proving evolution as just a "theory"

[Kenny'sID]

. You provide a series of observations. There is no scientific theory evident from those observations. WHY and HOW does that mechanism occur?

It don't need no stinkin' theory, it's cut and dried, that's one of my points. the reason evolution is just theory is because it's not cut and dried fact. Theory is the only way you can present it/it's all you got, and how dare you call it fact suddenly.

How would you explain it if someone put their hand on a stove and didn't get burned?

The stove wasn't on?

Would you care to demonstrate?

 

[tas8831]

This is why I have hard time talking to atheists. You guys say you want to interlocute, you say you want "untarnished truth," but when someone then presents it to you, you hedge.

Notice..........I said "few" atheist teachers I have had were that way. But, the ones that I had that were that way......were that way. I'm not relating to you some snippet from a Ripley's museum.

You offered 'untarnished anecdote', not truth.

But whatever.

 

[Kenny'sID]

That's right. Scientific theory represents the pinnacle of our understanding of any group of phenomena. It explains the HOW and WHY of those phenomena (facts).

And I'll go one better than your 'burned hand'.

Think about gravity. It's pretty well established that if I drop an object (on earth), it will fall to the ground. Happens every day, every time, right?

You'd think that the theory behind such a common, mundane phenomenon would be simple and cut and dried, right?

But it isn't. Gravitational theory is incomplete. There is still much about that simple action of things falling that we still don't understand. As more evidence is gathered/discovered, the theory will become stronger......perhaps as strong as evolutionary theory one day...

I don't really care if we don't understand gravity, but thank you.

Seems to me you just made a case for...If you don't understand evolution, then wait till you do and stop even presenting it as theory, but at the very least don't call it fact.

 

[tas8831]

Sure. Ask your friend to show you real evidence for evolution.
Ask for him to take you to any museum and share the evidence of species transitioning from one species to another.
Ask him to show you how kidneys evolved, or the liver or the spleen or the heart and circulatory
system evolved. Ask for the evidence. Ask him to prove it.
In the end he can't.

You know dinosaurs had all the body components - skeleton; muscles, organs, digestive systems;
eyes; brains; spinal cords; etc etc etc - they died out some supposed 65 million years ago and
ruled the world for hundreds of millions of years before.
So if dinosaurs had everything to be complex warm blooded animals and reproduce then just when did
all these necessary body parts evolve to allow for this? and from what?

When you get into the nitty gritty of the how of evolution there is only supposition and hopeful
wishing. Show me the evolution of the eyes and sight: eyeballs that are cameras, rods and cones
that are photographically sensitive to images; optic nerves; brain receptors; turning upside down
images into the right way up. Should be easy to show all the steps involved from light sensitive bacteria
right through to what we can visualize today.

Creation is self evident, evolution is continuing to deliberately deny the truth.

Asking questions is not evidence, or proving someone wrong.

Allow me to turn the tables:


Sure. Ask your friend to show you real evidence for creation.
Ask for him to take you to any museum and share the evidence of species being created from dust of the ground
Ask him to show you how kidneys were created, or the liver or the spleen or the heart and circulatory
system were created. Ask for the evidence. Ask him to prove it.
In the end he can't.

You know dinosaurs had all the body components - skeleton; muscles, organs, digestive systems;
eyes; brains; spinal cords; etc etc etc - they died out some supposed 65 million years ago and
ruled the world for hundreds of millions of years before.
So if dinosaurs had everything to be complex warm blooded animals and reproduce then just when did
all these necessary body parts get created to allow for this? and from what?

When you get into the nitty gritty of the how of creation there is only supposition and hopeful
wishing. Show me the creation of the eyes and sight: eyeballs that are cameras, rods and cones
that are photographically sensitive to images; optic nerves; brain receptors; turning upside down
images into the right way up. Should be easy to show all the steps involved from light sensitive bacteria
right through to what we can visualize today.

Evolution is self evident, creation is continuing to deliberately deny the truth.

 

[HitchSlap]

It don't need no stinkin' theory, it's cut and dried, that's one of my points. the reason evolution is just theory is because it's not cut and dried fact. Theory is the only way you can present it/it's all you got, and how dare you call it fact suddenly.



The stove wasn't on?

Would you care to demonstrate?

I explained to you what a theory is in the context of science. Please, quit embarrassing yourself and other cdesign proponentsists, and refrain from using this worn out canard.

 

[tas8831]

That so funny! I looked at the one site and guess what I found, supposition and assumptions.

Which one? Be specific please.

Not one tested verified experiment to show there was a common ancestor. Just the same old tired stuff that says in basic "this has a similarity to this therefore we have a common ancestor.". It's all a bunch of assumption wrapped in supposition. No one has observed or tested that one thing evolves into something else.

So...

You did NOT actually look at either of those sites.

Before you go all nuts and point to how a lizard changed on an island from one species of lizard into another species of lizard and that proves evolution, let me remind you that I already agreed that can happen. ...What we don't see is a creature turning into something it wasn't in the first place.

"... a lizard changed on an island from one species of lizard into another species of lizard and that proves evolution, let me remind you that I already agreed that can happen...
What we don't see is a creature turning into something it wasn't in the first place."

Hilarious.

One type of creature can adapt and change due to it's environment in order to survive. That's God's magnificent way to keep life going.

What is the mechanism by which this happens?

Are you implying that God intervenes to change those lizards into new species?

Or...?

 

[DogmaHunter]

Nope and you can't prove evolution from a common ancestor is either.

That's not entirely correct.
We sure can prove common ancestry of species, just like we can prove common ancestry of individuals (we can tell your genetic sibling from your adopted sibling, for example).

We can't prove "evolution" - the theory. Because theories can never be proven, only ever supported. Evolution, the theory, refers to the mechanism by which a mother population diversifies into sub-species.

But that mother-populations in fact do diversify into sub-populations (speciation), is pretty much a genetic fact.

So I guess we both have the same issue.

No. Not even by a long shot.
Evolution is supported by mountains of objective and independently verifiable evidence and subject to experiment.

Your religion is just, to be honest, a bronze age story that you can either believe or not. There is no verifiability there. There is no supporting data (not for the supernatural bits anyway). There is only the set of claims which are not in evidence.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Very difficult, because practically all people have been brainwashed for decades into believing that evolution:
a] is a scientific theory
b] is supported by lots and lots of evidence
c] is not just a naturalistic belief.
d] is something everybody with enough knowledge subscribes to
e] has no serious scientific gaps and problems.
f] etcetera.....

The great thing about science, is that it does not depend on people's mere "beliefs", nore does it expect people's "mere beliefs" to be accepted.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

If as a scientist you even only hint that your paper should be "just believed", it will be torn apart by default.

So, good luck with trying to make that person realise that it is in fact:
a] a naturalistic belief
b] a presupposition that was decided upon long ago
c] an outrageous claim that demands strong evidence, and not just people shouting there is so much evidence.
e] a feeble attempt to explain the mind blowing complexity and genius we find in living nature and in the premises for life to be sustained
f] a lot of stuff proudly proclaimed as proof is ambiguous or fabricated.
g] popular science is a travesty of proper science.
h] etcetera...

Good luck.

It is in fact just science like any other science.
"Mere beliefs" are never part of the equation.

 

[tas8831]

in science you only need one scientist with one counter evidence. and we indeed have such evidence.

LOL!


By that measure, creationism was disproven, flat-out demolished, more than a century ago.

 

[tas8831]

can you choose one of them?

Can I choose one of what?

 

[TBDude65]

For those here who want to prove evolution is "just" a "theory" (assuming the colloquial use of the word instead of the scientific), is anyone actually willing to go and try and prove it? I have offered as much to Kenny'sID, but he ignored it and claimed I wasn't giving what was being asked for.

If people really want to "prove" it is "just a theory," it would be fairly straightforward to do so, and I can help advise you on setting up an experiment that would do just that. We can stick with a field I would be best equipped to advise on: Paleontology/Paleobiology.

What we can do is this: replicate a study from the paleontological literature that shows evolutionary trends through time (changes in morphology). We can find a taxon that is abundant enough and long-lived enough in the fossil record that can be collected in large enough quantities to yield statistically significant numbers of samples. From these samples, we can measure specific morphological traits associated with the species. For instance, we can measure the shape of an organism (such as a bivalve or brachiopod) through time to look for directional selection pressure for changing shapes. We could replicate predator-prey relationships and look at how clades respond to predation and/or go extinct. We could look at other morphological traits within a clade too, such as the number of body segments and/or eye lenses within trilobites (two factors Gould considered in the famous Gould and Eldredge 1977 paper detailing Punctuated Equilibrium).

Does anyone actually want to do this and "prove" it is "just a theory?"

 

[rjs330]

And I am sorry to tell you that using magic words like "assumptions" and "speculations" to try and poof away the evidence in a cloud of smoke doesn't work. The evidence remains and remains unaddressed.

{snip}


This crime against semantics is laughable.

I have yet to see any actual evidence. All I see is speculation and assumption. That's my point. When you actually come up with a testing process that shows something turning into something from a common ancestor let me know. All your "evidence" is assumption and speculation. None of it is verifiable or testable or observable. It's not real science.

 

[tas8831]

the design model actually make several predictions. one of them is to find evidence for design.

The evolution model predicts that we will find evidence for evolution.

see how dopey that sounds?

and we indeed found such evidence:

In which direction does ATP synthase rotate?

You mean the stylized diagram is intelligently designed? i agree.

 

[Hieronymus]

Ever seen the documentary "Jesus Camp"?

Yes i have.
Have you ever noticed how evolution is promoted ?
Same thing.

 

[rjs330]

Once again you demonstrate that you do not understand the concept of evidence.

Once again you are incorrect. I work in a field where we work with evidence all the time. I'm not seeing any real evidence in evolution. I see speculation and I see a lot of assumptions but I don't see any real evidence. Why? Because it can't be observed tested or reproduced. Therefore it is guesswork. A belief.

 

[tas8831]

What a load of bunk.
Everything declares the creation. It is self evident and marvellous except to the blind and fools.

Why didn't you say so before! I am totally going to adopt your belief system, because I don't want the Righteous to consider me to be a blind fool...

 

[tas8831]

"Look.....the trees!" is not evidence....

Funny you say that - I took a creative writing class at a community college many many years ago, and an older woman was in the class. We had weekly assignments to write something, and then to read it to the class for discussion the next week. This older woman's work, every week, was some religious platitude. In one of her poems, she told a tale of walking in the woods with her granddaughter, who asked her where Jesus was. Her answer was to point out all the things they could see- the trees, the leaves, the ground, etc. - and to tell her poor little granddaughter that Jesus was in all those things for he had created it all....

They really tell that to children.

 

[tas8831]

but the creation model explain it too by a fusion event in the human lineage. so this isnt evidence for a common descent with chimp.

If that is so, then the same 'arguments' can be used against creation that are used against evolution in regard to the chromosome 2 fusion.

You realize this, do you not?

 

[tas8831]

I have yet to see any actual evidence. All I see is speculation and assumption.

Given your expertise on what is and is not science, and your claim that all you have seen is speculation and assumption, can you explain what, EXACTLY, is "assumption and speculation" in this link I provided to you:

Animals

 

[tas8831]

Once again you are incorrect. I work in a field where we work with evidence all the time. I'm not seeing any real evidence in evolution. I see speculation and I see a lot of assumptions but I don't see any real evidence. Why? Because it can't be observed tested or reproduced. Therefore it is guesswork. A belief.

Reproduced?

Do you think it is possible to do scientific study on the eruption of Mt.Vesuvius that destroyed Herculaneum?