branch davidian, April 27 at 5:27 PM:

Dammit Crowe, you’ve inspired me to make a speech… I’ll agree with you that numbers two and three are demonstrably true, since they refer to specific places and times and you can produce correspondingly specific evidence that no reasonable person could reject. Number four is almost demonstrably true because you could produce statistical evidence to support it; however to be completely demonstrably true, you would also have to be able to show what would have happened if vaccines had never been introduced. Maybe we would have generated spontaneous resistance to all diseases and become glowing beings of pure energy, who knows? Numbers one and five are both theories. Like the existence of God and phlogiston, they can can be supported by evidence, but theories by definition shouldn’t ever be considered true.

Jonathan Crowe, April 27 at 6:54 PM:

Interesting that you see numbers two and three as demonstrably true: they’re the two historical facts on this list, and, since you and I are both historians by training, neither of us has any trouble accepting the evidence for them.

But a scientist would see evolution, the efficacy of vaccination, and global warming as just as definitive, with just as much supporting evidence — what scientific theories do is explain why they’re happening.

It’s one thing to take issue with some detail of Darwin’s theory of evolution, for example (he couldn’t have gotten everything right) or with the specifics of some scientific study into climate change — quite another to deny that evolution is happening, full stop, that average global temperatures have not been rising, full stop, or that the Earth is not moving.

Especially when these arguments are coming from people who are emphatically not disinterested parties — people who are arguing against something because they just don’t like the results.