Ok Gotts, a couple of things first.
There is no argument here, you posted "If I want to argue that" , don't be so defensive. I was not and am not attacking you.
Below is an explanation of the 3 questions as I know them.
Bare in mind I am not a scientist, not by any stretch, I've never been taught any of this, this is what I have learned from my own research.
Should any of my points be incorrect or unclear, I would appreciate someone with more knowledge to correct/clarify.
Remember, being corrected when the correction is correct, just means you learned something new.
I , like science am happy when I am wrong because it opens up new questions and the possibility of new information and further learning.
Also, this is NOT an attempt to "Convert you", this is simply clarifying what the 3 points actually are.
As Cab said earlier in the thread, the things you say Science says are no different to someone saying Jesus was born in Miami. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, no one ever said he was born in Miami.
The same with Science, much of what you believe Science says... Science never said. It's misinformation, and the point of this thread is to arm you with the facts of what science says. This way when you debate or have questions, you can hit it from real angles instead of wild tangents.
Also bare in mind, this is scratching the surface, it's a very brief explanation of the 3 and much much more detail is evident. But for the purpose of this thread I will try and explain the basics.
Anyway, here goes.... and again, if I have something incorrect, someone with more knowledge (of which there are many on this forum) please correct me
Scientific Method...You said...
The scientific method, therefore, is to reduce any query to its working components, establish a systemically reliable way of recreating (ultimately arbitrary) interactions between those components, so as to justify the most useful interpretation of those components in their work as relates to the question. If the question is why do apples fall, then, the scientific method must distinguish apple, fall, and plurality of motion, in the implied context of Earth for which the most useful interpretation is gravity, specifically local gravity, since the distances mentioned are not universe wide in expanse.
Well sort of, you seem to complicate your own ideas.
Scientific Method is basically a way of investigating something to gain new knowledge or clarify old knowledge.
The method will take a hypothesis and perform experiments on it. Much of it is merely observation, but in many cases in order to observe , we must create or recreate the circumstances or environment.
In order for something to be tested by Scientific method, it must be testable and measurable. This is why we cannot test for God, there is nothing to test, nothing to measure.
Remember, Science simply shows what happens, it lets the evidence speak for itself.
Observation, Hypothesis, experiment, measure, repeat.
This is evident in the most simple of things, think about the first to cook meat, no one knows how it happened so lets make up a little story... A couple of cavemen, they just got back from hunting and have themselves a nice hunk of meat. As they gnaw on their raw meat, one of them stands up and trips and drops his meat on the fire, everyone freaks out and his wife is whacking him with the family pet, he grabs the meat out of the fire and figures he may as well eat it anyway. Surprised by the much better taste and texture, he passes it around (Observation). He then starts thinking "What would other meat be like if I threw it on the fire?" (hypothesis) so instead of Mammoth meat, he tries a bird (experiment) , he then wonders what happens if he leaves it longer (hypothesis) so he does it (experiment) and he burns it and realises it tastes bad that way (measurement). He continues to try different times and meats (repeat) Eventually he comes to the idea that different meats taste better when cooked for different lengths of time.... and here we are, pretty much all eating cooked meat.
While the caveman did not know he was performing a scientific experiment using the Scientific method.... that is exactly what he did.
As Richard Dawkins said when asked to validate Scientific Method "It works, calculators calculate, computers compute and planes fly"
The Scientific Method cannot be argued because it is evident in EVERYTHING we own or use.
Scientific Theory... You said...
Maintaining that scientific theory is to be objective such that alternatives generated by the theory are all considered balanced the impartiality of such theory being deliberately but admittedly riskily assumed to be impartial, the point of such theory is to provide as many practical configurations to the working of the components in a given question as would provide the correct interpretation for outcomes either specified or unspecified, from among the valid interpretations generated given varying contexts and interpretation.
Again, more complicated and sort of but not really.
A Scientific Theory is a body of Knowledge, it takes all the Experiments and Test results, all the Hypothesis and Observations and All the Data... put it all together and you have a Scientific Theory.
The Scientific Theory is the Highest title anything in Science can achieve.
It houses all the evidence, the proven facts and the still to be proven hypothesis.
The Theory of Evolution, it contains enough data to stack page by page tall enough to reach the moon... seriously... and that's NOT including the physical evidence such as fossils.
Basically, when something in Science reaches the point of becoming a Theory... you can take it as red that it is a scientific Fact.
The most common misconception is the Philosophical Theory , this is different from a Scientific Theory, a Philosophical theory is nothing more than an idea, your Threads are mostly philosophical theories. If they were Scientific Theories, you would have tested you ideas and come up with evidence and would present this evidence to thousands of others , who would then also test it and come back with the same results you did.
The Theory of Evolution... You said...
The theory of Evolution was proclaimed by Darwin to be an attempt to answer the question, how is Creation by God not obviously suffering (implied with no point)? In other words, if God was Himself to become a part of Creation how would He not suffer? (this is from a quote concerning Evolution and God, I have lost the reference other than to say it was in "the Selection of Preferred Races") At the level of principle, the mistake here is to think that God would excuse Himself from suffering, as a reasoned understanding of suffering is that it produces greater good than would otherwise have been possible if nothing suffered. That said, the question remains useful in that it highlights that regarding suffering as useful requires a leap of faith that can be explained for practical purposes as an action of physical law. The answer Darwin came up with is that species are disposable, change is inevitable, context is variable and outcomes are unpredictable. He put all this together in the context of a competition and concluded that God would challenge Creation to perfect itself over time, before entering into its hardship. This is not true. However, once again it proves useful, this time as an example of how much we lose sight of when we don't expressly do the will of God, which is treat life as valuable, change as predictable, context as focused, and outcomes as a function of choice. This exists together in the context of Heaven on Earth, where everyone cooperates (imagine that for a second). This context, is what the Bible predicts and is that which every believer anticipates with joy.
Ok... I'm just going to say "No"
It's not easy to explain Evolution without going on and on and on. So I will try my best to do this in short.
Evolution is gradual change over time (lots and lots of time) and is the cause of diversity of life, something that adapts to it's surroundings. A random change in the species will either stay or die out depending on whether or not it benefits. The only thing that is random is the mutation itself, once the mutation has taken place, the rest is driven by environmental issues. For example, lets say a group of animals are happily living away, some get eaten by predators and some don't. Then a random mutation causes slightly longer claws in some of them, giving some of the animals the ability to climb trees and get out of the reach of the predator. Those who do not have the longer claws will get eaten first, those with longer claws will climb the trees much more easily and faster and will get eaten last, if at all. As the generations go on, hundreds if not thousands of generations, the claws gradually get longer to help the climbing of trees more efficient. This means the animal with longer claws will survive better and reproduce, passing on the claw gene. Those who never got the gene will eventually all be eaten until the only ones left are the long clawed animals. Or.... the ones without claws will migrate somewhere away from the predator, and once they get there it may mean a similar change such as colour or thickness of hair.
Another example would be the Dolphin, the Dolphin embryo shows the beginnings of rear legs, this is because an ancestor of it walked on land. These rear legs are discarded during the early stages.
Whales also have this and actually develop small bones at the rear, these bones are useless to them now, but the evolutionary change has not taken full effect yet, in another 100,000 years (hypothetical number) they will likely disappear altogether.
Another would be that humans at around 6 months from conception are covered in hair, this would be a gene from one of our ancestors that we reduce because we do not need that much hair, but it reduces differently per person, this is why some of us are hairier than others.
Another example would be that in early stages, Chickens show the ability to grow teeth, again the gene is dormant, but if activated, we could have chickens that bite.
We also have Yoke sacks at early stages, we do not need or use them, it is a throwback from our ancestors who laid eggs.
Evolution is change and adaptation over time, the easiest example of Evolution would be the Evolution of Language. Latin.
Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French have all evolved from Latin... Yet Latin is not spoken any more in the mainstream.
The Evolution of the Knife, the first knives were made of stone and flint, it went through to be more pointed, sharper edges, then onto iron, steel etc and now we have a multitude of different knives.... None of which are made from Stone or Flint.
A new species is formed when you get what is known as ring species, a species of animal that migrates somewhere, and then again, and again and again, each time leaving some of the originals behind. Each time it moves, it changes slightly (over very long periods of time) due to environmental pressures (selection pressures). Eventually it comes to a point where the newest of the species has altered so much, it can no longer successfully breed with the original species and produce fertile offspring. It has then become a new/different species.
The best explanation of this I've ever seen is the colour wheel. Start the colour wheel at Red, move clockwise gradually changing to Blue. You can see the transitions all the way round... but when you get back round to the top... you have Blue and Red. Clearly 2 different colours.
I hope I worded that clear enough to be understood and again, anyone more knowledgeable, please please correct or add
