To Whom It May Concern: This is not a debate. This is indeed a GQ topic.
How can I prove the theory of evolution to the ignorant masses here? Their statements are thus:
Help me fight ignorance directly, like in the good ol’ days. 
Thanks! 
You can’t. Science isn’t about proof - you want proof, look to mathematics. Science is about falsifiability. Come up with a hypothesis, indicate what would show it to be false, and then set out to falsify it. If, after multiple attempts from a variety of angles the hypothesis holds (i.e., has not been falsified) then you may well have yourself a theory.
Evolution is falsifiable, therefore it is scientific. This is true for both the process (that evolution occurs) and the mechanisms (how evolution occurs). Evolution via natural selection has stood up to pretty much every test that has been thrown at it. Thus, we can state with a high degree of confidence that “that’s the way it is”. We cannot know that it is Truth (complete with capital T), but we can be pretty doggone sure that it’s close.
I think the SDMB prohibits linking directly to other message boards, so I’ll describe it. If you go to the JREF home page (jref.org), then click to the Forums, in the Science/Mathematics Forum, there is a thread titled “A Question on Evolution.” It’s basically this same question.
About #1, a contributor posted this: “The word theory means ‘a large coherent body of accepted facts and laws to describe and make predictions of natural phenomena, usually repeated tested and much evidence to ground it’.” Theory doesn’t mean that it’s tentative, it means that it’s a big-picture explanation of a bunch of facts, and in the case of evolution, it is an extremely well-supported theory.
#2: When I’ve seen it argued that evolution cannot be proven, it’s usually then stated that no one was around to see it. Well, OK, but in that case, the theory that “the U.S. Civil War happened” also cannot be proven, since no one alive today was around to see it. But there is more evidence that evolution has happened than that the Civil War happened.
#3: Not sufficient evidence? All I have to do is walk outside and I’m overwhelmed by the evidence. This person needs to open his eyes.
http://www.talkorigins.org/ is your friend:
1) A theory means it is unprovable/not completely true. (This one has a tiny correspondence to fact. At least it’s better than the old “just a theory” silliness. However, while not “provable” a theory in scientific nomenclature indicates the hypothesis that does the best job of explaining the known facts while supported by the best evidence and logic.)
For the response to “It’s just a theory,” see Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact.
In fact, here is an Index to Creationist Claims (philosophical and theological)
and above that An Index to Creationist Claims
and the Talk Origins Site map
Is there any difference between evolution and adaptation?
I see to recall reading about a white moth in England back during the Industrial Revolution that turned black because the trees it used turned back with coal dust.
Evolution or adaptation?
The “just a theory” alleged argument against evolution really bothers me. Yes, I do tell people that the common usage and the scientific usage of that word are vastly different. I like to argue that if Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is “just a theory”, please ask the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki about their views of it.
Scientific American published a great article entitled:15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense which should help you immensely.
A few clarifications:
Reeder: I don’t know about ‘adaptation’ as a truly scientific term. I think an individual can adapt and alter its behavior, but only populations can evolve. IANA[Evolutionary Biologist], though, so take that with a grain of salt. :o
Thanks again, all.
Adaptation (as a process, rather than a specific structure) is evolution via natural selection.
This one is more tricky than it might seem. Basically, the change in moth color was, indeed, an adaptation produce through natural selection. What remains questionable is the source of the selective pressures which drove the change. See here for a discussion.
The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner is a beautiful book on the evidence for evolution. Won the Pulitzer Prize.
Anyhow, my take is that the fact that evolution happens is pretty well proven. Change through time via natural selection – a fact.
Now, there are actually a number of competing theories to explain how various aspects of it happen. But that doesn’t make evolution itself less factual.
After all, we knew for millennia that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west every day, but we’ve only known how for a relatively short while. (And some folks still disagree about it.)
We haven’t worked out all the lovely details just yet, though we have a pretty good general picture of the hows and whys.
But – bottom line – evolution happens.
It would probably be a good idea to find out what they mean when they say “theory of evolution”, otherwise you can come back with all sorts of interesting information and they’ll just calming blink at you and say “Well, that’s not what I was talking about.” it wasn’t uncommon for me to agree that whatever their concept of the “theory of evolution” happened to be was utter crap… and then ask them if they wanted to learn some real science. It’s all about controlling the terms under discussion. Agree on definitions, then you can debate.
Evolution is a change in the genetic structure of a population over time. Such changes are known to actually occur, they have been observed. Evolution is a fact. There are evolutionary theories, of course, but they shouldn’t be confused with the documented process of evolution… as the only way we can have evolutionary theories is by using the data collected from observed evolutionary events, noting the characteristics of that data, and looking for these characteristics elsewhere. When we find these characteristic traces of evolution (for example, in the shared hierarchies of genes across all forms of life on Earth) the theory part comes in by suggesting that we find these patterns because evolution occurred (though we did not, in fact, observe it ourselves in these cases). It’s no more controversal than observing that bullets make bulletholes, and so, upon finding a something giving all impressions of being a bullethole, concluding it was made by a bullet.
You might want to stop arguing with this technique, since (as far as I’m aware) there is no significant link between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Theory of Relativity.
That’s a faulty argument because people were around to document the U.S. Civil War though words and photographs.
From:
This is in the section about special relativity.
Scientists are like economists-- they keep taking regular words and turning them into jargon. As if gravity is only a ‘theory’. Harrumph.
However, it should also be pointed out that not all evolution is adaptive. “Evolution” at its most basic is a change in gene frequencies in a population. This can happen due to “genetic drift,” that is changes purely due to chance (usually only effective in a very small population), competition between genes themselves within the genome, hijacking of the genome by retroviruses and certain other parasites, etc.
You might also add that they are confusing “theory” with “hypothesis”. Once they understand the difference, and that there actually is a word for something unproven, they might be more understanding of what a “theory” actually is.
“Unproven” was probably a bad choice of words. Probably should have written “with little or no data to back it up” or “untested”.
Ha!
Two very good friends of mine (both extremely intelligent, rational people) have an ongoing bet between the two of them. One posits that the other cannot prove that gravity exists. The conditions of the bet are thus:
Each have placed a sum of money (~$25) in a trust account, to be paid to either the winner, or the heir of the winner.
If “F” (he who asserts gravity is unproveable) ever refers to gravity, he loses the bet (as he has accepted its existence at that moment). As a result, every time he does refer to gravity, he’ll refer to “gravity” or “the unproven theory of gravity”.
If either person involved in the bet discover a scientific article/journal/whathaveyou that completely proves or disproves and explains the nature of gravity, the bet is over.
It’s been going on for years, and it’s hilarious whenever it comes up.
Who you gonna believe, a few written words and photographs, or millions upon millions of fossils located all around the world, plus gobs and gobs of DNA evidence?
I guess my point was that the creationist argument that there was no one around to see it, really is about no one alive today to act as an eyewitness, which is also true about the Civil War. All we have is circumstanial evidence, which in the context of science is much better than eyewitnesses anyway.