-----Original Message-----
From: John Clement
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 8:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Intelligent designists fight back
But of course evolution is not a fact, it is the only well developed
scientific model for how life came about on this planet. The vast
majority
of evidence supports it. I don't know what the ratio of strong evidence
to
ambiguous evidence is, but it is absolutely overwhelming.
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It is critical that one separate the fact of evolution, for which there
is overwhelming evidence, from the means by which evolution has
occurred. The prevailing model for that mechanism is Darwin's Theory of
Evolution by Natural Selection.
Much confusion arises from combining these two concepts. See also
Stephen Jay Gould's comments below.
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"In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"-part
of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to
hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is
"only" a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the
theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can't even make
up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it?
Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical
group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign
rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it
has in recent years been challenged in the world of science-that is, not
believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once
was."
Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories
are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty.
Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that
explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate
rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation
replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air,
pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether
they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be
discovered."