I mean, adaptation yes. Definitely. But that doesn't mean someone would transition into a new race over who-knows-how-long. The idea of single celled organisms evolving unto countless types of creatures each with many variations, species & races that all balance together to form a planet we can survive on (which by itself is extremely unlikely to this scale) just seems too far fetched.
When you have several billion years for the DNA of protocells to differentiate in order to best thrive in the environment they reside, then it is
more likely that the entire legacy of the Earth has been under constant change of gene frequency than the idea that all the species of Earth has been under a constant stagnancy this entire time.
You agree with Adaptation, but not Speciation. Why? Adaptation is the final result of Speciation. Entire populations will incrementally adapt to their environment as the fit survive to reproduce, their offspring sharing in their traits, while the unfit die and do not reproduce as often. As entire populations adapt over several generations of offspring, they incrementally drift from any point you call the "original set", as this new generation is
slightly better suited to their environment to the last. Eventually, when you allow for more generations to pass, you will see significant change in the population. Lets remember that one individual does not adapt, but entire populations together.
If I was to believe something that grand and large-scale when it originates from observations, theories and facts then I am going to need a LOT of irrefutable facts and proof.
Good thing we have Biology, Ecology, Physiology, Endocrinology, and Genetics (etc.) textbooks which can easily explain to you the basics of Evolution and numerous scientific journals which can explain to you the advanced mechanics. Trust me, you have your LOT of facts and proof here. But let's be clear, none of this information can be irrefutable. To be irrefutable is to never be able to be corrected by more advanced information to either support or debunk it, and that's not the Creed of Science. A scientific theory is either right 100% on time, 24 days a week, 365 days a year, or it's wrong. So far, it's been correct. And we don't see this scientific theory being wrong any time soon. So it's best you learn this information so you can come out of the dark ages.
But humanities understanding of the universe and our construct of scientific discovery falls down to 3 key flaws:
Why do we have to talk about the Universe? That's Astronomy and Cosmology. This is Evolution, aka "any living thing on Planet Earth". Let's bring our discussion down there.
1) We will NEVER know or understand it all. We haven't even scratched the surface on our own planet of everything there is to learn & understand. And it's one of millions if not billions. How would we ever get close to such a massive scale regardless of time or numbers? Advanced, yes--but always drastically incomplete.
How does this stop you from acknowledging Evolution as a fact and theory? We discover new species nearly every month, and every time, we have analyzed their DNA to find they fit in with the rest of our organisms. (Also, spare me the philosophy speak, please.)
2) We will never be 100% right with what we have. Let's face it--everyone makes mistakes. We have our entire lives, we will continue to do so for the rest of our lives and at least some small percentage of an individual's total understanding would be flawed. What has the human construct of scientific knowledge gone through? Human hands and human minds. Millions of them. It will always be flawed tosome degree and filled with 1+ "facts" that a person/people will swear to be truith and later on in human history turns out to be wrong. How many times have we done that?
Science will NEVER be 100% right, that's not what Science is about. Science is about the constant uploading of data to support hypotheses and scientific theories, with new data either strengthening the theory evermore or completely destroying the theory and leveling it down to hypothesis again. We had a theory called "Spontaneous Generation", which was the idea that organic or inorganic material can spontaneously generate complete, mature forms of organisms. Back then, it was thought that rain summons earth worms from the sky, leaving food out summons maggots, killing a cow and leaving it in the sun summons bees. Ridiculous right? Then a brilliant scientist called Louis Pasteur performed experiments, eventually figuring out that there were microprocesses involved in the upbringing of these new organisms and that they do not explicitly and fundamentally create them: rather, these processes draw
already-existing organisms to that process before we witness them. So now Spontaneous Generation was turned from a theory to a hypothesis, and that's where it has stayed since.
So if you have been paying attention, we create new data from our observations, and we use that data to bolster existing theories or hypotheses, or in rare cases, destroy them.
In the 150 years of Evolution, it has never been demoted from a theory to a hypothesis. And now that we have advanced modern technology and a blooming scientific utopia, I really don't think Evolution will be demoted to a hypothesis any time soon, or never.
3) It's unstable and in constant change. Even if it's massive and filled with fascinating discoveries and creations it's still not completely solid ground to stand on, regardless of size. I know the whole point is for it to change but it's still a negative characteristic to me--putting faith & dependence on something that will never be 100% firm & concrete.
I agree with you on it never being 100% firm and concrete.
It's more like 99.9999999% (seven deviations) firm and concrete. I don't think I need to remind you the utter silliness of being skeptical in the theory of Gravity, Plate Tectonics, Germ Theory, Sexual Reproduction (etc.) being fact on the grounds that it's not 100% concrete. The fact is, if an idea has numerous data to support it, I'd stake my claim on learning about it and acknowledging it as a legitimate Scientific Theory. Gravity, Plate Tectonics, Germ Theory, Sexual Reproduction are all Scientific Theories, but I guess since they're not 100% concrete, we shouldn't acknowledge them as facts and theories. Welp.
The human understanding of science is incomplete, imperfect and unstable because it was created by an incomplete, imperfect & unstable race. Those characteristics that we have will never disappear in our race or our science. So I will always take anything we think we know for absolute fact as something that could be either missing part of the picture, different now than what we thought then or just simply wrong. That includes the THEORY of evolution. Do we have all of the information that would support it? No. Do we have 100% certainty that it's true? No. Will our views on the matter change within the next thousand years? I doubt it wouldn't.
"Let's cap the word theory to remind everyone that it's a theory, in the hopes that everyone will mistake the word theory for a Layman Theory and not a Scientific Theory!" Let me make something clear to you. Like I said above, Gravity, Plate Tectonics, Sexual Reproduction and Germ Theory are all THEORIES. I capped the word theory there for you. The THEORY of Gravity. Does this not sound silly to you, if you're capping the word theory next to Evolution in order to try and undermine its success?
If by some miracle we had all of the knowledge in the universe as 100% fact & truth then yes, I'd listen to a scientific explanation as to how the universe came to be or how we ended up the way we are. But alas, that will never happen.
That's the universe, so you should try and learn from a physicist or an astronomer. This is the Earth's evolution of life, so you should try learning from ME, a Biologist.
