@farmerman,
I got a kick out of Aonus" statement that Steven J Gould's essay that "Evolution is a fact and a Theory" . He thanked me for the article but declared that "it was only one mans opinion". Its true but it was one man who spent his entire life in the study of evolution and had left us hundreds of articles in the scientific literature on the subject . He further, had been targetd more than anyone other than Richard Dawkins, as being the "devils spawn as a proponent of that Godless theory iof evolution". Goulds own article that I posted was clearly written , in accessible prose, to make the poerful argument about how, in science, the word "Theory" does NOT imply speculation. Its a clearly constructed methodological structure that explains the mechanisms of evolution and how it all fits together. The facts , then, support thwe theory.
MAYBE Aonus will like the US NATIONAL ACADEDMY OF SCIENCE, who , in 1999 , weighed in on this "argument of parsing language" that was so much a favorite tool employed by the Creationists.
Quote: Scientists most often use the word "fact" to describe an observation. But scientists can also use fact to mean something that has been tested or observed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples. The occurrence of evolution in this sense is fact. Scientists no longer question whether descent with modification occurred because the evidence is so strong
Maybe Aonus i trying to struggle with his previous world'd definition of fact v theory. However, by using this misunderstanding he, unknowingly, settles in with the Craetion camp and is merely repeating a foundational argument of those clowns while at the same time trying to espouse that he accepts the evidence of evolution.
Ya sorta cant do both and appear educated or logical.
OH WAIT, theres also Intelligent Design, which is Creationsim "light". Those clowns default back to the "assumed complexity " argument, where, bvecause something is complex, it MUST have had a creator. ALL evidence also refutes this argument. BUT many poseurs , who publically espouse "evolution" with a God behind merely are plants in debate forums and these guys provide us a means to try to cast doubt among educated laymen that there is a raging fight among scientists when theres not.
We dont understand the various mechanisms fully but theres no reason that , with addsitional evience, even these questions can be answered. We dont have to dafault to gods and aliens. The worlds geologic record supports the nature of adaptive evolution. Whenever a natural cataclysm occurs (even in a Huttonian world cataclysms occur), Life adjusts to the new reality that the cataclysms provide. This has been the summary of lifes journey on earth. We dont see evidence of god shots. Instead we see some big environmental shift and then , visible in the fossil record, we see a gradual shift in the pallette of life. This has occured 20 or more times in the environmental stratigraphic record and 6 (or more) times as major cataclysmic events. The simple reality of the mechanisms involved are so fascinating that we dont need no fuckin gods or boogeypeople or unicorns. Life is nifty and strange enough and we are on the cusp of unserstanding all this.
TOO bad that guys like spendi or Aonus keep themselves purposely defiantly ignorant.
