If a mythical creature such as a griffin existed.....

Well, the existence of something so flagrantly not-evolved would lead us to question the evolution of things which are less flagrant. If not-evolution was producing species, there's no reason to suppose that it would always be kind enough to do so in ways that were obvious to us. So I think that not only would we consider the griffin to be not-evolved, but it would cast a general shadow of doubt over the evolution of other species.

But again, where does it stop? If aliens brought along something which we could easily identify as an anomaly, such as a creature with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion, then they might also have brought along something which we couldn't recognize as an anomaly, such as something with the head of a lion and the body of a lion, i.e. a lion. We'd have to start wondering what, if anything, was the product of evolution and what was misplaced alien pets.

Well, they look like they do. After the griffin, we'd have a reason to suggest that anything might not be.

I myself would be somewhat less blas ... It's not a claim, it's a doubt. Once we'd found the griffin, would we be justified in saying: "But we know that nothing else was produced by the same process"?

How many mythical chimer would it take? Or not. There's no need to be dogmatic about it. Or we'd need another theory. There were people who thought the precession of Mercury could be explained within the Newtonian paradigm, but in the end a whole new theory was required.I am unable to think of one, but then I am also unable to find a griffin, so that's OK.

Yes, well, we haven't found those fossils. And we've had plenty of time to do so. The other problem is that a griffin is chimeric, it has the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. Stuck together. Even assuming the existence of undiscovered fossil tetrapods which are actually hexapods, the independent evolution of the head, beak wings, and feathers of an eagle, and the body of a lion, would boggle the mind. I'd say it would be exactly the sort of thing that God should have made if he wanted me to be a creationist. Darwin would have given up and gone home.

Well, we're obviously approaching this question from different angles. I took it to mean: "What if we have the data we now have, plus a griffin?" rather than: "What if we had the data we have now, plus a griffin, plus incontrovertible evidence that griffins evolved?" It would be, within the context of the theory of evolution as it stands. The function of the theory (as opposed to the mere fact) of evolution is to place constraints on what can and can't evolve. A griffin can't. Even if we had a good set of intermediate forms, we would still have no theoretical idea that would explain how the griffin could be a chimera of two existing forms with lines of descent separate from one another and from that of the griffin. Sure, but as I pointed out, we'd then have to wonder whether they did evolve. Would the process that produced the griffin look so kindly on us as to ensure that every non-evolved thing was so flagrantly non-evolved that we could spot it?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I'm not sure I quite follow you. But I'll take a guess and say you mean that we could still conclude that evolved things are evolved, because we'd still have the intermediate forms.But faced with a flagrant chimera, could we be certain any more that these intermediate forms were relics of evolutionary transitions? Could not Archaeopteryx, for example, be not a representative of a transition between dinosaurs and modern birds, but a chimera formed by non-evolutionary processes?If some creationist were now to suggest that God had produced such chimeras In The Beginning, I would answer him as follows: But given a griffin, this argument wouldn't work any more.---P.S: I was editing my previous post as you were replying to it, so you might want to look at it again so as not to let me sneak any arguments by you unawares.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yeah, but we wouldn't know that any more. All those intermediate forms could be chimeras. We'd have to go back and look again at the basis of what we now think we know with more skeptical eyes.

A god per se would not lead us to doubt the theory. But a god poofing species into existence obviously would.

With regard to the evidence we have. But we're being invited to consider evidence that we don't have. We're being asked: if there were griffins, would there be doubt? Yes, there would.You remind me rather of a creationist I once talked to. He maintained that evolution was unfalsifiable, hence unscientific. I pointed out that there were lots of things we could conceivably find in the fossil record that would totally destroy evolution. He replied that since no-one had found any such thing in all these years of looking, evolution was in practice unfalsifiable. He'd got the wrong end of the stick one way, and you seem to have got the wrong end of the stick another way.The question is: what if there was evidence that disproved evolution? Like my creationist acquaintance, you are apparently content to dismiss this idea on the grounds that there hasn't been yet. But that doesn't answer the question: what if there was? Well, we could. As an extreme example, we could meet the superintelligent alien who faked up the Earth and the evidence for evolution as the alien equivalent of an eighth-grade science project, and she could explain to us that this was a big experiment on us like running rats through a maze. She could show us the machines that she used to produce strata and fossils. We'd have to suck it up.

Well in that case I'd have to ask: "What is this evolution thing that you maintain is still true"?You write: So now when you say that "evolution is true", you mean that natural selection will still go on operating on random mutation. Well, yes. I believe most creationists would agree with that.But what "evolutionists" maintain is not merely that this process goes on, but that this process has produced all the varieties of life on Earth from, in Darwin's words "a few forms or one".To make it clear, I would give the following definitions:* Evolution: heritable change in a lineage.* Theory of evolution: our knowledge of genetics so far, subject to modification.* Darwinism: The proposition that the species now found on Earth were produced from one or a few ancestral species in accordance with the theory of evolution, from "a few forms or one" (as Darwin put it).Now if you want to defend "evolution", then this is an ambiguous word. But it would clearly be dishonest to use the second or the first of these definitions to fight for "evolution" when the real issue in question is the third. The third is the whole thing that we're fighting about.

The bit where someone asserts that the griffin is certainly produced by the processes that comprise the theory of evolution. Well, given the discovery of a griffin, that bit. No, I don't think that it would be dishonest for you to say this or that. I think that it might be ambiguous.I don't mind what terminology we use, so long as we can agree on what it means.

Well, this is obviously unworthy of you. If someone pointed out that asteroid DA2012 DA14 had a triangular orbit, and I said that this violated the theory of gravity, would you ask me to underline where in the theory of gravity it mentions that particular asteroid?

I have given considerable thought to this sort of problem. And I have concluded that either there is no solution, or that if I could solve it I would write my name across the centuries like Newton or Galileo.The general form of the question is how much confirmation we would require to push a theory from not probable to probable, or alternatively how many anomalies we would need to push a theory from probable to not probable.Now it is clear that scientists themselves cannot solve this interesting question about the scientific method. If they could, then (for example) there would have been a single scientific paper that would have pushed geologists from not believing in continental drift to believing in it. But there wasn't. Some of them were ahead of the time, some of them were behind the times, and even from our godlike perspective of knowing the right answer, we cannot (without egregious immodesty) point to the exact point when enough data really was enough, and we would have believed it.What will be the next thing, and what should our attitude towards it be? Hindsight does not grant us a general principle of foresight. Sometimes, looking back, we see that apparent anomalies could be brought within the rule. And sometimes, looking back, we see that there were real anomalies that required a new rule.Now in this hypothetical case of the griffin, we are provided with a remarkable situation. On the one hand we are supplied with literal mountains of evidence that a theory is true; on the other hand, we are presented with a single but really glaring counterexample.Which way should we jump? Now I would suggest that in this case also even hindsight would not give us the right answer. Suppose the following sequence of events to take place:(1) The griffin is discovered.
(2) I announce on this basis that in my opinion Darwinism is bunk.
(3) Further evidence comes forward proving that Darwinism is bunk.Now, can it really be said that on the basis of (3) that I made the right call at point (2)? No, not at all. I might merely have had a bias that in that particular case turned out to be the right one: I might have been a blind Gadarene swine furiously and fortuitously stampeding over the right cliff. Could I really claim a superiority of reason over those who went the other way?What, then, of this particular case? Now, I have put forward arguments, which I believe are correct, proving that the griffin would be a particularly harsh blow against evolution, even if it was just the one singular case; and people who are not idiots should see the force of my arguments. And yet no-one, certainly not I, could really say that this one piece of evidence would be sufficient to overturn the Darwinian paradigm; and no-one is in a position to say that it shouldn't. We would find ourselves repeating the usual scientific mantra: "More research is needed".But I do claim that such a discovery would cast a dark shadow of doubt over Darwinism unless and until the griffin could be explained within the Darwinian concept. While people are working on that, and before they come up with a solution, I think we would have to entertain grave doubts about the whole theory. And without further information about this purely hypothetical situation, I think that this is about as far as we can go.