| Reasonable said: You know, in the end you either read, understand and accept something like evolution or you don't. There is no one piece of evidence. It doesn't work like that. You need to put in effort to understand it, like pretty much any scientific theory. Sure, there will always be the attempt to deliver some potted summary, but it's just not that simple. Currently, based on everything I've read (and then thought about) it is clearly the most persuasive and convincing argument of how every living thing on the planet came to their current place. But it remains a theory. The one that holds up the best, but of course open for further research and revision as more evidence comes to light. Which brings up another point - to understand evolution as a theory, I believe it's also important to understand the scientific process. It does not, by definition, answer all issues to do with living creatures - such as how life initially began, exactly how our brains work, etc. Evolution is about how, given a known position very, very early in the appearance of life on Earth, the current forms around us came to be, slowly changing over millions of years. |
A theory is a very high accolade that a scientific idea can reach. If evolution hadn't had testable methods or sufficient evidence to back it up then it would be the "hypothesis of evolution". I mean the idea behind a theory really is that is has been proven but we still gather evidence to further refine and understand the theory. If conflicting evidence is found then the theory has to be adjusted to conform. To me scientific theory is almost as good as fact as that is essentially what a theory is, a collection of facts based on evidence.
I know you know all that, obviously, you are a very intelligent guy. I was really saying it for the benefit of some of the other users because I find that I have to explain it at some point during every science thread, might as well get it out of the way now.
