Some_weirdGuy said:
Speciation itself has also been observed
.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
((Section 5 details instances of observed and recorded speciation, such as in planets and insects. Problem is, so many people think as you do('it's too slow to be observed'), and already feel existing evidence is convincing enough as is, that we don't have many scientist actively trying to observe speciation further XD
there are also some more cited examples here http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html))
Thus my reiterated statement that evolution is still not a theory. ((though you do express the view most people use these days, it is itself still incorrect))
Normally I don't tend to take part in threads this old, but I've been away from the Internet for a few days and this post was rolling round in my head.
Although I accept with great interest and thanks your examples of observed speciation (all new to me and most welcome), and I agree that this refutes what I was saying, I still think you're to some extent missing the point I was trying to make. I was saying that the distinction between fact and theory isn't where you're drawing it.
On the one hand you have the *facts*, such as:
- Populations can vary by Natural Selection under changes in environmental pressure;
- Mutations in plants can cause new species to be created;
- All known organisms on Earth share the same genetic code;
- Organisms' DNA shows a clear pattern of relationships which follows their natural classification into species, genera etc;
On the other you have two *theories* which explain these facts, which are
- the Theory of Evolution: essentially that all organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor by repeated reproduction and speciation)
- the Theory of Natural Selection, which is that Natural Selection is sufficiently powerful to have caused this evolution.
(incidentally, the process of Natural Selection itself is something I'd class as neither fact nor theory but Law - it's almost tautologically true)
It's important to separate these two theories because it is the *first* which creationists dispute, despite the fact that as you quite rightly say and I have been keen to emphasise all along, the first is the one which has the most evidence to back it up - to the extent that it requires extraordinary special pleading at a supernatural level to come up with an alternative explanation of the facts.
The reason the second theory is important is not because it is necessarily true (although so far there's no real evidence to say that it isn't) but because it *could* be true. Before Darwin and Wallace many people believed in evolution but without a mechanism to explain it, it was always vulnerable to Paley's Watch-style arguments against. Natural Selection provided a plausible and compelling response to those criticism, and was *itself* the final 'proof' of the Theory of Evolution.
Just to finish off with the parallel story about Continental Drift. Once again we have facts (the continents look similar, flora and fauna on the continents show patterns of similarity suggesting the continents were once joined together, etc), and two theories. The theory of Continental Drift is the theory *that* the continents were once joined together and split apart several million years ago. Over the years lots of people proposed this theory and were laughed at, quite rightly, because despite the huge array of facts it explained, there was no underlying mechanism to explain how it could work. Then the theory of Plate Tectonics was invented, providing a mechanism for *how* the continents might move about. As an added bonus it provided lots of other testable predictions which made it a great candidate. With that in place, the first theory, that the continents move at all, became accepted - even though eventually we might learn that Plate Tectonics are not the whole answer to how continental drift occurs.
