(August 27, 2014 at 8:29 pm)professor Wrote: Real science deals with facts, like- I did this and got that.A scientific theory is an explanation that uses the facts at hand. What people like you don't seem to understand is that this makes it an open discussion, by allowing other scientists to put forward their own theories or to test the existing theories. In this manner those theories are either discarded or strengthened. Unlike claims for god, there are no hidden or magic formulas that can be used to keep a theory afloat. If you can disprove the theory of evolution --either by showing where it is invalid or providing a better theory that stands up to the same scientific rigor-- then it gets discarded.
ANYTHING else is postulating / guessing / theory.
If your approach is to claim that there's some vast conspiracy to discredit creationism, then what you are doing is presenting a theory. If you're going to dismiss the validity of using theories to explain facts, then you've really got nothing to present aside from unverifiable claims, by definition. Consensus does not refer to the way that your reflection in the mirror nods in agreement whenever you do.
"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
