When it becomes a fact?

[robvalue]

Someone who wants to argue that evolution isn't a fact is up against some serious problems. Like, everything, ever.

Remember there's a difference between evolution (the process, however it works) and the theory of evolution. The latter can always be improved. The former is so blatant that you'd have to plug up your eyes and ears to try and deny it. It would be stating that offspring are either identical to their parents, or else their parameters are random and not based on their parents. Either assertion is blatantly false after any amount of observation. Denying evolution is about as stupid as denying gravity.

[_Velvet_]

My point bringing evolution was as an example about a fact, but on particular a fact that its somehow denied constantly, and thus it needs to be stated as a fact, we rarely see people stating facts like those because they are often obvious...

So... I was interested about the approach on casual communication of facts, approaching of unsubstanciated assertions, incorrect reasoning and how some people other than me deal with all this on regular basis.

Both of you made some interesting points... I just (somehow) forgot completely about the "beyond reasonable doubt" concept, so I was struggling to reconcile the way Dawkins just make a assertion and said "it is the truth", even when he is... well, him.

[Cyberman]

A fact is a point of data indicitive of and supported by reality, to paraphrase AronRa horribly. Our interpretation of them can be faulty, but they remain facts regardless.

[Simon Moon]

Hello everyone, its me again, this is a post about Skepticism, not Atheism directly, so I apologize in advance if I should have posted this in philosophy sub-forums, but it just didn't fitted well there imo, I hope you guys can share your insights on the subject regardless, english is not my native language so exercise patience.

I was watching some random debates and speechs on youtube as usual and stumbled into the following assertion by Dawkins: "evolution its a fact".

He then elaborates on that saying that evolution is as well documented by Science as Napoleon is documented by History, and then concludes: "some things are just truth, they are not a matter of choice or opinion"

Yes, I do agree with him, but that made me scratch my head.

The more I experience and try to practice Skepticism the harder it is for me to make assertions like those, even about trivial subjects.

I started to notice everyday that people casually assert things like they were facts when its only their opinion or their personal taste for something (art/music), sometimes it reflects a hunch to explain why something happened, or even some quite reliable hypothesis misstooked as fact because its backed up by anedoctal evidence or some very limited testing with a great deal of confirmation bias.

After I learned that I simply stopped asserting things.

I started to imply my uncertainty by saying: "well seems likely to be X because ABCD" or "my ABCD experiences/tests so far point towards X", and things like that, to avoid saying "Its X".

I had decided that asserting something was simply too risky, risks that my reasoning was flawled somewhere I haven't noticed, or that I could just be suffering confirmation bias, and thinking that I have enough evidence to back up something, but instead being unreasonable without even noticing.

But then comes Dawkins and says something is a fact.

So... when some very fitting and solid theory becomes a fact?

A fact can be wrong? Wasn't all science subject to be changed at any given moment provided evidence of some more fitting model? So how we can have those facts?

And... if your answer is "after it gets published on peer reviewed journals and survives the scrutiny" how we could apply that concept to our everyday life's normal facts?

I can say something its a fact if I can reproduce that it works as I predict even without knowing the reason behind the workings of it? so people are expected to accept something as fact (due to it reproducibility) even with the absence of any reasonable thought process they can follow?

Those are my doubts...  I hope we can have nice exchanges. = ]

A fact, by definition, can not be wrong. If it is discovered to be wrong, it was not a fact.

Evolution is both a fact AND a theory.

It is an established fact, that allele frequency in a population changes over time (evolution). That is an observable fact. It is no less a fact than the moon orbits the earth.

The theory of evolution accounts for the above fact. The best known and supported theory of evolution is natural selection acting on random mutation or gene drift.

The theory may change, but the fact will not.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well said, Mr. Moon.