re: #278 Piglet-U93

Except for the agnostics everyone believes in something or nothing.
A belief based upon evidence for some and no evidence for others.

So the earth is about 4.5 billion years old (probably a very good scientific estimation) and lets suppose “real” science started about the time of Plato.
From the time of Plato to present day is about 2,360 years which is roughly .00005% of Earth’s life.

To put it on another scale.
4.5 billion seconds = 600 years
2360 seconds = 39.33 minutes

The earth being 600 years old, man in 39.33 minutes has the answer to life the universe and everything.

Deep Thought

The ancient Greek argument from ignorance, in all its fallcious gory, once again rears its hoary head.

Just because there are (and will ever be) things that we don’t know, doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that we do know. And we know for certain, based upon the fossil records, that evolution, defined as changes in species populations over time, happens, just as we know beyond rational statistical doubt, based upon an avalanche of empirical evidence, that the core mechanisms by means of which this process proceeds are random genetic evolution and nonrandom environmental selection, and just as we know that the material substrate that contains the coding that mutates is the DNA discovered by Watson & Crick, who searched for it due to the inspirational impetus provided by Charles Darwin’s and Gregor Mendel’s scientific insights.