Parable of the candle - should million/billion year dating be taught as fact?

How true, that humans are apes, and in my opinion, the most endangered.

how exactly does a population of 6.5 billion constitute "endangered"?Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

sarcasmI tend to inject sarcasm into posts to help maintain my sanity from some of what I read in other posts.

i was hoping. i never know on here.

who does?

You misunderstand. The example you gave is used as induction through confirmation. If apples are true then we see apples but if we instead see oranges that doesn't mean apple-theory must be discarded. You need to study MORE on specific, and the difference between proof and evidence.A falsification is not deductive logic, in the sense that a theory can be thought of as wrong and later be re-established as viable. For example if you expect to find transitionals and find not transitionals this is not a 'proof' there are none.The falsification is only strong because there has to be lots of 'little' confirming evidences in order to imply that theory X is true. A falsification is powerful but the actual theory depends on induction. Lame informal fallacy. By association they aren't the same and a mere assertion of anecdote doesn't = false. Back to logic school before you go teaching the rest of us!

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You misunderstand. The example you gave is used as induction through confirmation. If apples are true then we see apples but if we instead see oranges that doesn't mean apple-theory must be discarded

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You're relying on equivocation here, Mike. And that's logically invalid.If you disagree tell me how you can interpret the statement:"If the apple theory is true we must necessarily see apples" so that it is true AND so it can also be the case that the apple theory is true, yet we do not see apples.
(i.e. you need to show that A=>B, A and ~B can all be simultaneously true. And the truth table for implication shows that that is logically impossible).

After having a little think about this I realized that Rhrain wasn't understanding my point, or perhaps I didn't explain it well enough.My argument, (IIRC, was a while back,), is that theory is induction-based. I concede that his example of falsification is deductive logic. I only realized later that that is exactly why falsification is so powerful, because confirmation (induction) is so weak!My main point stands - theories are mainlyinduction-based. I never said that this excludes any deductive logic WITHIN that theory. Afterall, that is why there is a paradigm shift - because induction is weak and deductive proof is strong. I was silly to take the bait.Apologies if I don't get back to you on this, as I don't count myself as a debater any longer and I only access the internet when I happen to be in the library.