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Essay about Arguing Evolution

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Arguing Evolution

There is a blurry and indistinct line between giving the best possible scientific support for a theory in which one strongly believes that has only incomplete evidence, and writing a persuasive piece that will draw people to one side of an argument based on feelings as well as facts. Indeed, there may be no line at all, upon close inspection, but that would be an unpleasant thought to most scientists, who value their ability to write objective reports on subjects and end up with one best answer, because science possesses answers that are definitely and provably better than other answers.

Unfortunately it is impossible to find all the facts needed to support some theories, and sometimes scientific theories get …show more content…

The Creationists, who are the main opponents of evolution, rarely hold unbiased debates over unvarnished facts; that kind of debate is a scientific convention, and has little relevance to religion. With the debate over evolution only half in the world of science unbiased debates cannot really be used, because they only apply to the methods of one side of the debate. So emotion-laden, vague arguments are the norm.

Mayr is not, however, on the Creationist side of the debate. So would it be possible for him to write a proper scientific report? He is, after all, writing about science. The problem with that idea is that if he is facing off against the Creationists he must find some common battle field on which they can meet to argue. If Creationists argue solely in terms of faith and scientists argue solely in terms of facts they will be unable to have a discussion, because the two arguments never meet. Faith has no more impact on facts than facts do on faith. So Creationists must make use of facts and scientists must address emotions so that they can even debate the topic.

So arguments for one side or the other must absorb some of the traits of the opposition, but must this be an argument? What Is Evolution? seems to be presented as an explanation of evolution, which would conform to a definition of objective writing; "the goal of objective writing is to inform and

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