I didn't say everything - just that the bird one is extraordinarily lacking in actual fossils.
You seem to be uder the impression that fossils are common. Fossils are extremely rare, and nevertheless, we have:
* Diapsid reptiles to birds
o Yixianosaurus
o Pedopenna
o Archeopteryx
o Changchengornis
o Confuciusornis
o Ichthyornis
I've seen many decent articles. Though, I would need to know your definition of "decent" - does it have to outrule miracles?
If the proof doesn't predate the conclusion (a miracle), then it's a speculation.
One, mammal is an arbitrary grouping, based on circumstances, and has been changed over time. It will likely change further, as it is a comparitive definition, not an absolute one.
So?
I can predict that I will find a dinosaur with certain characteristics at a certain time - doesn't mean I have a theory, just that I notice that dinosaurs have a common set of characteristics.
..... except we're not talking about normal characteristics, we're talking about finding organisms with characteristics never seen before, and predicting those characteristics before the actual organism is found.
Reptiles already were known to look alot like mammals, besides certain characteristics (LIKE HAIR AND MAMMARY GLANDS - guess which we've found on fossils), so it is easy enough to make a guess.
"Insect wings evolved from gills, with an intermediate stage of skimming on the water surface. Since the primitive surface-skimming condition is widespread among stoneflies, J. H. Marden predicted that stoneflies would likely retain other primitive traits, too. This prediction led to the discovery in stoneflies of functional hemocyanin, used for oxygen transport in other arthropods
but never before found in insects (Hagner-Holler et al. 2004; Marden 2005)."
If I understand it, the theory of evolution is one of change. Therefore, INSTANCES will not provide acceptable evidence of it. Observation of the process will.
Incorrect. A *lot* of instances during different times do show a process.
Gravity is not provided evidence by finding things on the ground - it's provided evidence by watching things fall.
Let's fix the broken analogy. First second, object is 20 feet in the air, second second, it's over 15 feet, 3rd second 10 feet, 4th second 5 feet, 5th second ground.
According to you, this would mean nothing for gravity.
And? As I'm not dogmatic, I don't automatically rule things out without observation. 50 years ago, gorillas would be treated with the same disbelief you attribute to unicorns. Since I believe that rhinoceri exist, I believe that unicorns do too, I guess.
Except I'm talking about pink, horse-like, thin, mythical, magical talking unicorns. And you give the ones I said the same credit you give everything else. Good for you. Giving something without proof the same credit you give something with prof is unscientific.
Archaeology does not use the scientific method to produce theories - it attempts to catologue and explain the human past. So I have no problem with you removing it from the field of sciences.
It doesn't what?
The scientific method involves the following basic facets:
* Observation. A constant feature of scientific inquiry. (check)
* Description. Information must be reliable, i.e., replicable (repeatable) as well as valid (relevant to the inquiry). (check, you can check cities of the same civilization to see if the city you're in belongs to it)
* Prediction. Information must be valid for observations past, present, and future of given phenomena, i.e., purported "one shot" phenomena do not give rise to the capability to predict, nor to the ability to repeat an experiment. (check, once you know what civilization it belogns to, you can predict what sort of architecture it has)
* Control. Actively and fairly sampling the range of possible occurrences, whenever possible and proper, as opposed to the passive acceptance of opportunistic data, is the best way to control or counterbalance the risk of empirical bias. (since you know the architecture, you know where to look to find its famous columns)
* Falsifiability, or the elimination of plausible alternatives. This is a gradual process that requires repeated experiments by multiple researchers who must be able to replicate results in order to corroborate them. This requirement, one of the most frequently contended, leads to the following: All hypotheses and theories are in principle subject to disproof. Thus, there is a point at which there might be a consensus about a particular hypothesis or theory, yet it must in principle remain tentative. As a body of knowledge grows and a particular hypothesis or theory repeatedly brings predictable results, confidence in the hypothesis or theory increases. (many things in the city [such as finding radically different columns from the ones you expected] could prove you wrong)
* Causal explanation. Many scientists and theorists on scientific method argue that concepts of causality are not obligatory to science, but are in fact well-defined only under particular, admittedly widespread conditions. Under these conditions the following requirements are generally regarded as important to scientific understanding:
* Identification of causes. Identification of the causes of a particular phenomenon to the best achievable extent.
* Covariation of events. The hypothesized causes must correlate with observed effects.
* Time-order relationship. The hypothesized causes must precede the observed effects in time. (via its writing, you can see what happened to the city, how it grew, what it ate, etc.)
So do explain to me how archeology is not science.
Astronomy does make future predictions - ever heard of astrophysics? Gravity is included in this as well.
But according to you, studying the birth, growth and death of stars is unscientific.
You specifically say you are using evolution to prove him wrong, then you don't. Which is it?
I said it contradicts the proof evolution
[picked up. It contradicts the evidence out there that just so happens to support evolution.
Predictive: no.
Logical: sure
Testable: yes, but it hasn't succeeded- in fact, experiments to test simple parts like original formation of organisms, or macroscopic evolution, have unequivocally failed
Didn't you just quoted:
In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations that is
predictive, logical and testable.
If every single scientists that was ever born, including IDers, recognize evolution as a theory, then you're wrong, not the whole world.
If treated with normal scientific criticism, naturalistic evolution would have failed as a theory when experiments failed to produce even organic molecules using "known" environmental characteristics of the predicted time period.
"The experiment used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen (H2). The chemicals were all sealed inside a sterile array of glass tubes and flasks connected together in a loop, with one flask half-full of liquid water and another flask containing a pair of electrodes. The liquid water was heated to induce evaporation, sparks were fired between the electrodes to simulate lightning through the atmosphere and water vapor, and then the atmosphere was cooled again so that the water could condense and trickle back into the first flask in a continuous cycle.
At the end of one week of continuous operation, Miller and Urey observed that as much as 10-15% of the carbon within the system was now in the form of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed amino acids, including 13 of the 22 that are used to make proteins in living cells, with glycine as the most abundant. As observed in all consequent experiments, both left-handed (L) and right-handed (D) optical isomers were created in a racemic mixture.
The molecules produced were simple organic molecules, far from a complete living biochemical system, but the experiment established that the hypothetical processes could produce some building blocks of life without requiring life to synthesize them first."
Wtf are you talking about? The experiment was a success. Organic molecules, bloody amino acids even, were formed.
As it is, it was just claimed that the theory depended on extraordinarily random chance, and was probably untestable - shouldn't that be a huge hint?
Evolution depends on.... what? *Mutations* depend on random chance, and mutations are 1 of the elements that compose evolution, but evolutio does
not depend on random chance. Natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow are not random chance.