Just some minor quibbles as I actually do myself and everyone else a favor and read the other posts:

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Originally posted by trancaholic There's three differences between the stars example and the evolution example, one of them the inclusion of non-defined probabilities in evolution (as you nearly note yourself),

While true in the field, in the laboratory when all extraneous variables are eliminated (at least as much as possible), predictions of evolution are quite accurate.

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the second that even when we take a step back and consider only outcomes from a statistical viewpoint, evolution still allows for several results: If we observe a million galaxies of stars and only 20% of them actually ended up as black holes, we would need to dismiss the "contraction theory" as it clearly stated that that should happen. If we throw a million populations of cats into a million swamps and only 20% of them ends up with webbing between their toes we do not abandon evolution as it provides for a lot of things that could have gone wrong and caused the cats not to develop webbing.

Well in this particular hypothetical, you're attempting to treat evolution statistically the same as you would objects in a vacuum. As we well know, evolution doesn't occur in a vacuum, and as mentioned, many other extraneous variables occur that may interfere with the predicted outcome we're making about the cats. The fact that 20% of cats developed webbed feet verifies evolution has occurred, because we simply cannot eliminate all other possible variables involved (differing mutations, redundant vs. beneficial or detrimental mutations, predation, climate, etc. etc.). However, if those 20% of cats in another 10,000 yrs. become 90%, we have even further evidence of an evolutionary event occurring, which is what evolution itself predicts and what is verified in both the field and the lab.

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As an example of this last point, consider my previous example of bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics. According to evolution this should happen, but it very very rarely does, yet evolution is not rejected.

On the contrary, again under controlled conditions we see this occurring quite frequently.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

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I'm quite comfortable by such exclusions. The advantage of keeping things this way is that you do not include in the corpus of science anything which cannot be taken out again. Furthermore, the demarcation criterion is well defined with no reliance on subjective estimates when a hypothesis is up for consideration as being a scientific theory. The definitions from the dictionary do not posses this property. Take astrology, for instance, is it not observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena?

Perhaps I’m being naïve or a bit uneducated with astrology, but what experimental investigation occurs in astrology? And what body of evidence supports and verifies it through testability?

The question, if I’m reading Popper right, seemingly lies in the testability or falsifiability of a theory. That general definition I gave on theory certainly mentions “repeated tests”, which directly implies Popper’s Test. So no, astrology doesn’t work here.

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How about mathematics (which you seem to consider a science)? Is is using experimental investigations?

You’re quite correct in pointing out my error here confusing math with science. However it should be noted that you should not confuse in return the distinct differences in definition between a mathematical theory and a scientific one. The definition I gave above was for the latter, though I could have continued pasting the former for more clarification if necessary.

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Furthermore, what does "theoretical" explanation means? The "theory" definition is even worse, I think: Does creationism itself not fit this definition perfectly?

Again I think you’re confusing the everyday term “theoretical” with the definition of scientific theory. I fail to see the point you are making here, since this doesn’t negate the definition described above in any manner.

And by that loose everyday lingo, yes Creationism fits that nicely. What does that have to do with the scientific term?

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And what is this allusion to degrees of theoremhood: "especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted"? Further, is "repeatedly" the same as "at least twice", and who decides what "widely" means?

Now I think you’re reducing this definition down to the point of absurdity. By strict terms, yes I suppose “repeatedly” means more than once. Does 2x make something widely accepted? Of course that depends on the objects found. Discussing the point of where the threshold mark of acceptance lies really involves nothing more than a bit of common sense and reason. If a given event or object continually occurs, we should be safe to conclude that evidence supports that event or object. But of course that doesn't necessarily conclude that it will always be so - and if another event or object turns up that is different from the original, then obviously we must accept an alternative explanation, or perhaps even an "I don't know".

I guess I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

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As you hopefully can see, I consider the dictionary definitions practically worthless - or at least inferior to that of Popper's - for demarcation purposes.

I believe I’m understanding your points of limitation here, but attempting to throw evolution in with humanitarian sciences or even pseudosciences is a bit fallacious, esp. when we consider that Popper effectively took it out himself.

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The disagreement is then on the behaviour of evolutionists. It is not my impression that they are open and honest about the unresolved issues, open problems, riddles, or whatever term we should use, when they make statements in media concerning evolution. Actually the evolutionists I see in media is pretty confident, maybe because that any signs of weaknesses or admittance of problems would be claimed as a victory by creationists...? Anyway, that's my view of the matter, and the reason why I call the continued debate between cretionists and evolutionists "stupid".

Well again you’re certainly entitled to your views, but I think some of this can be explained a little bit further. I and many evo folks also tend to share your view, perhaps to a lesser degree, about evolutionists in the media. This problem stems from a couple of reasons:

1. Geeky scientists are absolutely horrible in discussing things in layman’s terms. It’s a real tribute to folks like Sagan who were gifted in this regard, even though there was a certain amount of resentment from other scientists towards him as a result.

2. Geeky scientists really give 2 shits about creationism as a whole, and consider the whole issue more of an annoyance rather than an actual problem to address. After all, their work is based on evolutionary principles, not creationist ones which don’t work too terribly well in research. This does not help their public image in any way, but:

3. Taken as a whole, Geeky scientists give 2 shits about their public image in the first place.

And to top things off, creationists continue to distort, misquote, misunderstand, or flat-out lie about evolution. Scientists really don’t have time to cover the same ground disproving these fallacies over and over again, but this is the tireless event created by creationists. It’s really considered a waste of time to them, and only a handful really take the time to take creationist/ID claims head on. Does this help their public image? Hell no, but that’s the reality of it to them.

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Well the first course of action of course. I don't see it happening in the media and in relation to educating the public though.

Perhaps not, and I agree that they should do a better job on public image. It’s a bit unfortunate.

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So we agree that there are phenomena not explained that well by evolution, and that that matter is not taught at schools. I agree that it would be too much to introduce students to current cutting edge research on how these holes may be closed, but I still think that teachings of evolution shouldn't neglect to mention that the holes exists.

Well I don’t want to get too nitpicky, but again the holes that are left are pretty small now have been either successfully closed or severely shrunk by evolutionary theory. What’s left is not so much a “problem” for evolution, but really a problem of further digging and technology. And as history has shown, these questions become answered eventually. There’s no viable alternative that has ever filled these big gaps in past history, and there’s currently no viable alternative that can successfully fill the smaller holes now. The only logical answer is that evolution eventually will.
The only real “gap” that’s often talked about is that of abiogenesis. If the science teacher doesn’t make the clear distinction between abiogenesis and evolution, I’ll certainly agree that this teacher is at fault.

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I agree with what you write, but at the same time have to ask you what you mean by "evolution" - is it simply the antithesis of "Goddidit"?

Unfortunately I can see how some might think this. But of course it’s not the antithesis. Who’s to say God didn’t have something to do with it randomly? And to take it a step further, who’s to say that God isn’t involved supernaturally one way or another?
The problem lies in the testability – can the supernatural be reliably tested and falsified? No. Therefore evolution researchers simply can’t involve any supernatural courses of action occurring, esp. when the body of research clearly demonstrates natural phenomena occurring via random mutation and natural selection.
IOW, we don’t have the capability to test whether or not the supernatural is involved. That’s not to say it doesn’t occur, nor is it to say that we may be capable in the future, but at present we can only verify natural phenomena.

I guess you could say this is the only wiggle room I leave for any ID ideas.

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If evolution is any kind of non-deity explanation which includes mutation and natural selection as well, then of course there's little debate as to whether it is true or not.

Well as I said, who’s to say that God isn’t involved somehow in the evolutionary (mutation, NS) process? The point is evolution researchers really don’t care whether or not a deity is involved. They just simply haven’t seen evidence to conclude such existence is involved in the evolutionary process at this time, nothing more.

And I think it’s important to discuss the notion of falsifiability a bit further, at least as to how you are defining it. But I think another interesting notion itself on Popper’s falsifiability principle is the fact that the principle itself cannot be falsified. There are some other criticisms on Popper’s original ideas on evolution and philosophy, which are noted here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/tautology.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/falsify.html

I think the central point really is whether or not historical sciences can withstand Popper’s falsification. Perhaps it is a matter of degree, as he states here:

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Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl...sification.html

And as I mentioned previously, perhaps Popper himself in his recantation realized that testability of evolution is acceptable in his own rigorous standards:

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“…some people think that I have denied scientific character to the historical sciences, such as paleontology, or the history of the evolution of life on Earth; or to say, the history of literature, or of technology, or of science itself. This is a mistake, and I here wish to affirm that these and other historical sciences have in my opinion scientific character: their hypotheses can in many cases be tested. It appears as if some people would think that the historical sciences are untestable because they describe unique events. However, the description of unique events can very often be tested by deriving from them testable predictions or retrodictions” (Popper, K. (1980). Evolution. New Scientist 87, 611.)

So now we see that word “retrodiction” again. Whether or not Popper is answering someone who utilized previously is a bit unknown, but I do think it’s interesting in to see in light of our mutual criticism earlier.

I found that quote in this paper here which talks in great length of testability of phylogenetics and cladistics. For the sake of brevity and my own personal sanity, I’ll just post the link and give you some further reading:

http://www.ib.usp.br/hennig/kluge1997.pdf

Have a great weekend.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Well, I'll be short here because I'm too lazy to answer every point in detail. It is true that the theory of evolution may still be improved on some details, so in that sense, yes, you could say that it's not a 100% accurate theory and maybe it never will be. But if you agree with that, then you can do the same thing for almost every other theory. In other words, there would hardly be a single theory in the book that would not carry a sticker mentioned on the first page.

___________________
1+1=10

First of all: Sorry for writing "48 hours" and then not returning to this thread when they were up. I got involved with a girl and then had to help organize a workshop, including taking a bunch of beer-happy Swedes drinking on the town. It has taken up a lot of energy and time. Apologies.

I won't cover everything that has been written (still pressed very much for time and will continue to be so until the middle of February at least), as a lot of it I agree with and some of it can probably be covered by a few general remarks:
First of all, as to the discussion on the predictive capabilities of evolution under controlled circumstances, I will readily confess that I know very little of these. I am not a biologist (as Mister Opus?), and really haven't access to or overview of experiments conducted in this area. Therefore, I cannot refute what has been written on that manner in this thread.
Then to the main points: It seems to me that I have succeeded in explaining my points on falsification at last. I know that none of you agree with me, but as long as it's not because of misunderstandings, then that's fine by me. I just don't like to be viewed as an idiot for the wrong reasons.
As to the actual topic of the thread, it seems to me that we all agree that the stickers may be right, given specifics interpretations of the words, but that they shouldn't be put on the books, as that would be ridiculous, considering how other textbooks are used in schools.

Then some further elaboration to clear up some minor misunderstandings/non-understandings:

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 While true in the field, in the laboratory when all extraneous variables are eliminated (at least as much as possible), predictions of evolution are quite accurate. Well in this particular hypothetical, you're attempting to treat evolution statistically the same as you would objects in a vacuum. As we well know, evolution doesn't occur in a vacuum, and as mentioned, many other extraneous variables occur that may interfere with the predicted outcome we're making about the cats. The fact that 20% of cats developed webbed feet verifies evolution has occurred, because we simply cannot eliminate all other possible variables involved (differing mutations, redundant vs. beneficial or detrimental mutations, predation, climate, etc. etc.).

I don't understand why you can say that "differing mutations, ... climate" are extraneous variables? I thought that evolution by natural selection would need to *include* those to predict anything? It's connected to my question from earlier as to what *exactly* is meant by evolution. Not a religious question, but simply a wish to have listed exactly those mechanisms that evolution is composed of?

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Very little time today, but did come across a little tidbit on Popper that I hadn't known before. Are you aware that he recanted his views on evolution? It appears that he examined evolution in greater detail and realized he had misunderstood it a bit: "I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation" (Dialectica 32:344-346). I think this is pretty telling.

I hope I haven't come off as trying to argue from authority. It is true that Popper changed his philosophy late in life. As far as I have understood, it happened something like this: Popper proposes falsifiability early in the 20th century, as a demarcation theory - implicitly defining how science *should* evolve. In the 60s Thomas Kuhn comes along with a quite different hypothesis on how science *does* evolve. In the time up to the point where this happened, Popper's philosophy had come to be regarded as a descriptive hypothesis. When Kuhn's thoughts came to be known, the old descriptive theory was subjected to a lot of pressure, because it clearly didn't match what was observed in real life. For some reason Popper had lost his marbles by then, or had simply fallen in love with the idea of being the one describing scientific progress, and he never emphasized that his ideas was meant be prescriptive rather than descriptive. Rather he adopted his philosophy into a descriptive hypothesis. History has other examples of great philosophers (e.g. Wittgenstein and Russel) who changed their views into something else later in life, but where the general consensus is that their earlier work was the most interesting. I agree with the early Popper ideas, and not the later ones. And yes I am aware that his idea cannot be falsified - very little philosophy can be falsified as it rarely deals with predicitions.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Perhaps I’m being naïve or a bit uneducated with astrology, but what experimental investigation occurs in astrology?

Well, creating horoscopes and presenting them to people of course?

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 And what body of evidence supports and verifies it through testability?

Well, my comment should be read as two: The first part ending with "Furthermore, what does "theoretical" explanation means?" was solely criticism of the "science" definition. The rest was aimed at the "theory" definition. I didn't propose astrology as a candidate for being a "theory".

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 The question, if I’m reading Popper right, seemingly lies in the testability or falsifiability of a theory. That general definition I gave on theory certainly mentions “repeated tests”, which directly implies Popper’s Test. So no, astrology doesn’t work here. You’re quite correct in pointing out my error here confusing math with science. However it should be noted that you should not confuse in return the distinct differences in definition between a mathematical theory and a scientific one. The definition I gave above was for the latter, though I could have continued pasting the former for more clarification if necessary. Again I think you’re confusing the everyday term “theoretical” with the definition of scientific theory. I fail to see the point you are making here, since this doesn’t negate the definition described above in any manner. And by that loose everyday lingo, yes Creationism fits that nicely. What does that have to do with the scientific term? Now I think you’re reducing this definition down to the point of absurdity. By strict terms, yes I suppose “repeatedly” means more than once. Does 2x make something widely accepted? Of course that depends on the objects found. Discussing the point of where the threshold mark of acceptance lies really involves nothing more than a bit of common sense and reason. If a given event or object continually occurs, we should be safe to conclude that evidence supports that event or object. But of course that doesn't necessarily conclude that it will always be so - and if another event or object turns up that is different from the original, then obviously we must accept an alternative explanation, or perhaps even an "I don't know". I guess I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

I hope that is because of the misunderstanding I tried to clear up above: I tried to show how each of the definitions were fuzzy to the point of uselessnes. Your elaboration in this piece refers to common sense and reason, which to me is fuzzy concepts as well.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 I believe I’m understanding your points of limitation here, but attempting to throw evolution in with humanitarian sciences or even pseudosciences is a bit fallacious, esp. when we consider that Popper effectively took it out himself.

Well, if you are rejected at the door to a nightclub for not wearing a blue tie on "blue tie"-night and so is a filthy drooling crackhead, it doesn't mean that you have been thrown in with him. You are simply both excluded from the group of clubbing people that night. Hope you get the analogy - my agenda is not to be detrimental to evolution, I just want to have science defined clearly in a manner so that I can agree with the consequences of that definition.

I've been terribly neglectful of this forum and esp. this thread. Since I told my boss that I'm going back to school this summer, I've had to spend last week, and better portion of the next 2 months training the new guy all my daily functions. So apologies for that.

Now on to your points:

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Originally posted by trancaholic First of all: Sorry for writing "48 hours" and then not returning to this thread when they were up. I got involved with a girl and then had to help organize a workshop, including taking a bunch of beer-happy Swedes drinking on the town. It has taken up a lot of energy and time. Apologies.

Don't sweat it. I've been busy as shit too, and have left too many posts and threads unanswered. I appreciate you getting back to this.

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First of all, as to the discussion on the predictive capabilities of evolution under controlled circumstances, I will readily confess that I know very little of these. I am not a biologist (as Mister Opus?), and really haven't access to or overview of experiments conducted in this area. Therefore, I cannot refute what has been written on that manner in this thread.

Again, don't sweat it. I don’t call myself a biologist by any means- I just had it as my undergrad major (and to a large extent, my grad. school focus as well). Doing 4 years of IT doesn’t put me much in the research either. However, the Evo. debate around my state has kept me up to date with all this stuff since undergrad.

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Then to the main points: It seems to me that I have succeeded in explaining my points on falsification at last. I know that none of you agree with me, but as long as it's not because of misunderstandings, then that's fine by me. I just don't like to be viewed as an idiot for the wrong reasons.

I really hope that's not what you believe I or anyone else here in the so-called "evo camp" thinks of you. Quite the opposite, in fact. Discussing your viewpoint has been pretty refreshing and very interesting to me.

I kinda tend to think that as a whole, we're somewhat talking in different directions or "different languages" as some may say, rather than disagreeing on the same points laid out in front of both of us.

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As to the actual topic of the thread, it seems to me that we all agree that the stickers may be right, given specifics interpretations of the words, but that they shouldn't be put on the books, as that would be ridiculous, considering how other textbooks are used in schools.

Well again, the wide body of paleontological, comparative and developmental biology, genetics, etc. tend to give it a great deal of weight, quite enough to call it a theory by today’s science standards (and not so much the strict early Popperlian standard you are adhering to). We’re just looking for the best explanation to explain natural phenomena, supported by a wide body of evidence. Evolution clearly fits the bill.

I think it would be a good time now to maybe compare and contrast different “theories” and see exactly what kind of differences we are discussing here. As I’ve stated before, my knowledge on astronomy and physics is limited, but I’d like to at least attempt to tackle the theory of gravity. How is this theory, in your mind, given more weight (no pun intended) than the theory of evolution? In evolutionary theory, for example, we have a known mechanism that can be tested, retested, falsified, and observed. For gravity, I may be wrong but we still do not have a very good understanding of the nature of gravity or how it works at all. In fact, do we even have a known mechanism for gravity? Furthermore, we have no understanding as to why gravity exists, in contrast to evolution (survival).

Can we test the properties of gravity? Of course – first Newton showed us, but it didn’t fit all models very well, like mercury’s orbit wasn’t it? So Einstein came along with relativity which explained things on the cosmic scale in much greater detail and accuracy. That’s certainly all well and good, yet we still know next to nothing about the mechanism behind this phenomenon.

Now I’m a bit absent on the discussion of Popper and scientific philosophy as a whole, but it seems to me that this might be one area that was a bit absent in Popperlian philosophy, and perhaps a rationale as to why his strict falsification interpretation of “theory” needed a bit of refinement. I realize I may be talking a bit out of my ass here, but again it seems to me that there had to be more than just discussing a wide body of evidence and filtering it down to a very narrow hole of falsification via strength of future predictions (which as I showed earlier, Popper himself agreed evolution’s “retrodictions” met this criteria regardless).

Can we make predictions based on these known properties of gravity, even when we have no known mechanism? Of course, and I don’t deny this at all. But again, does this necessarily give it more “strength” because we can make a certain kind of future prediction, as opposed to an evolutionary “retrodiction”? I’m not sure of that one, and again without talking too far out my ass, maybe this is what Popper saw as well. Because if we think about it, how far removed is a retrodiction from a prediction? What really is the difference from a scientific standpoint? We see some bones in a given sedimentary layer, we see some other bones and skulls in a different sedimentary layer that fits the phylogenic tree quite well – what should we take away from saying a prediction/retrodiction is made that bones in the middle layer between the two findings will likely demonstrate a verifiable transitional stage between the two? If this future finding has not occurred yet, how then can we really substantiate a difference between this future prediction and, say, the amount of gamma radiation that should theoretically be emitted from a pulsar? Or how about a prediction of movement of a particular galaxy?

And now that I think about it a bit, aren’t we really discussing retrodictions in astronomy this way, considering we are discussing past events that we are just now able to observe since they came to our planet? What, then, is the difference?

(And just for an added humorous bonus, here’s a group that’s giving an alternative theory to gravity, the Theory of Intelligent Grappling:

http://groups.google.com/groups?sel...40yasure&rnum=1)

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Then some further elaboration to clear up some minor misunderstandings/non-understandings: I don't understand why you can say that "differing mutations, ... climate" are extraneous variables? I thought that evolution by natural selection would need to *include* those to predict anything? It's connected to my question from earlier as to what *exactly* is meant by evolution. Not a religious question, but simply a wish to have listed exactly those mechanisms that evolution is composed of?

The mechanism is composed of 2 main parts - mutation and natural selection (well, actually 3 if you want to throw in isolationism). I'm not exactly sure how one could even attempt to include such variables like climate, predation, etc. in a mathematical probability of a given outcome occurring here. That would be like attempting to predict when, how, and at what strength a tornado comes down out of the sky, as well as exactly how much damage financially it will cause. How could one include such variables?

Well in the field, this is next to impossible, which is my point involving the known mechanism of evolution. That does not mean, however, that these variables are not useful in our understanding of the fossil record. Quite the opposite, in fact. Geological events, catastrophic or even on a lesser degree, can help us understand a great deal about the environmental pressures on a given lineage and where it may or may not branch. But can we utilize these variables precisely and give a precise measurement of an expected outcome? Well, within a given reasonable range, yes that’s exactly what we have. Again, here’s the evidence of those predicted outcomes with statistical support here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/phylo.html

Is it as precise as knowing the velocity of an asteroid shooting from the asteroid belt and where exactly that asteroid will be at time “x”? Of course not, but we do have a pretty consistent result from our “retrodictions”.

However, as I mentioned earlier, these variables are controlled in a lab setting, and we can predict with fairly reasonable accuracy the outcome of, say, a bacterial culture evolving over a given period of time. But then again, it’s probably no wonder that we’re dealing with such a small scale of evolution in the lab, such as bacterial cultures, basic and complex protein structures, and so on – we can control such extraneous factors much easier on this minute scale and directly observe the basic evolutionary mechanism take place. And yes, these are actual predictions, not “retrodictions”.

I hope I’m being more clear here. I don’t mind discussing further if needed (if I can).

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I hope I haven't come off as trying to argue from authority. It is true that Popper changed his philosophy late in life. As far as I have understood, it happened something like this: Popper proposes falsifiability early in the 20th century, as a demarcation theory - implicitly defining how science *should* evolve. In the 60s Thomas Kuhn comes along with a quite different hypothesis on how science *does* evolve. In the time up to the point where this happened, Popper's philosophy had come to be regarded as a descriptive hypothesis. When Kuhn's thoughts came to be known, the old descriptive theory was subjected to a lot of pressure, because it clearly didn't match what was observed in real life. For some reason Popper had lost his marbles by then, or had simply fallen in love with the idea of being the one describing scientific progress, and he never emphasized that his ideas was meant be prescriptive rather than descriptive. Rather he adopted his philosophy into a descriptive hypothesis. History has other examples of great philosophers (e.g. Wittgenstein and Russel) who changed their views into something else later in life, but where the general consensus is that their earlier work was the most interesting. I agree with the early Popper ideas, and not the later ones. And yes I am aware that his idea cannot be falsified - very little philosophy can be falsified as it rarely deals with predicitions.

I’ll take your word on this. As I mentioned, my scientific philosophy is a bit rusty. I think I’m also a bit guilty of argument from authority by referring to Popper’s recantation without further description. I guess I just thought that considering this is the father of this falsification standard, it would seemingly logically follow that if he understood that evolutionary theory fits within these boundaries, that should be acceptable for anyone else.

But again my knowledge on Popper and scientific history is limited, so this is an area that I would have to study a bit more on to comment further.

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Well, creating horoscopes and presenting them to people of course?

Ah yes, of course!

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Well, my comment should be read as two: The first part ending with "Furthermore, what does "theoretical" explanation means?" was solely criticism of the "science" definition. The rest was aimed at the "theory" definition. I didn't propose astrology as a candidate for being a "theory".

Gotcha.

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I hope that is because of the misunderstanding I tried to clear up above: I tried to show how each of the definitions were fuzzy to the point of uselessnes. Your elaboration in this piece refers to common sense and reason, which to me is fuzzy concepts as well.

I do follow your reasoning here, but I must respectfully disagree with you in general on the strength of the definition itself. All theories are tentative, even the most sound and well-accepted theories. That is the very nature of science. Furthermore, all theories are tested and utilized over and over – and the more a theory is tested and confirmed, well naturally the more strength it will have. Finally, the more the tenets of the theory can be falsified, the stronger that theory becomes. I think I understand your disagreement with this modernized definition of “theory”, and I do concede your point as to the relative line that’s drawn on when an idea is effectively labeled as a “theory”. However I think that the simple point that evolution has been tested, retested, and falsified (retrodictions in the paleontological realm, predictions in the lab) a gazillion times should give it ample strength to give a proper label of being a “theory”, esp. in comparison to a great many other theories out there in the scientific field. It is the reason why most scientists, and almost ALL biologists regard evolutionary theory to be one of the most sound theories around (if you excuse my minor appeal to authority here).

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Well, if you are rejected at the door to a nightclub for not wearing a blue tie on "blue tie"-night and so is a filthy drooling crackhead, it doesn't mean that you have been thrown in with him. You are simply both excluded from the group of clubbing people that night. Hope you get the analogy - my agenda is not to be detrimental to evolution, I just want to have science defined clearly in a manner so that I can agree with the consequences of that definition.

I’m beginning to think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one, and it further doesn’t help when my knowledge in scientific philosophers is limited. But perhaps not. We’ll see.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

i was just wondering what creationists and the likes think about dinosaurs and ohter animals that have been extinct for millions of years? the time of extinction is undisputable and far exceeds their view of a 6000 year old earth. in addition, evolution does not occur on a time scale of tens of years or any other small time scale like that. if you know anything about geologic time, then you know these things take millions of years to change and develop. short term changes are left up to your ability to adapt, and if you cant, you go extinct. youre not going to see evolution play out before your eyes just like youre not going to notice the continets moving and yet millions of years from now theyll be in different positions.

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Originally posted by The Greek i was just wondering what creationists and the likes think about dinosaurs and ohter animals that have been extinct for millions of years? the time of extinction is undisputable and far exceeds their view of a 6000 year old earth. in addition, evolution does not occur on a time scale of tens of years or any other small time scale like that. if you know anything about geologic time, then you know these things take millions of years to change and develop. short term changes are left up to your ability to adapt, and if you cant, you go extinct. youre not going to see evolution play out before your eyes just like youre not going to notice the continets moving and yet millions of years from now theyll be in different positions.

I've heard one person claim that fossils and the like were put there by God to test our faith

If these stickers go back on textbooks saying that Evolution is a theory and not fact, shouldn't they start putting stickers on Bibles or other books mentioning creationism saying that Creationism is a theory and not a fact?
Just to keep things fair.

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**Man I'm Pretty**