Re: By true scientific standards, is evolution even a theory?

pete wrote: 
Richard Dawkins wrote:


"His [Darwin's] general theory
that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations,
is still, as it was in Darwin's time,
a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without
direct FACTUAL support and
very far from that self-evident axiom some
of its more aggressive advocates
would have us believe.


Since the time of Darwin, more intermediate fossil forms have been found,
That's predictable from the theory and it will continue to happen.


That's true. And the molecular phylogenies that can be constructed are also be predicted by evolutionary theory.

Interestingly, one of the favorite things for the intelligent design faithful is the idea that certain structures couldn't evolve because the parts don't work if any key part is altered or missing. Irreducible complexity, they call it. Intellectual cowardice, I call it. Anyway, the vertebrate eye is a common example. So I like this new paper that came out, suggesting that a gene encoding a betagamma-crystallin (important structural protein for vetebrate lens function) exist in Ciona intestinalis, which split from the vertebrate line before lens evolution. There is conserved regulatory hierarchy, and other interesting features. The upshot is that a key part of the vertebrate eye may have been co-opted from something with a similar but different function. At least in terms of this protein, the problem is not irreducibly complex. See:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16169492&query_hl=3

mark
.