Welcome to Gaia! ::

The existence of the fossils of developing humans is pretty damning evidence, though.

I�m curious why you feel this way. You might not be able to tell me, much like I can�t say why I hated tomatoes for so long only to like them as an adult, but if you could try, I�d appreciate it.



I�m going to quote from the May 2005 National Geographic:
the reason this is an issue is because current gravitational �laws� and equations can�t explain what prevents this. According the equations we know, galaxies and stars SHOULD fly apart. Maybe our thoughts and theory of gravity is wrong. Or maybe it�s right and there is a substance being called dark matter that holds everything together, as this article suggests. We don�t know, thus it�s a theory.



How can we rely on equations to predict the effects of gravity when everything on the planet and in the solar system follows this pattern, but the galaxies do not? Everything that we have seen on this plant behaves according to evolutionary forces now. This doesn�t proven that it always has, just like our theory of gravity doesn�t prove that gravity has always existed, but it�s a safe bet.

It really confuses me that people talk about 'believing' in evolution as if it is a religious idea. confused

Careful about these words. Something can be considered 'fact' in common parlance if there's a reasonably high chance that it's true. Note that 'fact' is not a scientific term, like 'theory' is.
Note, many theories are considered facts as well.

Anyway, what exactly is the theory of gravity? Is it just that universal gravitation exists?

Yeah, that's true. Theories can be used as pieces of data while creating new theories, though.

Erm. Not Theory of Gravity, Law of Gravity. F=Gm1m2/r^2 and all that. Theory is why; Law is the mathematical equation that makes it all seem to work. As for the situation with things not meeting up with Newtonian gravity, check out this article:

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn8631

The problem is, scientists started by looking at normal-sized things going at visible speeds on Earth, so they came up with set theories. And then they started looking into microscopes at really small, close things, and they started looking into space at really big, fast things, and they started to figure out that their initial theories didn't cover those extremes. So they did some testing, got some data, and figured out an explanation that still worked for the normal stuff on Earth, but also explained the extremes. It looks like they just found another step for that in gravitational physics.

The thing with the whole "theory vs. hypothesis" situation going around with Creation Science is, there's a whole lot of people saying either "Evolution's only a theory!" or "But that doesn't explain this!" First off, scientific theory means something a lot different from crackpot theory your great uncle came up with after finishing the liquor bottle off. Second of all, trying to claim a scientific theory's wrong because you don't see microscopic proto-bacteria isn't going to work. You prove a scientific theory wrong by showing something that goes counter to the theory, not by showing that they don't have every detail of what happened along the way. And given all the fossil evidence supporting evolution, I personally believe it would take a spiteful, petty G*d to create humans with intelligent, curious brains and then give us fake fossils. And the G*d I believe in is neither spiteful nor petty.

(goes back and reads earlier posts) (points to the Law of Gravity/Theory of Gravity question in my previous reply)

(dusts off Physics degree) Okay. I think the first thing that needs to be covered is Scientific Theories vs. Hypotheses.

In Science, a Hypothesis is an unproven guess about how and why things happen. Some of these can seem wild and out there, some very basic. This is the closest thing Science has to the non-scientific sense of the word "theory" which can mean anything from "I have a vague idea how that could happen" to somebody's crazy idea about how aliens built the pyramids.

A current Scientific Theory is one that has repeatedly been tested under laboratory and research conditions, and has never had a piece of evidence that contradicted it. (There are also outdated Scientific Theories that were apparently correct but have since been found to have inconsistencies with external observation, like classical Newtonian Physics before Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity, but those fall out of favor as soon as that contradictory evidence occurs.)

No Scientific Theory is automatically assumed to be the whole and absolute truth; scientists believe that such theories are the best approximation we can come up with according to our current evidence, but must always be ready to accept that there may be some enexpected piece of evidence that throws the whole thing out the window.

For instance, the Darwinian Theory of Evolution suggested gradual, step-by-step evolution -- things changing slowly over time. The currently supported Theory of Evolution, last I heard, was Punctuated Equilibrium; things evolve very slowly, maintaining an even state that doesn't change very much, and then some dramatic event occurs that kills off a bunch of living things. The living things that are left, since there's not so much competition for the more wierdly-mutated offspring, evolve dramatically until all the necessary niches are filled again. Then things go back to evolving slowly. (Note: Punctuated Equilibrium does not mean Evolution is wrong; it just means that scientists are reaching a better understanding of how Evolution occurs.)

All the evidence we have is in support of Punctuated Equilibrium. And I mean *all* the evidence. If we had any reputable evidence that contradicted it, Punctuated Equilibrium would no longer be the current Scientific Theory. Scientists would look at the new evidence and study and research until they found an explanation that would fit all the old evidence and the new evidence, too.

My problem with Intelligent Design is that it says "but this is too complicated to happen on its own!" I once heard an ad on the radio comparing the situation to walking along a riverbank and finding an arrowhead. The speaker claimed that the arrowhead was too detailed to have naturally occurred there. My reaction was, "Perhaps, if all I found was an arrowhead, I might believe it had been created. But if the entire riverbank was littered with broken shards of rock that looked similar to arrowheads from the way they broke, finding one rock that looked like a complete arrowhead would no longer be so hard to explain without an intelligent designer."



You're welcome, Kalorn. The classical Laws of Gravitation may be broken, but they're still useful. It's only in certain circumstances that the variance from their data becomes observable, so it's a lot easier to use the classical Laws in everyday life. Sort of like we don't usually use Shroedinger's Equations when dealing with physics on a macroscopic scale. That's what happens a lot with Physics these days; the theories are getting accurate on a broader and broader scale, so Physicists get all the fun of figuring out what the forces are doing that can be approximated under most conditions with the equations we already have. (Of course, then you get into areas like String Theory, where they're trying to find connections for all these different behaviors. But I'm not up on current String Theory research.)