Re: Fishy Teeth

Hey Susan,

Thank you for pointing out all the uses of evolution in the article. This makes my point easier to state. 

My original point was this: the facts of the vast theory of evolution have helped scientists make important new discoveries.

And I gave an example.  This is the new discovery: "The researchers say their finding introduces into the scientific literature a core evolutionary list of molecular pieces needed to make a tooth." And all the things that you pointed out helped the scientists get to this discovery.

You can say that they were wrong every step of the way, but wouldn't that make their results, more than likely, wrong? This is why I say evolution is predictive. By following the evolution to it's logical conclusions, one finds new and true discoveries. Just as with math, evolution has an "unreasonable" propensity for predicting things correctly. 

Another way of seeing how helpful evolution is in science is this: scientists are egotistical. If the evolutionary biologist didn't actually help the geneticist in any useful way, do you think he would let them put their name on his paper? But he did. 

As for specified complexity, surely it exists. But it is not part of the theory of evolution. And it is unnecessary when explaining biological form and function (unless we're talking biological engineering). Dawkins explained this over and over. Did you not grasp it?

-b

   

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