> > Evolution falls outside Popper's boundaries and can not be
> > handled by Science as he knows it. It can of course be
> > handled by religion of whatever shape and form one wishes to
> > create to defend it and explain it. Puddles of primordial
> > goop or young earth divine Creator are equally good religious
> > views as a starting point. One or the other is more likely to
> > correspond to what really happened, but that's not the point.
> 
> 
> Eh? So you don't feel that the breeding of animals or plants to produce new
> strains, behaviors, traits, is evolution on the short term?
> 
> How exactly is it that we are NOT able to see the effects of evolution and
> test the hypothesis to prove or disprove it? I thought that we had pretty
> much tested it to death.

Evolution, with a capitol "E", is the theory that man descended from
apes descended from thecodonts descended from reptiles etc. etc.
That's the theory the CFs oppose.  It should be noted that even the most
ardent CFs generally accept that evolution (lowercase "e") is a real
force for biological change.  They simply refuse to believe that it could
be the origin of life.

Lowercase evolution is a damn good theory with minimal holes.
Uppercase Evolution is a bit more tenuous, and great deal harder to
"prove" (or at least, stringently test without finding holes).  The
conflict here is that SHs desire ONLY Evolution be taught, while
CFs don't see how evolution can be taught without condoning
Evolution.

It should be noted at this point that I've never heard a great
argument for Evolution, which necessarily beats hands down
other possible origins rather than primordial ooze.  Russell's
point is that believing that the origin of life on Earth is a
puddle of goop is no more scientific than believing that it
originated with a small crop of organisms created by a
Supreme Being or deposited here by a meteor or by an
intelligent alien culture.

Those are four possibilities which, AFAIK, are equally
possible if not equally likely.  Or, maybe God created the
Universe 30 seconds ago, and all the things we think we
know and remember are just thoughts planted there by
Him.  Or maybe he created the Universe 6000 years ago
and buried dinosaur skeletons to test the faithful.  Or he
created the Universe 15 billion years ago, and those
preaching to the contrary are fools.  No one really knows,
although it seems unlikely to me that dinosaurs roamed
the Earth 6000 years ago and were driven extinct, buried,
and fossilized in the intervening time, as some of the more
fringe CFs claim.

Mike H.

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