Quote: (06-05-2015 11:48 AM)Samseau Wrote:
Fixed that for you. And the answer is yes. No man is infallible.
The presence of fallibility does not make something someone believes to be dogmatic. Otherwise, everyone in the world is dogmatic.
Furthermore, I have yet to see anyone in this thread claim that they could never be wrong about evolution or anything else for that matter.
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Right. Which is why I'm laughing hard at the guys who are crying at a critique of selfish gene theory. Selfish gene theory is woefully inadequate to describe organisms like ants, bees, many types of apes, other social animals (even dolphins), and especially humans.
What's your point?
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The thing is, evolutionary theory hasn't really been strengthened at all since Darwin conceived it. The fact of the matter, what most people believe today has almost nothing to do with what Darwin wrote. Don't get me wrong; Darwin was a genius. But his original ideas have been adapted to fit into Gregor Mendel's genetics, as well as Watson and Crick's DNA theory.
1) That's not true at all. For example, Darwin's introduction of natural selection to this day still remains a pillar of the theory of evolution.
2) This is a natural course of research. Someone makes a relative breakthrough and his ideas are challenged or modified to fit more systematic and larger bodies of evidence that are brought upon by the community by experimentation and further research.
To claim that evolutionary theory hasn't been strengthened since Darwin (and by the way others such as Wallace were working on evolutionary theory at the same time and before as well, is foolhardy. The theory of evolution has gone from a basic idea and some ground-breaking research to a monolithic and multi-branch theory that has been tested in various forms thousands and thousands of times in the last 200 years.
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That's not how good science works. It's not the experiments which verify theories that are important, it's the experiments which falsify a theory which are important. Google "Karl Popper Falsification" for more info on how science makes progress.
Not true at all. Any research that either builds on a foundation of knowledge or disproves something is equally celebrated by the science community. Research in general is the driving force of science and academia, the creation of new knowledge is the result whether it strengthens or weakens some paradigm.
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All scientific theories suffer from errors, because all humans are full of errors, and evolution is especially erroneous because there is such a dearth of information needed to truly make the theory respectable:
- Massive gaps in the fossil record
- No one has yet to create a new specie using evolutionary theories
- Selfish gene theory does not describe how social organisms work
Classic trite reasons for arguing against evolutionary theory.
1) Gaps in fossil records is not a good measure of the validity of the theory of evolution. Expecting everything to be perfectly fossilized in a constantly changing biosphere like earth is ridiculous. Furthermore, many organisms do not fossilize well in any circumstances. The fossil record is extensive and we have found copious examples of transitional fossils.
2) The incompleteness of Evolutionary theory has no relevance when discussing the validity of the theory of evolution. All theories have gaps, the point of any researcher is to identify those gaps and research/produce knowledge on them.
3) Competing theories within the broader theory of evolutionary theory does not mean the theory is not valid. Scientists do not dismiss the theory of evolution, but there is certainly contention on the processes of how it happens and other matters. Just because one possible explanation/hypothesis isn't completely concrete in its applicability doesn't mean the whole theory of evolution is invalid.