Evolution is a scientific fact.

While I did initially state that his arguments unimpressed me, I did not mean that in full force. However, now I am well certified of it. He commits several acts of folly, such as quote-mining, making strawmans, and placing an incredibly heavy burden on the scientific community with an outlandish conclusion as a result. ===================== Revision of definitions ===================== My opponent's paragraph against my revision of evolution crumbles at the seams if he were to bother to READ THE DEFINITION IN IT'S ENTIRETY. If you were to read after the sentence my opponent quote, you will see it goes into great, concise detail about biological evolution (after all, there are different terms that include the word evolution, i. e. cosmological evolution). Since the definition I gave is as clear as daylight, refer back to my previous round for confirmation. He accepts my definition of a scientific fact - great. ===================== Brief defense of evolution -- Speciation ===================== My opponent infers from the fact that because the definition of species is contentious, biologists have stretched the definition of species so far that it ends up being vague and irrelevant. I find this to be an incredibly astounding conclusion. There is no warrant for such a heavy claim, and since there's a couple of things to address I will break this down into three sub-sections: 1. Definition of species is contentious, too broad, and ambiguous? My opponent makes the odd claim that since there doesn't seem to be an unanimous agreement on the definition of species, that evolutionists are bankrupt at any attempt at gathering evidence for speciation. NO. Not only does this presume there isn't an adequate definition of species (I could always argue for one, but I don't want to drag this debate into a slightly different topic), but it makes an unjustified leap from a theoretical lacking to a practical conclusion. In other words, just because biologists have yet to come across an agreed upon definition of species -- which happens in the theoretical level -- this does NOT preclude the events of evolution and more specifically speciation. Sure, we may come across a fine epistemological problem of how we can say speciation occurs if we have yet to settle the problem of what constitutes a species, but there are advancements that seem to demonstrate speciation EVEN THOUGH we don't have a clear cut definition yet. In other words, though the debate about the definition of species is large and complicated, it is confined. This means that most biologists will agree that bacteria and humans are different species - even if they are at conflict with the definition of species. I highly doubt that my opponent would be willing to say that the different animal kingdoms are of the same species or of some sort. There should have been a process for the gradual complexity of biological life on the planet earth - the difference between a plant and a cat is demonstrably obvious. So even though we don't have an unanimous decision of what constitutes a species, there are many examples that which we can point to and say "these are vastly different, some sort of process must have caused it". What is this process? Biological evolution - the process of change due to genetic mutations and the reproductive success of different groups of animals. 2. Snippets from my sources that my opponent mentions "Part 5 describes a number of observed speciation events and several experiments which (in my opinion) failed to produce speciation. " ----> My opponent states that this sentence from my article establishes that there is a large section dedicated to debunking several experiments that have purported to show speciation. NO - THIS IS A STRAWMAN. While it does present some cases of failed experiments, it does not discount all of them. To confirm this a brief scan of the section will prove that there are many given experiments from the author that have received no rejection. In fact, the failed experiments in which the BSC doesn't apply (which my opponent brings up) is covered in section 5.9 - everything beforehand is an EXTENSIVE LIST OF OTHERWISE VALID EXPERIMENTS. "In fact, then, both biologists and paleontologists must infer what happens, and it is very difficult to sort out where fact ends and where interpretation begins. " ----> This simply lamented at the difficulty of determining speciation due to the entanglement of results and interpretation. This is present in practically all fields of science, so I don't see your point in an attempt at exploiting this. "Notice that since biologists have not seen a speciation event that everyone would believe, biologists are driven to theory-heavy models of speciation, rather than a rich store of observational evidence. " ----> Holy S-word, did you notice that this quote refers to speciation events THAT EVERYONE WOULD BELIEVE? This is precisely the nature of the scientific community due to the fact of the debate over the definition of species. Are we really supposed to be surprised at this? 3. My opponent assumes I believe everything the author states I find it peculiar my opponent finds it evidence against me when he shows something in my source that supposedly is contrary to my position. Even if this were so (which it isn't - otherwise TalkOrigins would be defeating their own purpose), this in no way precludes me to be responsible. I simply listed the sources as a reference to lists of speciation events - I am not responsible for what the author responds about it. So until my opponent can extract some evidence against my position, which he obviously can't do with my sources, he's at a loss here. ==================== Conclusion and a few remarks ==================== Seriously. .. did my opponent visit my sources, click Ctrl + F, and search for keywords such as "failed experiment" or something? He seems to be particularly adept at quote-mining, making strawmen, and in general being intellectually dodgy. He hasn't refuted my points, but rather pulled lines out of my sources as an attempt to.