Ghazzali comments on The Wonder of Evolution - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 November 2007 08:49PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (80)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 May 2012 01:07:18AM 7 points [-]

There have been anomolies found in the fossil record that don't seem to make sense, but they are not deemed extreme enough by the scientific community to warrant any damage to evolution. The hypotheticals you have suggested are very extreme, do they have to be that extreme to warrant a hit on evolution or can less extreme finds also warrant questioning?

This seems to indicate a very confused thought process about how scientific theories work and are tested. A scientific theory that is wrong shouldn't have data that almost but doesn't quite fit. If evolution were wrong we would expect to see all sorts of bad data. Almost correct data with a few minor issues that we don't yet understand is exactly what one would expect for a scientific theory. To use a different example, there are some definite anomalies about gravity and how it functions (the apparent presence of dark matter is one of the more obvious examples). Will you make similar comments about gravity? If evolution and gravity are treated differently in this context, it is worthwhile to ask why. If the sole reason is that evolution has theologically uncomfortable implications, then what does that mean?