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RonSwansonsOldMan t1_j8ajbev wrote

Reply to comment by alcapwnage0007 in TIL the closest whale relative that is not a marine mammal is the hippopotamus after the species diverged 54 million years ago. by SuperMcG

I can't. Because it's impossible to know with certainty. I admit I don't know, and don't make up fake crap about it.

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Lileowastaken t1_j8ald2d wrote

It's impossible to know anything with certainty. Therefore you might as well not exist at all to me.

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alcapwnage0007 t1_j8amv1r wrote

I give you points for honesty. However, I think it's worth giving weight to the general agreement of so many scientists. You admit you don't know, and that's okay. You didn't focus your life on that. But some people have.

You say you are or were an attorney, so you understand records, surely? Documentation? Historians work with records and context to fill in where records fail. Detectives and crime scene investigators do the same.

Archeologists do the same on a much larger time table. We don't know the exact time and date that things happened, we know they happened a long time ago. We can estimate how old dirt is. We can use that to guess when this water horse lived and died. We see that the fossilized water horse was NOT the same creature as the ones we have, but that the creatures have similarities. We can look at how the bones of a whale match the bones of a horse with some modification. We can see the same sort of bone shape changing in different breeds of dog.

I will say this: I offer my apologies for calling you dumb.

I will ask: simply consider?

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RonSwansonsOldMan t1_j8anho5 wrote

You know, one simple word would resolve this whole controversy with me and I would shut my mouth. That word is "theory". When scientists dropped that word when speaking of evolution, they lost my respect as fact-based scientists.

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alcapwnage0007 t1_j8ar9sz wrote

I'd argue that it is at least partially proven, but I will cede that it is technically still theory.

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Totalherenow t1_j8bpiix wrote

The creationist you're discussing with doesn't understand what a theory is in science. It's a confirmed scientific model, confirmed by hypothesis testing. He thinks that his ignorance somehow constitutes an argument, but all it does is tell us how uneducated he is.

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Jamie___May t1_j8lr5bz wrote

How do you feel about the theories regarding gravity?

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