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From:
Ron Hoggan <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Paleolithic Eating Support List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:48:41 -0800
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Hi Emiliano, 
We see the greatest weakness in science of any kind put on display when
begin to assert that any theory is inviolate, unalterable, irrefutable
"fact". If you can't see the possibility that any scientific theory could be
partly or wholly wrong, then you are dealing in dogma, not science.

In general, I believe in evolution. However, there are many assumptions
embedded in that theory that are still hotly debated, especially as regards
the development of humans. For instance, some changes occur as the result of
gradual shifts in populations due to a particular trait conferring improved
survival and/or reproductive capacity. Examples of this range from the
maintenance of intestinal lactase throughout adulthood, the lightening of
skin as we moved into areas where there are long periods of little or no
sunlight every year, etc. And when milk is rarely consumed after infancy or
when ample vitamin D is present in one's diet, such shifts do not confer any
survival advantage so they do not occur.  But the capacity for speech has
long been debated. It requires a number of physical changes from our closest
primate cousins, the bonobos. These changes must occur in regional brain
function/capacity, in the form of the larynx, the tongue, etc. None of these
changes would, individually, confer a survival advantage. Yet together they
equip us to speak and understand language,providing an excellent means of
communicating, even when our hands are full. Speech production and
understanding facilitates cooperative hunting which probably provided a huge
selective advantage. However, one has to wonder if all of these traits have
occurred so elegantly interrelated, and simultaneously, in one group of
humans or pre-humans by mere chance?  Probably not. One group argues that it
happened all at once and fairly recently in human pre-history, while others
insist that it is a trait that is more than 2 million years old. So what
event or series of events acted upon humans to confer this faculty? We don't
know. The theory of evolution provides evidence for both sides of the
argument. How is any of this "fact"? It isn't, of course. Science doesn't
deal in "facts".       

YOu said: " the evolution theory is not an opinion but as of 2012 the most
widely accepted and validated scientific theory explaining why living beings
are what they are. Fact. Without evolution the whole paleo eating thing
wouldn't make sense. Fact. Creationism has no scientific evidence. Fact." 

That the earth was flat and we could fall off the edge was also, at one
time, the most widely accepted and validated scientific theory in Europe,
which to many Europeans, was the entire world.  

Similarly, the four humors were also widely accepted and, by the advocates
of this theory, considered to have been validated by evidence. 

Remember that Ignaz Semmelweis, the first person to validate the germ theory
of disease, was placed in an insane asylum where he died as the result of a
beating he suffered at the hands of the guards. He was placed there because
he insisted that childbed fever resulted from "invisible atomies" that we
now call germs. So I'm not a big fan of the idea that something is correct
just because a lot of people accept it. As for evidence, I was told when I
was 5 years old that I must have been very bad for God to bring down a
thunderstorm and flood on my birthday. The speaker was convinced that her
observations validated her perspective. And that is the kind of error that
science repeatedly makes. 
Best Wishes,
Ron

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