Not Last!
Nope. Just second to last.
In terms of accepting plain old facts. And for those of you who have yet to understand what theory means in a scientific context…? Note that one may indeed refer to the theory of gravity.
Way to get out in front of the future, America!
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Free The Animal is an eclectic writing project about everything since November 2003. 23 years, 5,500 posts, 5 million words.
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Sigh…and I live in America. So much of what the blog says is beyond true and what was said in the comments is true too, most of it. It's sickening to think how far backwards this country has gone scientifically, politically, and morally. I need to move…
John:
That's quite alright.
I note that the first references to a heliocentric cosmology — as counter to the false yet more plausible (to primitive peoples) geocentric cosmology — are to be found in the Vedic Sanskrit of ancient India, 800-900 years B.C.
Then there was Aristarchus and Archimedes of Greece, some 300 years before Christ.
Seleucus of Babylonia, 200 years B.C.
Then, of course, there's Aryabhata of India, again, about 500 A.D. And Bhaskara in 1200.
And while the Islamic world never proposed a heliocentric model, Ibn al-Haitham, in about 1200, issued a scathing critique of Ptolemy's geocentric model.
And so on. It wasn't until Copernicus in the 1500s (2,000 years after the first references to REALITY) that reality began to be accepted. Yet, still, the church rejected it and even persecuted people over it (including Galileo) for another 300 years.
We're only, what 150 years into the discovery of facts that will ultimately compel evolution as the only plausible explanation? Seeing as how it took nearly 2,500 years for the plain fact that the Earth revolves around the sun to be accepted as the FACTS they were, I'd say you are perfectly safe to persist in your fantasies with respect to evolution for the remainder of your life.
I can't see how evading the facts of the matter is really going to cost you anything — like a job, common respect, and whatnot — for quite some time.
Of course, we don't think of the people who believed in a flat Earth that the universe revolved around once per day as fruit loops, today. But, certainly, if someone were to evade the facts today, they'd certainly be looked upon with some degree of ridicule.
But I think you're safe. You'll be long gone before the evasion you now embrace is regarded as insanity.
Oh, and just a question for Marie: do you understand what you're talking about? Can you distinguish between physical law and theory? What elements form the building blocks of valid theory?
I don't believe in evolution.
Sorry.
Yes, but one may also refer to the LAW of gravity.
Can't refer to the Law of Evolution.
Marie:
Have you any idea the number of times the General and Special theories of Relativity have been "repeatedly demonstrated" over the last many decades? It's still a theory.
Physical laws are like axioms, i.e., they are directly observable, and any attempt to disprove them would rely on them. Theories are derivatives of some combination of physical laws working in concert under a particular set of circumstances such that they may be demonstrated again and again.
Gene evolution is observed in nature every day. That's established. Natural selection is also well established, and in fact, it's becoming more evident that huge changes can take place in a far shorter time than we once thought.
It has been believed/assumed, for instance, that the dog was the result of man-made selective breeding of wolves. Only, they've found that's very hard to do, and unpredictable. Turns out that a more likely scenario for how dogs evolved from wolves (beginning only about 10,000 years ago) was through natural selection, once humans, at the advent of agriculture established villages, and thus, garbage heaps. Essentially, the lazy and docile wolves were more content to scavenge and prey on easy resident rodents, so that's probably where dogs come from. From a naturally selective process, until such time that breeders began in-breeding them for all the sorts of strange variations we now have.
The way I understand it, laws can be repeatedly demonstrated. Theories either can't be proven, or have not been proven yet.
"I do think, however, that spontaneous mutations can be shown to always be a negative, never a positive."
That's simply false. Nonetheless, it is natural selection that primarily drives evolution, not random mutation. Random mutation is purposeless, whereas, natural selection is purposeful and this is a main red herring creationists use. Evolution is not the product of random chance mutation.
I don't know what to tell you. You're simply arguing against observed phenomena, both in the fossil record and in the lab. It doesn't mean that every step along the way has been demonstrated, but the underlying process has been clearly understood and established for decades. And it's becoming more solidly established all the time. Evolutionists have many, many new discoveries and observations to point to. Whereas, I was recently surprised to learn that the creationists have nothing new to raise since when I was a boy in private Christian high school. in the '80s.
If you want to argue that we have not yet observed or been able to demonstrate the appearance of life our of non-living elements, then I'll buy that. So far as I know, this still has not been demonstrated.
I'm confident it will be, but last I am aware, it's not something that can be considered scientifically established.
Genetic "evolution," natural selection, I do understand. I can breed just the white puppies with the white puppies and get whiter and whiter results, I know. I don't think that's evolution, actually, I just think that's genetic engineering.
Marie, the "whiteness" of a given dog is genetic, is it not? And it's random (as you find them), is it not? What you're doing when you breed them is to determine the fitness of each dog to breed.
You're doing exactly what nature does vis a vis ability to find food and to survive, attractiveness to mates, and the ability to provide for the young. You're just doing it on artificial criteria. It's no surprise that in even a few generations of doing that, you get puppies that are very highly matched to your fitness criteria, and vanishingly few who are not.
Another thing, Marie, string theory has put into question some aspects of relativity, but not it's basic principles. And string theory itself is very immature and still highly in doubt.
Do you ever use GPS? Do you realize that it wouldn't work at all if the relativistic math that it utterly depends on was wrong?
Rich: If you want to argue that we have not yet observed or been able to demonstrate the appearance of life our of non-living elements, then I'll buy that. So far as I know, this still has not been demonstrated.
No, but prions could be something of a missing link in that regard. They are a protein that is structured in a particular way and are not alive – depending on how you define it – but they "reproduce" by physically changing the shape of proteins they encounter to match their own. It's similar to how crystals "grow" by forcing the new material they aggregate to take the same structure. Except that proteins are the basic building blocks of DNA.
I know relativity is still a theory. I saw a special on our local PBS recently, that seemed to be saying that string theory put some of the theory of relativity into doubt. I don't have a particular ax to grind about either. I'm just sayin'.
Genetic "evolution," natural selection, I do understand. I can breed just the white puppies with the white puppies and get whiter and whiter results, I know. I don't think that's evolution, actually, I just think that's genetic engineering.
I do think, however, that spontaneous mutations can be shown to always be a negative, never a positive. I think that is one of the many weaknesses in evolutionary theory.