I Accept the Theory of Evolution

Just A Theory? Do You Even Science?... I don't believe in evolution, I accept it as a scientific theory.

In science, a theory holds more weight than just a fact does. A theory is not something we think of in the middle of the night after too much coffee and not enough sleep, that is an idea.

A theory in science means a large body of information that has stood a lot of testing.
consists of a number of different hypothesis and many different lines of evidence which show clear consistency.

a theory is something that has been tested many times, then is built on, revised and continues to be reworked in order to give an accurate representation of reality.

no theory is ever regarded as absolute truth.
theories are only well supported, testable explanations that provide natural explanations for natural phenomenon.

all scientific explanations are tentative because the search for knowledge is always blind.
science is about discovering the unknown, about what we don't know.

Theories have predictive ability, theories are ba<x>sed on observation, deduction, consistency and evidence by physical process that we know and understand.

testing is blind and lacks fixed ideas. If the testing isn't blind, it's not science. It is not a search for an explanation.

Supernatural causation is not a part of science because there is no way to test it. There is no evidence for the supernatural and no predictive ability which can be tested in reality.
You can not use it to explain the natural world.
Science can not be built on a negative argument.

Adaptation is evolution. when a population gets geographically divided, eventually the changes accumulated through genetic variation becomes great enough that two descendants that share a common ancestor can no longer reproduce. They are now two different kinds, two different species. Evolution doesn't explain origins, it only provides a way to explain why there is variation in species and proves that all animals share a common ancestor with each other.
No scientists will state that nothing can create something nor does evolution support that in any way.

Evolution is supported heavily by the fossil record and genetics. If even one fossil was out of place in the geological record, the entire theory would be proven false. So far that has not happened.

The cells of all great apes, like chimpanzees, gorillas, and the orangutang contain 24 paris of chromosomes. if humans share a common ancestry with them, you would expect us to have the same number. but surprisingly humans cells only contain 23 pairs. Typicall on the ends of every chromosome, you should find genetic markers called telomeres, in the middle you should find a different genetic markers called centromeres. but if the mutation occured in the past causing two pairs of chromosomes to fuse, we should find evidence in those genetic markers. Finding a structure like this would explain why humans have one pari fewer than the great apes. It exists in chromosome number two. All the mutations predicted by common descent by means of natural selection are present on human chromosome number two. Evolution has made a testable prediction and it has passed. Modern genetics and molecular biology support the theory of evolution in great detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chromosome_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ancestor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution

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turtlesplash

one of the things i love about the theory of evolution is the essentially magical implications - that we evolved through apes from dust - that the sun basically cooked the Earth until the rocks came to life - mad shit - and i'm not saying this is absolutely what happened but it is one the most reasonable inferences to make from the theory - and people actually think science is dry and predictable!

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turtlesplash

all systems of knowledge are flawed, even systematically derived empirical knowledge - if scientific knowledge wasn't always essentially inadequate to explain reality it wouldn't progress like it does - but the scientific orthodoxies of today will be laughed at tomorrow --- religious knowledge operates in quite a different way and has quite different strengths and weaknesses - for its day it was actually quite scientific, but today only defensive and dogmatic religious types that lack imagination will insist that scripture is the literal description of reality - the power of religion lies in its symbolism, and in its capacity to produce and interpret meaning, which is why it won't die no matter how well science disproves elements of its specific claims - in fact anyone with a fairly sophisticated grasp of symbolic logic [and this is the logic that precedes and underlies rational logic] understands how deep the parallels go between religious creation narratives and scientific ones - especially those familiar with particle theory

turtlesplash

perhaps i didn't acknowledge enough the essential truth of the original story here though - although i don't agree that the search for knowledge is blind, i understand why the author says this relative to religion - and i accept the main point that science is not dogmatic and is more fluid than religious knowledge [this is its greatest strength]

turtlesplash

though i can't resist pointing out that in practice science can become as dogmatic as religion as most people DON'T make the distinction the author just did between theory and certainty, between the label and the thing-in-itself ----- one is reminded of the old joke, that you can measure the greatness of a scientist by how long their theories hold back progress in their field

newjaninev2

When the French physicist Pierre Simon de Laplace explained his theory of the universe to Napoléon, Napoléon is said to have asked, "Where does God fit into your theory?" to which Laplace replied, "I have no need of that hypothesis".
... and now, all this time later, with all we have since learned... we still have no need of it

123willow

What you just printed is NOT true. There isn't a complete fossil record. Some of the theries of how fossils would change in the strata have been found untrue. It isn't because of GOD that I object. It is because science should not be filled with lies.

newjaninev2

Where does chips say that there is a compete fossil record... and why would anyone expect a complete fossil record? Such an expectation would be ridiculous, given that fossilisation is a very rare event.
What we have, as Chips remarked, is a fossil record where nothing is out of place... no rabbit fossils in pre-Cambrian strata, for example.

dinosaurcavemandude · 31-35, M

The samples we have of the fossil record surpasses what we would expect and supports the predictions made by the body of evidence made by the theory of common descent by means of natural selection. Within the strata, we have visible evidence of numerous climates in a single portion of the crust because of layers of variant sedimentation. Within each different underlaying sediment within the strata, we would expect to find fossils of the life forms which existed at that time and in that environment. If you look at any scientific paper or text book about geology, you would see that supported with overwhelming evidence. Because there is a gradation of organisms with more common features and more primitive (but not necessarily less complex) traits, we can deduce and directly see that these individuals of that population had variations which gave rise to diversity, by means of which we now know is genetic. How you came to the conclusion that that is untrue is a mystery to me.

runtom

Thank God (sic) for people that know the difference between "understand" and "believe".

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