# "Proving" Evolutions **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 20, 2004, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proving-evolutions/246103 "2004-05-20T02:25:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proving-evolutions/246103/21 "2004-05-20T22:39:22Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Padeye wrote: > > That’s a faulty argument because people were around to document the U.S. Civil War though words and photographs. > > 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. A year or so ago CSPAN2 had a Book TV program by a photo guy who went through the history of photographic faking. Such fakery started almost as soon as photography did and if will done was difficult to detect. Experts could do it quite well although we only know for sure that they could detect those that they could detect. We have no idea how much fakery went undetected. _Ergo_, simply showing photgraphs of the purported US Civil war doesn’t prove anything. And I read a real exciting book about the history and exploits of one Peter Blood which was just as detailed as anything written about the supposed Civil War. But the book _Captain Blood_ is fiction, I think, and so could be all those stories about the Civil War. It seems to me that the evidence for evolutionary processes acting throughout time is every bit as good as the evidence for the Civil War. PS, I’m quite convinced in the reality of the Civil War. ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proving-evolutions/246103/22 "2004-05-20T23:27:19Z")
**CurtC** Well I was going to mention about e=mc² but it seems that **Epimetheus** did a fine job explaining it. Anyway, my point being, how could Hiroshima and Nagasaki have undergone such incredible devastation from one bomb each? After all, e=mc² is “just a theory”. For another explanation of e=mc² please go to: [www.1728.com/einstein.htm](http://www.1728.com/einstein.htm) ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proving-evolutions/246103/23 "2004-05-21T00:01:01Z")
> [@citrus x paradisi](#): > > How can I prove the theory of evolution to the ignorant masses here? “You know how, every winter, there are news articles about some new strain of flu that’s resistant to drugs and people have to be careful? _That’s_ evolution in action.” ---
**Author:** ![spudmama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@spudmama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spudmama)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2004, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proving-evolutions/246103/24 "2004-05-23T19:46:56Z")
\*What people mean when they say something is only a theory is that something is only a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an idea or opinion that can be tested but has not yet been tested or, if tested, could not be substantiated. A theory is the result of testing a hypothesis and finding the hypothesis was substantiated and that the results of those tests can be duplicated. Because science is dependent upon knowledge available at the time of testing, a new theory may be required to accomodate new information. Developing scientific theory is a “best fit” proceedure. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proving-evolutions/246103.md?page=1)