Correcting Misperceptions About Evolution 838
Beagle writes "The science of evolution is often misunderstood by the public and a session at the recent AAAS meeting in Boston covered three frequently misapprehended topics in evolutionary history, the Cambrian explosion, origin of tetrapods, and evolution of human ancestors, as well as the origin of life. The final speaker, Martin Storksdieck of the Institute for Learning Innovation, covered how to communicate the data to a public that 'has such a hard time accepting what science is discovering.' His view: 'while most of the attention has focused on childhood education, we really should be going after the parents. Everyone is a lifelong learner, Storksdieck said, but once people leave school, that learning becomes a voluntary matter that's largely driven by individual taste.'"
Origin of life ?! (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
(Yeah, yeah, I know... no one RTFAs on /..)
They discuss that, and agree with you. The reason is that in the eyes of the public, the two are regularly conflated, especially by religious hacks trying to dispute evolution. So, they discuss the relationship and lack thereof (they're not completely unrelated, actually), and also discuss why they're talking about both.
The short answer is that they were trying to summarize the current state of scientific knowledge as relates to a particular political and religious debate, and both evolution and the origin of life are part of that debate.
Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Informative)
"'Evolution is a theory about the origin of life' is presented as false. It is not. I know many people like to recite the mantra that "abiogenesis is not evolution," but it's a cop-out. Evolution is about a plurality of natural mechanisms that generate diversity. It includes molecular biases towards certain solutions and chance events that set up potential change as well as selection that refines existing variation. Abiogenesis research proposes similar principles that led to early chemical evolution. Tossing that work into a special-case ghetto that exempts you from explaining it is cheating, and ignores the fact that life is chemistry. That creationists don't understand that either is not a reason for us to avoid it."
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/15_misconceptions_about_evolut.php [scienceblogs.com]
Define "Alive" (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem with abiogenesis: we need to define what counts as alive before we can say what started life.
Mind you, that's a problem religions avoid quite assiduously too: where does the soul get put in? Too early and the infant dies with a soul (natural termination). Too late and we have premature babies without a soul. So where does "life" begin? Why do humans get one but not Apes? How different from a human does a human have to be before it doesn't get a soul? E.g. did "Lucy" have a soul?
PS your PZ Meyers quote means nothing. It just states a position and doesn't actually bring anything to the table.
Abiogenesis is chemistry, correct. But chemistry doesn't define what "life" or "alive" is. And that definition IS what Abiogenesis is. As I said, we already have self-organised non alive collections that exhibit many of the characteristics of life. We have a line which is "definitely alive" and a line that is "definitely not alive" but these lines DO NOT MEET.
Abiogenesis is how to bridge the gap between to show how "Not alive" and "alive" are part of a spectrum and something "not alive" can gain the characteristics we assign to the "alive" side. If we never find how that happens, maybe THAT is the "irreducible complexity". But the IDers aren't looking for it. They take on faith that anything they don't understand NOW is irreducibly complex. And that isn't how to learn. It's just dogma.
Does PZ Meyers' discourse help in that goal?
Re:Define "Alive" (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a biologist, I think this statement is exactly incorrect. It's true, life is chemistry. The reason why chemistry does not define what "life" is is because anyone who really understands biochemistry understands that there is no meaningful distinction between "living" chemical systems and "nonliving" ones. The belief that there is some fundamental distinction between the two is called vitalism, and it was discredited a long time ago. Theories of abiogenesis attempt to explain how the chemical reactions we observe in "living" systems arose. Whether you or anyone else considers those chemical reactions to be "living" or not is totally irrelevant. Debating whether something is "alive" or not is similar to debating whether Greenland is a continent or not. It's a pointless, simplistic distinction applied post hoc for the purpose of justifying some sort of nonrigorous internal prejudices.
Re:Define "Alive" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Define "Alive" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Define "Alive" (Score:4, Insightful)
Sexual abuse of children also exist in every culture around the world. That doesn't make it reasonable or acceptable. Religious modes of thought are irrational, one could say pathological modes of the mind, and I hesitate to call them "thought".
No, abandoning religion in favor of reason is not like abandoning a hammer in favor of a screwdriver, it is like a carpenter favoring a hammer over a Twinkie for work. Twinkies just aren't good tools for anything other than getting fat a lazy. They are generally bad for you. Just like religion. Any kind.
Re:Define "Alive" (Score:4, Interesting)
I look at the diversity, and universality, of religion as proof of A) its arbitrariness; and B) that it, itself, is bestowed upon us by evolution.
With A, the plurality of god's and beliefs, it makes it impossible to say "this is THE god", since basically your saying your "righter" than the vast majority of humanity present and throughout time, all of which would offer the SAME claim, with the SAME amount of fuzzy proof.
With B, this does not bestow any special property on religion, or imbue it with any aura of validity. Just because something was useful at one time, does not mean it is useful now, nor, actually, does it mean it was useful at ANY time, actually. It just says that the mental machinery that exists in our head that lets us tie things into a "higher" ideology was not HARMFUL enough to keep us from passing it on, at some point in time.
Yes, I do agree that the current wave of "scientism" is getting rather obnoxious, though. I don't think that science, as a largely mathematical system, can provide all of the answers to reality, and it especially cannot bestow meaning (which is existentially important). For this though, I turn to another, and oft neglected, universal of human history, aesthetics, and not religion which often has messy consequences due to its delusions of objectivity. When was the last war fought between artistic movements? Was the the Expressionist/Dada war of 1920?
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, exactly what happened in the past, and when, gets murkier as we go back in time. By the time we get to the actual origin of the self-replicating life form from which we all evolved, we have very little insight. Some scientists even suspect that Earth's initial life form may have come from an asteroid, and evolved initially outside the Solar System. Others, more religious than me, suspect God had a hand in it, and I have trouble rationally arguing against that theory.
I think it's best to focus on more recent evolution in discussions with less educated parents, and those who purposely avoid learning about it. I find few people who believe God made the Earth in seven days have any clue how massive the body of evidence for evolution is. To respect their point of view, I generally concede that a "day" could have been a very long time back then, or perhaps God has reasons for trying to fool us. We don't even need to settle the "fact" vs "theory" dispute. Simply educating people about why we believe evolution is happening would be a great step forward. Arguing about what happened billions of years ago to create life in the first place just gives fud-slingers an opening to refute the entire body of evidence for evolution.
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, if your goal is to convince parents to allow evolution to be taught to their children, this isn't the best point to make. How about, "The process of evolution is a highly useful theory" instead? Even if God created the world 6,000 years ago exactly as it was 6,000 years ago, and let evolutionary processes take it from there, would it really matter? Evolutionary science would still be just as useful in understanding life - well, whatever life is...
Just $0.02 from a real, live evangelical Christian in the wild... ;-)
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Although that is, in fact, my opinion, I think religious scholars balk at this concept because it pigeonholes God into a smaller player in the universe. If God has to play by His own rules (and I'm not sure we have any documented proof that He has violated them), then it comes down to the opposite of what Einstein said about quantum mechanics: God ONLY plays dice with the universe. If the only effect God can have is to change the rolls of the dice, it limits God in a way that many highly religious folks don't believe He should be limited.
The fact that we can trace most species back through DNA and how it's expressed physiologically in the fossil record means that God doesn't appear to be Creating much new life these days-- just letting the process run its course. And if you include humans in that tree and assert that there were billions of years of pre-human life that later formed humans, it again diminishes God's direct role as our immediate creator, and relegates Him to an indirect force that set things in motion a long time ago.
Anyway, I think that's the objection.
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is. No. God.
Once you get over the initial discomfort you will realise that a great many kludges you unconsciously apply to your day to day living can be done away with altogether, and indeed the entirety of your world view can be refactored into a far more consistent state to which a genuinely ethical basis can be applied if you only reject the nonsense you have been taught by the church and embrace the simple (and obvious) truth encompassed by the phrase:
There is. No. God.
No, really.
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can explain the development from single-cell organism to homo sapiens to satisfaction without ever mentioning God, and then you add, as sort of an afterthought; this all happened because God wanted it so.
Then "God" in your theory is superfluos: your theory *with* god doesn't explain or predict anything that your theory *without* God doesn't do equally well, so there's no reason to include him in the theory in the first place.
Given equal explanatory powers, the simplest theory is the superior one. If you have 10 points from a data-set that happen to lie on a straigth line, there is guaranteed to be a 10th-degree equation that matches all the 10 points, but that's not the theory you should choose, given that data you should instead suggest the relationship may be linear.
(in general k1*x^0 + k2*x^1
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sophocles would disagree with you. You know, in Oedipus Rex? The Riddle of the Sphinx?
"What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?"
The answer is "A man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age."
So, here we have an "old Greek myth" with a figurative day representing longer time, despite morning, noon, and evening being clearly represented.
It's good that my humanities degree is finally coming to use.
Next question...
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Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed a rather large point (God could create diversity, too), but forget that for the moment. Focus on the main point for a moment, and try to empathize.
If your goal is to convince parents that their children need to understand evolutionary theory, is it better to say, "Your most deeply held beliefs are wrong, wrong, wrong, and we're going to teach them a different view because we're smarter than you and know it's right, right, right!", or is it better to say, "Regardless of whether history played out as you believe or as we believe, the evolutionary model is the best tool that we have for understanding the biological world as it exists today, and if your children don't understand or actually misunderstand it, they will be at a serious disadvantage in the competitive marketplace of ideas and jobs!"?
If you answer the first because it better fits your world view, then be prepared to continue to fight a losing battle. Evangelicals are extremely focused on children, and will perceive the first approach as an attack on their children and their own right to raise them in accordance with their culture and beliefs. As with bears, you mess with the cubs at your peril. It's not a recipe for success; it's a recipe for irrelevance. If you don't believe me, look where it's gotten you today.
Sometimes it's the science geeks who can't see the forest for the trees...
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Informative)
He speculated that when God made the universe, he made it as an ongoing affair with a prewritten history for the bits before the moment of creation. When Adam awoke, he didn't faint from hunger because he had the remains of meals in his blood and digestive tract, meals that he never actually ate. Likewise, he had a belly button for an umbilical cord that never, in fact, existed.
The world (according to this theory) is littered with fossils (not to mention descendants of the natural variations that Darwin observed in the Galapagos) of animals that never, in fact, lived. However, every trace that an actual animal living millions of years ago would have left is there.
This is a profoundly un-scientific theory, in that it is completely un-falsifiable by any observation. You really can't disprove that the universe wasn't created in this fashion, whether it was six thousand years ago or in the last millisecond. However, this notion gives science full rein to explore where it will; it even arguably puts science on par with Bible as a means to discover the mind of God. The problem is that this didn't satisfy the creationists, who weren't going after "old time religion" so much as pursuing new and rather muddled version of modernism in which science and scripture are awkwardly yoked to each other.
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Tomorrow, when you think of this, you will wonder if the world was created yesterday... but in fact that would be incorrect. Your memory of reading this yesterday is an embedded false memory. The world was just created this instant.
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Yes - For precisely the reason evolution feels counterintuitive in the first place.
When you consider evolution as something like a set of totally random genetic experiments, you invite comparisons to other statistical phenomena, such as coin-tossing. Evolution amounts to saying "we tossed the coin 10,000[*] times and came up heads each time".
In or
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Say what now? I like the concept of "evolution" for exactly the opposite reason - the simplicity of it. A specimen which is better adapted to the environment will more likely survive to pass on its genes. How, in the name of all that is (or isn't!) holy is that counterintuitive? A truely simple concept that provides for the complexity of live on Earth. In truth, it's staggeringly beautiful!
For much the same reason, I'm uncomfor
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can observe and test that a certain process works for 1, 10, 100 and 1000 generations, then the most reasonable assumption is that it'll work the same way with a 100 thousand or a 100 million generations too. Atleast absent some reasonable explanation for why it would not.
"macro-evolution" is a cop-out from Creationists that have a hard time ignoring the fact that any high-school that cares to can run evolution as an experiment (with artificial evolutionary pressure) and see clear results inside of 5-10 generations of the choosen organism. (this need not take that long, yeast-cells divide on a time-scale of an hour/generation or thereabouts, even with something larger like mice the experiment will run inside of a single school-year)
In essence, it says: "Yeah, sure it works for a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, but it somehow WONT work for a millenium or a million years. I refuse to give a coherent argument as to why not, but will now stick my fingers in my ears, sing lalalala and pretend I won the argument."
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading comprehension just isnn't a strong suit on /. *sigh* I'll give it one more go.
I wrote, "if your goal is to convince parents to allow evolution to be taught to their children... would it really matter?" Your response is to claim science is seeking "truth" (how noble). Philosophy seeks "truth" - science seeks understanding. Science is horseshoes - a better model wins points, even if it's still not exactly right. Newton's theories are demonstratably wrong (i.e., not the "truth") - but they greatly help me to understand how matter interacts because they are close enough for practical purposes. That's useful!
Evolution helps me understand how life transforms itself through generational variations to fulfill environmental niches created by changes in its environment. Despite that I'm obviously not a biology major, and so have only a weak laymen's understanding of evolution at all, I find that useful. I don't give a flip whether it's "truth" or not.
I strongly believe children should receive the best training in science - all of science - as we possibly can. Toward this goal (and note it's not my only goal!), I don't care whether their parents believe life originated from the primordial sludge, God Almighty, or the Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster, as long as their kids learn how to handle science and so can better understand their world, I'll consider that a good thing.
Just as an aside, I teach three Bible classes to children most weeks, and I use science experiments to illustrate Biblical concepts (I teach the science concepts at the same time). This is right in line the St. Paul's argument that he would "be all things to all men that I might persuade a few". Because I have found Christianity to work very well for me (compared to my disastrous attempts at atheism), I'm very interested in helping children to know God (that's an even bigger goal of mine). I believe that will be very helpful to them, and having done this for several decades, I now know adults who agree that it does. And if children learn science along with the Bible, more's the better.
Anyway, now that's $0.09 worth, and I've probably exhausted my quota of words on /. for the month. I just trying to warn you that "evolution == anti-Christian" is a losing tactic at least in the USA, where 75% or so of the population self-identifies as Christian. "Evolution == a useful tool for understanding life" is a winning tactic for convincing parents to permit their children to learn about evolution. Even for geeks, marketing matters. But do what you like.
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Conflating terms and ideas seems to be a theme of this thread, and of the evolution debate in general, and so I'll take the opportunity to point out another instance highlighted by your comment: articulateness and rationality should not be conflated.
People who are deeply religious and who hold fundamental beliefs without any basis of evidence are not rational. And while it might
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well said.
Let me add another car to your train of thought:
People who renounce rationality, are stuck with only one method to judge the truth of others' ideas: by judging the speaker's articulateness.
That is why scientists need not (and usually are not) articulate: in the rational realm, it is a secondary skill. It is certainly useful, but it isn't a requirement. Not so with the irrational realm: preachers et. al. need eloquence as a primary skill, because that is how their audiences judge the truth of their words.
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
The facts of it are that we have an extremely limited knowledge of the process of evolution. The scientific community is pretty good with the effects as observed, but not the process, although there are some good sub-theories about that.
How and Why are good questions. Ask them more, explain your answers if you think you have them, and don't put down people who doubt if they're willing to listen and make good counter-arguments; those things will just help you refine your own thinking.
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I know that adaptation is an absolute fact, and I have personally seen this happen in the wild, evolution on the other hand, changing from one species to another, I simply cannot accept due to several areas of dispute. The biggest of all these, is the undisputable non-existence of transitional forms. If species evolved from one species to another, they would of had to die some time in the middle of the evolution. If this was the cas
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:4, Insightful)
If at any step of this sequence it was necessary for a god to get involved, then why wouldn't he/she/it just shortcut and really actually produce a universe in 6 days with the solar system and the people and be done with it? Why wait so long? Unless we discard every shred of evidence that this Universe, the Solar system, this planet and live on it exist for very very long periods of time, then we cannot seriously claim that everything was created in a very short period of time. Why should a god wait if he is omnipotent and only after some long period of time break causality of natural order of this Universe and introduce an outside influence? There is no reason, were I god and had I wanted to make a Universe to put life into it I would just go ahead and do so immediately and without waiting (of-course I am assuming that I would be an impatient god, but why shouldn't I? If I was a patient god I would setup the Universe to deliver me something unexpected, something I wouldn't be making directly, I would want a surprise and then I wouldn't break causality of the new Universe anyway.)
It is however imperative that a Universe is not meddled with by introducing events that do break causality, if causality is broken even in small number of cases, given the time it takes to organize events it would make it impossible to achieve any real amount of organization leading to life appearance. Causality that is broken would leave trace behind that would be detectable and we would not be able to create a scientific theory to explain such a phenomena with any degree of usefulness.
1. Either there is a god and he set up the laws for this Universe and let it develop by itself without meddling.
OR
2. There is no god.
OR
3. God compensates for every time causality is broken in a way that is extremely extensive and reorganizes the Universe, making the Universe extremely unstable in principle but not allowing us to observe the effects of his/her/its meddling. So he goes into great length to convince us that he doesn't exist.
OR
4. God has only done this once to introduce life into the Universe. Then why did he bother waiting such a long time for the Universe to develop itself into something that could support life? - this implies god is stupid.
In either case it is actually irrelevant whether god exists or not, so there is no reason to introduce him into this equation, it doesn't change anything from our perspective. Thus reducing the complexity of this equation makes most sense.
Cheers.
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you take the bible literally, you are not a rational person.
Re:Actually, that's sort of a cop out. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why the suggestion that evolution is wrong is so absurd. Statistical Mechanics is one of the most well established branch of physics and questioning evolution amounts to questioning Statistical Mechanics well within it's established domain of applicability. The statements "the Earth is flat" and "evolution is wrong" are both equally ridiculous because the first can only be interpretted as suggesting that we cant apply Euclidean geometry to the Earth and the second because it assumes you can apply statistical mechanics to creepy crawlies.
I see where he's coming from, but I disagree. (Score:3, Interesting)
While I can see how evolutionary theory provides insight into abiogenesis (Spiegelman's Monster, anyone?), the fact remains that what we know about life on earth would work exactly the same whether a small initial population of prokaryotes arose by an as-yet-unknown abiogenic process, was placed here by aliens, or was zapped into place by His Noodle Appendage. Of course, what
Re:Origin of life ?! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Origin of life ?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Origin of life ?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Origin of life ?! (Score:5, Informative)
Plato believed in idealistic realism. He believed that the basic types had transcendental archetypes that represented perfectly the form of an uncorrupted object.
It wasn't until the scholastic movement when William of Ockham introduced the world to nominalism -- that words are merely approximate descriptions we apply to enable generalization of a real world of many diverse specifics. Reality was reality, and names and generalizations were the source of imperfections in reasoning, not that there are ideal forms for everything.
The archetypal example is the chair. Plato believed that there's such a thing as a perfect chair that personified and was what people should think of when you think of a chair. Ockham believed that people used the word chair as a symbol, or name (nomen) for the many things in the world that we used as chairs. The names were merely conventions.
How does Plato's ideology lead to inaccuracy in his theory of evolution? Well, to him, animals are a type, and as a type, they had a perfect form, the human, naturally, since it was the smartest and most powerful. Thus, any non-human was naturally inferior to the human. Combined with the common belief among Platonists and the religious gestalt of the time that things naturally tended toward corruption when left to their own devices (without, say a Philosopher King to step in and control the masses), Humans were the first and foremost species -- all the rest are merely corruptions of the animal archetype.
Platonism (more specifically neoplatonism) was the philosophic foundation for Christianity and the Catholic Church Fathers more than any other influence. Yes, Catholicism borrowed from Jewish, Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek Mystery, etc. religions, but the philosophical foundations of its theological systems lay directly with Plato.
For more information on the scourge of Plato and Platonic Essentialism, see Ernst Mayr's "Growth of Biological Thought", particularly the 180 page introduction if you can't read a thousand page book.
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No, the problems are where anyone thinks creation reflects reality in any way. Evolution doesn't prove creation and genesis aren't true; basic geology, cosmology, biology, and physics all do.
Amen (sic) to that. To take genesis literally, you have to deny the existance of summer and winter as we have yearly tree rings and glacier layers dating further back than 6000 years. The only way to take it as truth is to take the world as a complete fraud, all of it. Certainly an almighty being could do that, but then I'd feel more like I was in some teenager's ant farm than under the protection of some loving divine.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, surely God must love us if He went through all the trouble of restoring a whole universe from backup 6000 years ago
Re:Origin of life ?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Genesis has no mention of an origin date. So you could still take it literally.
The only way to take it as truth is to take the world as a complete fraud, all of it. Certainly an almighty being could do that, but then I'd feel more like I was in some teenager's ant farm than under the protection of some loving divine.
I think that this [cowtown.net] addresses your comment quite nicely. In the original language Genesis is written in a style halfway between poetry and prose...kind of like the Odyssey. It is easier to tell what to take literally, and what to consider metaphor in the original.
A lot of scholars believe that Genesis doesn't really make many extremely bold claims about the origins of life beyond the fact that God created the world and that there is an order in which he did it moving from the simple to the complex.
If you have to engage in bigotry that really is very cutting, that would be a better place for you to start. I understand what you were going with, though. Bigots traditionally start from a position of ignorance and the start making wild claims to defame those they wish to accuse, and you wouldn't want to break tradition.
Of course, you might find out that other people actually have valid points of view, which I'm sure will be disturbing for your faith, but I bet you can manage. Plenty of Christians pull their heads out of the sand and learn about the world around them, and they seem to be okay after that.
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Actually, the Genesis account of evolution isn't all that bad if you figure it was an attempt at describing it to people who knew no astronomy beyond the observational, approximately no chemistry, no biology beyond agriculture, no large numbers,and various other lacks in what is considered a modern scientific education. Sure, you have to be flexible on what a "day" means, and you have to figure that "God created" describes a large variety of techniques, but it has the great virtue that it isn't necessary
Re:Origin of life ?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Origin of life was by evolution (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially, in
a. certain intermediate-free-energy thermodynamic regimes (regimes in which common
elements and molecules can co-exist in all three of solid,liquid, and gaseous phases so that rigid and semi-rigid
structure can be combined with constrained energy flows),
and with
b. the right soup of lots of different common and chemically combinable elements trapped together in a gravity well,
you get the preconditions for randomly occurring structural and process experiments.
Some of these randomly occurring but probable-due-to-the-regime-and-the-ingredients experiments
end up making structural and process fragments that alter/interact with/use their environment in such a way as to
incrementally, or in some cases dramatically, increase the probability of a similar structure or process
fragment recurring nearby in time and space to the first one. This is already a positive feedback loop.
Eventually, by chance, some cluster of these self-probability-improving structure+processes, a cluster
most likely made of smaller self-made-more-probable structure-process fragments, reaches a threshold
at which its robustness leads to a probability of 1 of structure and process like that existing in the general
area.
Pattern self-preserving functionality transcends pattern occurrence improbability.
Call it stochastic evolution transforming into classical evolution.
Call it the origin of life if you like.
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Apart from that, the origin of life i
Re:Origin of life ?! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Everything that's replacated in labs is real, but not everything that is real can be replicated in labs, at least without an unbounded supply of luck, patience, time, and resources.
Re:Origin of life ?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh? Explain, please.
Most people today think that there is only one type of matter and that the complexity of life is just due to this matter acting like a very complicated machine. They would hold that if there is a soul it is separate from this world. A philosophical zombie would not work in this second view not because the matter has not taken the 'magic' form, but because no soul in the parallel world has attached itself to normal matter in this world. This is a view made popular by René Descartes.
Re:Origin of life ?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Origin of life ?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would we need to push "earth orbits the sun" on everyone outside the context of science? Science touches upon every area of our lives, and we are generally screwed if we don't have a population with a reasonable basic general education. A basic overview of biology needs to be covered in highschool just as much as a basic overview of chemistry does. Biology without evolution makes as much sense as chemistry without the periodic table of elements.
Going on to college to get an education as a doctor, or countless other professions, pretty well first requires a foundation learning elements and evolution and more.
There is something seriously wrong if a medical school has to teach fractions and other remedial math. There is something seriously wrong if a medical school has to teach atoms and other remedial chemistry. There is something seriously wrong if a medical school has to teach the evolutionary tree and other remedial biology.
And even then, they don't need to discount other accountings
What do you mean "discount other accountings"?
Do you mean like "discounting" the sun going around a motionless earth accounting of the solar system? And "discounting" the four element earth-air-fire-water chemistry accounting of chemistry?
If that is what you mean, then yeah, the general public rather should have enough general education to be aware that such "accountings" have been completely discounted.
-
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First, I don't think I ever mentioned taking them out of
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Here's a link to it: Spanish Inquisition Part 1 [youtube.com] Spanish Inquisition Part 2 [youtube.com]
The parent post is definitely not worthy of downmodding.
Re:Origin of life ?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ma Nature is a wasteful parent? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ma Nature just doesn't care about the waste. Of course the anthropomorphism just obscures things more, but the basic thing about natural evolution is that anything goes--but almost all of the changes lead directly to death. Ma Nature's approach results in vast numbers of tiny variations of the same basic forms that are all scrabbling for survival in a tiny niche. She isn't betting on the existence of a benevolent mutation. She just doesn't care.
Lately I was thinking that one of the weirdest aspects is that things worked out so that every one of us humans is a unique permutation. It would be 2^46 possibilities if you just started with one set of distinct genes from the chromosomes of a single mother and father, but there are so many variations for each of the genes that the actual number of potential human beings is vastly larger than that. Insofar as our genes contribute anything to the situation, each of us could be uniquely suited for some niche on earth. Talk about over-engineering?
Of course the likelihood that we'd ever find such perfect niches is pretty much negligible--but again Ma Nature doesn't care. If we wipe ourselves out in our frustration, she'll just start over again with the surviving cockroaches. So have a nice day.
Re:Ma Nature is a wasteful parent? (Score:5, Interesting)
Take by analogy a genetic algorithm to find some solution to a problem. Combining only the best solutions will make you fall into a local minimum and stay there. You have to keep some of the worse solutions in your set of candidates to break out of it. Similarly in real life, creatures with undesirable traits still survive and breed -- and I'm sure that that, even if simply by sheer coincidence and only in a small number of cases, leads to ultimately desirable traits in some circumstances.
Re:Not engineered! (Score:4, Interesting)
We humans do *NOT* do it that way. We try to produce large numbers of identical units, be they Pentium processors, copies of Microsoft's Windows OS, white lab mice, or even ears of corn. Essentially we're begging for viral disasters of every sort.
If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on the chickens. We've created vast flocks of chickens with almost identical genes, and they in turn have become hosts for vast infections of bird flu. By creating such vast stocks of viruses, we have greatly increased the chances of the appearance of a very serious human-human form of bird flu. But if not the chickens, there are other horses in the race, and right now I'm skeptical if we're liable to learn the big lessons from the disaster when (not if) it happens. Another thing about Ma Nature is that she's seriously patient.
I ran into this with my roommate yesterday (Score:4, Interesting)
Plus, he's an aspiring breeder.
Re:I ran into this with my roommate yesterday (Score:4, Funny)
How About Focus on Evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
The speakers spent most of their time discussing why Intelligent Design is wrong, and getting into semi-religion-bashing. I heard nothing about any of the things that the summary to this article mentions, for instance, which was actually something I wanted to know more about. I'm not very familiar with all of the specific evidence myself (I'm not a biologist).
Now look -- as a scientist, I can completely respect and agree with the fact that ID is not science, for a multitude of reasons. But look at it from the point of view of someone "new" to science that was curious -- they showed up to an event, hoping to learn more about what evolution is and understand the "debate", and all they heard was how Creationism is wrong and how we need to fight religious groups and educate the people about the truth. "Educate with what?", that person will ask. "They haven't given any proof yet, and just seem to talk about how much they hate religion when they get together.". THAT is what the average person sees, and it doesn't really make scientists look good, and gives ammunition to the people that spread misinformation about evolution. Will that person ever go back to an evolution talk in order for us to clear up misconceptions? Probably not; forever, that person will now think "Wow, Evolutionists are crazy, I'm not going to that again.".
There's other issues of course, but the public image of an evolution scientist right now needs to be cleaned up before many will even bother to listen.
Re:How About Focus on Evolution? (Score:4, Interesting)
you went to the wrong lecture (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't the scientists fault that ID reared its head in the USA and they got to 'defend' their theory.
Lets clear some misconceptions. (Score:5, Insightful)
This has some big consequences.. that recursion would mean that whatever was a common ancestor would need a common ancestor,, all the way down. and perhaps plants and animals are fundamentally different arising from different organisms, and a few trunks might appear for bugs, fungus, and bacteria..
By choosing traits carefully, a phylogeny was developed, which related animals to each-other.. strangely this worked really well.
Anyway, evolution predicts that there is a tree structure, and that endpoints dont cross over.. so mammals dont get 4 chambered lungs like birds, but might still have some egg laying abilities like reptiles. Not should we see the octopus eye structure in humans. or bug armor on birds. Armadillos will have armor from keratin like a rhino horn, or fingernails.
Anyway, once molecular biology and sequencing came out, it solidly backed the theory.. Phylogeny people have been re-mapping the tree, bacteria took some serious adjustment, larger organism less so.
Now there is a push to generate "ancestral genomes" so that we have an idea of what the predecessor organisms were capable of... and where some of the novel enzymes popped into being. So enzymes which appear to be adaptation from our last ice age might be related in some way to survival of the cold, or eating rodents without GI distress. But with some timing, and some idea of the climate, the flora, and fauna some good guesses can be made as to why a subtle change might have happened.
So evolution theory may help in figuring out why humans stopped making vitamin C, and rats never need a vitamin C pill or fruit in their lifetime.
Or it can confirm things that we might already have guessed.. that humans make less stomach acid during pregnancy might be an evolutionary adaption to morning sickness.. because most pregnant women don't seem to have chronic bulimia problems, ie rotten teeth, esophagus ulcers, which would occur at higher acid concentrations. anyway, once they find the control mechanism I'm betting that it'll point to roughly the time when we started bipedalism.
Yes evolution is science, it does matter, knowing the history of automobiles lets us understand why tempered glass isnt appropriate for a windshield. Knowing the path that our ancestors evolved with lets us know what we should watch out for when we start tinkering.
Storm Storm
Re: How About Focus on Evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Not that that invalidates your points. Scientists need to find a middle ground.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem, IMO, is that some people see it as an us-them situation.
Actually, it is an us-versus-them situation.
On the one hand, you have people who believe that everything--laws, beliefs, what have you--should be based on logic and reason. On the other hand, you have folks who, while not necessarily opposed to logic or denying its usefulness, decree that sometimes the decisions should be placed in the hands of a (by all descriptions) wishy-washy, temperamental, and angry deity. A deity who may or may not have our best interests at heart, mind you.
I find these two wo
Re:How About Focus on Evolution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Going after the parents is a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
- No, not everyone is a lifelong learner. That's the ideal not the reality. Just look at how hard it is for some older people to pick up computers after 40.
- The religion that's indoctrinated them has done so since birth. You're going to ear bash them for an hour or two and expect them to change their lifelong beliefs? You'll only create resentment.
- You have a much better chance at reaching the parents through the children. However if you only reach the children, it simply won't be an issue in 40 years.
Limit going after the parents to insisting that science is taught in science classes and religion is not.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Going after the parents is a mistake (Score:5, Informative)
In my studies, I read the Bible in Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek (with help of course) and learned that many things that are said in English are either out of context or blatantly wrong due to translation and just plain *HUMAN* error. Yes. The original Christian church showed me all of this in theology classes. The Church didn't seem to have a problem telling me that "P" and "J" and other sources wrote down the Old Testament and that Moses was looooooong dead by then. Or that the English "7 days" in Hebrew really meant "a long time." Among other things.
The Roman Catholic Church does not say that Evolution contradicts religion. In fact, the Church even explicitly said it had no argument against Evolution and that science is just fine.
It appears to me that it's the Fundies/Literalists with their King James translated Bible and absolutely no theological training whatsoever that are coming up with this Religion vs. Science debate. There isn't one. The writers of the Bible "the Jews" don't even have a problem with it.
Oh, and I hate to break it to you, but Jesus isn't coming again. His second coming was his Transfiguration (after he rose from the dead). It's just that the Fundies/Literalists don't even bother looking up "Revelation" in a dictionary. Revelations is basically another story about Christ *in the past* but written with a lot of religious symbolism. No prophecies.
What are you going to do with your free time now? Please consider donating your labor to charity groups such as Habitat for Humanity.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Tsk. Don't go to church much, do you?
"On the third day He rose in fulfillment of the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the r
Re:Going after the parents is a mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
It is no more "bold" or "arrogant" than an investigator going to a car wreck and stating "The car was going well over 100 MPH, period".
nobody here was at the scene and all that remains is some artifacts that we can investigate.
Correct.
Correct, and humans evolved, period.
Correct, and yhe car was going well over 100 MPH, period.
Each and every day we convict people "Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt" in a court of law, based upon forensic science.
Yes, forensic science can and does provide "Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt" answers about the past. And actually evolution level of proof goes way beyond any courtroom case. Maybe a few dozen police and prosecutors spend maybe a few months on a few slim pieces of evidencejust enough to get a conviction, and quit. On the other hand hundreds of thousands of scientists and other experts have spend over a hundred years examining a planet-sized-crimescene with near infinite evidence and endless tests.
And just DNA evidence is an irrefutable slam dunk in a rape case, the entire planet of DNA evidence is an irrefutable slam dunk for evolution.
watched many documenataries where evolutionary thought is force fed.
I have no idea what you were taught, but I do know that most highschools are doing an absolutely abysmal job teaching the subject. Many schools fail to cover it at all, and those that do cover it often do a rotten job teaching what evolution actually says, and even when schools do accurately teach what evolution says they generally fail to present the evidence irrefutably backing it up.
Many of the facts and arguments for creationism are dismissed outright, without investigating the evidence.
Oh come on. Well over a hundred years and hundreds of thousands of people.... you seriously imagine there is ANY such evidence that HASN'T been investigated to death and properly rejected?
Highschools don't spend any time on it just as they don't spend any time "investigating the evidence" four-element earth-air-fire-water chemistry. Because scientists already investigated it. Highschools teach supported science, they don't teach ideas that have been investigated and proven false.
Having said that, how many of you have read the bible?
Hmmm, lets see.... we're I assume we're talking United States here... where the ballpark of 100% of the population are Christian...
Are you seriously suggesting that anything less than the overwhelming majority of a half million or so earth and life scientists have read the Bible?
Come on, that is obviously silly. Of course they have.
The public realm ridicules creationism because the general thought is that it is out-moded.
Yes, along with the idea of the sun going around a motionless earth.
Some people took the Bible and said Galileo was wrong and that his solar system contradicted the bible and that his solar system was an attack to deny God.
Some people took the Bible and said Darwin was wrong and that his evolution contradicted the bible and that his evolution was an attack to deny God.
Exact same thing. People closing their eyes and closing their minds and closing their hearts, and presuming to tell God how He is and is not permitted to run His universe.
Genesis is Hebrew Old Testament. It was written in poetry and symbolism. Yes, poetry. The poetry of the language was lost when it was translated out of Hebrew. And now some people are trying to take it as a literal science textbook and trying to produce scientific implications out of symbolic poetry. And surprise surprise, those implications have been scientifically tested and demonstrated incorrect.
After all, there is a large resistance to the Galileo solar system, mainly from creationists but also from others. Even though it i
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's no such thing as "the protestant church".
And most churches in the US that claim to be protestant didn't even exist when the "protest" took place that the term "protestant" refers to (1529).
Pluto (Score:4, Insightful)
They and their fathers had grown up thinking that Pluto was a planet because of mankind's relative inexperience at astronomy. Recently, mankind learned facts [wikipedia.org] that required rethinking of what "planet" meant so that when the term was used, everyone knew what it did and didn't mean.
Remember how easy and sensible that debate was? When it was "over", the definition had as many footnotes [wikipedia.org] as principles.
And those were scientists. Heaven help us when we have to reteach anything to the general public.
Re: Pluto (Score:4, Insightful)
A modest proposal (Score:3, Insightful)
No More Obligation (Score:3, Insightful)
I became disenchanted over the last 8 years or so, as we were able to watch videos side-by-side of a politician stating "I stabbed a dog in the heart." and then a second video stating "I've never stabbed a dog." and then some member of the public is questioned about what they saw and they don't even recognize that conflicting statements were made. Then an "expert" begins discussing the two statements and is somehow able to reconcile completely contradictory statements into a seamless truth. It's like we're not observing the same reality. Of course since reality is a mental construct, it's true in some respect that we're not observing the same reality. And if we're not even in the same reality, how the hell can I possibly inform them of the laws and theories that govern the reality I'm in? I live in a world with gravity, evolution, electro-magnetism, chemical reactions, thermodynamics... they live in a world of magic, "truth", and gravity pulls down because that's how it feels today, and universes that pop-up out of nowhere because we live in a world designed like a video game.
And what's so weird is that I'm not even a skeptic. I like to believe I'm pretty open-minded. If any of my knowledge comes into question, I'm ready at the drop of a hat to re-examine things and see where I stand.
I guess I'm at the point now where I don't care if people like Bush ever acquire something approaching intellect. They can stay stupid for the rest of their stupid lives.
Skepticism (Score:3, Informative)
That is skepticism.
It is a common meme that skeptics are "closed-minded," when the reality, as you have explored, is that it is the closed-minded who will proclaim, "BE OPEN MINDED!" to those who will not accept their chosen beliefs because they are unable to actually support them with little th
Re:Not everyone is a lifelong learner... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not everyone is a lifelong learner... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not everyone is a lifelong learner... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not everyone is a lifelong learner... (Score:5, Funny)
And after that, could we review the difference between comedians and mathematicians?
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not everyone is a lifelong learner... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not everyone is a lifelong learner... (Score:5, Interesting)
As soon as we learn a model for the world, we want to actively support that model. We emotionally invest. Few of us have the capacity to re-examine that model constantly. Sometimes, overwhelming evidence will cause a sea change in certain groups' world view, but generally we like to stick to our own.
Some people have a world view that includes a just and active Christian God with a book that explains the way the world works; any evidence to the contrary is dismissed out of hand and any evidence to support it is grabbed on to no matter how irrational. Some (a few) people are just the opposite: they would dismiss any evidence of a deity and hold fast to any seeming contradiction in dogma, no matter how badly translated. I'm in the later group, and I dismiss out of hand anything anyone says about the existence of any god. I'm prejudiced that way, for better or worse.
But simply trying to explain things to the parents will probably not make any great inroads in society. Perhaps, but probably not. More likely, you'll get a group of 10 people pissed off and they'll have nothing better to do than to repeatedly call your boss/underwriter until you are forced to go sell hot dogs on the street for simply suggesting that we should all get along and that no one should be nailed to anything for it. I'm just saying.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
the ID "theory" does nothing of the sort. the only "innovation" it has over the overtly religious stories is the simple substitution of "god" with "intelligent designer". still, it does not explain why an "intelligent designer" is necessary, nor does it pro
Read the book first (Score:3, Informative)
It is probably better if you actually know something about the topic before you put down your comments in (virtual) print.
Mutation is random, selection is not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it appears you just made my point for me... (^_^)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Where is this evidence? (Score:5, Informative)
While this link more or less covers these points I'll summarize as it's a lot to slog through. The fossil record is sorted based on time. Radiological dating coupled with clear evolutionary progress as you look at progressively higher layers proves this. If much of the life on Earth died in a flood then you'd expect to see sorting based on density, size and swimming ability with the metal and stone tools of the time at the bottom and a spectrum of animals ranging from big slow creatures that couldn't make it to higher ground and live longer or swim very well on top of the tools and birds, bats and things that can swim for a long time at the top. Considering that the remains of tools are all well above the likes of T-Rex skeletons this is clearly not the case.
The Grand Canyon is pretty much a poster-child for modern geological theories. It's layering is not consistent with a rapid flood and the canyon its self is best explained by the long slow process of erosion by river. I could probably find some detailed studies if you'd like.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html [talkorigins.org]
If you have more questions about this part I'll gladly answer them when it's daytime.
What about comets causes problems for you. Tell me and I'll do my best to clear up any misunderstandings you may have.
Also, I've noticed you seem to have a problem common to many Creationists, you conflate geological evolution, astronomy, abiogenisis and biological evolution. Geological evolution is, as the name suggests about the changing of our planet over time and includes stuff like erosion, desertification and plate tectonics. Astronomy is the study of the stars and can include stuff like the big bang and the formation of our solar system.Abiogenisis is the idea that life originated from non-life due to the chemical conditions present on Earth at the time. Biological evolution is what you seem to want to debate and it's all about the adaptation of animals over subsequent generations due to natural selection. Even if one is disproved it doesn't necessarily invalidate the others because they're all separate theories with their own evidence and implications. The fact that they all tend to support each other where they overlap just adds credence to them all.
Talk more when it's day
-David
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, most of the layers of the Grand Canyon [wikipedia.org] are consistent with deposits over millions of years in a shallow sea off the c
Re:Where is this evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, you really should link to the articles in question, as that would be the polite thing to do: Cann [nature.com] | Gibbons [sciencemag.org] (pdf [dnai.org]).
Second, it is obvious that you have chosen a belief system and grasp at any evidence to support it, blatantly disregarding all other evidence. A google of those papers make them look to be two "classics" that creationists refer to again and again. The youngest is over 10 years old. Where are the more recent Science/Nature papers that confirm the conclusions of these papers? They don't exist.
Here is an acid test for good research: Does it stand the test of time? Is the field explosive in the scientific field 10 years later? Some examples of paradigm shifting fields are stem cells, apoptosis, and RNA catalysis. The papers you cite do not measure up to these standards and so are highly suspect. Good science gets confirmed by other scientists and not by conjecture or preachers who thumpin bibles. Where are the papers confirming the 6500 year old mitochondrial clock or have recent advances shown problems with the previous model? Do the research yourself if you are objective like you think you are--or you can remain blinded by your belief system. But if you wish to remain blinded by your belief system, don't burden others with your belief system like you are doing here.
When uninformed people have opinions on science that smell of belief and bias, my suggestion to them is to go spend five to seven years to get a PhD in a field of natural science. Don't cop-out and pick some religious school where you end up with a thesis full of bible quotes. Find a real state-run university without any allegiance to any religion. Do actual research out in the field (dig bones, sequence DNA, dissect plants, count the strata of geological formations, etc.), synthesize the data and write your thesis on what you have discovered. Don't lie and make up data to support your belief system! Even [insert your favorite religious prophet or diety here] wouldn't do that, right? Integrate the comments of your committee and defend your thesis in front of them. Once you have your PhD from the accredited state-run university without any religious affiliation, come back and examine your belief system from the perspective of a trained scientist. Until then, you are simply fooling yourself, discrediting the members of your faith, and annoying the knowledgeable.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me guess -- are you implying, from Gibbons, that 6500 years ago there was a mere one human woman on the entire planet, from whom everyone alive is descended? And I guess we all know her name...
Because the "Mitochondrial Eve" theory does not identify a purported woman, the only one on the planet, from which everyone who has ever lived descended. Rather it identifies the one woman that everyone alive today is descended from, and who was only one of many alive then, but the only one whose descendants w
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That, and the plants on Earth before the creation of the Sun.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yup just like every fish needs a bicycle.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Tip 2 - completely ignore the Old Testament, as it's mythical nonsense.
Tip 3 - stick to the Gospels - Paul was an authoritarian prick and should be discounted by anyone with common sense.
Tip 4 - don't take any of it literally, especially not in translation.
Tip 5 - you can come to the same moral conclusions on strictly utilitarian grounds, so gods aren't strictly necessary.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One can't help but wonder how much of the (undue) credibility that "evolution deniers" are given is down to this simple difference in semantics...
Re:Error in TFA: Last time life started, not first (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually this is a fascinating subject.
The evidence shows that life appeared just about at the earliest point it could have, pretty much as soon as the earth cooled from a molten ball to a solid surface. And at that time the earth was still taking the occasional insane extermination-level impact.
Allow me to define "insane extermination-level impact". An impact that covers the earth in vaporized rock, boils the oceans bone dry in a matter of days, and leave the entire surface of the earth hot enough to melt lead. Serious sterilization.
Which left a bit of a puzzle on how the record of life on earth is apparently a continuous fixture, from its very first appearance.
In the last several years there has been quite a bit of biological research/exploration in conjuction with commercial mining. It turns out that mines are loaded with all sorts or never-before-seen kinds of bacteria. Exotic bacteria that live off the chemistry of the minerals themselves, and living and spreading throughout the endless cracks in the rocks. Our deepest mines are well over over two miles deep and drill sampling even deeper, and the rock is loaded with bacteria and water creeping through the cracks. At 2.2 miles down into the crust the temperature rises to over a hundred degrees F, and just keeps climbing the deeper you go.
And someone did a neat computer calculation. They modeled the temperature gradient of the crust as it goes down to the sterilizingly hot molten depths below, and they modeled the incinerating heat of a megaimpact. The heat from above works its way down through the crust incinerating everything as it goes for months and years. But the impact is a heat pulse, and the surface does begin to cool back down over time. The downwards pulse of heat decays.
It turns out that the molten sterilization zone below and the impact sterilization pulse from above never quite meet in the middle. Deep down in the crust there remains a merely "very very hot" zone in between where some extreme heat tolerant bacteria could and would squeak by. Bacteria which would work their way back up to recolonize the surface as soon as it cooled.
A seriously neat little chunk of science
We are descended from heat-extremophile rock-eating bacteria that survived multiple insane incinerating impacts by hiding out in the deep crustal cracks.
-
Re:Interesting responses to the article (Score:4, Informative)
The only place in science for proofs are math and logic.
Theories are the "hows" for the "facts" of the universe. Take gravity as an example. Gravity is a fact (things fall to the Earth, masses attract each other, etc.). The *theory* of gravity is the "this is how it works". In fact, there are multiple theories of gravity *in use this very day*. Both Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity are used, even though Einstein's is significantly more correct more often. But neither theory has been proven correct because you *can't* prove they are correct. All you can do is show how well they match observation.
As for evolution, we know about the fact of evolution. We've seen it happen in real-time. We've seen it happen in the fossil record. We've instigated and directed it ourselves. That's evolution the fact. Evolution the theory (in fact, just like with gravity, theories) are the details, the "how it happens". Exactly *why* do animals evolve? Just *how* does this happen? These are aspect of the *theory* of evolution which all seek to describe the *fact* of evolution.
Re:hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)