Joe Reid wrote: >>The paleontologic evidence is overwhelming that evolution occurred.
Indeed. Staggeringly and mind-bogglingly so. Marcus Berger replied >I vehemently disagree! This is unfortunately what the >evolutionists establishment want people to believe. But there is >still a lot of controversy surrounding this issue. There is no "evolutionist establishment." That's one of the myths propagated by the oxymoronically-named Creation Research Institute (whose staff members have to sign a commitment to discard any evidence that is contradictory to their faith). In the real scientific community, there is no controversy whatsoever about the fact of evolution. Any disagreements tend to be over specific mechanisms in certain cases. There is a pseudo-scientific community (within which a significant number of members are "graduates" of the Creation Research Institute [CRI]). (Owing to a quirk in California law, the accreditation of CRI to grant degrees was upheld a few years ago.) There are also many fraudulent "quotes," represented as being from the work of legitimate scientists -- either made up from whole cloth or deliberately taken out of context. Duane Gish and Henry Morris, of CRI, are well-known for their penchant for fabrication. Given that they have done it so much, one has to wonder whether they're in it for their faith or for the money. It's quite evident, though, that most of those who buy Gish's books, never bother to check the references in them (taking them, instead, "on faith"). There are also people in the pseudo-scientific community who hold degrees (often advanced ones) in fields (law, engineering, etc.) other than the natural sciences. Phillip Johnson (who is a lawyer, not a scientist, and the key proponent of the "Intelligent Design" dogma) springs to mind. I believe Duane Gish is an engineer. >In any case, since the "Theory of Origins" belongs mostly in the >History science umbrella, there will never EVER be conclusive >proof one way or the other (*past* **events** cannot EVER be >tested in laboratory, you know...). Science involves the study and interpretation of observations. Not all observations are the result of laboratory tests. In fact, most are not. The Sun cannot be tested in the laboratory, but we can measure its temperature, energy output, mass, etc. We can also draw very reasonable inferences about its history. We cannot view the climate and atmospheric conditions of 10 000 years ago, but we can learn about them from ice core samples from the polar regions and from strata in the ground (which also tell us much about conditions, including climate, millions of years ago). In the purest sense of the word, scientists avoid the word fact. However, it is used in those circumstances where evidence is so overwhelming and probability so high that it would be unreasonable to draw a different conclusion. (Scientists never view anything as conclusive in an absolute sense. Science is not a dogma.) What is viewed as fact is subject to revision or refinement, based on new evidence. All the progressively-accumulated evidence in the study of variation and natural selection (commonly referred to as evolution) has led to refinement, not refutation. Some highly-specific theories within the field of evolution have been refuted. However, the existence of the process of evolution has not. Given the extent to which this is off-topic for this list, I'll stop now. Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
