On Aug 11, 2006, at 3:23 PM, Charlie Coleman wrote:
Are you saying the empirical evidence that Evolution exists is greater than the empirical evidence that gravity exists? I don't think I'd agree with that.
No. We have a great deal of evidence that both gravity and evolution exist. They can both be considered facts.
What the big question is is how to explain these phenomena - we know that they happen, but *why* do they happen. Gravity has many potential explanations, and none of them are quite able to explain it all. Evolution, OTOH, has largely explained how: natural selection. What still remains to be determined in evolution is the nature of the mutations that result in the genetic variety among species; there seems to be a lot of inconsistency there, such as whether things progress slow and steadily, or whether there is a long stasis followed by abrupt change (the 'punctured equilibrium' view). Like most things, once you start digging down to the molecular level, things are not as neat and tidy as you'd like.
Otherwise we'd be seeing species evolving into other species pretty often and the fossil record would be very clear.
Well, we have "seen" this, but not on the time scales that are intuitive to humans. We see species change just like we see continents drift. The fossil record is about equally even for both phenomena: enough to draw conclusions, but far from absolutely complete.
Hey, why aren't the fundamentalists pushing for warning stickers in science books that mention plate tectonics? Out of all scientific notions, that's probably the closest to evolution in terms of scientific evidence and overall time scale.
-- Ed Leafe -- http://leafe.com -- http://dabodev.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
