EVOLUTION TESTED Does evolution provide the OBJECTIVE knowledge that is required of engineering and other rational pursuits?

Evolution has long been compared with physics (physics envy) in the attempt to garner some of the accolades gained by physicists for having produced Empirical knowledge which is objectively reproducible, and thus falsifiable. Falsifiability eliminates subjective opinions, metaphysical and religious assertions, and Appeals to Authority which are used to hector dissidents into passive acceptance rather than to present demonstrative, objective persuasion. Does evolution present objective, demonstrative persuasion? The entire panoply of evolutionary claims must be searched for any objective knowledge which might be attached to evolutionary claims. Here it is done. Along the way the evolutionary claims are also examined for hypothetico-deductive, empirical processes, and Reductio Ad Absurdum failures.

CS Stephens is a Senior R&D Engineer who retired from Hewlett Packard, where he designed microprocessor emulators, and was on the palmtop computer team. He started his career as a Design and Development Engineer for classified equipment that went into the F4D fighter. Later, he worked in semiconductors, becoming the process manager for linear integrated circuits and clean room process engineering. As a firm empiricist, Stephens has defended the Baconian scientific method as the Materialist’s only source of objective knowledge of the material universe.