Evolutionism vs Creationism

I believe that my opponent is having some difficulties understanding the concepts we are discussing. I will try to explain them to him, before proceeding with the reasoning of the last round. THEORY: "Theory is a SYSTEM OF IDEAS intended to EXPLAIN something, such as a single or collection of fact(s), event(s), or phenomen(a)(on)." http://en.wikipedia.org... I don't know what my opponent thinks a theory is, but a theory is just a theory. A theory isn't suppose to prove something to be true, but to provide a possible explanation for a certain observation. I want to invite him to do 2 simple simulations: 1.There is this room. You know there was an animal there during the night and you want to find out which. You enter the room and you find some poop, pee and hair. You take it to the lab and you discover it all belongs to a black Labrador. You conclude by the evidences you found that there was a black Labrador in the room. Then I show you the footage that was taken during the night. From 10pm-11pm you see a monkey playing around, then the staff takes the monkey and puts there a horse for half an hour and thereafter they leave a parrot in the room for a couple of hours. In the end they take the parrot, they completely clean the room and they leave the evidences you found. It was impossible for you to figure that out, you only had access to the evidences that were left and concluded based on that, that there was a dog. But the fact that all the evidences pointed that way doesn't make it true, does it? 2. There is another room. The room is full with Rubik's cubes, a few dozens are already solved and the rest is not, and there is a monkey with one in its hand trying to solve it. After a while he manages to do it. What do you conclude? That if it managed to solve this one, he also solved the others? All the evidences point that it is possible, but I hope you've learned from the first example and you don't conclude that's the only possibility. It is also possible that the staff might had put some of them there just to mix the things up, for example. I show you the footage. During the night two kids, without the knowing or permission of the staff, enter the room with the monkey and solve all the Rubik's cubes. After that the monkey starts playing with the Cubes and mix part of them again. When you saw the monkey in the next morning he was playing with one of these cubes and by pure luck, or not, he managed to solve it. You can't base scientific theories on just ideas or nonexistent evidences, that's something more suitable for the philosophical field. However basing scientific theories on evidences doesn't make them more infallible or true either. You can't state that all the other explanations are false or irrelevant because there are not as well grounded as yours. You're just being "close minded and your faith is evading your reasoning to evaluate evidence" or the absence of it. 1.Creationism is a valid theory that can't be refuted by science. I think and hope that my opponent has already accepted that Creationism is a valid theory. However he's still trying to claim that it is not a valid scientific theory, which was something that I had clearly implied since the beginning, when I wrote that it couldn't be refuted by science. I don't understand why he has ever thought that I would try to claim it as a scientific theory. 2. Creationism shall be taught in schools. My opponent still disagrees, but I believe that's mainly because he doesn't understand that I'm not purposing it to be taught as a competitor to Evolution in the scientific field, as I've already tried to explain several times. What I'm defending is that Creationism shall be taught as a theological theory, that is based on the bible and that was considered as the only truth during many years. It shall be used to teach how science wasn't always able to study the origin of the universe and the origin of life and how people tried to approach this matters through religion. However, with the evolution of the human knowledge, scientists managed to start studying this subject on their field and to present a valid scientific explanation that doesn't necessary requires a God intervention. Nevertheless, this also doesn't disprove the possibility of a creator God, though for the science knowledge to keep advancing it's not productive to rely on this kind of religious dogmas, as it isn't productive to rely on theories based on pure luck, which only God would make plausible; and this takes me to the third topic. 3. In the previous round I claimed that Evolution was not reliable because of its improbability and randomness, which was answered by the following response: "Mutations are random, but natural selection is not [2]. With every beneficial mutation, natural selection evolves the population as a whole just a little bit. Over millions of years, evolution can change a population into a totally new species. Over hundreds of millions of years, those species can begin to look radically different from each other." If the mechanisms of adaptation and evolution of the living beings were only this two, eternity wouldn't be enough to make it plausible, since the species would take too long to adapt to any type of environmental change, how my opponent wrote, "Over millions of years (...) Over hundreds of millions of years". However, these are the mechanisms that most of the people that defend evolution are aware of and rely on to base their conviction. This ignorant, dogmatic, hypocrite belief is not science, but is basically what we learn in school about evolution and are expected to be satisfied with it. (I also would want to ask my opponent how EVERY beneficial mutation makes the population evolve as a whole? Are beneficial mutations coded with ultra dominant genes?) When I learned evolution in school, most of us were completely aware of it, it never was a question if the animals could evolve or not, it was a matter of how? We were taught about the genetic diversity, provided by sexual reproduction and genetic recombination, minor random mutations, genetic drift and genetic hitchhiking, which associated to the natural selection allowed small changes during the years that with time would create completely different species. This allied to more random mutations, but with remarkable alterations in the phenotype of the organisms, allowed them to adapt and evolve. At least 10 children in my class of ninth graders didn't buy it, a bunch of kids learning about it for the first time weren't satisfied with the lame answer that was provided and knew there was more to it than just that. Were they right? Absolutely. There were a bunch of questions made, to most of which my teacher didn't know how to answer, some of them were theories made up on the moment, here are two that I remember: http://www.boredpanda.com... Looking at some of the camouflages that exist in the animal kingdom, it easily comes to mind, what if there are transfers of DNA between different species? It would certainly help to explain such perfect camouflages and if animals from different species can trade DNA that would enable them to share important survival characteristics with each other, too. Horizontal gene transfer: http://en.wikipedia.org... It has already been proven in microorganisms, still being studied the use it may have to more complex systems. Other question was if the number of mutations is increased by the level of stress of the animal? It would make all the sense to increase the number of mutations in periods when the populations pass through more difficult times. Stress-directed adaptive mutations and evolution: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... Still in study. Other than these, there are a lot of other theories in study trying to cover the gaps of the "finished" theory of evolution, in macro and microsystems, genetics, epigenetics, etc. Evolution: A View from the 21st Century by James A. Shapiro http://sunsetridgemsbiology.wikispaces.com... Evolutionary Biology for the 21st Century http://www.plosbiology.org... Now, finally resuming my reasoning from the last round. By using evolution as a weapon, apparently part of the scientific community forgot that a scientific theory is supposed to provide an explanation for an observation, not just to prove the observation. Instead of focusing in explaining how the evolution actually works, part of the converted to evolution only focused in proving evolution over creationism, that doesn't even belong to the same field, basing their claims in a theory with so many gaps, that only a holy intervention would make it possible. The creationists naturally used this as a weakness against them. Then these "evolutionists", instead of admitting that there was still much to explain in regard of the mechanisms of adaptation, they presented claims like: "If it didn't happen this way we wouldn't be here thinking about it."; or "There are a infinite number of universes, in one of them it happened and here we are.". Thus taking positions based on chance and dogmatic assumptions, completely out of the scientific field. Since a scientific theory is suppose to be rigorous and able to be empirically disproved. Instead of trying to understand the theory they were trying to defend so blindly and promoting its advancement, they only cared to disprove a theological theory, which is completely useless and counter-productive for science. The only way to make science evolve, is fighting it against itself. However most people don't have the knowledge to do it, so they waste their time trying to prove evolution over and over again. Which is useless, because of the subjectivity and relativity of our reality. I ran out of characters again. To be continued... ;)