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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Master (Hijacked) who wrote (7542)	6/13/2000 4:22:00 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 9127

I accept it as a theory in a field where THERE ARE NO OTHER THEORIES that make sense. I've said this SEVERAL times. I don't know what you think you are getting at but I've explained my position on this many times today. Either you understand it or you don't. I really don't feel like repeating myself over and over again, and I don't think repetition is going to make it any clearer.

To: Master (Hijacked) who wrote (7542)	6/13/2000 4:51:00 PM
From: TigerPaw	Respond to of 9127

the Theory of Evolution as fact? A big part of the misunderstanding between facts and theories is one of definitions. Many lay people use the term Evolution to mean more than it does. Evolution is the statement that living organisms on earth have changed over time (evolved). The fossils and impressions in the ground make this abundantly clear. This is the fact, there were plants and animals different from today in the past, and todays plants and animals have not left a fossil record in the early rocks. The Theory part comes in when someone, such as Darwin, gives an explanation for why plants and animals in the past were different from the plants and animals of the present. Darwin's theory is generally referred to as Natural Selection. It would not be correct to call Natural Selection a fact and there are competing theories. The misuse of terminology clouds much discussion on this subject. TP

To: Master (Hijacked) who wrote (7542)	6/14/2000 10:57:00 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

Master, I've been following your postings about how evolution, being a theory, shouldn't be treated as fact and have a few comments. Every day we make decisions where we don't have all the facts but we have enough to formulate a working "theory." If we waited for the entire picture to be perfectly clear, we'd never get anything done. We'd never change jobs or move to new neighborhoods or even make a choice of which supermarket line to wait in. I'm no scientist. I have no inclination whatsoever in that direction. But I know that a lot of our science still technically falls into the category of theory, like the theory of general relativity. There's still lots of stuff about gravity that is "only theory," but that didn't keep us from going to the moon. We accepted what we had and acted on it as though it were fact. My point is that there comes a time when a theory gains a certain critical mass that enables us to accept it, pending further clarification, and move on while a small population of scientists specializes in that theory and works to clarify it for the rest of us. Evolution certainly is in that category. There are enough pieces of the puzzle in place that it is a waste of time for all of us to keep pondering it. With evolution, there's not even a competing scientific alternative, for heaven's sake. It looks like a no-brainer to me. Why do you keep raising religion? I have never once suggested faith, religion or creationism in any of my arguments on this subject. Since I'm not religious, I have no problem summarily dismissing a faith-based belief in favor of a well-developed scientific theory. But even as a small child, a good little Catholic girl, I had no difficulty reconciling evolution with the world being created in seven days. No one gave me the answer. I just thought about it for a while and figured that the seven day thing must have been figurative rather than literal, although I was probably too young at the time to have used those words in my thought process. My point is that, if one wants to both hold onto one's faith and yet function in the modern world, reconciling the two is doable, although reconciling the theory of natural selection with the mystical grand plan is harder to do than reconciling the fact of evolution. Evolution wouldn't even be a popular issue were it not for the apparent contradiction with the faith-based beliefs of so many people.