Warthog writes:
No. It is another name for a theory of abiogenesis. The ToE refers only to reproducing living things.
Yeah, you got me - trouble with writing on a phone when you're supposed to be working
No. You were right the first time. Hopefully we won't allow this thread to turn into arguing and equivocating over the term evolution, accompanied by "hear no evil" denials by the usual suspects.
The theory of evolution is about the origin of species. That is, descent with variation of things that are alive. We can of course argue about the definition of what is alive, but I expect that most of us put pre-biotic chemical replicators on the non-living side of the line.
Surely abiogenesis hypothesizes that some of the same principles (e.g. selection, reproduction with variation) that are part of the theory of evolution may well have been involved in the origin of life from non-living molecules. But sharing those same principles does not mean that the the ToE applies to the origin of life on earth. And our inability to provide a theory of abiogenesis does not put the thoery of evolution on shaky footing.
Abiogenesis likely did involve changes over long periods of time, and the dictionary does allow us to call such changes evolution. But the origin and development of the earth, the sun, solar/stellar system, and the entire universe have include processes taking billions of years. We should be able to label such changes as evolution without confusing those processes with the Theory of Evolution.
And yet some people, and the most prominent example I can give, is the tax evading fraud and convicted liar Kent Hovind, insist that believers in evolution, i.e. biologists and other life scientists are on the hook for proving the big bang and abiogenesis because they are all "evolution".
Yeah, Hovind, but they aren't all the 'Theory of Evolution.' Why that should be so #$%@# hard to grasp in a written forum ought rightly to be something to ridicule rather than to debate. But C'est la guerre.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)