A question about evolution

[Phil153]

Yeah, the analogy is way off. I would have called him out on it, but I've got him on ignore.

Methinks he's simplifying a complex problem a bit too much. He's totally failed to capture the nature of the problem. And it is a legitimate problem. If the mechanism of evolution was limited to single base pair changes in already functioning genes, acted on by natural selection, it would close to impossible to get from ape to human.

[MaxWeiss]

[ QUOTE ]
My question is: who bears this burden?

[/ QUOTE ]

Those who make the more extraordinary claim. People who say the Earth is round used to have the burden of evidence because good science said it was flat. We measured flat things and round things, and it was flat.

Then we got it the evidence for it being round. We can walk (not quite) in one direction and end up where we started. We have actually put people and instruments in space around us! We have theories, like gravity, which depend on the earth being round, and with that assumption in place, continue to be true. Once we looked into it, this extraordinary claim that violated common sense turned out to be true.

Now let's look at God and creation and evolution. Take all the evidence for God and creation and intelligent design in the entire world (the Bible) and take a look at it. Is the science right? Is it testable? Is it falsifiable??

Now let's look at evolution. You can get many texts on the basic idea, you can read numerous independent reports about fossils that were found and dated. You can read about independent predictions made about where certain fossils ought to appear, what we ought to find when we do any number of tests, etc. Every time we look, the evidence says the theory holds. And when the data says otherwise, we CHANGE the theory and retest it!!! That's the beauty of science. It's self correcting. That's why the last part of the scientific method is to publish you results so that others may attempt to reproduce and retest your theory.

The "theory" of evolution has been studied, tested, and verified to be true. Anything that directly contradicts it in the way that creationism does cannot also be true. Part or all of creationism is flawed. Unless we test the theory and find evolution to be flawed. Let me know when "man suddenly appearing from dust" is tested and turns out to be true.

You ask a lot of very silly questions for somebody who can "ramp up to the arguments at the 170+ range". Given your questions, that's quite an extraordinary claim to make. But of course, you can be tested and the validity of that claim is easily verified, like the theory of evolution.

[MaxWeiss]

[ QUOTE ]
Although, it's from a different perspective, here's where I'm coming from and here's my objective Stephen Gould - NOMA

[/ QUOTE ]

While God himself and certain of his aspects are not testable (and therefore also NOT science) many religious claims ARE testable and have been proven to be WRONG. Creation MAY have happened (separately from and parallel to evolution), but magical lobsters that we cannot detect MAY also fly to Mars every night. Neither claim can be tested but there is no good reason to believe either.

NOMA is a load of crap--It's just a PR piece.