[Mempho]

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What does "is just a theory" mean to you?

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I understand where you're going. I'm not going down a "the devil put the bones there to confuse us" road. I'm not trying to refute evolution based on the fact that it can't "be observed" either.

It is simply that I don't agree with the evidentiary basis for evolution.

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Thats not where I was going at all. Whenever someone uses the phrase "just a theory" when they are talking about evolution, it is a HUGE red flag. It nearly 100% of the time demonstrates a huge misunderstanding of what science is all about. I was just hoping you'd be able to clarify what you meant by that phrase, and what a "theory" is, to you.

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I know that, in the scientific sense, a theory is something that can't be observed or replicated and the fact that something is classified as a theory (as opposed to a law) has nothing to do with its factual basis.

I don't dispute evolution on the grounds that its classification is "theory." I question the evidence used in formulating it.

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No, that is not what a theory is at all. A theory is an all-encompassing explanation used to try to describe a set of observations. There AREN'T any laws, not any more, they don't use that term any more. You know why? Because its stupid. Nothing should ever be called a law, because it is never possible to test the infinite number of possible conditions. All of these "laws" we have are in fact theories, they are simply theories that have not been falsified for a long time and that almost certainly never will be. But they could be.

A theory is MOST CERTAINLY NOT "something that can't be observed or replicated." Thats almost the exact opposite of a theory. The theory of evolution HAS been observed, many many times. Theories MUST be falsifiable. The Theory of Evolution is falsifiable. These dinosaur bones found among human bones would go a long way towards falsifying it, as long as there was no other reasonable explanation for it.

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What do you mean when you say "observed." Are you referring to small genetic changes via natural selection? That's just common sense but it doesn't prove that humans evolved from plankton over millions of years.