The Creation vs Evolution debate thread...

[Skybird]

Dman, one wants to avoid this thread, but one cannot! If this craving is a symptom for an addiction, I maybe need a therapy?!

If world is only 6-10 thousand years old, why does light reach us from stars hundreds of thousands of lightyears away, and why does light reach us from galaxies millions of lightyears away?

Why are there fossils of much greater age - has some excentric deity walked around in his creation, placed some faked artefacts in the earth to fool parts of his creation, and giggles in the background for man being so stupid to take them as evidence for timeframes beyond 10000 years? Is this deity doing this a jester, a pervert - or just senile? Obviously he/she/it must be older than just 10000 years. At least 10000 years and 7 days old.

However, even wikipedia has usable material on Haplo's claim that the Young Earth "Theory" is true.

Lack of scientific acceptance

YEC was abandoned as a mainstream scientific concept around the start of the 19th century.[73] Most scientists see it as a non-scientific position, and regard attempts to prove it scientifically as being little more than religiously motivated pseudoscience. In 1997, a poll by the Gallup organization showed that 5% of US adults with professional degrees in science took a YEC view. In the aforementioned poll 40% of the same group said that they believed that life, including humans, had evolved over millions of years, but that God guided this process; a view described as theistic evolution, while 55% held a view of "naturalistic evolution" in which no God took part in this process.[74] Some scientists (such as Hugh Ross and Gerald Schroeder) who believe in creationism are known to subscribe to other forms such as Old Earth creationism which posits an act of creation that took place millions or billions of years ago, with variations on the timing of the creation of mankind.
Creationist methodology

Against the Young Earth Creationist attacks on "evolutionism" and "Darwinism", critics argue that every challenge to evolution by YECs is either made in an unscientific fashion, or is readily explainable by science, and that while a gap in scientific knowledge may exist now it is likely to be closed through further research. While scientists acknowledge that there are indeed a number of gaps in the scientific theory, they generally reject the creationist viewpoint that these gaps represent fatal, insurmountable flaws with evolution. Those working in the field who pointed out the gaps in the first place have often explicitly rejected the creationist interpretation. The "God of the gaps" viewpoint has also been criticized by theologians and philosophers[75], although creationists claim that their models are based on what is known, not on gaps in knowledge[citation needed].
Christian YECs adhere strongly to the concept of biblical inerrancy, which declares the Bible to be divinely inspired and therefore scientifically infallible and non-correctable. This position is considered by devotees and critics alike to be incompatible with the principles of scientific objectivity. The creationist organizations Answers in Genesis (AiG) and Institute for Creation Research (ICR) require all members to pledge support for biblical inerrancy.
YECs often suggest that supporters of evolution theory are primarily motivated by atheism. Critics reject this claim by pointing out that many supporters of evolutionary theory are in fact religious believers, and that major religious groups such as the Roman Catholic Church and Church of England believe that the concept of biological evolution does not imply a rejection of the scriptures. Nor do they support the specific doctrines of biblical inerrancy proposed by YEC. Critics also point out that workers in fields related to evolutionary biology are not required to sign statements of belief in evolution comparable to the biblical inerrancy pledges required by ICR and AiG. This is contrary to the popular belief of creationists that scientists operate on an a priori disbelief in biblical principles[76]. They also discount Christian faith positions, like those of French Jesuit priest, geologist and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who saw that his work with evolutionary sciences actually confirmed and inspired his faith in the cosmic Christ. Nor do they believe the views of Catholic priest Fr. Thomas Berry, a cultural historian and eco-theologian, that the cosmological 13 billion year "Universe Story" provides all faiths and all traditions a single account by which the divine has made its presence in the world.
Proponents of YEC are regularly accused of quote mining, the practice of isolating passages from academic texts that appear to support their claims while deliberately excluding context and conclusions to the contrary.[77]
Theological

Some theologians oppose the proposition that God can be a legitimate or viable subject for scientific experimentation, and reject a literal interpretation of Genesis. They propose there are statements in the creation week itself which render the historical interpretation of Genesis incompatible with scientific evidence.
One example is that God created the Earth and heavens, and light, on Day 1, plant life on Day 3, and the sun and moon on Day 4. One must ask where the light in Day 1 came from, and why there were plants in Day 3 if the sun, which provides all light to the Earth, did not even exist until Day 4.[78] YECs such as Basil the Great and John Calvin answered this by suggesting that the light created by God on Day 1 was the light source. Answers in Genesis has refined this by suggesting that the Earth was already rotating with respect to this light.[79] One can also make a case that God created the plants toward the evening of Day 3, the Sun was created on the morning of Day 4, therefore the plants only had to endure darkness for a period not much longer than a typical night.
Another problem is the fact that distant galaxies can be seen. If the universe did not exist until 10,000 years ago, then light from anything farther than 10,000 light-years would not have time to reach us. Most cosmologists accept an inflation model as the likely explanation for the horizon problem. Inflationary models also account for other phenomena, and are in agreement with observations of recent microwave anisotropy satellites. Creationists have also proposed models to explain why we see distant starlight.[80][81] See creationist cosmologies for more information.
Many critics claim that Genesis itself is internally inconsistent on the question of whether man was created before the animals (Genesis 2:19) or after the animals as stated in Genesis 1. Proponents of the Documentary hypothesis suggest that Genesis 1 was a litany from the Priestly source (possibly from an early Jewish liturgy) while Genesis 2 was assembled from older Jahwist material, holding that for both stories to be a single account, Adam would have named all the animals, and God would have created Eve from his rib as a suitable mate, all within a single 24 hour period. Many creationists attribute this view to misunderstanding having arisen from poor translation of the tenses in Genesis 2 in contemporary translations of the Bible (e.g. compare "planted" and "had planted" in KJV and NIV).[82] Some Christians assert that the Bible is free from error only in religious and moral matters, and that where scientific questions are concerned, the Bible should not be read literally. This position is held by a number of major denominations. For instance, in a publication entitled The Gift of Scripture[83], the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales comments that "We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision". The Bible is held to be true in passages relating to human salvation, but "We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters."[84] By contrast, YECs contend that moral and spiritual matters in the Bible are intimately connected with its historical accuracy; in their view, the Bible stands or falls as a single indivisible block of knowledge.[85]
Aside from the theological doubts voiced by other Christians, YEC also stands in opposition to the creation mythologies of other religions (both extant and extinct). Many of these make claims regarding the origin of the universe and humanity that are completely incompatible with those of Christian creationists (and with one another)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

Google delivers you plenty of more ripping apart of creationist claims.

The main problems are that creationism takes the Bible literally, and unerring. By doing so, it already seals it's fate as being no science at all.

[NeonSamurai]

I'm only going to make one comment on this thread, and a minor one

Originally Posted by goldorak

Evolution is a fact, you may dispute the mechanism through which evolution manifests itself (natural selection), but refuting evolution is akin to refuting that we orbit the sun.

Not exactly correct, evolution is not a fact, it is a theory. Natural selection is a hypothesis based on the theory of evolution. Evolution is also not directly observable, where as orbiting the sun is.

I'm not going to waste my time on the rest of the thread.

[antikristuseke]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

I will be presenting the side of scientific creationism. This means that I will bring forward evidence of a "young" earth, rebut as best I can challenges to such evidence with logic and fact, as well as demonstrate how evolution is a flawed theory lacking credible evidence.

How old is the earth? No one was alive to see its beginning, so there is no direct testamony to that beginning. However, a "Young Earth" - aka a planetary age somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old is demonstrated by a number of scientific facts.

#1 Let us look to the sky in the night and see our celestial neighbor - the Moon. The gravitational pull between the Earth and Moon causes the Earth’s oceans to have tides. The tidal friction between the Earth’s terrestrial surface and the water moving over it causes energy to be added to the Moon. This results in a constant yearly increase in the distance between the Earth and Moon. This tidal friction also causes the Earth’s rotation to slow down, but more importantly, the energy added to the Moon causes it to recede from the Earth. The rate of recession was measured at four centimeters per year in 1981, however, according to Physicist Donald B. DeYoung:

"One cannot extrapolate the present 4 cm/year separation rate back into history. It has that value today, but was more rapid in the past because of tidal effects. In fact, the separation rate depends on the distance to the 6th power, a very strong dependence ... the rate ... was perhaps 20 m/year ‘long’ ago, and the average is 1.2 m/year.

Because of this, the Moon must be less than 750 million years old -- or 20% of the supposed 4.5 billion-year age of the Earth-Moon system theorized by evolution.

First of all, this has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution does not deal with celestial bodies, the beginning of life, the beginning of space and time etc. It deals with the change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. That is all. I should ignore this, but will not.

Anyway, here is a response to why you are wrong.

1. The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the moon is 3.85 × 10 to the 10th power cm from the earth, this is already consistent, within an order of magnitude, with an earth-moon system billions of years old.

2. The magnitude of tidal friction depends on the arrangement of the continents. In the past, the continents were arranged such that tidal friction, and thus the rates of earth's slowing and the moon's recession, would have been less. The earth's rotation has slowed at a rate of two seconds every 100,000 years (Eicher 1976).

3. The rate of earth's rotation in the distant past can be measured. Corals produce skeletons with both daily layers and yearly patterns, so we can count the number of days per year when the coral grew. Measurements of fossil corals from 180 to 400 million years ago show year lengths from 381 to 410 days, with older corals showing more days per year (Eicher 1976; Scrutton 1970; Wells 1963; 1970). Similarly, days per year can also be computed from growth patterns in mollusks (Pannella 1976; Scrutton 1978) and stromatolites (Mohr 1975; Pannella et al. 1968) and from sediment deposition patterns (Williams 1997). All such measurements are consistent with a gradual rate of earth's slowing for the last 650 million years.

4. The clocks based on the slowing of earth's rotation described above provide an independent method of dating geological layers over most of the fossil record. The data is inconsistent with a young earth.

References:
1. Eicher, D. L., 1976. Geologic Time. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
2. Mohr, R. E., 1975. Measured periodicities of the Biwabik (Precambrian) stromatolites and their geophysical significance. In: Rosenberg and Runcorn, pp. 43-56.
3. Pannella, G., 1976. Tidal growth patterns in Recent and fossil mollusc bivalve shells: A tool for the reconstruction of paleotides. Naturwissenschaften 63: 539-543.
4. Pannella, G., C. MacClintock and M. Thompson, 1968. Paleontological evidence of variation in length of synodic month since Late Cambrian. Science 162: 792-796.
5. Rosenberg, G. D. and S. K. Runcorn (eds.), 1975. Growth Rhythms and the History of the Earth's Rotation. New York: Wiley.
Scrutton, C. T., 1970. Evidence for a monthly periodicity in the growth of some corals. In: Palaeogeophysics, S. K. Runcorn, ed., London: Academic Press, pp. 11-16.
6. Scrutton, C. T., 1978. Periodic growth features in fossil organisms and the length of the day and month. In: Tidal Friction and the Earth's Rotation. P. 7. Brosche and J. Sundermann, eds., Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 154-196.
8. Wells, J. W., 1963. Coral growth and geochronometry. Nature 197: 948-950.
9. Wells, J. W., 1970. Problems of annual and daily growth-rings in corals. In: Palaeogeophysics, S. K. Runcorn, ed., London: Academic Press, pp. 3-9.
10. Williams, G. E., 1997. Precambrian length of day and the validity of tidal rhythmite paleotidal values. Geophysical Research Letters 24(4): 421-424.

#2 Oil Wells - When oil wells are drilled, the oil is almost always found to be under great pressure. This presents a problem for those who claim "millions of years" for the age of oil, simply because rocks are porous. In other words, as time goes by the oil should seep into tiny pores in the surrounding rock, and, over time, reduce the pressure. However, for some reason it doesn't.

This has nothing to do with evolution, I get a feeling this thread should be named science vs young earth to be more accurate.
Anyway this is because every known substance is porous to a degree, but if it is dense enough it can still form a seal. Though my knowledge of the physics involved here is very limited.

#3 Our Friend the Sun - Measurements of the sun's diameter over the past several hundred years indicate that it is shrinking at the rate of five feet per hour. Assuming that this rate has been constant in the past we can conclude that the earth would have been so hot only one million years ago that no life could have survived. And only 11,200,000 years ago the sun would have physically touched the earth.

1. This assumes that the rate of shrinkage is constant. That assumption is baseless. (In fact, it is the uniformitarian assumption that creationists themselves sometimes complain about.) Other stars expand and contract cyclically. Our own sun might do the same on a small scale.

2. There is not even any good evidence of shrinkage. The claim is based on a single report from 1980. Other measurements, from 1980 and later, do not show any significant shrinkage. It is likely that the original report showing shrinkage contained systematic errors due to different measuring techniquies over the decades.

#4 The Air We Breathe - Carbon-14 is produced when radiation from the sun strikes Nitrogen-14 atoms in the earth's upper atmosphere. The earth's atmosphere is not yet saturated with C14. This means that the amount of C14 being produced is greater than the amount that is decaying back to N14. It is estimated that a state of equilibrium would be reached in as little as 30,000 years. Thus, it appears that the earth's atmosphere is less than 30,000 years old. In fact, the evidence suggests it is less than 10,000 years old.

This is the first time I hear this argument, but alas, this has nothing to do with evolution, again.
Anyway this argument is flawed because it assumes a constant conversion rate of N14 into C14, while it is everything but. (Strahler, Arthur N. 1987. Science and Earth History, p.158)
Tree-ring dating gives us a wonderful check on the radiocarbon dating method for the last 8000 years. That is, we can use carbon-14 dating on a given tree-ring (the 8000-year sequence having been assembled from the overlapping tree-ring patterns of living and dead trees) and compare the resulting age with the tree-ring date. A study of the deviations from the accurate tree-ring dating sequence shows that the earth's magnetic field has an important effect on carbon-14 production. When the dipole moment is strong, carbon-14 production is suppressed below normal; when it is weak, carbon-14 production is boosted above normal. What the magnetic field does is to partially shield the earth from cosmic rays which produce carbon-14 high in the atmosphere.

#5 "Mother" Eve's DNA - In 1989 scientists said that they had compared the Mitochondrial DNA of various different races of people and concluded that they all came from a single woman (they called her Eve) who lived from 100,000-200,000 years ago.This story was widely reported in the press. A few years later scientists actually measured the rate of Mitochondrial mutations and discovered that they changed about 20 times faster than was earlier reported. This means that "Eve" did not live 100,000-200,000 years ago but rather only 5,000-10,000.

Finally an argument that actualy has something to do with evolution, yay. Anyway the "mitochondrial Eve," to which this claim refers, is the most recent common female ancestor, not the original female ancestor. There would have been other humans living earlier and at the same time. The mtDNA lineages of other women contemporary with her eventually died out. Mitochondrial Eve was merely the youngest common ancestor of all today's mtDNA. She may not even have been human.

As of the mutation rate:
1. The claim is founded primarily on the work of Parsons et al. (1997), who found that the substitution rate was about 25 times higher in the mitochondria control region, which is less than 7% of the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). Revised studies of all of the mtDNA find that the control region varies greatly in substitution rates in different populations, but that the rest of the mtDNA shows no such variation (Ingman et al. 2000). Using mtDNA excluding the control region, they placed the age of the most recent common mitochondrial ancestor at 171,500 +/- 50,000 years ago.

Gibbons (1998) refers to mutations that cause heteroplasmy (inheritance of two or more mtDNA sequences). This does not apply to mitochondrial Eve research, which is based only on substitution mutation rates.

2. A study similar to the mtEve research was done on a region of the X chromosome which does not recombine with the smaller Y chromosome; it placed the most recent common ancestor 535,000 +/- 119,000 years ago (Kaessmann et al. 1999). Since the population size of X chromosomes is effectively three times larger than mitochondria (two X chromosomes from women and one from men can get inherited), the most recent common ancestor should be about three times older than that of the Mitochondrial Eve, and it is.

Refrences:
1. Gibbons, A. 1998. Calibrating the mitochondrial clock. Science 279: 28-29.
2. Ingman, M., H. Kaessmann, S. Pääbo and U. Gyllensten. 2000. Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans. Nature 408: 708-713.
3. Kaessmann, H., F. Heissig, A. von Haeseler and S. Pääbo. 1999. DNA sequence variation in a non-coding region of low recombination on the human X chromosome. Nature Genetics 22: 78-81.
4. Loewe, L. and S. Scherer. 1997. Mitochondrial Eve: the plot thickens. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12(11): 422-423
5. Parsons, T. J. et al. 1997. A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial control region. Nature Genetics 15: 363-368.

#6 Look at all the People - Today the earth's population doubles about every 50 years. If we assumed only half of the current growth rate and start with one couple, it would take less than 4,000 years to achieve today's population.

Back to stuff that has nothing to do with with evolution.
And this argument is plainly silly. Wars and plagues would have caused populations to drop from time to time. In particular, population sizes before agriculture would have been severely limited and would have had an average population growth of zero for any number of years. Then there is sanitation which affects attrition of humans. The kind of exponential population growth we see was impossible in the past due to the limitation of technology.

#7 The Dead Sea - The Dead Sea is in Israel. It is receives fresh water from the Sea of Galilee via the Jordan River. The Dead Sea has a very high salt content. Even so, it continues to get saltier since it has no outlet other than by evaporation. Scientists have measured the amount of salt added each year by the Jordan River; and they have also calculated the amount of salt in the Dead Sea. From these it is possible to estimate how long this process has been going on for. Assuming a constant rate of salt/water flow, and a zero salt level at the beginning, then the age of the Dead Sea is only 13,000 year old.

A comparison between the chemical composition of the water of the Dead Sea and its tributaries and that of other lakes and the ocean shows the average salinity of the Dead Sea water (31.50%) to be exceptionally high, concentration of the SO 4 ''-ion to be very low and that of Br (5920mg/1) to be probably the highest on record for any surface water. Most of the cationic calcium in the Dead Sea and its tributaries is balanced by chloride. A short summary of the geological history of the area shows that the Dead Sea is not a relict body of sea water; its salt assemblage is the result of accumulation in a closed inland basin under arid conditions. The salts originate from two main sources, about one third from the Jordan River and about two thirds from highly saline springs discharging into the Dead Sea. On this fact a method can be based for calculating the age of the Dead Sea leading to a maximum figure of about 70,000 and a minimum of 12,000 years, the latter being more probable. The annual amount of chemical precipitation in the Southern Dead Sea basin is calculated to 0.306 gr/cm 2 and it is shown that NaCl and CaSO 4 are the major and that CaCO 3 is a minor component. This result is in good agreement with observations on the present rate of chemical sedimentation in the Dead Sea. Volcanic and organic origins for the vast bromine reserve in the Dead Sea are rejected and the derivation of the bromine from fossil residual brines, formed during the Tertiary, is tentatively accepted.

Refrences:
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 25, Issue 4, pp.239-240

Additional detail and sources regarding these evidences along with others may be researched at the following links:

http://www.earthage.org/youngearthev/evidence_for_a_young_earth.htm
http://www.trueorigin.org/mitochondrialeve01.asp

Any aditional information available at www.Talkorigins.org

[antikristuseke]

Originally Posted by NeonSamurai

Not exactly correct, evolution is not a fact, it is a theory. Natural selection is a hypothesis based on the theory of evolution. Evolution is also not directly observable, where as orbiting the sun is.

This is wrong. For several reasons. One of those things is that evolution is directly observable, instances of speciation for instance.
Here is a list of some:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

[NeonSamurai]

Evolution is not directly observable any more then gravity is. You can observe the effects of gravity, but not gravity itself. That is why gravity is a theory not a fact, same goes for evolution.

That paper is observing differences, they are not observing actual speciation, but the effects of it assuming the hypothesis is correct.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Dman, one wants to avoid this thread, but one cannot! If this craving is a symptom for an addiction, I maybe need a therapy?!

Oh c'mon now Skybird, its too funny to debunk "alternative pseudo scientific" theories. I proclaim that after debunking Creationism, we should have a debate on wether the americans really landed on the moon in 1969, followed obviously by a debate on "did 9/11 really happened, or was it just a consipracy from the US government to green light its imperialistic view on the world". It should make a very interesting and funny debate.

If world is only 6-10 thousand years old, why does light reach us from stars hundreds of thousands of lightyears away, and why does light reach us from galaxies millions of lightyears away?

Now now, be carefull we wouldn't want alternative astrophysicists telling us that the cosmological redshift is nonsense.

Why are there fossils of much greater age - has some excentric deity walked around in his creation, placed some faked artefacts in the earth to fool parts of his creation, and giggles in the background for man being so stupid to take them as evidence for timeframes beyond 10000 years? Is this deity doing this a jester, a pervert - or just senile? Obviously he/she/it must be older than just 10000 years. At least 10000 years and 7 days old.

Don't try to introduce scientific arguments, it will lead you to nowhere.

However, even wikipedia has usable material on Haplo's claim that the Young Earth "Theory" is true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

Google delivers you plenty of more ripping apart of creationist claims.

The main problems are that creationism takes the Bible literally, and unerring. By doing so, it already seals it's fate as being no science at all.

How do you debunk something thats no even a scientific theory ?
Treating Creationism on the same level of any other kind of scientific theory only legitimizes their view.

[antikristuseke]

Evolution is both fact and theory, same for gravity. In science theory is basically a model with explains observations, a description of a process if you will. We understand far less of gravity than we do of evolution.

And those are observed instances of speciation since the two or more species are no longer capable of interbreeding. Definitions, these are important in science.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by goldorak

I'm sorry, there can be no debate; Creationism as a theory (scientific theory ?) to paraphrase one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century "is not even wrong".
Evolution is a fact, you may dispute the mechanism through which evolution manifests itself (natural selection), but refuting evolution is akin to refuting that we orbit the sun.
I always wonder why is it that the rest of the civilised world has no problem with the scientific theory of Evolution, whereas it is a gigantic problem in the US.

Is it a "gigantic" problem in the US? I don't see how it is really slowing us down. Come on, say it. You want to say we're all stupid
You only believe the earth orbits the sun because that's what you were taught. Did you ever try to prove it for yourself?

Originally Posted by Skybird

concluding on assuming God to be real in the first. How very much absurd, anti-scientific and a true assassination of reasonability that is.

I can imagine, 3000 years or so ago, one man saying how unreasonable and anti-scientific it was to consider the earth as anything other than a flat form--how do you think everything stays down!?!

Yeah, you are right when you said science is a growing, changing process. It has been wrong as many times as religion. You believe what makes sense to you, and just like a man from 3000 years ago, he believed what made sense to him. He took the science of his time, it made sense to him, he believed it. When science is proven wrong and corrects itself, people adjust their beliefs.

I'm a big fan of science and I do not take the Bible literally. But no matter how you spin it, even with our best science, nothing can explain the human soul, where it comes from, or where it goes when the vessel dies. Until science can explain that, we will have religous beliefs.

[Platapus]

antikristuseke,

A rather well written response. Good citations and a logical chain of thought without personal attacks.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

nothing can explain the human soul, where it comes from, or where it goes when the vessel dies. Until science can explain that, we will have religous beliefs.

Has it been demonstrated that we even have one? I would think that before anything can be proved as to where it came from and where it goes, it must first be established that it even exists in the first place.

[antikristuseke]

Originally Posted by Platapus

antikristuseke,

A rather well written response. Good citations and a logical chain of thought without personal attacks.

Thank you. I have to admit that i did punch my walls a few time and seriously considered smoking again, because I have been over all this several times on other forums and find it a little frustrating, but if even one person learns something or finds and interest in science it has been time worth spending.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Has it been demonstrated that we even have one? I would think that before anything can be proved as to where it came from and where it goes, it must first be established that it even exists in the first place.

Ok, then let me explain, by "soul", I am referring to consciousness.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Ok, then let me explain, by "soul", I am referring to consciousness.

I think that would be a much better measurable area to focus on.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Ok, then let me explain, by "soul", I am referring to consciousness.

If you mean something distinct from the body, then you still need to give
reason for thinking it has existence.

Souls are things that exist, consciousness is a process that happens, but
does not have existence.

[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by antikristuseke

Evolution is both fact and theory, same for gravity. In science theory is basically a model with explains observations, a description of a process if you will. We understand far less of gravity than we do of evolution.

And those are observed instances of speciation since the two or more species are no longer capable of interbreeding. Definitions, these are important in science.

No it isn't, you do not properly understand the differences between scientific fact, theory, and hypothesis.

Scientific facts are direct observations of repeatable, reliable, verifiable events. The key thing is directly observable. You cannot directly observe gravity, or evolution, etc. only the effects which we assign gravity, evolution, etc as being responsible for.

Theory and hypothesis try to explain those facts (there are some differences between the two, usually hypothesis is an extension of an established theory).

You cannot directly observe gravity, evolution, or speciation (try reading that paper closer, even they refer to it as hypothesis). They are not scientific fact they are theories which are used to explain observed scientific fact. In all cases what you observe are effects which the theory attempts to explain why they happened.

Maybe this will make it more clear. You have a ball, you drop it, it falls to the ground and stays there. Now what did you observe? Did you see gravity? The only observable fact is the ball fell down from your hand and hit the ground. The theory as to why that happened is called the theory of gravity. Gravity is not a fact, the ball hitting the ground is the fact.