Yes, and they say that "Since it's here, and the bible clearly says how it happened, ergo, this is the truth, easily observed." Fallacious on its face, but typical of those uneducated in simple theory of testing and argument.
Will we ever get closer to the truth about the origins of the Universe, Zug? I think so, because while we'll probably never be able to go and observe precisely what happened at the exact moment of Creation, if we have some hypotheses (in the correct use of that term) of what would result as a consequence of some suggested model, and then we go and DO observe those little events or consequences, then we are more brave in our speculation. The more of these downwind evidences we find, the more likely accurate is our Creation hypothesis. That's what urged early hypotheses about evolution theory before it became Evolution Law.
No can do, zug.... NIKK then goes on to prove the point. Not only is he surprisingly poorly educated about what evolution is, he clings, as is anticipated, in spouting outdated or erroneous information. He acceeds to adaptation, but will not accept that Evolution, through thoroughly
understood,
testable and
reproduceable methods, is a fact. In a true technically accurate scientific definition, it IS how species have arisen.
Evolution as an established process explains how simpler or different existing organisms accomplished two distinctly different outcomes:
1) A huge increase in complexity, from the original five pieces of Lego™ simply arranged into a useful building block, on to a passable model of the Empire State Building or a jumbo jet.
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leading to...
2) Vast differentiation, complexity to meet an ecological opportunity, and thus...
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Note that, logically, the complexity issue, once established in an early progenitor organism, simply carried on through all other off-branching species, so to see it all now, out there in our current world, and to be excessively awe-struck by it all, is actually to see and acknowledge it as only having happened once.
To which NIKK, with an angry red-face, will stutter that the second one, The Millenium Falcon,
can't possibly have arisen from the first. Too complex. This clearly demonstrates with amazing clarity an abject and desperate lack of understanding of what is now simple grade-school genetics.
As a scientist, during one of my graduate science degrees, I learned
exactly how to propose an hypothesis, a question. And then to follow it with it's accompanying null-hypothesis statement. A sort of "anti-hypothesis". Then I set out to prove or disprove my hypothesis. This is the absolute non-arrogance of true scientific curiosity. The honest use of a simple tool. Amazxing how it's led to endless insulting and hostile attacks.
Darwin didn't know
zilch about genetics. All
he did was to posit that something, some system, was likely working that allowed organisms to migrate their abilities, possibly their physical outward appearance, their ability to obtain / attack / track down / reach for certain key food items, or to digest certain nutrients their existing population could not. Once
that was accomplished, when a primitive predatory complex carnivore branched out to become, over vast millenia, sufficiently differently appearing organisms (a cougar, a lion, a wolf, a bear, a seal, etc.),
voila:
Speciation. As in "acquired, recorded and now consistent adaptations to the ever-changing environment".
Remove the opportunity and the organisms may well, yes, re-convene over time. Doesn't disprove
anything, NIKK! You wish!
When it's minor, it can be classified as a sub-species, even a "race". sub-species are just en-route to full speciation, but it's also a gray definition. If it makes you happy, NIKK, we'll just call a fox an "adapted wolf". But regardless, the point evolutionist biologists make is that we now fully know exactly HOW such appearance and physiological changes do happen.
Remember, the CXtian idea we argue about is the "Poof" concept. One lazy afternoon, your God creation simply popped it all out, T-Rexs and a couple of white people, sans navels, and all the rest. Preposterous on its face, and now, easily disproved because,
(I'm sooo tired of repeating it) we know exactly how the various species came about.
And soon enough, we'll prove that life started up by a chance accumulation of inorganic and organic (our definition, BTW) molecules that led, inexoribly, to some ability at the subatomic level to interact. Obviously if it led to a simple ability to pro-create, then it did just that, and by definition, we had a complex cluster of molecules able to recreate themselves in a stable way.
You seem so awe-struck by the fact that "Since we're here, it's too amazing, and so, there's gotta have been a God Creator!" How so? Alternately, if our appearance was simply chance, then we're only here because it did happen. If it hadn't happened, we'd not be here to discuss this. Voila. Distictly less circular that your arguments! Egg/chicken? Chicken-egg? Pre-egg = early chicken-ish organism, evolved into cluck-cluck. BTW, evolutionary science tells us that eggs, representing a sort of primitive unicellular organism with special adaptations, came first. Argument over.
Life arose.
Now, perhaps some passing alien PhD student stopped by, hovered over the primordial broth and spilled his pet project solution into that sea. Now and again, he stops by to check it out, and we all say we saw strange lights in the sky!
Your God, has provided not so much progress in the "miracle demo" biz. At least the alien visitors flash their positional lights once in a while to tantalize us and egg on our growing curiosity!
Our various scientific definitions, BTW,
may not be subsequently meddled with by anti-evolutionists and anti-scientists. Get your hands off! You're not approved to tinker and change things after the facts to support your non-scientific stuff! Until you learn the safety and behavioral rules, you're banned from the lab. You do claim to hate them all anyhow, so git out!
Anyhow, Darwin's amazing insight taunted other inquisitive minds to "
inquis", and, since the rules for scientific questioning and peer-review processes to keep it all scrupulously honest, were just being worked out, it all came together. Rather slowly by today's standards, but nonetheless... it evolved as a system, just like
species.
So now, with a staggering and bewilderingly powerful array of tools, coupled with the world-wide communications wonder of The 'Net, the answers to long-held questions are piling up so fast that you have to be a specialist focused on tiny areas to keep up.
Certainly absent ANY reading of even Scientific American once a year for an hour, the
layman is not qualified to do anything more than place a casual comment or politely ask one of those specialists a question.
For example, NIKK's ill-educated dismissal of ALL the current archeological dating techniques just proves my point. He, like Darwin, but absent the inquisitive mind, knows ZILCH about dating methodologies, but unlike Darwin doesn't care to learn, else I could point him at some irrefutible info. But he suggets how it DID happen ("Poof!"), and yet offers not one iota of empirical, testable evidence of it other than "Well, it's here, so there!"
And to this we should all bow down?
To decry and dismiss all curiosity and findings with an arrogant hand-wave? Inconcevably narrow-minded. To mis-use "hypothesis" and "theory" nowadays? Which stump do these people live under?
Even if these terms are correctly used, by any and all rational standards, Evolution is no longer, by science's definition, an hypothesis. Since biologists defined "
species", and have now exactly and precisely elucidated (even for the layman) the
process by which chance mutations occur, as well as their
rate of occurrence [proven and documented, and which, mathematically, does allow, easily, for all the mutations necessary to go from a uni-celled organism up to the chimps.], we now KNOW how it all works. No need to speculate, to conject, to wonder. All that's left is to educate. There's the rub!
(BTW: I'm now pretty sure we're an embarrassingly poor "advancement" from the chimp species, despite the denials of our direct genetic and behavioral relationship to those chimps in the humiliatingly silly Scopes Money Trial. Perhaps we could get a refund?)
The accurate recording and subsequent replay via DNA/RNA [
easily proven and documented] results in either minor species adaptations en-route to a new species [again, documented and proven], or a completely outwardly different organism [fox versus wolf]. There's no argument anymore.
Denial is futile!
Except in those whose life world-view
requires that even the smallest dent in their spiritual armor not be allowed. Then, it's to war we'll go, and to h$ll with the truth!
NIKK, I offered last fall to guide you through a several-post review of how science works to truthfully answer simple questions (a sort of redundant statement I agree...). I still have it all here in seminar form (I actually gave this seminar once to my Geology class, for technical, not anti-evangelical reasons, but it's quite educatin' as to how science comes to it's evil conclusions, if'n you're ready now).
I suspect though, that if someone handed you a red rose that conflicted with your beliefs, you'd rise up on your hind legs and shout that "No! It's BLUE, I tell you! Your statement that it's RED is only an hypothesis!"
Hmmm....
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