Originally posted by Hound_of_Love
I think he's trying to say that the Theory of Evolution is pseudo-scientific because it is empirically untestable in terms of the past.
That is also what I was taught as an undergraduate.
Not that this is really the place for this discussion...
I think's that's a quarter of the story, or rather it is a limited truth improperly extrapolated to a larger, misleading point. And what the hell, let's discuss it anywhere we like.
The
actual point of genetic evolutionary change in our history may be directly untestable in many instances. True enough as far as it goes - and that's as far as it goes.
Yet we can view genetic mutation and adaptation among many organisms in real time (ex: volcano in Hawaii erupts, magma runs down the hill and burns a path between 2 stretches of forest - scientists now track different genetic diffentiation from that moment in various flys and bugs separated by the volcanic burn) and get a fairly good idea of how organisms change over time, how organisms may change under certain environmental stresses, and the rate of such change.
Taking these guidelines and walking it backwards, pairing it up with the anthropological record isn't witchcraft. Yes, a lot of it remains congectural, but this is how cutting edge-anything develops.
Often picking apart the areas where the theory breaks down is done @ss-backwards. It is here where the greatest opportunity and creativity is to be found. Yes, one's criticism in this area may be accurate, but such should lead (and always does, eventually lead) forward towards more creative investigation and explanation. Give it a little time and usually better evidence is discovered eventually, too. However, facing backwards and using it to say "see! it's all wrong because you can't get this right!" is, as I said, @ss-backwards in that it is of one not creatively engaging but being an impediment with little to offer than reciting some mythologically-based canon.
[Full disclosure - I was raised in an intellectual religious catholic household in northern US. As a result I tend to find typically southern-based non-intellectual religious pronouncements on science laughable in the extreme -- especially so when they dress up scatter-shot scientific critiques, misconstrue and re-fashion it into what is really quackery-science (ok, let's be polite and call it pseudo-science...)]
Take the long view, please. We've gone from flat earth theory to earth is the center of the universe to man is created in god's image and do not come from some quasi-chimp creature (an interesting literal misread of that beautiful biblical passage, IMO, which strangely results in seeing us as not an animal, in effect, despite all evidence). All of which is an unbroken progression of myth-based self-concepts we as a race have had to surrender again and again over time in the face of greater and greater empirical evidence. That doesn't mean God doesn't exist, just that we're not as special in the way we think we are, and yet more special in other ways than we recognize.
The concept that earth is not the center of the universe -- hell, not even the center of the damn solar system -- was held to be a direct negation of the glory of God and the place we held in God's cosmos. 200 years, 400 years, 600 years later and this is no longer a stumbling block. It is, uh, quaint (please! someone trot out a flat earth believer as an exception to prove the rule before we're done here!)
Evolution, including evolutionary psychology, will undergo similar development and transformation as what astronomy and cosmology did over the last 500 years. Creationists and Intelligent Designers will be seen as the modern equivalent of astrologists and alchemists of today.
Disagree with me? Discuss. :woo:
