I believe it was my sister that came up with this argument.
I just used it today. And it makes me proud.
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Guy:
Evolution is a FACT, all of the evidence supports it.
Me:
Sorry, evolution is not a fact. The theory seems sound enough, but having bits of pieces of information doesn’t prove the theory.
Say you found a old crumbled and faded piece of parchment with four legible letters remaining. A, P, L, and E…say you even know they go in that order….Say there’s a somewhat legible letter between the A and P that looks like a P….One might say with reasonable certainty that the word that existed was APPLE. Most people would even agree. But never can you say without any shadow of doubt that the word wasn’t actually AIRPLANE or APPLAUSE. (An R can look like a P for those of you who don’t get it)
Until you have all the pieces, nothing is fact, my friend.
you sister is correct.
evolution = discent with modification, or if you like kids are not clones of mom and dad.
how things change from one species to another, well the theory covers that, you may be dubious about the theory, however a little time invested in learning will show the theory is pretty solid. Evolution however is a fact. If you need an example: drug resistent bacteria.
There are a number of bacteria that used to be highly suseptable to an antibiotic, that now are no longer affected.
This is evolution, the parents ( most of them anyhow) would have died when exposed to the antibiotic, the kids ( well most of them anyhow) are now able to tolorate the antibiotic, or it simply doesn’t affect them.
The theory of evolution explains this, in that some of the parents were not as suseptable to the antibiotic as others. Because we have been expsosing the population of bacteria to the antibiotics for a period of time we have been in effect selecting for bacteria that are resistent to the antibiotic. this has resulted in drug resistent bacteria.
this is a small change. Tehre are litterly thousands of otehr examples if you go look. For bigger changes, ie fish to amphibian, it takes longer forthis to occur, but it has.
Now it is possible that another force caused this change, however ther is no supporting evidence for that. There is however a huge ammount of evidece for natural selection/sexual selection/ genetic drift/ etc, all vectors for explaining the changes using the theory of evolution.
good luck with your self education