<p>"I accept evolution as truth (until a better scientific theory comes along, though any future theories will just be improvements on evolutionary theory)."</p>
<p>That's like saying I accept that I am absolutely right, unless I'm wrong. </p>
<p>You have to ask what is truth. 2+2= (and will ALWAYS=) 4....there is no theory to prove or disprove this...it is simply a fact</p>
<p>Is evolution true in the sense that
2+2=4 is
or, is it the best scientific assumption available at the current time, and therefore subject to revision and change...and therefore, not absolutely true in the sense that 2+2=4...or in sense that this statement is always true..."all bachlors are single"</p>
<p>by the way, the question asked in this thread was:</p>
<p>"Is Evolution true?"</p>
<p>Not, what do you think of religious fanatics?
Facts, as they say, are stubborn. It's a different question to ask, how well does evolution explain the facts of nature (which is an objective fact) than to say that evolution is an objective fact that explains nature. I often think of evolutionary theories as like psychological theories. The point is not the theory but what it is trying to explain.</p>
<p>Religious views are similar.</p>
<p>Religious fanatics tend to worship their religion, not what their religion is trying to explain.</p>
<p>fanatic=fanatic
no matter what they believe.</p>
<p>Evolution is not really a theory if you think about it...it's logic: if an organism does something self-destructive it will die. . . if it doesn't then it will live and propagate its genes. . . pretty obvious and incontestable if you ask me. . .</p>
<p>beyond the standard evidence for evolution (fetal development, comparitive anatomy, population genetics, etc.) there is also direct observation.</p>
<p>do you guys know about the famous white moths that turned black during the industrial revolution in england because the soot from the factories turned the white birch trees dark? it's a cool story...puncuated equilibrium at its finest</p>
<p>I agree with you dcircle . . .but isn't the whole white moth to black moths theory under speculation? Hmm, I remember reading a couple of articles w/pictures of the scientists actually pinning moths to the trees about a year ago?</p>
<p>Now that I think about it, pepper moths don't even rest on tree trunks ... I'm going to go look for those articles, I wonder where I put them.</p>
<p>yeah, I think that story is even in the standard ap biology textbook. it is pretty cool :)</p>
<p>lol, my hicktown local newspaper just ran an editorial about the teaching intelligent design controversy, and the letters in response went like this:</p>
<p>"Most mutations are not beneficial. Consider mutated skin cells that turn cancerous from the sun's ultraviolet rays. For a fish to evolve into a dog, even in a few million years, stretches credulity."</p>
<p>you might be right philosophia...i'm remembering the example from my high school text book as well--i'm sure it was controversial though and there was a lot of speculation</p>
<p>as another example, how about sickle cell anemia, evidently caused by an overexpression of a phenotype that normally confers malaria resistance to a select gene pool</p>
<p>Yeah I also heard about the white and black moth story, it's in every biology textbook in my high school, not just for ap classes.</p>
<p>Potpurri, no matter how much you think evolution is true, it still is a theory. I believe strongly in the theory of relativity and it's pretty much undisputed, yet it's still called a theory. Nothing much you can really do about it. So many things in science change over time so nobody can really hold anything as absolute truth.</p>
<p>The moth story was proved to be a hoax, recently.</p>
<p>I can't remeber where I read it, but it was pretty conclusive.</p>
<p>Potpurri, you said:</p>
<p>"if an organism does something self-destructive it will die. . . if it doesn't then it will live and propagate its genes. . . pretty obvious and incontestable if you ask me. . ."</p>
<p>That tells you nothing about evolution. You need mutation to make an evolutionary point. That just says, somethings die, some things don't; and you're right, that would be logical.</p>
<p>In 1999, Jonathan Wells, a postdoc at Berkeley, presented and discussed data refuting Kettlewell's 1953 experiments and industrial-evolutionary theory on the peppered moth. The Wells piece is entitled "Second Thoughts about Peppered Moths" and was published in The Scientist magazine.</p>
<p>i think some1 in the first few posts compared the theory of evolution to gravity, by saying gravity is also a theory. The difference between gravity and evolution is that gravity is a LAW, not a THEORY. they are two different things.</p>
<p>It would be a law if we understood how gravity works, but we don't, so it is still just a theory. Like evolution--we know it happens, we just don't know how.</p>
<p>It wasn't in dictionary.dot.com? Does that mean anything beyond the fact that it is not there?
Anyhow, gravity is an objective and observable fact. A particular observer may not be able to explain it through the scientific-method, but they know that it is repeatable and predictable like the law of causation (disregarding Hume).
Evolution, on the other hand, is only theoretical. That is, it is known only through inference and deduction. It may be a correct explanation of why nature is what it is, but it is not self-evident.
If you do not believe gravity to be a fact, try jumping off the earth. There is no such test for evolution, as with many other theoretical scientific theories, like quantum theory.
The average individual does not need to know how or why the first amendment works to know that they have the right to speak their mind, though most will know it is a law.</p>
<p>I suppose at the root of this thread is the ability to make a distinction between science and scientism.
Evolution is scientific.
Evolution as Truth, is scientism which on its face is not scientific.</p>
<p>i'm not sure if this debate is lexical or philosophical, but i'm going to have to disagree with you Fountain
they are both theories
they are both explanations of observations</p>
<p>how a ball falls from a certain height towards the earth can either be described by newtonian mechanics (as it was for hundreds of years) or by general relativity (as it could be now). the empirical observation is that the ball fell. but either theory could explain it.</p>
<p>simarly, evolution is supported by a set of empirical observations, be it phylogeny, embryology, genomics, or anything else. what we observe can be described by Lamark's theory of use and disuse, Darwin's gradual survival of the fittest, or Stephen Jay Gould's more recent puncuated equilibrium interpretation. the point is that all of these are theories.</p>
<p>I understand what you're saying.
The difference is in the fact of the ball falling to the earth (falling ball=undisputed fact)
The falling ball is not disputed, though explanations of what caused it may have differed over time.
Evolution is not an observable undisputed fact, and the theories that would support it if it were an indisputable fact also differ. There is of course a preponderance of evidence to support the theory that evolution explains something, i.e. the rise and fall of the species. But the rise and fall of the species due to mutation is not a fact in the sense of the falling ball.</p>
<p>I am not personally taking a stand against the theory of evolution; I find it to be a very convincing theory.</p>
<p>What I dispute is saying "Evolution is the truth."
It is not "truth," although it is not necessarily wrong.</p>
<p>dcircle, i think fountain is saying that gravity is proven constantly by daily events, whereas evolution is not something that can be proven in a lab. I haven't seen any scientists who have been able to show us evolution from the start.</p>
<p>I agree with you, fountain, that saying evolution is the truth assumes too much. As I said before in this thread, little can be held as absolute truth, and I definitely don't think evolution can be considered THE TRUTH, even though there's a lot of compelling evidence for it.</p>
<p>the undisputed fact that you observe the ball drop is evidence for a gravitational force.
so are your celestial observations of moving planets in the solar system, and numerous day to day occurences from your gait (a balancing act) to your breathing (trapped atmosphere)</p>
<p>the undisputed fact that human fetuses have gills during gestation...
the undisputed fact that trynapsoma cruzi adapts to a south american vector while trypanosoma brucei has remained in the african tsetse fly...
the undisputed fact that the same single copy non-polymorphic DNA reoccurs in more than 75% of the genome among different species...</p>
<p>are similarly all evidence for a theory of evolution.</p>
<p>the two theories don't share the same popularity, but i do think they are philosophically equivalent (disregarding Hume :) )</p>
<p>i think we might just be arguing semantics though</p>