Most high school biology teachers don’t endorse evolution

[lewisnotmiller]

There's that smarmy word again "creationism". ID is not equivalent to YEC, at least not to me. And ID has far more scientific evidence to support it then evolution.

Okay...so creationism is now a smarmy word.
I won't sidetrack the topic, but suffice to say I disagree re:ID having more scientific evidence to support it.

 

[johnhanks]

I won't sidetrack the topic, but suffice to say I disagree re:ID having more scientific evidence to support it.

I think we can be a bit firmer than this: ID has ZERO scientific evidence to support it. Its sole claim to testability has lain in the idea of "irreducible complexity"; and every claim of irreducible complexity made so far has been refuted.

 

[camanintx]

My understanding is that micro evolution refers to changes such as eye color, wing size, etc. Calling these "evolution" is misleading, IMO. They are variations within kinds. As to limits on reproduction, the Creator sets these limits by "kinds", not blind forces of nature. In short, the same intelligent Designer that created life established the mechanisms to control boundaries between life forms.

Can you please explain what these mechanisms are? Evolution is simply the genome change in a population. Micro-evolution are the small changes like eye color or wing size that appear over a few generations. Macro-evolution are the larger changes that appear over many generations. What mechanism exists that prevents the former from becoming the latter?

There's that smarmy word again "creationism". ID is not equivalent to YEC, at least not to me. And ID has far more scientific evidence to support it then evolution.

Are you suggesting that your "intelligent designer" didn't create life? Besides, the Wedge Document confirmed long ago that ID is nothing more than creationism in disguise.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I think we can be a bit firmer than this: ID has ZERO scientific evidence to support it. Its sole claim to testability has lain in the idea of "irreducible complexity"; and every claim of irreducible complexity made so far has been refuted.

This is not, strictly speaking, true. For example, if multiverse theories constitute science than "fine-tuning" cosmology (multiverse or not) does as well, so long as it is both published by specialists and in specialist literature (it is). It's extremely speculative, to say the least, but that charge has been laid upon the doors of many a non-theistic cosmology. Nor is irreducible complexity the only argument (not just because fine-tuning is another one). The argument from consciousness is out there in e.g., Moreland, J. P. (2008). Consciousness and the existence of God: A theistic argument (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion). I'm not particularly inclined to think it at all convincing of anything other than that philosophers should not corrode the state of neuroscience anymore than it already is, but it is an argument and it is one published by an academic and reviewed press. Also there is the mathematical arguments concerning evolutionary algorithms and fitness functions (Dembski may not be the only one arguing this one, but as so little ID "arguments" reach the level that warrant publication by an editorial board that doesn't consist of creationists, it could be that he is not alone).

And I'm sure there are others that I do not know about, although I do not know if any of them have been taken seriously enough by scientists to address.

So while it is certainly true that even those scientists who believe in ID seldom to my knowledge think there is any scientific evidence for it, and most scientists would agree it is wrong (including those like Collins, who is a Behe without the ID component), it is not true that irreducible complexity is the only argument offered nor is it true that certain arguments do not meet the standards of more respected scientific theories.

To me, this means that these more respected scientific theories should not be considered science, but as I am, alas, not allowed to dictate what is and isn't considered to be scientific, I can't demand that metaphysics masquerading as cosmology, mathematics, or neuroscience be distinguished from empirical research.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

People who don't believe in science SHOULDN'T TEACH SCIENCE! I shouldn't teach literature if I hate to read. I shouldn't teach math if I don't 'believe" that the algebra works out. I shouldn't teach Gym If i'm 300 lbs though some of the gym teachers I've seen....

But it really does come down to common sense. Evolution is at the point now that the only way that you don't believe it has to arise from Ignornace or willful ignorance. Some call it stupidity but honestly even stupid people understand evolution. Its stubborn people clinging to an already disproved god of the gaps argument.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Evolution is at the point now that the only way that you don't believe it has to arise from Ignornace or willful ignorance.

1) There are very few among those who believe in "evolution" that actually know what it is (this is true of climate science, physics, neuroscience, and other popular science topics). Certainly, there are very few who could defeat those like Behe or Dembski in an argument. Of those who could, most are scientists.
2) Behe, Dembski, Bradley, and others are most certainly not ignorant. I don't agree with them. I think they are wrong about several things and at times I think the way they present arguments to the public is so misleading it might as well be lying. But they do have sophisticated arguments and if they would spend more time trying to answer their challenges they might actually contribute to the life sciences.

Some call it stupidity but honestly even stupid people understand evolution.

No, they don't. In fact, depending on where one is coming from, people who study evolution use the same terms differently, as I found out when conversing with someone whose field is more directly related to evolution than mine. It wasn't that either one of us was wrong, simply that the two ways we approached a certain definition was different because the foci of our respective studies were different. And I didn't know that.

Nobody understands evolution. Some people understand a lot of what we know about it, some people specialize in certain areas, and most people have perhaps some vague idea about it. Evolution is not a theory, but a series of theories and they do not all agree because evolution is so fundamental to so many aspects of so many scientific fields that a computer scientists might be developing fitness functions for a model used by an interdisciplinary group of systems biologists and have really no idea about the biological evolutionary processes that the mathematical model relates to. But within the sciences there are both scientists and scientific literature to demonstrate the breadth of our understanding of evolutionary processes, so we do not need anyone to understand the totality of "evolution". We have sciences for a reason: one isn't enough.

Its stubborn people clinging to an already disproved god of the gaps argument.

You cannot disprove a "god of the gaps" until there are no gaps. There are gaps. And that's without getting into the issues of "proof" in science.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

1) There are very few among those who believe in "evolution" that actually know what it is (this is true of climate science, physics, neuroscience, and other popular science topics). Certainly, there are very few who could defeat those like Behe or Dembski in an argument. Of those who could, most are scientists.
2) Behe, Dembski, Bradley, and others are most certainly not ignorant. I don't agree with them. I think they are wrong about several things and at times I think the way they present arguments to the public is so misleading it might as well be lying. But they do have sophisticated arguments and if they would spend more time trying to answer their challenges they might actually contribute to the life sciences.

If point 1 is correct (and I have my doubts) then it is a failure of the school system. Evolution itself is a very simple concept that even children can understand. The specifics of what happens, how it happens and specific evidence can at times be rather complicated but the general idea of common ancestry and change over time in isolated populations is NOT a difficult topic.

I dissagree. I am not saying they are Ignorant on the point that they don't "know" the information but on part that they still think that there is evidence to the contrary. I have heard some of them in debates before. I wasn't terribly impressed as there has yet to be a good substanciated argument against evolution. If there was then people who didn't understand evolution but still tried to "defeat" the theory would be posting copy pasted arguments here.

So to make sure you don't confuse this. I don't think they are idiots. In fact they are all probably much smarter than myself. But they are in denial of the observable world. Something like less than 1% of scientist are anti-evolution?

No, they don't. In fact, depending on where one is coming from, people who study evolution use the same terms differently, as I found out when conversing with someone whose field is more directly related to evolution than mine. It wasn't that either one of us was wrong, simply that the two ways we approached a certain definition was different because the foci of our respective studies were different. And I didn't know that.
Nobody understands evolution. Some people understand a lot of what we know about it, some people specialize in certain areas, and most people have perhaps some vague idea about it. Evolution is not a theory, but a series of theories and they do not all agree because evolution is so fundamental to so many aspects of so many scientific fields that a computer scientists might be developing fitness functions for a model used by an interdisciplinary group of systems biologists and have really no idea about the biological evolutionary processes that the mathematical model relates to. But within the sciences there are both scientists and scientific literature to demonstrate the breadth of our understanding of evolutionary processes, so we do not need anyone to understand the totality of "evolution". We have sciences for a reason: one isn't enough.

You seem to think that I am saying everyone knows evolution through and through. It is a massive theory that spans across several sciences but the core of evolution and why people know its true is very simple. I don't have to know every detail about every theory and paper and piece of evidence to have a general understanding of it.

And as far as I know there aren't very many if any conflicts between theories that haven't led to new innovative discoveries. I would actually like to know a few for future refrence.

You cannot disprove a "god of the gaps" until there are no gaps. There are gaps. And that's without getting into the issues of "proof" in science.

God of the gaps is a terrible argument that sets themselves up for failure. There is no way to prove or disprove it. However when the gaps start closing in you have people who still cling to the mantra that they have been chanting while in the safety of their gap.

Evolution is one like this. Religion has assurted many things that have attributed to people not believing in evolution. All of them are false "god of the gaps" argument. They didn't know how life started or how old the eart was, or how life worked so they let god be the answer. We find out thats not true or at least it can be explained via a real natural process. Those that hid behind the "god of the gaps" routine were proven wrong. However they cannot simply accept that their argument was wrong so they still cling denial.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

If point 1 is correct (and I have my doubts) then it is a failure of the school system. Evolution itself is a very simple concept that even children can understand.

It isn't simple at all. It is extremely complex. It can be made to sound simple, but so can anything. "God created the universe" is very simple. It just doesn't mean much of anything.

The specifics of what happens, how it happens and specific evidence can at times be rather complicated but the general idea of common ancestry and change over time in isolated populations is NOT a difficult topic.

The "general idea of common ancestry" is mostly inadequate. So is the idea of "isolated populations". That in particular is throwing life sciences back a century or more.

I dissagree. I am not saying they are Ignorant on the point that they don't "know" the information but on part that they still think that there is evidence to the contrary.

There is evidence to the contrary. I don't find it convincing and neither do most scientists. But it does exist.

I have heard some of them in debates before. I wasn't terribly impressed as there has yet to be a good substanciated argument against evolution.

I would suggest you read Debating Design, an edited volume put together by Ruse and Dembski. One is absolutely opposed to the idea of any type of design, and the other is for it. The volume is the best one I know of to understand, through one source, how ID proponents and mainstream science agree, fundamentally clash, and overlap.

If there was then people who didn't understand evolution but still tried to "defeat" the theory would be posting copy pasted arguments here.

Evolution isn't a "theory". That's like saying biology is a "theory".

It is a massive theory

See above.

And as far as I know there aren't very many if any conflicts between theories that haven't led to new innovative discoveries. I would actually like to know a few for future refrence.

My "professional" relation with evolution is through mathematics and evolutionary psychology. I find the latter to be a lot of "just so" stories that can by justified without evidence because the evidence is created within the theory. This is quite distinct from more biologically oriented evolution theories.

God of the gaps is a terrible argument that sets themselves up for failure.

True. Unless nobody ever fills the gaps. But as I'm not a theist, I'm not all that concerned with this.

There is no way to prove or disprove it.

That's true of scientific theory in general.

 

[gnostic]

if they dont believe in evolution they shouldnt be forced to teach it as if they believe it*

A science teacher should be teaching science, not theological matters, like creationism or intelligent design. And evolution is biology, hence it is science, which should be damn obvious to you.

Neither creationism nor intelligent design is science.

A biology teacher who doesn't want to teach evolution in biology classroom because of religious beliefs, then he or she shouldn't be teaching biology at all.

Religion shouldn't dictate what is science and what isn't science.

One thing for certain, what you personally believe is your choice, but you have no say over what you considered to be science, or what should be taught in science subjects.

If you don't want to learn biology that is also your choice, and I personally don't give a damn what you choose to do with your life, but please keep your ignorance to yourself, and out of science classrooms.

 

[Reptillian]

Behe, Dembski, Bradley, and others are most certainly not ignorant. I don't agree with them. I think they are wrong about several things and at times I think the way they present arguments to the public is so misleading it might as well be lying. But they do have sophisticated arguments and if they would spend more time trying to answer their challenges they might actually contribute to the life sciences.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. - Thomas Paine

 

[gnostic]

There's that smarmy word again "creationism". ID is not equivalent to YEC, at least not to me. And ID has far more scientific evidence to support it then evolution.

:spit:

:biglaugh:

How in the blooody hell do you define "scientific evidence"?

Because it would seem your definition is completely different to everyone else.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

It isn't simple at all. It is extremely complex. It can be made to sound simple, but so can anything. "God created the universe" is very simple. It just doesn't mean much of anything.

Thats not a good analogy. We aren't saying 'because it happened" we are explaining how it happened. What specifically are you talking about thats so complex that it requires faith like attributes to believe it?

The "general idea of common ancestry" is mostly inadequate. So is the idea of "isolated populations". That in particular is throwing life sciences back a century or more.

I'll be honest. i have no idea where you are going with this. Most people understand the basic concept of evolution. They understand why its true. I don't get where you are going with saying is so complex that people don't understand it. I'm not a biologist. I majored in accounting with a minor in biology. I still don't understand what you are trying to say or prove. You seem to have some problem with me saying that people do understand what evolution is. Unless your talking specifically the genome sequence and how DNA produces mutations.

There is evidence to the contrary. I don't find it convincing and neither do most scientists. But it does exist.

Like? And then its not credible evidence.

I would suggest you read Debating Design, an edited volume put together by Ruse and Dembski. One is absolutely opposed to the idea of any type of design, and the other is for it. The volume is the best one I know of to understand, through one source, how ID proponents and mainstream science agree, fundamentally clash, and overlap.

I might. Seems intresting.

Evolution isn't a "theory". That's like saying biology is a "theory".

I think you are confused about something.

My "professional" relation with evolution is through mathematics and evolutionary psychology. I find the latter to be a lot of "just so" stories that can by justified without evidence because the evidence is created within the theory. This is quite distinct from more biologically oriented evolution theories.

Exactly how? Are you comparing evolution within non-organic systems to the evolution of life on this planet?

True. Unless nobody ever fills the gaps. But as I'm not a theist, I'm not all that concerned with this.

Does not make it any less of a fallacy.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. - Thomas Paine

Perfect.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

What specifically are you talking about thats so complex that it requires faith like attributes to believe it?

I'll give part of a conversation I had about a foundational component to evolution (fitness) with one who's knowledge of biological evolution is superior to my own because her field is biology (of what kind I do not know):

In evolution the only measure of fitness is how many of your genes spread in the population. You can die of old age, but if you don't reproduce you are not truly "fit" from an evolutionary perspective. (unless one counts kin selection)

I asked mainly because evolutionary algorithms talk about fitness and optimization in ways that I suspected differed from biologists. But it was also papers like the following:
"These definitions of ‘‘fitness’’ in terms of actual survival and reproductive success are straightforward and initially intuitively satisfying. However, such definitions lead to justifiable charges that certain explanations invoking fitness differences are circular." [and later on in the paper]
"The identical twins [mentioned earlier in the paper, in a hypothetical situation when one is crushed by lightning] are equally capable of leaving offspring. And the camouflaged butterfly is more capable of leaving offspring than is the noncamouflaged butterfly.
Thus, we suggest that fitness be regarded as a complex dispositional property of organisms. Roughly speaking, the fitness of an organism is its propensity to survive and reproduce in a particularly specified environment and population."
from "The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness" by Mills & Beatty (a paper from the volume Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology 3rd ed.; MIT Press 2006). The next paper in that volume is by Sober, and although he has more detailed stuff going back decades, his comment (or rhetorical question) in his contribution is short and to the point: "The definition of fitness as expected number of offspring has a one-generation time scale. Why think of fitness in this way rather than as having a longer time horizon?" (p. 28)

Second, it isn't clear to me how the use of the term "fitness" computational biology and computational intelligence techniques like evolutionary algorithms (things I am more familiar with) compared to evolutionary biology. Sometimes it seems as if biologists use the term to refer to an organism's "fitness" or "fitness traits" in ways more or less identical to the use in texts which talk about fitness functions (even those which have nothing to do with actual evolution or organisms). For example, "Any phenotypic change, before being fixed as an evolutionary change, goes through two stages. First, it is generated, and then it must undergo a process of selection, in which useful changes, those that improve the fitness of the organism to the environment, or at least do not reduce it, will be conserved and propagated to the progeny." (from the intro to Cabej's Epigenetic Principles of Evolution (Elseviar, 2012).

And in 10.3 of Systems Biology in Practice: Concepts, Implementation and Application (Wiley, 2005) entitled "Prediction of Biological Systems from Optimality Principles" the authors state "Evolution is considered to be without aim or direction, but it forces development of species towards maximizing fitness. The formulation of a function that measures fitness is not straightforward. Several optimality criteria have been proposed."

Which (like the book itself) is an approach to fitness as a function of optimal traits, whether in an organisms or species, but not a measure of progeny nor the number of progeny.

However, this is in contrast to descriptions like yours, also found in numerous other places such as biology textbooks: "Unfortunately, ‘fitness’ is also commonly used to denote the survival-enhancing qualities of individuals, such as size, speed or strength (‘survival of the fittest’), or individual reproductive success (reproductive ‘fitness’)...we shall use ‘fitness’ to refer to the spread of alleles rather than any quality of individuals." (from p. 64 of Barnard's Animal Behaviour: Mechanism, Development, Function and Evolution).

Here Barnard talks about the use of "fitness" as I am more used to the term, but calls it unfortunate compared using the spread of alleles as a definition.

The only way to measure total fitness is long term over single or several generations.

There are two measures used to study fitness over generations... absolute and relative.

I understand (I think) the idea behind frequency approaches (absolute or relative), but it seems as if (and again, prior to this thread my knowledge of biological fitness was quite limited, and although I've done a fair amount of reading since, I'm clearly not in any way capable of knowing what the state of research is here) there are a number of studies which show that frequency of direct or indirect offspring are inadequate. The most scathing evaluation of this approach comes from a fairly recent book in The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology, Robert Reid's Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (MIT Press, 2007):

"neo-Darwinists had no qualms about establishing a precedent when they redefined it as differential survival and reproduction. While this addressed the effects of the process, it left putative causal agents such as competition, predation, and the literal choices that are made in reproductive pairing, and co-evolution, to be tacitly implied. Natural selection is not simply the effect of evolutionary change, but a syndrome of secondary causes and effects. As such, it is a real phenomenon, based in some part on the participation of genes, and not to be abandoned for its creaky logic.

To make matters worse, without a murmur of dissent from the orthodox, evolution itself was re-invented as changes in the distribution of alleles in populations, for the sole purpose of making it match the new definition of natural selection. What cloud of unknowing allowed, and still allows, this to pass without protest?
You can track both of these from one generation to the next, to get an idea of long term fitness. Your long term fitness is not a single steady measure. " (p. 9-10; italics in original)

Only if they do not spread their genes into the population.

In computational appoaches to evolution and fitness "fitness" is based on solutions given the environment in question (which, for my work anyway, rarely has anything to do with an actual physical environment). But wouldn't at least some computational/algorithmic measures of fitness be useable in biological evolution, especially given their use in mathematatical/computational biology and systems biology. See, for example, the edited volume Information Processing and Biological Systems (Intelligent Systems Reference Library,Volume 11; Springer, 2011). Also, as far back as 1998, Auyang's Foundations of Complex-system Theories: In Economics, Evolutionary Biology, and Statistical Physics, Auyang talks about the implicit yet idealized individualism within frequency approaches to fitness in biology, and notes the problems here:
"Does the statistical averaging preserve most important causal mechanisms? Is the correlation among various character types of organisms really negligible? To these controversial questions, genie selectionism not only answers with a blanket yes but asserts that the allele distribution is the correct way to represent evolution. Its opponents counter that although some factorization is inevitable, usually we must retain the correlation among some character types because their functions are biologically inseparable. The indiscriminate use of allele distributions in evolution theory obscures and distorts the causal mechanisms of evolution." (p. 142; emphasis added).

Additionally, using evolutionary algorithms, graph theory, gene expression, and similar adapative algorithms has produced at least some evidence (I say "some" because I can only speak to the fact that I've read some work on this, but have no idea how accepted it is within evolutionary biology or biology as a whole) that emergent genetic networks tend to diverge from the original "parent" patterns, and thus (among other things) frequency approaches to fitness are missing a lot of the actual dynamics in genetic expression by defining fitness based on mutation and its role in the number of heritable genetic traits an organism passes on. The entirety of epigenetics and the ways in which a single organism can produce characteristics which are not the result of inherited genes or of mutations, but rather selectional expression of the organism itself (particularly in development).

Does not make it any less of a fallacy.

It isn't really a fallacy at all. The name comes from arguments for god that disappear as knowledge increases. That just makes them bad arguments and it means the strategy is going to fail (IMO) in the end.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I'll give part of a conversation I had about a foundational component to evolution (fitness) with one who's knowledge of biological evolution is superior to my own because her field is biology (of what kind I do not know):

What is your field if I may ask?
And maybe its because I know more about evolution than the random layman on the street, but that isn't all that complex. I almost view it as common knowledge except for the terminology. But then again I am somewhat well read for a non-scientist about evolution.

It isn't really a fallacy at all. The name comes from arguments for god that disappear as knowledge increases. That just makes them bad arguments and it means the strategy is going to fail (IMO) in the end.

"You don't know therefore god" is a fallacy.

 

[jmn]

The gravity controversy http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refute-gravity-with-new-int,1778/

:sorry1: no controversy:run:

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

What is your field if I may ask?

Who knows at this point. I had to leave my lab because I couldn't afford to live where I did and had to move in with family, and at the moment my "field' is "research consultant" which means that I try to help a company that develops products for researchers who are in everything from applied physics and engineering to the social & behavioral sciences. But I would like to think of my field as cognitive neuropsychology, because that's what I did before I had to move, and that is what I hope to return to in some form or another. Because within the cognitive sciences are theoretical physicists along with philosophers, not to mention engineers & computer scientists, psychologists, and linguists. HCI is fundamentally tied to the cognitive sciences, as is neuroimaging, linguistics, and evolutionary psychology. So I need not necessarily go back to any particular grad program, yet the one I had has certain advantages and I lived there for most of my life.

And maybe its because I know more about evolution than the random layman on the street, but that isn't all that complex.

How would you define "fitness" (in terms of evolution, of course)?

I almost view it as common knowledge except for the terminology.

It's common knowledge that greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the big factor in global warming. The fundamental reason why (feedback mechanisms from various atmospheric, oceanic, and even surface systems) is not. Most people think that the increase in GHGs increases the temperature. Which is true, but if that's all it was we wouldn't be worried. The ways in which these increases change other things like irradiative absorption, cloud coverage and type of cloud coverage, and a great deal more are what matters.

Evolution is similar. It's very easy to say things that are trivially true or true but don't say much of anything important. It's much harder to get at what fundamental components of evolutionary processes, from epigenetics and interactions between species and local environments which change both and therefore make something like "adaption" an incredibly dynamic process to why evolution itself is poorly named because the word suggests a direction that we know doesn't exist.

But then again I am somewhat well read for a non-scientist about evolution.

That's a very good thing to be, in my opinion. And I wouldn't be surprised if by "somewhat" you are being modest.

"You don't know therefore god" is a fallacy.

It is. But the god in the gaps argument is the name given to the belief that arguments which are thought to require a divine explanation are really just things we don't know. People appeal to scientific authority, peer-review, probability, logic, statistics, and all types of things, but never have I head epistemic justification through an appeal such as "well, the god in the gaps argument demonstrates X" or "you see, we can understand this if we apply the god in the gaps argument and realize that a divine creator..."
In other words, it is the name given to a type of argument by people who believe that these are "gaps". People who use these arguments do not view them as gaps, but as things that cannot be explained ever by the sciences or through any other means but divine power. The justification is not, therefore, of the form "you don't know ergo god", but "x cannot be explained except through god". The former is a fallacy, the latter is not. I believe it is wrong, but that's because I see gaps, not god. Those who believe that these are not gaps and require an explanation no science can provide are not arguing that the lack of knowledge entails a divine creator, but that the impossibility of any explanation other than a divine creator entails a divine creator.

It is important, when pointing out fallacies, to note that the reason something is a "fallacy" holds only when one has a particular view. The name "god in the gaps" is a particular way of characterizing beliefs about what cannot currently be explained by those who believe such things can be explained or at least do not require god to explain. From that point of view, it is a fallacy, but as nobody holds that view and believes that a divine creator is necessary to explain "gaps" (why would they call them that if they believed only a divine creator could explain them?), then it is not a fallacy in and of itself. It is just something that has failed over time, and in particular when it comes to evolution.

 

[Red Panda]

I have a degree in zoology. I'm jumping in here to clarify evolution as I haven't seen this point made and it is very important if you're going to debate the subject.

The process of evolution is a fact. It has been demonstrated over and over again. You can prove the process of evolution works. Farmers use the process of evolution when they breed farm animals and when they choose seeds for their crops. You breed this cow with that cow and you get a cow which produces more milk. The same thing happens in nature, this lion mates with that lion and you get a cub that has characteristics of both parents.

The theory of evolution says that from this process of evolution all life forms evolved from the first single cell organisms. This takes a very very long time to happen. In the case of Darwin's finches, it took many generations for the different species to emerge from the parent species which got blown to the Galapagos from South America. It is not the parents are ground finches and the children are small tree finches. The changes are very small and incremental. The difference between parents and children are hardly noticeable. But over time those small changes build up until there are separate species.

The process of evolution is a fact. The theory of evolution is open to debate, because it is a theory.

 

[Father Heathen]

[youtube]fqs9DYisSsg[/youtube]
No no no Donkey - Family Guy - YouTube

 

[Skwim]

I have a degree in zoology. I'm jumping in here to clarify evolution as I haven't seen this point made and it is very important if you're going to debate the subject.

The process of evolution is a fact. It has been demonstrated over and over again. You can prove the process of evolution works. Farmers use the process of evolution when they breed farm animals and when they choose seeds for their crops.

While selective breeding often involves bringing out certain traits in a species, just as evolution does, it isn't really evolution. Breeding involves selecting specific traits before mating, in anticipation that the resulting trait will be more beneficial, either to the breeder or to the organism. Evolution does not. Evolution is more of a crap shoot, wherein the resulting change may or may not be beneficial. Moreover, unlike evolution, selective breeding almost never results in a new species. Selective breeding is a purposeful enterprise. Evolution is not.