The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160033 Message #3795940
Posted By: Steve Shaw
15-Jun-16 - 01:33 PM
Thread Name: BS: Logic and the laws of science
Subject: RE: BS: Logic and the laws of science
No they are not. I'd wager that no-one else here would think so either.
The request to "show me some evolution" is illegitimate. That question can be attempted at a single point in time but evolution is not a phenomenon that takes place at a single point in time. The way to demonstrate evolution is to present the evidence for it. I could show you natural selection taking place in bacteria over a couple of days, but natural selection is a mechanism, not evolution. That isn't going to satisfy anyone who doesn't think evolution is true, of course. Asking an impossible, unreasonable and illegitimate question about something you don't want to believe is true is either disingenuous or an argument from ignorance. Evolution is a dead cert that we try to explain by scientific theory. You deny that it is a natural phenomenon then you go on to arbitrarily atomise the concept of a natural phenomenon by regarding individual species as natural phenomena. Well why not go the whole hog and declare that no, not even they are the natural phenomena, rather 'tis the protons, neutrons and electrons that make up their trillions of atoms...or perhaps we can settle on a hierarchy of natural phenomena. I think you're nit-picking, in other words.
Evolution is not just a new idea. It has been going on for most of the life of planet Earth, and would have been going on whether there were sentient minds available to try to explain it or not. You are conflating a non-scientific truth (evolution) with the theory that explains it. Having a theory for it means that we don't fully understand it. Evolution doesn't give a damn whether we understand it or not and just keeps rolling on as a very old non-idea. I nearly said doesn't give a monkey's there, but it does... The theory is the new and better idea you refer to, not evolution itself.
Most theories in inexact sciences such as biology are going to be joint efforts eventually, if not at the beginning. Darwin's big idea has been added to, tweaked and clarified. In his case, strengthened. That doesn't stop it from being a good theory. Darwin did not have modern genetics or biochemistry at his disposal. He would have been delighted that both disciplines have overwhelmingly backed him. That's science for you.
I could hector you on your personal interpretation of the two words "natural" and "phenomenon" in order to glean why you think evolution (not its explanation) isn't a really good fit for both words. But it's my birthday and I need to play Hunt The Corkscrew now.