(March 29, 2013 at 2:49 am)Sagasa Wrote: If I heard a prophecy that went something like, "And lo, in the year 1978, a man from Ohio shall win the lucky 7 lottery, and his name shall be John Doe," and it did happen, I'd be really impressed.
You know what would happen, though. In 1987, a man from Oklahoma would win the Super 8 lottery, and his name would be Dave Johnson. And people would say "omg if you transpose the 87 and take the O from Oklahoma and transpose the initials of the guy and dismiss the rest that means IT ALL CAME TRUE PRAISE BE TO NOSTERDAMNUS!!!"
"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 don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould