>"Do evolutionists distort the definition of science to somehow try an bolster the theory of evolution?"
No. And I can prove it.
If 'evolutionists' had to distort the definition of science in order to accommodate evolution into biology ... then that very distortion would show up in its inconsistency with other accepted fields of science. I.e. it would be inconsistent with the methods and results of physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, etc. If one claims (as many Creationists do) that 'evolutionism' is the spread of this "distortion" from biology to these other fields ... that the physicists, chemists, astronomers, geologists, etc. are all conspiring with the biologists to "distort" their own fields to be consistent with evolution, then this just spreads the accusation of "distortion" to all of science.
Such a "distortion" would be collapsing science itself into incoherence.
E.g. if the physicists had to "distort" the scientific method and the science of radioactivity in order to falsify the results of radiometric data, and 'adjust' the actual age of the earth from 6,000 years old to 4.55 billion years old (as a favor to the 'evolutionist' biologists) ... then such a COLOSSAL "distortion" would make all of physics an unworkable, inconsistent mess. Or if the astrophysicists had to "distort" the speed and other properties of light in order to force a false conclusion of the age of the universe of 14 billion years, then the entire science of astronomy has no basis. Or if the second law of thermodynamics really disproved the compexity and energy claims required by evolution, then snowflakes would be unexplainable, and refrigerators would not work. If biochemists and geneticists had to "distort" the science of DNA or the mechanisms of mutations in order to make evolution possible, then the science of biochemistry and genetics would again be an inconsistent, incoherent mess. Science itself would be a mess of inconsistency and illogic collapsing under the weight of the "distortions" needed to accommodate something as monumental, and monumentally "wrong", as evolution.
There is absolutely NO SIGN of any such collapse of the entirety of science. There is absolutely NO SIGN of the kind of monumental "distortion" that would be required to accommodate evolution if it was indeed as absurdly WRONG as the Creationists claim it is.
>"Is it no longer a form of epistemology which is based solely on what can be observed, tested and repeated in the present? "
Of course it is. That has not changed. That is precisely why questions about God, or life after death, or any question to do with the supernatural, is out-of-bounds for science if it does not leave testable, observable, repeatable evidence. That doesn't mean these are 'False', only that they are out-of-bounds for scientific inquiry.
But be careful with that word 'repeated.' It is a common mistake made by people who don't understand the concept of 'repeatability', that science can only concern itself with repeatable *phenomena*. This is False, and has always been False. It is the *observations* that must be repeatable ... not the phenomenon itself. Otherwise we could know nothing about the birth of stars, the formation of mountains, the erosion of beaches, the causes of hurricanes and earthquakes, or for that matter, the growth of 800-year-old redwood trees. These are all *non-repeatable* phenomena that can be studied using repeatable *observations*.
>" I've heard it said by one of the members on here that science does not prove anything, and can only suggest testable explanations for the workings of nature, is this really true?"
Yes that's true. (I'm one of those members who say that.)
The concept of "proof" is one of logic. When something is "proved", it can never be "unproved." It's truth is no longer subject to question. As such it is a concept of mathematics, where a statement is "proved" based on rules of logic alone.
But science is not based on logic alone, but on *EVIDENCE*. Observations are essential, but observations can be deceptive.
Consider the simple observation of the "motion" of the sun across the sky every day. That is a deceptive observation. One must look closer, take more observations, be willing to reinterpret that self-evident observation of the "motion" of the sun and be willing to "unprove" the obvious conclusion that the sun is "moving." That is the type of thinking that Copernicus started and Galileo nailed down ... observations can at any time be shown to be misleading by making new observations.
Thus the truth of *ANY* statement in science is contingent (dependent) on the evidence used to support it. Nothing is ever considered "beyond question." Ever. Ever. Ever.
The best we can hope for are testable explanations for the observations we know about.
This is not a "distortion" of epistemology. This is not something "new." This is reflected in Kuhn, in Popper, in Carnap, going way back to Kant ... but also to Hume, Hegel, Descartes (the only things we can be *sure* of are not observations but the act of thought itself), going back to Aristotle (a key split from Plato). It is reflected in the philosophy of science from Galileo to Bacon to Newton to Leibnitz right up to Einstein to almost any modern scientist like the late Feynman or the current Hawking.
It is a long-standing central tenet of scientific epistemology that science is NOT something "absolute" ruled by some concept of definitive "proof." Science is always always always *contingent*. Even someone like Newton, who you would think was an absolutist, if you read about his philosophy it becomes clear that the very reason he was successful because he was an empiricist and reductionist ... he valued observations but always recognized that observations can be deceptive and must be constantly revised with *closer* observations.
>"And if science doesn't actually prove anything what constitutes a scientific fact? "
A "fact" in science is not "proved" to be true. It is *OBSERVED* to be true.
Thus even "facts" are subject to revision!
(Such as the "fact" that the sun "moves" across the sky. Or the "facts" of Newtonian physics that were revised by Einstein and relativity.)
So no. Evolution is absolutely consistent with a long history of scientific epistemology.
There is absolutely no *REASON* science would abandon or "distort" this epistemology to accommodate evolution or any other concept if it was not *fundamentally* consistent with with that epistemology. Such a fundamental distortion would collapse science ... and scientists are not so STUPID that they would be unaware of this.
The only REASON claimed by Creationists for some sort of wholesale abandonment of basic scientific principles by the bulk of the scientific community, is some sort of deep-seated prejudicial commitment to *atheism*. But there is absolutely no evidence of this ... especially when at least 40% of scientists self-identify as believing in God. (Read Francis Collins, Ken Miller, Francisco Ayala, etc. ... all devout theist Christians, all biologists, and all 'evolutionists' ... all strident examples of how evolution is NOT rooted in atheism.) The fact that scientists ... both within and outside of biology ... and among equal numbers of theists, atheists, and agnostics ... overwhelmingly accept evolution, is testament to the fact that it simply CANNOT be fundamentally inconsistent with basic scientific epistemology.
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P.S. In case anybody accuses me of being inconsistent ... when I said in my first sentence "No. And I can prove it." this is NOT inconsistent with my claim that statements in science cannot be "proved."
When I said, I can "prove it", I don't mean 'prove that evolution is true', I mean 'prove that evolution is consistent with long-standing scientific epistemology.' Big difference. The latter is not a statement of science, it is a statement of logic. It is proved not because of observations, but because science would be *logically* untenable if it were "distorted" to the extent necessary to accommodate an inconsistent theory as huge as evolution is.