From: Walter Hicks (wallyshoes@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Dec 03 2002 - 06:22:54 EST
Michael,
The difficulty is that I am discussing evolution with people who have IQs as
good as anyone on this list and they do not accept evolution. Mostly they
are OEC people who feel that:
1.) "Evolution" is an atheistic concept that leaves God out of the physical
acts of creation because atheists cannot allow for intervention by God.
and
2.) It stretches credibility to believe that simple natural processes could
give rise to what we see, in contrast to what Genesis 1 describes..
Instead they tend to be OECs who feel that the Bible correctly defines God
as Intervening at various points and creating life incrementally as outline
in Genesis 1. If "evolution" is undefined, then nothing you have listed
below would be true of evolution and not true of OEC. OEC is specific and
could be falsified in several ways:
1.) One discovers an unbroken chain in the fossil record for the evolution
of one species from another.
2.) An example of evolution takes place in our lifetime, induced in the
laboratory by nothing other than changing environmental conditions of some
creature like rats.
Other possibilities exist.
In my mind, there should be offered up a comparative example of what would
refute evolution. But to do so one does need as specific a model as the OECs
would put forth ------ followed by examples which would refute that concept
(but not OEC). What you have listed below is completely consistent with OEC.
Perhaps I am asking too much.
Walt
Michael Roberts wrote:
> Evolution is easily falsifiable.
> 1.) Find human fossils in the mid-Tertiary or earlier
> 2.) Find palaeozoic mammals
> 3) Precambrian vertebrates.
> 4) A young or a youngish earth i.e less than 100 million - consider what
> Kelvin nearly did to evolution after 1860
> 5)0 our DNA more like insects than rats
>
> We could go on.
>
> Hasn't anyone got the skill to falsify evolution on these points
>
> Michael
>
> > I have raised this issue before and nobody seems to be willing to
> > back up the claim
> > that evolution is a real scientific theory. If is is, then it can be
> > simply stated
> > and then have a definite set of conditions under which it can be
> > falsified. If it
> > is not a falsifiable theory which can be invalidated somehow, then it
> > is no more a
> > scientific theory than ID is!
> >
> > In my opinion, the evolutionary THEORY, not the "FACT", (excuse the
> > capitals) is
> > just a set of shifting sand that is adamantly supported by scientists
> > who refuse to
> > yield any ground at all in their quest for absolute scientific
> aturalism ---
> > proven or not. Slapping Band-Aids year after year on Darwin's first
> > notions hardly
> > makes for an acceptable theory by most scientific standards in other
> fields.
> >
> > IMO
> >
> > Walt
> >
> >
> >
> > ===================================
> > Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>
> >
> > In any consistent theory, there must
> > exist true but not provable statements.
> > (Godel's Theorem)
> >
> > You can only find the truth with logic
> > If you have already found the truth
> > without it. (G.K. Chesterton)
> > ===================================
> >
> >
-- =================================== Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>In any consistent theory, there must exist true but not provable statements. (Godel's Theorem)
You can only find the truth with logic If you have already found the truth without it. (G.K. Chesterton) ===================================
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