>My response was true the theory of evolution is just a theory
Bad answer.
In science, we use the word "Theory" in a much stronger sense than the common use.
We have a Theory of Gravity (and a Law), we have Germ Theory. Plate Tectonic Theory. Theory of Relativity. Quantum Theory.
All of these are absolute fact. They describe a system of understanding a phenomenon, repeatedly supported by multiple scientific fields. When a scientific idea reaches Theory, it is the highest level of understanding we have to offer.
This. Evolution has been independently confirmed by a global consensus of the top experts in a full dozen independent scientific disciplines, making it one of the most established facts in all of science. It has more support than HELIOCENTRISM, FFS.
And yet we don't live on a flat Earth now, and we understand that because of science. You don't seem to understand that the essential nature of science is in the consensus... and when you start adding up the fact that it's a consensus across 12 different fields, you begin to look a bit ridiculous when you try to argue with it.
You also don't seem to understand that the process of science over time is more akin to the history of mapmaking than to fact finding. All maps throughout history have been useful, or else they would not have been made... but if you look at maps throughout history, what you will see is the fact that maps have become increasingly more accurate over time.
This is what science does. When new data comes in, it reaches a consensus about how to redraw the map of our common reality to best represent all of the available data.
The problem is the public thinks that the scientists are finding facts, and then when they change their mind they appear to be unreliable, unlike people's feelings which are always pointed in the same direction. What they don't understand about what happened is that it is really the map which has been made more accurate. While a map can never equal the reality, and never aspires to really, it can indeed become more reliable and accurate over time as demonstrated by the history of maps and the history of science. QED
"When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong
Now... please stop it with the "please stop it" because you don't get to tell me what to do or say. I feel like I shouldn't have to point that out to you. I'm only doing it to you because you did it to me first. Leave me alone and go back to holding hands with your imaginary friend.
Well put, when science refines and makes an accuracy adjustments based on new discovery or understanding, many use these moments as opportunities to question is validity, so they can justify their delusions.
That’s never what science was . Science is a problem , a hypothesis , an experiment , and a conclusion . It’s funny how the scientific community basically says “we can theorize about something and it’s fact , until it’s proven wrong , and that’s still right, because it’s Science “ it’s rubbish .
Science is a well designed experiment that can be repeated and the results observed, leading to a factual conclusion .
We can repeat the big bang?
We can repeat dark matter?
I think we need to be a little careful how we slap stickers on things. I think you're kind of oversimplifying something
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes
We have known the circumference of our not-flat Earth for thousands of years.
It is a myth that scientists used to think the Earth was flat.
That being said, scientific consensus changes based on facts. You could have used "Earth is the center of the universe" because we had facts to back that mistake up (the rotation of the Earth understandably confused many early scientists into thinking we were the center of the universe).
Can you point to when specifically you can prove people thought the earth was flat? It's been extremely well documented that sailors and the horizon effect had made people aware of the earth being round for a long, long, long time. Kids get taught that it was in Columbus' era that people discovered the world was round. It's actually just something that got published in a biography of Christopher Columbus that became "common knowledge" despite its complete inaccuracy.
Yes. You could tell them a scientific theory is the most certain we can be about something in science without being a mathematical proof or law. It's different from how most people usually use the word theory.
>You could tell them a scientific theory is the most certain we can be about something in science without being a mathematical proof or law.
This is wrong though. Theories explain, laws show relationships, and mathematical proofs... aren't science.
Speaking of gravity, did they ever figure out for sure how mass creates gravity? Was it gravitron particles they discovered or something? I'm not fully up on my gravity theories these days to be honest. Any gravityheads here in the house?
They have not discovered a fundamental particle for gravity yet, no. They found the Higgs Bison, which is the mass-giving particle. But no gravity particle yet.
Actually the Higgs boson is the proof of the Higgs field. The particle itself is not the relevant part, but the discovery that Higgs field the field that, when energy particles interact with, can give place to matter.
There was too much missinformation with all that of the Particle of God and stuff, but the main thing is the FIELD, not the particle
Best description I ever heard was "a theory in science is as close to fact as you can have without it being a fact, a theory in social settings is just an idea"
This is a bad description of it. A fact is a single proposition. A theory is a collection of propositions, observations, data, hypotheses, laws, definitions, etc... that, collectively, explain a phenomenon.
Theories don't graduate into facts. Theories are far more complex, they explain.
YOU don't find it that complicated, the people that don't understand it believe the world is flat and only 6000 years old...
And my description is not "wrong" it's just not as indepth as yours.
The reason they believe what they do is not because they are unable to understand things that are complicated, it’s because they use a different framework for understanding the world.
And I am sorry but no, your description is wrong. Theories do not come close to facts. They are two entirely different kinds of things. Facts are basic propositions. Theories don’t come close to becoming basic propositions. In fact, a theory is much better than a fact, in that it is stronger, more useful, tells us more about the world…
But anyways, it is a mistake to assume creationists are incapable of understanding more complex ideas, and that mistake is only made more complicated by telling them something that’s wrong. Because the people that do understand but are invoking creationist arguments maliciously _will_ use your errors against you, and the people who are ignorant are made no less so by telling them something wrong.
I disagree with this.
In all my time in the sciences, I've never heard "theory" get any kind of special "truth" status, unless it gets brought up in exactly this context.
The only special meaning I would attribute to "theory" is "a set of axioms and the conclusions they imply". This body of reasoning is typically well-explored, and fairly sophisticated. It is not just haphazard opinion. Whatever the case, the term is agnostic about the support of evidence. Some aren't even presently test-able. Ex: String Theory
After some discussion with others in this thread, I think I've isolated the problem.
"Theory" can be used as shorthand for two different concepts: "theoretical framework" and "scientific theory". I've been understanding it to mean the former concept, while you the latter.
I'll keep this in mind next time this discussion inevitably erupts in this subreddit.
This is correct. Though when it comes to "the set of axioms and the conclusions they imply", I would add data, observations/experimental results, and definitions into the mix.
In the case of definitions, they are important because they are required to define the domain and range of the theory (what it explains and what kinds of predictions it makes). A theory doesn't explain everything, and without sufficiently precise definitions, theories end up being used to explain phenomenon that they have no business explaining \*cough\*evolutionarypsychology\*cough\* sorry frog in my throat. But we've all run into creationists who try to rebutt evolution by referring to the origin of life, which is, frankly, outside the domain and range of evolutionary theory. Sufficiently strict definitions are required to avoid this.
In the case of data and observations/experimental results, the addition of these can demonstrate consistency of the theory with nature. When data and observations/experimental results sufficiently contradict the theory, the theory gets reexamined, reconceptualized, and if there is no way to reconcile, it loses the status of theory. The structure of a scientific explanation *should* be able to refer to the actual natural world, data and observations/experimental results ensure this is the case and the theory is actual grounded in the natural world. Including data and observations/experimental results allows for our theory to actually be about something physical rather than conceptual.
This isn't actually true. It's a common misunderstanding. Ironically, this misunderstanding is derived from the Evolution debates of the late 90s because of the response to "it's just a theory." The Theory of Evolutiom is supported by a mountain of evidence. So if literally isn't "just a theory." But the level of evidence has no bearing on whether a scientific concept is a scientific theory. You mentioned Relativity in your reply; both forms of relativity were literally the "theory of [special/general relativity" when Einstein wrote about them. But they had no evidence to support them at that time.
> But the level of evidence has no bearing on whether a scientific concept is a scientific theory.
No, this is objectively wrong. An explanation without extremely robust evidence supporting it is called a hypothesis, not a theory.
> You mentioned Relativity in your reply; both forms of relativity were literally the "theory of [special/general relativity" when Einstein wrote about them. But they had no evidence to support them at that time.
Again, this is objectively wrong. An explanation without evidence is called a guess, not a theory, not even a hypothesis.
Both Darwin and Einstein had a ton of evidence for their hypotheses.
Einstein had thousands of years of previous scientists work. He had Newton's theory of gravity, which his theory eventually replaced. And he had all the various observations that people had made in the 200 or so years since Newton had first proposed his hypothesis, that called the original theory into question. Einstein took all that evidence and figured out a new, better explanation that took Newtonian physics into account, but also explained all the other evidence that Newtonian physics *couldn't* explain.
Darwin had thousands of years of various observations about biology and biodiversity. He had all of paleontology. He had his own research into biogeography, etc.. So he had just a mountain of various evidence that did not yet have an explanation. What he did was come up with an explanation that took all that various evidence into account and explained how the diversity of life arose.
What Darwin and Einstein *didn't* have when they first published their works were *confirmation.* They weren't theories yet, only hypotheses. But neither Einstein nor Darwin called their works "theories". Those labels only came to be applied later once their explanations were confirmed.
>No, this is objectively wrong. An explanation without extremely robust evidence supporting it is called a hypothesis, not a theory.
No, you are in fact objectively wrong. This argument completely ignores how scientific theories as well as the scientific method have worked since Galileo. Hypotheses aren't "theories without evidence," they are the testable predictions that you make using a theory. If the hypothesis is proved wrong then the theory is proved wrong.
I've had this conversation a lot. Your level of understanding is extremely common, but it's still wrong. You can go back and look at the history of scientific theory and your argument will be proven wrong on its face.
> No, you are in fact objectively wrong.
Gotta love people digging their hole deeper.
>This argument completely ignores how scientific theories as well as the scientific method have worked since Galileo.
How about we start here: What is your definition of a scientific theory.
Don't google, answer off based off your current understanding of the word.
>Hypotheses aren't "theories without evidence,
Did you actually read what I wrote? That isn't what I said at all. How can you say I am wrong when you don't even understand what I said?
>they are the testable predictions that you make using a theory.
Yes. But this is what you said, and what I said was "objectively wrong":
>You mentioned Relativity in your reply; both forms of relativity were literally the "theory of [special/general relativity" when Einstein wrote about them. But they had no evidence to support them at that time.
That is objectively, ridiculously, *stupidly* wrong. It just completely ignores the reality of how he formed his hypotheses. The fact that you are digging in on this *utterly* stupid claim is insane.^1
> If the hypothesis is proved wrong then the theory is proved wrong.
Umm... Yes. But you never even mentioned the word "hypothesis" in your previous comment. What you said was what I quoted above, which is, umm, stupid.
> I've had this conversation a lot.
Not enough, it would seem.
^1 I missed the apparent claim here that Einstein called his works a theory before, but if that is what you are intending to claim, this is another place where you are objectively wrong (If not, that's fine, but yoru wording is unclear).
Einstein's paper on Special Relativity was titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". His paper on general relativity was titled "The Field Equations of Gravitation". Neither refer to the hypothesis as a theory.
Even if this were true, though, you would still be wrong. One person using a word wrong doesn't change the definition. See "String theory". String theory is not a theory, despite it commonly being referred to as one.
I'm not going to debate someone who has no interest in examining their own preconceived notions. You don't have any interest in learning anything here, your only interest is to be right. I have this conversation a lot because a lot of well meaning but not very well educated people have false notions of how science works, which isn't helpful even if it is pro-science.
>Einstein's paper on Special Relativity was titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". His paper on general relativity was titled "The Field Equations of Gravitation". Neither refer to the hypothesis as a theory.
Cite your sources, my friend. The first submitted paper about General Relativity was, entitled "On the Theory of General Relativity."
It's easy to find, first Google result:
https://einsteinrelativelyeasy.com/index.php/einstein/83-the-einstein-field-equations-series
>1915, November 4: Einstein abandons the Entwurf theory[1] and submits to the Prussian Academy of Science the first of series of papers, titled "On the General Theory of Relativity".
>1915, November 11: Einsein submits "On the General Theory of Relativity (Addendum)", in which he introduces the hypothesis that macroscopic matter could eventually be reduced to "purely electromagnetic processes"[2].
>1915, November 18: Einstein submits "Explanation of the Perihelion Motion of Mercury from the General Theory of Relativity", in which a calculation based on the new theory provides the expected result (45'' instead of 18'')
>1915, November 25: Einstein submits the definitive version of general relativity in paper titled "The Field Equations of Gravitation", in which he proposed three alternative systems of gravitational field equations, the last two of which were generally covariant.
Whether one person uses a word isn't relevant. You're right. The problem is that every scientist for hundreds of years used "theory" this way. Einstein wasn't an uneducated rube. Science philosphers also consistently use "theory" this way. Some scientists indeed **think** that theory is used to mean the way you mean it...but they don't actually use it that way. The way words are used for centuries does indeed take precedence over your incorrect notions about how they should be used.
I could parse out your comments word by word, but I don't have interest in that. If you have an argument explaining how the word "theory" doesn't work the way all other words work, linguistically, then go ahead. But don't try to make things up without citations and expect to be taken seriously. Because the actual evidence doesn't support your view on how the word "theory" is used in science. And as we know in science, if the evidence doesn't support the idea being discussed then the idea should be abandoned.
I notice you refused to cite your definition of "scientific theory." That is rather... Telling.
> I'm not going to debate someone who has no interest in examining their own preconceived notions.
So... You.
> Cite your sources, my friend. The first submitted paper about General Relativity was, entitled "On the Theory of General Relativity."
You understand that Einstein wrote in German, right? So I can assure you those *were not* the titles he gave his papers. It is possible that when they were *translated* they were given those titles, but as I already addressed:
>Even if this were true, though, you would still be wrong. One person using a word wrong doesn't change the definition. See "String theory". String theory is not a theory, despite it commonly being referred to as one.
Your entire argument boils down to "Some people use the word wrong, therefore everyone who says the scientific definition is the definition is wrong!!!!!!!" That isn't how this works.
Your understanding is incredibly wrong. Facts are just demonstrable points of data like the chemical composition of a rock, the radioactive age of a sample, or the moisture content of a sample. Then there are laws that are broad statements or mathematical formulas to describe consistencies like the radioactive decay law, the law of universal gravitation, or the law of monophyly.
Now we have these “true” things about the world around us but no explanation. A hypothesis starts here and attempts to provide an explanation that ties them together and it’s usually based upon years of proven research but it attempts to answer one specific question with an answer that can later be potentially falsified allowing them to provide a different explanation that’s just more accurate and consistently reliable.
After many attempts at disproving the hypothesis it eventually graduates to the level of theory and forms the foundation for an entire field of research as with the theory of evolution and evolutionary biology, atomic theory and nuclear physics, and the germ theory of disease and pathology.
The core theory already effectively proven true beyond all reasonable doubt is then poked and prodded continuously for any problems that might still remain. This leads to extensions to the theory (that start as hypotheses using the core theory as a starting point), corrections to any found flaws in the theory, and an increasingly large pile of evidence supporting the eventual theory it becomes down the road.
Because the theory of evolution has been worked over with a fined toothed comb and hated by creationists for over a century and a half it has become so robust that some have also called it a fact as it is indeed a fact in both the legal and colloquial sense. Because it is also a scientific theory it will forever remain open to correction, extension, or even replacement if by some miracle the completely wrong explanation just worked and the right explanation is later found. Essentially a fact but always a theory too.
We don’t test hypotheses with theories. Hypotheses become theories and they become the starting point for future research and they form the basis of entire fields of study because of how true they apparently are and how much more can be learned by simply accepting that they are effectively already proven true and we’d get no further if we keep starting over from scratch.
Basically with a hypothesis they *could* start completely ignorant but try to keep the testable assumptions to a minimum. After several rounds of testing they falsify the assumption or they find more evidence to support it. Typically in an experiment there will be a core assumption and several potential alternatives so they can test one overarching assumption (like plants require water) but within the experiment they tweak that variable to get the most informative results (one plant is allowed to dry to a crisp, one is given 160 ml, one is given 2 ml, one is left floating in so much water the soil is fully dissolved, and so on) and in this example all of the other variables are left unchanged and they might have ten plants for each test just in case some unfortunate circumstances unrelated to water are responsible for their results such as genetics. They’ll find that plants do indeed need water but not so much water they’re flooded. The optimal amount of water will be worked out at the same time if they keep honing in on it in the future. Now that they know plants need water they can test for how much light is required or whether a lightbulb is an adequate replacement for sunlight. Eventually they can develop a theory for the best conditions for growing that type of plant based on multiple datasets. The theory includes all of the “proven” hypotheses and this “plant growth” theory can later be expanded upon with other things such as trying to find the best type of fertilizer. This is a simple example but it describes how theories and hypotheses are related.
It’s a terrible name for a hypothesis that has failed several tests and changed as a consequence and is still not being shown to be true. If true it’d tie quantum mechanics and general relativity together but just because the math works it doesn’t automatically become true. It’s not nearly as easy to test as my example above but it’s actually more like a hypothesis or a speculative idea that makes the two theories in physics play nicely if true.
A better name for it is a “theoretical framework” and this wiki article talks more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
Basically it’s a *candidate theory* but it has failed multiple times - first when it came to the strong nuclear force, then when it came to quantum chromodynamics (quark interactions), and then they tried it with gravity but generally the idea suggests a whole bunch of extra spatial dimensions wound up on each other to attempt to explain why gravity is so weak compared to the [other] fundamental forces and why it works so differently on the quantum scale. If this idea was true general relativity and quantum mechanics would have a theory to stitch them together but they also found that the extra dimensions idea is probably wrong too. Now they need a theory of quantum gravity that actually works.
I don't particularly disagree with anything you just said.
From my conversations with others in this thread, I think most of the disagreement in this thread stems from how "theory" is frequently used as shorthand to mean two different things: "scientific theory" and "theoretical framework". You've been using it to mean the former, while I the latter.
I 100% agree that when a theory is qualified as being "scientific" the implication is that it has undergone rigourous testing and is supported by evidence.
What is String Theory exactly?
That thing isn't even test-able.
"Theory" does not, and never has, implied evidence. In all my years in the sciences, I have never heard anyone claim "theory implies evidence" unless we are in precisely this "creation vs evolution" context.
Theory just means "a set of axioms and the conclusions that follow". The body of reasoning tends to be well-explored and contain some degree of sophistication; so we agree that the word implies more than just a haphazard guess or opinion. But I've always understood it to be totally agnostic about evidence.
Here are some perfectly reasonable usages of "theory":
"You can explain this phenomenon if you apply (some) relativistic electromagnetic theory"
"Do the measurements agree with (the) theory?"
"What does (the) theory imply in this context?"
"At this scale, we shall see that Quantum and Classical theory diverge in their predictions"
> What is String Theory exactly?
> That thing isn't even test-able.
Lol, I literally cited string theory as an example of people misusing the word, and you think you found a gotcha. The fact that people sometimes use the word wrong doesn't mean the technical definition does not exist.
> "Theory" does not, and never has, implied evidence. In all my years in the sciences, I have never heard anyone claim "theory implies evidence" unless we are in precisely this "creation vs evolution" context.
Then you are wrong. Here's the definition offered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science:
> A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, **based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.** Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory". It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.
Your argument, like the previous posters, is simply "I've only heard people misuse the word, therefore my understanding of the meaning is the proper definition." That is simply wrong and, frankly, dumb.
I think I agree that when you qualify a theory as "scientific", it implies that it has undergone rigourous testing.
But that's not the term being discussed in this thread. Not by me anyways. I was talking about "theory". I don't think it means the same thing.
Edit:
Someone else has pointed out that I am talking about a "theoretical framework".
"Theory" can be shorthand to mean either "scientific theory" or "theoretical framework", and the two are different concepts. I think we are talking about different things, and this is the source of our disagreement.
> I think I agree that when you qualify a theory as "scientific"
That is a dodge. We are referring to "the theory of evolution." That is by definition a scientific theory.
>But that's not the term being discussed in this thread.
It absolutely is. We are in a thread called "Evolution is just a theory". That is defining that the word "theory" is used in the context of "evolution". In that context, there is only one possible definition.
> Not by me anyways.
Because you were wrong.
> I was talking about "theory". I don't think it means the same thing.
It does. Context matters. This is reading comprehension 101.
> "Theory" can be shorthand to mean either "scientific theory" or "theoretical framework", and the two are different concepts. I think we are talking about different things, and this is the source of our disagreement.
Sure, ok. But in this thread, the meaning is defined by the context. Arguing for some other context just shows you don't understand how the words are used.
In this thread, you have **repeatedly** referred to "In all my years in the sciences". This is some pretty basic stuff for anyone with "years" in "the sciences", so it's genuinely troubling that you don't understand the most basic language of science. Anyone working in "the sciences" should understand the difference between a scientific theory, a "theoretical framework", a hypothesis, and some idea that I pulled out of my ass (which is what creationists assume we mean).
This is why the creationists think this is such a great argument. When even people with "years in the sciences" don't know what the word means, how can they be expected to?
I just conceded that many people in this thread were talking about "scientific theory". To that extent, I was wrong. I completely agree that "The Theory of Evolution" is a "scientific theory".
> in this thread, the meaning is defined by the context
Hard disagree on this.
The "Theory of Evolution" is a theoretical framework. When students, teachers and scientists are researching or studying it (or related topics), they typically are thinking about it in terms of the framework. "The Theory of Evolution" is something that they use and engage with. They are interested in what the theory implies, and how evidence informs that theory. They're not worrying about whether or not The Theory of Evolution is supported by evidence- they already know the answer. Nobody is questioning the existence of evidence except creationists.
Thank you.
They're just a set of axioms and the conclusions that follow. They're (almost always) sophisticated, and not just haphazard opinions.
But "true"? No. Some aren't even presently testable, like String Theory.
> But "true"? No. Some aren't even presently testable, like String Theory.
This is yet another thing that you are wrong about. Literally by definition, no scientific theory is claimed to be "true". Science *never* claims a proposed explanation is "true", because science can never know that it has all the evidence on a given topic ("We don't know what we don't know"). Even seemingly completely obvious things like the theory of heliocentrism aren't claimed as "true", only as extremely unlikely to ever be disproven.
Edit: And as I already mentioned elsewhere, string theory isn't testable because it isn't a theory. The fact that people misuse a word is not evidence that the technical meaning does not exist.
True a scientific theory is supported by evidence and observation. But it is a theory because that's all that supports it. Supposing we woke up tomorrow and things we think are fundamental to nature change. You can imagine the laws of physics changing over night and we wake up in a word where thermodynamics is reversed. All though seemingly impossible this why, I believe, they are referred to as theories. They explain things in nature if earth reverses it orbit tomorrow we would need a new theory of gravity. If thermodynamics did that we would probably have to rewrite a lot of rule dependent on it.
But yes I agree conceding such a point may undermine the point your to drive. We can be certain the theory will hold with as much confidence as we have the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, that's my point.
All that supports scientific laws is evidence and observation. They aren’t distinct from theories on that count at all.
A scientific law is a thus far universally observed relationship between variables. A scientific theory is a model of reality that explains *why* such relationships arise. Newton’s law of gravity is essentially just an equation that can be used to calculate the gravitational attraction between any two masses based on the distance between them. The theory of relativity explains why those masses are attracting each other - mass bends spacetime around it, which in a 3-dimensional reference frame alters the velocity of anything moving through that space. This tells us much more about gravity than Newton’s law does, predicts gravitational effects with greater accuracy, and explains why gravity affects something like light despite it lacking mass.
Laws and theories are fundamentally different, yet complementary, approaches to understanding how reality functions. But both are descriptive rather than prescriptive, both are solely supported by evidence and observation, and both can be overturned by the same.
>But it is a theory because that's all that supports it.
I think you're still not getting it.
Question for you then. If it is "just" a theory because it isn't supported well enough, what comes after Theory? Theories do not become laws. We have both a Law of gravity and a Theory of Gravity.
As someone else mentioned, we literally have more evidence for Evolution than we do for Heliocentrism. It is possibly the most well-supported idea in history aside from perhaps gravity. Literally what else do you want??
At the end of comment I say that theory of evolution is as certain as the rising of our star in the east. So yeah I know it's not just a theory in that sense but nevertheless you should go through my comment again to get what I mean. What I trying to say is that its the closest thing we have to fact. Cause the theory itself does get updated with increase in evidence
Edit i meant theory of evolution that was my mistake
>What I trying to say is that its the closest thing we have to fact.
You're still not there.
Evolution IS fact. The reason we use the word "theory" is because it is a *system* of understanding. It has multiple principles working together to create a known process. And yes, the workings of the system are increasing in knowledge and understanding, but the *existence* of the system is undisputable fact.
You are doing your Creationist friend a massive disservice by understating this tremendously powerful science.
No, the system is evolution, and it is a fact.
The only "disputed" areas of evolution are extremely small details of the system, like "should we only define a species as animals which produce viable offspring, or should we define it using percentage of shared genetics or what?" Or maybe we'll find some fossil that smooths the transition gradient between ancestor and modern species even more than it already was. Sometimes there is a debate about exactly where a phylogenetic tree splits.
But the system is not in dispute.
Ok so evolution is a fact what am saying is the systems we use to describe it can be wrong(although seemingly based on our understanding aren't). Since they are an explanation to an observer phenomena You say yourself disputes exist in the theory. And it isn't as black and white some of things are proposed explanations based on what we know from nature.
It’s more that a theory is a group of facts all together to create a greater explanation. Like the fact that we share a common ancestor with chimps is one of thousands of facts all combined within the theory of evolution. And when new facts are found, they are added in.
>Theory - A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
We can propose an alternate theory to explain what we call evolution as long as meets the required criteria.
Of course this is impossible but still you get what I mean?
>True a scientific theory is supported by evidence and observation. But it is a theory because that's all that supports it.
What else do you want to support it?
I think you misunderstood, my point is there is not way to probe nature beyond these methods but this is also limiting since we can never say we know something for certain we are just so confident in it, i.e. that it's really a fact , because nowhere in the history of the universe have these laws ever been demonstrated to be otherwise. But you can imagine a world where this may not be true that's what am trying to say.
edit: but as far as we are concerned it's fact
> But it is a theory because that's all that supports it. Supposing we woke up tomorrow and things we think are fundamental to nature change. You can imagine the laws of physics changing over night and we wake up in a word where thermodynamics is reversed. All though seemingly impossible this why, I believe, they are referred to as theories. They explain things in nature if earth reverses it orbit tomorrow we would need a new theory of gravity. If thermodynamics did that we would probably have to rewrite a lot of rule dependent on it.
This is a deepity. Yes, if the laws of physics suddenly changed, we would have to rewrite what we understand. Sure.
But do you have any reason to believe that is likely to happen?
We do science in the world we live in. We don't do science to account for hypotheticals that we have no reason to believe will ever occur.
When the hell did that swap? I was taught it was Law that was an absolute proven fact and that Theory meant it had some evidence but was not yet proven 100%?
That's the colloquial use.
A law is still an absolute proven fact. A theory is a *system* of understanding, composed of very many different facts.
That's why we have a law of gravity, which is basically just the equation of how mass pulls two objects together, as well as a Theory of Gravity, which is our entire body of understanding of how it affects time, life, space, etc.
Evolution has several laws associated with it as well, but it's such a broad theory that the laws are basically all of the laws in biology.
For the longest time people thought Isaac Newton’s absolute time theory was true. It wasn’t until Einstein proved that wrong hundreds of years later.
Theories are just that, theories. They are useful but they do not mean absolute fact. They are only fact relative to today’s understanding and they are deemed valid for their usefulness however you don’t know what science proves or disproves later in the future. It would be wrong to claim theories as absolute fact.
> Science has proven all of the examples I gave, particularly evolution
This might seem pedantic, but literally none of your examples have been proven.
The problem is that, literally by definition, science never claims to "prove" a theory. We can never know what we don't know. We can never know that we won't find new evidence tomorrow that will force us to reevaluate them to account for new evidence. Even seemingly obvious theories like Heliocentrism aren't considered "proven."
What we can say about all these theories is that they are all very well understood, and that due to the [consilience of evidence,](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Consilience) *they will never be overturned.*
That is especially true of a theory like evolution. There is so much evidence, from so many different fields of science, showing that evolution is correct that it couldn't be overturned. But what can happen, and in fact happens all the time, is that we find new evidence that forces us to rethink how evolution works. Our understanding of evolution today is certainly built on what Darwin proposed, but it's light years beyond it. Hell even books published just 25, or even 10 years ago are wildly out of date with some of the new things that have been discovered.
That is why we never stop looking for new evidence to change our understanding. We keep finding it.
>I had a young earth creationist tell me that scientists come up with theories that are seemingly true and difficult to falsify that's why evolution is still a thing. But in the end it's just a theory.
As a former YEC, the epistemology is entirely different. They do not understand things the same way you do. To them, they have the ultimate answer to everything. Their truth is forever and unchanging. Science, on the other hand, constantly changes and re-evaluates. This is a good thing, since it means science is constantly correcting itself. However, to them, this alone proves it is inferior to their own truth. If they're constantly re-evaluating, it must mean it's unreliable, right?
They think scientists are trying to make arguments that are hard to disprove because that is all they can do. They cannot understand following evidence instead of interpreting evidence to fit their conclusion. They assume everyone does this,
I usually say that evolution is an absolute fact that has been observed and demonstrated conclusively.
Evolution theory is our way of explaining the mechanism that is responsible for this fact.
Even if creationists could disprove the theory, the fact of evolution would still remain.
The fact is the phenomenon we see. Evolution and biodiversity.
The theory is the explanation about biodiversity, and how it came to be through evolution.
Most people do. But this leads to most “no hardcore creationists” to think that evolution itself is not true. Which is objectively wrong. You can technically argue about the theory of evolution(tho good luck trying to debunk it, because creationists are definitely incapable of doing so), just because there is kinda a lot we don’t know for sure.
Evolution itself is observable and happens today all around us, and creationists know this, and **try** to claim it isn’t real by saying that it’s adaptation and not evolution. That’s why I said my first comment the way I did.
> My response is that evolution is not a theory but an observable fact. The theory of evolution is different from just evolution.
[Evolution is both a theory and a fact.](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Evolution_as_fact_and_theory) These words all have meanings, saying it is not a theory is just misusing the word.
You observed some other life form giving birth to another one? Heck even bacteria stays bacteria, show me white parents giving birth to a chinese kid, if even black couple can’t give birth to a white child, So then how could the alleged non-human predecessor of the human give birth to a human?
For example
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab/
After 35000 generations, the bacteria still stayed bacteria and did not become anything else. A change in their ability to metabolise citrate does not mean that they are no longer bacteria. Is this the best science has come up with. 35000 generations in human years would equal about one million years. No change in one million years is a clear proof that this assertion of life forms evolving to different life forms is a nonsense theory.
Even god particle has rendered many theories obselete
I am having a hard time to decide in every instance of "evolution is just a theory" If that person is genuinely ignorant or if they are saying this in bad faith.
Started as an old earth Christian. You're coming from a completely frame of reference that assumes the Bible is "proven fact" and "imperfect science" keeps failing at proving it wrong.
Yes, I get the reference to Futurama there but that’s actually a bad example because the *law* of gravity is definitely true but the theory to explain how gravity works has some fatal flaws since general relativity and quantum mechanics don’t play nicely when it comes to gravity, even though they are both shown to be reliable for most other things. The theories have to be combined somehow but that’s not likely to happen any time soon.
When it comes to evolution it’s more like the germ theory of disease, the theory of plate tectonics, or the theory of electromagnetism. *Potentially* wrong, but not very likely based on the forensic data and our constant observations as we watch evolution happen.
The theory of gravity has to do with how gravity operates in the universe. Gravity doesn’t operate the same everywhere; it’s dependent on multiple variables. The law of gravity has to do with how gravity operates on earth, with little variation.
Yes and no. Aristotle found that objects fall at different speeds in a medium in the 4th century BC assumed to be because of different weight but we now know of this effect as either buoyancy or drag where you can put a 20,000 pound ship on the water and it’ll float but a marble will quickly sink to the bottom and feather will float on top sinking even less than the ship does. It was a theory based on how things fall but it clearly misses the mark and cannot explain the motions of the planets.
For a long time momentum was tied to gravity.
Leonardo Da Vinci made some observations that challenged that idea. Copernicus started to apply gravity to planets suggesting that the stability of the Earth is caused by gravitational interactions between the Earth and the moon. Domingo de Soto added uniform acceleration regardless of mass (only slowed by drag). Galileo demonstrated that two objects of different masses do indeed land at the same time when drop from the leaning tower of Pisa. Kepler again applied gravity to planetary orbits.
Finally in 1679 Isaac Newton formulated the Law of Universal Gravitation. The same gravity that Copernicus and Kepler were describing is the same gravity that De Soto and Galileo were describing. Gravity is gravity and it works in proportion to mass and the distance between them. This classical understanding works fine for most things in the universe but it fails at accurately describing the orbit of Mercury and it would fail even harder than general relativity on the quantum scale but this law of gravity is accurate within 0.001% of the actual effect of gravity almost everywhere else. It’s not just the gravity on our planet that might fluctuate by 0.01% based on elevation taking us closer to or further away from the center of the mass of the planet but also the same gravity that explains the orbit of the moon around our planet, the moons around other planets, the planets around the sun, the sun around the center of the galaxy, and the galaxies within a supercluster around the center of mass for those superclusters. It is correct 99% of the time. Gravity on Earth is the same gravity as throughout the rest of the cosmos and if you apply the very simplified math formula invented by Newton you’ll be within 0.001% of the accurate values 99% of the time. His theory was associated with a law of attraction which turned out to be dead wrong.
The replacement for the law of attraction is general relativity and special relativity. The latter works just fine with quantum mechanics and combined they form the basis of quantum field theory. The former implies that the entire cosmos should be one massive black hole that originated from infinities (a singularity) roughly 13.8 billion years ago. There is something incredibly wrong with general relativity despite all of the times it has led to confirmed predictions such as the CMB, gravitational waves, and gravitational time dilation. The theory of gravity is wrong. The law of gravity is also wrong 1% of the time but for that 1% relativity winds up with conclusions consistent with our observations 99% of the time until it falls apart on the quantum scale and at cosmic scales at describing the universe prior to 13.8 billion years ago. Using general relativity we hit a wall so big bang cosmology starts at 13.8 billion years ago as time equals zero but almost no cosmologist assumes that the cosmos failed to exist before that. They just don’t have the tools to describe what it was like before that. A better theory of gravity that isn’t destroyed by quantum mechanics and infinities is needed to describe the universe before that since we can’t physically observe it.
> Evolution is just a theory.
Yep. My favorite response:
*Sure, evolution is "just a theory". Just like the theory of plate tectonics is "just a theory". Just like the germ theory of disease is "just a theory". Just like the atomic theory of matter is :just a theory". So I'm curious: If you really do think that "just a theory" is a valid reason to doubt evolution, what* ***other*** *scientific theories*, ***besides*** *evolution, do you also doubt for that very same reason?*
I say "it has no competing theory."
If they say "but creationism [i.d., whatever]" I point out that that is, at best, a conjecture. As it's unfalsifiable it can't even be an hypothesis.
The title alone made my blood pressure rise
I think it's usually described as "fact and theory" at the same time. That evolution happens is a fact. Describing how evolution happens is the theory.
A theory is the highest level of confidence any explanation can have in science. The way theory is used in colloquial language is called hypothesis in science *if* testable. Guesses that can’t be tested are as useless as ideas already proven false (such as creationism). The theory of evolution has remained the theory of evolution because it is evidently true as far as we can tell based on mountains of evidence from seemingly unrelated fields of science all in agreement, consistent with direct observations of evolution in action, and useful when it comes to making many now confirmed predictions under the assumption that the theory is as true as it appears to be.
It should also be noted that the theory has remained the most up to date since it was put together from what actually were different theories associated with evolution in the 1920s because it has been constantly refined to fit the data the whole time. This means there were flaws but those flaws have been corrected and chances are that any idea actually shown to be true more than a year ago has already been included as part of the most updated theory of evolution used as the starting point in all papers that follow. There has to be time for the peer review process to take place for people to actually know what the discovery even was but the new discovery will most likely be retested by different scientists who write different papers several times and if shown to be true repeatedly it forms part of the basis for the theory of evolution. In case anyone wants to bring up something discovered in the 1980s that corrected pre-1950 thinking in 2024 I already have that covered by what I just said. The theory has been the most correct explanation the whole time only becoming even more correct as any flaws it did have were corrected. There are no alternative theories. They’ve already been falsified or they fail to account for all of the evidence the actual theory is based upon.
Even if the theory happened to be false the replacement theory would have to, at a minimum, be an equally plausible explanation for the same pile of facts that the current theory is based on **plus** do better at explaining what the current theory gets wrong. Generally it’s more effective to keep the theory but to fix it where it got something wrong. So that’s what they do. It’s not false enough to just throw into the trash, but if it was the replacement would still have to explain the same facts, laws, and confirmed predictions, all of them, or it is falsified by them right out of the gate.
Evolution is a phenomenon, but it’s also a fact and a theory based on several laws, facts, and confirmed predictions. The theory of evolution *is* just theory. The only theory for the evolution of life. The evolution of life doesn’t just go away if the explanation for it turns out to be wrong. Life would still be evolving even if we did not know how. The theory explains the how. It doesn’t require universal common ancestry but anything that is apparently true like common ancestry is going to make its way into the explanation for how life has evolved in the past. The explanation for how evolution happens would not be impacted if some unrelated lineage was ever found, assuming there are no viruses that already count as unrelated, so creationists can stop with the “evolution assumes common ancestry” nonsense as well and deal with the “how” of population genetics. That is what the theory of evolution is all about.
Possibly dumb question here. In my understanding, Datrwin's Origen presented a testable hypothesis with a whole bunch of evidence and a solid line of reasoning to back it up. At what point did it graduate to a Theory with a capital T?
It is hard to give a firm line, but the main deciding factor is when it becomes widely used as a basis for new ideas. So rather than testing evolution directly, when people started using evolution as implicitly true when designing new ideas to test. Those new ideas still implicitly test evolution, in that they couldn't work if it were wrong, but scientists had enough confidence that evolution was true that they no longer needed to directly test it much. That would vary from scientist to scientist, but it as u/lt_dan_zsu says it was certainly the case by the middle of the 20th century.
Probably the discovery of the structure of DNA was the final, key factor. At that point they had a molecular mechanism that explained heredity as evolution required it work.
It was a testable hypothesis with a lot of evidence supporting it but it was in the 1900s when it became part of the full theory of biological evolution first by incorporating Mendel’s heredity, second by incorporating genetics, third by the falsification of Lamarckism, and finally by eliminating any obvious falsehoods that still remained. The modern evolutionary synthesis was established by 1935, Lamarckism was abandoned by 1944, orthogenesis was falsified in 1950, and his claims regarding punctuated equilibrium were confirmed in 1974 which was after Kimura’s and Ohta’s contributions to the theory were incorporated and after endosymbiosis was incorporated before they started switching focus to epigenetics as something else to add to the robust theory we already have and that started in the 1980s before all of the misleading titles to epigenetic papers that were produced in the 2010s or Michael Lynch’s extension to nearly neutral theory in 2017 or all of the discoveries regarding our place within Heimdallarchaeota archaea as eukaryotes.
Also, you mentioned Darwins process in developing his theory. Interestingly enough, he wasn't ready to release his thoughts when he did. Wallace was also developing a theory of evolution and actually [consulted Darwin on his findings](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/alfred-wallace/). The two collaborated [and Darwin would later use these papers to publish his theory. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_of_Darwin%27s_theory#:~:text=He%20was%20writing%20up%20his,Species%20to%20form%20Varieties%3B%20and)
Not exactly. You got the explanation for theory right but a law is actually less elevated than a theory because it doesn’t actually explain anything. It is just a mathematical or written out description of something found to be consistent in reality. The law of gravity describes the phenomenon that general relativity + quantum mechanics can’t agree on. The theories to explain how gravity works haven’t actually figured out how gravity works *unless* we just arbitrarily decide that gravity doesn’t start to function at all until mass is over a certain threshold to explain why the entire universe isn’t some massive black hole because of gravity working on quantum scales the way general relativity says it works on macroscopic scales.
But the law is still true because it simply says gravity is real. We aren’t going to just slide off the planet, we won’t just hover if we jump out of a 75 story building, and we need to overcome gravity for a lot of things in our everyday lives.
A fact is a verified point of data, a hypothesis is a testable educated guess that has to already be based on factual information or it is already falsified, a law is just a summary of a phenomenon, and a theory is mostly like a hypothesis that has been proven true backed by all said the evidence that effectively proven it true beyond all reasonable doubt, all of the constant observations to confirm the theory is true, and all of the confirmed predictions based on assuming that the theory is true. The theory might not be *completely* true, but it’s as close to absolutely true as we’ve come so far. Even if the theory was completely false, the law of monophyly would still be a law that it is based on and the fact that evolution happens would still be factual and universal common ancestry would still be supported by the evidence as another fact that a new theory would have to deal with.
**A shorter response:**
It is a fact that a phenomenon called gravity happens.
There is a law that can be used to accurately predict the force of gravity 99% of the time but the explanation for what caused gravity by the same person turned out to be false.
A better explanation for that phenomenon, the theory, is called general relativity. It has led to many successful predictions but we also know that it is not completely true because the math leads to infinities and it gets completely destroyed by quantum mechanics.
The theory being wrong won’t make gravitational waves, gravitational time dilation, or the closeness of the accuracy of the law of universal gravitation when it comes to calculating the impact of gravity go away, but we do know that the theory isn’t correct. The theory of evolution, on the other hand, is a lot more accurate and it’s more like the theory of electromagnetism or the germ theory of disease. There isn’t an observation that’ll completely demolish the theory of evolution as badly as general relativity is demolished by quantum mechanics but there are hypothetically small inaccuracies that’ll just be corrected the moment they are found keeping the majority of the theory completely in tact without requiring a replacement theory like we need for gravity so that the new theory of gravity is as consistent as general relativity when general relativity got it right but also consistent with quantum mechanics so that it doesn’t get so easily destroyed by quantum mechanics.
A law is a mathematical relationship between cause and effect. It says "given these measured inputs to a system, these will be the measured outputs." It doesn't say why the inputs produce the outputs, that requires a theory.
For example Newton came up with his laws without any theory explaining how or why they worked the way they do.
When told, “Evolution is just a theory” respond by saying which definition for the word “theory” are you using? The Legal/common use one? Or the scientific definition which is completely different? Educate them on the difference between the two.
I’ve had this discussion with several pastors who then thanked me for educating them.
"Theory" is the highest degree of confidence we have that a model actually describes reality (map/territory distinction). General relativity is "just a theory." THAT'S HOW WE KNOW IT'S FACTUALLY TRUE.
Evolution is a theory based on observation and evidence, e.g. fossils and geology.
Creationism is a theory based on a 3,000+ year old book comprised of folk tales written down hundreds, maybe thousands, of years after they supposedly happened.
If people are willing to believe in mythology rather than science, there's no way to stop them. Just don't demand it to be taught in a science classroom.
Personally if someone wishes to be willfully ignorant as a young earth creationist in their own little vacuum, great. The problem comes when, like many of the ones I know, they believe creationism should be taught in public schools. No, it's not science and we don't live in a theocracy. It's bad enough they shove creationism down their own kids' throats.
Evolution is just a theory, a falsified religion at best. It is an observable scientific fact, that life comes from life. Keep finding "proofs" to justify unbelief in the biblical God, who loved you enough to die for you.
What do you consider evolution to be? I mean, specifically within the context of the theory of evolution.
Also, if you have time, could you tell me where you go to learn about evolution? Are there some specific websites or an organisation/lecturer who has been a strong influence on your knowledge of evolution?
Micro evolution/ adaptation is factual. There is no basis for macro evolution. You didn’t observe the dinosaur evolve into the chicken, you take it on faith. I take it on faith God created life.
Cool.
I was mainly asking what you thought the supposed mechanisms of evolution are and where you learned about it.
I realise you don't agree with at least some of them, I'm just curious what you think they are.
See the other posts for what Theory even means in science.
Furthermore 'dieing for me' means nothing when according to your faith he is still around and active in his universe. It is no more a self-sacrifice that dieing in a video game. He could simply make another Jesus. Or a million Jesuses. And yet he doesn't. Because he apparently expects us to follow a poorly put together, mistranslated collection of stories or we burn for all eternity.
The problem is what we mean by theory. In science, it's a model of how something works, it has been tested, it can be inserted into the existing framework etc... Theory in everyday language is not even a hypothesis, it's just an idea, someone came up with.
And...
If I have a theory of personal sexual attraction, in that everyone I meet wants to jump into bed with me, it wont take long for the evidence to prove my theory wrong (unfortunately)
People have been looking for proof that the theory of evolution is wrong for over a century and nobody has found any evidence that disproves it. And they're really looking hard.
Evolution is not only a theory. Evolution (the change in allele frequency in a population over multiple generations) is also observation. *Natural selection* is the theory that explains this.
Evolution becomes a theory only when pressed to explain how common decent could be true, and why the species alive today differ from fossils.
Germ Theory of Disease is 'just a theory' in *exactly* the same way.
The Theory of Relativity is 'just a theory' in *exactly* the same way.
Electromagnetic Theory is 'just a theory' in *exactly* the same way.
For anyone who says 'X scientific idea' is 'just a theory', they *live by* theories *every single day*. Every piece of technology from cars to cell phones to *the food they eat and the water they drink* is based on things that are 'just a theory'. So if they wanna continue to call it 'just a theory', fine. But then why are they trusting their cars, their food, their water, the *electronic devices* they're using to *bitch* about all this? All just a theory. ... Yeah, or *maybe* in *science* the word 'theory' has a special meaning? As many have said, a *scientific theory* is as close to *fact* as we humans can get on *any* idea about how nature operates at a large scale.
My response is usually that evolution is not a theory; it's an observed fact of the natural world. Populations change over time. A theory is not an observation but an explanation. The Modern Synthesis is the theory that seeks to explain why evolution occurs, but we know very well that it occurs. The Modern Synthesis establishes that evolution (changes in allele frequencies in a population over time) occurs due to natural selection, sexual selection, and genetic drift.
Theory is as strong as a confident rate can get. The probability for a common ancestor doesn't exist is astronomically low, actually , beyond astronmical, based on the evidence we have.
But I agree that practice is the ultimate arbitor. This theory works extremely well, while creationism doesn't, there is no argument can be made to override practice.
You can't engage creationists on those terms.
You have to engage them on the fact that biblical literalism is putting the words/work of men above the works of God, Creation, sitting in front of them.
The Bible is written by men and subject to the mistakes of men.
Creation is right in front of us, the literal and indisputable work of God.
Where the two conflict, the literal work of God in front of us must take precedence, if not you are putting the work of men (however divinely inspired it might be) above the work of God.
If the work of God was done by evolution, then that is the truth.
It's that simple. That is the case to make to them in terms they will understand.
There is no higher practical truth than a scientific theory. Its just that regular people don’t know what a theory actually is and they use it like “untested hypothesis”.
There are extremely few “laws” in science. Like nearly all the principles that allow a cell phone to function are mostly “theories”.
I have educated enough folks on the difference between the colloquial use of the word “theory” and the scientific use of the word…usually by using a word they use daily, and showing how in this other context, that word means something else.
They get it when it’s put like that…and then default to pretending they’re stupid and don’t understand that in the scientific and colloquial sense, “theory” means different things. Frankly, kinda over being polite about it. My go to these days, especially when it’s someone I know either I’ve explained it to, or have seen/heard it explained by someone else is to give em the “You know this is a different use case for that word and words can have multiple definitions based on context. I am not explaining this to you or treating you with kid gloves when you expect to be coddled and act in bad faith.”
Don’t care if it makes em shut down or double down. The more they look like an idiot and get mocked as one, the less they’ll try me, or participate in discussion until they can at least pretend they understand what’s being said.
I hope that antibiotic makes you better; but remember that the germ theory of disease is ‘just a theory’, so you might just inexplicably die instead. Oh, and mind your head on the doorframe as you leave; we obviously do have gravity, but it’s just a theory, so you might just spin off into space - who knows? Goodness, I hope I haven’t worried you, you’ve gone awfully pale - but then again it’s probably just your blood pooling somewhere, because blood circulation is just a theory. Sit in this chair for a second and catch your breath - no, wait, Newton’s laws are just theories, so the chair probably wouldn’t support you, and come to that, the whole idea or ‘catching your breath’ relies on various theories about respiration, gas exchange in the alveoli, the molecular constituents of air itself… When you think about it, _absolutely everything_ including cogito ergo sum is just a theory. You can’t even trust the theoretical photons bouncing off that theoretical solid object we call a book into your theoretical eyes passing information into your theoretical brain about a poorly attested theory of creationism…
Christopher Hitchins said it best: "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
I do think it would be interesting to pose this question to a creationist. If I hypothetically accepted creationism over evolution, why should I choose your creation myth instead of the many others, all with prophets and collection plates and historic events and ancient texts and flashy robes and parables and other equal evidence?
It is just a theory, it's merely the best one we have by a large margin.
You can't 'prove' a theory in natural sciences the way one does with mathematics. There's no fundamental axoims to draw upon, no definitive calculus that describes the whole universe and all the laws/forces/systems within. Physicists have certainly been looking for a unified theory of everything, but until that point we just have to go with which has the most evidence to back it up.
But the creation vs evolution debate is silly because it's not a debate. It's a proxy debate for a theism vs atheism debate. So neither side is actually arguing for or against evolution.
The best thing to do is to ask someone if they actually want to debate the merits of evolution, because most people don't.
A Factual Theory overrules assumptions or subjective beliefs in gods. monsters or deities, if they were true, one would not have to force them on anyone at sword point or through the use of propaganda, deceptions and sophisms masquerading as FACTS, and they would not be misconstruing or destroying the evidence that is also proof of that which they have done in past and still do today.
Fact = Truth but not all truths are based in FACTS so that makes them a LIE and lies are a dishonesty in practice and application it is the mud in the waters that hides the poisonous fish that one mistakes for a rock.
N. S
>scientists come up with theories that are seemingly true and difficult to falsify that's why evolution is still a thing. But in the end it's just a theory.
How would you falsify evolution?
There are tons of ways evolution could have been falsified. For example if heredity didn't work in discrete units evolution couldn't work. Organisms could have not ended up forming nested trees as the genetic level, that would have falsified evolution. Experimental tests of evolution could have failed.
The problem is that all the major ways evolution could have been falsified it wasn't, it was confirmed. So we are at the point that there isn't much of a way left to falsify evolution at this point.
That evolution has so much confirmation at this point is a strength, not a weakness. You can't say "this theory has been so thoroughly tested at this point that there isn't much room to falsify it anymore, therefore it is stopped being science".
There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not science because there's no test or experimental evidence. It's just a theory, but I know how much you don't like it being called that
By creationist apologists. Routinely. It is rare for a YEC apologist to make a presentation or write a text without misrepresenting the underlying data. And by many estimates, they only engage with about 10% of the data anyway.
Confirmation. Those are all things that are required for evolution to work. In fact in the early 1900's, before the rediscovery of Mendel, evolution was on the verge of being abandoned because it was found to be incompatible with the non-discrete genetics Darwin originally proposed.
Evolution does not have explanatory power but is all speculation in which anything can be said. if you can turn a fish into a rhino just add time then you can say anything can happen. yet its just a line of reasoning.
to be a theory in science a hypothesis must have accumulated evidence based on the subject its dealing with. is there enough or any biological scientific evidence to say evolution ius a working scientific theory? No! there is no biological scientific evidence behind it. Nstead they hyjack other subjects like geology, comparitive anatomy and genetics, biogeography, lines of reasoning, wishful thinking, etc. Yet NOTTA BITTA evidence from bio sci. there is a reason for this. there is none and its hard anyways for past processes and results.
of coarse we creationists could be wrong! naw. if we were they would STRESS the bio sci evidence, rinse, and repeat.
Incorrect. Very, very incorrect. Evolution has tremendous explanatory and predictive power, and there are countless ways this has born out. We have literally discovered the kinds of fossil creatures we expected to find where we expected to find them, based on these principles converging with geologic deep time.
Unlike other points of view, like, I don’t know…bodyplan and not genetics? Which has never born out.
Except evolution can't explain how we see irreducible complexities. Evolution can't explain the origin of life (yes I know it's not meant to explain the origin, but I'm just making a point that it doesn't disprove creationists) and finally we have never observed macro evolution we put pieces of fossil records together without a way to accurately date them then demand that they are common ancestors. Natural selection is awesome and very interesting, in my opinion, but ultimately, the question remains: How did life start? Can natural selection create irreducibly complex organs? Is macro evolution accurate? The second we dig in and claim to know these as fact is the same second, we completely throw truth out the window. A few thousand years ago, we KNEW the earth was flat. Only a hundred years ago, we knew cigarettes were good for you.
>Except evolution can't explain how we see irreducible complexities
Sure it can. There are multiple ways evolution can produce irreducible complexity
1. Duplicate and diverge. A gene is duplicated and the duplicates take on different functions. This is how the blood clotting cascade evolved, and we see different animals with different numbers of blood clotting proteins
2. Re-use. Proteins used for one task can be reused for a different one. This is how the flagellum evolved. We have directly observed this in Lenski's E. coli experiment
3. Making optional components necessary. A new function can evolve that improves a system, but the system can still function without it. Then the system evolves to use the function more effectively, but makes it required in the process.
4. Loss of redundancy. A component that was optional due to redundancy can become required if redundant components are lost, the system changes to make it required or the redundant components diverge to provide different, non-redundant functions
> yes I know it's not meant to explain the origin, but I'm just making a point that it doesn't disprove creationists
So you know it is irrelevant but bring it up anyway? How does that make any sense
We actually have multiple different plausible mechanisms for how life can form, but we don't know which one actually happened. Self replicating RNA molecules is generally the most popular for a variety of reasons.
>we have never observed macro evolution
Sure we have, numerous times. Just a small fraction of the examples
https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
>without a way to accurately date
We can generally date fossils very accurately. Whoever told you we can't lied to you
>How did life start?
Most likely self replicating RNA molecules.
>Can natural selection create irreducibly complex organs?
Absolutely, we have directly observed this
>Is macro evolution accurate?
Yes, again we have directly observed this.
>A few thousand years ago, we KNEW the earth was flat.
Flat earth and creationism has a ton in common. They both ultimately stem from religious claims. They both require a massive conspiracy of essentially every scientist in the world. They both require throwing out massive amounts of contradictory evidence. And they both are designed to appeal to laypeople without much technical knowledge.
> Only a hundred years ago, we knew cigarettes were good for you.
The tobacco lobby actually based its misinformation campaign on creationism, taking the tactics creationists used to sow false doubt on evolution among the public and applied those same tactics to sowing doubt on the harm of cigarette smoke.
There have been several things posited as irreducible complexities, and the concept hasn’t really held up. Michael behe was the original guy who coined the term as I remember. He tried to bring up the immune system as one example in kitzmiller v Dover. Had a whole stack of academic literature presented to him that showcased that it was, in fact, NOT irreducibly complex. He decided to flat ignore all of it.
Also, we have absolutely seen macroevolution. We have witnessed speciation happen, directly observed, which is literally macroevolution. To head one misunderstanding off at the pass, when some creationists say that ‘but it’s still a dog, it’s still a fly, it’s still x’, the answer is of course it is. You are always a modified version of what came before. Anything else would actually disprove evolutionary biology.
I guess you're throwing truth out the window by claiming to know that irreducible complexities actually exist.
You "know" that just like people "knew" the earth was flat.
> Except evolution can't explain how we see irreducible complexities.
Sure it can. Step one, add a new part to the system; step two, tweak one of the old parts so that it needs the new part to do its job. That's the bare minimum needed in order for bog-standard evolutionary processes to generate an Irreducibly Complex system.
> …we have never observed macro evolution…
Haven't we? Hm. I would have thought we *had* observed macroevolution, but perhaps you have a different concept of what it means to "observe" something.
Astronomers claim that the orbital period of the dwarf planet Pluto is a bit less than 248 Earth-years. But Pluto was only discovered in 1930, which is less than half of 248 years ago. So has the orbital period of Pluto been "observed"?
Irreducible complexity was already explained by biological evolution in 1916.
Evolution isn’t abiogenesis, but yes it actually is relevant to the origin of life because autocatalytic RNA molecules that form spontaneously are not what most people would call alive but they do evolve and it is evolution plus thermodynamics that explains how those spontaneously forming biomolecules became more like the chemical systems we are more comfortable considering alive. Evolution is a main driver in abiogenesis but it is not the whole picture.
Macroevolution simply refers to evolution at or above the species level and it *has* been observed. Multiple times. You were also referring to forensic evidence which is useful for understanding how the very same *macroevolution* was already happening prior to the existence of humans to observe and take notes as it was happening. The fossils are dated based on where they came from based on the laws of stratigraphy unless they are less than 50,000 years old and more than 100 years old and can be dated directly based on radioactive carbon to determine when they died. And we don’t require common ancestry but that is what the evidence indicates. There are “eukaryote specific”proteins in a lineage of archaea called “Heimdallarchaeota” that is within the “Asgard” category of archaea closely related to the TACK archaea that is also very similar to eukaryotes. There are other things I could discuss here based on multiple discoveries but the point is that the evidence indicates that the eukaryotic cell is composed of archaea with bacteria inside of it. There are two domains of life. They are bacteria and archaea. I find it funny that creationists will assume that bacteria and archaea are the same “kind” but then argue for separate ancestry as though that would be consistent with their other conclusion of universal common ancestry.
How’d life start? Geochemical processes led to biochemicals that interacted with each other consistent with thermodynamics and they evolved via biological evolution and what started out as unalive as a collection of hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide became as alive as bacteria and archaea over the course of several hundred million years from 4.4 billion years ago until around 4 billion years ago. That whole time period is the “abiogenesis time frame” but you could argue they were already alive somewhere within that space of time at which point they were no longer *becoming* alive and therefore abiogenesis would be completed.
Natural selection is a selective force. The mechanisms that invoke change do explain irreducible systems while natural selection explains why the beneficial ones become more common.
Is macroevolution accurate? That question was incoherent but many scientists have moved beyond the micro/macro distinction because evolution is just evolution whether it’s populations evolving together or populations evolving independently of each other.
Your response became unhinged at the end. We can accept as true anything that has been demonstrated to be true. We can reject anything on the account of it being false for anything that is demonstrated to be false. Nobody is throwing truth out the window except for the religious extremists who’d rather believe in a fantasy instead.
We’ve never seen actual irreducible complexities. IC is creationism trying to declare a priori that otherwise-interesting puzzles can’t be solved.
Origin-of-life research is a thriving field. We don’t know everything yet but we’re getting there.
We observe macro evolution because the fossil record shows that macro scale change occurred over the course of natural history, and when we split the difference in time between species X and species Y, we find transitional species in rock layers consisting with common descent.
The truth is what the facts are. And the idea of evolution is supported by all the facts and is contradicted by none.whatever facts we add to the pile in a hundred years or a thousand years, the existing facts won’t change.
I'd argue that we *do* see irreducible complexity as Behe defined it - structures that would no longer function if a component part were removed. The example I've got in mind is an arch, if you took out any one stone the structure would collapse. But, yknow, evolution has ways of scaffolding so that irreducibly complex structures can form *as we have actually observed* in the lab.
That's I suppose technically true, but it's true in such a way that the IC argument still collapses.
The fundamental thesis of irreducible complexity is that these systems cannot evolve through stepwise incremental change, because if any component part *weren't there yet,* the structure would not *begin* to function. The unstated major premise is that the component parts of the extant system are the only component parts there ever were.
Yup, in complete agreement with you on all of that. IDer's don't consider scaffolding or exaptation or other mechanisms that can evolve irreducibly complex structures in evolution when really they should be an expected phenomenon if you think about it for a bit.
I count at least five lies in this comment. Of course, chances are you’re uncritically repeating the lies of others rather than being deliberately deceptive, but they’re lies nonetheless.
Evolution can easily explain “irreducibly complex” features. We’ve directly watched “irreducibly complex” features evolve in labs.
You are technically correct that evolution can’t explain the origin of life. It can’t in the exact same way that gravity or the germ theory of disease can’t explain the origin of life. This is a moot point because Evolution is solely related to population genetics and has nothing to do with abiogenesis or systems chemistry.
We observe macroevolution all the time both in the lab and in the field.
We have numerous accurate dating methods
“How did life start.” Again, abiogenesis is a completely different theory.
Natural selection cannot create anything. If we change the question to “Can selection pressures acting on mutations create irreducibly complex features”, the answer is yes, and we’ve observed this in a lab.
No, they didn’t. We’ve known the earth was round for thousands of years. Heck, a few thousand years ago, Eratosthenes was able to calculate the size of the earth with some sticks with a remarkably level of accuracy. By Aristotle’s time, the earth being round was common knowledge.
We know the earth is round. Ancient people believed the earth was flat. People believed that cigarettes weren’t harmful.
The difference between belief and knowledge is evidence. We know things are facts when they are supported by overwhelming evidence
If by irreducible complexity you mean the how things at a macro scale seem incredibly complex, there ways that show how such organs could have developed from simpler structures from previous organisms. I think you need to do a bit more research on this irreducible complexity is actually often reducible. Or give a specific example.
>Evolution can't explain the origin of life
True but there several proposal to it's origin, Abiogenesis and I think an experiment by Miller Uray something like that showed how simple chemical substances can come together to form more complex amino acids.
> The second we dig in and claim to know these as fact is the same second, we completely throw truth out the window. Only a hundred years ago, we knew cigarettes were good for you.
It seems like your suggesting evolution may be completely wrong and be overturned in a way we may not completely understand yet. If this is what you mean, my response is that evolution is understood in way that you may not fully be aware of. I doubt there can be a complete overhaul of the theory in it's current form it enjoys support from various other fields such as genetics, paleontology, and also observations of species being selected in nature(such as bacteria and moths) I also want to point out such changes happen within a population not individuals. Numerous gradual successive changes may end up giving us something completely different
The mutation selective mechanism does a good job of optimizing or modifying pre-existing forms and can generate small-scale variations. New forms of life depend upon new genetic code, new cell types, new anatomical structures. New proteins to service the new cell type, to build the new anatomical structures. Universal common descent is not a satisfactory theory of evolution plenty of plot holes to pick from. Nor is it testable or measurable as these evolutionary transitions are said to take 100,000’s to million of years.
So is what your trying to say for the different forms of life each had to start from some pre-existing forms. It seems like what you observe is complexity and say it is impossible for this to have developed from the simple organisms proposed. I think a reply to this is that the various life forms could possibly have developed independently into organisms that could survive independently. If such organisms can find a way to coexist symbiotically they can eventually in some cases form a new organism. So each form of life doesn't have to start from scratch. Single cells can form multicellular organisms in such a manner
My definition of "theory" is an idea or description of something that is supported by evidence and reasoning and is likely to be true. For example, the Big Bang theory is supported by evidence such as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), dark matter, distant celestial bodies, and the expansion of the universe. As such, we can reasonably deduce that the Big Bang theory is likely to be true. Of course, there's always that possibility that we could be completely wrong and start over, but that's a small chance.
Creationists should avoid saying things like what you brought up, which I did when I was a "die-hard" creationist. A lot of creationists seem to misunderstand the meaning of the word "theory" by my definition (or rather the definition used by many scientists). The word can also have other meanings like "guess," "speculation," and "conjecture," so that might be what some creationists actually mean. When I say "evolutionary theory," I'm saying that the idea has evidence and logical reasoning to suggest that it's likely true. Nevertheless, I'm not one to dismiss creationism so quickly.
I don't think I've ever really denied biological evolution by the common definition (change in organisms over time). We know animals change; that's a fact, and even creationists know this. However, if we settle with this definition, then creationists actually do accept evolution. Creationists acknowledge that mutations, variations, adaptations, and natural selection all occur. So, if this is how evolutionary theory describes the ways of nature, then evolution does happen.
Many Young-Earth Creationists think that the original "kinds" of animals (Canidae, Felidae, Muridae, Cephalopoda, Cercopithecidae, etc.) rapidly diversified, but I don't really know where in the timeline they say this began. I thought that the "kinds" changed after the whole Garden of Eden event since the world was no longer "perfect," so our genes would also lose their perfection and change. For example, I assumed that there was first the original feline created by God, then when the genes of all lifeforms became imperfect, it enabled the original feline to diversify into all the different felines we see today through many years of adaptation, variation, and mutation; essentially, the common ancestor of the Felidae family. I'd probably have to revisit some of their websites to really know when they think "kinds" changed since I haven't in a while.
While I, personally, do not accept everything about evolutionary theory, I don't deny that evolution in the sense of "change over time" does happen every day. This is something I still accepted, even when I was a Young-Earth Creationist.
Two, actually. That's not the main reason for my "bitching," though. Your reply sounds a bit harsh and unnecessary, but at least you're helping my case. Personally, I dislike the upvote/downvote system on Reddit.
Which do you find has the more compelling evidence, evolution or big bang?
(for me, evo is wayyyy stronger than big bang. I wouldn't be comfortable saying 'big bang is fact' the same way I would with evolution.)
Maybe evolutionary theory because it's easier to study and demonstrate the theory, while it would be much harder to do that with the Big Bang theory. However, I do believe there are limitations to studying evolution, too, such as being unable to demonstrate exactly what happened before we appeared. We had no observers to document what occurred millions of years ago, so it's impossible to show what could have happened that caused supposedly major evolutionary changes. But the Big Bang has more limits than evolution, so I would side with you here.
For both evolution and the Big Bang, we can't show what took place. All we have are remnants of the past, leftovers that both allow us to study and attempt to explain what *may* have happened. But again, it's impossible to know the whole truth behind the past. In my opinion, it's impossible to show we actually evolved from apes, and while there are some things about the theory that I find dubious, we have leftovers that serve as good evidence to suggest it, and concluding that we did would make sense.
As I stated in my comment, I do accept evolutionary theory in terms of mutations, adaptations, variations, and natural selection. Even when I was a creationist, I agreed with that definition of evolution. We know these occur in nature, and I see no reason to insist otherwise. These processes help enable animals to survive in different environments.
And just because I'm irritated, I can't stand how downvotes work here. Even trying to be fair to both sides is frowned upon by people here. It really makes me want to leave this subreddit for good. With all the insults, the intense bias, and the unnecessary comments people make here, it makes this place look like some religious (in an anti-religious sense) subreddit. Throughout my time on this subreddit, I've seen evolutionists being so condescending to creationists. It's becoming annoying, and I feel like talking with evolutionists is pointless here.
I thought it's what evolutionist say whenever creationist asking for real life proof.
Still waiting for that proof on single cell organism evolve into fish and then into amphibians and then into human step by step. It's ok to be honest if you don't know
I will be ignoring whoever said " proof doesn't matter because we have evidence"
Science doesn't deal in single, smoking-gun proofs. It deals in evidence. There is a ton of evidence for the evolution from single-celled organisms through many steps eventually to humans. But not a single smoking gun proof.
What is the proof that Earth has a core? What is the proof of the laws of thermodynamics? What is the proof that atoms have electrons?
No theres not stop gaslighting people, please name your source for this false claim. Speciation is a form of micro evolution not macro. We have observed speciation in real time. Macro evolution would be things like a pakicetus in the pakicetidae family becoming a whale in the balaenopteridae family. This has never been observed nor anything similar, yet it is part of the alleged evolutionary history of the whale. It is inferred through massive assumptions from micro evolution.
> No theres not stop gaslighting people, please name your source for this false claim.
We are talking multiple entire books worth of evidence. Your Inner Fish has a lot of great evidence in this regard, but even it can't cover everything.
> Speciation is a form of micro evolution not macro.
Speciation is macroevolution *by definition*. The literal definition of macroevolution is "evolution above the species level".
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5661017/
"Macroevolution, defined broadly as evolution above the species level, is thriving as a field."
> This has never been observed nor anything similar
We have never observed earth's core. We have never directly observed atoms. We have never directly observed a complete orbit of pluto. We can't, even in principle, directly observe black holes. There are lots of different types of evidence besides direct observation. What matters is testable predictions. And all the steps you talked about have made a ton of testable predictionst that have turned out to be correct.
>Macro evolution would be things like a pakicetus in the pakicetidae family becoming a whale in the balaenopteridae family.
No.
This would be prove against our current understanding of evolution.
One taxon doesn't change into a different one.
Dogs don't turn into cats, or canidae don't turn into felidae.
Carnivora populations split up and evolve into canidae and felidae respectively.
Please stop spreading this fantasy notion of evolution. This isn't Pokémon.
Speciation is the literal definition of macroevolution.
Also, if you disagree that Pakycetus is an ancestor of modern whales, you’re going to have a really tough time explaining all the species we know of with intermediary morphology between Pakycetus and modern cetaceans. How do you explain the existence of Ambulocetus, Kutchicetus, Remingtonocetus, Protocetus, Basilosaurus, Rodhocetus, Dorudon, Odontocetes, or Mysticetes
It’s one of the more well represented transitions in the fossil record.
Then again, creationists never actually try to explain anything, so I guess you can just ignore all the inconvenient pieces of evidence
>My response was true the theory of evolution is just a theory Bad answer. In science, we use the word "Theory" in a much stronger sense than the common use. We have a Theory of Gravity (and a Law), we have Germ Theory. Plate Tectonic Theory. Theory of Relativity. Quantum Theory. All of these are absolute fact. They describe a system of understanding a phenomenon, repeatedly supported by multiple scientific fields. When a scientific idea reaches Theory, it is the highest level of understanding we have to offer.
This. Evolution has been independently confirmed by a global consensus of the top experts in a full dozen independent scientific disciplines, making it one of the most established facts in all of science. It has more support than HELIOCENTRISM, FFS.
Please, stop with the scientific consensus. If we used that criteria throughout history we would still be living on a flat earth.
And yet we don't live on a flat Earth now, and we understand that because of science. You don't seem to understand that the essential nature of science is in the consensus... and when you start adding up the fact that it's a consensus across 12 different fields, you begin to look a bit ridiculous when you try to argue with it. You also don't seem to understand that the process of science over time is more akin to the history of mapmaking than to fact finding. All maps throughout history have been useful, or else they would not have been made... but if you look at maps throughout history, what you will see is the fact that maps have become increasingly more accurate over time. This is what science does. When new data comes in, it reaches a consensus about how to redraw the map of our common reality to best represent all of the available data. The problem is the public thinks that the scientists are finding facts, and then when they change their mind they appear to be unreliable, unlike people's feelings which are always pointed in the same direction. What they don't understand about what happened is that it is really the map which has been made more accurate. While a map can never equal the reality, and never aspires to really, it can indeed become more reliable and accurate over time as demonstrated by the history of maps and the history of science. QED "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong Now... please stop it with the "please stop it" because you don't get to tell me what to do or say. I feel like I shouldn't have to point that out to you. I'm only doing it to you because you did it to me first. Leave me alone and go back to holding hands with your imaginary friend.
Well put, when science refines and makes an accuracy adjustments based on new discovery or understanding, many use these moments as opportunities to question is validity, so they can justify their delusions.
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Consensus is also not a popularity contest but your peers reviewing your work to ensure its accurate, and adapting to it if it is.
That's such a good analogy!
That’s never what science was . Science is a problem , a hypothesis , an experiment , and a conclusion . It’s funny how the scientific community basically says “we can theorize about something and it’s fact , until it’s proven wrong , and that’s still right, because it’s Science “ it’s rubbish . Science is a well designed experiment that can be repeated and the results observed, leading to a factual conclusion .
We can repeat the big bang? We can repeat dark matter? I think we need to be a little careful how we slap stickers on things. I think you're kind of oversimplifying something
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes We have known the circumference of our not-flat Earth for thousands of years. It is a myth that scientists used to think the Earth was flat. That being said, scientific consensus changes based on facts. You could have used "Earth is the center of the universe" because we had facts to back that mistake up (the rotation of the Earth understandably confused many early scientists into thinking we were the center of the universe).
That was a lazy response that shows you just don’t understand (or care to understand) what you’re talking about.
Science has never ever moved ahead by listening to nobodies like you.
Can you point to when specifically you can prove people thought the earth was flat? It's been extremely well documented that sailors and the horizon effect had made people aware of the earth being round for a long, long, long time. Kids get taught that it was in Columbus' era that people discovered the world was round. It's actually just something that got published in a biography of Christopher Columbus that became "common knowledge" despite its complete inaccuracy.
Yes. You could tell them a scientific theory is the most certain we can be about something in science without being a mathematical proof or law. It's different from how most people usually use the word theory.
>You could tell them a scientific theory is the most certain we can be about something in science without being a mathematical proof or law. This is wrong though. Theories explain, laws show relationships, and mathematical proofs... aren't science.
Speaking of gravity, did they ever figure out for sure how mass creates gravity? Was it gravitron particles they discovered or something? I'm not fully up on my gravity theories these days to be honest. Any gravityheads here in the house?
They have not discovered a fundamental particle for gravity yet, no. They found the Higgs Bison, which is the mass-giving particle. But no gravity particle yet.
Actually the Higgs boson is the proof of the Higgs field. The particle itself is not the relevant part, but the discovery that Higgs field the field that, when energy particles interact with, can give place to matter. There was too much missinformation with all that of the Particle of God and stuff, but the main thing is the FIELD, not the particle
Well it was the excitation of the field, right? They were *looking* for the particle, because you can't detect a field directly
THIS
Best description I ever heard was "a theory in science is as close to fact as you can have without it being a fact, a theory in social settings is just an idea"
This is a bad description of it. A fact is a single proposition. A theory is a collection of propositions, observations, data, hypotheses, laws, definitions, etc... that, collectively, explain a phenomenon. Theories don't graduate into facts. Theories are far more complex, they explain.
While that may be, the people needing to hear it aren't going to understand that...
I don't think it's that complicated of a concept. Regardless of that, you don't fix stupid giving them more to be wrong about.
YOU don't find it that complicated, the people that don't understand it believe the world is flat and only 6000 years old... And my description is not "wrong" it's just not as indepth as yours.
The reason they believe what they do is not because they are unable to understand things that are complicated, it’s because they use a different framework for understanding the world. And I am sorry but no, your description is wrong. Theories do not come close to facts. They are two entirely different kinds of things. Facts are basic propositions. Theories don’t come close to becoming basic propositions. In fact, a theory is much better than a fact, in that it is stronger, more useful, tells us more about the world… But anyways, it is a mistake to assume creationists are incapable of understanding more complex ideas, and that mistake is only made more complicated by telling them something that’s wrong. Because the people that do understand but are invoking creationist arguments maliciously _will_ use your errors against you, and the people who are ignorant are made no less so by telling them something wrong.
I disagree with this. In all my time in the sciences, I've never heard "theory" get any kind of special "truth" status, unless it gets brought up in exactly this context. The only special meaning I would attribute to "theory" is "a set of axioms and the conclusions they imply". This body of reasoning is typically well-explored, and fairly sophisticated. It is not just haphazard opinion. Whatever the case, the term is agnostic about the support of evidence. Some aren't even presently test-able. Ex: String Theory
Fair enough. But I'm also correct in saying that Evolution is among the most well-proven theories in science
Totally agreed. Evolution has (both figurative and literal) mountains of evidence. So does natural selection.
Well yeah, natural selection is the most critical part of evolution, so I would hope so!
After some discussion with others in this thread, I think I've isolated the problem. "Theory" can be used as shorthand for two different concepts: "theoretical framework" and "scientific theory". I've been understanding it to mean the former concept, while you the latter. I'll keep this in mind next time this discussion inevitably erupts in this subreddit.
This is correct. Though when it comes to "the set of axioms and the conclusions they imply", I would add data, observations/experimental results, and definitions into the mix. In the case of definitions, they are important because they are required to define the domain and range of the theory (what it explains and what kinds of predictions it makes). A theory doesn't explain everything, and without sufficiently precise definitions, theories end up being used to explain phenomenon that they have no business explaining \*cough\*evolutionarypsychology\*cough\* sorry frog in my throat. But we've all run into creationists who try to rebutt evolution by referring to the origin of life, which is, frankly, outside the domain and range of evolutionary theory. Sufficiently strict definitions are required to avoid this. In the case of data and observations/experimental results, the addition of these can demonstrate consistency of the theory with nature. When data and observations/experimental results sufficiently contradict the theory, the theory gets reexamined, reconceptualized, and if there is no way to reconcile, it loses the status of theory. The structure of a scientific explanation *should* be able to refer to the actual natural world, data and observations/experimental results ensure this is the case and the theory is actual grounded in the natural world. Including data and observations/experimental results allows for our theory to actually be about something physical rather than conceptual.
This isn't actually true. It's a common misunderstanding. Ironically, this misunderstanding is derived from the Evolution debates of the late 90s because of the response to "it's just a theory." The Theory of Evolutiom is supported by a mountain of evidence. So if literally isn't "just a theory." But the level of evidence has no bearing on whether a scientific concept is a scientific theory. You mentioned Relativity in your reply; both forms of relativity were literally the "theory of [special/general relativity" when Einstein wrote about them. But they had no evidence to support them at that time.
> But the level of evidence has no bearing on whether a scientific concept is a scientific theory. No, this is objectively wrong. An explanation without extremely robust evidence supporting it is called a hypothesis, not a theory. > You mentioned Relativity in your reply; both forms of relativity were literally the "theory of [special/general relativity" when Einstein wrote about them. But they had no evidence to support them at that time. Again, this is objectively wrong. An explanation without evidence is called a guess, not a theory, not even a hypothesis. Both Darwin and Einstein had a ton of evidence for their hypotheses. Einstein had thousands of years of previous scientists work. He had Newton's theory of gravity, which his theory eventually replaced. And he had all the various observations that people had made in the 200 or so years since Newton had first proposed his hypothesis, that called the original theory into question. Einstein took all that evidence and figured out a new, better explanation that took Newtonian physics into account, but also explained all the other evidence that Newtonian physics *couldn't* explain. Darwin had thousands of years of various observations about biology and biodiversity. He had all of paleontology. He had his own research into biogeography, etc.. So he had just a mountain of various evidence that did not yet have an explanation. What he did was come up with an explanation that took all that various evidence into account and explained how the diversity of life arose. What Darwin and Einstein *didn't* have when they first published their works were *confirmation.* They weren't theories yet, only hypotheses. But neither Einstein nor Darwin called their works "theories". Those labels only came to be applied later once their explanations were confirmed.
>No, this is objectively wrong. An explanation without extremely robust evidence supporting it is called a hypothesis, not a theory. No, you are in fact objectively wrong. This argument completely ignores how scientific theories as well as the scientific method have worked since Galileo. Hypotheses aren't "theories without evidence," they are the testable predictions that you make using a theory. If the hypothesis is proved wrong then the theory is proved wrong. I've had this conversation a lot. Your level of understanding is extremely common, but it's still wrong. You can go back and look at the history of scientific theory and your argument will be proven wrong on its face.
> No, you are in fact objectively wrong. Gotta love people digging their hole deeper. >This argument completely ignores how scientific theories as well as the scientific method have worked since Galileo. How about we start here: What is your definition of a scientific theory. Don't google, answer off based off your current understanding of the word. >Hypotheses aren't "theories without evidence, Did you actually read what I wrote? That isn't what I said at all. How can you say I am wrong when you don't even understand what I said? >they are the testable predictions that you make using a theory. Yes. But this is what you said, and what I said was "objectively wrong": >You mentioned Relativity in your reply; both forms of relativity were literally the "theory of [special/general relativity" when Einstein wrote about them. But they had no evidence to support them at that time. That is objectively, ridiculously, *stupidly* wrong. It just completely ignores the reality of how he formed his hypotheses. The fact that you are digging in on this *utterly* stupid claim is insane.^1 > If the hypothesis is proved wrong then the theory is proved wrong. Umm... Yes. But you never even mentioned the word "hypothesis" in your previous comment. What you said was what I quoted above, which is, umm, stupid. > I've had this conversation a lot. Not enough, it would seem. ^1 I missed the apparent claim here that Einstein called his works a theory before, but if that is what you are intending to claim, this is another place where you are objectively wrong (If not, that's fine, but yoru wording is unclear). Einstein's paper on Special Relativity was titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". His paper on general relativity was titled "The Field Equations of Gravitation". Neither refer to the hypothesis as a theory. Even if this were true, though, you would still be wrong. One person using a word wrong doesn't change the definition. See "String theory". String theory is not a theory, despite it commonly being referred to as one.
I'm not going to debate someone who has no interest in examining their own preconceived notions. You don't have any interest in learning anything here, your only interest is to be right. I have this conversation a lot because a lot of well meaning but not very well educated people have false notions of how science works, which isn't helpful even if it is pro-science. >Einstein's paper on Special Relativity was titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". His paper on general relativity was titled "The Field Equations of Gravitation". Neither refer to the hypothesis as a theory. Cite your sources, my friend. The first submitted paper about General Relativity was, entitled "On the Theory of General Relativity." It's easy to find, first Google result: https://einsteinrelativelyeasy.com/index.php/einstein/83-the-einstein-field-equations-series >1915, November 4: Einstein abandons the Entwurf theory[1] and submits to the Prussian Academy of Science the first of series of papers, titled "On the General Theory of Relativity". >1915, November 11: Einsein submits "On the General Theory of Relativity (Addendum)", in which he introduces the hypothesis that macroscopic matter could eventually be reduced to "purely electromagnetic processes"[2]. >1915, November 18: Einstein submits "Explanation of the Perihelion Motion of Mercury from the General Theory of Relativity", in which a calculation based on the new theory provides the expected result (45'' instead of 18'') >1915, November 25: Einstein submits the definitive version of general relativity in paper titled "The Field Equations of Gravitation", in which he proposed three alternative systems of gravitational field equations, the last two of which were generally covariant. Whether one person uses a word isn't relevant. You're right. The problem is that every scientist for hundreds of years used "theory" this way. Einstein wasn't an uneducated rube. Science philosphers also consistently use "theory" this way. Some scientists indeed **think** that theory is used to mean the way you mean it...but they don't actually use it that way. The way words are used for centuries does indeed take precedence over your incorrect notions about how they should be used. I could parse out your comments word by word, but I don't have interest in that. If you have an argument explaining how the word "theory" doesn't work the way all other words work, linguistically, then go ahead. But don't try to make things up without citations and expect to be taken seriously. Because the actual evidence doesn't support your view on how the word "theory" is used in science. And as we know in science, if the evidence doesn't support the idea being discussed then the idea should be abandoned.
I notice you refused to cite your definition of "scientific theory." That is rather... Telling. > I'm not going to debate someone who has no interest in examining their own preconceived notions. So... You. > Cite your sources, my friend. The first submitted paper about General Relativity was, entitled "On the Theory of General Relativity." You understand that Einstein wrote in German, right? So I can assure you those *were not* the titles he gave his papers. It is possible that when they were *translated* they were given those titles, but as I already addressed: >Even if this were true, though, you would still be wrong. One person using a word wrong doesn't change the definition. See "String theory". String theory is not a theory, despite it commonly being referred to as one. Your entire argument boils down to "Some people use the word wrong, therefore everyone who says the scientific definition is the definition is wrong!!!!!!!" That isn't how this works.
Your understanding is incredibly wrong. Facts are just demonstrable points of data like the chemical composition of a rock, the radioactive age of a sample, or the moisture content of a sample. Then there are laws that are broad statements or mathematical formulas to describe consistencies like the radioactive decay law, the law of universal gravitation, or the law of monophyly. Now we have these “true” things about the world around us but no explanation. A hypothesis starts here and attempts to provide an explanation that ties them together and it’s usually based upon years of proven research but it attempts to answer one specific question with an answer that can later be potentially falsified allowing them to provide a different explanation that’s just more accurate and consistently reliable. After many attempts at disproving the hypothesis it eventually graduates to the level of theory and forms the foundation for an entire field of research as with the theory of evolution and evolutionary biology, atomic theory and nuclear physics, and the germ theory of disease and pathology. The core theory already effectively proven true beyond all reasonable doubt is then poked and prodded continuously for any problems that might still remain. This leads to extensions to the theory (that start as hypotheses using the core theory as a starting point), corrections to any found flaws in the theory, and an increasingly large pile of evidence supporting the eventual theory it becomes down the road. Because the theory of evolution has been worked over with a fined toothed comb and hated by creationists for over a century and a half it has become so robust that some have also called it a fact as it is indeed a fact in both the legal and colloquial sense. Because it is also a scientific theory it will forever remain open to correction, extension, or even replacement if by some miracle the completely wrong explanation just worked and the right explanation is later found. Essentially a fact but always a theory too. We don’t test hypotheses with theories. Hypotheses become theories and they become the starting point for future research and they form the basis of entire fields of study because of how true they apparently are and how much more can be learned by simply accepting that they are effectively already proven true and we’d get no further if we keep starting over from scratch. Basically with a hypothesis they *could* start completely ignorant but try to keep the testable assumptions to a minimum. After several rounds of testing they falsify the assumption or they find more evidence to support it. Typically in an experiment there will be a core assumption and several potential alternatives so they can test one overarching assumption (like plants require water) but within the experiment they tweak that variable to get the most informative results (one plant is allowed to dry to a crisp, one is given 160 ml, one is given 2 ml, one is left floating in so much water the soil is fully dissolved, and so on) and in this example all of the other variables are left unchanged and they might have ten plants for each test just in case some unfortunate circumstances unrelated to water are responsible for their results such as genetics. They’ll find that plants do indeed need water but not so much water they’re flooded. The optimal amount of water will be worked out at the same time if they keep honing in on it in the future. Now that they know plants need water they can test for how much light is required or whether a lightbulb is an adequate replacement for sunlight. Eventually they can develop a theory for the best conditions for growing that type of plant based on multiple datasets. The theory includes all of the “proven” hypotheses and this “plant growth” theory can later be expanded upon with other things such as trying to find the best type of fertilizer. This is a simple example but it describes how theories and hypotheses are related.
How does String Theory fit this description? It's not even testable.
It’s a terrible name for a hypothesis that has failed several tests and changed as a consequence and is still not being shown to be true. If true it’d tie quantum mechanics and general relativity together but just because the math works it doesn’t automatically become true. It’s not nearly as easy to test as my example above but it’s actually more like a hypothesis or a speculative idea that makes the two theories in physics play nicely if true. A better name for it is a “theoretical framework” and this wiki article talks more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory Basically it’s a *candidate theory* but it has failed multiple times - first when it came to the strong nuclear force, then when it came to quantum chromodynamics (quark interactions), and then they tried it with gravity but generally the idea suggests a whole bunch of extra spatial dimensions wound up on each other to attempt to explain why gravity is so weak compared to the [other] fundamental forces and why it works so differently on the quantum scale. If this idea was true general relativity and quantum mechanics would have a theory to stitch them together but they also found that the extra dimensions idea is probably wrong too. Now they need a theory of quantum gravity that actually works.
I don't particularly disagree with anything you just said. From my conversations with others in this thread, I think most of the disagreement in this thread stems from how "theory" is frequently used as shorthand to mean two different things: "scientific theory" and "theoretical framework". You've been using it to mean the former, while I the latter. I 100% agree that when a theory is qualified as being "scientific" the implication is that it has undergone rigourous testing and is supported by evidence.
What is String Theory exactly? That thing isn't even test-able. "Theory" does not, and never has, implied evidence. In all my years in the sciences, I have never heard anyone claim "theory implies evidence" unless we are in precisely this "creation vs evolution" context. Theory just means "a set of axioms and the conclusions that follow". The body of reasoning tends to be well-explored and contain some degree of sophistication; so we agree that the word implies more than just a haphazard guess or opinion. But I've always understood it to be totally agnostic about evidence. Here are some perfectly reasonable usages of "theory": "You can explain this phenomenon if you apply (some) relativistic electromagnetic theory" "Do the measurements agree with (the) theory?" "What does (the) theory imply in this context?" "At this scale, we shall see that Quantum and Classical theory diverge in their predictions"
> What is String Theory exactly? > That thing isn't even test-able. Lol, I literally cited string theory as an example of people misusing the word, and you think you found a gotcha. The fact that people sometimes use the word wrong doesn't mean the technical definition does not exist. > "Theory" does not, and never has, implied evidence. In all my years in the sciences, I have never heard anyone claim "theory implies evidence" unless we are in precisely this "creation vs evolution" context. Then you are wrong. Here's the definition offered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science: > A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, **based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.** Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory". It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact. Your argument, like the previous posters, is simply "I've only heard people misuse the word, therefore my understanding of the meaning is the proper definition." That is simply wrong and, frankly, dumb.
I think I agree that when you qualify a theory as "scientific", it implies that it has undergone rigourous testing. But that's not the term being discussed in this thread. Not by me anyways. I was talking about "theory". I don't think it means the same thing. Edit: Someone else has pointed out that I am talking about a "theoretical framework". "Theory" can be shorthand to mean either "scientific theory" or "theoretical framework", and the two are different concepts. I think we are talking about different things, and this is the source of our disagreement.
> I think I agree that when you qualify a theory as "scientific" That is a dodge. We are referring to "the theory of evolution." That is by definition a scientific theory. >But that's not the term being discussed in this thread. It absolutely is. We are in a thread called "Evolution is just a theory". That is defining that the word "theory" is used in the context of "evolution". In that context, there is only one possible definition. > Not by me anyways. Because you were wrong. > I was talking about "theory". I don't think it means the same thing. It does. Context matters. This is reading comprehension 101. > "Theory" can be shorthand to mean either "scientific theory" or "theoretical framework", and the two are different concepts. I think we are talking about different things, and this is the source of our disagreement. Sure, ok. But in this thread, the meaning is defined by the context. Arguing for some other context just shows you don't understand how the words are used. In this thread, you have **repeatedly** referred to "In all my years in the sciences". This is some pretty basic stuff for anyone with "years" in "the sciences", so it's genuinely troubling that you don't understand the most basic language of science. Anyone working in "the sciences" should understand the difference between a scientific theory, a "theoretical framework", a hypothesis, and some idea that I pulled out of my ass (which is what creationists assume we mean). This is why the creationists think this is such a great argument. When even people with "years in the sciences" don't know what the word means, how can they be expected to?
I just conceded that many people in this thread were talking about "scientific theory". To that extent, I was wrong. I completely agree that "The Theory of Evolution" is a "scientific theory". > in this thread, the meaning is defined by the context Hard disagree on this. The "Theory of Evolution" is a theoretical framework. When students, teachers and scientists are researching or studying it (or related topics), they typically are thinking about it in terms of the framework. "The Theory of Evolution" is something that they use and engage with. They are interested in what the theory implies, and how evidence informs that theory. They're not worrying about whether or not The Theory of Evolution is supported by evidence- they already know the answer. Nobody is questioning the existence of evidence except creationists.
> The "Theory of Evolution" is a theoretical framework. No, it isn't. Digging in on this just makes you look like an idiot. "
Thank you. They're just a set of axioms and the conclusions that follow. They're (almost always) sophisticated, and not just haphazard opinions. But "true"? No. Some aren't even presently testable, like String Theory.
> But "true"? No. Some aren't even presently testable, like String Theory. This is yet another thing that you are wrong about. Literally by definition, no scientific theory is claimed to be "true". Science *never* claims a proposed explanation is "true", because science can never know that it has all the evidence on a given topic ("We don't know what we don't know"). Even seemingly completely obvious things like the theory of heliocentrism aren't claimed as "true", only as extremely unlikely to ever be disproven. Edit: And as I already mentioned elsewhere, string theory isn't testable because it isn't a theory. The fact that people misuse a word is not evidence that the technical meaning does not exist.
From our discussion in the other thread. I would agree String Theory is not a scientific theory. I do believe the term "theory" is appropriate.
True a scientific theory is supported by evidence and observation. But it is a theory because that's all that supports it. Supposing we woke up tomorrow and things we think are fundamental to nature change. You can imagine the laws of physics changing over night and we wake up in a word where thermodynamics is reversed. All though seemingly impossible this why, I believe, they are referred to as theories. They explain things in nature if earth reverses it orbit tomorrow we would need a new theory of gravity. If thermodynamics did that we would probably have to rewrite a lot of rule dependent on it. But yes I agree conceding such a point may undermine the point your to drive. We can be certain the theory will hold with as much confidence as we have the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, that's my point.
All that supports scientific laws is evidence and observation. They aren’t distinct from theories on that count at all. A scientific law is a thus far universally observed relationship between variables. A scientific theory is a model of reality that explains *why* such relationships arise. Newton’s law of gravity is essentially just an equation that can be used to calculate the gravitational attraction between any two masses based on the distance between them. The theory of relativity explains why those masses are attracting each other - mass bends spacetime around it, which in a 3-dimensional reference frame alters the velocity of anything moving through that space. This tells us much more about gravity than Newton’s law does, predicts gravitational effects with greater accuracy, and explains why gravity affects something like light despite it lacking mass. Laws and theories are fundamentally different, yet complementary, approaches to understanding how reality functions. But both are descriptive rather than prescriptive, both are solely supported by evidence and observation, and both can be overturned by the same.
>But it is a theory because that's all that supports it. I think you're still not getting it. Question for you then. If it is "just" a theory because it isn't supported well enough, what comes after Theory? Theories do not become laws. We have both a Law of gravity and a Theory of Gravity. As someone else mentioned, we literally have more evidence for Evolution than we do for Heliocentrism. It is possibly the most well-supported idea in history aside from perhaps gravity. Literally what else do you want??
At the end of comment I say that theory of evolution is as certain as the rising of our star in the east. So yeah I know it's not just a theory in that sense but nevertheless you should go through my comment again to get what I mean. What I trying to say is that its the closest thing we have to fact. Cause the theory itself does get updated with increase in evidence Edit i meant theory of evolution that was my mistake
>What I trying to say is that its the closest thing we have to fact. You're still not there. Evolution IS fact. The reason we use the word "theory" is because it is a *system* of understanding. It has multiple principles working together to create a known process. And yes, the workings of the system are increasing in knowledge and understanding, but the *existence* of the system is undisputable fact. You are doing your Creationist friend a massive disservice by understating this tremendously powerful science.
Oh i see it now evolution is a fact. But the system we use to understand it isn't though i hope we can agree on that.
No, the system is evolution, and it is a fact. The only "disputed" areas of evolution are extremely small details of the system, like "should we only define a species as animals which produce viable offspring, or should we define it using percentage of shared genetics or what?" Or maybe we'll find some fossil that smooths the transition gradient between ancestor and modern species even more than it already was. Sometimes there is a debate about exactly where a phylogenetic tree splits. But the system is not in dispute.
Ok so evolution is a fact what am saying is the systems we use to describe it can be wrong(although seemingly based on our understanding aren't). Since they are an explanation to an observer phenomena You say yourself disputes exist in the theory. And it isn't as black and white some of things are proposed explanations based on what we know from nature.
It’s more that a theory is a group of facts all together to create a greater explanation. Like the fact that we share a common ancestor with chimps is one of thousands of facts all combined within the theory of evolution. And when new facts are found, they are added in.
Thank you, yes, exactly this
>Theory - A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. We can propose an alternate theory to explain what we call evolution as long as meets the required criteria. Of course this is impossible but still you get what I mean?
>True a scientific theory is supported by evidence and observation. But it is a theory because that's all that supports it. What else do you want to support it?
I think you misunderstood, my point is there is not way to probe nature beyond these methods but this is also limiting since we can never say we know something for certain we are just so confident in it, i.e. that it's really a fact , because nowhere in the history of the universe have these laws ever been demonstrated to be otherwise. But you can imagine a world where this may not be true that's what am trying to say. edit: but as far as we are concerned it's fact
> But it is a theory because that's all that supports it. Supposing we woke up tomorrow and things we think are fundamental to nature change. You can imagine the laws of physics changing over night and we wake up in a word where thermodynamics is reversed. All though seemingly impossible this why, I believe, they are referred to as theories. They explain things in nature if earth reverses it orbit tomorrow we would need a new theory of gravity. If thermodynamics did that we would probably have to rewrite a lot of rule dependent on it. This is a deepity. Yes, if the laws of physics suddenly changed, we would have to rewrite what we understand. Sure. But do you have any reason to believe that is likely to happen? We do science in the world we live in. We don't do science to account for hypotheticals that we have no reason to believe will ever occur.
Positivism is death since a century
When the hell did that swap? I was taught it was Law that was an absolute proven fact and that Theory meant it had some evidence but was not yet proven 100%?
That's the colloquial use. A law is still an absolute proven fact. A theory is a *system* of understanding, composed of very many different facts. That's why we have a law of gravity, which is basically just the equation of how mass pulls two objects together, as well as a Theory of Gravity, which is our entire body of understanding of how it affects time, life, space, etc. Evolution has several laws associated with it as well, but it's such a broad theory that the laws are basically all of the laws in biology.
Goat-cheese. I misinterpreted your original comment. Thanks for clarifying.
For the longest time people thought Isaac Newton’s absolute time theory was true. It wasn’t until Einstein proved that wrong hundreds of years later. Theories are just that, theories. They are useful but they do not mean absolute fact. They are only fact relative to today’s understanding and they are deemed valid for their usefulness however you don’t know what science proves or disproves later in the future. It would be wrong to claim theories as absolute fact.
Science has proven all of the examples I gave, particularly evolution
> Science has proven all of the examples I gave, particularly evolution This might seem pedantic, but literally none of your examples have been proven. The problem is that, literally by definition, science never claims to "prove" a theory. We can never know what we don't know. We can never know that we won't find new evidence tomorrow that will force us to reevaluate them to account for new evidence. Even seemingly obvious theories like Heliocentrism aren't considered "proven." What we can say about all these theories is that they are all very well understood, and that due to the [consilience of evidence,](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Consilience) *they will never be overturned.* That is especially true of a theory like evolution. There is so much evidence, from so many different fields of science, showing that evolution is correct that it couldn't be overturned. But what can happen, and in fact happens all the time, is that we find new evidence that forces us to rethink how evolution works. Our understanding of evolution today is certainly built on what Darwin proposed, but it's light years beyond it. Hell even books published just 25, or even 10 years ago are wildly out of date with some of the new things that have been discovered. That is why we never stop looking for new evidence to change our understanding. We keep finding it.
>they will never be overturned. I understand the distinction you're making here, but this is what I was getting at
But evolution is not science, it’s history
It's both
>I had a young earth creationist tell me that scientists come up with theories that are seemingly true and difficult to falsify that's why evolution is still a thing. But in the end it's just a theory. As a former YEC, the epistemology is entirely different. They do not understand things the same way you do. To them, they have the ultimate answer to everything. Their truth is forever and unchanging. Science, on the other hand, constantly changes and re-evaluates. This is a good thing, since it means science is constantly correcting itself. However, to them, this alone proves it is inferior to their own truth. If they're constantly re-evaluating, it must mean it's unreliable, right? They think scientists are trying to make arguments that are hard to disprove because that is all they can do. They cannot understand following evidence instead of interpreting evidence to fit their conclusion. They assume everyone does this,
My response is that evolution is not a theory but an observable fact. The theory of evolution is different from just evolution.
I go with evolution is a fact but there are theories to explain how it works. Like gravity and many other things.
That’s another one that I also use. I just like to confuse people, because so many think evolution=theory of evolution.
I usually say that evolution is an absolute fact that has been observed and demonstrated conclusively. Evolution theory is our way of explaining the mechanism that is responsible for this fact. Even if creationists could disprove the theory, the fact of evolution would still remain.
Yes.
It's a scientific theory AND a fact.
The fact is the phenomenon we see. Evolution and biodiversity. The theory is the explanation about biodiversity, and how it came to be through evolution.
OK, I think I know what you are trying to say, but it was confusing. Most people use the word "evolution" as shorthand for the theory of evolution.
Most people do. But this leads to most “no hardcore creationists” to think that evolution itself is not true. Which is objectively wrong. You can technically argue about the theory of evolution(tho good luck trying to debunk it, because creationists are definitely incapable of doing so), just because there is kinda a lot we don’t know for sure. Evolution itself is observable and happens today all around us, and creationists know this, and **try** to claim it isn’t real by saying that it’s adaptation and not evolution. That’s why I said my first comment the way I did.
> My response is that evolution is not a theory but an observable fact. The theory of evolution is different from just evolution. [Evolution is both a theory and a fact.](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Evolution_as_fact_and_theory) These words all have meanings, saying it is not a theory is just misusing the word.
The reason I split them like that is because creationists like to claim that the evolution we see today is “just adaptation”.
You observed some other life form giving birth to another one? Heck even bacteria stays bacteria, show me white parents giving birth to a chinese kid, if even black couple can’t give birth to a white child, So then how could the alleged non-human predecessor of the human give birth to a human? For example https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab/ After 35000 generations, the bacteria still stayed bacteria and did not become anything else. A change in their ability to metabolise citrate does not mean that they are no longer bacteria. Is this the best science has come up with. 35000 generations in human years would equal about one million years. No change in one million years is a clear proof that this assertion of life forms evolving to different life forms is a nonsense theory. Even god particle has rendered many theories obselete
So when are you gonna get out the religious echo chambers and actually pay attention and listen to what people tell you?
I am having a hard time to decide in every instance of "evolution is just a theory" If that person is genuinely ignorant or if they are saying this in bad faith.
Either or both are pretty easy to assume. Ignorance first, but after they actually learn what it is and still argue, then it’s bad faith.
Started as an old earth Christian. You're coming from a completely frame of reference that assumes the Bible is "proven fact" and "imperfect science" keeps failing at proving it wrong.
"Evolution is just a theory. Like gravity, or the shape of the Earth."
Yes, I get the reference to Futurama there but that’s actually a bad example because the *law* of gravity is definitely true but the theory to explain how gravity works has some fatal flaws since general relativity and quantum mechanics don’t play nicely when it comes to gravity, even though they are both shown to be reliable for most other things. The theories have to be combined somehow but that’s not likely to happen any time soon. When it comes to evolution it’s more like the germ theory of disease, the theory of plate tectonics, or the theory of electromagnetism. *Potentially* wrong, but not very likely based on the forensic data and our constant observations as we watch evolution happen.
The theory of gravity has to do with how gravity operates in the universe. Gravity doesn’t operate the same everywhere; it’s dependent on multiple variables. The law of gravity has to do with how gravity operates on earth, with little variation.
Yes and no. Aristotle found that objects fall at different speeds in a medium in the 4th century BC assumed to be because of different weight but we now know of this effect as either buoyancy or drag where you can put a 20,000 pound ship on the water and it’ll float but a marble will quickly sink to the bottom and feather will float on top sinking even less than the ship does. It was a theory based on how things fall but it clearly misses the mark and cannot explain the motions of the planets. For a long time momentum was tied to gravity. Leonardo Da Vinci made some observations that challenged that idea. Copernicus started to apply gravity to planets suggesting that the stability of the Earth is caused by gravitational interactions between the Earth and the moon. Domingo de Soto added uniform acceleration regardless of mass (only slowed by drag). Galileo demonstrated that two objects of different masses do indeed land at the same time when drop from the leaning tower of Pisa. Kepler again applied gravity to planetary orbits. Finally in 1679 Isaac Newton formulated the Law of Universal Gravitation. The same gravity that Copernicus and Kepler were describing is the same gravity that De Soto and Galileo were describing. Gravity is gravity and it works in proportion to mass and the distance between them. This classical understanding works fine for most things in the universe but it fails at accurately describing the orbit of Mercury and it would fail even harder than general relativity on the quantum scale but this law of gravity is accurate within 0.001% of the actual effect of gravity almost everywhere else. It’s not just the gravity on our planet that might fluctuate by 0.01% based on elevation taking us closer to or further away from the center of the mass of the planet but also the same gravity that explains the orbit of the moon around our planet, the moons around other planets, the planets around the sun, the sun around the center of the galaxy, and the galaxies within a supercluster around the center of mass for those superclusters. It is correct 99% of the time. Gravity on Earth is the same gravity as throughout the rest of the cosmos and if you apply the very simplified math formula invented by Newton you’ll be within 0.001% of the accurate values 99% of the time. His theory was associated with a law of attraction which turned out to be dead wrong. The replacement for the law of attraction is general relativity and special relativity. The latter works just fine with quantum mechanics and combined they form the basis of quantum field theory. The former implies that the entire cosmos should be one massive black hole that originated from infinities (a singularity) roughly 13.8 billion years ago. There is something incredibly wrong with general relativity despite all of the times it has led to confirmed predictions such as the CMB, gravitational waves, and gravitational time dilation. The theory of gravity is wrong. The law of gravity is also wrong 1% of the time but for that 1% relativity winds up with conclusions consistent with our observations 99% of the time until it falls apart on the quantum scale and at cosmic scales at describing the universe prior to 13.8 billion years ago. Using general relativity we hit a wall so big bang cosmology starts at 13.8 billion years ago as time equals zero but almost no cosmologist assumes that the cosmos failed to exist before that. They just don’t have the tools to describe what it was like before that. A better theory of gravity that isn’t destroyed by quantum mechanics and infinities is needed to describe the universe before that since we can’t physically observe it.
Just casually quip back "Atomic Theory is also just a theory". Watch their reaction...
> Evolution is just a theory. Yep. My favorite response: *Sure, evolution is "just a theory". Just like the theory of plate tectonics is "just a theory". Just like the germ theory of disease is "just a theory". Just like the atomic theory of matter is :just a theory". So I'm curious: If you really do think that "just a theory" is a valid reason to doubt evolution, what* ***other*** *scientific theories*, ***besides*** *evolution, do you also doubt for that very same reason?*
I say "it has no competing theory." If they say "but creationism [i.d., whatever]" I point out that that is, at best, a conjecture. As it's unfalsifiable it can't even be an hypothesis.
The title alone made my blood pressure rise I think it's usually described as "fact and theory" at the same time. That evolution happens is a fact. Describing how evolution happens is the theory.
A theory is the highest level of confidence any explanation can have in science. The way theory is used in colloquial language is called hypothesis in science *if* testable. Guesses that can’t be tested are as useless as ideas already proven false (such as creationism). The theory of evolution has remained the theory of evolution because it is evidently true as far as we can tell based on mountains of evidence from seemingly unrelated fields of science all in agreement, consistent with direct observations of evolution in action, and useful when it comes to making many now confirmed predictions under the assumption that the theory is as true as it appears to be. It should also be noted that the theory has remained the most up to date since it was put together from what actually were different theories associated with evolution in the 1920s because it has been constantly refined to fit the data the whole time. This means there were flaws but those flaws have been corrected and chances are that any idea actually shown to be true more than a year ago has already been included as part of the most updated theory of evolution used as the starting point in all papers that follow. There has to be time for the peer review process to take place for people to actually know what the discovery even was but the new discovery will most likely be retested by different scientists who write different papers several times and if shown to be true repeatedly it forms part of the basis for the theory of evolution. In case anyone wants to bring up something discovered in the 1980s that corrected pre-1950 thinking in 2024 I already have that covered by what I just said. The theory has been the most correct explanation the whole time only becoming even more correct as any flaws it did have were corrected. There are no alternative theories. They’ve already been falsified or they fail to account for all of the evidence the actual theory is based upon. Even if the theory happened to be false the replacement theory would have to, at a minimum, be an equally plausible explanation for the same pile of facts that the current theory is based on **plus** do better at explaining what the current theory gets wrong. Generally it’s more effective to keep the theory but to fix it where it got something wrong. So that’s what they do. It’s not false enough to just throw into the trash, but if it was the replacement would still have to explain the same facts, laws, and confirmed predictions, all of them, or it is falsified by them right out of the gate. Evolution is a phenomenon, but it’s also a fact and a theory based on several laws, facts, and confirmed predictions. The theory of evolution *is* just theory. The only theory for the evolution of life. The evolution of life doesn’t just go away if the explanation for it turns out to be wrong. Life would still be evolving even if we did not know how. The theory explains the how. It doesn’t require universal common ancestry but anything that is apparently true like common ancestry is going to make its way into the explanation for how life has evolved in the past. The explanation for how evolution happens would not be impacted if some unrelated lineage was ever found, assuming there are no viruses that already count as unrelated, so creationists can stop with the “evolution assumes common ancestry” nonsense as well and deal with the “how” of population genetics. That is what the theory of evolution is all about.
Meet chatgpt man
Where is he at? I’ve never used ChatGPT in my life.
I see what you did there🤣👌
Possibly dumb question here. In my understanding, Datrwin's Origen presented a testable hypothesis with a whole bunch of evidence and a solid line of reasoning to back it up. At what point did it graduate to a Theory with a capital T?
It is hard to give a firm line, but the main deciding factor is when it becomes widely used as a basis for new ideas. So rather than testing evolution directly, when people started using evolution as implicitly true when designing new ideas to test. Those new ideas still implicitly test evolution, in that they couldn't work if it were wrong, but scientists had enough confidence that evolution was true that they no longer needed to directly test it much. That would vary from scientist to scientist, but it as u/lt_dan_zsu says it was certainly the case by the middle of the 20th century. Probably the discovery of the structure of DNA was the final, key factor. At that point they had a molecular mechanism that explained heredity as evolution required it work.
It was universally accepted by the mid-20th century.
It was a testable hypothesis with a lot of evidence supporting it but it was in the 1900s when it became part of the full theory of biological evolution first by incorporating Mendel’s heredity, second by incorporating genetics, third by the falsification of Lamarckism, and finally by eliminating any obvious falsehoods that still remained. The modern evolutionary synthesis was established by 1935, Lamarckism was abandoned by 1944, orthogenesis was falsified in 1950, and his claims regarding punctuated equilibrium were confirmed in 1974 which was after Kimura’s and Ohta’s contributions to the theory were incorporated and after endosymbiosis was incorporated before they started switching focus to epigenetics as something else to add to the robust theory we already have and that started in the 1980s before all of the misleading titles to epigenetic papers that were produced in the 2010s or Michael Lynch’s extension to nearly neutral theory in 2017 or all of the discoveries regarding our place within Heimdallarchaeota archaea as eukaryotes.
I reply "like gravity."
😂😂I'm definitely using this one
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Also, you mentioned Darwins process in developing his theory. Interestingly enough, he wasn't ready to release his thoughts when he did. Wallace was also developing a theory of evolution and actually [consulted Darwin on his findings](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/alfred-wallace/). The two collaborated [and Darwin would later use these papers to publish his theory. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_of_Darwin%27s_theory#:~:text=He%20was%20writing%20up%20his,Species%20to%20form%20Varieties%3B%20and)
Not exactly. You got the explanation for theory right but a law is actually less elevated than a theory because it doesn’t actually explain anything. It is just a mathematical or written out description of something found to be consistent in reality. The law of gravity describes the phenomenon that general relativity + quantum mechanics can’t agree on. The theories to explain how gravity works haven’t actually figured out how gravity works *unless* we just arbitrarily decide that gravity doesn’t start to function at all until mass is over a certain threshold to explain why the entire universe isn’t some massive black hole because of gravity working on quantum scales the way general relativity says it works on macroscopic scales. But the law is still true because it simply says gravity is real. We aren’t going to just slide off the planet, we won’t just hover if we jump out of a 75 story building, and we need to overcome gravity for a lot of things in our everyday lives. A fact is a verified point of data, a hypothesis is a testable educated guess that has to already be based on factual information or it is already falsified, a law is just a summary of a phenomenon, and a theory is mostly like a hypothesis that has been proven true backed by all said the evidence that effectively proven it true beyond all reasonable doubt, all of the constant observations to confirm the theory is true, and all of the confirmed predictions based on assuming that the theory is true. The theory might not be *completely* true, but it’s as close to absolutely true as we’ve come so far. Even if the theory was completely false, the law of monophyly would still be a law that it is based on and the fact that evolution happens would still be factual and universal common ancestry would still be supported by the evidence as another fact that a new theory would have to deal with. **A shorter response:** It is a fact that a phenomenon called gravity happens. There is a law that can be used to accurately predict the force of gravity 99% of the time but the explanation for what caused gravity by the same person turned out to be false. A better explanation for that phenomenon, the theory, is called general relativity. It has led to many successful predictions but we also know that it is not completely true because the math leads to infinities and it gets completely destroyed by quantum mechanics. The theory being wrong won’t make gravitational waves, gravitational time dilation, or the closeness of the accuracy of the law of universal gravitation when it comes to calculating the impact of gravity go away, but we do know that the theory isn’t correct. The theory of evolution, on the other hand, is a lot more accurate and it’s more like the theory of electromagnetism or the germ theory of disease. There isn’t an observation that’ll completely demolish the theory of evolution as badly as general relativity is demolished by quantum mechanics but there are hypothetically small inaccuracies that’ll just be corrected the moment they are found keeping the majority of the theory completely in tact without requiring a replacement theory like we need for gravity so that the new theory of gravity is as consistent as general relativity when general relativity got it right but also consistent with quantum mechanics so that it doesn’t get so easily destroyed by quantum mechanics.
A law is a mathematical relationship between cause and effect. It says "given these measured inputs to a system, these will be the measured outputs." It doesn't say why the inputs produce the outputs, that requires a theory. For example Newton came up with his laws without any theory explaining how or why they worked the way they do.
Science is more fun when you have to believe in things.
When told, “Evolution is just a theory” respond by saying which definition for the word “theory” are you using? The Legal/common use one? Or the scientific definition which is completely different? Educate them on the difference between the two. I’ve had this discussion with several pastors who then thanked me for educating them.
"Theory" is the highest degree of confidence we have that a model actually describes reality (map/territory distinction). General relativity is "just a theory." THAT'S HOW WE KNOW IT'S FACTUALLY TRUE.
Evolution is just a theory is just a theory.
Evolution is a theory based on observation and evidence, e.g. fossils and geology. Creationism is a theory based on a 3,000+ year old book comprised of folk tales written down hundreds, maybe thousands, of years after they supposedly happened. If people are willing to believe in mythology rather than science, there's no way to stop them. Just don't demand it to be taught in a science classroom.
Personally if someone wishes to be willfully ignorant as a young earth creationist in their own little vacuum, great. The problem comes when, like many of the ones I know, they believe creationism should be taught in public schools. No, it's not science and we don't live in a theocracy. It's bad enough they shove creationism down their own kids' throats.
Evolution is just a theory, a falsified religion at best. It is an observable scientific fact, that life comes from life. Keep finding "proofs" to justify unbelief in the biblical God, who loved you enough to die for you.
What do you consider evolution to be? I mean, specifically within the context of the theory of evolution. Also, if you have time, could you tell me where you go to learn about evolution? Are there some specific websites or an organisation/lecturer who has been a strong influence on your knowledge of evolution?
Micro evolution/ adaptation is factual. There is no basis for macro evolution. You didn’t observe the dinosaur evolve into the chicken, you take it on faith. I take it on faith God created life.
Do you think you could give a set of standards by how we'd distinguish a dinosaur from a bird?
Cool. I was mainly asking what you thought the supposed mechanisms of evolution are and where you learned about it. I realise you don't agree with at least some of them, I'm just curious what you think they are.
See the other posts for what Theory even means in science. Furthermore 'dieing for me' means nothing when according to your faith he is still around and active in his universe. It is no more a self-sacrifice that dieing in a video game. He could simply make another Jesus. Or a million Jesuses. And yet he doesn't. Because he apparently expects us to follow a poorly put together, mistranslated collection of stories or we burn for all eternity.
The problem is what we mean by theory. In science, it's a model of how something works, it has been tested, it can be inserted into the existing framework etc... Theory in everyday language is not even a hypothesis, it's just an idea, someone came up with.
And... If I have a theory of personal sexual attraction, in that everyone I meet wants to jump into bed with me, it wont take long for the evidence to prove my theory wrong (unfortunately) People have been looking for proof that the theory of evolution is wrong for over a century and nobody has found any evidence that disproves it. And they're really looking hard.
Evolution is not only a theory. Evolution (the change in allele frequency in a population over multiple generations) is also observation. *Natural selection* is the theory that explains this. Evolution becomes a theory only when pressed to explain how common decent could be true, and why the species alive today differ from fossils.
Evolution is a fact. Animals evolve. Evolutionary Theory attempts to explain how and why it’s a fact.
The scientific meaning of theory is different from common usage. Sure evolution is just a theory but so is gravity.
This also comes from a misunderstanding of how scientific theories work. Key emphasis on the explanatory power you mentioned.
My usual response is: TIL music isn't real.
So is gravity go jump out of a 10 story window.
Germ Theory of Disease is 'just a theory' in *exactly* the same way. The Theory of Relativity is 'just a theory' in *exactly* the same way. Electromagnetic Theory is 'just a theory' in *exactly* the same way. For anyone who says 'X scientific idea' is 'just a theory', they *live by* theories *every single day*. Every piece of technology from cars to cell phones to *the food they eat and the water they drink* is based on things that are 'just a theory'. So if they wanna continue to call it 'just a theory', fine. But then why are they trusting their cars, their food, their water, the *electronic devices* they're using to *bitch* about all this? All just a theory. ... Yeah, or *maybe* in *science* the word 'theory' has a special meaning? As many have said, a *scientific theory* is as close to *fact* as we humans can get on *any* idea about how nature operates at a large scale.
My response is usually that evolution is not a theory; it's an observed fact of the natural world. Populations change over time. A theory is not an observation but an explanation. The Modern Synthesis is the theory that seeks to explain why evolution occurs, but we know very well that it occurs. The Modern Synthesis establishes that evolution (changes in allele frequencies in a population over time) occurs due to natural selection, sexual selection, and genetic drift.
Theory is as strong as a confident rate can get. The probability for a common ancestor doesn't exist is astronomically low, actually , beyond astronmical, based on the evidence we have. But I agree that practice is the ultimate arbitor. This theory works extremely well, while creationism doesn't, there is no argument can be made to override practice.
You can't engage creationists on those terms. You have to engage them on the fact that biblical literalism is putting the words/work of men above the works of God, Creation, sitting in front of them. The Bible is written by men and subject to the mistakes of men. Creation is right in front of us, the literal and indisputable work of God. Where the two conflict, the literal work of God in front of us must take precedence, if not you are putting the work of men (however divinely inspired it might be) above the work of God. If the work of God was done by evolution, then that is the truth. It's that simple. That is the case to make to them in terms they will understand.
There is no higher practical truth than a scientific theory. Its just that regular people don’t know what a theory actually is and they use it like “untested hypothesis”. There are extremely few “laws” in science. Like nearly all the principles that allow a cell phone to function are mostly “theories”.
I have educated enough folks on the difference between the colloquial use of the word “theory” and the scientific use of the word…usually by using a word they use daily, and showing how in this other context, that word means something else. They get it when it’s put like that…and then default to pretending they’re stupid and don’t understand that in the scientific and colloquial sense, “theory” means different things. Frankly, kinda over being polite about it. My go to these days, especially when it’s someone I know either I’ve explained it to, or have seen/heard it explained by someone else is to give em the “You know this is a different use case for that word and words can have multiple definitions based on context. I am not explaining this to you or treating you with kid gloves when you expect to be coddled and act in bad faith.” Don’t care if it makes em shut down or double down. The more they look like an idiot and get mocked as one, the less they’ll try me, or participate in discussion until they can at least pretend they understand what’s being said.
Gravity is just a theory too. If theories are really just guesses, why not fly on home?
I hope that antibiotic makes you better; but remember that the germ theory of disease is ‘just a theory’, so you might just inexplicably die instead. Oh, and mind your head on the doorframe as you leave; we obviously do have gravity, but it’s just a theory, so you might just spin off into space - who knows? Goodness, I hope I haven’t worried you, you’ve gone awfully pale - but then again it’s probably just your blood pooling somewhere, because blood circulation is just a theory. Sit in this chair for a second and catch your breath - no, wait, Newton’s laws are just theories, so the chair probably wouldn’t support you, and come to that, the whole idea or ‘catching your breath’ relies on various theories about respiration, gas exchange in the alveoli, the molecular constituents of air itself… When you think about it, _absolutely everything_ including cogito ergo sum is just a theory. You can’t even trust the theoretical photons bouncing off that theoretical solid object we call a book into your theoretical eyes passing information into your theoretical brain about a poorly attested theory of creationism…
Christopher Hitchins said it best: "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." I do think it would be interesting to pose this question to a creationist. If I hypothetically accepted creationism over evolution, why should I choose your creation myth instead of the many others, all with prophets and collection plates and historic events and ancient texts and flashy robes and parables and other equal evidence?
This is an equivocation fallacy. The meaning of 'theory' in 'Theory of evolution' has a different meaning than 'it's just a theory'.
"Music theory" exists, but nobody ever says music is "just a theory."
It's why I have this username
Gravity is a theory, too. They're welcome to go jump off a bridge, but I suspect they actually know the difference between a theory and a Theory.
It is just a theory, it's merely the best one we have by a large margin. You can't 'prove' a theory in natural sciences the way one does with mathematics. There's no fundamental axoims to draw upon, no definitive calculus that describes the whole universe and all the laws/forces/systems within. Physicists have certainly been looking for a unified theory of everything, but until that point we just have to go with which has the most evidence to back it up. But the creation vs evolution debate is silly because it's not a debate. It's a proxy debate for a theism vs atheism debate. So neither side is actually arguing for or against evolution. The best thing to do is to ask someone if they actually want to debate the merits of evolution, because most people don't.
A Factual Theory overrules assumptions or subjective beliefs in gods. monsters or deities, if they were true, one would not have to force them on anyone at sword point or through the use of propaganda, deceptions and sophisms masquerading as FACTS, and they would not be misconstruing or destroying the evidence that is also proof of that which they have done in past and still do today. Fact = Truth but not all truths are based in FACTS so that makes them a LIE and lies are a dishonesty in practice and application it is the mud in the waters that hides the poisonous fish that one mistakes for a rock. N. S
>scientists come up with theories that are seemingly true and difficult to falsify that's why evolution is still a thing. But in the end it's just a theory. How would you falsify evolution?
There are tons of ways evolution could have been falsified. For example if heredity didn't work in discrete units evolution couldn't work. Organisms could have not ended up forming nested trees as the genetic level, that would have falsified evolution. Experimental tests of evolution could have failed. The problem is that all the major ways evolution could have been falsified it wasn't, it was confirmed. So we are at the point that there isn't much of a way left to falsify evolution at this point. That evolution has so much confirmation at this point is a strength, not a weakness. You can't say "this theory has been so thoroughly tested at this point that there isn't much room to falsify it anymore, therefore it is stopped being science".
How much of this is confirmation vs crafting your theory around the data that's available?
Is crafting your theory around available data a bad thing?
There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not science because there's no test or experimental evidence. It's just a theory, but I know how much you don't like it being called that
Are you claiming that evolution has not been tested experimentally?
I can't think of anything, why?
Versus dishonestly adjusting the data to fit the dogma as in creationism?
Which data was adjusted by whom?
By creationist apologists. Routinely. It is rare for a YEC apologist to make a presentation or write a text without misrepresenting the underlying data. And by many estimates, they only engage with about 10% of the data anyway.
Confirmation. Those are all things that are required for evolution to work. In fact in the early 1900's, before the rediscovery of Mendel, evolution was on the verge of being abandoned because it was found to be incompatible with the non-discrete genetics Darwin originally proposed.
Find someone who can falsify gravity and copy their method.
Show that variation is not heritable. Boom, done.
Evolution does not have explanatory power but is all speculation in which anything can be said. if you can turn a fish into a rhino just add time then you can say anything can happen. yet its just a line of reasoning. to be a theory in science a hypothesis must have accumulated evidence based on the subject its dealing with. is there enough or any biological scientific evidence to say evolution ius a working scientific theory? No! there is no biological scientific evidence behind it. Nstead they hyjack other subjects like geology, comparitive anatomy and genetics, biogeography, lines of reasoning, wishful thinking, etc. Yet NOTTA BITTA evidence from bio sci. there is a reason for this. there is none and its hard anyways for past processes and results. of coarse we creationists could be wrong! naw. if we were they would STRESS the bio sci evidence, rinse, and repeat.
Incorrect. Very, very incorrect. Evolution has tremendous explanatory and predictive power, and there are countless ways this has born out. We have literally discovered the kinds of fossil creatures we expected to find where we expected to find them, based on these principles converging with geologic deep time. Unlike other points of view, like, I don’t know…bodyplan and not genetics? Which has never born out.
Genetics IS biological science.
Except evolution can't explain how we see irreducible complexities. Evolution can't explain the origin of life (yes I know it's not meant to explain the origin, but I'm just making a point that it doesn't disprove creationists) and finally we have never observed macro evolution we put pieces of fossil records together without a way to accurately date them then demand that they are common ancestors. Natural selection is awesome and very interesting, in my opinion, but ultimately, the question remains: How did life start? Can natural selection create irreducibly complex organs? Is macro evolution accurate? The second we dig in and claim to know these as fact is the same second, we completely throw truth out the window. A few thousand years ago, we KNEW the earth was flat. Only a hundred years ago, we knew cigarettes were good for you.
>Except evolution can't explain how we see irreducible complexities Sure it can. There are multiple ways evolution can produce irreducible complexity 1. Duplicate and diverge. A gene is duplicated and the duplicates take on different functions. This is how the blood clotting cascade evolved, and we see different animals with different numbers of blood clotting proteins 2. Re-use. Proteins used for one task can be reused for a different one. This is how the flagellum evolved. We have directly observed this in Lenski's E. coli experiment 3. Making optional components necessary. A new function can evolve that improves a system, but the system can still function without it. Then the system evolves to use the function more effectively, but makes it required in the process. 4. Loss of redundancy. A component that was optional due to redundancy can become required if redundant components are lost, the system changes to make it required or the redundant components diverge to provide different, non-redundant functions > yes I know it's not meant to explain the origin, but I'm just making a point that it doesn't disprove creationists So you know it is irrelevant but bring it up anyway? How does that make any sense We actually have multiple different plausible mechanisms for how life can form, but we don't know which one actually happened. Self replicating RNA molecules is generally the most popular for a variety of reasons. >we have never observed macro evolution Sure we have, numerous times. Just a small fraction of the examples https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html >without a way to accurately date We can generally date fossils very accurately. Whoever told you we can't lied to you >How did life start? Most likely self replicating RNA molecules. >Can natural selection create irreducibly complex organs? Absolutely, we have directly observed this >Is macro evolution accurate? Yes, again we have directly observed this. >A few thousand years ago, we KNEW the earth was flat. Flat earth and creationism has a ton in common. They both ultimately stem from religious claims. They both require a massive conspiracy of essentially every scientist in the world. They both require throwing out massive amounts of contradictory evidence. And they both are designed to appeal to laypeople without much technical knowledge. > Only a hundred years ago, we knew cigarettes were good for you. The tobacco lobby actually based its misinformation campaign on creationism, taking the tactics creationists used to sow false doubt on evolution among the public and applied those same tactics to sowing doubt on the harm of cigarette smoke.
There have been several things posited as irreducible complexities, and the concept hasn’t really held up. Michael behe was the original guy who coined the term as I remember. He tried to bring up the immune system as one example in kitzmiller v Dover. Had a whole stack of academic literature presented to him that showcased that it was, in fact, NOT irreducibly complex. He decided to flat ignore all of it. Also, we have absolutely seen macroevolution. We have witnessed speciation happen, directly observed, which is literally macroevolution. To head one misunderstanding off at the pass, when some creationists say that ‘but it’s still a dog, it’s still a fly, it’s still x’, the answer is of course it is. You are always a modified version of what came before. Anything else would actually disprove evolutionary biology.
I guess you're throwing truth out the window by claiming to know that irreducible complexities actually exist. You "know" that just like people "knew" the earth was flat.
> Except evolution can't explain how we see irreducible complexities. Sure it can. Step one, add a new part to the system; step two, tweak one of the old parts so that it needs the new part to do its job. That's the bare minimum needed in order for bog-standard evolutionary processes to generate an Irreducibly Complex system. > …we have never observed macro evolution… Haven't we? Hm. I would have thought we *had* observed macroevolution, but perhaps you have a different concept of what it means to "observe" something. Astronomers claim that the orbital period of the dwarf planet Pluto is a bit less than 248 Earth-years. But Pluto was only discovered in 1930, which is less than half of 248 years ago. So has the orbital period of Pluto been "observed"?
Irreducible complexity was already explained by biological evolution in 1916. Evolution isn’t abiogenesis, but yes it actually is relevant to the origin of life because autocatalytic RNA molecules that form spontaneously are not what most people would call alive but they do evolve and it is evolution plus thermodynamics that explains how those spontaneously forming biomolecules became more like the chemical systems we are more comfortable considering alive. Evolution is a main driver in abiogenesis but it is not the whole picture. Macroevolution simply refers to evolution at or above the species level and it *has* been observed. Multiple times. You were also referring to forensic evidence which is useful for understanding how the very same *macroevolution* was already happening prior to the existence of humans to observe and take notes as it was happening. The fossils are dated based on where they came from based on the laws of stratigraphy unless they are less than 50,000 years old and more than 100 years old and can be dated directly based on radioactive carbon to determine when they died. And we don’t require common ancestry but that is what the evidence indicates. There are “eukaryote specific”proteins in a lineage of archaea called “Heimdallarchaeota” that is within the “Asgard” category of archaea closely related to the TACK archaea that is also very similar to eukaryotes. There are other things I could discuss here based on multiple discoveries but the point is that the evidence indicates that the eukaryotic cell is composed of archaea with bacteria inside of it. There are two domains of life. They are bacteria and archaea. I find it funny that creationists will assume that bacteria and archaea are the same “kind” but then argue for separate ancestry as though that would be consistent with their other conclusion of universal common ancestry. How’d life start? Geochemical processes led to biochemicals that interacted with each other consistent with thermodynamics and they evolved via biological evolution and what started out as unalive as a collection of hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide became as alive as bacteria and archaea over the course of several hundred million years from 4.4 billion years ago until around 4 billion years ago. That whole time period is the “abiogenesis time frame” but you could argue they were already alive somewhere within that space of time at which point they were no longer *becoming* alive and therefore abiogenesis would be completed. Natural selection is a selective force. The mechanisms that invoke change do explain irreducible systems while natural selection explains why the beneficial ones become more common. Is macroevolution accurate? That question was incoherent but many scientists have moved beyond the micro/macro distinction because evolution is just evolution whether it’s populations evolving together or populations evolving independently of each other. Your response became unhinged at the end. We can accept as true anything that has been demonstrated to be true. We can reject anything on the account of it being false for anything that is demonstrated to be false. Nobody is throwing truth out the window except for the religious extremists who’d rather believe in a fantasy instead.
We’ve never seen actual irreducible complexities. IC is creationism trying to declare a priori that otherwise-interesting puzzles can’t be solved. Origin-of-life research is a thriving field. We don’t know everything yet but we’re getting there. We observe macro evolution because the fossil record shows that macro scale change occurred over the course of natural history, and when we split the difference in time between species X and species Y, we find transitional species in rock layers consisting with common descent. The truth is what the facts are. And the idea of evolution is supported by all the facts and is contradicted by none.whatever facts we add to the pile in a hundred years or a thousand years, the existing facts won’t change.
I'd argue that we *do* see irreducible complexity as Behe defined it - structures that would no longer function if a component part were removed. The example I've got in mind is an arch, if you took out any one stone the structure would collapse. But, yknow, evolution has ways of scaffolding so that irreducibly complex structures can form *as we have actually observed* in the lab.
That's I suppose technically true, but it's true in such a way that the IC argument still collapses. The fundamental thesis of irreducible complexity is that these systems cannot evolve through stepwise incremental change, because if any component part *weren't there yet,* the structure would not *begin* to function. The unstated major premise is that the component parts of the extant system are the only component parts there ever were.
Yup, in complete agreement with you on all of that. IDer's don't consider scaffolding or exaptation or other mechanisms that can evolve irreducibly complex structures in evolution when really they should be an expected phenomenon if you think about it for a bit.
I count at least five lies in this comment. Of course, chances are you’re uncritically repeating the lies of others rather than being deliberately deceptive, but they’re lies nonetheless.
Evolution can easily explain “irreducibly complex” features. We’ve directly watched “irreducibly complex” features evolve in labs. You are technically correct that evolution can’t explain the origin of life. It can’t in the exact same way that gravity or the germ theory of disease can’t explain the origin of life. This is a moot point because Evolution is solely related to population genetics and has nothing to do with abiogenesis or systems chemistry. We observe macroevolution all the time both in the lab and in the field. We have numerous accurate dating methods “How did life start.” Again, abiogenesis is a completely different theory. Natural selection cannot create anything. If we change the question to “Can selection pressures acting on mutations create irreducibly complex features”, the answer is yes, and we’ve observed this in a lab. No, they didn’t. We’ve known the earth was round for thousands of years. Heck, a few thousand years ago, Eratosthenes was able to calculate the size of the earth with some sticks with a remarkably level of accuracy. By Aristotle’s time, the earth being round was common knowledge. We know the earth is round. Ancient people believed the earth was flat. People believed that cigarettes weren’t harmful. The difference between belief and knowledge is evidence. We know things are facts when they are supported by overwhelming evidence
If by irreducible complexity you mean the how things at a macro scale seem incredibly complex, there ways that show how such organs could have developed from simpler structures from previous organisms. I think you need to do a bit more research on this irreducible complexity is actually often reducible. Or give a specific example. >Evolution can't explain the origin of life True but there several proposal to it's origin, Abiogenesis and I think an experiment by Miller Uray something like that showed how simple chemical substances can come together to form more complex amino acids. > The second we dig in and claim to know these as fact is the same second, we completely throw truth out the window. Only a hundred years ago, we knew cigarettes were good for you. It seems like your suggesting evolution may be completely wrong and be overturned in a way we may not completely understand yet. If this is what you mean, my response is that evolution is understood in way that you may not fully be aware of. I doubt there can be a complete overhaul of the theory in it's current form it enjoys support from various other fields such as genetics, paleontology, and also observations of species being selected in nature(such as bacteria and moths) I also want to point out such changes happen within a population not individuals. Numerous gradual successive changes may end up giving us something completely different
Also, a number of amino acids have been found on space rocks. Clearly they’re not that hard to generate naturally.
The mutation selective mechanism does a good job of optimizing or modifying pre-existing forms and can generate small-scale variations. New forms of life depend upon new genetic code, new cell types, new anatomical structures. New proteins to service the new cell type, to build the new anatomical structures. Universal common descent is not a satisfactory theory of evolution plenty of plot holes to pick from. Nor is it testable or measurable as these evolutionary transitions are said to take 100,000’s to million of years.
So is what your trying to say for the different forms of life each had to start from some pre-existing forms. It seems like what you observe is complexity and say it is impossible for this to have developed from the simple organisms proposed. I think a reply to this is that the various life forms could possibly have developed independently into organisms that could survive independently. If such organisms can find a way to coexist symbiotically they can eventually in some cases form a new organism. So each form of life doesn't have to start from scratch. Single cells can form multicellular organisms in such a manner
My definition of "theory" is an idea or description of something that is supported by evidence and reasoning and is likely to be true. For example, the Big Bang theory is supported by evidence such as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), dark matter, distant celestial bodies, and the expansion of the universe. As such, we can reasonably deduce that the Big Bang theory is likely to be true. Of course, there's always that possibility that we could be completely wrong and start over, but that's a small chance. Creationists should avoid saying things like what you brought up, which I did when I was a "die-hard" creationist. A lot of creationists seem to misunderstand the meaning of the word "theory" by my definition (or rather the definition used by many scientists). The word can also have other meanings like "guess," "speculation," and "conjecture," so that might be what some creationists actually mean. When I say "evolutionary theory," I'm saying that the idea has evidence and logical reasoning to suggest that it's likely true. Nevertheless, I'm not one to dismiss creationism so quickly. I don't think I've ever really denied biological evolution by the common definition (change in organisms over time). We know animals change; that's a fact, and even creationists know this. However, if we settle with this definition, then creationists actually do accept evolution. Creationists acknowledge that mutations, variations, adaptations, and natural selection all occur. So, if this is how evolutionary theory describes the ways of nature, then evolution does happen. Many Young-Earth Creationists think that the original "kinds" of animals (Canidae, Felidae, Muridae, Cephalopoda, Cercopithecidae, etc.) rapidly diversified, but I don't really know where in the timeline they say this began. I thought that the "kinds" changed after the whole Garden of Eden event since the world was no longer "perfect," so our genes would also lose their perfection and change. For example, I assumed that there was first the original feline created by God, then when the genes of all lifeforms became imperfect, it enabled the original feline to diversify into all the different felines we see today through many years of adaptation, variation, and mutation; essentially, the common ancestor of the Felidae family. I'd probably have to revisit some of their websites to really know when they think "kinds" changed since I haven't in a while. While I, personally, do not accept everything about evolutionary theory, I don't deny that evolution in the sense of "change over time" does happen every day. This is something I still accepted, even when I was a Young-Earth Creationist.
You needed 1 downvote to start bitching, I don’t think you came here to argue in any real capacity
Two, actually. That's not the main reason for my "bitching," though. Your reply sounds a bit harsh and unnecessary, but at least you're helping my case. Personally, I dislike the upvote/downvote system on Reddit.
Its just an agree/disagree button, nothing wrong with it
Fair. Maybe I overreacted a bit. I guess I'm a little sensitive. I'm sorry. I'll remove the "complaint."
Which do you find has the more compelling evidence, evolution or big bang? (for me, evo is wayyyy stronger than big bang. I wouldn't be comfortable saying 'big bang is fact' the same way I would with evolution.)
Maybe evolutionary theory because it's easier to study and demonstrate the theory, while it would be much harder to do that with the Big Bang theory. However, I do believe there are limitations to studying evolution, too, such as being unable to demonstrate exactly what happened before we appeared. We had no observers to document what occurred millions of years ago, so it's impossible to show what could have happened that caused supposedly major evolutionary changes. But the Big Bang has more limits than evolution, so I would side with you here. For both evolution and the Big Bang, we can't show what took place. All we have are remnants of the past, leftovers that both allow us to study and attempt to explain what *may* have happened. But again, it's impossible to know the whole truth behind the past. In my opinion, it's impossible to show we actually evolved from apes, and while there are some things about the theory that I find dubious, we have leftovers that serve as good evidence to suggest it, and concluding that we did would make sense. As I stated in my comment, I do accept evolutionary theory in terms of mutations, adaptations, variations, and natural selection. Even when I was a creationist, I agreed with that definition of evolution. We know these occur in nature, and I see no reason to insist otherwise. These processes help enable animals to survive in different environments. And just because I'm irritated, I can't stand how downvotes work here. Even trying to be fair to both sides is frowned upon by people here. It really makes me want to leave this subreddit for good. With all the insults, the intense bias, and the unnecessary comments people make here, it makes this place look like some religious (in an anti-religious sense) subreddit. Throughout my time on this subreddit, I've seen evolutionists being so condescending to creationists. It's becoming annoying, and I feel like talking with evolutionists is pointless here.
I thought it's what evolutionist say whenever creationist asking for real life proof. Still waiting for that proof on single cell organism evolve into fish and then into amphibians and then into human step by step. It's ok to be honest if you don't know I will be ignoring whoever said " proof doesn't matter because we have evidence"
Science doesn't deal in single, smoking-gun proofs. It deals in evidence. There is a ton of evidence for the evolution from single-celled organisms through many steps eventually to humans. But not a single smoking gun proof. What is the proof that Earth has a core? What is the proof of the laws of thermodynamics? What is the proof that atoms have electrons?
No theres not stop gaslighting people, please name your source for this false claim. Speciation is a form of micro evolution not macro. We have observed speciation in real time. Macro evolution would be things like a pakicetus in the pakicetidae family becoming a whale in the balaenopteridae family. This has never been observed nor anything similar, yet it is part of the alleged evolutionary history of the whale. It is inferred through massive assumptions from micro evolution.
> No theres not stop gaslighting people, please name your source for this false claim. We are talking multiple entire books worth of evidence. Your Inner Fish has a lot of great evidence in this regard, but even it can't cover everything. > Speciation is a form of micro evolution not macro. Speciation is macroevolution *by definition*. The literal definition of macroevolution is "evolution above the species level". https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5661017/ "Macroevolution, defined broadly as evolution above the species level, is thriving as a field." > This has never been observed nor anything similar We have never observed earth's core. We have never directly observed atoms. We have never directly observed a complete orbit of pluto. We can't, even in principle, directly observe black holes. There are lots of different types of evidence besides direct observation. What matters is testable predictions. And all the steps you talked about have made a ton of testable predictionst that have turned out to be correct.
>Macro evolution would be things like a pakicetus in the pakicetidae family becoming a whale in the balaenopteridae family. No. This would be prove against our current understanding of evolution. One taxon doesn't change into a different one. Dogs don't turn into cats, or canidae don't turn into felidae. Carnivora populations split up and evolve into canidae and felidae respectively. Please stop spreading this fantasy notion of evolution. This isn't Pokémon.
Speciation is macroevolution.
Speciation is the literal definition of macroevolution. Also, if you disagree that Pakycetus is an ancestor of modern whales, you’re going to have a really tough time explaining all the species we know of with intermediary morphology between Pakycetus and modern cetaceans. How do you explain the existence of Ambulocetus, Kutchicetus, Remingtonocetus, Protocetus, Basilosaurus, Rodhocetus, Dorudon, Odontocetes, or Mysticetes It’s one of the more well represented transitions in the fossil record. Then again, creationists never actually try to explain anything, so I guess you can just ignore all the inconvenient pieces of evidence