angryoldfatman:
"If these evolutionary scientists ('botanists') can't tell us what events caused what effect, and exactly where the evolutionary branches diverge (witness the debate between Homo erectus, Homo rudolfensis, Homo gautengensis, Homo ergaster and Homo habilis, for instance), then I feel 'so-called' is an accurate description." But there's nothing "so called" about it.
And it takes no great genius to ask questions for which there are not answers.
Indeed, that is more-or-less the definition of the word "sophomoric".
So, raw material scientists have to work with consists of such things as fossils, geology, comparative biology & DNA broadly speaking.
Confirmed theory puts these together in the rough shape of an evolutionary tree.
However, nobody can answer specifically, for example: what caused Neanderthals to die out?
Sure, any number of factors may have contributed, but all we can say for certain is that after a certain time period, we find no more Neanderthal bones.
But at least with Neanderthals, thanks to DNA analysis, we know for certain they were not our direct ancestors, though they did interbreed to some extent.
That's quite a bit more than we can say about most other pre-human fossils so far discovered.
angryoldfatman: "I've seen academics in what we refer to as evolutionary science simply make narratives up for theses.
Hell, if Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, and Java Man can fool generations of suckers out there, then how reliable can they be?"
You've just recited some famous controversies or frauds from 100+ years ago, as if they happened yesterday.
In fact, in every case, science worked just as it is supposed to: errors were reviewed, exposed & corrected eventually, by other scientists.
But they certainly do tell us that nothing in much of science is ever really "settled".
New data, or new ideas, can always overthrow older understandings.
It's what science is, it's how science works.
angryoldfatman: "There's some other things.
Some say 98%, others say 96%, and some point out that we share a majority of DNA with bananas.
So we are from the same branch as bananas, too (if you pardon the pun).
Who knew?"
All of that is true.
The percentages of similarities in human & chimpanzee DNA depend on exactly what you measure & how you compare.
So any number in the high 90s percent could be supported by selected data.
All it really means is that humans are much more recently related to chimps than to, for example, bananas.
The data suggests that ancestors of humans & chimps branched off about 8 million years ago, while those of humans & bananas roughly a billion years ago.
And it takes no great genius to ask questions for which there are not answers.
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You’re right there, I never claimed to be a genius.
However, after all of the junk science I’ve seen (”climate change” being the most recent and prominent of it), and seeing the similar arguments used to support neo-Darwinian evolution (percentage of scientists’ consensus, settled science, evidence provided by vested interests, etc.), it leads me to my conclusion.
How much study do you need to answer some of the most basic questions that underpin the theory? We’ve had over 150 years. Most laymen (read: non-geniuses) should not be able to come up with unanswerable questions.
Should we be calling academics “scientists” when they simply pull “sexual selection” out of their hats when they can’t explain a trait that (logically) should have been eradicated by natural selection? And then they even claim that it PROVES their theory and call people stupid for questioning it, instead of prompting a re-examination of the theory?
If you have to use the Dawkins trifecta - anyone who doesn’t believe what I do is either “stupid, ignorant, or insane” - to upgrade your hypothesis to theory, it’s not very good science.
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You’ve just recited some famous controversies or frauds from 100+ years ago, as if they happened yesterday.
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You act like we don’t use theories from 100+ years ago.
Science is science, or so I’m told.
The methods by which those hoaxes permeated and endured in scientific academia is the most instructive part of those incidents.
Many of those methods that allowed those hoaxes to be foisted onto scientists of the time are still in place. For example, most of the Devonian fish fossils (with a very small number of notable exceptions) are small bone fragments extrapolated into entire creatures.
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In fact, in every case, science worked just as it is supposed to: errors were reviewed, exposed & corrected eventually, by other scientists.
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You mean they asked questions about “settled science”? Imagine that! Oh no, wait, they found other evidence of outright tampering, but never questioned the premise upon which the fossils themselves were based.
“Your Honor, Mr. Jones is most assuredly a murderer, but this knife was planted at the scene. However, I’m sure the REAL knife will turn up, and possibly some other weapons he used to kill the victim with, if we just search another 150 years or so.”