Angus Reid: Canadians and Britons strongly believe in evolution, Americans not

[John Dibble]

"Fact" is a bit strong.

No, it isn't. Evolution is supported by mountains of evidence and is one of the strongest ideas science has ever produced.

[John Dibble]

There is something horribly wrong with an education system which leds people to think this, its the equivalent of 50% of americans coming out of maths thinking 2+2=5.

Not really. Failing to understand evolution is far less likely to inconvenience you personally or professionally. From a purely utilitarian perspective understanding evolution is of little significance outside of a few professions.

But the point is, it's a scientific fact and the fact that a majority of Americans don't believe it is troubling.

"Fact" is a bit strong.

It is not. Evolution is an observable fact.

Exactly.  There was an experiment that lasted decades with hundreds of thousands of generations of bacteria in which macroevolution was observed.  Creationists have no choice but to pretend it didn't happen.

There is no macroevolution - there is only evolution. The micro/macro distinction is something creationists made up because the evidence for evolution was too strong to deny completely.

[John Dibble]

"Fact" is a bit strong.

No, it isn't. Evolution is supported by mountains of evidence and is one of the strongest ideas science has ever produced.

Regardless, it's not a scientific fact.  Anyone with a background in the sciences would agree.

People with a background in the sciences don't agree with your statement:

H. J. Muller, geneticist and Nobel laureate - "So enormous, ramifying, and consistent has the evidence for evolution become that if anyone could now disprove it, I should have my conception of the orderliness of the universe so shaken as to lead me to doubt even my own existence. If you like, then, I will grant you that in an absolute sense evolution is not a fact, or rather, that it is no more a fact than that you are hearing or reading these words."

Kenneth R. Miller, cell biologist and molecular biologist - "evolution is as much a fact as anything we know in science."

Ernst Mayr, evolutionary biologist - "The basic theory of evolution has been confirmed so completely that most modern biologists consider evolution simply a fact. How else except by the word evolution can we designate the sequence of faunas and floras in precisely dated geological strata? And evolutionary change is also simply a fact owing to the changes in the content of gene pools from generation to generation."

Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist and evolutionary biologist - "Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

Richard Lenski, evolutionary biologist - "Scientific understanding requires both facts and theories that can explain those facts in a coherent manner. Evolution, in this context, is both a fact and a theory. It is an incontrovertible fact that organisms have changed, or evolved, during the history of life on Earth. And biologists have identified and investigated mechanisms that can explain the major patterns of change."


The rallying cry of "just a theory" is supported primarily by creationists, few of which have backgrounds in science and fewer of which have backgrounds in biology in particular.

[John Dibble]

Dibble, the people you cited calling evolution a "fact" are almost as guilty as the creationists with the "it's just a theory" argument.  The true scientific fact is a very rare, thing, and evolution has not been verified to the extent that it can truly be called a "fact".

So first you say that "anyone with a background in science" would agree that evolution is not fact, then I show you a list of people whose scientific backgrounds are well recognized that don't agree with you, and then you move the goalpost? These people have this thing called evidence to back up their claims, the creationists don't.

Tell me Inks, do you actually have any non-creationists with a background in science to back up your argument? Preferably in some biology related field.

[John Dibble]

Is it not possible to believe in both creationism and evolution?

As dead0man points out creationism as it is usually defined in the sense of this conversation is mutually exclusive with evolution. There are a few ways you can believe both though:

1. You can believe that a deity created the universe with natural laws that allow life to arise on its own (abiogenesis) and then evolve.
2. You can believe that a deity created the universe and the first single celled organism that was then allowed reproduce and have its offspring evolve independent of its creator. (abiogenesis and evolution are related but still separate theories, something many creationists do not understand)
3. You can believe that a deity created the universe and the first single celled organism, after which the deity intervened in a limited fashion for a few special cases to control the evolutionary outcomes but evolution could still occur without intervention in the majority of cases.

The idea that a deity specially designed everything, either by immediately creating it or by controlling every mutation, is mutually exclusive with evolution as natural evolution is an undirected process.