(February 14, 2014 at 4:23 pm)The Good News Wrote: I wasn't playing anything. I will try to explain what I meant:
If I was to say to you that it is true that I am a human being that is typing on a computer, and you said "no, I don't believe it, you do not exist." Then I sent you a picture of myself but you still denied my existence, would I expect you to believe that I exist because I sent you that picture? No, I would expect you to believe I exist because I exist. If you don't believe I exist it is your own folly.
What you are saying is more like this: you tell us you are really an ostrich wearing a bow tie. When we express doubt, you tell us that your brother, who is sitting next to you, can verify that this is true. Your "brother" types out the message "yes, he is an ostrich wearing a bow tie." When we still express doubt, you tell us that he is telling the truth because he is your brother and he's really a pretty honest guy.
"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
