That is the general idea of how macro evolution occurs. Although to say that micro-evolution is the same as macro-evolution is a pretty hefty claim. I once read an article (cannot find it) about how researchers were growing a specific type of potatoe so that it grew naturally with a high sugar content in order to reduce the amount of imported sugar needed to complete their product. As they breed their potatoes more and more to develop a single aspect, other aspects started deteriorating. As you gave the natural sugar content a higher advantage the potatoes had large vulnerabilities to common molds and spores, and very quickly were not able to even function as a living organism. This is seen whenever anything is breed: there are natural limits on how far you can go.



Also, if there has been so much purple and violet then there should be millions of fossils of missing links, and it should be extraordinarily clear as to how we came from single celled organisms. Perhaps macroevolution is so believable because it is neither testable or observable? That's what your text says: it happens to slowly to observe, and it's clearly too slow to test. I'm still not convinced that macroevolution is the same as microevolution to the observable and testable natural limits that organisms have.

If you can find the article I can probably go more accurately in depth. What probably happened here is selective breeding: where a group of organisms were made to be very similar and thus vulnerable to the same things. When a population is not exposed to any threats, it will naturally test the limits of what is possible to maximize growth, but through various random routes. If instead those organisms are artificially bred to be optimal by selecting a specific plant that is the "best" and having it become the ancestor of all other plants, you've made a species very susceptible to disease by limiting its genetic diversity. A great example of this is bananas. One species was completely wiped out by a single disease and the current species we eat is in danger of a similar threat in the next couple of decades. This is due to artificial selection, not natural selection.


Read the original post. Jack thought this as well so it appears to be a pretty common strawman and demonstrates a gigantic ignorance of geology and archaeology.

In a sense artificial and natural selection are the same thing, artificial being faster. Imagine the potatoes being monkeys. Imagine that monkeys with more iron in their bloodstream can hold more oxygen and thusly run away from predators better. Over time natural selection (could) create a race of monkeys that have a high natural iron content because the ones that don't die off over time. However after time this does not mean that monkeys will start growing iron horns, or anything of that sort. Genetic material will never be added to a population through natural or artificial selection, all you can do is take away which is precisely what happened to the potatoes. The point of my example was to say that there are observable and testable limits in the variation a species can have before it just doesn't function anymore. Your defense was "well that's artificial selection not natural", but the thing is is that we cannot test macroevolution, or observe it, or even observe the traces macroevolution should have left for us to see. So why believe in it at all?

Perhaps you should explain why? I know a good amount about geology and archaeology, and I see no reason why there is lots of evidence for organisms existing as lone species, but no evidence for any missing links.

I'm assuming you're saying that once microevolution goes too far, the evolving species will have too many flaws and disadvantages in their phenotype to be able to survive and further evolve. If I understand you correctly, then think about this: in artificial selection, the individuals that are selected are selected JUST for whatever traits humans want, as long as they survive long enough to reproduce. With natural selection, the species' overall survivability and fitness are tested, so every single trait that can benefit the creature gets selected, thus no super shitty trait will be scattered all around the population, but the ones that aren't so well fitted don't die too fast, so there are always diversity in the gene pool. Macroevolution can occur as a population's development branch off into a way that is more beneficial to them in their current environment and niche, while the others either stay the same or develop in yet another way. This way natural selection can occur while only eliminating only a minimal number of traits while new traits are introduced, expanding the possibilities. If you want to test macroevolution, you can perform a test on colonies of bacteria pressured by different factors (although this is not a very convincing way to test it since it is hard to differentiate species of bacteria)
1) There are places that haven't been excavated yet, places with fossil-containing stratums that haven't been excavated, and fossils destroyed by many ways.
2) Only a very very very very very small amount of animals and plants leave a fossil.
3) Many fossil samples are incomplete, and are impossible to categorize and compare to known species without more samples from the same species. Also, there are fossils from the same species that are mistaken to be separate species, and fossils from different species thought to be from the same one.

No, they are absolutely not. There's not much more that can be said here, you have no idea what you're talking about.
As opposed to artificial selection, in which humans favor specific traits, in natural selection the environment acts as a sieve through which only certain variations can pass.
Also completely wrong: genetic code undergoes insertions, replications, and random mutation.
Insertions can be anywhere in size from one base pair incorrectly inserted into a DNA sequence to a section of one chromosome inserted into another.
Hopefully someone in this thread was reading my posts, because you clearly weren't. I've given at least a dozen examples of traces of macroevolution, most of them with sources.
Not wasting my time, here's a link to the OP that gives plenty.
Here's the quick summary from the original post that I told you to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil#Rarity_of_fossils. It's a rather straightforward concept: fossils are very rare and the homo genus is very young. There are, however, a number of transitional fossils that have been found even in spite of this, lending even more credence to the theory. Here's a dozen such fossils compared to modern chimp and modern human skulls.



Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 3 2011, 2:42 am by CecilSunkure. Reason: Removed off-topic discussion.

Micro-evolution happening over millions of years is theorized to result in macro-evolution.

Originally there is one group of organism. Half of them live on the west side of a river, and the other half live on the east side. Over time, the river cuts into the ground, slowly creating a deep canyon. When the canyon is deep enough, the east organisms and west organisms cannot interact with one another. If the environment on one side is different from the other (e.g., there's more rainfall on the east side, or there's less trees), the organisms on the east side will exhibit different traits than the west. Each group of organisms will develop the best traits for surviving in their respective environments. After millions of years, the two groups will become so different that they cannot mate with each other.

Replace the canyon with an ocean and you get even bigger differences.

Okay so with artificial selection only organisms with a specific trait(s) will breed. With natural selection, only the specific organisms with the ability to survive and breed will be likely to breed. Both scenarios have a pass or fail filter, artificial selection being having a particular trait. Natural selection allows organisms to breed that survive, which means ones with traits not suitable to their environment die off. One filter is inclusive and the other exclusive. However with natural selection, the organisms that survive can be viewed as ones to probably specific traits that allow them to survive, while artificial selection does the same thing with a more narrow of an inclusion. So, isn't that the same thing as artificial selection, just with a less critical filtering mechanism? Doesn't natural selection simply achieve the same thing at a slower pace? Why would slow variation amongst species allow for a species to cross farther away from its original starting point, than to compared to a faster method like artificial selection?

I do agree with you that natural selection will not yield entire populations organisms that cannot survive, as the ones that cannot survive will die. Doesn't that just mean that those limits will never be crossed like the potatoes crossed? You can think of the artificial selection as a way of jumping over the genetic boundaries that natural selection would never achieve, resulting in organisms that are still potatoes but cannot survive due to deficiencies.

And to respond to your idea about bacteria testing, the thing is that sounds like it would only yield results of micro evolution, that being a bacteria resulting in a bacteria, rather than perhaps over time result in a multi-cellular organism.

Sure they are rare, but to say that the missing links are completely non-existent at all compared to all the other fossils found? Lots fossils like this one have been found. It seems to be a sort of fossil cemetery with lots of what looks like sea snails. It doesn't sound convincing that there were any missing links when you see the amount of fossils found that aren't missing links.

Genetic code undergoes insertions during replication of itself, yes, but that's old information being transfered to a new location, not new information being generated. The only time new information is generated is during mutations, and those mutations result in harm done or information loss. In that link there was a reference to frameshift mutation. Frameshift mutation happens when an insertion or deletion occurs resulting in all the codons coded after the initial error to be false. It's like lining up all the boys and girls that are currently dating in a single file so each line is facing one another, although each couple is in a group of three couples and each groups is all friends, and no couples from one group of three are friends with couples from another group of three. Then, delete a girl and boy in the middle, and have all the girls and boys on the left of the deletion slide one slot to the right. Imagine that the previous slots where the groups were stayed the same so that when the shift to the right occurred every group to the left of the deletion had a couple move out of the group and a new couple move into the group. This would result in each group of three couples having two that are friends and one lone couple.

So by definition of natural selection it will not produce new information, because any new information that occurs will likely kill the organism (or cell within the organism). However if organisms have been replicating for billions of years it's more likely for a helpful mutation to occur, but that doesn't necessarily mean the earth is billions of years old.

@Faz - That picture of skulls you showed doesn't really show that the skulls are missing links, or show how the skulls were determined to be missing links.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on May 4 2011, 4:04 am by CecilSunkure.

Artificial selection, especially when used without knowledge of genetic diversity, results in a a genetically undiverse population. Natural selection does not do so except in rare scenarios where there is a bottleneck in a population. You clearly have no idea of the mechanisms that propel natural selection, even though you linked the topic to me. It requires time because it is the product of random genetic chance, not a reinforcement of aspects that are already there. I'm not going to go any further into the potato discussion without specifics of the example, it's pointless to speculate more based only on your terrible explanation of what happened.
Thanks for summarizing the Wikipedia link that I provided. I am incapable of reading and had no idea what was in it.

Mutations are not always harmful, ones which provide evolutionary fitness are seen as positive and can propel species in new directions. Given instances of cladogenesis, this allows a population to become two which are genetically distinct.
Evolution postulates one example of what the skulls represent. I've yet to see an alternative.

Here's a source that might be useful, you've clearly never picked up anything like it and I grow rather weary of teaching incredibly basic concepts in what is supposed to be a discussion topic.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 3 2011, 8:01 pm by NudeRaider. Reason: link to piracy site

How about this: Half of them are chimpanzee skulls and half or human.

The cranial capacity of the skulls varies far too greatly for that to be remotely true. Look at the modern human skull, none of the others come even close.

There are also variations in dental structure, protrusion of the jaw, etc. but it's really unnecessary, a cursory inspection shows that to be an incredibly silly proposition unless virtually all of these fossils have some crazy deformities.

You're forgetting that modern humans (to use an evolutionist term) have a fairly large amount of diversity between skulls, as do chimps. Add in deformities and half-skulls with reconstruction work done on them and it's a bigger stretch to say that they're missing links than to say they aren't. Certainly it isn't sufficient to come anywhere near scientific evidence.

Source this.

Best I could come up with in the first page on google is this http://mediamilitia.com/human-skulls-54-free-images/ ;o There's quite a lot of diversity there, and the description says they're all human skulls. A better example would probably be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation#Phenotypic_variation where it says that human heads have diversity, or even just pictures of different people next to each other, e.g. http://booboothefashionista.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/fs1.jpg (best I could find, it's a little difficult to find a comparison of human heads with different shapes. The principle still stands, however).

Well actually it does. Natural Selection results in a genetically undiverse population to a much lesser degree (in most cases) than artificial selection would. They both give the same affect to varying degrees. Artificial selection is rigid due to intelligence driving what can breed, where Natural Selection is driven by probability. My whole point isn't to say both are the exact same, just that both result in the same thing at different paces and or different degrees of extremity. If you can't make a dog evolve into something else quickly whilst it's being driven by intelligent will, adding millions of years and random chance to it aren't going to help out, are they? Say we have paper shreads laid out on a table in the shape of a dog, which represents a dog population. Then we leave it out in the elements for an extended amount of time. How long will it take before the paper shreads re-align themselves into another functioning organism's shape?

Take the second law of thermdynamics and apply it to our situation with the paper shreads. Over time the paper shreads will be pelted with the elements and fall into the state of least resistance, and from there entropy will set in which can be represented by pieces of the paper being blown or washed off of the table. However there is a chance that during all of this the paper pieces can re-align themselves into a new a functional shape. Although the more time you apply to the situation the more decay on the system there is and the less likely for a new shape to appear.

However what is very likely to happen in this scenario is that during the time the shape is a functioning dog, over time slight variations within the dog appear, perhaps it's tail will grow shorter, or the paper will accumulate on one area more than another. However the paper shape will always represent a dog before it represents chaos.

Faz if you're trying to persuade something to someone, telling them they just don't know anything isn't going to go well. Of course I know about natural selection. Perhaps you should give my examples and explanations a fair consideration as you're not even addressing my points I'm making anymore.

I don't think anyone is claiming that a mutation cannot be beneficial, I believe I said it was just abysmally improbable. Also I don't believe anyone here is willing to claim cladogenisis doesn't exist, it's just that I'm claiming there's limits to it. For example all the Galapagos finches observed are rather distinct:



However the thing is, is that they're all finches. If you give them more time perhaps one strain will deserve a new classification of other than "finch", but it will be a bird just like the finch is a bird.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 3 2011, 6:32 pm by CecilSunkure.

A mutation is usually a abnormal gene. Or a change due to the fact the body is resilience is amazing. And we require things at certain time, for e.g. goosebumps were a evolutionary trait that makes our hairs stands, (we use to be hairier before). It happens when we are cold or scared meaning that when we are cold it makes hair insulate us.

Other things like fossil records, and a useless organ (appendix) which is most likely required from our previous life. Lets assume all this junk was useful before, but becuase our needs change our body changes (over long periods of time). For e.g. when we exercise the targeted area gets stronger. If we don't exercise this part it gets weaker over time til it become useless.

Edit: junk dna is another huge part which shows we had a need and now don't supporting evolution.

Evolution is possible. We have been artificially selecting animals for only about ten thousand years. If we continue breeding like we do for the next million years, it's possible that new species may develop.

I'm interpreting this line as saying "evolution is not possible since we're not alive long enough to see evolution at work." (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) However, we can look at the Grand Canyon. It's unlikely that a geologist would think, "The Grand Canyon was always a giant fissure in the ground! It's impossible that the Colorado River could have slowly eroded the rock to create a mile-deep hole! I know because I've never seen a river erode a wall of sturdy rock. I've seen water pick up a little bit of dirt in my garden but that's not the same." Oh wait, Mr. Geologist, it is the same. Erosion of a canyon is just erosion of a little bit of dirt every day over thousands or millions of years. I know that biology != geology. The analogy, not the specifics, is the important bit.

You're saying all the organisms in a population change in exactly the same way. There are differences between individuals that naturally exist. I think I can explain natural selection a bit differently.

We have one million tables in a room, each with shreds of paper that form images of Canis lephoagus, the now-extinct species that is hypothesized to have evolved into several modern-day canines. Each table and its paper will represent a single organism of the species C. lephoagus.

On the each table, one piece of paper is added, removed, or rearranged every day. Let's say the first table, on the first day, has no change. The second table's C. lephoagus adds a piece of paper to its tail. And the third table's C. lephoagus has one piece of paper removed from its tail. And the fourth gets a shred placed on its back, and the fifth has one removed from the middle. The rest of the tables have some small change to their arrangements of paper.

Let's say, on the end of the first day, there is no change to the environment. The first C. lephoagus lives on. The second and third C. lephoagus survive just fine as well, since their chances of survival are not significantly affected by their slightly longer or shorter tails.

However, the fourth doesn't fare well, as the lump on its back causes it to run slower than the others. It dies. The fifth has a bad heart, so it dies as well. In short, some C. lephoagus survive, some die. Some of the survivors' offspring fill the niches left open by the C. lephoagus that recently died.

The second day comes, and each C. lephoagus transforms ever so slightly. The environment changes, and some die, but most survive. New individuals arise.

The third day comes, and let's say a new environment (e.g. an island connected to the mainland by a land bridge) is available for the organisms to colonize. A few offspring of the last day's generation go to the one hundred new tables in the room down the hallway.

On the fourth day, the island is disconnected from the mainland. The process continues.

The environment changes on the fifth day, and only the C. lephoagus with thicker coats can withstand the cold. Let's say the C. lephoagus with bodies at least ten shreds wide can survive--except for the organisms on the island, where the warmer climate allows a greater variety of C. lephoagus to survive.

A few weeks later, a second island opens and closes. A few weeks later, a third island opens and closes. Eventually, there are two million tables for C. lephoagus to survive in, and each room is full of tables and shreds of paper. Each table has a different-looking design. Some organisms are tall. Some are fat. Some have tall, pointy ears. Some have long legs. Some look like large wolves. Some look like small dogs.

After several years, the C. lephoagus populations are different. The organisms on the mainland have thick coats, sharp claws, and long legs. The organisms on the first island have thin coats, dull claws, and short legs. If a mainland canine and an island canine tried to interbreed, their offspring would be infertile since they are now two separate species. The other populations have different unifying traits, such as a gray coat or large ears. Offshoots of C. lephoagus evolve into species such as Canus lupus and Canis aureus and a variety of other wolf-like creatures due to differences in the many "rooms" the species colonized.

Each individual shred of paper in your analogy represents an individual in the entire population, correct? But each individual can survive (or die) on its own, no matter what the "shape" of the population is. If the dog's shape transforms to be half the size of the original, the entire population will not die. Only half will perish, and the rest will continue to represent the living species, even if the dog eventually starts looking like a new form of canine.

Once again, the individuals can survive without a definite shape. Half the scraps of paper can go on to be a dog and the other half can be swept off the table and form a "neo-dog" on the floor. Many shreds will be swept off, and perhaps some will be torn up by the elements. But some will continue to survive.

I'm interpreting by your analogy (Correct me if I'm wrong, Cecil) that you're saying that once an organism has been created, it cannot change into another shape because any change in the population's shape will eventually result in the extinction of the species and its descendants.

It seems to me like you almost understand it. Yes after more time and more changes being preyed upon by natural selection the bird will continue changing until it is completely different, perhaps no longer even a bird. This takes a very long time and is dependent on the environment putting on the appropriate pressures.

I notice you talk a lot about 'random chance', this is a common canard employed by those who do not understand how evolution works, (Cyclone going through a scrap-yard argument). The only thing random about evolution is the random mutations. Natural selection is anything BUT random[u]. Out of all the randomness only the most beneficial mutations are propagated down through the gene-pool, the negative mutations are very quickly taken out and the neutral mutations don't get selected.
A good analogy would be one of those combination locks. Usually, it would be impossible to get the right combination except by pure chance. However, if the lock opened slightly at each correct guess, then it would very quickly be opened, wouldn't it?

So, if you have managed to grasp that concept correctly, you should never have an excuse to use the 'random chance' argument again.


Another fallacious argument I often hear employed by creationists. It is a misapplication of the law. The second law of thermodynamics only applies to isolated systems (if you are familiar with entropy, you know there are three types of systems, isolated, open, and closed). Earth is, of course, an open system, sunlight streams in every day!

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on May 18 2011, 6:03 am by Oh_Man.

I do agree it is possible that over millions of years breeding a dog could result in something other than a dog. However not only is that not currently testable, it's also brining in intelligent influence into the scenario, and in a way would only support Creationism (intelligent design).

Your grand canyon idea brings up the idea that we can see the effects of evolution now and today. The thing about evolutionary evidence, is that the evidence I always see cited is never really evidence for evolution. This is possible because it's very easy make a good observation and a bad conclusion. Let me demonstrate this real fast: The moon is yellow. Good observation. The moon is made of cheese, because it is yellow. Bad conclusion.

Similarly we can see that there is a small river in a giant canyon. Good observation. The canyon was formed over millions of years? Bad conclusion. The misunderstanding of the grand canyon has always baffled me, as I don't know how the idea of it taking millions of years for it form was spread around, even by evolutionists in desperate need of evidence that the earth is old.

Do you know that the top of the grand canyon is higher than the bottom? Do you know that a tiny river is currently flowing through the bottom? Do you know that rivers do not flow uphill? The grand canyon is formed through the middle of a giant hill, tiny rivers do not flow uphill, therefor the water must have backed up behind the hill before the canyon was there.



I used to live in a rural farm area, and a lot of the farmers had land for cattle next to a river. This river was near the ocean, so the tide would raise the river's elevation up and down constantly. During high tide and heavy rains the river would swell to a pretty scary height at times. In order to keep the water out from the fields, there were levies at the edges of the fields; high mounds of dirt to prevent water from spilling into the fields, so the fields would stay dry even though they were at a lower elevation than the river at times. Whenever the levies would be breached, they would breach in a single spot where the water spilled over, and near-instantly a very defined cut in the levy would form and water would spill through that gap and tear it into a wider and more open form. The same thing could easily happen during a flood or ice age.

I understand what you're saying in this analogy, but I'm unsure of how new pieces of paper are added? In my original analogy only energy was added to the system, which is like the Earth here. Except my analogy demonstrated that if everything is left to it's natural abilities the energy added to the system would result in chaos, and entropic actions would occur to the paper resembling information loss (populations dieing, mutations, etc.). Also, the canines are still both types of dogs and the analogy doesn't demonstrate that they can become anything but dogs.

Mm not quite what I meant. The pieces of paper represented the current state of the sum of organisms in a population. As energy is added to the system (weather elements representing the sun) chaos ensues, and over time entropy occurs to the pieces of paper, and when they fall off of the table they become unusable (this would exemplify traits dieing off within a species). So then the analogy shows that over time chances of any new information forming (as in a functional shape) are infinitesimally small, and the chances of the shape deteriorating into chaos over time is inescapable. That is what I was getting out.

The only plausible way for the shape to maintain its state is for some form of intelligent intervention to constantly correct the alignment of the pieces. This intelligent intervention could be considered chlorophyll, as it is the only biological means of harnessing the sun's energy. So then apply this all to the beginning of evolution when supposedly only heterotrophic organisms exist my paper analogy really comes into play. However to say that abiogenesis resulted in a fully functional autotroph is absurd due to the minuscule probabilities required. Even my old highschool biology teacher, who was an evolutionist, found it way too hard to believe that an autotroph arose from inorganic material.


Please tell me you're just trolling. Not only is there no way for you to know that new genetic information is formed and successfully passed on into the gene pool, but to say it's more likely to happen than with harmful mutations is absurd. Here's a list of some common genetic mutations currently being passed around: X

I wasn't saying Earth is a closed system. I was saying that all closed systems deteriorate into the path of least resistance. Similarly, all systems decay towards a state of equilibrium. The Earth is no exception. However the Sun provides energy to the Earth constantly, so the state that Earth is in stays in a nice balance above the state of equilibrium. This is only possible due to chlorophyll harnessing the sun's energy, as energy applied to a system without intelligent intervention results in chaos. Do you think Pearl Harbor would have been attacked if the Japanese thought that their energy applied to the boats in the harbor would result in spontaneous improvements in the ships? How many times would the situation of pearl harbor have to be re-run in order to find a variation where a bomb actually benefited a ship? It is certainly possible a bomb could benefit a ship; perhaps a torpedo misses a ship, and instead runs straight into a dock. Pieces of wood fly up from this dock, and perhaps a bullet from a gun on a Japanese plane was going to strike an important person on a ship, but a wood fragment from the torpedo hitting a dock knocked the bullet off-course, and thusly allowed that figure on the ship to survive. Perhaps this figure then gave an order to a ship-mate to man a large anti-air gun that resulted in the downing of a Japanese craft. This is entirely possible, though infinitesimally unlikely.

Now how many times would the event of pearl harbor have to be re-run in order for a ship to gain new [genetic] information? Could a bomb or torpedo exploding cause a spontaneous improvement of the ships radar mechanism? Could a new anti-air weapon be spontaneously developed on the ship? A small information loss (loss of the dock) can result in a beneficial side affect (survival of the important figure), though the benefit is a temporary one, as there is still an entire dock missing from the harbor.

Here is a physics simulation: http://www.notdoppler.com/frame/639.html

I went ahead and placed a fan blowing wind in a spiral, and put some dust in there (X). You can see a cup also, which represent the earth, while the wind represents the sun. How long will it take before the dust within Earth in the physics simulation to form a recognizable shape? Perhaps a square? If you have an infinite amount of time, it will eventually happen. If you don't, the chances are so small they practically equal 0.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 18 2011, 8:31 pm by CecilSunkure.

I'm not at all religious, but the reason why evolution is still only a theory is because everything would have had to evolve out of nothing. If the cell is the most basic unit of life, and evolution is the change over time in a selection of organisms, the cell and its contents could not have been evolved because there were no populations to begin with. To answer that life was created with intelligent intervention is also only theoretical because of the same reasons.

...my wording sucks.

"Still only a theory". This is a common and appalling mistake that many laymen make, and frankly it makes me want to rip my hair out. Gravity is a theory, magnetism is a theory, yet you never hear anyone saying "they're just theories". I suggest you learn the difference between the regular use of the word theory and the scientific theory. In fact, I will post a brief excerpt that will explain it all for you:

"This is a favourite (and wholly duplicitous) canard beloved of creationists, and relies upon the fact that in everyday usage, English words are loaded with a multiplicity of meanings. This is NOT the case in science, where terms used are precisely defined. The precise definition apposite here is the definition of theory. In science, a theory is an integrated explanation for a class of real world observational phenomena of interest, that has been subjected to direct empirical test with respect to its correspondence with observational reality, and which has been found, via such testing, to be in accord with observational reality. It is precisely because scientific theories have been subject to direct empirical test, and have passed said empirical test, that they ARE theories, and consequently enjoy a high status in the world of scientific discourse. As a consequence of the above, anyone who erects the "it's only a theory" canard with respect to evolution will be regarded with well deserved scorn and derision."
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=98084

Though I can't be 100% sure because of the ambiguous wording of your post I think you maybe also about to make another common fallacy, confusing abiogenesis with evolution. If this is indeed the fallacy you were preparing to make, here is another excerpt:

"A favourite one, this, among the creationists who come here. Which always results in the critical thinkers going into petunias mode (read Douglas Adams in order to understand that reference). Since so many creationists are woefully ill-educated in this area, I shall now correct that deficit in their learning.

Evolutionary theory is a theory arising from biology, and its remit consists of explaining the observed diversity of the biosphere once living organisms exist. The origin of life is a separate question, and one which is covered by the theory of naturalistic abiogenesis, which is a theory arising from a different scientific discipline, namely organic chemistry. Learn this distinction before posting, otherwise you will simply be regarded as ignorant and ill-educated.

While we're at it, evolutionary theory does not consider questions about the origin of Planet Earth itself, nor does it consider questions about the origin of the universe. The first of these questions is covered by planetary accretion theory, the second by cosmology, both of which arise from physics. As a consequence of learning this, if you subsequently erect the tiresome conflation of evolutionary theory with the Big Bang or the origin of the Earth, be prepared to be laughed at."
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=98084