Re: What if?

Gordon Brown wrote:

"I have some questions about semantics. Is evolution a science, or should
it be evolutionary biology that is the science? The observation below is
also predicted by progressive creation, but that may not qualify as
science since it involves some supernatural action."

The really convincing evidence for evolution--i.e., for major changes in macroscopic life forms over time--comes from paleontology, and that has a lot to do with anatomy but less to do with the rest of biology. Paleontology is the science that is most purely concerned with the facts of evolution.

I agree that "progressive creation" is not science but theology: a way of getting God to fit existing data.

Don

  
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: gordon brown<mailto:gbrown@euclid.colorado.edu>
  To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 2:09 PM
  Subject: Re: What if?

  I have some questions about semantics. Is evolution a science, or should
  it be evolutionary biology that is the science? The observation below is
  also predicted by progressive creation, but that may not qualify as
  science since it involves some supernatural action.

  Gordon Brown
  Department of Mathematics
  University of Colorado
  Boulder, CO 80309-0395

  On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Don Winterstein wrote:

> Moorad wrote:
>
> "Evolution is not an experimental science. Is it? ...."
>
> It is. It allows many predictions. One of the most powerful: Fossils in a bed of a given geologic age will be the same many miles away in a bed of the same age, provided the depositional environment was similar. This prediction has been substantiated innumerable times, and its validity has been widely used for dating sedimentary layers. Also, the kind of prediction Charles Carrigan suggests below has been substantiated many times, usually in somewhat more complicated situations.
>
> Don
Received on Thu Dec 9 06:56:33 2004