At 06:09 AM 08/26/2000, you wrote:
>Reflectorites
>
>On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 01:05:30 +0100, Richard Wein wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>RW>Johnson implicitly admits that his case against Darwinism is not based on
> >scientific evidence (which as just as well, as he doesn't have any , ...
Chris
If a theory is *true*, what kind of evidence *could* there be against it?
Well, it would have to be "evidence" that seemed to indicate that the
theory was false while in fact it was true. Thus, if we wanted to find
evidence against the basic claim that gravitation is a fact, we'd have to
find apparent cases of physical objects not being affected by gravitation,
even in the presence of massive objects (such as the Earth) which clearly
gravitationally affect *other* things.
But, if the theory of gravitation is *true*, why would we find such things?
What we might find would be things that, to the very naive, appear to act
contrary to the law of gravitation, such as a helium-filled balloon that
floats upward rather than falling downward. But, with just a *little*
insight, we can see that anything lighter than air should tend to rise in
air, just as a block of Styrofoam will tend to rise when it is pushed under
water. Why does the balloon rise? Because, though it *is* affected by
gravitation, it is *less* affected than the same volume of air would be,
because it has less matter in that same volume. Thus, like the Styrofoam,
it will rise in air.
So, I ask again: Why should there actually be evidence against naturalistic
evolution if it is in fact the case?
We can, of course, specify things which, *if* they were the case, would be
evidence against naturalistic evolution (and I and others *have* specified
such things). But, we're still waiting for one of these things to be found
to be a fact.
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