RE: Proving Evolution
That's nice with the red-purple text. I like that.
Here's where the evidence for your belief system is, quite simply, missing.
Take a common, modern creature. Say the bottle-nose dolphin and greater apes ... the emperor penguin, the ostrich, and the osprey.... the alpaca and white-tailed deer ... the octopus and the starfish.
Now, if this creature descended from some other creature, identify it in the chain of evolution. First A, then B. In the example above, "red text" can be isolated either in the fossil record or in modern times to be distinct from the "blue text."
I would think that hundreds and thousands of such pairs can be discovered. I believe over 10,000 species are "discovered" every year. But the obvious problem is that at the top of the food chain, there is an antecedent problem. The old imaginary "common ancestor" that has been hypothesized for over 100 years in evolutionary pseudo-science.
Red-blue pairs. A handful of stable purple ones.
Fiction makes a lot of sense. It's entertaining to go see "natural history" museums with the bald faced fake history lessons, supported by artist renditions and reconstructions. Believing in fiction ... doesn't make it any more real.
A flow-chart (or hundreds of them) with hypothetical "chains" of the evolutionary fiction, like the ones appearing in biology textbooks: This is the purported evidence. The hypotheses are circular. The flowchart points to a proposition, and the proposition is said to be examples of evolution, while the evidence is missing and theoretical and assumed.
So when you conflate a "micro" version of evolution with the billion-year macro version of it causing the so-called fossil record, you have to do so based on assumption, belief, and ignoring alternative theories. Wouldn't you say that beliefs and ignorance are the hallmarks of religion and pseudoscience? If the shoe fits, wear it.
Don't you see? Evolution is a continuum. A spectrum.
The notion of a red/blue pair is an completely arbitrary one. Classifications are us simply drawing a line in the text and declaring something 'purple' or 'bluish', but ultimately that demarcation is made up.
Consider the evolution of language - you may have a ancestor language like Latin. Latin then branches to beget Franch, Spanish, English, Italian, etc.
Those demarcations are very easily seen as we've zoomed out, included time, and drawn those arbitrary lines. However, when Latin was first traveling around the globe, the Western speakers and Eastern speakers could probably still communicate, could probably interact just fine. But, with additional time, group isolation, and essentially random changes, they eventually became distinct.
As it is with biology. We are all still evolving and the demarcations we create are arbitrary. All the creatures are the planet are still red-ish or blue-ish on their way to something even more red-ish or blue-ish that may or may not help them survive against selection pressures within their environment.
And yes, I would agree that beliefs and ignorance are hallmarks of religious belief and psuedo-science. Traits you seem to be exercising in spades.
Have a great Monday!
The language metaphor is powerful if misguided.
It would be great for analogy if languages changed randomly, accidentally, and imperceptibly. On closer inspection, none of that is true.
Folks purposely coin new terms. They get tired of old language and pronounce things different. They accidentally overhear words and misuse them, too, but that is not random chance, it is due to the perception of vocal cues and mistakes.
In macro evolution, we would need to have the same kind of fluid changes of creatures happening through natural and random forces.
You move the goalposts to score.
Furthermore, language did not arise on its own at random. It would seem more scientific to presuppose that language was borne out of purpose and design, and whatever words you would intentionally eschew in a debate on evolution.
That was an unforced error on your part. Language is clearly not evolutionary in its creation story. It is rooted in purpose, and meaning, and defining the environment by fiat. It has living elements that direct both its genesis and its structure and its propagation through time and space. It cannot be disconnected from its creators (that is, presumably man) and its changing character (clearly driven by man).
To interpret the branching languages in the earth as an evolutionary process is too short-sighted and unscientific to not point out your egregious error. You might want to reconsider not just your analogy, but even use this as a meta-example of the creative processes at work in the earth.
Thanks for your insight! I liked the chart. I am somewhat a history buff.
I also liked how you deflected the search for the missing linked pairs... to a discussion in which missing links cannot or should not exist.