Do you believe in god, if not do you believe in something else?

[The_vagabond7]

Kasz216 said:

The_vagabond7 said:
If Rabbit fossils showed up in the pre-cambrian era then there would be a problem with evolution. Saying evolution is faith based is just saying "I don't know anything about evolution".

I spent the first twenty or so years as a die-hard conservative christian, I know my bible forwards and backwards right down to the ridiculous prophecies of revelation and daniel. I also know an assload about evolution, biology and physics. Only the former part of my education was faithbased. There is an abundance of evidence for the latter, and a bunch of old books that rely on you making them your axiom for it to be a justified belief.

I disagree.  There are tons of theories that would come into play before then. 

I'd bet people would either change the model so that some sort of rabbit like creature was around then, or would come up with a time travel theory.

Or that it was an alien rabbit like creature.

The only way evolution would be disproved is if something else was somehow proven.  Like.... if animals just sponataniously appeared before someones eyes that were like nothing anyone had ever seen before... and even that would probably bring up theores about teleportation and stuff first.

 

See, that's the difference between religion and science. Science sets up parameters and predictions and if things don't meet those predictions they know they made a mistake. Science is "falsifiable" it can be disproven. Religion sets up the answer, an axiom that under no circumstances can be wrong, before hand and then sets out to explain why everything points to the answer being right, and if something does fit into the parameters or predictions then they set out to explain why the prediction or parameters are wrong (they have to be wrong, they already have their axiom to compare everything too) or how they actually if you look at it in the right way, still prove we're right. You're confusing the two here.

My example of rabbits in the pre-cambrian comes from actual biologists. When asked what would disprove evolution they some something like "Rabbit fossils in the pre-cambrian era". Something that completely contradicts what they know and predict. Evolution actually makes predictions and sets itself up for failure if they find something that would screw up the whole theory.

 When the science of genetics came about, the biologist community took a big nervous gulp and got to work because this was something that could make or break the theory of evolution. What if everything had wildly different genetic codes? What if their were no connections? What if each specie was a perfect, unique snowflake? What if genetics left no room for things to gradually change over time with each successful replication? But those things weren't true. They made predictions of what the genetic code should show, the predictions were right. All the things they predicted were related had highly similar genetic code, lots of organisms had genetic code left over from what they used to be but were no longer, there was a ton of junk DNA, they could predict which species came first, and you could tell which species came first by genetic code. And the way chromosones exchange with each generation showed exactly how evolution takes place.

If a descrepency is found, then a new prediction has to be made to account for the descrapancy. For instance Apes such as Gorilla's, chimpanzees, and orangutans have 24 pairs chromosones. Humans have 23. Now that doesn't make sense, you don't lose chromosones evolving from a closely related cousin. That could've been a big wrench in the common ancestory idea, it would've blown it out of the water. So a testable prediction was made, the chromosone pair containing the necessary genetic information had joined with another chromosone pair. Each chromosone pair have a distinct beginning/end point called "telomeres" and a middle point called "centromeres". If the two pairs joined at some time then there should be a chromosone pair that has telomeres in the middle, and there should be two of the "centromeres", like a genetic big mac as it were. Guess what the result was when they went looking for the chromosone pairs? They found exactly what they predicted. A chromosone pair with telomeres in the middle and two sets of centromeres. Do you know how ridiculously specific that prediction is? That's not a harlot riding a scarlet covered wild beast, that's damn specific and there's no chance of that being a coincedence.

They made predictions of what would appear in the fossil record, they too were proven right. The further back you go, the less complex life gets. Certain species evolved into other species, and came about at different points in the earth's history (as it turns out, fish and birds didn't pop up before land animals per genesis).

That's how science works, falsifiable predictions are made, and then proven or disproven.

Little things come up here and there, that leads back to the drawing board. But those are details, not game breaking things. If something came along that blew the frame work out of the water such as bird fossils predating all land animals such as genesis predicts, then that would signal that the theory of evolution was wrong. But as it stands it makes predictions and then it's villified. What you describe is the religious take on proof.