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Author Topic:   scientific theories taught as factual
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 196 of 295 (447667)
01-10-2008 11:36 AM
Reply to: Message 193 by ICANT
01-10-2008 11:14 AM


Re: Sudden Appearances
ICANT writes:
Let me try to understand this.
I have always thought there was one single cell life form that appeared out of the absence of anything.
We were talking about the origin of species, not the origin of life. I think it would be better to focus on just one thing at a time, don't you?
You said that there was once a population of only two carrier pigeons that over time increased to over five billion. I explained that it was unlikely for there to have ever been a time in the passenger pigeon's evolutionary history when their population was reduced to a single pair. Species evolve gradually as populations. A population will gradually over time take on a different character as it responds to evolutionary forces in its environment. There is never any sudden emergence of a species, it is always a gradual process of tiny, tiny transitional steps from one generation to the next. Significant differences in the character of a population can only be detected after many generations have passed.
Before this revelation I thought there ought to be a lot more fossils than there are. But with millions more of each creature that tells me there should be mountains of fossils.
I think you should think through something so simple on your own. Here's a hint. Ask yourself why the forests aren't awash in squirrel and bird fossils.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 193 by ICANT, posted 01-10-2008 11:14 AM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 200 by ICANT, posted 01-10-2008 2:18 PM Percy has replied
 Message 265 by ICANT, posted 01-12-2008 6:25 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 199 of 295 (447694)
01-10-2008 1:21 PM
Reply to: Message 198 by ICANT
01-10-2008 12:30 PM


Re: Sudden Appearances
ICANT writes:
Example: I buy a bag of marbles with one hundered marbles in it. I am walking along a dark path with a lot of leaves and I spill my bag of marbles. I can only find fifty marbles, I lost 50% of my marbles. Next day I go to store and buy another bag of 100 marbles. Now I have 150 marbles a lot of time passes and I keep losing marbles in different ways and one day I spill my marbles again and cannot find 83% of them Now I have about 25 marbles left. If I lost all these marbles in a 1 acre yard I should be able to take a rake and rake the entire yard and find between 1 and 175 marbles.
The two places I spilled the marbles should produce the most marbles.
Now assume that instead of marbles it was bouillon cubes. How many do you think will still be around to rake up after a week?
You didn't mention my encouragement to consider why forests aren't awash in squirrel and bird fossils, so I'm going to assume that you now understand that under normal circumstances fossilization is rare.
You're now moving on to ask why certain extinction events didn't cause the relevant geological layers to be filled with fossils, and the answer is the same: fossilization is rare. Take the hypothesized asteroid that hit Mexico and might have caused the demise of the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs in the area within a thousand miles or so are all walking around when suddenly an enormous flash of heat and impact turbulence hits them, killing them instantly. Now they're all lying around on the ground where scavengers that mostly live below ground (e.g., some types of amphibians, reptiles and mammals) will remove their flesh, and the bones exposed to the elements will gradually erode and decay away (certain bacteria and fungi probably had a heyday).
Much of the material receiving enough energy to throw it into the air would be superheated, and those buried under superheated material would turn to ash.
But that's just within the blast area. Around the world environmental conditions change to the point where dinosaurs are no longer favored, and over the next couple million years they gradually die out, with fossilization no more likely than it ever was.
In other words, there would never be any huge burial ground of a geological layer for the dinosaurs. It wouldn't be unexpected for there to be pockets here and there of animals immediately killed, buried and preserved, but we haven't been so lucky to discover any that we can determine to be directly related to the event.
I can offer equivalent rationalization for the frozen mammoths, such as reduction of habitat, enormous numbers, persistence in following ancient migratory routes that were being filled in by glaciers, etc., but I don't think anything I could write would be helpful to you. What you're really seeking is reasons why evolution must be false, and if phenomena for which there is no evidence, such as the supernatural, is an acceptable explanation for you, then nothing anyone says will convince you that natural explanations suffice. There will always be things we do not know or can't explain, and in the face of the unknown or inexplicable there will always be people who say, "There be God!"
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Spelling.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 198 by ICANT, posted 01-10-2008 12:30 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 201 by ICANT, posted 01-10-2008 3:28 PM Percy has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 205 of 295 (447729)
01-10-2008 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 200 by ICANT
01-10-2008 2:18 PM


Re: Sudden Appearances
ICANT writes:
Now if thousands, millions or billions of creatures came on the scene at one time...
Actually, I've been trying to say the exact opposite, that millions and billions of a new type of creature do not appear at the same time. Sexual species evolve as populations of interbreeding organisms, and they evolve very gradually in tiny, tiny steps.
If you consider two fossil species, call them A and B, and A is suspected to have evolved into B, then assuming a consistent pace of evolution, at the start our original population of say several million organisms has traits that are 100% A-like and 0% B-like. Now keeping in mind this is very simplistic and only to illustrate the principle, after one generation our population has traits that are 99.9999% A-like and .0001% B-like. After two generations our population has traits that are 99.9998% A-like and .0002% B-like. And so forth.
After 10,000 generations our population, which has always maintained a population of several million, now has 0% A-like traits and 100% B-like traits.
Notice that there was no point in time when several million B's just suddenly popped into existence. The evolution of the population of A's into a population of B's occurred very gradually one tiny transition at a time.
Replying to your next Message 201 also:
ICANT in Message 201 writes:
The fact remains that I am looking for the tons of evidence that I have read on this site exists that proves evolution beyond a shadow of doubt.
You keep telling me it does not exist.
Proof of evolution beyond a shadow of doubt? Of course not. There is no proof of anything in science beyond a shadow of doubt. Science doesn't prove theories because science is tentative. Theories are always open to change or even rejection in light of new evidence or improved insights.
So if you're looking to science for proof of anything, be it Boyle's Law or relativity or the Maxwell equations or evolution, you're looking in the wrong place. Science can't give you proof. Let me emphasize this by replying to more of your post.
Sure there are a lot of things that we can prove.
If you're talking about science, there is nothing we can prove. All we do is build theoretical explanations around bodies of evidence through an intense process of experiment, observation, analysis, replication and making successful predictions.
There is change over time. That is a proven fact.
In science this cannot be considered a proven fact, though of course except at the outer limits of physics research science simply makes this assumption because it works extremely well.
Science is tentative. You have to accept that.
So I can choose on circumstantial evidence to accept that it did.
Circumstantial evidence is a legal term, not a scientific one. Scientific observations can be indirect, but it would be very bad scientific practice to accept the equivalent of circumstantial evidence as anything more than an indicator of something worth looking into more rigorously.
So far in the last 10 plus months on this site there has been very little evidence for anything put forth. Period.
Well, that's a very strange thing to say, because science is based upon evidence. The reason Darwin's theory was accepted so readily back in the 1860's was because of the wealth of evidence he presented in Origins, and the evidence supporting evolution has grown a million-fold since then, especially the evidence from genetics.
You do not have enough evidence to prove to me beyond a shadow of doubt that I descended from a single cell life form.
Of course I don't have enough evidence to prove evolution beyond a shadow of doubt. That's because I'm doing science. Scientists don't prove things, they support them with evidence. The more evidence the greater our confidence, but it never reaches 100% certainty. Not ever.
One day in the future the issue will be settled once and for all.
Oh, I very much doubt that.
If your theory is correct you and I will probably never know the answer or see the absolute proof.
Of course, because there's no such thing as absolute proof in science.
If my theory is correct you and I will both know the answer to the issue as we will both stand before God and confess that He is God.
Or it might be that evolutionary theory represents our best attempt at developing an accurate model that explains the diversity of life and earth, and that God is just fine with people figuring out how the real world really works.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 200 by ICANT, posted 01-10-2008 2:18 PM ICANT has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 206 of 295 (447732)
01-10-2008 4:45 PM
Reply to: Message 204 by ICANT
01-10-2008 4:27 PM


Re: Sudden Appearances
ICANT writes:
Hi sidelined,
However when the building materials are chemicals and the units self assemble then the process is automatic and the materials plentiful.
They did cease to be chemicals when they became single cell life forms didn't they.
Life is just very complicated chemistry. At university there's an introductory course called organic chemistry that's required for pre-med students. Besides separating the future doctors from the business majors, it teaches the basics of the chemistry of life.
So no, chemicals do not cease to be chemicals when they join a living organism. DNA consists of, among other things, amino acids, and their inclusion in the DNA molecule doesn't suddenly mean they're no longer chemicals. DNA itself is just a very complicated chemical molecule.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 204 by ICANT, posted 01-10-2008 4:27 PM ICANT has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 249 of 295 (448035)
01-11-2008 7:01 PM
Reply to: Message 244 by ICANT
01-11-2008 5:09 PM


Re: Sudden Appearances
ICANT writes:
All chemicals I know about are liquid.
Very believable.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 244 by ICANT, posted 01-11-2008 5:09 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 254 by ICANT, posted 01-11-2008 8:30 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 260 of 295 (448103)
01-11-2008 11:47 PM
Reply to: Message 254 by ICANT
01-11-2008 8:30 PM


Re: Sudden Appearances
ICANT writes:
Very believable.
Thank you for reading what I said not what everybody thought I should say.
You're thanking me for pointing out that you really are as ignorant as you seem?
I feel much like Anglagard. Since you're either not interested in or not capable of informed discussion, why are you here?
Members like you always attract a crowd, because the mistakes you make and the things you don't know are so simple and obvious that everyone believes they can be remedied with a few short explanations. I'm sure it comes as a surprise to everyone that such ignorance and confusion can persist across hundreds of posts of useful, relevant information.
A small part of the problem (a very small part) is that this topic is has been allowed to wander all over evolution, but we're so close to 300 posts there's no point in clarifying things now.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 254 by ICANT, posted 01-11-2008 8:30 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 261 by RAZD, posted 01-12-2008 9:12 AM Percy has not replied
 Message 262 by ICANT, posted 01-12-2008 11:49 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 264 of 295 (448205)
01-12-2008 12:52 PM
Reply to: Message 262 by ICANT
01-12-2008 11:49 AM


Re: Sudden Appearances
Hi ICANT,
Naturally you believe you're doing a wonderful job, but your performance is not the topic of this thread. It only comes up when you make particularly noteworthy or spectacular gaffes. We're only human, after all. Even in the midst of serious discussion, or at least attempts to coax someone into serious discussion, no one can ignore the clown slipping on the banana peel. When you engage in discussion primarily with quips and errors instead of evidence and argument then you shouldn't be surprised when you're not taken seriously.
But why don't you let the rest of this thread serve as a demonstration of how wrong I am. If you're so inclined, you can start with the messages from me that you ignored, Message 205 and Message 206, but there's lots of other messages from others with substantial information that you've ignored.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 262 by ICANT, posted 01-12-2008 11:49 AM ICANT has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 270 of 295 (448422)
01-13-2008 11:47 AM
Reply to: Message 265 by ICANT
01-12-2008 6:25 PM


Re: Sudden Appearances
Hi ICANT,
As much as I would like to, I'm not going to try to convince you of how accurately and well science describes reality. I'll just focus on explaining the nature of science and its relevant evolutionary views, and you can accept or reject them as you wish. Whatever decision you make, at least it will be based upon what evolution actually is and says, rather than upon misconceptions.
ICANT writes:
Percy in Message 205 writes:
ICANT in Message 201 writes:
The fact remains that I am looking for the tons of evidence that I have read on this site exists that proves evolution beyond a shadow of doubt.
You keep telling me it does not exist.
Proof of evolution beyond a shadow of doubt? Of course not.
Well then Percy I believe in evolution stronger than you do then because I believe there are things that have changed over time. I am 68 years old have raised many hybred crops, achieved some dramatic changes with selective breeding. Yes change over time happens and that is a fact.
I'm happy to grant that change over time happens, but the difference of opinion is about evolutionary theory, not change over time. The evolutionary explanation of how change over time has produced the diversity of species we see today through a process of descent with modification through natural selection is tentative. It is not a fact, it is a tentative theory. It can and will change in light of new evidence or improved insight.
All scientific theories are tentative, including Newton's laws of motion. In science, "law" is just a synonym for "theory", and Newton's laws have already been falsified by Einstein's theory of relativity, which itself could one day be falsified.
So when I say evolution cannot be proven beyond a shadow of doubt, I'm not telling you anything at all about evolution but about the nature of science itself, because no scientific theory can be proven beyond a shadow of doubt. Scientific theories are considered tentative, not certain.
But scientific theories do have mountains of evidence supporting them, and they've gone through an intense process of review, replication and prediction validation, and so while our certainty of their validity can never reach 100%, we can still be extremely confident in them. When Newton's laws of motion were falsified by Einstein's relativity, it didn't suddenly mean that everyone who had ever calculated distance as being equal to velocity multiplied by time had gotten the wrong answer, because Newton's laws are completely accurate for non-relativistic velocities. We know so much today that new knowledge is almost always a refinement of past knowledge, not an invalidation or rejection of it.
But enough about the nature of science, let's move on to fossils:
As I said Percy I need help here.
Lets say that several million was 10 million.
Over 10000 generations thats at least 50 billion + boddies along the way.
This is why creationist are always crying where are the fossils.
You never responded to my earlier explanation, so I'll just repeat it, which began by asking a rhetorical question: Why aren't our forests awash in bird and squirrel skeletons in the process of fossilization?
The answer is that fossilization is rare. We only see in the fossil record creatures that happened to become preserved. We know almost nothing about the entire evolutionary history of upland creatures, because that is not an environment favorable to fossilization because upland regions are areas of net erosion rather than deposition. A dead upland creature is very unlikely to become buried and preserved. Most fossils come from layers deposited beneath shallow seas, and the next most common category comes from lowland and shore areas. Mountains erode away, lowland areas accumulate materials eroded from upland areas.
Creationist reasoning would conclude from the absence of fossils of upland creatures that upland creatures did not exist a million years ago, or 100 million years ago during the dinosaurs, or 300 million years ago during the Permian age of reptiles, that they did not exist ever until very recently. But of course hills and mountains existed during all eras, there were indigenous creatures to hills and mountains just like there are today, but they aren't regions likely to preserve any fossils.
Fossils are what were accidentally preserved. We can only find what was actually fossilized. If you think more creatures should be fossilized then I again suggest you walk through a forest and see if you can find a single squirrel or bird skeleton.
Let me relate an experience I've had more than several times over the years while mowing the yard. I'm pushing the mower along and notice a dead bird or chipmunk at the edge of the yard (I have cats who are already well fed and only interested in sport, which is how I suspect this happens), and I make a mental note to clean it up later, then I forget. The next week while mowing the yard I remember that I forgot to clean up the dead animal, but when I reach that point in the yard it is gone. It's always gone. Dead animals are food, and unless some lucky accident buries them and prevents their bodies from being attacked not only by scavengers but also by bacteria and fungus, which are present even underground, then it will not be preserved.
Fossilization is rare.
Moving on to how it is populations that evolve, and that new species do not suddenly pop into existence, one problem you had was that, like most evolutionists, I noted that the origin of species is a different topic than the origin of life. But you can project back to the origin of life using the same principles we use for evolution, except that we can no longer know what the mechanism for heredity was. There was a point before which DNA and genes and chromosomes existed. There's a mild consensus today that the first life was based on RNA, but there must have been something before RNA-life, and what was that?
The most important reason for distinguishing between the evolution of life as we know it today, versus the evolution of pre-life, is that we have little more than speculation at this point about the hereditary mechanisms of pre-life. Certainly the principles must have been the same, and so we believe that whatever replication mechanisms were in place were imperfect, and that selection operated on variation to produce populations of pre-life best adapted to their environment.
This means that populations of pre-life gradually evolved into populations of life. There was never an original cell. Rather there were populations of incredibly primitive pre-life that gradually evolved into populations of less primitive pre-life that gradually evolved into populations of merely primitive pre-life that gradually evolved into populations of proto-life that gradually evolved into populations of the very first forms of primitive life, which is where we usually consider the theory of evolution to take over. But evolutionary principles are considered to have governed the evolution of pre-life, we just don't know the hereditary foundation.
We start out at ground zero with several million.
At 2500 generations what would this population look like? Maybe A because they haven't changed enough.
At 5000 generations what would this population look like? Not like A and not like B so what would this population look like.
At 7500 generations this population definetly would not look like A and would look more like B maybe.
At 10000 generations A has become B and looks nothing at all like A and probably nothing like they did at 5000 generations.
Hopefully I've assuaged your concerns about the lack of fossils for every stage of progression from A to B, and if so, then your account of this gradual transition of a population of A's into a population of B's is largely correct. As time goes on the population has a smaller and smaller proportion of A-like traits, and a larger and larger proportion of B-like traits.
As I said in the opening, I'm not trying to persuade you that evolution is correct, only that this is the correct explanation of evolution. The evolutionary views I've just described are the ones you have to criticize.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 265 by ICANT, posted 01-12-2008 6:25 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 271 by RAZD, posted 01-13-2008 3:46 PM Percy has not replied
 Message 272 by ICANT, posted 01-13-2008 4:16 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 275 of 295 (448534)
01-13-2008 10:16 PM
Reply to: Message 272 by ICANT
01-13-2008 4:16 PM


Re: Sudden Appearances
ICANT writes:
I just hear so much about evidence. Even you mentioned mountains of evidence. But I can't find it, I find a mole hill hopefully someone can point the mountain out.
You asked for evidence proving evolution beyond doubt. I can't do that, not because there's no supporting evidence for evolution, but because there's no amount of evidence that could ever prove anything in science beyond doubt.
My guess is that your thinking of the claim that people like to make that it is a fact that evolution has occurred, while the mechanisms thought to lie behind evolution, what we would call evolutionary theory, are tentative. I blame the former claim, that it is a fact that evolution has occurred, on Stephen Jay Gould, and I believe it is false. For the purposes of that statement, Gould defined fact only as something that had so much supporting evidence that it would be perverse to withhold at least provisional acceptance. If you define fact in that way, then clearly it is not beyond any shadow of doubt that evolution has occurred, since that would mean 100% certainty. In science nothing is ever 100% certain, even what we consider our facts.
But there are mountains of evidence supporting evolution, both its occurrence and the mechanisms behind it. In other words, if you want to learn about the evidence proving evolution beyond a shadow of doubt, then there's no amount of evidence that can do that. But if you want to learn about the evidence supporting evolution, then there's a wealth of evidence available.
It would take a pretty stupid person to expect to find fossils in a forrest of squirls or birds. Also of bullion cubes in a yard.
I didn't ask you to consider why you don't find bird and squirrel fossils in the forest. I asked you to consider why you don't find bird and squirrel skeletons in the forest. Before there can be a fossil there had to be an actual skeleton made of bone that would, over time, fossilize. Since there are virtually no bird or squirrel skeletons in the forest lying around waiting to become future fossils, you should not expect to find many bird or squirrel fossils buried in the geological layers. And the same is true of all other life. Fossilization is a rare event. I don't know what the actual odds of a creature becoming a fossil are, but it's got to be at least a one in a million type of event.
ICANT writes:
I stated when I came on this site that I had no problem with evolution.
But that's not true. For example, in your previous post you mentioned insufficient fossils as a problem with evolution. And even if it were true that you have no problem with evolution, you don't understand it, as your difficulty with the concept of the evolution of populations and with the nature of fossilization makes clear.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 272 by ICANT, posted 01-13-2008 4:16 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 276 by Modulous, posted 01-13-2008 10:33 PM Percy has not replied
 Message 281 by ICANT, posted 01-14-2008 12:01 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 285 of 295 (448593)
01-14-2008 7:11 AM
Reply to: Message 277 by nwr
01-13-2008 10:56 PM


Re: pedantic interjection
nwr writes:
If I measure the height of my desk as 29 inches +- .5 inches, then I call that a fact. I think I can be far more certain of that than I can of what evolutionists sometimes call facts.
Yeah, this pretty much nails what I was trying to say. Too much time and effort is wasted on the evolutionist claim that it is a fact that evolution has occurred. If evolutionists are involved in any bait-and-switch tactics, this is it. While it wouldn't quite be correct to say that calling evolution a fact is wrong, it certainly is misleading to attempt to give the impression that evolution is the same type of fact as the height of your desk. Something that took Darwin years of investigation during a round the world voyage followed by many more years of thought and analysis to discover and understand is by no means the same type of obvious fact as the height of your desk or the color of a flower, and I wish Gould had never made the claim as it's a cause of endless and unnecessary trouble.
Aside to Modulous: I own a 25 year-old copy of Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 277 by nwr, posted 01-13-2008 10:56 PM nwr has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 286 by Modulous, posted 01-14-2008 7:46 AM Percy has replied
 Message 289 by Dr Adequate, posted 01-14-2008 9:18 AM Percy has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 287 of 295 (448599)
01-14-2008 7:47 AM
Reply to: Message 281 by ICANT
01-14-2008 12:01 AM


Re: Sudden Appearances
ICANT writes:
But that's not true. For example, in your previous post you mentioned insufficient fossils as a problem with evolution.
Would you please point out in Message 272 where I say insufficient fossils is a problem with evolution.
First, I was replying to your Message 272, so your previous post would be Message 265.
Second, have you dropped the level of discourse to the point where you're now denying things you've clearly said? Only 15 messages to go in this thread, ICANT, you're wasting them!
Third, here's you in your Message 265 where you mention the problem of insufficient fossils:
ICANT in Message 265 writes:
Now the creationist in me says where are the fossils of the population when they were at the half way point 5000 generations.
As I said Percy I need help here.
Lets say that several million was 10 million.
Over 10000 generations thats at least 50 billion + boddies along the way.
This is why creationist are always crying where are the fossils.
Of course, we both know you have a problem with the fossil record, because you admit it in your very next paragraph:
ICANT writes:
But yes I do have a problem with insufficient fossils...
Thank you for making me waste my time quoting precisely where you had already said this.
Percy would you like to know without a doubt that evolution has occured as many here believe it has and you could prove it with a fossil record that could not be questioned as to the facts?
There is nothing that can't be questioned in science. There is nothing that can be proven in science. There is nothing that can be known without a doubt in science. Science is tentative.
Science can only provide levels of confidence in what we think we know through a process of experiment, observation, analysis, replication and prediction validation. We're pretty certain about the theory of evolution, and about our belief that evolution has produced the diversity of life observed both in the fossil record and currently living on this planet, but that certainty never reaches 100%. There's tons of evidence supporting these conclusions.
Your problem is that you're rejecting all evidence that doesn't prove evolution. If you keep looking for the evidence that proves evolution then you'll never find any evidence at all, because no such evidence exists. No evidence proving any scientific theory exists, because scientific theories aren't proven.
Scientists use words like "prove" and "proof" all the time, but they're just using it as shorthand for "supported by sufficient evidence." They don't mean to imply certainty beyond doubt, which is what you seem to be looking for. That degree of certainty doesn't exist within science.
I've explained this so many times now that I have to ask, if you play chess, does your opponent have to explain castling and how the knight moves before every game, or do you learn and incorporate what you learn into your thinking? I assume the answer is yes. How about doing the same thing here?
I will say since God made everything out of the same material we would be very similiar. Now we are back to square 1. You should be more concerened about the lack of fossils than I am because without them you will never be able to convince creo's.
You can't find what isn't there. You are never going to find the fossilized skeleton of any creature whose remains were eaten, scavenged, scattered, then completely decayed to dust and detritus, which is the fate of probably at least 99.9999% of all creatures that have ever lived.
I did say inMessage 272
quote:
I do have a problem when people say it is a proven fact that I evolved from a lower life form.
So do I, as I explained already when I mentioned Gould.
I said I hear so much about evidence but I can't find it.
I was pointed to a lot of written material and a few pictures.
Like I said before, if you can't find the evidence it's because you're looking for evidence that proves evolution true. No such evidence exists.
As others keep suggesting, you sound like you just want to ignore the evidence while complaining about exaggerated claims. You're like a guy surrounded by trees saying, "Where's the forest?"
If you're sincere in wanting evidence and would like to give examining that evidence another try then the greatest wealth of evidence presented for evolution is probably in the original book on the subject, Darwin's Origins. It's very readable, and though dry, if it's evidence you're looking for then there isn't a better place. You can find it in any library and most bookstores, and nearby it you'll find a wealth of more contemporary books that also present a lot of evidence.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 281 by ICANT, posted 01-14-2008 12:01 AM ICANT has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 295 by nator, posted 01-14-2008 5:27 PM Percy has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 288 of 295 (448601)
01-14-2008 7:51 AM
Reply to: Message 286 by Modulous
01-14-2008 7:46 AM


Re: pedantic interjection
I don't think I'd have any objection if evolutionists modified the Gould argument to claim that evolution is a non-obvious fact.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 286 by Modulous, posted 01-14-2008 7:46 AM Modulous has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 293 of 295 (448621)
01-14-2008 12:05 PM
Reply to: Message 292 by Dr Adequate
01-14-2008 10:35 AM


Re: pedantic interjection
Dr Adequate writes:
You know I'm joking, right?
When will we ever learn it's not possible to have a serious discussion with an anti-evolutionistianarianismist!
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 292 by Dr Adequate, posted 01-14-2008 10:35 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
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