[MrWonderful]

We have all heard the phrase, "That's like comparing apples and oranges."
In fact, apples and oranges compare very nicely.
1. They're both very round in shape.
2. They're both fruit.
3. They're both tasty.
4. They're nutritious.
5. They're common.
6. They grow on trees.
7. They're of comparable size.
8. They generally have attractive coloring. They're pleasing to look at.

"Comparing apples and oranges" needs to be replaced with "comparing evolution and gravity."

You see, evolution is universally defended with this non-comparison of "It's a theory like gravity."
Well, no, there is nothing theoretical about gravity. Plants react to it, animals react to it. They both understand gravity perfectly.

Darwinian evolution is a simplistic tautology. Gravity is an ironclad law, described by physics and verifiable equations, not evolutionary biology "A>B>C>D".

Oranges and apples are eminently more comparable than evolution and gravity.

[Godstud]

It is quite clear that you do not understand how scientific theory and laws work. Come back when you have more succinct understanding of both, along with scientific method.

https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-theory

https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-theory

Scientific Theory vs Law
Scientific Definition of Theory
According to the same dictionary, another definition of theory is “a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena.” An example of this type of theory would be the theory of relativity proposed by Albert Einstein. This is the scientific definition of the word theory, which holds an important distinction from the English definition: a scientific theory must be backed with scientific evidence and have passed a rigorous testing process. According to Wikipedia, “a scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed, preferably using a written, predefined, protocol of observations and experiments.” The article continues stating that “scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge.”

The Scientific Method
Suppose that you observed some phenomena and formulated an idea to explain it. In English, you could describe this idea as a theory. In science, this idea would be called a hypothesis. If you wanted to call it a scientific theory you would need to repeatedly develop predictions, gather data to test these predictions, and refine your hypothesis based on this data. After many iterations, you would submit your hypothesis to the scientific community. If any scientist could disprove your idea, it would be rejected and remain a hypothesis. If no scientist could disprove your idea, it would be accepted and become a scientific theory. This process is known as the scientific method, and has been simplified for the sake of brevity.

Theory vs Law
Now that we understand the distinction between an English theory and a scientific theory, we can discuss the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific law. As previously stated, a scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world. A scientific law is simply an observation of the phenomenon that the theory attempts to explain. For example, suppose that you were lying under an apple tree and observed an apple fall from a branch to the ground. The observation of this phenomena can be called the law of gravity. The law of gravity states that every time you drop an apple, it will fall to the ground. The theory of gravity is the explanation as to why the apple falls to the ground. A law is an observation. A theory is an explanation.

Just A Theory
Understanding the difference between a theory and a law makes evident the ignorance of statements like “oh, that’s just a theory” when attempting to diminish the integrity of a scientific theory like evolution. This argument doesn’t make sense, as a theory is the highest honor achievable in a scientific field. Acknowledging the theory of evolution as a scientific theory is acknowledging it as the greatest thing that humans, through science, are capable of creating. The theory of evolution is the best explanation of the observed phenomena of evolution. The current theory is Darwinian evolution through natural selection, and an enormous amount of evidence supports the theory. Scientists would encourage you to challenge and be skeptical of the current theory of evolution, as doing so helps refine existing theories into better ones. It does not, however, make sense to refute the massive amount of scientific evidence for evolution like the existence of fossils of human ancestors. We should dispute why what happens happens, but not the fact that it is happening.

Scientific Certainty
Even scientific theories, which have obtained the highest honor anything can in science, are not meant to be taken as absolute truths. While some are based on very sound reasoning and evidence, they could one day be proven wrong and every scientists knows it. When scientists discuss well-established scientific theories as if they were true they are allowing themselves a minor degree of technical error to facilitate the expression of information more efficiently. I suspect that there are very few universal truths we will ever discover, and if we prefaced every statement we made with “evidence strongly suggests that” we would waste an enormous amount of time and energy being unnecessarily redundant. The fact that any given scientific theory could one day be proven wrong, and that a better theory would replace it, is exactly what makes science such a powerful tool.

Conclusion
The scientific method allows us to formulate ideas and back them with evidence. They are then shared with a community of other scientists that rigorously try to disprove them. If no one can disprove a hypothesis, it becomes the current working theory. If someone eventually does, the theory is changed or replaced. This process continues and results in better and better ideas being formulated over time. Although the scientific method is not guaranteed to give us the absolutely correct answer, it does help us get closer to that answer. It helps us improve our existing model of the universe and learn from our mistakes.

Scientists have been wrong before, and they will be wrong again. Science is the process of attempting to understand the natural world through evidence. New evidence can change our model of the universe, and that’s okay. The humans that lived on this planet before us for hundreds of thousands of years probably never knew that our planet was round. With Google Earth, I can view a three-dimensional simulation of our whole planet from my living room. That wouldn’t have been possible without the advancement of science and technology. That would not have been possible if we had given up faith in science the first time we misinterpreted scientific evidence. There was a time when we thought the earth was flat, but when new scientific evidence suggested the earth was round we swapped out that theory for a better one.

It would be great if there was a tool that guaranteed us the absolute correct answer every time, but no such tool exists. Science is by far the best tool we have to understand the natural world, and scientific evidence should not be ignored just because it has been misinterpreted in the past.


That said:
2. Evolution by natural selection: Charles Darwin, 1859
Darwin showed that the intricate complexity of life and the intricate relationships among life-forms could emerge and survive from natural processes, with no need for a designer or an ark. He opened the human mind to pursuing natural science unimpaired by supernatural prejudices. His theory was so revolutionary that some people still doubt it. They shouldn’t.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/contex ... c-theories

[MrWonderful]

The lion does not turn around when a small dog barks. - Nigerian Proverb

Admin Edit: Redacted. Use the report function to make reports to the moderators not your own post.

Are these men, and thousands of others like them, all ignorant of this magesterium of *science* about which so many pretentious atheists pretend to know so much?

“WE CONCLUDE – UNEXPECTEDLY – that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak.” – Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Illinois, Chicago, The American Naturalist, November 1992

“Darwin’s theory is no closer to resolution than ever.” – David Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion

“I can think of no other example in all of history when an important scientific theory (Darwinism) – a dominant position in intellectual life – was held in such contempt and skepticism by people who are paying for its research. People just found that theory impossible to swallow.” – David Berlinski, 2008 lecture

“My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed…..It is not even possible to make a caricature of an evolution out of paleobiological facts…The idea of an evolution rests on pure belief.”(Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, noted Swedish botanist and geneticist, of Lund University)

“Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever! In explaining evolution we do not have one iota of fact.” – (Dr. Newton Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission.)

“When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.” (John Polkinghorne, Cambridge University physicist, “Science Finds God,” Newsweek, 20 July, 1998)

“Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.” (Charles Townes, 1964 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, “Science Finds God,” Newsweek, 20 July, 1998)

“It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which — a functional protein or gene — is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man? Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artefacts appear clumsy. We feel humbled, as neolithic man would in the presence of 20th century technology…” (Michael Denton, Evolution — A Theory in Crisis, p. 328).

[MrWonderful]

In all this, two influential ideas are at work. The first is that there is something answering to the name of science. The second is that something answering to the name of science offers sophisticated men and women a coherent vision of the universe. The second claim is false if the first claim is false. And the first claim is false. Nothing answers to the name of science. And Nothing has no particular method either, beyond the immemorial dictates of common sense. - The Devil's Delusion, by David Berlinski, page xii

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs," the geneticist Richard Lewontin remarked equably in The New York Review of Books, "in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories". - Ibid, page 9

Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek insouciantly offered: "The universe appears to be just one of those things." Of course if physicists can believe that the universe is just one of those things, then believers can affirm that God is just one of those things as well. - page 139

[Besoeker2]

Over the years, even centuries, science has offered many explanations of how things work, evolve, go extinct with theories and testable evidence.
Religion does not.

[MrWonderful]

Over the years, even centuries, science has offered many explanations of how things work, evolve, go extinct with theories and testable evidence.
Religion does not.

The subject is the Craziness of Comparing Evolution and Gravity. You did just that.
Of course that is what atheists and other Leftists do, try to confuse and obfuscate.

Science is a good thing. Christianity is also a good thing. One talented writer has stated that mankind lived without science for many centuries, but not without religion.

This "science" about which you and others wax effusive gave humanity:
1. Nuclear bombs, used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and threatening today from North Korea and Iran,
2. Zyklon B poison gas, used on hundreds of thousands of Jews in Germany,
3. Sex change operations,
4. Partial birth abortions,
5. *Toxic* gasoline, now *poisoning the air and the entire earth!*


... their books (by Dawkins and Harris) are identical in their message: Because scientific theories are true, religious beliefs must be false. (Sam) Harris has conveyed the point by entitling an essay "Science Must Destroy Religion." His call to jihad cannot be long delayed. - The Devil's Delusion, page xii

In all this, two influential ideas are at work. The first is that there is something answering to the name of science. The second is that something answering to the name of science offers sophisticated men and women a coherent vision of the universe. The second claim is false if the first claim is false. And the first claim is false. Nothing answers to the name of science. And Nothing has no particular method either, beyond the immemorial dictates of common sense.

We have been vouchsafed four powerful and profound scientific theories since the great scientific revolution of the West was set in motion in the seventeenth century - Newtonian mechanics, James Clerk Maxwell's theory of the electromagnetic field, special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics. - Ibid

==============

These splendid artifacts of the human imagination have made the world more mysterious than it ever was. We know better than we did what we do not know and have not grasped. - page xiii

"Religion's power to console," Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion, "doesn't make it true." Perhaps this is so, but only a man who has spent a good deal of time snoring on the down of plenty could be quite so indifferent to the consolations of religion, wherever and however they may be found. One wonders, in any case why religion has the power to console and why it has had this power over the course of human history." - The Devil's Delusion, by David Berlinski, page 11, 12

[Rancid]

there is nothing theoretical about gravity

False.

Gravity is in fact a theory.

Theory is any phenomenon which has a significant amount of evidence supporting it. If there is not a significant amount of evidence supporting it, it cannot be called a theory. Likewise, evolution is in fact a theory as well. There is evidence supporting it (like observing genetic change in fruit flies who's life cycles are very short).

In common parlance, the word theory is often used incorrectly.

often when people say "That's just a theory" what they really mean is "That's just a hypothesis."

[Sivad]

Theory is any phenomenon which has a significant amount of evidence supporting it.

A theory is an explanation for a phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself.

[Rancid]

A theory is an explanation for a phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself.

Yes, thanks for correcting. That is much more precise.

None the less, it's called a theory when the explanation for the phenomenon, has strong supporting evidence.

[MrWonderful]

Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation

Someone please provide for us Darwin's Law of Universal Evolution.
Oh wait, you mean there ISN'T such a thing? But the angry atheists say......

[Godstud]

I pointed this exact thing out to you in another thread @MrWonderful. You somply don't understand scientific terminology.

Scientific law vs. theory and facts
Many people think that if scientists find evidence that supports a hypothesis, the hypothesis is upgraded to a theory and if the theory if found to be correct, it is upgraded to a law. That is not how it works at all, though. In fact, facts, theories and laws — as well as hypotheses — are separate parts of the scientific method. Though they may evolve, they aren't upgraded to something else.

"Hypotheses, theories and laws are rather like apples, oranges and kumquats: one cannot grow into another, no matter how much fertilizer and water are offered," according to the University of California. A hypothesis is a limited explanation of a phenomenon; a scientific theory is an in-depth explanation of the observed phenomenon. A law is a statement about an observed phenomenon or a unifying concept, according to Kennesaw State University.

"There are four major concepts in science: facts, hypotheses, laws, and theories," Coppinger told Live Science.

Though scientific laws and theories are supported by a large body of empirical data, accepted by the majority of scientists within that area of scientific study and help to unify it, they are not the same thing.

"Laws are descriptions — often mathematical descriptions — of natural phenomenon; for example, Newton's Law of Gravity or Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment. These laws simply describe the observation. Not how or why they work, said Coppinger.
Coppinger pointed out that the Law of Gravity was discovered by Isaac Newton in the 17th century. This law mathematically describes how two different bodies in the universe interact with each other. However, Newton's law doesn't explain what gravity is, or how it works.It wasn't until three centuries later, when Albert Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity, that scientists began to understand what gravity is, and how it works.

"Newton's law is useful to scientists in that astrophysicists can use this centuries-old law to land robots on Mars. But it doesn't explain how gravity works, or what it is. Similarly, Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment describes how different traits are passed from parent to offspring, not how or why it happens," Coppinger said.

Another example of the difference between a theory and a law would be the case of Gregor Mendel. Mendel discovered that two different genetic traits would appear independently of each other in different offspring. "Yet Mendel knew nothing of DNA or chromosomes. It wasn't until a century later that scientists discovered DNA and chromosomes — the biochemical explanation of Mendel's laws. It was only then that scientists, such as T.H. Morgan working with fruit flies, explained the Law of Independent Assortment using the theory of chromosomal inheritance. Still today, this is the universally accepted explanation (theory) for Mendel's Law," Coppinger said.

The difference between scientific laws and scientific facts is a bit harder to define, though the definition is important. Facts are simple, basic observations that have been shown to be true. Laws are generalized observations about a relationship between two or more things in the natural world. The law can be based on facts and tested hypothesizes, according to NASA.

For example, "There are five trees in my yard" is considered a fact because it is a simple statement that can be proven. "The apples fall down from the tree in my back yard and not up" is a law because it describes how two things in nature behave that has been observed in a certain circumstance. If the circumstance changes, then the law would change. For example, in the vacuum of space, the apple may float upward from the tree instead of downward.
https://www.livescience.com/21457-what- ... c-law.html

[Rancid]

Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation

"Law" is an old timer phrase. The science community is moving away from calling things laws these days.

Ultimately, you're just trying to play games with definitions of words. If the definition of words is your point, then this discussion is unproductive.

[MrWonderful]

Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation

F = G*m1m2/r squared

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation

As to the nonsense demand to "prove evolution is not true," this comes from the very same group of militant, condescending atheists who will never attempt to prove that the universe came from nothing.
The onus is on Darwinists to prove their claims. They can't even create new life forms from the most rapidly reproducing extant life forms, despite millions of dollars in research funds squandered, with no new species produced even when artificially irradiated to speed up mutations enormously.

[Rancid]

The onus is on Darwinists to prove their claims.

What claim exactly?

[Besoeker2]

As to the nonsense demand to "prove evolution is not true," this comes from the very same group of militant, condescending atheists who will never attempt to prove that the universe came from nothing.

OK. Where did god come from?

[Besoeker2]

The subject is the Craziness of Comparing Evolution and Gravity. You did just that.
Of course that is what atheists and other Leftists do, try to confuse and obfuscate.

Science is a good thing. Christianity is also a good thing. One talented writer has stated that mankind lived without science for many centuries, but not without religion.

This "science" about which you and others wax effusive gave humanity:
1. Nuclear bombs, used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and threatening today from North Korea and Iran,
2. Zyklon B poison gas, used on hundreds of thousands of Jews in Germany,
3. Sex change operations,
4. Partial birth abortions,
5. *Toxic* gasoline, now *poisoning the air and the entire earth!*

Do try to read what I posted before commenting on it instead of trying to invent what you think I meant.

I am NOT claiming that all science has been good for mankind or the earth. You list five negatives. There are countless positives in the medical field alone. Sanitation, clean water on tap, electricity where you get power and lighting at the flick of a switch, vehicle safety, better communications, medical procedures for conditions that could not have been previously treated, penicillin........the list goes on.

[Besoeker2]

The subject is the Craziness of Comparing Evolution and Gravity. You did just that.

I did no such thing.
We have evidence of both. That is not a comparison. You can't express gravity in terms of evolution nor vice versa.
So, can you cite precisely and succinctly where any such comparison was made?
And by whom.

[MrWonderful]

I did no such thing.
We have evidence of both. That is not a comparison. You can't express gravity in terms of evolution nor vice versa.
So, can you cite precisely and succinctly where any such comparison was made?
And by whom.

Oh please, how many times have Darwinists recited their giggly "Gravity is just a theory. If you don't believe it, just throw yourself off a cliff."

https://evolutionnews.org/2017/06/the-e ... ing-point/

When has any physicist claimed that gravity is "as real as evolution"? Never, and for good reason.