Re: Evolution is alive and well
Glenn R. Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Fri, 09 Oct 1998 17:57:53 -0500
At 10:31 AM 10/9/98 -0700, sschaff@SLAC.Stanford.EDU wrote:
>Moorad wrote:
>
>> Christians ought to realize that evolutionary theory cannot be proven false
>> since it cannot be falsified. [...]
>
>I have seen you make this statement several times, and I am puzzled by
>it. I can think of several kinds of observation that _I_ think would
>falsify evolution (by which I mean common descent of all life forms on
>the planet), at least in anything remotely like its present form. And
>the opponents of evolution certainly think it can be falsified, since
>they spend a good deal of ink trying to do precisely that. Could you
>explain why you think it is unfalsifiable?
If we were to find the entire panoply of modern animals, fossilized in
Cambrian rocks, it would clearly rule out evolution since nothing would
have changed and no evolution would have occurred. So, evolution is clearly
falsifiable. The problem is we don't find modern animals in the 500 myr
old Cambrian rocks. In fact the earliest fossil example of a living animal
is only 5-10 million years old. There are two of them from Upper Miocene
rocks.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm