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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Re: Why Creation?
Message-ID: <405@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Apr-85 13:20:11 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.405
Posted: Thu Apr 18 13:20:11 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Apr-85 23:51:38 EST
References: <7187@watdaisy.UUCP> <189@spp1.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley friesen)
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In article <189@spp1.UUCP> johnston@spp1.UUCP (Micheal L. Johnston) writes:
>
>Maybe you should provide your definition of evolution before you say its
>disprovable. In particular, what "observations would prove the theory
>wrong"? If my definition agrees with yours that evolution involves a
>transition from one species to another, then the only observation that
>would disprove the theory would be to watch all species for infinity for
>an ocurrence of that transition. Since there can't be a time constraint
>since a transition could occur after any arbitrary end, the theory can
>never be disproved. Now don't get sidetracked on whether my definition of
>evolution matches yours. The point is that only theories with a set of
>discrete observations for falsifiability can be disproven.

	But this is *not* what a scientist means by falsifiability,
he means that the predictions of a theory are such that obsertvations
which would tend to show it invalid are at least *concievable*.
Remember, absolute proof is impossible in science. Ther are many
observations that would tend to disprove evolutionary theory,
but, as the preceding article mentioned, they have not been seen.
One major sort of evidence would be clear, unambigous fossils of
a specilized form many millions of years earlier than the fossils
of the most similar less specialized forms(I mean like *skeletons*
of Homo sapiens in Jurassic sediments). Or, alternatively, a well
demonstrated, non-evolutionary explanation for the species that have
appeared in recent times, and there *are* such in the literature,
they are just all *local* species, and therefor not well-known.
>
>Now ask yourself how many accepted scientific theories are really
>falsifiable according to your criteria. Can you disprove gravity?
>What observation would do so?
>
	Gravity is *easily* falsifiable, if the Earth proceded to
move off in a straight line instead of continuing to orbit the Sun,
or if an object released from someones hand *didn't* fall, this
would clearly falsify gravity theory. Scientists would then have to
come up with some other explanation of why things tend to move towards
one-another.

>Couldn't I then say that creation is falsifiable by the observation that
>it occurred a different way. Which observation is easier to observe. Both
>are rather difficult.
>
	But creationism is *not* falsifiable in the scientific sense,
since for any concievable observation I might make, you can say,
"But God *made* it that way", He could even have created the Universe
complete with a past(see other postings). Evolutionary theory, as a
theory of a process, at least predicts that a certain *class* of
observations will occur as a result of the process, all of which are
in fact observed.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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