LOL, that cracked me up.


People will continue to debate the topic of evolution for decades to come, but I believe that in time, the non-religious will only keep increasing in numbers. However, I do see the perspective of the close-minded faith-holders. If you were raised to think that there is a place called 'hell' that you want to avoid, and a place called 'heaven' that you wish to go to after you die, then it would be hard to reverse the brainwashing and accept the fact that there is no one really controlling the events happening in the universe, that there is no 'higher purpose' in life. You choose to walk right or left. The ignorant and weak need their delusions to go on. This includes most humans nowadays. Pitiful, but true.

Last edited by Seijurou at 9:04 pm, Dec 29 2011

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honestly I don't get why it's still labelled as a theory
it should've been a law long time ago.
there isn't a single scientist alive that'll object to "law of evolution"

*warning, wall of text, read it like listening to a story, don't think too hard on it*

A lot of people talk about theory of evolution but not many of them are clear of what it is about. The theory of evolution that a layman person talk about is just not a single "A+B=C" theory, but rather it's a mass of theories related to each other. The theory of evolution developed by Charles Darwin is the portion of "Common Ancestry" - that is, species that we know now are all decedents of a few species. Darwin pushed this theory further by stating that "natural selection" is the driving force behind and evolution doesn't always happen overnight. Also, it's not a 'Law' like the laws of physics because we use 'Laws of ...' when we know how it works but we don't really know what makes it work and the "Laws" do fail in some cases. We use theory instead of laws when we can tell what makes it work. I'm going to give you readers this short and dirty version of theory of evolution.

The theory of evolution or rather the theory of where life came from didn't start from Darwin, it started from much earlier. It started out from something like "how come we have a long neck giraffe?" and with it "the transmutation of species" theory. The guy who developed the theory thought that everything was born as some form similar to each other then they develop into complex forms from there. Like a giraffe was born like a deer but develop a longer neck over time. Of course, Darwin came along and busted this guy theory. From a few data set of birds on Galápagos Islands, Darwin used scientific method to draft out the preliminary frame work to what we known now as "natural selection". The general consensus at the time agrees with what we now known as the theory of "common ancestry" - it's a portion of the theory of evolution. The theory pointed out that several species are related like brothers of the same family. Cats and related to tigers and dogs are related to wolves. You can easily see that certain animals around you are some how similar; such as Rats (big mouse) and mice (tiny mouse), horse and donkey, buffaloes and cows, monkey and chimps. Because of the extreme similarity between these creatures, we are bound to think that they are some how related. If they are related then they must have the same parents (thus Common Ancestors) or great-grand parents (or some super long line of ancestors). This is also what religious people refer to as "macro evolution" - it's not a scientific term so don't use it on your biology teacher or you'll get "I don't know what that means" at best and be laughed at at worst.

But who are the parents and how come we have mini-tigers as cats and giant cats like tigers? Are all species as we known now come from a single creature or several? If several then what are their ancestors (this is where you see how Intellectual Design theory got busted)? Are they even related at all or they just look similar!? What makes these creatures to be different species (it's not just the size, I tell you)? By the way, what defines a specie of frog from another anyway (it's not the color!)? What caused these parent/ancestors creatures to give birth to mini-tigers and giant cats? These are the more complex questions that you will get a better answer once you tackle on evolution in full - lots of research, lots of reading, get a good evolution biology book and don't rely on just wikipedia.

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Common Ancestors is sure easy to understand right? It's just a portion of evolution and there are a mass of other stuff too. So why are there so much debate about evolution? What are these 'holes' and 'gaps' in the theory people are talking about anyways?

If you view life on earth as a giant picture of a tree (the tree of life) then the theory of evolution describes what a tree might look like (it's a giant stump in the middle with lots of branches on top). The thing is, we don't have the whole picture but rather pieces and some imprint that was left on the background. Even worse, we are blind and can not climb the tree since nobody can live long enough to see the whole tree of life. We can touch, feel and guess stuff but can't really see the whole tree with every branches, flowers, leaves and fruits.The good old 'Faith' is like wild guess work and gave us the "the elephant is long like a tube" conclusion at best. This is where Science as a method of study becomes so powerful in reconstructing the picture of life.

The theory of evolution provides a frame work, biologists starts to collect pieces and imprints that are relevant to the frame work and piece them together piece by piece. Over time you might not get the whole clear and vibrant picture but you start to get a shape of the tree with a strong big line in the middle and multiple branches coming from it. You can not see the picture since you are blind but you know where all the pieces are since you know and every pieces you collect.

Of course you get certain missing pieces or some what unclear picture on some locations if you examine them one by one but they don't really matter overall. For example, "Ap**e *s d**ici*us", you are missing a few pieces here and it's hard to tell what the message is, but you can guess that it's something like "Apple is delicious". The picture of life is also like that. You're missing several pieces and you are blind.

The 'holes' and 'gaps' some people are talking about are the missing link between transformation of some species. As I said before, evolution didn't always happen overnight. The saber-tooth cat didn't become you house cat "Tom" by thunder strikes. The effect is gradual and you can't watch it without a time machine. Scientists follow the "Common Ancestry" by finding fossil records of creatures that are similar to the cat but occur before the cat comes around. Sometimes you can't find any fossil between a certain time range and you get the great-grand parents fossil of the cat but no parents or grand-parents. A lot of the links between these missing fossil records are patched by some what shaky theories because there aren't a lot of supporting facts to go around. However, these are theories that manage to survive all the questioning of scientific methods and they tend to provide the most reasonable explanation given the facts (or lack of it). These theories are the 'holes' and 'gaps' that some people refer to when they talk about evolution.

However, as I said before, if you look at evolution as a giant picture of a tree then you don't really need the whole clear picture to tell it's a tree with branches. The fossil records and other solid facts are like dots on the picture and theories connect these dots to create lines. You might get a few missing dots here and there but you can work out the lines and predict the dots if you have enough of the relevant dots and lines.

It’s been explained before in the thread why a scientific theory can’t become a scientific law. They are different models altogether, with laws being rules that work under specific conditions, whereas a scientific theory includes all concepts, observations, the aforementioned laws and empirical data that explain a phenomenon. Scientific theories do not “level up” to become scientific laws; scientific laws are part of scientific theories.

For a hypothesis to become a scientific theory, the ideas have to be supported by observation and empirical data .A scientific theory is thus already its highest form of model.

In comparison creationism and ID don’t even attain the status of theory. They are at best conjectures or opinions.


Irrelevant. Evolution doesn’t concern how life came from nothing: that’s abiogenesis.
Evolution is only concerned with how life forms change over time.

And for the record, evolution is both a theory and a fact.


There is no difference between micro- and macro-evolution apart from time and scale; that’s a fallacy.
Given enough time and accumulation, intra-specie changes will lead to speciation.

Also, speciation has been observed.

As for the “it’s full of holes” argument, that doesn’t make much sense either. For one, please list the specific holes that would need to be filled for evolution to be “proved” (that is, if you’re not just repeating a creationist soundbyte)?
As I posted previously, what’s missing so far is irrelevant; it’s what has been found that matters. There is just so much empirical data and observations in biology and geology that we’re certain beyond reasonable doubt of evolution.
Of course there’s still much to find, but that doesn’t affect the existence of evolution. It only helps understanding better how the known process works in specific cases. There's a good reason why there is no controversy about the existence of evolution in the scientific community, and more relevantly amongst biologist.



Now, about the thread’s subject...
Faith is colloquially defined as “belief without evidence” (that’s not the actual definition, but it’s the one used in this thread). Yet the theory of evolution is based on observed evidence and empirical data. As such, evolution can’t be a faith as it’s exactly the opposite of the definition set above.

People need to realise that their objections to evolution are all based on inadequate or lack of education in biology, and not actual rational reasons.

Assuming that there is not a single scientist out there who isn't Atheist.

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Everyday I'm tumblin'

Assuming evolution has anything to do with Atheism.

Anyone who walks into their research with preconceived notions that they try to bend their findings around is not a scientist, period.

I have faith in the teachers or scientists that tell me evolution is a good theory. That is the proper use of the word faith. If you take evolution to be true because of that theory, that is not faith, because all theories are based on proof. See definition below.

faith   [feyth] Show IPA
noun
1.
confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2.
belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3.
belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4.
belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5.
a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

Okay, let's makes things clear.

1. I never said "I have faith in god" nor "I don't have faith in evolution". I'm not talking about god, not even mention it.

2. We're talking about evolution, yes maybe it would be possible to prove it true in some manner, but time wise there is no way to prove it true now. I said "as long as it can't be proven".

3. "the only way for something that can't be proven true is for it not to be true." --wrong statement. Blue Truth.

4. you can go and make a discussion about your breeding or whatever.