Originally posted by randman
Tell you what Jerry. Define gravity. Tell us what it is in a way that can emperically test it, not its effects, but what gravity actually consists of.
You want the classical physics or the relativistic definition of gravity? It not being matter, it doesn't "consist" of anything. It is a force the action of which is directly observable, and any scientific quantification of it or theory about how it works is testable.
As you know, we can't. We don't know for sure what gravity is, or in lay-man's terms, what causes gravity, but no one states it is not a valid concept, though perhaps a few dispute gravity. I've heard some go back to a form of the ether theory basically, and actually had some interesting data to back it up.
No, one really can't put all of the theories of gravity into laymen's terms. One can give a simple classical definition of it in layman's terms:
The force of attraction between two massive objects, relating to the gravitational constant G, the mass of the objects, and the inverse square of their distance.
"Kind" is a valid concept.
"Kind" may or may not be a useful categorization. I have yet to see any use for it.
The difficulties in proving it are far less than proving, say, abiogenesis, for instance, and less than proving common descent in my view.
How do you "prove" a classification? If you can make statements about organisms within the classifications that can be tested, then you can prove or disprove those statements. I don't know how you would go about testing a categorical division.
First, both camps agree that all life forms today stemmed from some common ancestors. Thus, evolutionists admit that "kinds" exist in that sense,
We don't make any claims about "kinds". As far as we know, there may only be one "kind", or only two or three. We make no claims other claims.
but Creationists beleive the evidence supports their idea that God created "kinds" and not a single-cell organism from non-living matter as the life-form we all descended from.
Well, depending on how you define "kind", you might well be right about God creating it/them. The evidence points to the "cell" kind as being what we are all "members" of by the reproductive idea of "kind".
I think the evidence supports the Creationist view, but does not support the common descent view. Certainly, the mutations and "evolution" we have observed fits quite well with descent from "kinds",
How would we know?
but there is no observation of macro-evolution, and there are a lot of problems with the idea a single-cell could gradually mutate into the complexity we see today..
There are more solved problems than pending ones. The pending ones certainly don't seem to be dangerous to the core of the theory, which is very well established beyond reasonable doubt.