Quigly said:
Isn't evolution more speculation based off of scientific logic? I mean, you can't reproduce macro evolution at all or at least to my knowledge you can't as this takes thousands and millions of years.
This seems to be one of the primary arguments that creationist nutters use in their public displays of attempting to discredit evolution as the fact that it is. I say "public" because they are patently unable to present their arguments in scholarly sources for peer-review. Their logic fails and their "science" is largely non-existent or wrong. Obviously one cannot reproduce evolutionary change on something like a mouse in the laboratory in such a way to demonstrate that gradual changes occur over time with environmental pressures. The project would need a funding source that lasted several million years and plenty of patience. Unfortunately, the ignorance of the religious fundamentalists who seek to discredit science because they fear the effect it will have on their faiths aren't willing to wait, and neither is any living scientist who would prefer to look at the forensic evidence.
And it's the forensic evidence that is abundant. The theory of evolution (that gradual changes in species occur over time due to pressures such as their environments), if true, implies certain predictions that we should be able to observe. We should be able to see evidence for gradual changes in morphology over time; we should see and ordered progression of change over time (i.e. no out of place fossils); we should see genetic evidence; etc.
To anyone who has studied geology, palynology, biology, chemistry, anthropology, anatomy, botany, etc., these points are clear. These predictions hold true. Moreover, there are literally
thousands of examples of each. And not one of them has been falsified to date. There are no fossils of mice in the Cambrian. There are no fossils of hominids in the Jurassic. Comparative anatomy shows similarities that we would expect to see if there were a single common ancestor for a phylum. Flowers all have the same basic structures; mammals have the same numbers of carpals/tarsals in wrists & feet (sometimes in fins!).
And so on, and so on.
There is a massive body of evidence that
supports the conclusion that life on this planet evolved over time. And
nothing that contradicts it.
Evolution is a fact. It really happened.
Quigly said:
It seems pretty hard to say firmly that this and that is the way it was because when you talk about millions of years, you are talking about quite a bit of unknown variables.
But the variables aren't that unknown. Certainly there are many, many things that are still unknown -I wouldnt' debate that point, but there is enough known to tell us what occurred with enough confidence to say: species on the planet evolved from a common ancestor gradually over time. The forensic evidence exists in the fossil and DNA records.
A criminalist need no actually murder someone in order to discover how a crime was committed or even by whom. He/she need only examine the forensic evidence, infer all possible hypotheses, then rule them out, one-by-one. If a murder weapon has a fingerprint in the blood of the victim, then that fingerprint was made
after the victim began to bleed. If there are no data to suggest wounds earlier than the fatal one, then one can conclude the print was made by someone who handled the weapon shortly after the victim's blood was deposited. If the print is matched to another person, that person becomes a likely suspect. Then the investigators begin examining
new hypotheses: that the suspect found the victim and moved the weopon; that the suspect held the weapon as it inflicted the wound; etc.
Science works the same way in examining evolution. Amazingly enough, religious fundamentalists are quick to dismiss science when they fear their precious doctrine is in trouble, but they have no problem agreeing with their conclusions when putting a murder suspect on death row. If creationists nutters were to somehow succeed in invalidating evolution in the eyes of the government, then every criminal ever convicted because of a forensic investigation should be freed: the same methods are at work.
