There also is no proof positive that macro evolution, i.e. one species generating another ever occurred. On a micro scale mini evoltion occurs but according to well defined rules. See Gregor Mendel’s hybridizantion via Google et al.
A closed mind is difficult if not impossible to penetrate. "My mind is made up, I will not listen to ‘contray opinions.’ I will not engage in open debate with an opponet I conside being unworthy.
This is why, in Australia at least, we often speak of judges “ennumerating” or “identifying” new rights, rather than “inventing” them.
Sorry, that was meant to have a quote of Bricker’s and David’s discussion.
A simple question. Do you hold these views for religious reasons? If so, do you accept that the Establishement Clause of the First Amendment prevents the US government from sponsoring them?
There is lots and lots of evidence for macroevolution. You are misinformed. Speciation has been directly observed. You could also try googling for “retrogenes.” Speciation is a proven fact.
There is also no mechanistic difference between “micro” and “macro” evolution. Macro is just a whole bunch of micro.
Nevertheless, we will still have a mission to combat ignorance and we will correct your factual errors regardless of your own willingness to listen.
Macroevolution is observed fact in the same way that tree growth is observed fact; nobody has ever sat and continuously watched an acorn until it grows into a mature oak tree; all they’ve done is observed and correlated a vast number of ‘micro’ growth events. That oak trees grow from acorns is the only conclusion sanely supported by the entirety of the evidence (and is not contradicted by any of it); so it is also with macroevolution.
spingears, what prevents microevolution changes from adding up to macroevolution changes and speciation? Does God prevent it from happening?
And springears, just to make things clear, how do you define
Do you mean a dog changing into a cat, or just two subpopulations that can no longer successfully breed together? Much opposition to evolution lies in a lack of understanding what it says, as opposed to what opponents claim it says.
There are, in my reading, at least two major findings. One follows more naturally from the other. The first finding was that ID is not a scientific statement, it is a religious one. This was established by proving its ties to creationism and showing that a reasonable man would associate ID with religion. The two-part Endorsement Test and the three-part Lemon test both check to see if the statute/action on the part of the state have the effect of being religious. So this finding of fact is really the key one as it would cause the board’s decision to be struck down no matter what their motives were.
The second major finding of fact was about the intent of the school board. Their intent was clearly to have teachers make religious statements in a classroom. The first finding of fact showing ID as being definitively a religious statement makes this conclusion inescapable. Also supporting this finding of fact was the minutes from the board meetings where some members clearly identified their motives as religious. The three-part Lemon test has a part which examines the motives for a legal action and if the motives are forbidden, as explicitly religious motives for state actions are, then it fails the test.
Bricker’s commentary mentioned the second finding of fact, but not the first. The second finding of fact is less broad-ranging than the first. Without the first finding this case could not be used as precedent for future ID in schools cases where explicit religious motives of the administration/board were not present.
Enjoy,
Steven
I protest the words “new rights.” This difference of opinion will last interminably. There are those who live in the days of the divine right of kings where the sovereign deigned to give rights to his or her subjects and they aren’t going to change.
I know it’s futile but I feel the need to point out that ain’t the basis for the US Constitution, which is by the people, whenever the subject arises.
Sort of like a company protecting its registered trademarks.
As you so often do, you have grossly overrepresented your position to the point of diseminating ignorance.
Speciation is not a fact, it is a scientific theory, albeit a particularly well supported theory. There are no proven facts in science, and speciation is no exception.
A couple of simple questions Diogenes.
If, as you claim, speciation is proven fact doesn’t that mean that there is no possibility of it being discovered to be false?
If the potential exists that it may one day be shown to be untrue doesn’t that mean that it is not a proven fact?
But isn’t the possibility of falsification a key element required for any mechanism to be scientific?
Doesn’t claiming that speciation is a proven fact mean that it isn’t scientific, by definition?
Seriously Diogenes, I suggest you go and read some Popper and some Gould before making comments like this. There are no proven facts in science, only theories with varying degrees of evidential support. As soon as anyone claims that something is proven fact then what they are discussing is no longer scientific. To remain scientific a concept has to admit to the posibility of being incompatible with the facts.
And as I have pointed out to you before, there are numerous evolutionary biologists who have been published in numerous perr reviwed journals who say excatly the opposite. In this instance you have repeated this claim despite the fact that you have been informed of this before, so you are now disseminating ignorance knowingly, not just as a result of actual ignorance on your part. Nevertheless we have a mission to combat ignorance and we will correct your factual errors every time we notice yopu posting them, regardless of your own willingness to listen.
Erwin, D.H., 2000; Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution. Evo. & Devpt. 2:2
"The attractiveness of macroevolution reflects the exhaustive documentation of large-scale patterns which reveal a richness to evolution unexplained by microevolution. If the goal of evolutionary bviolgy is to understand the history of life rather than simply document the experimental anlysis of evolution studies from palaeontology, phylogenetics, developmental biology and other fields demand the deeper view provided by macroveolution.
…
In particular palaeontologists and other macroevolutionists point to a range of phenomena that suggest dicontinuities between microevolution and some forms of macroevolution and in the interactions between some clades."
I get the impression that you may already have an answer to this, but I would still argue that there are such things as “proven facts” in science, while agreeing that there’s no such thing as a “proven theory”.
Pick up a stone, and drop it. Carry this out in front of objective, independent witnesses who can verify what happens. You have just proved the fact of gravity, beyond any doubt - apart from fanciful speculations that you, and your observers, are all subject to mass hallucination, or something of the sort. Similar arguments can (and have been, notably by Descartes), been used to show that absolute proof, even of something like “2 + 2 = 4”, is impossible, but that’s not relevant to this particular point. This fact can then be used to provide additional support to the theory of gravity, although that theory (Newton’s, Einstein’s, or anyone else’s) can never be proved to the same level of confidence.
This is the core of (what I consider to be) your mistake - you’re shifting from “fact” or “theory” to “mechanism”.
A scientific theory must, indeed, be falsifiable. But theories are falsified by facts - and these must be “proven facts” if they’re going to be regarded by the scientific community as challenging the theory.
I don’t think that “mechanism” is a precisely-defined scientific word; however, I don’t think it can mean both “fact” and “theory”, as your argument requires it to.
Your interjection would have worked better, had you not switched terms in the middle.
Speciation would not meet my definition of “mechanism.” I would see speciation as an observed event, the mechanism of which would be subject to hypothesis, examination, and theory.
We have cases of living beings which interbred and the descendants of which cannot interbreed–which satifies one definition of species. How that inability to interbreed came about can be described through hypotheses or theories, but the observation is, indeed, a fact. That hardly makes it “not scientific.” Water boils. That is an observed fact. The hows may be theoretical, but the event is real.
Exactly. The right to privacy does not have to be found by some Supreme Court hack. It is ours already. We have to sieze it for ourselves and defend it. Eventually, the right to housing, food and clothing will be so recognized. But that’ll take awhile. Especially in these parts.
Who exactly doesn’t recognize the right for people to wear clothing?
Speciation is an observed phenomenon. It is as much a “fact” as the freezing point of water.
You really should make an effort to understand the terminology before you spout off like this. Speciation is neither a theory nor a mechanism. It is a result of mutation and adaptation and it’s a phenomenon which has been directly observed. It’s also a result which can be unequivocally confirmed by infererred genetic evidence such as retrogenes.
Is it unscientific to say that “it’s a proven fact” that the earth goes around the sun? Speciation is an observed phenomenon, both directly and indirectly. Evolutionary theory is merely an explanation for that phenomenon.
You’re telling me to read Popper and you think speciation is a “scientific theory.” . Physician, heal thyself.
All of this misses the real point which is that there is no mechanistic difference between so-called “micro” and “macro” evolutionary events. Enough “micro” MUST lead to “macro” unless something stops it. As long as mutation and heredity are pressured by a sorting mechanism (like natural selection), speciation MUST occur unless something stops it. What mechanism do you believe would stop it, and how do you explain the observed instances of speciation? How do you explain retrogenes?
No, you have not proved the fact of gravity. People were well aware that stones fell when dropped for thousands of millennia before gravity was accepted or even thought of. If you believe the mere dropping of stones proves gravity why did it take so long for the concept to even be considered, much less accepted? Clearly the act of dropping a stone did not prove gravity to the vast majority off observers.
All that dropping a stone proves is that the stone dropped, in fact all it proves is that you remember perceiving that it dropped. Mere accumulation of observational evidence does not constitute proof or fact. People had accumulated observational evidence that the sun revolved around the Earth for thousands of years. That did not make it a proven fact.
On the contrary, I am remaining consistent while you are apparently attempting to beg the question.
We are discussing the status of “speciation”, whether it is a “proven fact” as DtC claimed, or whether it is a well-supported scientific theory. We can not construct any pertinent argument by describing it as either a fact or a theory at the outset. That would be a clear case of begging the question. We need to refer to it as something that is neither fact nor theory, but potentially capable of being either. Would you agree with that?
And if you do agree that we need a neutral term for our argument than what do you see as being problematic with “mechanism”? A mechanism can potentially be a fact or a theory can’t it? And speciation is a mechanism isn’t it? If you have any legitimate concerns with the use of the word mechanism then I will cheerfully substitute any other neutral term you choose such as entity. It will make no difference at all to my argument.
No they aren’t. They are falsified by observational evidence. There are no facts in science.
Cite! Seriously, please show me one reputable source that even claims that there are any proven facts in science, much less that the only evidence acceptable in science is proven fact.
I can’t think of one theory that has been successfully challenged by anything other than observational evidence.
Well first off you are begging the question again. You can’t imply as you did that “fact” is a precisely-defined scientific word and use that in an argument to establish the existence of facts in science.
Moreover you need to expand on the whole line of reasoning, because it seems that you have just started arguing my case for me.
Just to assist you, a mechanism is “An instrument or a process, physical or mental, by which something is done or comes into being”.
Evolution itself is theory is it not?
And it is certainly a physical process by which things come into being, so it’s mechanism, right?
But you now seem to be saying that since evolution is a theory and a mechanism it can not be a fact. IOW you seem to be arguing my case for me, but at a much more fundamental level than I did myself, since if we don’t accept evolution as fact we certainly can’t accept evolutionary speciation as fact.
As I just pointed out I never switched terms anywhere.
Then perhaps you could tell us what your definition of mechanism is then, and where you have taken it from? And in what ways you think that speciation is not a mechanism?
I just gave my definition of mechanism and it certainly meets that doesn’t it? It’s a physical process by which new species come into being?
In fact the reason why I used the term mechanism is because Henderson’s defines speciation as “the evolution of species; development of a specific quality; the process of species formation.” And evolution itself is commonly defined as a process that produces novel traits etc.
Well since you have chosen to make this a semantic argument can we please see your reference that defines speciation as an event rather than a process or development? I’m not requesting evidence of observed speciation events but rather support for your belief that speciation is an event, which is quite different.
No, it is an observation, not a fact. You are using the two terms as though they are synonymous. They are not. Not every observation is a fact. I observed David Copperfield flying, that does not make it a fact that he did fly does it?
No that is an opinion of yours, and an incorrect one. There are an infinite number of conditions under which water does not and will not boil. It is clearly not a fact that water boils. At which point you then need to narrow it down to specific conditions of temperature and pressure, which starts to get towards the truth, which is merely that no one has ever observed water not boil under some conditions. That is not in any way the same as you declaration that it is a fact that water boils. Yet that is how science works.
Semantics aside, we do have to agree that speciation has not been observed, except perhaps for single celled organism that do not reproduce sexually. In that case, though, the term species is not well defined. We simple call two population different species based on either structural or DNA analysis.
We infer that speciation of higher organism has occured from the fossil record and from DNA and morphological data, but we have never observed one species split into two, AFAIK.
But that doesn’t make speciation unscientific any more than the existence of the electron is unscientific. No one has directly observed an electron-- we infer its existence from observations of its interaction with matter and energy.
I think that scientists use the terms “fact” and “data” interchangeably, in the sense of “data” that has been recognized and accepted as reproducible. In that sense, there is nothing wrong with saying that evolution or speciation is a fact. It is something that we know has happened. Otherwise, you end up having to say that we don’t know anything. And while that might be an interesting philosophical point, it makes no sense to talk about science if we don’t actually know anything.
Meaning that it isn’t a fact at all. There are no facts in science. I notice that you are now including quotation marks around the word fact, something you initially neglected to do, so I assume you are beginning to see your major error here.
Speciation is not a fact, neither is the freezing point of water. Those are two well supported theories, but both remain theories and always will do.
A few more simple questions for you to try to duck DtC, like you ducked my last ones.
Do you believe that all scientific concepts start out as hypotheses?
If so at what point does a hypothesis such as “the freezing point of water” becomes a fact?
Ooh, I’m gonna enjoy this, coz you see, I made suremy ducks were in a row before I posted. I have references to support what I said. Let’s see if DtC can say the same.
Cite. I have provided a reference that says that speciation is a process (and hence a mechanism if you believe it produces something).
Cite.
You really should think before posting such massive blanket statements. I really look forward to this evidence that shows a 100% certainty that speciation can be inferred from genetic evidence. After al that is what you just claimed when you used the word unequivocal. So come on mate, trot out the journal that published results with 100% statistical confidence.
Let me guess, once again you have made a blanket claim that you can’t support in any way at all, right.
According to Gould, popper and others yes. Can we please see the literature that you are using as the basis for your position that at some point a hypothesis like the heliocentric model becomes a fact? Whose scientific method is that?
No one ever said otherwise.
Cite.
You have a lot of invective and certainty in your posts DtC, but can wee see any actual evidence to support your claims? In this case some evidence that speciation is a scientific fact and not a theory?
If you bothered to do some basic research you would see that there are numerous respected evolutionary biologists published in reputable peer-reviewed journals who believe that there are mechanistic differences between “micro” and “macro” evolutionary events. (No quotations are required BTW, these are standard and well defined term sin evolutionary biology). Did you actually bother to research the state of the science of this topic before posting with such certainty?
Once again, this is weaseling. You did not say that A must lead to B. You said that there is no mechanistic difference between A & B. I just provided one refercne which says quite explicitely that thisi not the case and can provide many more if requested. At what point are you willing to accept that, at the very least, there is considerable scientific debate about whether macro and micro evolution are mechanistically different?
Dude, can we please see some evidence to support your claim that there is no mechanistic difference between macro and micro evolution? I’ve already shown you evidence to the contrary.