You seem really really taken in by this bizarre, almost metaphorical idea of vision being essential to science. What we have in evolution is no different than what we have in any other empirical study: we have evidence. Either that evidence supports evolution, or it doesn’t, or it supports something else. This “watching” or “snapshot” idea just isn’t relevant.

“While politics surrounding the Theory of Evolution is unfortunate, I don’t think the theory wrong or poorly studied; I just think its proof remains beyond us. That is blasphemy? Is science is about the quest for knowledge or the worship of knowledge? Does skepticism have its place or do you treat such as heresy?”

Good skepticism is INFORMED skepticism. Dissembling about how the evidence works in evolution, and just how strong the evidence is, isn’t skepticism. It’s apologia. Suggesting with a straight face that the evidence just as well could imply that all creatures were created at the same time in a Garden of Eden just isn’t within the realm of reality.

What I find it interesting about this discussion is how this exercise began with two theories. Yet you fellows are spending all your time trying to convince me of the theory I find least objectionable.

While politics surrounding the Theory of Evolution is unfortunate, I don’t think the theory wrong or poorly studied; I just think its proof remains beyond us. That is blasphemy? Is science is about the quest for knowledge or the worship of knowledge? Does skepticism have its place or do you treat such as heresy?

The Theory of Global Warming, on the other hand, is almost entirely wrapped in politics. Rather than scientific analysis, we have fear-mongering – can we afford to take a chance (gasp)? It would appear that even Waldo recognizes the scientific basis for this theory weaker by far than that supporting the Theory of Evolution. Hence, rather than the hot air, Waldo wants to know where the fossils came from.

Because neither of us has any way of evolving a creature, neither of us has any way of proving or disproving the Theory of Evolution. Fossils are obviously the remains of dead creatures. However, because some of the fossils are rather strange, we can only speculate how they got here.

We can only speculate how they got here? What are the possibilities? They fell from the sky? Can you name any other candidates for how they got here other than evolution? Just one?

How about the content of this blog entry? The descent of man, as it’s known, from Homo erectus? Homo heidelbergensis? Homo habilis? The clear path described by the advance of those proto-human forms leading to modern man? What are those, Tom? How do you explain them?

This is simply ridiculous. Do you even know what the twin-nested hierarchy is? Cladistic analysis? Why do people who have no idea what they are talking about feel like they can make grand pronouncements about what can or cannot be proven?

“Fossils are obviously the remains of dead creatures. However, because some of the fossils are rather strange, we can only speculate how they got here.”

They are not just “merely strange”: they all fit into a very very specific pattern that just somehow magically, I suppose, matches up with genetic analysis and, well I dunno: pretty must every other physical feature on the planet, all pointing at the same thing. It has nothing to do with indoctrination: it has to do with us having looked at all the evidence from virtually every angle and the same picture cropping up again and again.

“What if the Garden of Eden did in fact exist, that our entire world was the garden. Would not God have populated it with a wide variety of interesting and varied creatures?”

This story is simply contradicted by the evidence. Period.

“What if during the intervening millennia since creation our DNA has degenerated?”

That’s not what anyone looking at our DNA sees. You spin out all these what if ideas as if there were no way to test them out and see if they match the evidence. But there ARE ways to test them… and they don’t.

Let’s consider a popular contrary theory. What if the Garden of Eden did in fact exist, that our entire world was the garden. Would not God have populated it with a wide variety of interesting and varied creatures?

The Bible says men once lived much longer. What if during the intervening millennia since creation our DNA has degenerated? What if we have confused evolution with degeneration, death and decay? What if since man left the Garden, the earth has suffered successive catastrophes of Biblical proportions and our planet has been repeatly strewed with remains of untold numbers of creatures? Unlikely. Perhaps. Yet even the approved theories require we formulate huge disasters.

Of course, much of the forensic evidence argues for a much older earth, and before we started despoiling our tropical forests and corral reefs, no one would have thought to suggest these places were underpopulated. Still, one ought to be prepared to question supposedly proven theories. More than once in history people thought so highly of their theories about the nature of the universe they persecuted those who were wiser.

You just keep trying to change the subject, not to mention keep harping on this goofy misunderstanding of what the word “theory” means in science. “Theory” in science, as has been explained to you before and apparently must be again, has nothing to do with something being speculative or conjecture. Heck number theory is 100% deductively proven, and its still called a theory. So stop misusing the word in order to misinform.

“Scientist do the same. To ascertain how it affects the product yield, chemists will mix different concentrations of reactants. That is why Galileo dropped weights from a tall building. That is why we have people trying to create, for example, life from simulated primordial soup.”

So? How does this in any way address what I said?

“Consider what scientific theories do. They model the relationship between cause and effect. If you have never observed the cause and then the effect — when all you can do is observe the effect — you have a serious limitation. You are reduced to speculating what the cause might be.”

No, because you can piece together the evidence to find out. That’s the whole point. People like you just deny, or don’t understand the evidence.

The more we learn about how well everything within the universe fits together is humbling. The natural world is a result of processes we can explore, study, and decipher. That is incredibly awe-inspiring.

So if a new, better theory should come along to challenge evolution, it will have to fill an incredibly precise niche that takes into account all of the empirical evidence built across every other known scientific field. If such a theory should arise, then I’m certain it will be embraced. But scientifically speaking what’s the leading alternative?

The more we study a subject, the more questions we have about that subject. More often than you might think, we discover that the assumptions and the data that support our conclusions shaky. At other times, we discover our explanations cover only a small subset of the cases that require explanation.

The complexity of Creation should be enough to humble us. What is a wonder is that so often it does not.

http://www.poststar.com/articles/2007/03/29/ae/today/1535ed6926fa79dc852572ad0008b805.txt

Aside from all of the obvious reasons of dating fossils, why haven’t any dinosaur bones been found with butcher marks, or evidence that they were utilized for food and tools?