(January 29, 2015 at 11:41 am)SteveII Wrote: This ignores that fact that the arguments are not meant to prove conclusively, but rather to assign a probability ranging from a) no way, b) more likely than not, or c) likely. You cannot claim 100% "no way" to any of them and support that conclusion.So on a subject which might be the most important one ever for both the individual and the human race as a whole, you're satisfied with "seems likely to me"? You feel that it's sufficient to admit that the evidence is poor, but at least it exists?
I'm guessing (again) that you apply a far stricter standard of evidence and reason in most other areas of your life. But for the one that you consider the most important, you set the bar astonishingly low.
"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