Evolution and the Scientific Method ----> Creationsim

"Natural experimentation may be accepted by the scientific community however it is in no way an accurate form of experimentation. "Though I concede that individual, isolated natural experiments are subject to uncontrolled conditions, and so accuracy is lost, as you stated, I refute my opponent's claim that it "cannot be used as an accurate source of information" in relation to evolution. Natural experiments carried out in the field of evolutionary biology are done on a grand scale, under an innumerable number of conditions, in numerous subsets of the field, over long periods of time. Even with the inherent loss of accuracy that my opponent points out can be characteristic of natural experiments, the conclusions drawn from these multifarious natural experiments all diverge on the same point, this being evolution. That the theory holds up under experimentation under this multitude of varying uncontrolled conditions, yet is not falsified, actually supports the theory rather than falsifies it. [1]"the bacteria were present in the laboratory for more than 44,000 generations a figure that cannot applicably be applied to nature. These bacteria were being taken care of in a laboratory and therefore these results cannot be accurately switched over to nature"As for the first part of this statement, this is the natural rate at which bacteria reproduce. I am not sure why my opponent takes issue with this. Evolution occurs on a large time scale (billions of years), to allow for such random mutations to take place. [2]As for the second part of this statement, my opponent appears to contradict himself. He is unwilling to accept natural experimentation as a valid method for verifying the theory of evolution, yet laboratory experimentation is also unsatisfactory. The purpose of laboratory experimentation is to create a controlled environment. The bacteria were raised in a manner that is analagous to how they would survive in nature, feeding off of a steady diet of glucose in the digestive tract of an animal. [2] Nothing inherently "caused" the mutation to form, it was a random mutation.My opponent's claim that the bacteria did not evolve into a more complex being is also incorrect. Metabolizing compounds is an extremely complex process, even in simple life forms like bacteria. A bacteria that is able to metabolize two different compounds, rather than just one, is inherently a more complex being because the metabolic processes it undergoes are more complex. [3] I concede that the man-made classification system does not lend itself easily to the differentiation of bacteria species and, unlike evolution, there is much debate in the scientific community as to what constitutes a bacterium species.The So-Called "Lack" of Transitional FormsMy opponent claims that there is a lack of fossil evidence to support transitional forms. This is misleading and incorrect, for a number of reasons:1. Some of the best evidence of transitional forms are in fact the vestigial organs found in countless living creatures. For example, the pelvis of a snake, or the human appendix. These organs are useless, though often harmless, remnants of previous species in the evolutionary line. In this way, nearly all species are "transitional." [5]2. As any respectable paleontologist will confirm, fossilization is in fact very rare. The fossil record is by no means a perfect record of the history of life on earth, though that does not mean it is "faulty" when it comes to the confirmation of evolutionary theory (We do not, for example, see dinosaur fossils in strata corresponding to the pre-cambrian era, or humans in the strata corresponding to the Jurassic period). For there to be fossilized neat half-way points between species undergoing evolution would be incredibly unlikely, though transitional forms have been unearthed, as I will address later. [6]3. My opponent's understanding of transitional forms appears to be faulty. As he has felt the need to repeat numerous times, random mutation (and so evolution) takes an extremely long time. As such, one would not expect homo-sapiens to live among Cro-Magnum at the same time in the geologic time scale (evolutionarily speaking). 4. My opponent also claims that Archaeopteryx is a "fake" transitional form. One contention presented by his source is that the feathers of the fossil do not appear in the counterslab. However, this is characteristic Solnhofen fossils, because " the dead animals would fall onto hardened surfaces which would form a natural plane for the future slabs to split along, leaving the bulk of the fossil on one side and little on the other" [7]. Though I do not have the space here to correct every claim made by the source my opponent cites, my source (which in turn cites 88 sources, while my opponent's cites a handful), is below for reference.So in reality, evolution does not "dodge hard empirical evidence."SpeciationI explained in my earlier argument that artificial selection was utilized in many of these laboratory experiments. Evolution by artificial selection, however, still provides a compelling case for the theory as a whole. Artifical selection and natural selection are in many ways analagous. If one considers that natural selection is the result of outside pressures on a species (climate, environmental change, predation, etc.), artificial selection fits within this criteria (the outside pressure being what traits are desireably by humans). Humans have artificially selected (and inadvertantly created new species) for thousands of years. Corn as it exists today did not exist prior to human intervention. It is a completely unique species (the same with dogs, cows, domestic cats, etc.), and as such was not put on earth by a creator. [8]Creationism and FalsifiabilityI am not trying to falsify creationism. I am merely denying my opponent's assertion that evolution is verifiable by the scientific method, and so should be taught in science classes in schools, while creationism is not verifiable or subjectable to the scientific method, and so should not. Creationism is not based in science, for the reasons I explained earlier. Creationism cannot be properly subjected to scientific scrutiny, because any and all arguments are based on the existence of a deity/creator, and so cannot, by nature, be proven. EntropyThis is a popular, though easily refuted, argument. The law of entropy/Newton's 2nd law applies exclusively to a closed system. The earth is not a closed system, which is a simple fact of physics, as the sun radiates energy and heat in turn escapes from earth into space. In any case, mutations (the drivers of evolution) are observed today, and obviously do not violate any physical laws. [9]The Cambrian ExplosionThere are multiple explanations for the Cambrian explosion. One explanation is that a sort of genetic threshhold was crossed, allowing for a larger range of morphological possibilities. Another posits that there was not really an explosion so much as harder-bodied creatures began to evolve. There very well may have been a large number of species in the pre-cambrian era, though primarily soft-bodied (which do not leave behind nearly as many fossils). [10]I thank my opponent for his time, this has been quite the pleasurable debate. [1] Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment, Reid, Robert G.B.[2] http://en.wikipedia.org...[3] http://www.scienceclarified.com...[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[5] http://en.wikipedia.org...[6] http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com...[7] http://en.wikipedia.org...[8] http://evolution.berkeley.edu...[9] http://www.talkorigins.org...[10] http://www.fossilmuseum.net...