Lets open the Darwinian can of worms and ask, "what is the use"?

Question

my positions:
- science doesn't care about religion
- there are people who believe in scientific theories as if they were proven
- these people are wrong, scientific throies can't be proven, but are useful to believe in.
- scientific theories are only as good as thier ability to predict (and in direct proportion to simplicity)
- I am inclined to think evolution does a good job of explaining things, but I don't have any kind of sufficient evidence to stand firmly.
- Short term evolution can be 'proven' with empirical evidence using bacteria and other short-life-span organisms.

by "short term evolution" I mean the evolution of bacteria or small organisms that have a short enough reproductive cycle to be observed in a lab

My question though:
What does long-term evolution help scientists predict?

Answer 1

Right, one more answer then I'm going to bed (It's 1am in the UK and I need to be up early tomorrow morning to write a report.)

I can see where your coming from, but you are actually asking the wrong question. The problem with predicting the future for species using evolution is that it is impossible to do with any degree of accuracy, and as such evolution really isn't any use here (although I am sure you will find some biologists who will disagree.)

The "point" of evolution is to demonstrate the following
1. To demonstrate why things are the way they are
2. To demonstrate that organism's development is in the hands of a set of "natural laws" rather than being subject to divine whim
3. To explain homologous structures across organisms
4. Without evolutionary theory it becomes very difficult (if not impossible) to tie together other biological theories

I don't think it would be overstating things to describe evolution as the glue which holds modern biology together.

With evolutionary theory as it is (i.e. very well established, and as conclusively proven as it is likely to get in the near future) there is not currently a great deal of work going on refining or testing it.

The only real reason it is still being discussed in the way that it is, is that it contradicts the "origin of life" stories of pretty much every religion you can think of and nothing pisses people off more than scientists proving bits of their religion to be false.

Answer 2

I suppose they use this theory to find more out about the past of humankind. What would be more useful would be that if they could use the evolution of the past to predict how the human race would evolve in centuries to come. Now that would be interesting.

Answer 3

Why should science care or not care about religion, unless it was to prove the the human race has evolved in parallel with a sub human race, who believes the hearsay of others as facts, who believes a theory is a fact, and who asks spurious questions!

Answer 4

Wow...okay,first just what is long term evolution is it a stage,cycle,a predicated norm or what? Most people forget that science like any other human endeavor is a tool that weights statistical datum.

Answer 5

maybe we can predict how our species will be changing in the next million years? or we can learn how to speed up evolution to deal with new strains of diseases?

Answer 6

Is this the line for free cheese?