Why 'just a theory'?

[Hans Blaster]

Because there is no such thing as “ the” theory of Evolution. As in one
its an assumption made by evolution “ believers” who don’t understand what is actually there.

Warden didn't speak of "the theory" of evolution, but rather evolutionary theory and other formulations. Evolutionary theory is also not a belief with "believers".

Unlike some theories (like the General Theory of Relativity) there is not a simple set of equations that can be written down for evolution. The people who refer to evolution as "just a theory" aren't complaining about the lack of mathematical rigor.

What is there is a mixture of beliefs, ideas, a few hypotheses , some theories primarily in molecular genetics And pure speculation, there is no such thing as one coherent all encompassing theory of evolution.

Evolutionary theory is not any kind of belief or pure speculation. This is just false. (I suspect you are aware of this.)

so it is not people who “ don’t accept evolution”: (everyone accepts man’s ability to breed dogs with long ears)
but there are those sensible people who dont accept the atheist narrative on scope and extent .

Evolutionary theory doesn't have anything to do with any "atheist narratives".

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Why do you call it an "atheist narrative?"

Because he sees evolution as going against the Bible because it has no god in it, and thus it is atheistic to him.

 

[Mountainmike]

Warden didn't speak of "the theory" of evolution, but rather evolutionary theory and other formulations. Evolutionary theory is also not a belief with "believers".

Unlike some theories (like the General Theory of Relativity) there is not a simple set of equations that can be written down for evolution. The people who refer to evolution as "just a theory" aren't complaining about the lack of mathematical rigor.


Evolutionary theory is not any kind of belief or pure speculation. This is just false. (I suspect you are aware of this.)

Evolutionary theory doesn't have anything to do with any "atheist narratives".

Hans.

Backrgound

There are only two ways to view this. As a scientist or not. I prefer the former.

If you are in non scientist mode, theory , hypothesis proof can mean what you like.
Evolution can mean what you will.

If you are in scientist mode Theory. Hypothesis. Proof mean very specific things.

In non scientist mode, there is no "consensus" on what evolution means in colloquial usage except to say some vague assumption that it - the so far undefined "evolution" can somehow explain all or most of what happened certainly after the first cell.

But you and I in "work mode" as scientists cannot settle for other than definition rigor and you can only state what can be derived axiomatically and what are experimentally verified hypotheses can be promoted to theory. Whether they are mathematical or not.

So from the background let us deal with this case of woolly unscientific language by Warden..

Warden begged the question, when he questioned whether evolution was "just a theory" as if somehow deprecating a theory.
The question is whether there IS a "A theory of evolution" as validated by scientific means.
The answer is there is no single theory.

For example take the specuation that "all life" came from "evolution".
Quite apart from the fact nobody can decide when that started (some refer to chemical "evolution" before the first cell, who immediately run into problems as to whether chemicals are live!

Darwins so called theory was progressive small change is responsible for life (with or without survival of fittest)
It refers to no underlying process. Only an observation chain. So cannot be extrapolated beyond the observations so to make conclusions as regards all of life, he is just speculating...
And since in "life" terms he is referring only to observations of the last second of the last hour of life development, he cannot possibly demonstrate that hypothesis by experiment. So it is not a theory.

Let us be more specific and refer only to cellular development for which we at least have some molecular biological processes.
The simplest cell we know is Massively complex, more complex than any known chemical factories.
There is no conjectured pathway to those cells from simpler cells. The days of thinking that cells were just blobs of simple jelly as they did in darwins day is long gone. So there is no theory for evolution of cellular life that spans more than the last second of the last hour of cellular development.

Startting at the other end there is no hint of process to test to get to the first cell or from there to present cels so no hypotheis that encompasses most of life.. Nothing to test. No theory. Nothing EXCEPT speculation.

Clearly there are molecular genetic theories based on present life observation- starting with mendel and gene function - to the genome division and recombination that cover generational updates. Man as always used his observations well. Most of the life you see as plants and domesticated animals are the result of man using observations to adapt his envirionment.

But a myopic look at a few generations is certainly not what those who enter the "evolution" vs "creation" mean by evolution!

So those who think and claim that present science "explains" in any sense "life" using the word "theory of evolution" to do it clearly do not understand the words hypothesis, theory or scientific process.

When warden says "Just a theory" he should have said with scientific hat on "NOT EVEN a theory"

And if he ever comes up with his personal definition of this "theory of evolution" on which we must assume he based his remark, there is no doubt it either a/ it does not explain life in anything like entireity, or b/ he is speculating as darwin did. In neither case it is it a theory.


Alas in my field of science identifying what are assumptions repeated so often they became facts without proof, and distinguising them from fact, s is how many new discoveries are made/
In converse, Promoting the conclusion of evolution way beyond the evidence is a feature of atheists discussing origin of life.

I just tell it how it is. I am happy to separate what I "know" from science (with all the metaphysical limitations that has) with what I believe.
Most atheists cannot do that. Evolution explains life is the core belief of all atheists I ever met.! And those attacking creation are generally atheists on a forum like this. So that was fair comment too. It is not exclusive, some theists believe in evolution explained life from a created first cell. Others belief life appeared in late stage and developed from there. Either way they distinguish what they believe. Atheists can rarely separate what they believe from what they think (often wrongly) science can tell them.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

We can easily dismiss any notion of

We can easily dismiss any notion of what you say, very true because you say nothing.

 

[BCP1928]

Hans.

Backrgound

There are only two ways to view this. As a scientist or not. I prefer the former.

If you are in non scientist mode, theory , hypothesis proof can mean what you like.
Evolution can mean what you will.

If you are in scientist mode Theory. Hypothesis. Proof mean very specific things.

In non scientist mode, there is no "consensus" on what evolution means in colloquial usage except to say some vague assumption that it - the so far undefined "evolution" can somehow explain all or most of what happened certainly after the first cell.

But you and I in "work mode" as scientists cannot settle for other than definition rigor and you can only state what can be derived axiomatically and what are experimentally verified hypotheses can be promoted to theory. Whether they are mathematical or not.

So from the background let us deal with this case of woolly unscientific language by Warden..

Warden begged the question, when he questioned whether evolution was "just a theory" as if somehow deprecating a theory.
The question is whether there IS a "A theory of evolution" as validated by scientific means.
The answer is there is no single theory.

For example take the specuation that "all life" came from "evolution".
Quite apart from the fact nobody can decide when that started (some refer to chemical "evolution" before the first cell, who immediately run into problems as to whether chemicals are live!

Darwins so called theory was progressive small change is responsible for life (with or without survival of fittest)
It refers to no underlying process. Only an observation chain. So cannot be extrapolated beyond the observations so to make conclusions as regards all of life, he is just speculating...
And since in "life" terms he is referring only to observations of the last second of the last hour of life development, he cannot possibly demonstrate that hypothesis by experiment. So it is not a theory.

Let us be more specific and refer only to cellular development for which we at least have some molecular biological processes.
The simplest cell we know is Massively complex, more complex than any known chemical factories.
There is no conjectured pathway to those cells from simpler cells. The days of thinking that cells were just blobs of simple jelly as they did in darwins day is long gone. So there is no theory for evolution of cellular life that spans more than the last second of the last hour of cellular development.

Startting at the other end there is no hint of process to test to get to the first cell or from there to present cels so no hypotheis that encompasses most of life.. Nothing to test. No theory. Nothing EXCEPT speculation.

Clearly there are molecular genetic theories based on present life observation- starting with mendel and gene function - to the genome division and recombination that cover generational updates. Man as always used his observations well. Most of the life you see as plants and domesticated animals are the result of man using observations to adapt his envirionment.

But a myopic look at a few generations is certainly not what those who enter the "evolution" vs "creation" mean by evolution!

So those who think and claim that present science "explains" in any sense "life" using the word "theory of evolution" to do it clearly do not understand the words hypothesis, theory or scientific process.

When warden says "Just a theory" he should have said with scientific hat on "NOT EVEN a theory"

And if he ever comes up with his personal definition of this "theory of evolution" on which we must assume he based his remark, there is no doubt it either a/ it does not explain life in anything like entireity, or b/ he is speculating as darwin did. In neither case it is it a theory.


Alas in my field of science identifying what are assumptions repeated so often they became facts without proof, and distinguising them from fact, s is how many new discoveries are made/
In converse, Promoting the conclusion of evolution way beyond the evidence is a feature of atheists discussing origin of life.

I just tell it how it is. I am happy to separate what I "know" from science (with all the metaphysical limitations that has) with what I believe.
Most atheists cannot do that. Evolution explains life is the core belief of all atheists I ever met.! And those attacking creation are generally atheists on a forum like this. So that was fair comment too. It is not exclusive, some theists believe in evolution explained life from a created first cell. Others belief life appeared in late stage and developed from there. Either way they distinguish what they believe. Atheists can rarely separate what they believe from what they think (often wrongly) science can tell them.

Many theists believe that the development of life proceeded pretty much as evolutionary biologists tell us. Many of us also believe that the origin of life will also turn out to have a naturalistic explanation. There is no conflict with doctrine for most of us. Only "Bible-believing" Christians have that problem.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Hans.

Backrgound

There are only two ways to view this. As a scientist or not. I prefer the former.

If you are in non scientist mode, theory , hypothesis proof can mean what you like.
Evolution can mean what you will.

If you are in scientist mode Theory. Hypothesis. Proof mean very specific things.

I don't deal with science in non-science mode. I can't turn it off.

In non scientist mode, there is no "consensus" on what evolution means in colloquial usage except to say some vague assumption that it - the so far undefined "evolution" can somehow explain all or most of what happened certainly after the first cell.

But you and I in "work mode" as scientists cannot settle for other than definition rigor and you can only state what can be derived axiomatically and what are experimentally verified hypotheses can be promoted to theory. Whether they are mathematical or not.

So from the background let us deal with this case of woolly unscientific language by Warden..

groovy

Warden begged the question, when he questioned whether evolution was "just a theory" as if somehow deprecating a theory.

He wasn't questioning the existence of evolutionary theory. He was commenting on the people who use the phrase "just a theory" to denigrate the science of evolution.

The question is whether there IS a "A theory of evolution" as validated by scientific means.
The answer is there is no single theory.

I thought we covered that already, but let's move on.

For example take the specuation that "all life" came from "evolution".

This is a distortion of evolutionary theory. The theory of common descent (a key component of evolutionary theory) posits that all Earth life is descended from a common ancestor in the far distant past. Evolutionary theory explains how it diverged and changed into all of the species we see today.

Quite apart from the fact nobody can decide when that started (some refer to chemical "evolution" before the first cell, who immediately run into problems as to whether chemicals are live!

That is abiogenesis and is the subject of origin of life research. It is not part of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory would work just fine if the ancestral life form had been placed on the Earth by aliens or a god.

Darwins so called theory was progressive small change is responsible for life (with or without survival of fittest)

Again, your phrasing gets evolution wrong. (I suspect you know better, but I have no way to know the quality of the common British education system.) The nature of Darwin's theory is plainly stated in the title of his book it is a theory "On the Origin of Species" and even states the mechanism in the subtitle "by means of Natural Selection". Modern evolutionary theory has certainly expanded beyond that, but natural selection lurks all over it and remains a key component.

It refers to no underlying process. Only an observation chain. So cannot be extrapolated beyond the observations so to make conclusions as regards all of life, he is just speculating...

This is incorrect. "Natural selection" was the underlying process Darwin provided. It was well known that organisms could inherit traits and Darwin proposed (correctly) that natural pressures would select traits that worked best in that environment to propagate offspring. He did not have a mechanism for generating the variation that selection works on as even the most elementary of genetics (Mendel) was only published in obscurity contemporaneously with Darwin's work. Today modern evolutionary theory deals extensively with the genetic mechanisms of inheritance and their nature during selection.

And since in "life" terms he is referring only to observations of the last second of the last hour of life development, he cannot possibly demonstrate that hypothesis by experiment. So it is not a theory.

Again, this is incorrect. Darwin was aware of the contemporary fossil evidence as well as the extant diversity of life. He personally had extensive experience with selection through the artificial selection of pigeons. (About which he wrote an earlier book.) Artificial selection is reasonable (though human directed) analogy for natural selection.

Do all theories have to be backed by "experiments" in your mind? I wonder what constitutes an experiment in your mind. Does a planned observation of a group of galaxies constitute an experiment? Can there be a theory in astronomy in your worldview? What about geology?

Let us be more specific and refer only to cellular development for which we at least have some molecular biological processes.
The simplest cell we know is Massively complex, more complex than any known chemical factories.
There is no conjectured pathway to those cells from simpler cells. The days of thinking that cells were just blobs of simple jelly as they did in darwins day is long gone. So there is no theory for evolution of cellular life that spans more than the last second of the last hour of cellular development.

Since the last common ancestor of all life (LUCA) a bit under a billion years ago, there have been billions of generations of single-celled life forms. The animals with all of their diversity have had fewer. This doesn't even include the 2+ billion years before LUCA of evolution of single-celled lifeforms.

Startting at the other end there is no hint of process to test to get to the first cell or from there to present cels so no hypotheis that encompasses most of life.. Nothing to test. No theory. Nothing EXCEPT speculation.

Nonsense. There have been laboratory experiments showing the evolution of multicellularity.

Clearly there are molecular genetic theories based on present life observation- starting with mendel and gene function - to the genome division and recombination that cover generational updates. Man as always used his observations well. Most of the life you see as plants and domesticated animals are the result of man using observations to adapt his envirionment.

These are part of evolutionary theory, which you seem to admit.

But a myopic look at a few generations is certainly not what those who enter the "evolution" vs "creation" mean by evolution!

If you actually want to know what we mean read a decent book on evolutionary theory. A textbook would do.

So those who think and claim that present science "explains" in any sense "life" using the word "theory of evolution" to do it clearly do not understand the words hypothesis, theory or scientific process.

When warden says "Just a theory" he should have said with scientific hat on "NOT EVEN a theory"

The OP was very clearly about the sociology and psychology of those rejecters of the science of evolution who cast aspersion on evolutionary theory by calling it "only a theory" as if that is somehow a bad thing.

And if he ever comes up with his personal definition of this "theory of evolution" on which we must assume he based his remark, there is no doubt it either a/ it does not explain life in anything like entireity, or b/ he is speculating as darwin did. In neither case it is it a theory.

Warden is not trying to define a theory of evolution and neither am I. we have no need to as it is well evidenced in the literature for the general audience. This information is readily available to you.

Alas in my field of science identifying what are assumptions repeated so often they became facts without proof, and distinguising them from fact, s is how many new discoveries are made/
In converse, Promoting the conclusion of evolution way beyond the evidence is a feature of atheists discussing origin of life.

And you haven't identified any of these "repeated assumptions."

I just tell it how it is. I am happy to separate what I "know" from science (with all the metaphysical limitations that has) with what I believe.

You are making accusations based on your personal biases with little connection to what evolutionary theory actually is.

Most atheists cannot do that. Evolution explains life is the core belief of all atheists I ever met.! And those attacking creation are generally atheists on a forum like this. So that was fair comment too. It is not exclusive, some theists believe in evolution explained life from a created first cell. Others belief life appeared in late stage and developed from there. Either way they distinguish what they believe. Atheists can rarely separate what they believe from what they think (often wrongly) science can tell them.

This has nothing to do with being an atheist. It has everything to do with defense of science and its methods from the barking dogs. I studied creationism and learned *how* it was specifically wrong long before I became an atheist. Many anti-creationists are Christians.