And you arrived at this knowledge how?
True. And that is what evolution is. Is it wrong? Is it right?
I was right on the fact that it IS possible to build that car.
Evolution is right on the fact that we ARE alive.
What's the middle ground?
For the love of Pete, read up on the words that you're using. This next bit is stolen shamelessly from elsewhere on the internet:
A
theory is a well-established principle that has been developed to explain some aspect of the natural world. A theory arises from repeated observation and testing and incorporates facts, laws, predictions, and tested hypotheses that are widely accepted.
A
hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in your study. For example, an experiment designed to look at the relationship between study habits and test anxiety might have a hypothesis that states, "We predict that students with better study habits will suffer less test anxiety."
In your case, you predicted that your particular build of a vehicle would achieve 200mpg. That was a hypothesis. It turned out to be wrong, as the vast majority of hypotheses are. If you're not getting stuff wrong, you're not trying hard enough, in science.
Predicting that it's possible for a vehicle to get 200mpg is barely even a hypothesis if you don't speculate some mechanism by which this might be achieved. That's just wishful thinking, and doesn't get anyone anywhere. It's only helpful if you're going to put your money where your mouth is and explain how it might be done.
Yeah, I guess you are right. I'm looking for the reason, and evolution doesn't give one. So, at this point, I'll stop following this thread and leave it where it is. My question has been answered well enough that I'm not worried (or willing) to pursue it further because, from this point, it really does get into the abiogenesis problem, and that isn't going to be a pleasant discussion, no matter how decent we are to each other.
So, enjoy what you have, and see you sometime.
There's a relevant discussion to be had about abiogenesis, but not if you keep using problems that are explained by abiogenesis as reasons to take shots at evolution. If you want to talk about abiogenesis, then address the points correctly. It's about as close to on topic here as it's going to get, given that the creationist view incorporates both creation and how species evolve (or not) thereafter.
Look, I get testy with you because you ignore it when people give you topics to go read more about. You obviously don't know much about this stuff, which is fine, and it's cool that you're interested, but you can't expect to learn the entire thing just by reading responses on GTPlanet. I get that it can be tough to know where to start, hence why you're being give topics like abiogenesis, becauseI know how easy it is to flail around for hours on Google not knowing the right things to search for. But you actually have to go out and do the reading yourself.
If you're really amazingly bright and have a solid background of science already, you might, maybe, be able to have a halfway decent grasp on what's going on in an evening. Realistically it's probably a few days of solid reading for any normal person. This is how complex modern science is; if you don't know much about biology and genetics then you're going to have to get on Wiki and catch up. It's not hard, you don't need to be a scientist, and there's lots of good explanations and videos out there. And when you get done and there's one or two bits you don't get, someone will be happy to explain.
But you have to do the work first, or else you're going to be asking dumb questions and people will either assume that you're an idiot, a troll, or they'll just start taking cheap shots at you.
If you were going to have a discussion with some racing drivers on the finer points of racing and car setup, you'd probably expect it to go pretty poorly if you didn't know how to drive a car at all. At the very least, you wouldn't expect your opinions to be given much respect, and you could hardly expect the racing drivers to bring you up to speed (ha!) in an afternoon of chatting.
It's no different here. You don't need to have a PhD in genetics, but if you're confused by high school biology then the best thing you can do for everybody is help yourself. And in doing so, you'll actually be giving yourself a fairly good lesson in thinking scientifically. Scientists are attempting to learn something that no one else knows, or at least something that no one else has published yet. Your advantage is that what you want to learn has been published, so the information already exists, but you can still think about it scientifically.
What do you want to learn? If nobody knew that, how would you go about finding that out? If somebody had done that already, where would you find their results and a description of their work? How can you find more information about this part that you don't understand?
Learn to think like that, and you'll find a lot of this making much more sense.
There is no point in people teaching you the "right" answer if you don't understand how to reason your way to it. You're confused by the clock example because you don't understand why someone would design an experiment like that, and what it might actually tell you.
Start with something like Mendelian inheritance and see if you can figure out how he learned what he did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_inheritance
Allow yourself to wander and read through Wikipedia with that as a starting point. You'll learn a lot that's likely relevant.
