Creationism to get place in Wisconsin classes!, page 2

Originally posted by Jehosephat
What i have a problem with is that a lot of schools forget to teach that evolution is a theroy

They "forget" to teach that evolution is a theory in exactly the same way that they forget to teach the "theory" of gravitation.

On the subject, let me quote a Creationist website:

‘Evolution is just a theory.’ What people usually mean when they say this is ‘Evolution is not proven fact, so it should not be promoted dogmatically.’ Therefore people should say that. The problem with using the word ‘theory’ in this case is that scientists use it to mean a well-substantiated explanation of data. This includes well-known ones such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Newton’s Theory of Gravity, and lesser-known ones such as the Debye–Hückel Theory of electrolyte solutions and the Deryagin–Landau/Verwey–Overbeek (DLVO) theory of the stability of lyophobic sols, etc. It would be better to say that particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture.

From: Answers In Genesis

But even their last statement, conflating the ToE to an unsubstantiated guess is pretty disingenuous: There's a lot of evidence out there that supports the theory of evolution. Scientists aren't just promoting it to "kill God" or anything silly like that.

The vast majority of the physical evidence that we have points to a process very similar to the modern conception of evolution (to whit: genetic change over time) as the source of the diversity of species extant today.

We have almost every piece of evidence demanded:
Transitional fossils? We've found them, but every time one is produced all an opponant has to do is ask "Well, what about the missing fossils for the steps between those two." I swear, if I were to produce a line of fossils showing the centemeter-by-centemeter atrophy of a whale's hind legs, someone'd ask for a millimeter-by-millimeter fossil record.

Globorotalia truncatulinoides, a marine microfossil. In one location, and only one, there is a complete record of transition from G crassaformis through G tosaensis to G truncatulinoides. This transition taking about 500,000 years. In all other locations where G truncatulinoides fossils are found, they appear suddenly in the fossil record. This is evidence of migration, not saltation. We know that they are seperate species, not merely variations within a species, because both of them are around today
Phacops trilobites: A single quarry in New Hampshire shows the transitional forms, elsewhere there are large gaps in the fossil record. Again, migration, not saltation.

Speciation?

Cichlids: These are freshwater fish descended from salt water fish. They are able to exploit waters that have higher mineral content than most freshwater fish can tolerate. They are extremely well studied, because they are so fascinating. The lakes that the cichlids inhabit are geologically young, and most cichlids are endemic to the lakes they inhabit. The Lake Victoria cichlids have all diverged within the last 200,000 years (mDNA studies). Lake Victoria itself is less than 1 million years old. There are over 200 endemic cichlids in Lake Victoria. They vary extremely in the niches that they occupy, from algae grazers to snail crushers and one that forces mouth brooding female fish to disgorge their hatchlings for its dinner. They are less closely related to the cichlids of Lake Malawi, who have two mDNA lineages, but those lineages are more closely related to each other than to the cichloids of any other lake.

As the mDNA indicates, a single cichlid population arrived in Lake Victoria, an environment with plenty of unfilled niches. In the blink of a geological eye that single population has diverged into over 200 species. All of the evidence from other lakes repeats these observations.
Two strains of Drosophila paulistorum developed hybrid sterility of male offspring between 1958 and 1963. Artificial selection induced strong intra-strain mating preferences.

(Test for speciation: sterile offspring and lack of interbreeding affinity.)

Dobzhansky, Th., and O. Pavlovsky, 1971. "An experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila", Nature 23:289-292.
Evidence that a species of fireweed formed by doubling of the chromosome count, from the original stock. (Note that polyploids are generally considered to be a separate "race" of the same species as the original stock, but they do meet the criteria which you suggested.)

(Test for speciation: cannot produce offspring with the original stock.)

Mosquin, T., 1967. "Evidence for autopolyploidy in Epilobium angustifolium (Onaagraceae)", Evolution 21:713-719
Rapid speciation of the Faeroe Island house mouse, which occurred in less than 250 years after man brought the creature to the island.

(Test for speciation in this case is based on morphology. It is unlikely that forced breeding experiments have been performed with the parent stock.)

Stanley, S., 1979. Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Company. p. 41
Formation of five new species of cichlid fishes which formed since they were isolated less than 4000 years ago from the parent stock, Lake Nagubago.

(Test for speciation in this case is by morphology and lack of natural interbreeding. These fish have complex mating rituals and different coloration. While it might be possible that different species are inter-fertile, they cannot be convinced to mate.)

Mayr, E., 1970. Populations, Species, and Evolution, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. p. 348

Look, I'm all for you believing that the world was created in exactly 144 hours, that's fine. It's just not science, and that's fine too. Science isn't some mystical oracle that can show us the right way to live, it can only, ever, be a tool used by us to describe the physical properties of the universe in which we live.

If those properties have been falsified in some way, whether by God or by Satan, science cannot "see" that. If we're misinterpreting the evidence in some way, that's why a process of rigorous peer review exists, and it will be corrected.

But, please, I'm begging you, stop trying to use science to prove your religion.