1. A theory is not a fact, period. It is an "educated guess".
Sorry. You're just wrong here. It's a set of provable statements which may be true or false, along with any ineluctible logical conclusions which are based on those facts, to create a model of the way that the world functions.
If the statements are true, then the conclusion is true. There's no way for it not to be. However, many times, the initial theory is true in a gross manner, but not in certain more specific applications. (For example, see the general and special theories of relativity, or, as you bring up later, the differences between Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Evolution as it currently stands today.)
When we are talking about hard sciences such as germ theory, etc, these CAN be proven or disproven.
Evolutionary theory is as much of a hard science as germ theory. Your ignorance is showing.
But we are talking about the theory of evolution which unless we work out the kinks in the time machine we have been working on, it is impossible to prove one way or the other.
Untrue. Darwin's theory of evolution was, when it boils down to it, this: through natural selection, individuals with advantageous traits will tend to succeed and ones with disadvantageous traits will not succeed to reproduce and pass on those traits. As such, populations may change over time in such ways that they are considerably different from that of the originator species. An ineluctable conclusion of the theory is that everything descended from a common ancestor.
Even though we can't go back in time and follow along, we know that evolution is occurring now, it appears to be a natural law, and, as such, can be expected to apply in absence of other mitigating factors from the beginning of biology to the end of time. But, you might be right. Maybe gravity didn't work the same way either, back then, and Icarus really -could- fly close up to the sun on wings of feathers and wax. Maybe he passed a pig on the way. Maybe worms really do spontaneously generate from meat, and mice from wheat -- or at least, back then they did, but then suddenly and miraculously the
entire order of the universe changed.
</sarcasm>
In many ways, evolution has become a matter of faith.
Except that evolutionary biology is a vibrant and growing field of research, and evolutionary biologists aren't taking everything on faith. They're using it and applying it. They know it works.
The average lay person? They take evolution on faith. They also take on faith the fact that the earth is round, that the moon is not, in fact, made of green cheese, but mostly silica, and that they are not just brains in jars dreaming electric dreams on a shelf in a warehouse somewhere.
Just as geological dating. There are a million variables that could change the outcome of radioactive isotope decay that it is also impossible to definitively state the age of anything that is considerably outside of the human reference. Humans have been recording history for THOUSANDS of years, not tens of thousands. It IS possible to accurately date something which we have a point of reference for, but again, we must wait until that time machine...
It's obvious here that you don't understand the way that radioisotope dating works. While carbon-dating can be somewhat problematic, there're other forms of dating which are less accurate on the short-term but much more accurate in terms of millions of years. There are several different radioisotopes used for dating, and using the proper one for the thing that you're dating is important.
I can't travel into the past, but I can't travel to the moon, either. However, I can experimentally verify the size of the moon through a number of different methods. The lowest-tech would be to use parallax to verify the range to the moon, and then figuring out the size of the moon is a 'simple' calculation based on the moon's apparent size and actual distance.
Then, using a few more measurements, I can calculate the orbit of the moon, its period, and, thence, its exact position in the
sky and all transits and eclipses for millions of years before now and after now. Radioactive decay is just as bound by the inexorable laws of mathematics as the orbit of the moon is. While experimental errors can creep in and while every method has its own precision, that doesn't invalidate them.
2. It is NOT arrogant to say that germs and viruses cause disease, again, this is a hard science, something which can be proven or disproven in a laboratory or in the field.
You think it's so simple, only because it's so well accepted that you
take it on faith. It's less simple. Significantly so. It is only within very, very recent years that we can actually observe the processes of disease and damage going on, to any extent, and our understanding there is still limited. 25, maybe 40 years ago, the Germ Theory was essentially as 'unproven' as the Theory of Evolution is today -- and even then your mom yelled at you to wash your hands or you'd get sick.
What IS arrogant would be to state that germs and viruses are the ONLY causes of disease or any number of statements which have recently been proven wrong.
Digression, strawman, irrelevance. I never -- nor did the Germ Theory -- stated that germs and viruses are the only causes of disease.
3. You wrote: "A 'missing link' for what? And you expect a species (the common ancestor) which, by definition, became obsolete and reproductively non-competative millions of years ago to still be around? Way to set the bar (literally) impossibly high."
One of the big problems with evolution theory is that the fossil record fails to support "gradual evolution". This has led to revisions of Darwin's original evolutionary theory and the proposing of even more rapid evolutionary changes; that many new species may be produced by sudden, drastic changes in genes; a theory which is called the process of "punctuated equilibrium".
Yep. They made a minor modification to the theory when they realized that they were wrong. This is the way that theories work, and this is the difference between 'Darwinian Evolution' and the currently-accepted Theory of Evolution. However, the punctuated equilibrium model is supported by a lot of current research; very minor changes in genes sometimes have drastic effects. For example, the bacterial flagellum, often touted by creationists as 'irreducibly complex' isn't. It turns out that it's a simple modification of another gene, which I believe coded for another type of bacterial appendage, and that, in turn, was defined by the simple modification of another type of movement device, a kind of syphon. In each example, the organism changed radically with a single mutation, in a single leap, without useless intermediary forms.
Of course, the more complex an organism gets, the less likely it is that any single mutation will both yield significant change and a living organism. However, populations can change radically over decades, years, or even months, depending on the frequency of reproduction.
4. In reference to the finches mentioned in a previous reply, I am not sure if this is the specific issue alluded to, but interesting nonetheless since it is key to the argument against "natural selection" as being key to the "evolution of a species". The research study which was done in the 1970's by Peter and Rosemary Grant discovered that after years of drought, finches that had slightly bigger beaks survived more readily than those with small beaks. The National Academy of Sciences used this example in their brochure, but they neglected to mention that in the years following the drought, finches with smaller beaks again dominated the population and which subsequent papers indicate that they had seen "a reversal in the direction of selection".
In short, what scientists refer to as the evolution of a new species could just as easily (and just as accurately) be referred to as a matter of variation within a "kind" of animal/life form.
That's how it starts, duh. If the environmental conditions had lasted long enough, you'd've had another species (assuming that the ancestor critter has populations outside of that area.) However, because the changes were relatively minor, and because the time was very short, it was easily reversed when the environment changed.
You seem to think of changes due to evolution as something that's happening all the time, but really, it's something that tends to happen more in times of environmental upset or upheavel, when conditions change and suddenly populations get culled due to this. This is when whole populations change and shift. In other times, the mutant is a freak, and may not be able to reproduce. However, when the mutants have the best ability to survive and reproduce, they dominate.
Theories are not fact and they should not be taught as such. It stiffles progress and goes against scientific principles. Scientists, institutions and entire disciplines have latched on to specific theories as gospel and have essentially made them articles of faith.
Scientific Theories are Scientific Theories and should be taught as such. Unfortunately, it's either often mis-taught or mis-learned. But a well-examined, scientific Theory can be treated as fact, most of the time, because it's the most logical model of the world extant regarding that subject. By the time a theory gets known to the layperson -- like the Theory of Evolution, or the Theory of Gravity, or whatever, it's either roundly well-supported or it's become a joke. (For example, see Lamarkian evolution.) Doing pretty much anything in biology while insisting that evolution is unsupported and wrong is kind of like putting on galoshes, a winter coat, and a sweater, because it's June, and the weather man said that it's going to be 104F out, but, y'know, his model might be wrong and we could be in for a blizzard!
Edit: Okay, the Theory of Evolution was known to laypeople right off, but only 'cause people freaked out about it and it caused a media circus. But I meant it in terms of scientific theories that people could name now.
