In response to Fraggle Rocker and Iceaura:
Now hold on a second. So many explanations on the word fact gives me discomfort.
Should this not be the LEAST disputed word known to humanity?
Not a bit of it. If everyone agreed what constituted facts, nobody would argue about anything.
Then it cannot be deemed a fact. A fact is something which cannot be disputed. Once we go around massaging definitions then we are into dirty pool.
Evolution is a fact as much as the fact that rain falls on the Earth. How exactly it happens is open to debate, but the fossil record is real. DNA is real.In response to Fraggle Rocker and Iceaura:
Now hold on a second. So many explanations on the word fact gives me discomfort.
Should this not be the LEAST disputed word known to humanity?
the most controversial thing was the lack of data to support much of what was said, which led to the panels consensus.Which of the following statements was held in controversy at that conference?
Evolution is a fact as much as the fact that rain falls on the Earth. How exactly it happens is open to debate, but the fossil record is real. DNA is real.
It may be a fact but not like the fact that rain falls on the Earth.
That is a fact (in part) because you can observe rain falling on the Earth.
Evolution is a fact (in part) because you can observe organisms evolving.
You can, of course, claim that it does not rain a lot, and that thus you only believe in "microrain" but not "macrorain." You can also claim that neither rain nor evolution happens; it's a free country.
Evolution is a fact as much as the fact that rain falls on the Earth. How exactly it happens is open to debate, but the fossil record is real. DNA is real.
I am evolving right now as i type into an old man.
I gathered that much, but since none of the platforms upon which the TOE is built were undermined by the conference, why do you connect the conference with a disavowal of TOE?the most controversial thing was the lack of data to support much of what was said, which led to the panels consensus.
for the consensus you will need to buy the issue.
No you're not. You're just getting older.
I shouldn't do this but.......
no, that's not right. The fossil record and DNA relationships are facts (observations reproduced many times by independent observers). Evolution is the THEORY that accounts for those observations (and actually predicted the DNA relationships long before they were discovered). It cannot itself be a fact because, like any theory in science it is only provisional, that is, open to the possibility that it may be shown in need of improvement, revision or even - in principle, though this seems vanishingly unlikely - replacement.
In my submission it is a mistake to present the theory of evolution as "fact", as it encourages precisely the misconceptions that creationists exploit to cast doubt on it. There are plenty of areas within the theory that are under development, the subject of scientific dispute, or likely to be refined or revised. As there should be, in ANY live discipline of science. Creationists are too dim, or too disingenuous, to recognise this and so they try to portray these live areas as symptoms of a "theory in crisis" etc.
The thing to do, surely, is NOT to maintain that the theory is a rigid "fact", since that simply lays you wide open to the objection as to why then there are these disputed areas. What one has to do, surely, is educate creationists (why do I mistype cretinists all the time?) that this is NORMAL in theories of science and is far from a sign of weakness. The strength of a theory is to be gauged by its explanatory and predictive power, NOT by the absence of disagreements or revisions within parts of it. And by that yardstick (cf. DNA above) Evolution is triumphantly successful, of course.
In my submission it is a mistake to present the theory of evolution as "fact".
It is still an evolution. My whole body is evolving. For that matter ten years from now i may have large breasts, due only from age. May have no hair or hair on my back that was never there before. This is evolving so just wanted to make you see the error in your last post and WHY I called it the oldest strawman on the internet.
leopold consistently misrepresents what the consensus of the panel was. No one on the panel disagreed with the theory of evolution. The disagreement was whether the transitions were smooth and gradual, or whether they were fast and jerky (punctuated equilibrium).
Here's the first page extract of the paper, from 1990.
View attachment 6310
TOE says "XYZ happens", the conference concluded, based on the available evidence which for the most part was lacking, that XYZ doesn't happen.. . . but since none of the platforms upon which the TOE is built were undermined by the conference, why do you connect the conference with a disavowal of TOE?