Today I'm posting several messages, because I might be away from the computer for a while, and I don't know for how long. It could be up to a week or more. So I should add, too, that if someone refutes something that I've said, and I'm not heard from replying to that, that's only because I'm away from the computer for a while.
I have no wish to add to or continue the evolution debate. But it's an issue on which, if one isn't careful with one's wording, one can give the wrong impression of one's opinion or position. So, though it's off-topic, I'd like to clarify my position a little.
I was commenting on the claim that evolution of species had never taken place, but then it turned out that the claim was merely evolution of species due to natural selection has never taken place. So that's the claim that I then replied to.
I criticized it in two ways:
1. By telling why the arguments claiming that natural selection isn't feasible weren't valid.
2. By saying that the claim that evolution wasn't caused by natural selection is conveniently unverifiable.
That last argument is the one that I want to clarify. I didn't mean to say that I criticize any proposition that isn't verifiable. That could make me sound like the science-worshipers who argue these issues. And that's what I want to avoid, by this clarification message.
So , it isn't because that claim isn't verifiable or scientifically provable. Science is only valid so far, with its own particular range of applicability, to describe and predict events in the physical world. That may sound obvious, but there are those who make a religion of science and want to apply it outside of its legitimate range of applicability.
Of course one can show that natural selection is not only feasible, but is what one would expect, and that it can be expected to sometimes result in new species.
Other than that, one can specifically reply to the "intellligent design" advocates by asking why they think it's somehow less "intellilgent" for life to begin and evolve without violation of this universe's physical laws.
(To keep these comments simple, I should specify that when I speak of life or living things, I'm speaking of the physical bodies of living things).
You know, most religious people don't have any problem wilth the suggestion that God could have created life, including advanced life-forms, without making exceptions to the physical laws of the universe that God created. Those physical organisms, after all, are part of that universe,and it is their surrounding environment. So why would someone insist that they have to be created via exceptions to that universe's laws?
Because-- The "intellilgent design" advocates claim that not only was an exception made to this universe's laws when those physical systems first appeared, but they also claim that the exceptions are continuing all the time that species are evolving.
The claim that natural selction isn't possible, or that, if it happened, it couldn't result in new species, is absure.
Whan someone says that, for some reason, they want to believe that living things (again, referring to physical systems) must be created as exceptions to this universe's laws, one can only reply by asking why they need to believe that. It isn't a question of disproving that belief, or objecting that it's unverifiable.
That's what I wanted to clarify.
Again, this isn't intended to re-start a debate, but only to clarify what I meant.
Mike Ossipoff
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