evolution discussion with faith

I guess I'm a borderline scientist, as a mathematician and computer scientist. But computer science is more a mixture of mathematics and engineering, so not really like a typical empirical science.Theoretical physics also has a high theory/mathematics component, and is not at all like biology or geology.In other words, scientists don't all fit the same mold. Expertise is not the same as what they do. You are asking the wrong question. The main expertise of a scientist is a deep an thorough knownledge of his discipline, and of tools (such as mathematics) that are useful to the discipline.What empirical scientists do, is systematically study some aspect of the world that fits within their specialty. An intense curiousity is part of this systematic study. Their work may involve devising suitable ways of systematizing their study. It may involve devising measurement methods or other methods for gathering data.Explanations of natural phenomena emerge from this kind of study. But I think it is a bit too simple to say that what scientists do is "generate explanations of natural phenomena and test."

See my comment about systematic study in Message 56. For much of biology, ToE is the basis for much of the systematicity.

I am not a biologist, so I will have to defer on most of the examples. But here is one.The system of plant and animal classification is based on the evolutionary tree.Before we had ToE, classification was based on the Linnaen system. That was close enough to the evolutionary tree that the evidence for evolution became impossible to miss. Today it is based on the evolutionary tree.The evolutionary tree is used, because it best fits the data. The Linneaus system was close to the evolutionary tree, because Linneaus devised it to fit the data. He just got it a little wrong, because the data was not as complete at that time.

No, I don't agree.Science is a very diverse enterprise. It is difficult to come up with any simple characterizaton of what "all scientists do." What theoretical physicists do is different from what empirical physicists do. What plant biologists do is different from what animal biologists do, and in turn that's different from what paleontologists do.Social scientists do a lot of generating hypotheses, then doing statistical hypothesis testing. But you cannot generalize that across all of the sciences.In many cases, explanations emerge after discussions of groups of scientists working in related areas. They are not the product of a single scientist, but of a community of scientists.It is probably correct that all empirical scientists collect and analyse data. Many, but not all, carry out experiments. Theoretical scientists might not do any of those, but they are in communication with empirical scientists and there is a great deal of cross fertilization of ideas. No. The knowledge of a lab or field tech is typically narrower and shallower than that of the scientist. The lab or field tech needs to be able to collect the data, but need not understand the implications of that data.I can suggest some reading.How the laws of physics lie, Nancy Cartwright.
Against Method, Paul Feyerabend.Nancy Cartwright is a serious philosopher of physics, and she works with physicists. It's a good book. It is not a take down of physics, although the title ight seem to suggest that.The Feyerabend book is a bit tongue in cheek, and some people might consider it a scandalous attack on science. He is making the case that there is no easily described scientific method. Feyerabend is not actually attacking science, but he is attacking traditional philosophy of science.

It can be based on fossils; it can be based on genetics; it can be base on morphology (structure of an organism). You might want to take a look at Allright, forget the fossils. It's a very short thread.

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in fact will continue when the ToE is finally discovered to be false.

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Imo, this presents a valid way to test Faith's claim, at least as a thought experiment. If we were to say ToE is wrong, would population genetics continue and be valid?

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It depends on how ToE might turn out to be wrong. In other words, it depends on the kind of error that would show up in ToE.The core of the support for ToE is in genetics. If that is shown to be wrong, it would at least be a problem for population genetics. If genetics is correct but there is a technical problem elsewhere, then ToE might merely need a little tweaking, and population genetics might continue without modification.

Hi Faith. I hope you read Allright, forget the fossils as I suggested, because it relates a little to what we are discussing. Let's play pretend. We will pretend that you are right about this. And now we can think about the consequences.We were talking about an evolutionary tree. With our "just pretend" you would have many evolutionary trees instead of one. You would have a tree for the dog kind, a tree for the bear kind, etc.Now we still have the evidence that all of those trees seem to fit together very well, as if they are all parts of a single large tree. There is a possible explanation for that. Maybe God designed all of the kinds separately, but he based it all on a common design.Here is how we can tweak ToE to describe that. We say that God has a design lab, where he designs organisms. It is an evolving design. So we still have a single evolutionary tree, and we still have evolution. It is just that part of the evolving is happening in God's design lab. That even explains the alleged gaps in the fossil record.This tweaked theory really isn't much different from theistic evolution, with God subtly controlling the mutations to get it right. I'm not sure how that helps you, since YECs are usually opposed to theistic evolution. I would expect most YECs to be also opposed to the tweaked evolution I just described. And you still have the problem of evidence showing that evolution, whether Darwinian or tweaked, occurred over millions and millions of years. I actually think your biggest problem is with geology, rather than with evolutionary biology.Any comments?This message has been edited by nwr, 01-09-2006 08:08 PM

We are still playing pretend, where I assume that your idea is correct. It's good to have friendly discussions this way without being excessively confrontational. If the similarities are caused by common design, that would still indicate a kind of 'evolution' of design plans. Perhaps it all happened at once, so that "evolution" isn't quite the right word. And it could have happened long before the start of genesis. The actual creation of a species could have occurred after it had been designed.I would think this tweaked theory of evolution, where part of the evolving was in God's use of an 'evolving' common design rather than change that occurred on earth, would probably handle a much of the biological evidence.If we could also assume that God inserted these creatures at different times, extending over a very long time period, maybe that would even be consistent with the paleontological and geological evidence.There isn't any likelihood that scientists would adopt this tweaked theory of evolution, because all the tweaking does is add complexity without providing any benefits with respect to explaining the evidence. So this was an exercise to show how we could fit the theory of evolution into your idea about there being barriers that limit the degree of evolution.Given your view of a young earth, I think your biggest problem is with geology. It would be much harder to tweak geology to fit with your views.Thanks for your clear presentation of your views.

I've done that part. It really can't be done with young earth creationism.I know you like to challenge the dates. Any particular date has some margin of error, and for some datings the margin might be large. But the evidence for an old earth and old life is rock solid.If you could accept some kind of old earth creationism, then it would be easier to find support.