1) I am not a scientist, you may be. If not, that makes our particular conversation even more ridiculous because it's all just about stuff we've read. lol But that's okay, I'll continue anyway with stuff I've read.
Well I do have a B. Sc. but it's not in biology. But if you were to limit yourself to discussing only what you had a degree or worked in, you could only ever talk about one thing. And even then your knowledge on that subject would just be one thins that you read/taught.
2) That sounds like microevolution. There are people in Italy whose livers are immune to the effects of excessiv alcohol. But they are still human. I am speaking of macroevolution.
Micro-evolution and macro-evolution operate by the identical mechanisms. Much of the time, macro-evolution is just accumulated changes from micro-evolution (for example, the evolution of birds from feathered dinosaurs).
3) I have heard of certain evolutionary aspects being observed. However, they never lasted over generatations and were always lost (generally not making it passed the first generation).
Most new genetic traits tat die out within a generation, but there have been several documented cases where this does not happen. In the experiment I showed you before, the newly created subspecies of bacteria had completely changed it's metabolism by the end of the experiment. And this process took many generations to complete (IIRC several years of real world time).
4) I think we may be quibbling a bit over terms. But facts for most people are things that can't questioned. The facts that have been used to promote evolution (which, by the way, I am not saying is not true) do not make evoultion itself a fact. I can use facts to support a lot of theories but that doesn't make the theory true. It may make it the most probable of theories, but in the end, it's either true or not (and we may never know). Like a murder case where in the end we never know because we didn't see it but the evidence leads us to such and such a conclusion. And like a murder case, our prejudices and humanness can get wrong people convicted.
Terms are a bit important in this case. When people say evolution is a theory not a fact, they falsely use the imply the colloquial meaning of theory which is an unconfirmed hypothesis. In fact in science a theory is something that has been repeatedly confirmed and never dis-proven by observation. The other mistake they make is to misunderstand that evolution IS and observable fact. You can but bacteria in a petri dish under stress and watch their genetic makeup change by itself to adapt to that new environment. The theory part of the "theory of evolution" is actually the genetic inheritance and natural selection mechanisms that cause these changes.
5) The scientific community largely makes this out to the be the OJ Simpson case. I question that based on what other scientists have said, but who are not given a platform to speak on because they don't conform (you don't question fact... and evolution is not an undisputed fact. Quacks question whether the moon is there and apparently evolution (amoebas to man as well as the Big Bang now it seems) is as solid a case as the existence of the moon. I have a problem with that.
There is no real science that can deny the reality of evolution. Nothing in biology makes sense without it. And the fact that things evolve is an observable fact. The people who say evolution does not exist are effectively presenting a null hypothesis that is so inept it's not even wrong there's no argument behind it. The debate between evolutionary theory and something like intelligent design is basically this:
Evolution: These two animals share 99.9% identical genetic code, and have many similar physical features. Their commonalities suggest a common ancestor in the distant past with two populations that diverged into these two species to better adapt to their separate environments. We even have these fossil of what looks like a possible ancestor and existed at the right time in the past in the area close to where both populations were found.
Intelligent Design: That's impossible.
There's no way to build scientific theory or technology off of intelligent design because it's not science. It's denialism. It's just based on disproving an actual theory by denying observational and fossil data, while at the same time providing no testable explanation or predictions of its own about any biological phenomena.
6) But the following is why I began to question theory of evoltuion, and it wasn't based primarily on what dissenting scientists suggested. It;s that the powers that be in the Scientific Community are increasingly materialist. Unlike real science (that is what we now refer to when we call it science, natural observations and conclusions based thereon) and Christianity, the philosphy of materialism and Chrisitanity are mutually exclusive. But it is the philosophy that lead this establishment to conclude that thre is no other option than evolution. That something can never come from nothing without a natural explanation like the Big Bang. God does not exist for the materialist and it is no longer that Science is limited and therefore cannot speak about God (but it was perfectly fine for a scientist to conclude that "maybe the answer lies in something outside of nature-- that is, maybe science can't speak to the ultimate origin" but that Science is what there is and since GOd cannot fit inside, He has no room in this world.
Science isn't based on materialism. It based on logical reasoning combined with observational data. Evolution in no way pushes God out of the creation of the earth or any of his creatures (man included). It's very easy to see that God guided how things evolved in the world. God guiding evolution isn't a part of the theory because it is irrelevant to the purely objective claims of the theory. That is to say, knowing God guides it doesn't add any predictive or explicative power to the theory of how and why things evolve. Science is the study of the things that are confined to our universe. God is not confined by energy and matter and is a truly unquantifiable being by any scientific measure. But at the me time He encompasses all of science; He created the universe and the laws it operates by, and these are the things science is intended to discover.
7) That's the mentaility that concluded that evolution is a fact because without a SUPERnatural force, it is the oNLY possibility.
8) You adn I can conclude that it is A possibility... but it is not responsible for us to conclude it as fact.
Josh
Well again I say evolution is an observable fact, you can watch mutations happen over generations and with genetic sequencing see exactly how and where the DNA changed for each one. There's nothing supernatural about reading DNA.
It's as responsible to accept evolution as it is to accept that the planets revolve around the sun, or the sun around the galaxy.
If you are actually having trouble about seeing how evolution or science square together. I recommend some books by Kenneth Miller. He's a bio professor from my school (and a devout Catholic) who testified as one of the expert witnesses in the Dover intelligent design trial to get the theory out of the schools. I've been to several of his talks on the subjects of intelligent design and faith and science, and they were truly great experiences. The titles of the books are
Finding Dawin's God and
Only A Theory.
