The phrase "Evolution is a fact"

The theory of gravity is a theory.Gravity is not a theory.Gravity is a fact.The theory of evolution is a theory.Evolution is not a theory.Evolution is a fact.

If you are going to go down this route, you would end up concluding that the only forms facts can take are:* I am experiencing certain qualia (which may be the product of hallucination).
* I possess a certain memory (which may be erroneous).
* I am having a certain thought (which may be wrong).All else is inference. No. If that was the case then I couldn't say that it was a fact that, for example, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Or that I ate pizza yesterday.When it becomes necessary to redefine the word "fact" so that it no longer has its normal usage in order to argue that evolution is not a fact, this is a sign that evolution, in normal usage, is a fact.

Reference please?Thanks.

No, that's just artificial selection. Many of the best-studied small-scale evolutionary events are of the evolution of resistance to toxins such as antibiotics and pesticides, which obviously we did not bring about deliberately. This is not actually true. This is not grammatical, which may explain why I have no idea what you mean by it.

The trouble is that there's no mechanism which allows the right mutation to happen just because it's a good idea. How would the bacteria know?On the other hand, there is a mechanism (or perhaps I should say the failure of a mechanism) which produces mutations (good, bad, and neutral) at random: natural selection then selects those which are a good idea. It came into being by chance.To see why it was favored by selection, consider the following. You say that the species "obviously had enough food to survive". This is true, but remember that selection operates on individuals. Just because the species has enough food to survive and reproduce doesn't mean that every individual has enough food to survive and reproduce --- indeed, this cannot be so, for otherwise the original population of bacteria would grow exponentially, which is impossible while their supply of food remains constant. (It was this consideration that led Darwin to think up his theory in the first place.)The first bacterium to get the nylonase mutation had a supply of food for which it had no competitors. There is always a selective advantage to moving into an empty niche.---I hope this helps.

Will you give me some examples of things that you think are facts?

As Popper admitted, you can't even do that, "in the strictest sense", because one can always provide an ad hoc argument against any evidence contrary to any theory.Perhaps we should take this one to my "The Scientific Method For Beginners" thread, where this point has already been discussed.

The great thing about our cunning plan to sound scientific is that we've managed to fool the world's scientists.BWAHAHAHAHA!!!But somehow you, whose knowledge of science can only be expressed as a negative number, since everything you think you know about it is nonsense that's been fed to you by creationists --- you can see through our little charade.It must be nice for you to know more about science than the world's community of scientists do collectively. It must be even more of a boost to your ego to have achieved this without ever having spent a moment actually studying the subjects you're prating on about.For example, having never spent a moment studying taphonomy, and knowing nothing at all about it --- do you even know the word? --- you still feel confident enough to bullshit us about it. What a great genius you must be, to be sure.

Whereas people who study rocks --- they're called geologists --- think it does. And people who study fossils --- they're called paleontologists --- think it does. And here's the rub, Archangel. Scientific knowledge is necessary and required to engage in a scientific discussion.But if, on the other hand, all you want to do is scream halfwitted nonsense about how science is "a lie" and "the epitome of fraud" and "a pseudo science", then your complete, total, pitiful ignorance of science will suffice.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Why yes. The fact that you've never bothered to study the subject that you're drooling on about is in fact a good reason to ignore your drivel. Yes. Obviously I can.They have survived two thousand years longer than Biblical chronology allows for the age of the Earth because Biblical chronology is a load of crap.