Who Owns the Standard Definition of Evolution

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Hi Theo,A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that can be repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method. These theories are developed using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Let me break it down further:1. Definition: A scientific theory is a systematic ideational structure of broad scope, conceived by the human imagination. It encompasses a family of empirical laws regarding regularities existing in objects and events, both observed and posited1.
2. Characteristics:
...... Testability: Scientific theories are testable and make verifiable predictions.
....... Explanation: They describe the causes of a particular natural phenomenon.
........Application: These theories are used to explain and predict aspects of the physical universe or specific areas of inquiry, such as electricity, chemistry, and astronomy2.3. Different from Facts and Laws:
.......A scientific fact is a simple, basic observation.
.......A scientific law is a statement (often a mathematical equation) about a relationship between facts and/or other laws.
.......In contrast, a scientific theory explains “why” or “how” something happens. .......For example, Newton’s Law of Gravity is a mathematical equation that predicts the attraction between bodies, but it doesn’t explain how gravity works2.4. Strength and Evolution:
.......The strength of a scientific theory lies in its ability to explain diverse phenomena and its simplicity.
.......As new evidence emerges, theories may be modified or even rejected if they don’t align with the findings.
.......Some theories, like evolution, heliocentric theory, and germ theory of disease, are so well-established that they are unlikely to fundamentally change2.How does this do for a definition of Theory?God Bless,

How is this fundamentally different from what was already posted multiple times in this thread?

Thank you for putting this example together, but the evolutionary process in question is the one governing the descent of one life form from another, e.g., aquatic creature to land animal, bird to lizard, etc.Variance within like life forms is to be expected, particularly across generations and geographies. I'm assuming all of the skulls shown above are from horses, exhibiting variance. Skulls from present-day dogs would show a more striking variance; however, they are still all dogs.The evolutionary process in question is the one that would demonstrate that all life forms come from a common ancestor. The processes that result in variance (genetics and natural selection) are not that process.One other observation - If the fossil record is so incomplete, what certainty can we have of any conclusions drawn from this record?On one hand the Evolutionist says the fossil record is replete with transitional life forms, and on the other hand he says it is highly incomplete. How can it be both ways?

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Thank you for putting this example together, but the evolutionary process in question is the one governing the descent of one life form from another, e.g., aquatic creature to land animal, bird to lizard, etc.
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You got a sequence, as you asked. And it’s evidence for the “processes governing the descent of one life form another”. The sequence is a sequence of different species - different life forms.

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On one hand the Evolutionist says the fossil record is replete with transitional life forms, and on the other hand he says it is highly incomplete. How can it be both ways?

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Quite simply. The fossil record is nowhere near complete on the scale of individuals, but as we go up the taxonomic tree it becomes more complete. Intermediates between species are very rare, but intermediates between larger taxonomic groups are less so.That said, there are significant biases in the fossil record, so some parts are more complete than others.

I see.If they are different species, then how can we be sure that on descended from another? Where is that evidence, and how do we demonstrate that descent from one species to another is even possible, outside of scholarly explanations?

OK folks, great discussion but can we get back to demonstrating, empirically, the more profound and contentious tenets of Evolution, i.e., all life has common ancestry? Below is a hi-level summary of Evolutionary principles and methods, as far as I can gather from our discussion:1. All known life forms from ancient remains to the present are studied for common traits.
2. An intricate hypothesis, Evolution, linking these life forms to common ancestry has been constructed.
3. Evolution is a naturalistic and - very importantly - random, non-directed process that occurs over vast populations over great periods of time.
4. As anomalies/questions arise they are either woven into the explanation, or they are set aside for later consideration.#1 and #2 are inarguably scientific endeavors. They may just be thoughts, maybe something more, but we have to start somewhere.#3 is where the hand-waving and supposition begin, as in “It happens so gradually over such a long period of time that we can’t see it, but we know it’s there”. This is where the conscientious scientist would construct an experiment to confirm/reject the house of cards.#4 is where the hardcore application of the Scientific Method to #3 is cast aside for the inferior pursuit of additional analysis, and technical explanation aligned with explanations previously advanced.

This is high grade trolling Mr Rose. Congratulations.Obviously you are a creationist with no scientific education or interest in, or understanding of, the science of evolution.You can find the answers to all these very basic questions very easily on line; why are you making this stuff up? You must know that what you are doing is entirely disingenuous. From here it looks like the usual lying for Jesus that we get all the time.What do you think you're doing here?

Fairly well, especially in that it distinguishes between theory, fact, and law. Too many scientific illiterates, such as creationists, make the mistake of thinking that theories grow up to become laws, whereas theories and laws are very different things which serve different purposes.
 
It would have been nice if it had included hypotheses and the role of hypotheses in constructing, testing, and verifying theories (eg, from our understanding of something (AKA the theory) we predict the outcome of an event (a hypothesis) and by testing that hypothesis we can either verify the theory or detect potential problems with the theory). Out of curiosity, what was the source that you copied that from?And why did you not include the footnotes that you cited? The other question is whether you understand what you copied. Or if you had even bothered to read it (eg, you obviously reject evolution yet you included "Some theories, like evolution, heliocentric theory, and germ theory of disease, are so well-established that they are unlikely to fundamentally change2." -- I still wonder what Footnote 2 says).Examples of copying without comprehension abound among creationists, most typically when a creationist copies another creationist claim including that other claim's bibliography without ever having looked up any of those sources cited. IOW, those plagiarizing creationists not only falsely claim that they had written that argument themselves, but even worse falsely claim the scientific sources in the bibliography as their own sources.That last can be the source of great embarrassment for the creationist. My page, MOON DUST, reports on my research into the claim by Dr. Henry Morris (ICR) regarding the layer of meteoric dust on the moon's surface -- he claimed a layer more than 200 feet thick if the moon were old, whereas correcting for the claim's extraneous factors due to misquoting the source and abusing the laws of mathematics predicts a layer about a third of an inch thick. His claimed source was a "1976" NASA document ("well into the space age"), but his actual source was another creationist, Harold Slusher (who obviously had another unidentified creationist as his source). When I pulled that "cited" NASA document off the university shelf, just looking at the front cover refuted Morris' claim: it was papers presented at a symposium in 1965 (printed in 1967, but I had to go to the copyright page for that information. In addition, both Morris and Slusher misidentified the document as being "Volume II" (two) in a series whereas the document's cover identifies it as being "Volume 11" (eleven), which tells me that Slusher got that "information" in hand-written form from a third creationist.If, at any point the that entire chain, either Morris or Slusher had done the most basic scholastic due diligence of going to the cited source to verify how it's quoted, then that "well into the space age" falsehood would have been caught immediately and nipped in the bud. But that kind of scholarship and scholastic integrity is sadly missing in creationism.Another case was a former member of this forum, Crazynutsx, a young British gamer who joined 18-May-2011 and last posted 13-Jun-2011. Except for maybe a few of his eleven (11) posts, half were to advertise a creation/evolution forum he had created elsewhere and the other half to discuss it (mainly addressing problems we were having accessing it).Needless to say, the poor kid was in way over his head so he plagiarized virtually everything he posted, which I repeatedly took him to task over on his forum. Towards the end before he abandoned his forum (which eventually got hijacked by Japanese hackers who used it to discuss golf and to advertise merchandise and dentists), he took to deleting posts (and lying about it) as discussed starting in Message 50.The classic case that I'm building up to is a discussion in which Crazynutsx was pushing the old creationist "leap seconds" claim (ie, claiming a too large rate for the slowing of the earth's rotation because the originator, probably Walter Brown, misunderstood what leap seconds are (c. 1978) -- my web page on it is Earth's Rotation is Slowing). As usual, he kept plagiarizing sources and I kept beating him up over it in my unsuccessful attempts to make him honest. I seem to recall I challenged him to explain leap seconds (after he refused to listen to my explanations; at the time I had been working with leap seconds professionally for about 20 years). In response, he plagiarized yet again with something he was sure would shut me up, but I recognized what he had posted: it was from the 1982 article which definitively refuted his claim, As the World Turns: Can Creationists Keep Time? by William M. Thwaites and Frank T. Awbrey, Creation/Evolution, Issue IX, Summer 1982, pp.18-22. He was trying to use the definitive refutation of his claim to support it!It was after that that a lot of my posts started disappearing and then he abandoned his site.What you should take away from this is that when you plagiarize something, you need to be extra sure of what it says.

The evolutionary process is the same, whether tracing lineages from eohippus to equus, or from sea creatures to land animals, or from ancient reptiles to dinosaurs to birds. It's all descent with modification (mutations, and also genome mixing for sexual species) winnowed by natural selection. What is most pronounced in the fossil record is the increasing difference from modern forms with increasing distance in the past. The ancestral species are the same family as horses, but they're extinct and are not the same species as horses. Yes, all dogs are the same species, Canis lupus. That's why they can all interbreed. Wolves, from which dogs are descended, are also the same species, and dogs can interbreed with wolves, too.
​ Evolution is a theory that places the evidence into an interpretive framework. Theories don't prove things. While the evidence we have is consistent with a universal common ancestor, there are other possibilities and no proof that it is the correct one. If by "genetics" you mean the imperfect copying that occurs with almost all reproductive events then this is exactly the process that produces variation. In general the more time that passes the more variation accumulates until at some point it is no longer the same species.
​ All science is tentative. There is no certainty. The best we can do is improve upon evidence and insight to increase our confidence that our understanding is likely true.
​ Imagine a town through which a hurricane has passed. Some neighborhoods are decimated, some spared. Who knows why.It is the same with the fossil record. In some regions sedimentary layers have been preserved, in others they've been eroded away, in yet others they've subducted back into the mantle, and in yet others they've become hopelessly deeply buried. Fossil preservation after death and the preservation and/or accessibility of the region where the fossilization occurred are serendipitous.--Percy

It's copy-n-pasted.--Percy

What are you talking about? No one thinks lizards evolved from birds!The evolutionary process in question governing the descent of one life form from another is called reproduction, and all lifeforms descend from their parents. The process is reproduction. Life falls into nested hierarchies based on morphology, which is the pattern you would expect to see if life evolved from a common ancestor. When it was discovered that species fall into the same nested hierarchy based on genetics, that added tremendous support for the common ancestor part of the theory of evolution. In fact, genetics absolutely shows this pattern for all the species that have been sequenced so far. And when exceptions were found for that, re-evaluation of the morphology showed errors in the original groupings.Pretending that genetics and natural selection are not part of the process evolutionary descent with modification is just illogical and silly and certainly not based on any scientific observations, and in fact, is counter to what is actually observed. The certainty that the descriptions we have for the millions of fossils of hundreds of thousands to millions of species are are accurately documented. And this was a poorly formed question rather than an observation. You are trying to imply that if we don't know everything, we cannot know anything, which is absurd. Scientists observe and report that all the fossils are obviously transitional between their ancestors and their possible descendants. It's a pretty simple and obvious concept, that we see demonstrated with every single birth of every single organism.

similar to what I posted

Troll alert

As far as I know, there are no one parent humans.