>>SJ>Secondly, "most scientists" cannot really accept it as a "fact
>>>that evolution has occurred" unless they know *how* evolution
>>>occurred.
>
>BH>I think its very useful to familiarize oneself with the debates
>>surrounding the acceptance of Newtonian mechanics, which took
>>many years BTW. Newton was severely criticized by many great
>>scientists (including Leibniz) because he could not say how
>>gravity occurs. But no one denied that gravity occurred.
Another, more recent example might be stellar evolution. Howard Van Till
has a very accessible discussion of it in his book "The Fourth Day: What
the Bibie and the Heavens are Telling Us about the Creation". Roughly the
theory says that the 100 or so elements we know about were formed in stars
by successive fusion burns. The lighter elements were formed first. When
a star began to use up its hydrogen fuel, it would begin to fuse heavier
elements. Some of the changeovers from lighter elements to heavier are
quite dramatic. No one can monitor a star for a significant portion of its
lifetime. But astronomers are pretty confident that they understand the
process, because they can identify stars whose behavior indicates they are
undergoing stages of the process whose behavior they can predict. Van Till
mentions that the theory of nuclear fusion which led to the hydrogen bomb
(and we hope it will lead to cheap, clean energy someday) also was helpful
in developing the theory of stellar evolution.
The point is that the creationist objection that historical events are
nonrepeatible and/or that they are not subject to experimentation is a
potential danger to any branch of science that has to use indirect
observation.
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Bill Hamilton
Staff Research Engineer
Chassis and Vehicle Systems
GM R&D Center
Warren, MI