MrGoodBytes
Seeker for life, probably
Excellent post. Not that AV1611VET will read a word of it, but excellent nonetheless.You have said two things about evolution in this post, the same two things that were said of "Goddidit" in the OP. namely, that evolution is not testable, and that evolution is useless as an explanation for anything.
Let's see if these are true, shall we?
First of all, let's deal with your claim that evolution is not testable.
Okay. In science, tests are carried out like this:
We go out and gather evidence from the real world. We get that evidence, and try to come up with an idea that explains that evidence. We get the idea and then we see if that idea suggests that something will happen that we haven't seen yet. Then, we go out and see if that thing is really out there.
For example, if we gather data X, Y and Z, we can come up with an idea to explain it. Now, this idea might also say that A, B and C exist. We didn't see A, B or C when we were out gathering evidence, so we go out and see if we can find A, B or C. And if we DO find A, B or C, then it supports our idea.
An example from the real world?
A fellow named Dmitri Mendeleev once tried to put all the elements know at the time into some meaningful order, the forerunner to today's periodic table. he did this by putting the elements into order from lightest to heaviest. However, when he did this, he noticed there were some gaps. Dmitri looked at these gaps and, by understanding the pattern that existed in the part of the table that he had been able to complete, he was able to not only predict that there were undiscovered elements that would fit into those holes, but he was also able to predict what the properties of those elements would be!
And lo and behold, he was proven correct! Scandium, gallium, technetium and germanium were all predicted to exist by him, and he was correctly able to prdict the properties that they had by using the idea he had.
Now, if his idea was wrong, do you think he would have been able to make such accurate predictions? of course not.
Well, the thing is that evolution predicts that certain things will be out there as well, just as Dmitri's idea for the periodic table predicted the unknown elements. And, if we find these things out there, as evolution predicted, then it supports evolution. This is just the same way that the predictions that Dmitri made using his idea about the periodic table would show that his idea was right if the predictions were shown to be true.
So, what does evolution predict?
Evolution predicts that there are transitional species. A transitional species is a species that shows a middle point between two other species. It does NOT mean an animal that is, say, half fish and half dog. Evolution does not make such huge jumps - it is a gradual change over a long time.
Some examples of transitional fossils include the titanotheres (an extinct type of animal). They existed in many different species, and they had horns. We have a progression of fossils which show how the different species gradually developed the horns. They went from early species with small horns to later species with larger horns. This is a series of transitional species that show how the horns got larger and larger as the titanotheres evolved to be different species.
Darwin was able to look at fossil apes and predict that humans first evolved in Africa. Since then, this has been shown to be very accurate.
Also, when we look at the relationships between predators and prey, the evolution of the prey animals has a predicatble effect on the predators.
Ernst Mayr predicted in 1954 that speciation should be accompanied with faster genetic evolution. A phylogenetic analysis has supported this prediction.
For some more predictions that evolutionary theory has made that have turned out to be true, have a look at THIS video.
Also, the theory of evolution has been put to practical use. For example, Bioinformatics, a multi-billion-dollar industry, consists largely of the comparison of genetic sequences. Descent with modification is one of its most basic assumptions. Evolutionary theory is used to manage fisheries for greater yields. And diseases and pests evolve resistance to the drugs and pesticides we use against them. Evolutionary theory is used in the field of resistance management in both medicine and agriculture. The evolutionary principles of natural selection, variation, and recombination are the basis for genetic algorithms, an engineering technique that has many practical applications, including aerospace engineering, architecture, astrophysics, data mining, drug discovery and design, electrical engineering, finance, geophysics, materials engineering, military strategy, pattern recognition, robotics, scheduling, and systems engineering
If evolution was not correct, all these things would be pretty much impossible. So you can see that evolution is testable (through the finds in the fossil record which can be predicted by using evolutionary theory) and it is also used in science today.
Now, AV, you've said before that you don't understand evolution. Please, make the attempt to understamnd it even a little before you dismiss it, okay? Dismissing something that you freely acknowledge you don't understand doesn't really help your cause. Imagine - if you understood it and still dismissed it, then you'd be able to at least make much better rebuttals of evolution. At the moment, you're not dismissing evolution, simply your own false ideas about it.
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