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What I have stated, I have stated clearly. You have misconstrued my position."
Oh, let's give the whole post so that the reader can decide if I really misconstrued anything.
I believe I outlined for you how evolution follows the scientific method.
http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/28/2794/16.html#000228
You did not raise any objections. I assume that that means that you accept now that evolution really does follow the scientific method.
The fact of the matter is that you made a false claim that scientists involved in biology are not actually following the scientific method. I then gave you a short summary of the scientific method and followed that with how biologists in the field of evolution actually follow the method. You have never raised any objections to that. For example, you have never shown factually (or even attempted at all) to show what I claim are the observations are not really observations. You merely repeat the same false assertion if you even mention it again.
I am making the assumption that since you cannot spell out any faults in my reasoning that you cannot find any faults. If you cannot give the fault, then why do you make the same assertions? If you can find fault, then why don't you detail them for us? Instead you distort the facts by claiming that I have misconstrued you when all I said was that I was going under the assumption that you must not object to claims that evolution does follow the scientific method since you have not raised any objections. I distorted nothing of your position. At worst, I made a bad assumption.
But you still have not shown what is wrong with the short summary. Here it is again for the reader.
For giggles, let's Google "scientific method." The first hit is
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html
It states the scientific method as follows.
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />The scientific method has four steps
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
So let's see how evolution stacks up.
Step 1. I have given you a partial list of observations above. So check.
Step 2. Well, we hypothesize that these observations seem to show that all life may be related. So we will go with that as a hypthesis. New life forms can develop from other life forms.
Step 3. Now the fun begins. Let's look at a few examples.
Take whales for example. They are sea dwelling mammals. During their development, they have cute little legs and feet that emerge and then are reabsorbed. Sometimes this programmed cell death does not occur and the whales are born with full on rear legs. Well, we'll predict that whales have a land dwelling ancestor and we should be able to find fossil of such. And we do. Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Basilosaurus and many others. Well, once we have the fossils we see that they show whales evolving from ungulates. So if we test modern ungulates we should find them closely related to whales. We test and they are. Now, if whales came from land animals, they then once had a functional sense of smell. We might be able to find the remains of the genes for this system. And guess what, whales have scores of pseudogenes of a sense of smell just like what the land animals to which it is related have.
Man has traits that makes us another ape. There should be links between us and the other apes. And there are. (For a whole thread on the genetic links see
http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/66/19.html? ) Some of the links are genetic. We find shared pseudogenes and retroviral inserts and transposons between man and the other apes. We have a rich fosil record leading back to common ancestors.
The fossil record shows the horses and rhinos share a common ancestor. We predict that genetics should show the same link. And it does.
Darwin even predicted that there must be a means for carrying the instructions for making life. Last century we found it, DNA.
So, evolution passes the thrid step with flying colors. This third step is where we really spend all of our time in debates.
Step 4. Well here we refine our theory as we make more observations and we see how different scientists support different notions with new discoveries. Some ideas are cast off in favor of new ones, such as cladogenesis replacing orthogenesis for the most part, but such is the process. We have lab experiments where rapid evolution can be observed. Evolution meets the criteria of the fourth stage.
So we see, contrary to your assertion, that evolution does follow the scientific method.</font>[/QUOTE]
