The current evolutionary synthesis is not a scientific theory

"Traits are observable, so the criteria of demonstrability has been met." It was conceded that it could be demonstrated, what was contested is that it is predictive, there is no way to even model it with algorithms as there is no way to define a "goodness of fit" criteria [1]. "Buildings can catch fire and burn down." A more analagous statement would be "After it is built, a building might burn down.". Now would that be considered a valid scientific theory? One could sit and watch building after building not burn down and the statement would hold because it only notes they could, not that they should and under what conditions (which would make it a theory). Is that predictive? Clearly no. "Different organisms have different mechanisms for correcting DNA mutations." Note the current theory does not restrict inherited traits to be from DNA as it is now know there are non-DNA sources of inherited traits. "It is beneficial to the survival of the human species to evolve quickly. Not so horseshoe crabs." Note "survival of the fittest"is no longer the primary constraint in evolutionary theory as it is known that mechanisms such as genetic drift can cause speciation which to not "fit" a species to the environment. "Pro argues, "There is no constraint in the definition which can be used to exclude divergence, ..." I'm not sure what Pro means, but it is not relevant to the resolution. The resolution is that the proportion of traits in a population can change. That's not contradicted." It was argued that if forced breeding failed to work it would falsify evolutionary theory, this is not the case. If forced breeding produced no focused change at all over time instead showed divergence or oscillation of trait frequency then the theory still would hold as it does not say that a change has to take place, nor does it say that the change has to obey rules for DNA inheritence. Assume the goal was to breed a more muscular dog so in each generation the most muscular dogs were bred. The statement in the above would allow for the population of dogs to not become more muscular because the traits could oscillate, they could even in fact produce less muscular dogs - or they could produce no net change. "Hence if 99.9% of scientists agree with the whole theory of evolution, a higher percentage might oppose the current resolution, but not a lower percentage." They would agree that the statement is not false if they accepted Darwin's theory yes, but the resolution is not that the statement is true, the resolution is that the statement (a noted in the above) is a scientific theory. In summary, there has been a great deal of new information discovered which contradicts many long standing ideas in evolutionary theory such as; inherited traits = DNA, natural selection = mechanism for allele selection, etc. . As the current statement of evolutionary theory has removing these falsified assertions it has in doing so become so vague that it is currently as stated not a scientific theory. "Scientists are authorities on what constitutes science, whether agree with a theory or not." I would agree, but again are they actually commenting on the specific resolution made here? "Pro argues that the theory of Darwinian evolution has changed over time. That's irrelevant to the current debate, where the definition is given as a weak subset of the larger theory." It was included to clairfy what was being contested was the current statement only. "Newton proposed a valid theory of how gravity acts; Einstein explained how the mechanism works. That supports, not denies, Newton." Accepted without contest, but note here Einstein proposed the mechanism (curvature of space time), this is the exact opposite of what we are discussing here where the mechanism was removed from the definition. [1] http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk...