Jinksy

Does anyone know of any links that explain concisely why some yahoo off the street saying 'I don't believe in evolution, and the burden of proof is on the layman who accepts it to prove that it "exists"' would be wrong, whereas his skeptic buddy saying the same thing about Christianity is right?

(for the record, I'm not just looking for anyone to explain the reasons to me - I already know them - I'd like the link a) so I can find something better worded than my own attempts b) to persuade the sorts of people who won't believe any assertion that runs contrary to their beliefs without some perceived authority to back it up, and c) because I'm idly curious about the history of logic)

[edit] Actually, while I'm looking for stuff to debunk creationists, does anyone know of any sites that actually show photos of related fossils that demonstrate evolution? All the stuff I can find on google is textual.

Scorpion

A small nitpick: that yahoo wouldn't be wrong; anyone claiming that evolution is happening does have a burden of proof when questioned (however, one has no burden of proof for just accepting it - one doesn't need to justify one's beliefs to anyone else AFAIK). The difference between evolution and Christanity is that the former does much better job bearing that burden.

-S-

Majestyk

Another small nit-pik: My understanding of basic scientific methods is that the propponent needs to offer a Theory which is supported by evidence, fully explains its subject, and accurately predicts previously unknown phenomena. No Theory is ever "proved" to be true. They just have yet to be proved false (failing to provide accurate and repeatable predictions).

There burden is actually on the individual who proclaims the Theory is flawwed to show their proof.

Personal beliefs on the other hand, require no rationalization, education, or cognition. We can just accept the first a priori thought that gets planted in our heads and stick with it 'til the end.

Scorpion

Granted - I tried to put my point concisely to avoid having to include the whole philosophy of science here

Now that we started on the pedantic path, I'd like to add though that what a proponent presents is a Hypothesis, not a Theory... and what I implicitly meant with my "burden of proof" in this case was that the hypothesis must be easily falsifiable, yet not falsified despite serious attempts to do so.

My apologies to Jinksy that we're not contributing much to the original question

-S-

skepticalbip

Jinsky,

Unless you just enjoy arguing with crab grass for the pure joy of arguing, you are wasting your time. You can no more convince someone who belives in the biblical creation story that it is disproved by science than they can convince you that science is disproved by the bible.

If you simply enjoy the argument, have fun... If you are expecting to change minds, prepair for disappointment.

BioBeing

Looks like this is more suited for E/C, if it is creationists you be wanting to debunk.

BioBeing,
S&S Moderator

Jinksy

I disagree - appeal to authority is virtually always cited as being fallacious when it's used to support deductive reasoning or when the person cited isn't qualified to speak on the subject. By inference, then, if neither of those are the case, the appeal isn't fallacious.

Besides which, the argument isn't 'Dawkins and co. say evolution exists, therefore it probably does', it's 'Dawkins and co. say evolution exists, therefore for the layman who isn't qualified to speak on the subject, the most reasonable position is to accept that evolution probably exists (and to deny as much would be unreasonable).

I know that But 'burden of proof' (as I think Scorpion subsquently implied, but I'm tired and hung over, and possibly not reading his post right) is normally used as shorthand for 'burden of evidence'.

I know... it's some form of emotional masochism, I spose :huh: Stress relief, basically.

So no links?

Scorpion

Sorry, I didn't follow that. What part of what I said were you disagreeing with?

-S-

Jinksy

That you'd picked any of my nits

skepticalbip

An appeal to authority? Hardly convincing to this particular audience... You have to remember the authority they appeal to. For them there is no higher authority.