Percy writes:
More accurately, it is assumed that life in the past followed the same processes as life today. We know how evolution works because we can observe it in real time today.
This comment represents a degree of progress and thus, a glimmer of hope.
You've at least admitted that ToE is based, not on a fact, but on an assumption. Well done.
There *is* a common creationist argument that life in the past was different from life today ... There is no evidence from the past, neither recent nor distant, that the processes of life were any different from today. If you think these processes were different in the past and at some point changed to the processes we observe today, what evidence are you looking at that tells you this, and when did the change happen?
I can't recall arguing that life in the past was different from life today.
We know exactly how evolution works because we observe it happening in the here and now.
I'm afraid not. You can't prove that known evolutionary mechanisms were responsible for producing the fossil record, therefore you can't claim to know how evolution works.
Simple logic shoots your claim down in flames. Sorry.
In the sense that you're using the word "know," no, of course not. Everything in science is tentative. What we would actually say is that the theory of evolution provides a robust explanatory framework for the history of life as revealed by the fossil record.
Can you see how confused you are? You say "We know exactly how evolution works" and in the very next sentence in your post you admit that you don't "know" that life on earth evolved according to ToE.
Anyone constructively participating in an exchange of information would ask clarifying questions when a point fails to connect. You instead seem to be working hard at not understanding anything while confounding efforts to communicate using strategies such as making absurd comments about your IQ.
I don't recall "making absurd comments about [my] IQ." There is an almost-unanimous opinion on this thread that I am an idiot. I agree with that opinion, which, after all, is formed by individuals of exceptionally high intelligence.
Science doesn't prove things. As with everything in the universe, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the way we see things happening today is the way they must have happened in the past.
No one has ever observed known evolutionary mechanisms ever producing even a new genera, so what we see happening today is a very poor explanation for what happened in the fossil record, where entire new phyla appear.
Do you have any evidence that life in the past didn't reproduce via the replication of genetic material and that the organisms that passed their genes on to the next generation passed through a selection process governed by the natural environment? In the absence of such evidence, the theory of evolution is the best we have for explaining the available evidence.
I agree that that theory of evolution is the best
scientific explanation for the fossil record ... which however, doesn't permit anyone to claim to
know how evolution works.
In the same way, no matter what the current state of an organism's genome, no matter how much prior change there's been, what could prevent more mutations from occurring? Nothing could prevent this, right? There's nothing that could lock down a genome and prevent further change. If the organism reproduces there will be change, right?
You can't prove, for example, that the genome of a fish eventually gave rise to the gemone of a mammal.
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