If the question is** “Is it a fact that species evolve?”** then the answer should be yes, regardless of one’s opinion - the fossil record clearly shows species adopting advantageous genetic traits over the course of many generations, and the process of genetic adaptation can be observed in a lab, and even in some moth species observed to adapt their coloration in response to changing environmental factors.
If the question is "Is the theory of evolution a fact, and does this disprove creationism or intelligent design?" - not so much. In my informed layman’s opinon, yes. But the scientific method doesn’t work that way, especially when the alternative “theory” isn’t really a theory and cannot be tested in any meaningful way, such as with intelligent design and creationism.
This untestability means that no scientist worth their salt would offer any such affirmation in any official capacity - if it can’t be tested, it simply can’t be disproven scientifically. You may as well ask them to disprove that Superman exists, or that there are invisible gremlins inside your refrigerator that turn the light off when you close the door. They may offer an opinion that creationism/intelligent design are wrong, but they won’t put it forth as scientific fact.
And unfortunately, that scientific and logical rigor, is one of the things that makes things so muddy for the masses who simply don’t understand science at a fundamental level. Folks who, in my experience, largely tend to give “facts” more credence based on how loud and negative the person asserting the “fact” is. Some people love to be told “this is right and that is wrong”, but they aren’t so big on “this is proven, but we can’t rule out other possibilities”.
And before someone comes in and makes some analogy like I’ve seen here before: “Is the sky blue or red? If blue, then it can’t be red. Thus if evolution is true, intelligent design is not”… Please don’t pass your fallacies off as scientific methodology. I know that evolution is true, but I also know that science will never disprove the alternatives - science doesn’t work that way.
Descent with modification is a fact. The fossil record is a fact. The relatedness of different species via DNA is a fact. Morphological similarities between different species is a fact. Etc.
Evolution by natural selection is the best (only) theory we have to explain those facts. Other hypotheses fail to explain the facts nor do they make predictions that can be tested. Thus they remain hypothesis, at best, and debunked “junk science” at worst.
Selective breeding is a fact and has been proven over and over. What hasn’t been demonstrated is that it leads to speciation. Yes look at all the breeds of dogs. We have had plenty of time. I have recently seen esitmates of the domestication of dogs ranging from 12,000 to 100,000 years. Yet they can still freely interbreed with wolves.
Also, how can anybody prove God didn’t create the universe with the appearance of age? Who was there with their note book? What I think is a big joke are the creationists looking for a mistake to prove the world was created with age. If God chose to do that, he didn’t make any mistakes.
First, hypotheses are by default incorrect, so until the intelligent design and creationist community can give some evidence, we don’t have to disprove anything.
However, both these hypotheses make testable predictions. ID predict that there should be at least some features which cannot be explained by evolution, which is what Behe was all about. He at least knew what had to be done. None have been found. Creationism made a lot more testable predictions, all of which were falsified over 200 years ago. We are now on Creationism theory rev 1,875,234. All of them fail at making predictions, but get revised to account for unexpected data, and in an inelegant way.
Elegant creationism is Goddidit, but they can’t pretend that is science which can be taught in schools.
While dogs haven’t speciated yet (perhaps because we don’t isolate breeds) lab rats from the same stock and sent to colonies on the West and East coasts have.
I would say: “common descent is a fact”, evolution explains this fact (the theory of evolution; natural selection, genetic drift, sexual selection, etc).
+1 this is better than what I said. You could throw in something about refuted theories that competed with evolution (say lamarkianism, lysenkoism), and then point out that creationism is not a scientific theory.
Clearly there are minds better versed than I in the intricacies of the scientific method working on this one. I’ll be over here chewing on a size 10 Vans.
Yes indeed. Notably, creationism, coupled with the conditions (that tend to be rather important to religious people) that the creator be highly intelligent, knowledgeable, powerful, benevolent, and sane, leads to the prediction that similar environments will contain the same species (those species that are, by design, well adapted to that sort of environment), or, at least, similar and closely taxonomically related species. This is not in fact the case, as Darwin realized during his voyage around the world. In fact, from a creationist perspective, the way species and higher taxonomic groups are distributed in isolated environments, such as oceanic islands, makes sense only if God utterly insane. On the other hand, the distribution makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. It was this realization that led Darwin to give up on creationism and to seek to discover a viable mechanism for evolution. Working out that mechanism (natural selection with variation) took him several more years of research and hard thinking, but he was motivated to do it because he already knew that creationism just could not be true.
These two sentences are inconsistent. A theory must be consistent with the facts, as per your first sentence. If observable facts become inconsistent, the theory must be wrong or revised. So long as the observation of facts is consistent with a theory, then it is a good theory. The theory adequately explains the observation of the consistent repetition of events. The events are the facts. The explanation of them is the theory.
Nobody can, because that explanation is pat. “God created the universe to arbitrarily appear exactly as it is” isn’t really debateable, but it’s not particularly explanatory or elegant, and, as you point out, there’s no way to provide evidenciary support either for or against it.
This argument is precisely what the “invisible unicorn” metaphor was created to address.
I don’t think that’s considered a fact. I agree with John Mace, that it is the best theory we have, but that’s not that same as it being a fact. Unless I’m misunderstanding you, or Mr. Mace. I take it you mean that we all life shares a common origin. Is that right?
“Fact” is a really, really lousy term in a scientific context. Any time it’s used, it’s basically the wrong word. It’s a term used to signify a certain level of acceptance / reliability, but it’s so semantically loaded that it’s almost always the wrong word to use.
Trying to differentiate between “fact” and “theory” and “evidence” and “law” is impossible not because the distinctions are fuzzy but because there’s no sliding scale at all.
Theories don’t “graduate” to being fact – the best ones remain theories, simply ones with an increasing body of supportive evidence.
“Fact” essentially implies that something could not be wrong. The only ideas to which this ever accurately applies are nondisprovable, and nondisprovable concepts cannot be examined by science meaningfully.
It’s about as close to a fact as we can get in science. All known life on Earth shares a common genetic code, in that the same DNA base triplets code for the same amino acids in every organism (with some minor exceptions). Since there is no necessary biochemical reason for this to be so besides common descent (and it would be astronomically unlikely for it to happen by chance) all life we know of must have a common origin.
They’re not inconsistent at all. They’re about two different things; the meaning of one has no bearing on the meaning of the other. I despair to explain, because it appears that while you know some stuff about science, you don’t understand science. Believe what you will.
I think only mathematics could be said to be “fact”.
2+2=4 is a fact. There is no way around it in any universe I can imagine.
Gravity is a bit lower on the scale but one I would still call a “fact”. Grab a pen and drop it. It falls to the floor. Has happened the same way since, well, forever. That makes gravity a “fact” in any meaningful definition of “fact”. The theory lies in us not knowing what mechanisms make the pen fall. We can talk about gravitons or the curvature of space but no one can say for certain how it works. They come up with excellent models that can predict its behavior but what is happening at the fundamental level remains a question mark. That said the models we have work great if you want to do something like orbit a satellite. We may not know precisely how gravity holds a satellite in orbit but we know gravity exists and we know with great precision how it works.
So too with Evolution.
Does it occur? Without a doubt. The evidence for it occurring is indisputable.
Again though, like gravity, the actual mechanisms of it remain in doubt. We know a lot and like gravity can construct models that give us great answers for the most part. It is an excellent theory of how living things grow/change/adapt but the fundamental mechanisms remain somewhat opaque.
If you let me define the axiom system, I can make 2+2 equal anything you want. I can make it equal 0 quite easily, in fact. I’m not saying the resulting axiom system would be interesting or useful to you or anyone else, but I can do it, and the equality would be perfectly true within that axiom system.
My point is that axiom systems allow us to derive truths, but they are only true within the axiom system from which they are derived; they may be false or meaningless in other axiom systems, and are only relevant to the outside world as descriptions or models of physical relationships and processes. However, something that is true within an axiom system is always and absolutely true within that axiom system. That kind of absoluteness is not available to us in the physical world.
The interesting part about this question does not actually regard the evidence for evolution (which is overwhelming). The issue is what a fact is. People seem to have a lot of different views on this but I agree with the others who argue that “fact” is not really a scientific term so it is difficult to apply it to a scientific theory. But what IS a fact? Is it fact or opinion that Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever? If forced to pick I’d probably say opinion but what about the notion that Bill Gates is not the best basketball player ever? Looks like a fact.