Jar, I must apologize for getting back to you so late. The price of sleep for me has skyrocketed since I last posted. It is now a scarcity I can no longer afford with ease.
quote:
It's not a matter that so many disciplines are required to confirm the theory. That's not the case at all.
Perhaps that was the case back in the 18th century, but in modern science every field is linked in some way and that they must reinforce each other for them to be valid.
One of the major fact that could either overwhelmingly confirm the theory of evolution or blow it out of the water is the apparent age of the Earth as well as the solar system. In order to have enough "positive" mutations, for lack of a better word, for all the diversification required, the age of the earth must be pretty old, or at least older than the 6,000 year age proposed by creationists. Geology confirmed this. Astronomy further confirmed that the solar system was sufficiently old enough for most of the solar debris to have either been vacuumed up by the planets or settled into stationary orbits.
But suppose the theory of evolution have overwhelming biological evidence but then geologists as well as astronomers both confirm that everything was only 6,000 years old. Would biologists continue to believe that evolution was the best explanation for the diversity of life on Earth or would they go back to the drawing board and figure out if anything went wrong along the way?
quote:
The thing that adds overwhelming weight to the TOE is that every discipline DOES support it. It was well supported with the publication of Origin of the Species. Since then new technologies have been developed.
But would you agree that not all biologists have the kind of mastery over astrophysics, geology, or chemistry as astrophysicists, geologists, or chemists? If you answer yes, then there is some degree of faith in the scientific community to accept that, yes, geology, astronomy, etc. do support the theory.
quote:
In 2000 years not one supporting fact, evidence or technology has come along to support ID or Creationism.
Of course, there have been evidence that supported ID and creationism in the past 2000 years. Perhaps not any legitimate evidence in the last half century or so, but there were plenty before that.
To holmes:
quote:
To hold evolutionary theory as some sort of fact is definitely an act of faith. It requires faith in assumptions about the methodology of science, the results of that methodology, and most importantly the completeness of the data to give us a picture of what happened over time for all living entities.
While I partially agree with this statement, I'm not sure I can go along with it completely. The methodology of science is based mainly on the assumption that we live in a consistent universe, that if we repeat exactly what we did before we should get the same result again and again. Now, whether you would call this assumption faith or trust is up for debate. Personally, since I have repeatedly observed consistency all my life, I tend to see it as more of a trust than faith.
The other thing is I don't believe the case is closed. Yes, we do consistently face the incompleteness of the data to adequately give us the whole picture. This is why everything in science is open-ended. Every theory is subject to change should there emerge new data that tell us a different story than before, like the utraviolet catastrophe.
To SuperNintendo Chalmers:
quote:
Our deveopers don't have know how transistors work or about electron potential wells to make our products work.
I don't think this is a fair comparason, and I'll tell you why.
quote:
Similarly, things like anti-biotics just work! Which should be proof enough that evolution is solid.
Developers make money whether your explanation of how the transistors work is right or not as long as the transistors work. Yes, anti-biotics work, but in science people should care whether the explanation to how it work is correct or not.
™ Version 4.2
