(June 6, 2009 at 12:42 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: The evidence is extremely strong - now I might be wrong here but I would think the reason why it's not a scientific fact - instead it's a scientific theory - is something to do with the fact that all the tons and tons of extremely strong evidence is circumstantial ? Is that perhaps the reason or is there another reason, etc?
As Dawkins has said, to quote from the Dawkins wikipedia page:
' In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know". When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word theory, Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue ... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English." '
EvF
If you’re going to use this example of the murder scene then it does not support your argument because not all murder scenes tend to be result of a murder regardless of the evidence provided. It could be an accident, a mistake, setup or self defence, I mean you watch movies. So a detective may assume that it's a murder but it's not always the case and many times never proven regardless of the post evidence that the detective have. In the movies, how many times does the innocent person gets the blame for a murder he did not commit and how many times does the murderer gets away with it regardless of the evidence provided? Of course, movies are no guide for us but sometimes they do represent human nature and life as it is
peace2u
