Dragaera

The Great Debate....to DDB

Lydia Nickerson Lydy at demesne.com
Sat Nov 30 11:09:32 PST 2002

At 5:18 AM -0800 11/30/02, Caliann the Elf wrote:

>
>However, I might point out that evolution is STILL a "theory" and 
>that it has NOT been "proven" to scientist's satisfaction.  Once it 
>HAS been "proven", it will no longer be put forth in scientific 
>circles as the "theory".

That's not the way it works.  You are mixing up colloquial usages and 
the more precise scientific ones.  Nothing in science is more certain 
than a theory.  That is because science is constantly involved in 
checking and verifying and adding to its body of knowledge.  An idea 
about how things work that hasn't been tested is sometimes called an 
hypothesis.  If it stands up to rigorous examination, it might be 
promoted to a theory.  There isn't any doubt about evolution.  Some 
of the mechanisms have been challenged, and there have been various 
other refinements over the years, but the core of the theory remains 
solid.

>
>Hhhmmm, in that, let me put forth that scientists have still not 
>been able to reproduce "life" in tests which the enviroment is 
>consistent with those of ancient Earth.  They have been able to 
>reproduce "life" in those tests, but they have had to remove said 
>"life" from the enviroment so that it wasn't destroyed.

I have no idea what you mean by this.  Which ancient Earth?  How far 
back are we going?  What evidence do we have for the environmental 
conditions?  Besides, scientists can't work on evolutionary time. 
The time it would most likely take for life to spontaneously generate 
>from an appropriate chemical soup is greater than the amount of time 
that humans have been on Earth, by several orders of magnitude, if 
I'm remembering my timeline correctly.


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Lydy Nickerson		lydy at demesne.com	lydy at lydy.com
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