beer good
Well-Known Member
Actually, only creationists will use the word "evolutionists", as it's just as nonsensical as calling aerospace engineers "gravitationists"; and no, they won't say that (feel free to give an example if you still maintain that they do). The "just a theory" meme rests on more or less wilful ignorance of the fact that the word "theory" means different things in popular speech and in a scientific context. The "theory of evolution" doesn't mean "we think there might be evolution, but we have no proof of it"; it means "we have found proof that seems to indicate that evolution is going on, and here's the best explanation we can find for it."Actually even evolutionists will say it is 'just' a theory
You've committed a logical fallacy as the theory of evolution is in fact based on observable facts.
Such as? Feel free to be specific.
It has been revised since Darwin's days to accomodate new findings. Darwin, for instance, didn't know about genetics. Darwin figured out that traits are inherited somehow, but didn't know the mechanism for it. Funnily enough, when Mendel figured that out, it didn't contradict Darwin's findings; it explained them.
Ah, the magic word: this is where I link to Isaac Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong. The neat thing about the scientific method is that it allows for a refining of theory to accomodate new findings without dismissing the previous findings altogether; it's possible to be 99% right and then add another .001. When we disovered the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, we didn't go back to flat earth theory. When we discovered that Newton's theory of gravity isn't perfect, birds didn't fall from the sky.
If someone can come up with a better explanation for the evidence, sure. But simply flat-out saying the evidence (which evidence, exactly?) doesn't exist isn't a better explanation; it's the equivalent of slapping your hands over your ears and going "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU".
Again, such as? And trust me, creationists have been very creative in coming up with ways to dismiss evolution. That's the fun paradox here: thanks to all the people wishing really hard that evolution weren't true, it's probably the single most tested theory in the world. So far, it's held up no matter how many crocoducks people throw at it.
Feel free to expand. Concrete examples, please.
The mechanism of natural seletion is in the title of the very first book written about it. Feel free to disprove it, but don't simply claim it doesn't exist. The results of it can be observed in labs, in the fossil record, in DNA (yes), in species diversity... again, find a better explanation for it and we'll see if it holds up, but don't just claim it's non-existent.
The theory of evolution doesn't say species aren't distinct at a given point in time; it says they're not static in the long run. They, what's the word... evolve. If you think they are distinct over a long time, find me a rabbit in the cretaceous layers and we'll talk.
For the sake of argument, let's leave out the fact that evolution is an ongoing process, happening as we speak, which technically means that all life forms are intermediary forms between their predecessors and their successors. Even so, there's tons - no, literally metric tons - of quite physical evidence sitting right in your friendly neighbourhood museum of natural history. Again, find a better explanation for, say, the gradual development of birds' wings if you can, but don't just claim it doesn't exist.
Again, who says that, exactly? Cite your sources. Since the very phrase "macro evolution" is a creationist dodge to say "OK, we admit that we can no longer deny that evolution is happening, so we'll settle for hoping people can be convinced that it only changes life forms a little bit." Which of course is nonsense; many little bits of change over a long enough time add up (and if they don't, please specify the mechanism that stops them). Positing a division between micro and macro evolution is a bit like saying "OK, I concede that people can run 100 metres, but I refuse to believe that anyone can run a marathon."
And again, it can be observed by looking at the evidence - fossil records and DNA. You can't observe it happening within a single lifetime with the naked eye, obviously, but if we only accepted human witnesses as proof of anything, cops wouldn't bother collecting evidence at crime scenes.
