We were talking about faith in Philosophy class today, in the context of when the concept of faith started existing, as you can't really say the Ancient Greeks had faith—evidence of their gods constantly surrounded them.
I'm going to say that faith exists only when there are two opposing worldviews, one metaphysical(religion), one physical(science), and a person makes the decision to believe in the metaphysical rather than the physical. You can argue that faith/belief applies just as much to the scientific worldview, but faith required as absence of evidence, which science has gobs of, granted in very arcane forms in some areas.
Now, most people aren't going to have a working knowledge of the ins and outs of evolutionary theory. I certainly don't. I know the basics, but biology isn't my strong suit, and so I trust biologists. And I trust them, because I know there is peer review, and if I really wanted to I could go and perform the experiments they performed to check their conclusions.
I know that I don't know these things. I know I could study hard and work hard to know them, but I have a finite amount of time on this earth, and other things interest me more. I assume/believe that biology as an establishment is honest, because I know the rules by which it functions and find that they are designed to end up with theories that are based in experimental truths. Not all theories shake out, but evolution has been around for a long time. It's been attacked and examined and bits have changed since Darwin, yet in all those years no other theory has disproved it, or superseded it.
Human knowledge is incremental. Origin of Species's main conclusions (quoted below, from the
wikipedia summary), are a little different from evolutionary theory today. If you want a brief rundown on the differences I'd point you to the Talk Origins page
here. They basically boil down to adding genetics in, and recognizing that Natural Selection isn't the only mechanism of evolution, and that there may be another one that is about as important.
In short, evolutionary theory
is different today. But it's more along the lines of an addition being built onto an old house rather than a complete demolish and rebuild.
1. Species have great fertility. They have more offspring than can grow to adulthood.
2. Populations remain roughly the same size, with small changes.
3. Food resources are limited, but are relatively stable over time.
4. An implicit struggle for survival ensues.
5. In sexually reproducing species, generally no two individuals are identical.
6. Some of these variations directly impact the ability of an individual to survive in a given environment.
7. Much of this variation is inheritable.
8. Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and less likely to reproduce, while individuals more suited to the environment are more likely to survive and more likely to reproduce.
9. The individuals that survive are most likely to leave their inheritable traits to future generations.
10. This slowly effected process results in populations that adapt to the environment over time, and ultimately, after interminable generations, the creations of new varieties, and ultimately, new species.
Ok im kinda new hear and i may have missed the definition phase of this contest so pleas define evolution for me. In the context of this argument.
It's not that structured a debate, it was never defined.
