Hatchet, the language you use in your post to describe your stand on evolution is waaaaay off base. You simply cannot 'know' evolution is true. You can believe it, and you can be justified in that belief, but you can't KNOW it to be true (I personally believe in evolution, I'm just choosing to argue against your particular point because you're showing the same close-mindedness as many of the religious people you are bashing).

As for the final parenthesis in your post:
"Again, I do not believe in evolution. I understand how evolution is a fact. I know evolution is here, silently doing its work.
(People, 'believe' is just a word of unsupported faith. If you know that evolution is a fact, then do well to stop using'believe' and start using 'know why' and 'understand' or something else like that. Just my opinions. Don't take me too seriously.)"

You couldn't be more wrong. Ask yourself, what does it mean to know something?
Well, in order to know something, that thing has to be true, right? You cannot know something that is false.
Furthermore, you must be justified in you belief; if you guess the lottery number and get it right, you can't well say "i knew what the lottery would be", you simply were lucky; as such, you need to be justified to have knowledge.
FINALLY, you need to believe what you know; you can't know something you don't believe in. Its incongruous to say "I know that this apple is red, but I don't believe it is red"

So: knowledge consists of justified true belief (justified true belief doesn't imply knowledge, but knowledge implies JTB; you can have JTB and not have knowledge (Gettier examples) but in order to have knowledge, you must have JTB), and as such, you simply cannot say you know something, without already believing in it. Belief isn't a word of unsupported faith; that's completely wrong. I believe my mother exists. Does that mean I have unsupported faith in her existence? NO! I believe she exists because I have good evidence that she does. As such, when people say they 'believe' in evolution,they are not making a blind statement of faith.

Do you believe in an external world? Do you believe the sun will rise tomorrow? Do you believe someone when they tell you 'the north pole is cold'?Are any of these beliefs based on faith alone?

So, you can easily say you believe in evolution.

Furthermore, you cannot say you know evolution exists. In order to know something, it has to be true. Can you prove evolution is true? NO! As you said, we might in future find evidence to support that it doesn't exist. Saying this allows the possibility that evolution might not actually be true; there is some possibility it is false. As such, you cannot say you know it exists, as you cannot be sure it is true.
The best you can really say is that you have lots of evidence supporting a theory which you believe in; you have a belief which is greatly supported and justified.

Furthermore, to say you understand how evolution is a fact is, again, wrong. To do this, you would need to know evolution is a fact. You can say 'I understand how evolution works" assuming it is true, or say "I understand the evidence I am presented with strongly supports evolution". You cannot say, in any way, that it is undeniably true.

The language you use has turned your belief in evolution into a dogma, rather than a scientific belief; you have shown an unwillingness to be open minded, and an inability to admit that there could be evidence out there disproving your theory. As such, you sir, are a hypocrite; you have turned you particular scientific belief system into just as much as a cult as religion. For shame sir, for shame.

Quote from walker90234

Furthermore, you cannot say you know evolution exists. In order to know something, it has to be true. Can you prove evolution is true? NO! As you said, we might in future find evidence to support that it doesn't exist. Saying this allows the possibility that evolution might not actually be true; there is some possibility it is false. As such, you cannot say you know it exists, as you cannot be sure it is true.
The best you can really say is that you have lots of evidence supporting a theory which you believe in; you have a belief which is greatly supported and justified.

Furthermore, to say you understand how evolution is a fact is, again, wrong. To do this, you would need to know evolution is a fact. You can say 'I understand how evolution works" assuming it is true, or say "I understand the evidence I am presented with strongly supports evolution". You cannot say, in any way, that it is undeniably true.

That can technically be said about any fact. Tomorrow you could wake up and be able to fly. Just because we have never seen something happen doesn't mean it will never happen. That means everything we know about anything is based on past experience, which may not always stay the same in the future. It's really technical but basically no fact is guaranteed to stand true forever. But we can't speculate forever so we have to take things at face value when a certain amount of evidence has been shown. The Theory of Evolution has more then enough evidence to be classified as a fact.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html
"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

That little quote there also explains that evolution is a fact no matter what theory explains it. Even if we found more evidence supporting a new theory, evolution would still be a fact. And because evolution is a fact, I know it to be true.

What we classify knowledge as is highly subjective. I agree with most of Walker's post, however I agree with Cobalt in that you can say you know something to be true without having reached undeniable certainty. If you're going to be pedantic you can reach hyperbolic doubt and say that not even the "truths" of mathematics and logic are true. Indeed, you can even deny Descartes' cogito if you don't follow its reasoning, and that leaves you with no certainty whatsoever.

It's completely justifiable to:
a) Take the external world for granted as being true (as it's pointless to do otherwise).
b) Take a priori truths to be certain, as intuitively grasped truths.
c) Take a posteriori truths to be certain, based on your own set of criteria.

Now, this last one is the important one. We see "water boils at 100C" as being an inductive, but true, statement. This is not certain in the same way that "2+2=4" is certain, as an analytic truth (which can also be doubted). And yet if you are to say that because it can never be verified in practice, then it cannot be considered knowledge, is doing an injustice to how we make sense of the world around us, in my opinion.

Of course, this has some ramifications on my beliefs about religion. For example, if you accept that what you accept as certainty is based on your own set of criteria, then a religious person could say "God is certain to me because my subjective criteria allows it to be so". In a sense this is saying that what is true is what is a part of our conceptual scheme, or blik. However, whilst this may be the case, that doesn't mean that we cannot debate and discuss whether your criteria are, in fact, correct. For instance, I might respond and say "well your criteria for certainty is too weak to be reasonable, whereas mine, which accepts evolution, isn't", and that's how we can proceed with a meaningful discussion on the subject.

Any thoughts? I'm not sure how well this view fits in with my views on religion being uncertain vs evolution being certain. It could be entirely self-contradictory

As a side-note, can anybody tell me what the word for a "self-contradictory mindset" is? I was going to use it in that last sentence, but it completely slipped my mind. Something that implies different views that you hold that are inherently contradictory and paradoxical.

Quote from Automaton

As a side-note, can anybody tell me what the word for a "self-contradictory mindset" is? I was going to use it in that last sentence, but it completely slipped my mind. Something that implies different views that you hold that are inherently contradictory and paradoxical.

Cognitive dissonance

Quote from walker90234

Belief isn't a word of unsupported faith; that's completely wrong.

It's not completely wrong, come on. Why are you wasting so much time arguing about semantics?

A belief doesn't necessarily imply the believer is certain of it. But it doesn't imply that the belief is uncertain either. You can say "I believe I exist", and "I believe aliens exist", both are valid uses of the word despite one being obviously true and the other being little more than blind faith. We use the word "know" in place of "believe" to make that distinction and that's all he was doing.

Quote from walker90234

In order to know something, it has to be true. Can you prove evolution is true? NO!

How do you know?

This sort of epistemological skepticism is self-defeating and useless in a debate. If that's the only argument you have to refute the statement "I know the theory of evolution is true", then it's a valid statement as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps the main problem is that he is stating:

People who believe in evolution can say they know it exists, whereas people who believe in God can only say they believe he exists, not that they know he exists (someone who does believe in god will say they know he exists, naturally, and unless you can prove he doesn't exist you cannot deny them the right to say they know, and set yourself as able to say you 'know'.)
The main problem i the double standard he is setting, as if evolution is a certainty, rather than something that is nigh-on-true. I thoroughly believe that evolution is a fact, yet it is wrong to say that one person can only believe in something, whereas another can know, as that implies the debate is already over; its a closed mindset.

Quote from walker90234

Perhaps the main problem is that he is stating:

People who believe in evolution can say they know it exists, whereas people who believe in God can only say they believe he exists, not that they know he exists.
The main problem i the double standard he is setting, as if evolution is a certainty, rather than something that is nigh-on-true. I thoroughly believe that evolution is a fact, yet it is wrong to say that one person can only believe in something, whereas another can know, as that implies the debate is already over; its a closed mindset.

Knowing is believing on the basis of good evidence. Faith is believing something without evidence, therefore, I wouldn't say that a belief based entirely on faith would qualify as something that you "know".
Also, god is irrelevant to whether or not evolution is true. There are people who believe in evolution and in god, and you can also disbelieve both.

You're arguing definitions, which is quite petty.

Quote from walker90234

(someone who does believe in god will say they know he exists, naturally, and unless you can prove he doesn't exist you cannot deny them the right to say they know, and set yourself as able to say you 'know'.)

That's not how burden of proof works, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. If you ask them: "How do you know that your god exists? Can you present me evidence of this being's existence?" and if they're unable to share their 'knowledge', you're well within your right to assume that they're full of shit. You can give proof of evolution, if someone asks for it, and if you can't, then you have bad reasons to believe that it's true. Things that you 'know' to be true, but can't be proven with evidence aren't things that you are rationally justified in believing to be true.

Quote from walker90234

yet it is wrong to say that one person can only believe in something, whereas another can know, as that implies the debate is already over; its a closed mindset.

No, it means we're debating about the validity of a theory when it's not even up for debate. It's almost as if that was my entire point for creating this thread.

My entire response explained why the view isn't a double-standard, are you responding to anything I said? Seems like all you did was repeat your previous argument verbatim without addressing anything I said about it.

Quote from Leokill

Things that you 'know' to be true, but can't be proven with evidence aren't things that you are rationally justified in believing to be true.

I don't think it's irrational to believe something without evidence, at least not in this regard. If disbelief is less favorable than belief for reasons other than its factual validity it's not necessarily irrational to continue believing it. But that's probably a debate for another time

Yeah, fair enough Exilement, I see your point there; perhaps I jumped the gun a bit

Quote from Exilement

Cognitive dissonance

That's the one, cheers.

Over the past year and a half studying epistemology (and I assume the same goes for Walker) at college, it's taught me nothing about what constitutes true knowledge other than how fucking confusing it is. I think people need to accept that there is always room for doubt, and that we therefore need to amend our definition of certainty to be only that which is extremely probable, or logically indubitable (if you take logic/reasoning and the a priori as an intuitive certainty). Of course, it's kinda weird saying certainty is what's probable, not what's certain, but it seems that that's the only reasonable way to get around all doubt.

which one came first the chicken or the egg?

The egg. 2 species of some form of chicken produced an egg that was a slightly different species (obviously the emphasis is on slightly here, it's evolution after all). That egg would have been the first species of chicken as we know it today.

Quote from Moreno

which one came first the chicken or the egg?

It is very hard for us to say when the first chicken came to be because evolution is a very, very slow process.
However, DNA can only change before birth so the changes that made chicken must have happened before conception or inside of the egg of a creature similar to the modern day chicken. That change would continue to happen until someday the eggs of a chicken. So yeah, the chicken and the structure of their eggs evolved simultaneously over time from ancient birds.

I think I saw a paper somewhere which suggested that the protein which forms the hardened shell of a chicken egg, and therefore produces something which we would recognise as an egg (obviously we can't just use any egg since, you know, dinosaurs), evolved more recently than the chicken. Animals are defined as being a different species if they can no longer breed together and produce fertile offspring. I think the suggestion is that something which could breed with modern chickens existed which had not yet developed the ability to harden its egg shells. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/researchers_apply_computing

No matter which way you look at it, whenever the first 'modern' species of chicken arose, the first chicken of that species was of that species at conception, within the egg. The parents of that chicken are not that species (as we've just said that we're talking about the FIRST chicken of the species). Following these two premises we can conclude that the egg came first. Simple logic, without going into evolutionary details, can tell us that this is the case. Maybe there are enthymemes here, I didn't formulate it as an argument.