You have not produced a new species, when you reproduce different looking dogs. You might classify that as a new species, but it is not a new species in any me

You have not produced a new species, when you reproduce different looking dogs. You might classify that as a new species, but it is not a new species in any meaningful or underlying way. You are talking about a system of classification that only exists in the minds of men. I will agree that these are somewhat useful distinctions in order to allow us to navigate and describe our world, but let's not kid ourselves that we are describing some underlying reality. > First of all, as I explained earlier, I don't need to literally see it happen to understand how it must have. The present derives from the past, and if you simply extend how we see genetics working today into the past (or future), evolution is in fact the only possible result (assuming no magical forces are acting). Your way of thinking is a dead end for any process that lies outside the limited human senses: if something is smaller than what we can see, or further away than we can see, or takes longer than a single human lifetime, it would be completely out of the reach of science. I do not accept this view of the world, and I don't see any reason why theories couldn't be extrapolated beyond what is immediately visible. You are lost in the stories. You think that because you have classified something as a new species, it is a new species. You can say what I say is a dead end. That's fine. I'm just not prepared to extrapolate theories ad infinitum. I'm certainly willing to entertain them. I'm not prepared to treat them as true or as knowledge, without actually being able to confirm them. Evolution might be as described, but I can't know that it is, as I am unable to confirm it. We are not given information to allow us to understand - we are given claims that we have to accept as true. > If I understand what my eyes see, and I understand how a lense works, and I understand how an electron microscope works, then I can trust that the image the electron microscope is drawing of a microbe is true, even though if I take away the microscope I can only see a mess. The same works if you apply this reasoning backwards in time, even over millions of years. My point is that you do not understand. You believe you understand. You are standing on belief, not knowledge. Knowledge is certain, indisputable. Beliefs might or might not be true. > The crisis of reproducibility is a tangent, and it only affects a limited set of fields, it is not a crisis in all of science. Well, I understand that you think this is a tangent. But for me, I see this as evidence of nefarious activity. Science is presented as a completed package, we are masters, etc. Yes, there are some bits that are changing, but we've got the big pieces in the right place. I think this idea - that science is basically right - is dangerous and plays on our ego. We think we know, but we have belief. We cannot be critical of the pronouncements of science. This 'science' is really religion. Cutting to the chase, I think science has been bent to conform to some ideas that those that bent it, want us to accept. Those that bent it, have also ensured that we are all educated (indoctrinated) in these dogmas. We are presented with theories, we are not given the evidence we need to know, but we are told to believe these are truth. As children, we are pushed into a situation where we take these ideas as true articles of faith or nothing. And as we prefer a story to the absence of one, we cling to it. This is not logic, it is a psychological trick. At the end of this process, as adults, we have beliefs masquerading as knowledge. This makes for very rigid thinking, such that whoever holds to it, cannot even consider other possibilities. To do so would be to destroy their sense of self. So 'adults' will double up and reject alternative ideas as they are seen as a personal attack. And they are - they are attacking that adult's beliefs - they must be rejected, as a Christian would reject some science explanations. This is not the way of science and the scientific method. We should be grateful for alternative ideas, as we will likely discover something new. But no, what we have is the idea that 'the science is in' and we just have to accept it. Science is a powerful means of control. Just like religion used to be.