evolution?

Question

I only just found out that evolution is a theory not a fact, how come it is taught as a fact?- there are apparently flaws in it, please may you point out some flaws!

Answer 1

Every fossil, every observation in biology points to evolution. There is nothing that goes against it or points to a different way to scientifically explain modern diversity. There is not one fossil or one piece of DNA that does NOT point to evolution. It would be hard NOT to see the concrete evidence, and only those blinded by faith can do this.

Evolution is 100% world-wide accepted fact, including the evolution of man.

There is ZERO evidence for a higher being causing anything. This is why people who are religious need faith, you can't see or study the actions of a deity, by definition. Evolution has ZERO faith and ALL evidence.

Scientists (real ones) have been studying and supporting evolution for over 150 years, and still nothing has pointed to creationism. There is clear links and transitional forms between everything in the fossil record to the Class-Family level, if not Genus-Species level. And this includes humans, which there are several 'missing links' which are well described and studied, people just choose to ignore this. Sure, there are still things we don't know, but that's why science is not stagnent and dead. We learn more every day, that's what happens when you keep an open mind and follow the scientific method.

There are some areas of evolution in which all of the pieces have not been found in the fossil record, but there is no counter theory that has even ONE piece of evidence that can not easily be explained by evolution.

Let me turn the question around, if Creationism was correct and science could definitively prove Creationism (and thus the existence of God), why would they not? That would be the greatest scientific discovery in the history of the world. No one would pass that up to maintain the 'status quo'. There is no conspiracy to hide creation evidence. Anyone who knows real scientists knows they are glory-mongers first. They love to prove others wrong to enhance their own standing. And if any scientist could prove Creation/God, it would've been done a long time ago.

Go to a museum, take a class in biology, go to reputable sites on the Internet (like AAAS: http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/evolution or http://www.talkorigins.org ) and find out for yourself.

Answer 2

There is actually no such thing as a fact in science. There are constants, definitions, models, hypothesis, strong theory, moderate theory and weak theory.

Many of these models and strong theories are presented as "facts" to the general public in a bid to simplify things to express certain concepts. In reality, everything in science is tentative. This means that should something new be discovered which changes a theory or model, then by all means it will be recognized. An example of this is the theory of the photon. The photon, or light, was originally treated as a particle but then a few smart guys started to speculate that it was of a wave nature and not a true particle. A few hundred years later, it was discovered that it was a particle, but it was also a wave. Our current model holds that a photon has a wave/particle duality. It travels like a wave and interacts with things like a particle.

Evolution is a strong theory but we have only just recently made advances in the field of biology and genetics to study it in extreme depth. There are many things we don't have the answers to yet and we will find that some points need to be rethought however this doesn't invalidate the theory as a whole. It's really a shame that in our society people choose to disagree with the theory of evolution before they really even know what it entails. Most people think it states that we came from monkeys. It does not.

P.S. We do see information adding mutations in the form of repeats of genetic code and in some cases, repeats of chromosones.

Answer 3

Evolution is a fact (actually several facts) and a theory which explains those facts.

It is a fact that all creatures are descended from a common ancestor. It is a fact that there are creatures in the fossil record that no longer exist, and that modern creatures do not appear in the fossil record until recently. And so on.

The theory of evolution tries to explain the facts. That's what theories do in science - they aren't guesses, they are collections of well-substantiated statements about evolution, that taken together explain the observed facts.

For more information on the distinction between theory and fact, see www.talkorigins.org, in particular the article entitled "Evolution is a theory and a fact": http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

Answer 4

Read this page:

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html

Excerpt:

"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 do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."

Answer 5

Well, there are many flaws with the hypothetical concept of Evolution. One, religious people think that it is not right due to their hypothetical phenomenon of that they were put here by God. None of us really knows which is true. Yet. And two, some scientists right now are arguing with the theory that we came from monkeys. But, still, some scientists believe this is true.

I hope this has helped you!

Answer 6

A FACT is a minor detail, but one that no one is arguing with. Facts are the most boring thing in Science
A LAW is just something that happens for no know reasons
A HYPOTHESIS is an unvarified yet falsifiable explanation for something
A THEORY is a VARIFIED explanation that has yet to be falsified, theories are what Laws and Hypothesies hope to be some day. Gravity, germs, basically all of physics, economics etc are all theories.

Answer 7

Gravity is also a theory.

Evolution actually has far more evidence than gravity. Yhis is principly due to the fact that biology involve more variation than physics. There are two major gaps (not flaws) in evolutioary theory -- most creatures do not fossilize so there are some small gaps in the fossil record and we are yet to figure out all the non coding DNA sequences with biological function.

Answer 8

It is an umproven fact. Part of the reason it may be called a theory, in my opinion, is so as to not piss of really religious people. there is undinaible proof supporting evolution.

Answer 9

This might be a bit of a long answer but bear with me.

A theory is an attempt to identify and describe relationships between phenomena or things. It can be used to generate falsifiable predictions which can be tested through controlled experiments and empirical observation (i.e. it should be possible to disprove a prediction as well as prove it).

A theory is obtained by inference from a body of facts. The word "fact" tends to mean information obtained by a fairly direct observation. However in science "fact" can aslo mean a theory that has been "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent". Explanations based on speculative or conjectural explanations tend to be called hypotheses. Well tested explanations tend to be called theories.

In this scientific sense, "facts" are what theories attempt to explain. So, for scientists, "theory" and "fact" do not stand in opposition, but rather exist in a reciprocal relationship; for example, it is a "fact" that apples have fallen to the ground the last billion times they were dropped and the "theory" which explains this is the current theory of gravitation. In the same way, heritable variation, natural selection, and response to selection (e.g. in domesticated plants and animals) are "facts", and the generalization or extrapolation beyond these phenomena, and the explanation for them, is the "theory of evolution".

The theory of evolution has been around since the theory of natural selection was proposed in a jointly presented pair of papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858. Since then, this theory has been combined with other theories such as Mendellian inheritance, genetic drift, mutation theories, population genetics and gene flow to produce modern evolutionary theory (often dubbed "Neo-Darwinism") which says that evolution consists primarily of changes in the frequencies of alleles between one generation and another as a result of genetic drift, gene flow, and natural selection. Speciation occurs gradually when populations are reproductively isolated, e.g. by geographic barriers.

Although those who would have only creationism or "intelligent design" taught in schools call evolution "just a theory", they forget that in science, theory becomes considered fact when it has been confirmed to such a degree over such a period of time that deny it as fact would be considered perverse (i.e. just plain dumb). Evolutionary theory has been around for approx 150 years, during which time it has been tested on, experimented on and creationists have tried to pick it apart and failed. Meanwhile, fossil studies, population studies, genetic studies, DNA studies, sudies using recombination, examination of gene flow and gene drift have all shown that every single tenet in Neo-Darwinism stands up to scrutiny. As such, given the time the theory has been in existance, and given the overwhelming scientific evidence in support of it, it would be perverse to deny that the theory of evolution is a fact.





P.S.

BTW compare evolution to intelligent design. A fundamental tenet of science is that a can be used to generate falsifiable predictions which can be tested through controlled experiments and empirical observation (i.e. it should be possible to disprove a prediction as well as prove it). As it is impossible to test for the existence (or not) of an "intelligent designer", you cannot create falsifiable predictions, and hence ID is not a science

Answer 10

It is not taught as a fact but rather the theory is based on observable facts!