> Abdul Fatteh Questions on evolution!

[Hassan_Abd_Allah]

Assalamu 'alaikum all,

I know pretty much nothing about evolution and biology is my least favourite subject. So I want some light shed on this post I found on facebook: Its about refuting some creationist questions.

Im only gonna post the points about which Im confused.

claim: Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

rebuttal:

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

claim:

Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

rebuttal:

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

claim:

Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.

rebuttal:

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

claim:

Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.


rebuttal:

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

claim:

Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

rebuttal:

"Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap--a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Complexity of a different kind--"specified complexity"--is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life.

Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

claim:

Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

rebuttal:


This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Gal¿pagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

It especially addresses some of the arguments in Brother Abdul Fattah's site, like Evolution is not falsifiable, or irreducible complexity etc. So Im kinda concerned. Help?

Jazak Allah Khair for the answers.

[Abdul-Fattah]

Selam aleykum
I'll try and respond to the best of my abilities.

Claim: Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

I agree with this claim, although in my experience many evolutionists clam that the origin of life is not "part" of evolution, but a matter to be discussed separately. A sort of semantics debate I'm glad you've chosen not to bother with

rebuttal: The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry.

The work that has been done is neglectable. There are still many issues and chemical impossibilities that show us quite clearly how such a process would have been impossible to occur naturally, some of which I discuss in my site. And somehow people get the impression that since scientists have shown how some steps along the line could have been possible, that therefore the whole hypothesis of abiogenesis gains in probability and support. Well it doesn't, no matter how plausible some of the steps along the line might seem, that doesn't change the fact that there are chemial implausibilities and even impossibilities in this hypothesis. Some steps are simply impossible to have occured due to natural processes.

Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

No they don't. Astrochemical analyses does not hint on how anything might have origenated. Astrochemical analyses does not deal with origen. Astrochemical analyses only analyses what (already) exists in the cosmos, not how it came into existance. And although it might seem I am splitting hairs here, there's really a much deeper level to my counterargument. Namely that proponents of abiogenesis are playing a game of hide and seek here. It is obvious with our knowledge on chemestry that certain buildingblocks could not have origenated trough natural processes. Neither on this world, nor anywhere else for that matter. That is because the laws of chemistry are quite fundamental, and although things like pressure and temperature, which might be diffrent in other places will have an influence, there's still a huge set of limits on what can naturally occur. And yes, some of these building blocks are found outside our planet on astroids. But we don't know how those building blocks were formed. So wheter they are found outside of earth or not really doesn't make any diffrence in this whole creation vs. abiogenesis debate. We already know that life exists, the question is not that it exists, but how it came into existence.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

Very much true. I wholehartedly agree. And as a creationists myself, I am just as much annoyed by these claims as an evolutionists might be, perhaps even more, because I feel misrepresented by these people who make uninformed claims.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones.

Well first of all, I am not a proponent of the "chance argument". I think it's rather silly and uninformed to try and represent scientific theories in terms of chances. To begin with, the words chance and random are very ambiguous. They could refer to a proces that has no cause at all. Or they could refer to a proces that has a cause which is to complex for us to (fully) understand. And I can't shake the impression that people shift back and forth between those two different concepts all the time when debating probability and evolution. Furthermore, in science we don't normally deal with chance (exept perhaps in quantum mechanics, but that's a whole different discussion). Instead we deal with causality: action and reaction. And those make things allot easier. An occurence is either possible or impossible. The problem with abiogenesis, is that proponents of the hypothesis have so far failed to shown how the origen of life out of lifeless matter trough naturall processes is possible. Sure many people have done speculation, but those hypothesis all skip many vital steps in causality, relying on assumption and personal interpretation to fill in the gaps. That, among with other reasons, is why in my opinion abiogenesis doesn't even deserve the title of "theory" but should at this moment be considered merely a hypothesis. What proponents of this "chance argument" are trying to point out is simply that this hypothesis is unlikely. And although I disagree with their argument, I do share opinion regarding the point they are trying to make. That point is that the theory of abiogenesis should not be taken seriously in its current state, if you judge it face value.

As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

Having mentioned my opposition to the "chance-argument"; a much more interesting point is to be made here. From your rebuttal of their argument, it becomes clear that you are missing a very vital understanding of the theory of evolution. Natural selection is not a creative force. If one were to make the mistake of expressing scientific causal processes in terms of probability, at the very least one should realize that natural selection has no influence in this probability once-soever. Natural selection is a process that can only occur after an evolution. Only once that there are two variations, where one has a slight advantage over the other, then a natural selection can take place. And the name actually speaks for itself. It selects somethingout of the existing variations. It does not create new variations. So this natural selection does not influence the likelihoods of random mutations to occur in any way. Nor does this influence the form in which such mutations would take place. So natural selection doesn't in any way "push" evolution or create sophisticated structures, let alone create anything.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequen ce "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

As a smal side-comment, the actual numbers of variations of a 13-letter sequence is 26^13 (26 to teh power of 13) which equals 2.48.. * 10^18 or if I write that number out it would be something like:
2 481 152 873 000 000 000
Appart from that, I must say; very interesting remark, and this points to a fundamental flaw in the analogy why I don't like the "chance-argument" in the first place. By comparing the process of evolution, with monkeys hitting a typewriter, one misrepresent reality. For to express matters in such a way, one suggests that any combination is equally possible. So "AAAAAAAAAAAAA" is equally possible as "TOBEORNOTTOBE." or as "SDFLGHDGQJJFQ". All three having a chance of exactly 1/(26^13). So on that premise, given enough time the occurence is bound to show up sooner or later. However as I mentioned the problem with abiogenesis is not so much the probability of it happening, but rather the absence of a workable model trough which it would happen. Or to translate that to the monkey-analogy. It would be like the monkeys trying to type "tobeornottobe" on a typewriter that is missing the letter T. No matter how much they try, they simply cannot get the desired result if they do not have the right equipment to do so.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. I am not a proponent of this argument either. This part of evolution is scientific sound, testable and provable. What I as a creationist disagree with are other parts of evolution like "common descent" or abiogenesis. which if judged by its own merits turns out to be a neither testable, provable or even scientific hypothesis for that matter.

Claim: Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

I think the problem with putting forth fossils as a form of proof, and the problems of common descent run much deeper then this "claim" make it appear.
1. This might seem silly due to it's simplicity, but this is actuall a huge flaw in almost every alleged proof of common descent that is not to be underestimated: "Simularity does not prove descent!". A scientist should always judge any evidence on face value. Whenever a piece of evidence requires that you acept a premise for it to work, it is no longer scientific, but biased. A creationists might just as well claim, that simularity points to the fact that both species are created by the same omnipotent, omniscient being. Now I'm not saying that creationism is a scientific alternative. Creationism as a theory clearly does not meet the criteria to be considered scientific. My point however is that common descent and abiogenesis doesn't either! So it's a bit hypocritic for evolutionists to point out the unscientific nature of creationism, while common descent, when judged exclusivly from it's own merits is unscientific as well.
2. Fossils do not prove evolution or mutation. The only thing that a fossil proves, is that a certain creature lived in a certain era. Wheter or not it was created, or mutated out of a more primitive form remains open for interpretation.
3. Fossils only reveal limited information. If one really wants to set up a scientific theory of common descent, one would have to aproach the matter at a genetic level, studying the "genotype" of creatures, not studying the "phenotype". Only then can you build a solid scientific theory. Everything else relies on interpretation, speculation and assumption. And any hypothesis is only as strong as it's weakest part. You mention yourself that for each intermediate species, suggested by proponents of common descent, a creationist can set the bar higher and require yet another intermediate. While you make this appear as an unreasonable burden, I would suggest this is merely a result of the unscientific approach many people have been using while building hypothesis of common descent. If scientists were to build only hypothesis from genotype, then the lines would be clearly drawn. It would be measurable exactly how much intermediate species it should take for evolution to work. That creationists make these frustrating requests is merely a result of evolutionists not using a proper scientific methodology, and relying on suggestion, interpretation and speculation.

I'm inclined to think that in face of these three arguments; one should be forced to admit that it is indeed futile to debate the possibilities and probabilities of these hypotheses of intermediate species any further.

Claim: Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

Just as in the case of common descent, many of the arguments put in favour of evolution here are based on assumption and speculation. Some remarks on the many arguments you made regarding the flagellae.
1. Only some of the components of the flagellea are found in other organelles, not all of them.
2. If the flagellea Behe discusses would indeed have evolved out of a simpler form, then it still remains to be shown how.
3. Even if for the sake of argument we work with a simpeler flageallea and even if all necesairy components would be available in the same organism, there still exists a problem of irreducible complexity: "Did a single mutation take place taking different genes out of different places scripting different proteins, and putting them all toghether; or did multiple mutations took place, adding one gene at a time and putting the flageallea toghether?"
If you answer the former, then what sort of mutation can see to it that different genes of different loci are all put toghether? How is it chemically possible for so many different molecules, or rather parts of a large melucule to be rearanged all at the same time? If you answer the latter, then what workable intermediate stage could there have been that natural selection would favour?
4. These other organelles where components are found, are also irrdeucibly complex. the problem with irreducible complexity is much more fundamental then the flagellea allone. In fact, it ties in with the many problems in abiogenesis. There are just no workable theories on how most of the various complex structures of living organisms could have formed. It really is irreducible complexity all the way down, and actually all the way up as well since many examples can be found at a macro level as well.

Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns.

This depends on your definition of "simple process" and your definition of "complex patterns". If you approach these patterns and their process from a mathematical point of view; much of the patterns apparent complexity suddenly appears to be much more simpler. Is the process repetitive, and is the pattern repetitive as well? Does the process have many variables? Does the pattern appear to have a larger degree of variables then tits process causing it? Does the pattern appear to have a larger variety of structures, as the process has levels of exponents in its variables. I would argue these proposed studies hardly cut the mustard. They aren't even close to the level of complexity that Dembski refers to.

Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

You are of course entitled to believe what you desire regarding the posibilities of that. But again we reach a point where it becomes obvious that common descent and abiogenesis are based on premises of personal believe. We simply shouldn't accept any hypothesis which relies on what "could be" as scientific.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution.

First of all, let me applaud you by this reply. I myself have also advocated that each theory that falls under the group-name of evolution should be judged by its own merits. This is the only logical, scientific approach. And in all honesty you are the first evolutionists who had the fairness of admitting so. Most evolutionists I debated with so far, had simply assumed that since some parts of evolution are scientific, all parts should be seen as such. Yet another praise for admitting that macroevolution is a theory that should be classed as "historical" and not as "scientific". Again something many other evolutionists fail to admit and/or understand.
All praise asides, I would however strongly suggest that there need to be 1 or possibly 2 more subgroups which should be judged seperatly. The first one being abiogenesis, but off course then walks straight into the semantical debate of wheter or not this is actually part of evolution. In my opinion there's a diffrence between "biological evolution", and "evolution of the different species". I would argue abiogenesis is part of the former but not the latter. But then again, I much prefer avoiding semantical folly and stick to the debates which actually matter.
If not abiogenesis, a part of evolution that definetly should be judged seperatly is common descent. It's one thing to claim that one specie can evolve into another, it's a whole different thing to claim that all species evolved out of the same ancestor.

I for one believe in both micro as well as macro evolution, however I do not believe in common descent nor abiogenesis. Furthermore, while I consider both macro and micro evolution to be scientific, I consider neither common descent nor abiogenesis to be so. And I have to date not seen any testability, falsifiability or emperical test that would suggest otherwise. I mean, think about it, how is something as vague as a three of common descent falsifiable? As soon as any suggested three of descent is falsified, one could merely propose a new three and insist that the core concept of common descent still holds. So how can we see any such attempts as falsifications of the concept? So if such falsifications fail to falsify the concept itself, then the concept of common descent itself is not falsifiable. This is somewhat similar to the argument I made about the ininite intermediate species. One could respond that creationsts place an unfair, unreasonable burdon here. But we could just as well reply that it's not our standards which are unfair, but rather the ambiguitty and the unscientific nature of the hypothesis which is unfair.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

This argument is philosophical in nature, hence I will repond to it accordingly. First of all, I agree that one should not exceed reason in demanding falsifiability. Indeed, given enough philosophical thought every single theory known to man could be robbed of its falsifiability. And that is simply not constructive. For practical, pragmatic reasons, we have to allow some level of uncertainty and rely on premises sooner or later in constructing our theories. However I think that's hardly an issue here for the following three reasons:
The first reason why we shouldn't allow pragmatism to dismiss the problem of falsifiability in this debate. It is not the case that these sub-theories: common descent and abiogenesis, have falsifiability which is philosophically flawed for relying on this or that premise. No, not at all, the problem is much more fundamental. They have no falsifiability at all, not even premise-based ones! Now of course I grant with enough effort one could come up with some unreasonable premises under which these theories suddenly do become falsifiable. But judging from the fairness and level of debate in your arguments, such tactics would be far beneath you. I think you'll be forced to agree again, that under the currently commonly accepted premises, common descent still remains unfalsifiable.
The second reason why we shouldn't allow pragmatism to dismiss the problem of falsifiability in this debate, is the complexity of the debate. In general I would say that as scientific theories become more fundamental, they also become allot more testable. So even though their falsifiability might be philosophically debatable, their testability makes up for it. The other way around, as theories become increasingly complex, their testability decreases, and thus their falsifiability becomes increasingly important.
The third reason why we shouldn't allow pragmatism to dismiss the problem of falsifiability in this debate, is the controversial nature of the debate. I would argue that in such a debate wich so much on the line, one cannot simply dismiss the oponent arguments by this pragmatic aproach to falsifiability. To judge wheter or not something is dismisable by pragmatical reasons highly depends on ones personal world view. If it were a subject were everybody more or less agrees on, then pragmatism should work. Like if there were somebody comming up with a philosophical refutation of the falsifiability of gravity, then I would agree that any such refutation is nonsense at worst, a philosophical folly perhaps at best. And even if people might fundamentally disagree on the principles and interpretations of how gravity works or what causes it, I think most sane people do all agree that there is indeed a phenomena in our lives that we discribe as gravity. What people migh disagree on then are just the technical details and interpretations, not the fundamental concepts. In the case of evolution however the same no longer holds.

[Qatada]

asalaam alaikum


jazak Allah khayr bro Abdul Fattah :D

[saifudheen]

Athiest:
Even gravity is a theory. Does islam approve of it?

[saifudheen]

what are problems faced by evolution..can you list them here brother..?

[Abdul-Fattah]

Originally Posted by saifudheen

Athiest:
Even gravity is a theory. Does islam approve of it?

Aselam aleykum
The question can be replied in various ways.

1. Islam doesn't approve or disprove of theories.
2. While some parts of evolution are theory, other parts aren't even theories but rather hypothesis.
3. I as a creationists don't reject (parts of) evolution because it's merely "a theory" but rather I reject it because of the many flaws in it.
4. Even those parts that are "theory" are not comparable with gravity, just like you cannot compare a house with a shack.

[binnasoordeen]

Originally Posted by saifudheen

what are problems faced by evolution..can you list them here brother..?

no1 : missing links ?