- 5,078
- Panama City, FL
SCJ, your misuse of terms makes it impossible to rationally discuss these things with you.
A theory is not an idea somebody had, like in a detective saying "I have a theory how they did it." Even a hypothesis is more than that.
Science is not a belief system. We don't believe gravity to be effective. We don't believe the water cycle exists. We don't believe 3 time 5 equals 15. All of these are facts verifiable by observation and experimentation by anyone anywhere.
When enough of those repeatable observations have been collected by enough people over enough time, it goes way beyond belief. Remember, you defined belief as not requiring proof (loosely quoting) but everything I listed in my examples is taken as proven, because of the repeatability and portability of observation. (By that I mean that anybody anywhere can look at it and get the same result.) Absolute proof will never exist, which you take to be a fallacy. Absolute proof is accepted as impossible, because not all conditions can be known. We know how gravity works here, but how does it work in the center of a black hole? How about the event horizon of a black hole? A little more difficult to observe.
Your other misuse of terms is your "understanding" of change in a species. No bird is going to suddenly have monkey children. No monkey is going to have human children. But change within a species does occur, and can occur in an observable span of time. We also see evidence of it in many species outside of a human lifetime. I saw somewhere this week about a tiny mouse that lives in a desert, the mouse is of course sand-colored for camouflage. If a mouse grew up with say, black fur, it would stand out and be easy prey for owls and hawks. Thus a preponderance, well, actually a unanimity of sand-colored mice. Then part of the habitat was been covered with lava, forming a black surface. Sand-colored mice became easy prey, but the occasional black-furred toddler was able to hide and survive. On the present day the lava area has black mice living in it, while the sandy area still has sand-colored mice. So a black mouse developed from a sand-colored mouse. Still "after its own kind," still a desert mouse, but a changed version more fit to its new environment. An occasional random mutation became a fitter specimen for the environment, and became predominant in that environment. It's not what we "believe." Before the lava flow occured there were no black mice, there was no place for them to be. If the environment didn't shape the species there would still be just as many black mice in the sand areas, because there always would have been. There are no black mice in the sandy area, only in the lava areas. Therefore an observable fact the an environmental change effected a change in the animal there.
Similarly, one of Darwin's earliest observations was the difference in finches he found. Finches widely known at the time have a short, strong beak for breaking seeds and nuts. Yet he observed finches with long, thinner beaks, useless for seeds, but great for pollinating flowers, or fleshy plants like cactus. Still a finch, otherwise no dfferent from any other, but a different beak entirely. Trapped on an island with a different food source, the species adapted by mutations in offspring being more successful than the "traditional" short-beaked birds.
You asked for a "transitional" species, but you don't accept the idea that every species is transitional by the very process of natural selction. You want a "missing link," something that isn't this, isn't that, but something in between. In post 4225 of this thread I presented the lungfish, which was promptly ignored by the creationists in the thread. The fossil record also presents the Tiktaalik roseae whose fins were actually limbs, thanks to a new bone structure, more like land-dwelling limbs than swimming fins, a single upper bone, two bones after a joint, then a group of bones at the end, what we now think of as a wrist. Fish fins are not made like that. A transitional species in your sense of the term. Something else for you to ignore or misinterpret.
Until you speak the same language we speak, you're never going to understand what we're saying.
And I put my earlier question for Nicksfix to you: Do you know that the earth revolves around the sun? Do you accept that Jupiter has moons that are easily observable with even a discount-store telescope or cheap binoculars? Do you accept that without air resistance being a factor that a hammer and a feather will fall at the same speed? All of these taken-for-granted easily observable facts were once violently opposed by religious leadership. Persons who professed such things were imprisoned, or worse. Yet you know them to be true facts. So tell us why the church is right "this time" about evolution? All the evidence is out there, all of it reviewable by anyone who cares to make the effort, yet religious leaders oppose it violently. Why are they right this time? They're 0-in-forever!!!
400 years from now, creationists (meaning those who argue that evolution does not occur) will be looked on with the same amazement we use today for those who thought the earth was flat. How could people really think such a thing? How could they have this information at hand and still insist evolution didn't exist?
And a really more basic question: if the environment does not shape the species, then why don't all creatures exist everywhere? Why do we not have macaws in Florida, or alligators in New Brunswick? How's the grouper fishing in Kansas, or tiger-hunting in Argentina?
A theory is not an idea somebody had, like in a detective saying "I have a theory how they did it." Even a hypothesis is more than that.
Science is not a belief system. We don't believe gravity to be effective. We don't believe the water cycle exists. We don't believe 3 time 5 equals 15. All of these are facts verifiable by observation and experimentation by anyone anywhere.
When enough of those repeatable observations have been collected by enough people over enough time, it goes way beyond belief. Remember, you defined belief as not requiring proof (loosely quoting) but everything I listed in my examples is taken as proven, because of the repeatability and portability of observation. (By that I mean that anybody anywhere can look at it and get the same result.) Absolute proof will never exist, which you take to be a fallacy. Absolute proof is accepted as impossible, because not all conditions can be known. We know how gravity works here, but how does it work in the center of a black hole? How about the event horizon of a black hole? A little more difficult to observe.
Your other misuse of terms is your "understanding" of change in a species. No bird is going to suddenly have monkey children. No monkey is going to have human children. But change within a species does occur, and can occur in an observable span of time. We also see evidence of it in many species outside of a human lifetime. I saw somewhere this week about a tiny mouse that lives in a desert, the mouse is of course sand-colored for camouflage. If a mouse grew up with say, black fur, it would stand out and be easy prey for owls and hawks. Thus a preponderance, well, actually a unanimity of sand-colored mice. Then part of the habitat was been covered with lava, forming a black surface. Sand-colored mice became easy prey, but the occasional black-furred toddler was able to hide and survive. On the present day the lava area has black mice living in it, while the sandy area still has sand-colored mice. So a black mouse developed from a sand-colored mouse. Still "after its own kind," still a desert mouse, but a changed version more fit to its new environment. An occasional random mutation became a fitter specimen for the environment, and became predominant in that environment. It's not what we "believe." Before the lava flow occured there were no black mice, there was no place for them to be. If the environment didn't shape the species there would still be just as many black mice in the sand areas, because there always would have been. There are no black mice in the sandy area, only in the lava areas. Therefore an observable fact the an environmental change effected a change in the animal there.
Similarly, one of Darwin's earliest observations was the difference in finches he found. Finches widely known at the time have a short, strong beak for breaking seeds and nuts. Yet he observed finches with long, thinner beaks, useless for seeds, but great for pollinating flowers, or fleshy plants like cactus. Still a finch, otherwise no dfferent from any other, but a different beak entirely. Trapped on an island with a different food source, the species adapted by mutations in offspring being more successful than the "traditional" short-beaked birds.
You asked for a "transitional" species, but you don't accept the idea that every species is transitional by the very process of natural selction. You want a "missing link," something that isn't this, isn't that, but something in between. In post 4225 of this thread I presented the lungfish, which was promptly ignored by the creationists in the thread. The fossil record also presents the Tiktaalik roseae whose fins were actually limbs, thanks to a new bone structure, more like land-dwelling limbs than swimming fins, a single upper bone, two bones after a joint, then a group of bones at the end, what we now think of as a wrist. Fish fins are not made like that. A transitional species in your sense of the term. Something else for you to ignore or misinterpret.
Until you speak the same language we speak, you're never going to understand what we're saying.
And I put my earlier question for Nicksfix to you: Do you know that the earth revolves around the sun? Do you accept that Jupiter has moons that are easily observable with even a discount-store telescope or cheap binoculars? Do you accept that without air resistance being a factor that a hammer and a feather will fall at the same speed? All of these taken-for-granted easily observable facts were once violently opposed by religious leadership. Persons who professed such things were imprisoned, or worse. Yet you know them to be true facts. So tell us why the church is right "this time" about evolution? All the evidence is out there, all of it reviewable by anyone who cares to make the effort, yet religious leaders oppose it violently. Why are they right this time? They're 0-in-forever!!!
400 years from now, creationists (meaning those who argue that evolution does not occur) will be looked on with the same amazement we use today for those who thought the earth was flat. How could people really think such a thing? How could they have this information at hand and still insist evolution didn't exist?
And a really more basic question: if the environment does not shape the species, then why don't all creatures exist everywhere? Why do we not have macaws in Florida, or alligators in New Brunswick? How's the grouper fishing in Kansas, or tiger-hunting in Argentina?
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