In another topic
about information Garrett made the claim that:
if the evidence infers a conclusion that isn't verifiable, you rely on faith
So I thought I'd start a topic on how conclusions can be verified, and I'm going to use murder as my analogy.
If we find a man in the room with a knife in the back, we generally infer that a murder has taken place. However, we need to verify it. How? We verify something by finding other evidence, independent of the first, that agrees with that conclusion.
So take the evolutionary time scale. One of the biggest criticisms that faces evolutionary time scales is that we cannot verify it. For example, the fossil record shows that the marsupial mammals and placental mammals diverged about 143-178 million years ago
1.
How? From radiodating of the fossils. How do we verify this?
One way to do it is to attempt to calibrate a molecular clock based on a radiodating time. If this molecular clock gives us times similar to the radiodating times (for times other than the calibration time obviously) then this is considered verification of radiodating. It would be a tremendous coincidence if the two just happened to line up. It has been done
1 on several occasions.
There are many independent lines of enquiry that agree with the inferred conclusion that is evolution. Each one serves as a verification method. The (in)famous
29+ evidences (which is now the second result on google if you search for 29+) demonstrate many of these lines of enquiry.
I appreciate the topic appears to be wide, so I'll clarify:
off topic
1. Discussions about whether or not the 29+ evidences are right or not. A little discussion on them would probably be on topic, but we are going in the wrong direction if it becomes the central topic
2. Radiodating is wrong! Essentially the topic is about verification methods, and what they are. The dates and dating forum is the place for such rants.
on topic1. Falsification, the opposite of verification, but I think its discussion is on topic here.
2. Using the above topics as examples. Eg, If radiodating is right, here is a method for verifying it. If radiodating is wrong, here is how to falsify it. Just be careful because that kind of thing can lead too far off the topic's path.
3. Philosophy/logic. Its popular here at the moment, and I think it would be interesting.
Kicking off the discussion
Garrett writes:
You can easily [verify] that your computer is on your desk by reaching out and touching it. However, it's not possible to [verify] that changes ABOVE the level of species can occur. Evolutionists would be the first to admit this since they take such great time to occur.
Garrett was talking about verification not proof, so I changed his words (as noted by square brackets). Of course we can not prove my desk is here (it could a complicated sequence of tactile, aural and visual hallucinations. I've neither smelled nor tasted it yet). Nor can we prove evolution at higher levels of taxa.
However, we can demonstrate many lines of evidence that infer evolution that agree with one another. Turning back to murder, if we had
1. DNA evidence,
2. fingerprint evidence,
3. a CCTV camera
4. a witness
5. a confession
6. no alibi
7. a bloody (victim's blood) weapon found at the suspect's house
8. a diary that details what the suspect was going to do, which matches up with what happened.
9. footprints that match the shoe size and type of the suspect
10. tyre tracks that match the suspect's vehicle,
11. which was caught on a speeding camera 200 metres from the location of the crime
12. The forensics pinpoint the time to within 20 minutes of the speed trap
13. etc
that suggested it was Greg Matthews then it would require FAITH that it wasn't him since it is unreasonable doubt, not reasonable doubt, to think such a thing.
As such when we have well over a dozen evidences that all point to the same conclusion of evolution it requires faith to not accept that conclusion, not vice versa.
1A molecular timescale for vertebrate evolution Sudhir Kumar & S. Blair Hedges
Is it Science? Seems to make sense.
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