Evolution is a scientific fact.

I hope you enjoy your stay here; I'm sure you'll find a lot of bright members to mingle with. That said, I don't find your conclusions about evolution impressive. In fact, I find it to be quite the contrary - incredibly flawed and inaccurate. While I do admit I haven't heard the fully story of your arguments for anti-evolutionism, I can imagine what they would be. You gave some definitions, but I will have dispute that since they are a mis-characterizations of how science really works, and then tackle your main position. My round will follow accordingly: I will first dispute/elaborate your definitions and then give a brief account for evolution since in turn I want to see where your criticisms lead us to. ===================== Revision of definitions ===================== My opponent's definitions are mediocre at best, and I feel that they leave out several important aspects that shouldn't be overlooked when we are debating about the scientific merits of evolution. First, we have the definition of evolution. Drawing from the incredibly rich sources of TalkOrigins[1], I define evolution as the following: "In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution . .. is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions. " Then, we come to his. .. frankly wrong definition of a scientific fact. A scientific fact is "an observation that has been confirmed repeatedly and is accepted as true (although its truth is never final)[2]. " So it is NOT conclusively proven - to say that an empirical claim can be known to be certain is philosophically ridiculous, and would reveal the speaker's lack of knowledge about the roots and issues of epistemology. If we were to abide by this standard, then there can be no scientific knowledge since the burden is simply too heavy. ===================== How evolution is a scientific fact ===================== Assuming evolution is correct (which I make a case for in the following section), evolution is not only a theory but a scientific fact as well. How, you ask? Simple: A fact is an observation, while a theory is an explanations. This is why "biologists consider the existence of biological evolution to be a fact. It can be demonstrated today and the historical evidence for its occurrence in the past is overwhelming. However, biologists readily admit that they are less certain of the exact mechanism of evolution; there are several theories of the mechanism of evolution. [3]" For example, take gravity. A fact of gravity is observing an apple fall from a tree while a theory of gravity explains why that happened (curvature of space time, yada yada yada). If my opponent wants to contend that there aren't any demonstrations and evidence for the fact of evolution, then this brings us to the next section. If he agrees to this, however, then this debate goes to me since he would have effectively conceded this debate. ===================== Brief defense of evolution ===================== As far as I can tell, the only criticism my opponent places against evolution is that there is a "lack of evidence suggesting that anything can change from one species to another. " This is unequivocally incorrect. Speciation is very well supported, documented, and explained. Simply put, speciation is "a process whereby over time one species evolves into a different species (anagenesis) or whereby one species diverges to become two or more species (cladogenesis). [4]" The debate rages on about how much genetic drift plays a role in comparison to natural selection (though most biologists would agree natural selection is the majority of influence). I would argue that natural selection plays an overwhelming part of evolution, and that genetic drift is much less than expected. However, this is for another debate so on to the explanation of how speciation works. Another debate rages on about how speciation works (in terms of it's mechanism). There is no doubt that it does occur, but the focus is on how. This link will give you access to the different theories involved[5]. As for current day observed examples (though we don't need them to support evolution, since there is inferred evidence), there are many well documented ones. Since there are so many, I will simply supply this link[6] to which you can refer to said observed examples. ===================== Conclusion ===================== It becomes glaringly obvious that evolution, if true, is a scientific fact. Just like how gravity is both a fact and a theory, evolution can clearly be both a theory and a fact. The only argument my opponent can feasibly garner is to show that evolution is incorrect - which, of course, I have addressed. That said, the reason why I didn't put a lengthy defense of evolution is because there are simply too many possible arguments against evolution that have been advocated by creationists. To counter each one is much too large for the character limits and my patience, so I will wait earnestly for my opponent's next round. Good luck to him! ---References--- 1. . http://www.talkorigins.org... 2. . http://www.thefreedictionary.com... 3. . http://www.talkorigins.org... 4. . http://www.biochem.northwestern.edu... 5. . http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu... 6. . http://www.talkorigins.org...