Evolution is an unjustified axiom of faith

Rationality & Strong Evidence vs Weak Evidence Before we delve into the science of evolutionary biology, it is important first to examine the broader processes that subsume science, naturalism, and logic. They are themselves rooted in the tradition of rationalism that had its traceable origins to the Milesian philosophers of Ancient Greece. There is an identification that must be made between the beginnings of rational thought and the beginnings of science; thus, science must be seen as part of a wider, progressive story about the development of human intellect and understanding. A major principle under rationality is the differentiation between strong and weak evidence. Strong evidence offers compelling grounds for rational belief includes hard evidence, direct and indirect observations, the ability to be independently verified, falsifiable, etc. Weak evidence includes anecdotal evidence, faith, dreams, hearsay, ad populum fallacy, etc. [1] Strong evidence is what we have to prove in this debate concerning probability, given that the duly accepted definition is "supported by evidence strong enough to establish presumption but not proof. " Whoever provides more strong evidence and argument will increase the probability his side is correct. [2] Science One of the basic assumptions of science is that of assuming natural causality. This means that in this debate, there is a battle between science that assumes naturale causality and creation theology which not only assumes supernatural causality, but asserts it as absolutely true. [3] Evolution is a scientific theory. In this context, theory does not me a guess. It is a body of propositions related to a particular field, such as the germ theory of disease. Stephen Jay Gould defined a scientific fact as a theory that has been "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent. " [4] A scientific theory must be both testable and falsifiable. That is that, based on a theory, we must be able to make predictions about what is likely or unlikely to be true if the theory is correct and we must remain open to the possibility that the theory is wrong. When conflicting strong evidence is discovered, a scientific theory must be adjusted or abandoned. These make science the most reliable basis for empirical reality ever devised. This is how the scientific method operates: 1) Make observations. 2) Formulate hypotheses based on observations. 3) Form predictions based on hypothesis. 4) Test the predictions in testable and empirical conditions. 5) Draw conclusions that confirm or deny the predictions. 6) Report falsifiable results in a peer review journal that opens scrutiny of the conclusions Evidence for Evolution In contrast to the lack of strong verifiable evidence for creationism's unfalsifiable, supernatural claims; evolution has a wealth of strong evidence from the collective work in the fields of chemistry, biology, biochemisty, molecular biology, developmental biology, population biology, mammalogy, ornithology, botany, zoology, herpetology, ecology, genetics, ethology, biogeography, epidemiology, psychology, and population genetics. a) Increasing diversity and complexity Mark I. Vuletic writes, One of the crucial predictions of evolutionary theory is that one should find a general progression of increasingly diverse and complex life forms when one traces the fossil record through progressively higher strata of sedimentary rock. This is not to say that major extinctions cannot occur, or that simpler life forms cannot persist alongside more complex ones, but merely that the more complex ones should not appear before the less complex ones have appeared. The appearance of organisms in the fossil record should reflect the branching, treelike structure of evolution. Thus, had God wished to supply humanity with decisive evidence refuting evolution, He could have done so easily by depositing, preserving, and later exposing to paleontologists numerous mammalian fossils in the oldest rock strata (no difficult feat for the omnipotent creator of the universe). Yet, when we examine the fossil record, we find a distribution that matches the predictions of evolution, not one of the countless distributions that would not. Creationist spokesmen are forced to seize upon any ad hoc explanation they can think of to explain this; for instance, that Noah's Flood somehow sorted the fossils into exactly the pattern expected by evolution, or that God, for some strange reason, decided to create life over the course of aeons in a sequence matching the predictions of evolution (in either case, God presumably did not care that the resultant fossil patterns would cause us to be deceived). Surely it is more sensible simply to conclude that evolution has occurred. [5] b) Transitional Forms Mark continues, A second prediction of evolution is that the fossil record should yield transitional forms. Evolution does not require the fossil record to yield transitional forms as plentiful as the stars, since the conditions of fossilization are severe, and some organisms fossilize less easily than others, but one would reasonably become suspicious if, after more than a century of work, paleontologists had not discovered any transitional forms at all. A complete absence of transitional forms, in fact, is precisely what creationists should expect. Paleontology, however, has yielded plentiful transitional forms, of which a mere handful is listed here: From fish to amphibian: The fish Eusthenopteron and the early amphibian Icthyostega share so many characteristics as to constitute a virtual bridge between fishes and amphibians. From amphibian to reptile: Seymouria, according to Alfred Romer, "exhibits such a combination of amphibian and reptilian characters that its proper position in the classification of vertebrates has been much disputed" (Romer 1966:94). [5] c) Patterns in Genetic Material Mark continues, Had God created life through means other than evolution, He could have used the faintest whisper of His boundless power to endow each kind of creature with a different form of genetic material, or a completely different genetic code. But all life forms on Earth use DNA and RNA as genetic material, with a code that admits of only very rare and insignificant alterations, which is what one would expect had all life evolved from a common ancestor. There is, furthermore, a high degree of correspondence between molecular phylogenies and evolutionary expectations, even for nonfunctional changes in DNA. Especially puzzling for creationism is the question of why these evolutionary expectations are borne out in the case of similar species living in similar climates on different continents: creationists should expect the DNA of such creatures to closely match, if DNA was designed for functionality. However, we find instead that these species often have DNA more closely resembling that of different species in adjacent environments than that of the similar species in distant locales. The appearance of the similar species is the result of convergent evolution: the species have managed to adapt in similar ways to their environments, but they remain genetically closer to the different species near them, with whom they share a more recent common ancestor. The manner in which such genetic correlations match evolutionary expectations is independent confirmation of evolution that would serve absolutely no purpose but deception in a world in which all life was created directly by God. [5] All of the aforementioned reasons demonstrate the high probability of naturalistic evolution. Thank you. [1] Julian Baggini, Atheism: a Very Short Introduction, pages 13-23 [2] . http://philosophynow.org...... [3] . http://undsci.berkeley.edu...... [4] Steven Jay Gould, Evolution as Fact and Theory, 1981 [5] Mark I. Vuletic, In Defense of Evolution, 2003