Scientific Evidence Supports Macroevolution

Once again, I thank SavedByChrist94 for being my opponent, and I hope readers have enjoyed our exchange as much as I have. To his credit, he is an impassioned defender of his cause, and although I consider his arguments to rest atop many misconceptions and misunderstandings, I respect him for the effort he’s put forth in this debate. Now, for our conclusion. A) Eyewitness testimony, of the sort that my opponent demands, is not the primary method used by scientists. Think about particle physics, chemistry, and biology as examples where the materials which are studied obviously cannot be seen with the naked eye. Additionally, eyewitness testimony is far less reliable than physical evidence (such as the kind which supports evolution, incidentally). Any criminologist, or heck, even a fan of Law and Order would know this [9]. A theory of who-done-it can be confirmed in criminal justice with DNA sequencing and identifiers. A theory of who-done-it… with Neanderthals in the ancient past can similarly be confirmed by ] the same kind of tests. B) YHWH is not verifiable by the naked eye, which blatantly exposes the double standard routinely employed by Con throughout this debate. I posed this objection in the previous round... and nothing from Con. I’m still waiting. C) With respect to first cause, is Con proposing that YHWH is a disembodied mind floating around in the nothingness of the infinite past before it occurred to him to make all of existence? Because if that is his claim, we have a problem - there is absolutely no evidence that disembodied minds exist, or that consciousness is possible outside of the electrochemical processes occurring within the physical brains of higher carbon based organisms. Minds have only ever been observed in association with physical brains. I don’t claim this alone disproves God, and that isn’t even what I want this particular discussion to focus on. I’m only talking about evolution in this debate. But is worth considering how much discussion time Con has wasted with this non-scientific, unobserved “fact” as he mistakenly calls it. D) “A cause requiring the properties of its effect”… what do you even mean by that? When a river causes erosion in rock over millions of years, are you saying that means that the river must have all the same properties of rock canyons, or rock all the same properties of a river? What are you even talking about? On second thought, nevermind. It has nothing to do with evolution. E) Science works. That is why people respect it, as well as the people who practice the discipline. Angels, faeries, gods, pixies, unicorns, and other fanciful imaginations may or may not be flying around - but airplanes surely are. Our understanding of physics, aerodynamics, biology, evolutionary science, chemistry, etc… may always and forever be incomplete, at least in an absolute, religiously dogmatic truth sense - thankfully - but although these ideas continue to be refined, our current models, laws, and principles of the underlying theories have excellent predictive value and practical applications. That is why we can be confident we have things mostly right – because things work. Dog and horse breeding are among the examples of both ancient and modern evolutionary understandings being put to practical use [10]. F) Con attempted last round to put creationism on equal footing with evolution. I’m sorry, but just “being an idea” is not the criteria of what constitutes a sound scientific theory. Philosopher Richard Popper has identified falsifiability as the differentiating factor between science and pseudoscience [11]. An example used by Richard Dawkins and others to demonstrate the falsifiability of evolution is that if a rabbit fossil were ever discovered in sediment dating to the Precambrian period, this would blow evolution out of the water, because according to evolution, bacteria and other primitive life that was present during that time can’t just jump directly into being complex mammals [12]. No such rabbit has ever been found to date, by the way. To contrast this with creationism, there is no possible way to falsify the YHWH “theory”. That may sound great to believers, but that those of us who understand how science works realize that this is a weakness, not a strength. If an excuse can be made for any piece of evidence that comes along no matter what, that makes the idea, by definition, pseudoscience. G) Just to quickly rebut Con’s “proof” about the shroud of Turin, it is not even officially authenticated by the Catholic Church, which is not nearly brave (or foolish) enough to stick it’s neck out that far, considering that there remains strong controversy over whether or not it is a medieval hoax used to attract tourists on pilgrimage. Any other “rebuttals” to the evidence I presented seemed as far as I can tell to fall into one of three categories: “nuh uh!”, “that has never been directly observed”, and “simple, God could have just made it that way”. I don’t need to really bother with 1, spent time discussing 2 already, but let me proceed more in depth to 3. One of the strongest refutations of his “God made it that way” idea with respect to evolution is a study of endogenous retrovirals. These are actually inactive viral DNA sequences left over from infections suffered by ancestors and passed on to descendants. It is one of the methods we are able to use to map the branching off of one species from other species. For example, alligators, crocodiles, cats, humans, dogs, tigers, and monkeys may all share a certain retroviral sequence, because we all shared a distant common ancestor. But then, if alligators and crocodiles separated farther back from mammals, than they did from one another, then it stands to reason that they would additionally have certain endogenous retrovirals that mammals do not, and vice versa. The same would be expected for humans and monkeys, who are more recently separated than, say, humans and tigers. And indeed that is exactly what we observe. Retroviral DNA sequences are observed in exactly the right sequences predicted by evolutionary science [13]. Why would God have created species with muted, inactive viral codes in the exact correct order to make it look as if common descent were true? Even if it is possible that he did, that explaination is not the most parsimonious - and thus the most reasonable one. The video I provided in round 2 talks about this towards the end and has some good visuals to illustrate the findings. DNA has certainly not overturned evolution, I have no idea why my opponent would think this. Since 1953, support in the scientific community has not dimiished either. It is with good reason that the vast majority of scientists in relevant fields – around 99.5% of them – accept evolution [14]. I realize that the number of scientists that agree with something doesn’t automatically make it true, but these are not stupid people. Give them some credit. Picture a courtroom scenario. If you’ve only ever heard evolution as it is explained by creationists, this is rather like hearing a case presented only by one side. Just imagine that. What if the prosecutor in a trial said “instead of allowing the defense a chance to speak, the judge and I have agreed that I will instead present his position for him. You don’t need to hear it directly from him, you can trust me to tell you the truth about everything.” How absurd is that? But that’s exactly what is going on if you only get your information about evolution from preachers instead of scientists. Thank you for your time and consideration. 9) http://agora.stanford.edu... 10) http://www.pbs.org... 12) http://en.wikipedia.org... 13) http://en.wikipedia.org... 14) http://en.wikipedia.org...