Is evolution falsifiable? What would falsify evolution?

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I consider that flatly false. Bias affects all people in all activities, and productive science is often science done by scientists who favor their theories irrationally given the background evidence. Not only that, but essentially the modern philosophy of science isn't a naive falsificationism to a great extent, because science works with bias, science works with partially falsified paradigms, and so on. I mean, the notion of a Kuhnian paradigm shift is so widespread that I've seen it referenced in neuroscience papers, and that idea is based upon the notion that people are stuck in a particular paradigm and only leave when both the weight of the evidence is against the current theory and a newer, better theory is out there.


I am not sure what rules and evidences you are referring to, I would guess that they would be the rules and evidences that creationists try to use against evolution. Not only that, but there is also no need for a more open-minded view, as evolution is the only theoretical answer at this point in time. So, the only direction for a scientist to go is to say that "evolution is the ONLY answer". Perhaps if another viable theory existed, then a more open discussion can occur, but if only one theory is credible, then all discourse is going to presume this theory and work to defend it's validity. I suppose you might refer to ID as another answer, but the issue is that ID is difficult to realistically make into a non-ad-hoc hypothesis, and additionally, even if there are problems with the evolutionary paradigm, the general view is that it is more correct than not anyway, and further research has a way of changing perspective on problems significantly. Scientists are not smarter than the scientific process's ability to generate ideas and test them.


I don't think you know what you are talking about. Dogmatic passion is often what drives scientists. Often we are served by their willingness to spend too much time researching both good and useless theories to try to defend them.


Science can never "prove that God is real". Supernatural hypotheses are nearly impossible to verify or falsify. I mean, by the time that we can know that we have found a supernatural thing, we no longer need science to confirm the matter, it is only open to falsification.


It is hard to even point to more evolved beings and show their actions through history. I mean, if science could prove that Martians made the Egyptian pyramids, that also wouldn't be terrible, but still, any attempts would likely be futile even if this were true, and there does not seem to be good reason to think that this is true. I mean, ID and creationist communities are not known for being viable research communities, and at this point they are dismissed as pseudo-science and from what I've heard, some of this is a matter of evaluating the arguments put forward. I mean, ID was labeled by a US court as not being science, same as creationism, and if the matter is clear enough for the scientific community and the US courts system, then what other authority can be appealed to? This isn't to say that the matter is just to be settled by authority, but I have no doubt that neither of us are actual scientists or philosophers of science, so the technical details are likely beyond both of us.


Science is what science does. Science is a method of inquiry. Scientists do affirm preconceived agendas, and that is going to be part of their research. This does not stand against finding the truth either. This is just how the world works, and ironically for all of this rant you put forward, all I actually see is a need to affirm a preconceived agenda. Do I think this invalidates your argument? No. But it also does not invalidate the actions of numbers of scientists either and their arguments. Perhaps you think that the scientific community has some conspiracy to suppress God though? Well, my only response to that is my fervent belief that the US Government has a conspiracy to hide Elvis away in Area 51 along with the big eyed aliens, and that people would know that if they just LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE!!

Plenty of creationists today, the ones which I respect, do not. The organizations of which many of them are members of, creationist organizations that is, are:



Creation Ministries International: http://creation.com/

Creation Research Society: http://www.creationresearch.org/

and even,

Institute for Creation Research: http://www.icr.org/

Of these three, CMI is the one I prefer and go to the most.

Also, consider this. Recently people are claiming that I'm arguing against arguments that are outdated, but really the immutability of species outdated as well. If I argue against modern arguments, you probably wouldn't recognize them. And if they violate your continuing notion that we believe that life never changes, then you'll just continue to claim... oh whatever! I need to be working on my accounting assignments anyway.

If phylogenies inferred from independent sets of traits were uncorrelated. You can test this every time you discover a new species (best make that multicellular species because in bacteria there is so much horizontal gene transfer that things get complicated). If you have enough taxonomic knowledge and know where to look, you can discover dozens of new species every day for the rest of your life and you can keep testing this prediction on new data.

The prediction that phylogenies inferred from independent sets of traits should be correlated is necessary for evolution, but is not a necessary element of creationism or intelligent design. It can be added in, but only at the price of making creationism or ID less testable than evolution.

If front loading had occurred. Front loading is the name of the notion that all information that appears to be generated by evolution really was there before evolution did anything. One example is the postulate that developmental programs were already present in the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes and all evolutionary history comes from activating some parts and possibly losing others. No new information is supposed to have come in since the moment front loading occurred. If that were true, there would be a lot less left for evolution to explain, and it would not explain the front loading event itself.

The prediction of front loading is not a necessary element of intelligent design. Apparently it has been derived from the notion that there is a law of conservation of information that can be broken only by intelligent agents. If ID proponents accepted that this law does not exist, that would not falsify ID. If that law were true, it would falsify evolution. Evolution is more testable.

Evolution would also be falsified if the biological inheritance system were one that does not allow evolution. The inheritance system accepted at Darwin's would have made evolution impossible. Darwin knew that inheritance was a problem, and spent a lot of effort at trying to reconcile evolution with the then accepted theory of biological inheritance. It was shown only after Darwin's death that the two are incompatible. At least one of the two had to be false. It turned out to be the theory of inheritance. Mendel had the solution to Darwin's problem during Darwin's lifetime, but his work made little impact until about 30 years later. The inheritance system does not matter to ID or creationism. Evolution is more testable.

Evolution would be in trouble if the universe were too young for evolution to produce the biological diversity we see. That was the basis of Lord Kelvin's objection, when he believed the only sources for the sun's energy could be potential energy, and that only added up to enough energy for a sun about 100 000 years old. When physicists discovered the possibility of fusion, Kelvin withdrew his objection. The age of the universe does not matter to creationism or those versions of ID that assume a supernatural designer. Evolution is more testable.

Is that enough?


I think if you say something that someone else doesn't believe, and you answer a request for evidence with "I can, I just don't want to" you just lose credibility with most people more than five years old. They will assume you really can't offer evidence. It's not good debating strategy. Better not to say anything at all.

I have a more than passing familiarity with evolution myself, and I have not found any of those contradictions you mention. Can you understand why I will not accept "I can, I just don't want to" as a persuasive argument?

Last edited by Gromit on 03 Dec 2009, 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'll take your word for that right now.



It's not quite the same, more often than not people who argue for evolution don't bother to research the creationist side to consider what our actual arguments are. I know that you've said before that you have looked into what creationists websites actually say, so this doesn't apply to you. However, with Arthur Dent here it most certainly would seem to apply. And really, when arguing with someone who does this, more often then not, after we've done the research and posted references, the reply from a person like Dent is usually along the lines of "your ignorant and wrong" like a constant function, practically no matter what is said.

Dent's point, at least I'm guessing, is that all creationism begins by accepting that a deity is behind changes in species and is rejected on those grounds - believing in the existence of a deity is precisely that, an act of faith, not a basis for advancing humanities understanding of it's material existence (and therefore can only perpetuate a condition of ignorance). What does creationism ultimately teach us that is useful, much less more useful than natural selection and/or evolution, when it's primary presupposition (in fact the only thing that holds the entire concept together) is the belief in the existence of an anthropomorphic and/or omnipotent entity which cannot be measured or verified. Hence why I say creationism only teaches humanity to turn up on a sunday and make no attempt to advance beyond the condition it finds itself in.

Though this would fall more under the category of deism more than Biblical creationism in specific, one of the first occurrences of its usefulness is in the idea that God is omniscient and that He is the Lawmaker of the physical universe. The orderliness and regularity of physical law... I'm not saying this right, let me find it....



Lewis, C.S., Miracles: a preliminary study, Collins, London, p. 110, 1947.

Scientists are trained to do the opposite... you set out to find something that contradicts what is previously known. And there is much more fame, glory, and money in overturning old paradigms than there is in supporting them. If there were legitimate scientific findings which were inconsistent with evolution, biologists around the world would be all over it.


I find it curious that virtually none of the people who actually understand the relevant concepts share this belief, unless you are assuming some sort of massive conspiratorial cover-up in the scientific community.

With how strong the opposition to anything that would speak out against it is, who needs an actual conspiracy?

OK, fair enough, but the basis of creationism (especially young earth creationism) is still completely untenable in the face of the evidence.


Took a look around, seemed to be mostly nonsense. Better-presented, better-argued nonsense than most creationist sites, indicating that these are at least intelligent people, but they are still very far from offering a compelling case against evolution.

Is there really strong opposition to anything that speaks out against evolution? I'd say that the main problem is that anti-evolution arguments these days are all... well non-scientific BS. So it is rather a coincidence that most anti-evolution arguments are opposed strongly. If we had a well-made scientific argument against it, it would help us really confirming whether your generalization is true or not.

Anyway, regarding OP:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211.html

Somehow I feel like experiencing a dejavu here.

I am not sure that CS Lewis's point is necessarily that correct though. I mean, while I have heard that Islam has held to a metaphysical contingency in rules, I have also heard that some of the work done by the Greeks was somewhat scientific as well, which means that the "law-giver" hypothesis seems disconfirmed by the studies of those Greeks. Now, I will not say I have done an extensive study, however, Richard Carrier, who is an expert has made this claim about the Greeks.

Not only that, but I don't see much reason for the CS Lewis argument either. I mean, yes, there is a problem of induction, however, this cannot really lead us to the notion of a God, simply because a God would be as arbitrary if not more so than saying "the universe just works this way". Additionally, quantum mechanics is not utterly lawless, and the claim "science is true" has been surrendered as an act of humility, not a matter of disbelief in uniformity. I mostly see this matter as a matter of rhetoric, as a significant number of scientists and science enthusiasts are atheists (with top scientists often being somewhat likely to be atheists), while I do really think that religious circles have shown themselves to be more ideological than science-minded.

Actually "natural selection" must be true because it is a tautology. In essence natural selection is simply the premise "survival of the the fit enough", and the standard by which "fit enough" is measured must therefore be survival. So in essence the premise is "those things that survive are fit enough to survive".

It is impossible for a species to evolve into another species by natural selection alone. Natural selection's role in evolution is to "skew" the odds to favour reproduction of alleles that promote or facilitate reproductive fitness, and to skew the odds against the reproduction of alleles that detract from or prevent reproductive fitness. In an of itself (independent of other processes) this cannot result in speciation.

Not really. Natural selection is a tautology and must be true, and it is rather obvious that it cannot be irrelevant to the rate at which alleles are reproduced in a gene pool.

Not without departing from the axioms of deductive logic.

I'd say that the truth stands somewhat in the middle here. Not only that, but I would still want to emphasize that the scientific community's strength is that it is a community. Individual scientists can be biased, but frankly the fact that multiple members are questioning the ideas of other members with "science" being what emerges from this and transition of the field from generation to generation is a strength. I mean, I would like to say that bias isn't bad in individuals, being biased can lend some determination required to show a theory is correct against a prevailing orthodoxy as well.

What would falsify evolution?

- Organisms did not inherit genetic traits from their parents.
- No mutations. The laws of chemistry are different for DNA. A chemical reaction in which cytosine is deaminated to uracil will work fine anywhere, except when it takes place in the DNA molecule of a living organism, because some force stops the reaction from happening. DNA inside living organisms is invulnerable to chemical alteration, and while point mutations, frame shifts and duplication may be able to occur in samples in a test tube, the laws of chemistry miraculously change when that DNA is present in an organism.

Of course, it won't be falsified because we have observed that organisms inherit genetic traits from their parents, and we have observed that mutations can take place in living organisms. From that, evolution is inevitable; each generation will inherit genetic code with some minor random alterations; those organisms who inherit a genome more suited to survival and reproduction will pass on their genes to the next generation, those that don't won't. More and more changes will accumulate over time, until eventually down the track the descendants of an organism have some many changes that they can be considered a seperate species. The idea that evolution can account for minor changes, but not for speciation, is peculiar. It's akin to saying that I can walk to the shops, but I can't walk to the next city. If you accumulate enough small changes over time, then of course you'll eventually get something substantially different. The only way that this couldn't happen would be if there was some peculiar mechanism monitoring every bit of DNA, and intervening at some point to prevent mutations which would cause the next generation to cross some invisible line at which it would become 'too different' to its distant ancestor.

Of course, none of this is to say that evolution is an unfalsifiable theory - it would be false if mutation and heritability did not take place in this world, it's just that in this world they do. It's much the same way that the theory of gravitation is falsifiable - if everything floated, and moved in a manner independent of the presence of large masses, this would show that the theory of gravity is false. However, gravity won't be falsified, because things fall down in our world.

... what? The principles of chemistry are not different for DNA, they just apply differently. The other potential reactions which would occur in a randomized mixture of amino acids, in which any of the functional groups are available for bonding to, are eliminated by the confined geometric parameters of the DNA.

Name me a single area of science that is reliant on an implicitly or explicitly posited deity/god/allah/whatever in order to maintain it's internal coherence.
If it is true that some men turned to science because of their religiosity and ended up prdoucing the very thing which destroyed the concept of god then it is a happy accident of history.
I'm under the distinct impression that Einstein remarked of Quantum Mechanics, the field of inquiry his own research helped give birth to, that "God does not play with dice" - and yet we have the Large Hadron Collider, the CERN fusion reactor, Ion drives, weaponised lasers and so on and so on.

I ask again, what does creationism ultimately teach us that is useful other than to go to church and pay your tithes to charlatans?