Evolution doesn’t require experimental verification?

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Recently, I have been awestruck by the statement of one of the “reputable” regulars at TSZ that evolutionary theory doesn’t need to be subjected to any experimental testing or experimental verification…

How do you like that?

He erroneously used the famous experiment that verified Einstein’s prediction of gravity’s ability to bend light. Here are the details:
See? Experiments don’t need to be run in the lab, and they can still be valid experiments.

While this kind of statement is nothing new to me that Darwinists deny or ignore the need for the experimental verification of their evolutionary claims, on the other hand, they demand ID to be subjected to the scientific method processes for their claims to be verified…Hypocrisy at its best…

So, why can’t evolution be tested?

For those who are not well familiarized with the scientific method, it is probably a good idea to review some of the requirements of the scientific theory, or hypothesis, just to realize what an impossible task Darwinists would face even if they would like to verify their evolutionary speculations by experiments… While the definitions of the scientific method vary slightly depending on where you look, most scientific methods of a theory or a hypothesis need to meet the 3 main criteria:

  1. It needs to be observable (one kind of animal evolving into another: organs in transition, the third hand evolving to hold the cellphone while I’m driving)
  2. It needs to make accurate predictions (If we tweak this gene this is going to begin to evolve, such as a change the body plans from 5 pound land walking animal to 50 ton whale)
  3. It needs to be replicated by experiments (bacteria without a flagellum put under selective pressure to evolve something resembling a flagellum or a propeller…

Anyone who has been following TSZ and my OPs knows that my calling on the supporters of evolution to help their belief system to meet the criteria of a scientific theory or scientific hypothesis is not new… The public admission by some that evolution doesn’t need to be subjected to experimental testing reached the new, unacceptable levels of ignorance by Darwinists, especially in the view of their arrogant insistence that ID would be subjected to experimental testing to be proven as a scientific theory or hypothesis…

Darwinists either don’t know, or choose not to know, but if they subjected evolution to experimental testing they could prove their theory or hypothesis right and, at the same time, ID wrong…

So, why not do it?

I guess the only explanation for the phenomenon is that Darwinists have not much faith in their own beliefs… It is just used as a facade to make their s”intelligence” look less ludicrous…

339 thoughts on “Evolution doesn’t require experimental verification?”

  1. Joe Felsenstein:
    As Rumraket implies (by citing Doug Theobald’s conpilation of evidence) the consilience of evolutionary trees from different parts of the genome is powerful evidence for common descent.In history, biologists started suspecting common descent when they saw evidence from different parts of the phenotype supporting the same patterm of relationship.

    When we go to a new region of the genome and look to see whether the phylogeny inferred there is very similar to that inferred elsewhere, is that an “experiment”?It is certainly new evidence.Similarly in astronomy we can look at different parts of the universe to see whether our theories on planetary orbits holds up, or our theories onplanetary geology or solar astrophysics.

    Apparently some people don’t recognize this as evidence, and don’t believe that, say, whales evolved unless we can see them doing it in a giant aquarium.

    I agree consilience can demonstrate the strength of a hypothesis BUT ADMIT its a replacement for experiments!
    I admit whales were one land creatures but the evidence for this is not evidence for selection on mutations.(evolution)
    Convincing oneself evolution is true by marine mammals bodyplan changes would miss the point of the absence of evidence in everything else.

    To claim a tree of compaitive bits in biology is evidence for its origin is not just rejcting other options(like common design which also predicts trees) but is still a poor man’s scientific method.
    Its just guessing about why things look alike while unrelated.
    the evolution hypothesis is not proved by the likeness but instead was suggested by it. It seems a cheat to THEN say its proved by it.
    Naw. Its just comparative bodyplans and then a suggestion how to came to be.

    Id /YEC offer a excelkent winning argument to the public of why biology has a great uniformity of parts. A fractal reality. Or like in chemistry with the elements.

    Its a blueprint. its not a random thing from mutations desperately seeking selection.
    If it was it wouldn’t be so gloriously similar.
    In fact trees claimed to show common descent actually show a common blueprint.
    Not descent from fortunate mutations.
    Its just not triue. Its not intelligent in its foundations I must say.
    If we are getting more intelligent in our science then evolutionism will be decreasing in being demonstrated or increasing.
    iD/YEC are famous unique criticisms of a former science conclusion and this blog is a witness. Its a curve of rising rejection.
    Somebody is wrong here. i think this tree thing is case in point.
    Another 5, 000 post might be worthy after all.

  2. Robert Byers: i don’t agree Einsteins light bending was proved but rather only the movement of something that bumped into light.

    Do you believe in the mind bending, Bob? Because, I gotta tell you, I’ve experienced it while reading your comment… I have a feeling that something must’ve bumped into it…I gotta a distinct feeling that it was my soul trying to escape my body to hell, so as to experience less severe suffering than to continue to be tormented by your vivid arrays of comments…🤣

  3. Joe Felsenstein: Apparently some people don’t recognize this as evidence, and don’t believe that, say, whales evolved unless we can see them doing it in a giant aquarium.

    We have many examples of 150-200 pound or more land walking mammals that have been spending most of time under water diving…

    What would be the evolutionary predictions for adatations that should have happened over the last few thousand years?
    If a 5 pound land walking mammal evolved into a 50 ton whale, 200 pound or more mammal spending most of the time under water should show at least some significant signs of adaptive evolution… This is one of the aspects of a scientific theory: accurate predictions…
    I mean Dawin boys do have faith, right?
    My accurate prediction is that Darwin boys are going come up with very predictable excuses…nothing else…because if the evolution were a scientic theory or even hypothesis, we would have hundreds if not thousands of examples of different species transitioning, with partially evolved organs or limbs, from land to water environments and the other way around…
    Unfortunately…

  4. J-Mac,

    Nonsense; the falsest of false dichotomies: either evolution is false, or all intermediates would be preserved.

  5. colewd:
    Allan Miller,

    Interesting response

    You seem to have access to information on the density of eyes in that portion of space accessible to viable organisms. The rest of us aren’t privy to this.

    It appears you are looking at some data and ignoring other data yet you only provide an assertion that this strategy is ok.So I think you maybe misleading yourself with poor methods.

    What data am I ignoring? You’ve merely said ‘eyes’, nothing more; I’ve said the genes for eyes show the same patterns (including aforementioned transition-transversion bias, silent vs nonsilent substitution) as every other gene in their possessors. So what is the special ingredient I am ignoring? Imagine you are writing a scientific paper, trying to persuade people that there is something about eyes that is being ignored by the scientific community.

    “Eyes” by Bill Cole.
    Abstract … ?

  6. colewd:

    So is this observation signal or noise relative to the common descent of fly and another insect from a common ancestor?

    Signal, of course.

  7. Goethe feared that science was becoming like a despotic court circle whereas it should be like a free republic. This is why he was so opposed to Newtons colour theory which was based on artificial experiments set up to confirm a prior viewpoint.

    Zemplén Gábor in The Experiment as Mediator Between two worlds

    Goethe:

    “I venture to assert that one experiment, even several experiments combined, prove nothing; indeed, that nothing can be more dangerous than the attempt to confirm a theory by experiments; and that the greatest errors have arisen precisely because its dangers and its inadequacies were not realized.”

    “To show his (the person trying to confirm a theory or hypothesis by experiment) mastery, as it were, he will select from the data a few favorites that flatter him, he will manage to arrange the rest so that they will not appear to contradict him, and lastly he will complicate, obscure, and eliminate the hostile data. Thus in the end, the whole no longer resembles a free republic but a despotic court circle.”

    These structures tend to survive for centuries, as the students are more than willing “to admiringly assimilate as much as possible of their master’s mode of thought”, until someone ventures to “attack the sacrosanct”, and to reinterpret the data by taking the theory less seriously.

    Experiments should be looked at as a way to gain a better understanding of the subject and not as a way to confirm a theory.

    For example, how much attention has been given to Bill’s link to Ewert’s video? How many of us have dismissed it out of hand because it doesn’t align with evolutionary theory? How many here have even watched it?

  8. Allan Miller: You seem to have access to information on the density of eyes in that portion of space accessible to viable organisms. The rest of us aren’t privy to this.

    Mutation doesn’t sample sequence space. It samples next door neighbors.

    We do have observational and experimental data on the density of viable neighbors.

  9. CharlieM: ? How many here have even watched it?

    It’s over an hour involving Jonathan McLatchie as interviewer. It’s physically impossible to endure. Is there a transcript?

  10. CharlieM: Experiments should be looked at as a way to gain a better understanding of the subject and not as a way to confirm a theory.

    If the experiments show that the theory or hypothesis are not supported by its results, what should be done about them?
    You scrap them!

    Since evolution can’t be observed, there can’t be any accurate predictions made regarding it, and most of all, it can’t be experimentally tested, why is evolution presented as a fact? Just because a small group of people wouldn’t feel intellectually fulfilled without it?

    Maybe we should talk about misrepresenting people and ascribing nefarious motives to them?!

  11. J-Mac,

    OK, you don’t buy evolution. Bill Cole doesn’t either. We have failed to convince you. What next? Another post on how you don’t buy evolution? An OP perhaps: “Did I mention I don’t buy evolution?” by J-mac? Perhaps you can make it a 10 part series.

  12. Alan Fox: It’s over an hour involving Jonathan McLatchie as interviewer. It’s physically impossible to endure. Is there a transcript?

    Well I managed to “endure” it. I don’t know if there’s a transcript, I haven’t looked.

  15. J-Mac: If the experiments show that the theory or hypothesis are not supported by its results, what should be done about them?
    You scrap them!

    Since evolution can’t be observed, there can’t be any accurate predictions made regarding it, and most of all,it can’t be experimentally tested,why is evolution presented as a fact? Just because a small group of people wouldn’t feel intellectually fulfilled without it?

    Maybe we should talk about misrepresenting people and ascribing nefarious motives to them?!

    We all observe things that we would like to explain. The fossil record, the differences between species in in relation to separate areas of the earth and the similarity in underlying forms throughout the different species. What is needed is experiments that clarify the data without being set up to bolster the experimenter’s opinion or to challenge the views of perceived opponents.

    The scientific endeavour ts often seen as a competition with participants keeping data from their rivals because they want to be first to reach the goal, whereas IMO it should be a cooperative effort.

    Zemplén Gábor:

    But if he (Goethe) warns us about rashly connecting facts and building a theory, he must also explain how this fallacy is to be avoided. His solution is not as radical as many believe. Recognizing the intellect’s inevitable tendency to form hypothesis it is evident that this predisposition cannot be changed. All one can do is to reduce it’s effect on how the facts are interpreted. What Goethe proposes is to build up a ‘super-experiment’, to establish a series of experiments which “directly adjoin and touch each other”. Goethe sees all these experiments as the manifold aspects of the same experiment. In a letter to Schiller in January 1798 he calls this the pure phenomenon, and in his Farbenlehre the Urphenomenon. His attempt with the two Contributions to Optics is this, to help his reader to re-experience this ‘higher experiment’.

    For Goethe the highest duty of a scientist is to strive towards “experiments of this higher type”, as this is the point when, within our human limits, we can best understand nature. The method of building up the ‘higher experiment’ is that of a mathematician’s, it proceeds step by step, by “deriving one fact from the preceding one”. Natural sciences in Goethe’s view can reach the exactness and purity of mathematics. Just as mathematical proofs are “always expositions and recaþitulations, never mere arguments, sciences should not be argumentative, as the task here is not that of clever debaters using their wit and imagination in connecting isolated instances, but the ‘unveiling’ of nature’s inherent structure. Arguments, that is “the direct application of an experiment to prove a given theory” is dangerous, because they stress our preconceptions, not the order of nature.

    Finally, Goethe summarizes his aims with the following words:

    My purpose is this: to collect all data in the field, to set up my own experiments and carry them out in the greatest diversity, by methods easily duplicable and within range of more individuals than heretofore; furthermore, to formulate the propositions by which data of the higher type can be expressed and to have the patience to learn whether these too may be subordinated under a higher law. If imagination and wit should nevertheless impatiently hurry ahead, the procedural method will itself indicate the point to which they must again return.

  16. Allan Miller,

    You seem to have access to information on the density of eyes in that portion of space accessible to viable organisms. The rest of us aren’t privy to this.

    We know eyes take lots of different cells with boat loads of FI to build. When they start popping up without appearance in a common ancestor that appears to be noise in the data. I would not expect this from an inheritance pattern given what we know about inheritance patterns when we can trace lineages.

    What data am I ignoring? You’ve merely said ‘eyes’, nothing more; I’ve said the genes for eyes show the same patterns (including aforementioned transition-transversion bias, silent vs nonsilent substitution) as every other gene in their possessors. So what is the special ingredient I am ignoring? Imagine you are writing a scientific paper, trying to persuade people that there is something about eyes that is being ignored by the scientific community.

    You said you can get the signal from the molecular data without morphology. Has the twin nested hierarchy idea gone by by?

  20. colewd: I would not expect this from an inheritance pattern given what we know about inheritance patterns when we can trace lineages

    What do you know about inheritance patterns?

  22. Alan Fox,

    What do you know about inheritance patterns?

    From observing groups that are known to share ancestry such as my family. Usually they have eyes or they don’t. 🙂

  23. Alan Fox,

    So could you précis it for us, Bill?

    -Ewert has come up with an alternative was to organize genetic data to a tree.
    -It is call a dependency graph that taken from modular software development
    -Its sorting algorithm is based on Bayes theorem.
    -It sorts according to gene families which are around 50 genes to 500 genes in size
    -He did several experiments comparing the dependency graph to the null (random) and the tree. The results are in the paper
    -the experiments matched predictions
    -Ewert admits this is a new idea and needs work.
    –

  24. colewd:
    Alan Fox,

    -Ewert has come up with an alternative was to organize genetic data to a tree.
    -It is call a dependency graph that taken from modular software development
    -Its sorting algorithm is based on Bayes theorem.
    -It sorts according to gene families which are around 50 genes to 500 genes in size
    -He did several experiments comparing the dependency graph to the null (random) and the tree.The results are in the paper
    -the experiments matched predictions
    -Ewert admits this is a new idea and needs work.
    –

    Brilliant. I can take genetic data, cherry pick it the way Ewert did, and force it to fit a map of the streets and roads around Chicago and the rest of Cook County.

    That proves the Designer of Life was the Illinois Department of Transportation, right Bill?

  26. CharlieM: We all observe things that we would like to explain. The fossil record, the differences between species in in relation to separate areas of the earth and the similarity in underlying forms throughout the different species. What is needed is experiments that clarify the data without being set up to bolster the experimenter’s opinion or to challenge the views of perceived opponents.

    The scientific endeavour ts often seen as a competition with participants keeping data from their rivals because they want to be first to reach the goal, whereas IMO it should be a cooperative effort.

    There are coywolves in my neck of the woods…
    Ard they an example of evolution?

    Is Larry Moran and Masatochi Nei an example of evolution?

    https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-role-of-chance-in-evolution.html

  27. Adapa,

    Brilliant. I can take genetic data, cherry pick it the way Ewert did, and force it to fit a map of the streets and roads around Chicago and the rest of Cook County.

    Cherry Pick? Whats wrong with examining the patterns of gene families. I know you don’t like ID but this is reasonable analysis that adds a very interesting look at the data.

  30. Joe Felsenstein: That issue worries them, and is addressed in the article.

    colewd:
    Alan Fox,

    -Ewert has come up with an alternative was to organize genetic data to a tree.
    -It is call a dependency graph that taken from modular software development
    -Its sorting algorithm is based on Bayes theorem.
    -It sorts according to gene families which are around 50 genes to 500 genes in size
    -He did several experiments comparing the dependency graph to the null (random) and the tree.The results are in the paper
    -the experiments matched predictions
    -Ewert admits this is a new idea and needs work.
    –

    Is Ewert supporting a tree???

  32. Robert Byers: I agree consilience can demonstrate the strength of a hypothesis BUT ADMIT its a replacement for experiments!
    I admit whales were one land creatures but the evidence for this is not evidence for selection on mutations.(evolution)
    Convincing oneself evolution is true by marine mammals bodyplan changes would miss the point of the absence of evidence in everything else.

    To claim a tree of compaitive bits in biology is evidence for its origin is not just rejcting other options(like common design which also predicts trees) but is still a poor man’s scientific method.
    Its just guessing about why things look alike while unrelated.
    the evolution hypothesis is not proved by the likeness but instead was suggested by it. It seems a cheat to THEN say its proved by it.
    Naw. Its just comparative bodyplans and then a suggestion how to came to be.

    Id /YEC offer a excelkent winning argument to the public of why biology has a great uniformity of parts. A fractal reality. Or like in chemistry with the elements.

    Its a blueprint. its not a random thing from mutations desperately seeking selection.
    If it was it wouldn’t be so gloriously similar.
    In fact trees claimed to show common descent actually show a common blueprint.
    Not descent from fortunate mutations.
    Its just not triue. Its not intelligent in its foundations I must say.
    If we are getting more intelligent in our science then evolutionism will be decreasing in being demonstrated or increasing.
    iD/YEC are famous unique criticisms of a former science conclusion and this blog is a witness. Its a curve of rising rejection.
    Somebody is wrong here. i think this tree thing is case in point.
    Another 5, 000 post might be worthy after all.

    Thanks Bob! I had no idea that you and Darwinists have so much in common…

  33. Rumraket: In an equal number of generations (~65.000) it’s about 1 million years.

    So why hasn’t the designer created something “new”? Why hasn’t magic man turned them into elephants, dogs, or palm trees?

    Is this the best you can come up with? “Why” ?
    The space is expanding at an accelerated rate… faster than the speed of light…
    I don’t ask why…I’m afraid to ask how…

  34. J-Mac,

    Is Ewert supporting a tree???

    No. The tree fits the data (gene families) better if a branching pattern is used but its best fit is a dependency graph used by software module designers

  35. colewd:
    Allan Miller,

    We know eyes take lots of different cells with boat loads of FI to build.When they start popping up without appearance in a common ancestor that appears to be noise in the data.I would not expect this from an inheritance pattern given what we know about inheritance patterns when we can trace lineages.

    You’ve changed horses again. Suddenly it’s not about convergence at all.

    You said you can get the signal from the molecular data without morphology.Has the twin nested hierarchy idea gone by by?

    You don’t need morphology when you’ve got gene sequences. And when morphology is ambiguous – for example if we were so stupid as to think insect eyes and vertebrate eyes confound their respective phylogenies – genes sort it out. I don’t know anyone outside of Creationism that would be that dim, however.

    It’s a multiple nested hierarchy – there’s consilience between different genes in the same organism – a pattern ID does not have a prayer of explaining, as you have admitted re: transition/transversion bias etc.

  36. colewd:
    J-Mac,

    No.The tree fits the data (gene families) better if a branching pattern is used but its best fit is a dependency graph used by software module designers

    I think I know what you are trying to convey…but although I’m sympathetic to this idea, just imagine someone who hates ID and anything to do with ID…How could I argue to support it? I know more that a few biologist who don’t support the tree but find the bush or a forest acceptable to due to LGT…
    Any thoughts?

  37. J-Mac,

    Huh? You misunderstand. If its the marine mammals thing well U’m sure yEC will come around to see them as landlovers who after the flood took to fill a empty seas. Otherwise huh?

  38. Robert Byers:
    J-Mac,

    Huh? You misunderstand. If its the marine mammals thing well U’m sure yEC will come around to see them as landlovers who after the flood took to fill a empty seas. Otherwise huh?

    Huh? You understood? I hope… yEc is walking… not only that, it’s running…
    I’m not too much into Land Rovers as they tend to be boxy and overrated because the Brits spend too much time drinking at the pubs and too much time recovering at the assembly plants… Their reliability sucks…
    Otherwise, what would it take for you to realize that you have a lot in common with the “empty sea”? Would you take cash or debit?

  39. So, why can’t evolution be tested?

    Well, first, the people testing it would need to know what evolution is.

  40. Darwinists either don’t know, or choose not to know, but if they subjected evolution to experimental testing they could prove their theory or hypothesis right and, at the same time, ID wrong…

    Why must it be either one or the other, why not both evolution and ID?

  42. Mung: Well, first, the people testing it would need to know what evolution is.

    If people don’t know what evolution is, just like you claim in your previous comment:

    “Well, first, the people testing it would need to know what evolution is.

    how are they going to distinguish evolution from ID?

  44. J-Mac: There are coywolves in my neck of the woods…
    Ard they an example of evolution?

    Is Larry Moran and Masatochi Nei an example of evolution?

    https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-role-of-chance-in-evolution.html

    Coywolves might play a small part in the evolution of life, but in the evolution of consciousness they are the twig on a side branch.

    Larry Moran and Masatochi Nei are examples of the use (or misuse) of the level of consciousness which has evolved so far 🙂

  45. Mung: Why must it be either one or the other, why not both evolution and ID?

    Sure, what is intelligently designed and what isn’t?

  46. Mung: Why must it be either one or the other, why not both evolution and ID?

    Seems okay. Evolution is a system of intelligent design.

    It’s the ID people that you mainly have to convince.

  48. colewd:
    newton,

    The universe is

    k

    Are all the contents of the universe, including their present state of affairs, intended outcomes of that design?

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