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david

Florida Drug Rehab
Florida Drug Rehab

Theories are only as close as one can get to the truth at any given point in time, not as close as one can get to the truth in total. If it were the latter, then science wouldn’t move anywhere as there’s nowhere to go.

Good examples.

@ The Centipede

Hmmmm I don’t think you’d want to use theory to disprove theory, #3 isn’t really a good example. By that logic, ID must be a valid scientific theory (based on the quote above) because evolution can disprove it. Using a theory to disprove a theory would seem to negate the weight science puts behind theories (them being as close to fact as you can get).

You forgot 3. another theory comes up that naturalistically explains everything evolution does and explains some more things that evolution has difficulty with.

Then again, that’s not really proving it wrong so much as proving it not entirely right, like how relativity and quantum mechanics both simplify to Newtonian mechanics when it comes to “real world” scales.

There are two observations I can think of that would disprove evolution conclusively:

1. a parent generation of species X creating offspring of a totally different species Y – for example, mate a pair of chickens, they lay an egg and hatch a chimpanzee.

2. take a DNA profile of many species, let them reproduce for a large number of generations and take a DNA profile of the offspring in the later generations. If there are no mutations, then the fundamental premise of evolution is highly likely to be false.

Yes you know me

We’re on the same page as far as theory goes. My original statement still stands. Whether you go by the lay-man or scientific interpretation “theory” still leaves some bit of doubt (though it may be infinitely small). As you said yourself:
‘a “theory” is as close to “proven fact” as you can get.’

Theory != fact

I guess there’s also some argument that says there are things we will never be able to fully prove and thus call fact.

It also seems like building a house of cards to suggest that laws are less than theories. If that were the case then the “theory” of relativity is complete junk since it’s based on the “law” of gravity.

What if we consider “theories” like string theory vs the theory of relativity. Maybe those aren’t good comparisons, that’s just off the top of my head…..I’m sure there are mutually exclusive scientific “theories”. In which case, “as close to fact as you can get” depends on which scientists you talk to.

Here’s an interesting bit to throw into the mix:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-20-2005/0004173856&EDATE
“To be called a scientific theory, Intelligent Design must be at the very least, disprovable. Since there is no way for Intelligent Design to be disproved, it fails the simplest test of scientific theory.”

How does one go about disproving evolution?