Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:
The theory of evolution provides one possible explanation, it does not provide proof of that explanation.
Speculation is not proof, conjecture is not proof, educated guessing is not proof. Agreement among scientists of what constitutes a best guess is not proof.
We know that science has very strict standards of what constitutes proof, and the theory of random chance unguided change has not met that criteria.
Really, when a reasonable person thinks about it, this explanation of "random chance unguided change" is just a full admission of ignorance of the hows and whys of the process of change.
No one is questioning that change we can observe is a fact.
However, to suggest that a change that 'may' have taken place in the past was necessarily a cause of some current effect is not logical.
250 years ago in this country, men like Jefferson who were recognized as scientists believed in the existence of God. The vast majority of the members of the scientific community accepted God's existence as an obvious fact. It was not disputed to any great extent, and if someone did dispute it, they were considered a minority opinion and as such invalid.
250 years later, the majority opinion is that God is not a fact.
So are we to suddenly conclude that the fact of Jeffersonian times were not facts but just just uneducated opinions, but today the educated opinions are necessarily facts?
Such utter nonsense.
A real scientific fact doesn't change, as observations don't themselves change.
Conclusions may change as new facts are revealed, but the old observations are not invalidated by new facts, we simply have a new paradigm in which to assemble the old and new facts to reach different opinions.
Scientific opinion may or may not be an actual fact, time tells us what lasts and withstands the test of time and changes in data, and unless science has discovered all possible facts and has retrieved all the data, it is not reasonable to act in a dogmatic manner about processes of cause and effect.
The scientific community can decide whatever they want as a group, but that doesn't make their conclusions logical in the strictest sense nor necessarily true.
What a scientist believes about the existence of God is irrelevant because scientists do science, not theology, and it is in the area of science that I am giving the VAST majority opinion its weight of authority. If I wanted to discuss a consensus about God, I'd seek out an organization of ministries for that consensus.
Thus, your Jefferson analogy is easily distinguishable from the present discussion.
You seem to think that your definition of what is a fact is not subject to debate, yet, and let me emphasize this one more time, the OVERWHELMING majority of scientists -- those who do SCIENCE for a living, do not agree with your definition, because if they DID agree, then they would reject evolution.
You can tell me and everyone else all day long that you alone know what is a scientific fact, and that any scientist who does not adopt your standard of falsifiability is not a scientist, but at the end of the day, there will be all the scientists on one side of the line, and you alone will be on the other.
If the overwhelming majority of scientists accept evolution as a fact, then until someone comes along and convinces them otherwise, then I also accept evolution as a fact. Just as the overwhelming majority accepted that the Earth was the center of the Universe until Galileo came along.
So, one more time -- if you think that the majority of scientists are wrong, then LET'S SEE YOU PROVE IT. Not using some Aristotle logic discussion, but by YOU DOING SCIENCE and falsifying each and every substantial evolutionary concept.
If you can do this, then you will win the Nobel Prize and I will salute you. Otherwise, you're just spouting conclusions unsupported by any factual evidence, and as far as I'm concerned, those conclusions prove just one thing...
Res Ipsa Locqutur
