veracity of evolution

Dave I suggest to you that when evidence arises that actually proves that evolution is an actual indisputable fact, the entire world will know it within hours.

The Theory is written in math.

And that's just natural selection, which despite its gross overemphasis is not the only mechanism of population genetic changes as a function of time.

The entire population of the world outside of Africa was founded by a small subpopulation of Nilo-Saharans from northeastern Africa. That is a founder effect. Or in plant evolution, all terrestrial green plants, from moss up to giant sequoias, are the descendents of green algae (but not red algae or brown algae). Again, a founder effect, not a selection effect. The small founding population is not genetically representative of the ancestral population.

The difference between positrons and electrons is not written in math -- it comes from laboratory demonstration. Same with mesons, which were mathematically predicted but later observed. In this regard, it's not much different than evolutionary biology, in which hypotheses are supported (or not) by data.

You seem to be asking for an interpretation of the math, because it is the math that defines the theory - not words. If you are looking for an interpretation, I can give you my own, but it is not the Theory. The Theory is written in math.

I believe that you are referring to experimental evidence which are found in labs, and other experimental areas, which is different from the math itself that defines Quantum Theory, most of which for the most part was developed prior to the discovery of many of the elementary particles.

So if quantum is easy to explain - why is that so?

No one has been able to do it since the mathematics was first born in the 1920s. Schrodinger's equations themselves were a re-writting of Heisenberg's equations. So, you are asking me to do something that Bohr, Schrodinger, Einstein, deBroglie, Dirac, Von Neumann, Heisenberg, Wheeler, Wigner, Feymann, Bell, etc. etc., couldn't do.

I understand and respect that - though even things like meteor strikes or being poisoned by DDTs strike me as - utimately - natural events.

But Quantum Theory would be in the trash bin if it were not corroborated by scientific demonstration. Just as Darwin's theory would be in the trash if it hadn't been scientifically supported. Galileo, Copernicus, Tycho, all child's play until Newton came along and put meat on their theories.

Yes. Quantum Physics has been corroborated in some of the most remarkable experiments I have ever read about. It is fascinating.

Hiya Dave,

welcome to the thread.

I don't expect anyone to come late into a thread abd be able to know every single post so you probably missed the ones that give the reasons why I have the problems I do but just to briefly restate them:

I agree with what your defintion of evolution is and have no problem with that. However, as with many other aspects of metaphysics, they go unanswered by biologists simply because they ask questions that cannot be answered.

This does not mean that the two should be separated. To my thinking, everything is bound together in one huge mystery, all of which needs to be a part of the other in order to be what it is. Evolution may be an actual process. The evidence certainly points in that direction. But not to the degree that it is not challenged by extremely difficult questioning doubts. Many of those have to do with the fact that evolution suggests a reality that is only comprised of the biological as though there is no such thing as the underlying mysteries that make it all possible in the first place.
Its like looking at a bottle of coke and studying the chemicals that are in it and experimenting with what they can do and how they are mixed together, and yet ignoring completely how they got into the bottle in the first place. Evolution attempts to declare that they know where coke comes from without knowing how it got into the bottle. This is my problem. No declarations until the time is right. When you can prove it do so, until then it must all remain hypothetical regardless of haw many people follow it.

I imagine it was somewhat like Neil Shubin, knowing that Devonian rocks were of the right age to bridge the gap between fish and the appearance of early tetrapods, and knowing that the earliest tetrapods were found on Ellesmere Island, went there with the hope of discovering a fossil that shared qualities of both tetrapods and fish to a previously unknown degree, and dug Tiktaalik up.

Which, you know, sort of corrolated with all that evolution stuff.

And again, the reason the math merits respect is that it's consistent with observations.

This is the problem with string theory -- you may be able to elegantly prove string theory, but until you show that it's consistent with the physical world, all it is is mathematical rhetoric.

What I like about Quantum is the predictive value.

Nah, its fundamentally flawed because coke bottles don't self-replicate.

They also found the Piltdown Man: