Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 18th, 2023, 7:18 am
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑March 17th, 2023, 3:53 pm... what does ID and creationism have to offer: not a single scientific proposal that explains biological differences. No one is asking for a “worldview”, but plain science.
There is no doubt that the theory of evolution is one of the most widely accepted scientific theories in the field of biology. There is a vast body of evidence from multiple disciplines, including genetics, palaeontology, comparative anatomy, and biogeography, that suggest a pattern supporting the theory.
Interesting how someone changes his mind in a couple of days:
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 17th, 2023, 5:20 am
Aha, a high-priest of the Church of Darwin at work I see....
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 17th, 2023, 5:20 am
I am against dogmatism in science, and in the case of evolution, it seems to be rampant.
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 17th, 2023, 5:20 am
The problem is that it was decided by education authorities, that it was not wise to name the problems with evolution,
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 18th, 2023, 7:18 am
However, there are still some aspects of evolution that remain under investigation and not fully understood, such as the exact mechanisms of speciation and the role of epigenetics in evolution, and like all scientific theories, the theory of evolution is always requires refinement and revision based on the hope of new data and discoveries. Additionally, the evolutionary history of some groups of organisms, such as viruses and prokaryotes, can be challenging to reconstruct due to their lack of fossil records and other factors.
So, in the end, evolution is a fact that keeps being researched and the theory of evolution is a scientific theory. That's not different from what I said before you jumped to scorn the "high-priest of the Church of Darwin".
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 18th, 2023, 7:18 am
The lack of fossil evidence for transitional phases of species and the concept of irreducible complexity have been widely debated within the scientific community, and various hypotheses have been proposed. With regard to the lack of fossil evidence, it is assumed that the fossil record that has to date been uncovered is incomplete, or the likelihood of an organism becoming fossilized is relatively low. There are suggestions that transitional fossils may have been lost due to geological processes or not yet discovered. But the problem is not just the general incompleteness of the fossil record or even a pervasive absence of ancestral forms of life in the fossil record. Rather, the problem, which was put forward by Louis Agassiz, is the selective incompleteness of the fossil record.
Incompleteness of the fossil record is not a hole in the theory of evolution, as you seem to acknowledge. There's no pervasive absence of ancestral forms of life, either, so it is evident that life forms have changed over million of years, that this change has involved a progression in organic functions and structures that remains consistent (so you don't find vertebrates before invertebrates), and that there's a relationship between the more recent life forms and their ancestors. That's the unproblematic fact of biological evolution.
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 18th, 2023, 7:18 am
Numerous transitional fossils have been said to have been found, such as Archaeopteryx, which has shared features of both birds and reptiles, but appears millions of years before its supposed theropod dinosaur ancestors, or Tiktaalik roseae, although regarding the so-called “feet”, which are a far cry from those seen on the “Darwin fish” decal, scientists have yet to uncover a scrap of evidence to suggest that they functioned as anything but common fins, which renders their transitional status somewhat specious, to say the least.
Archaeopteryx is another classic in the creationists manual. While scientists debate what is its phylogenetic position, it is very unlikely that it will turn out to be something casting any doubt in the process of evolution. Corrections and improvements in biology are expected, but it is completely unreasonable to expect that at this time a breakthrough discovery will send all our current knowledge about life to the basket bin. You would need a whole new biological science, and right now there's no hint of it. As I said before, denial of evolution is not that science.
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 18th, 2023, 7:18 am
If human beings evolved from ape-like creatures, what were the transitional species between ape-like hominins and the truly human-like members of the genus Homo found in the fossil record? It turns out, there aren’t any good candidates.
Again, incompleteness of the fossil record is not a hole in the theory of evolution. Since fossilisation is rare, missing links are normal and expected. The details of the picture are not perfectly clear, but what the whole image shows is indisputable, specially when considering not only the fossil evidence, but modern genetics as well. There's little doubt that we are related to other primates and we have common ancestors.
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 18th, 2023, 7:18 am
Regarding Darwin’s universal Tree of Life, as National Academy of Sciences (NAS) biologist W.F. Doolittle states, “evolutionary scientists will have failed to find the ‘true tree,’ not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.”
Pfff...absolute nonsense.
OneZoom: The Tree of Life
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑March 18th, 2023, 7:18 am
Michael Behe formulates irreducible complexity as a test of building an entire system in a stepwise manner.
Oh, of course, Michael Behe, irreducible complexity and the Discovery Institute. It has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that this is religion, not science. I'm amazed that they are still bringing him on, given the stellar defeats he has gone through while in his crusade.
A Scientist Responds to Behe's "Black Box"
But what about the evidence that Behe put forward — all of those wonderful examples of irreducible complexity (IC) in Darwin's Black Box? Behe used many of them at Lincoln. They have all been soundly refuted in scientific journals and on the web. Behe proposed that a mousetrap is irreducibly complex (all parts must be there for it to function) and therefore a good metaphor for IC in biological systems. On PBS' Firing Line in 1997, evolutionary biologist and "known Christian" Kenneth Miller demonstrated how that analogy fails. There is a more basic flaw in Behe's assertion, however — that a molecular machine must perform a specific task, or it is useless to the organism. Just as a mousetrap without a critical part might function as a great paperclip or a very interesting earring, a mutated flagellum or enzyme might lead to all manner of interesting innovations. That's basic evolutionary biology.