Comments (319)

301. Redem
     November 27th, 2007 | 09:35

     “I also had trouble posting this to the site. It wouldnt let me.”
     Same. Sometimes. I think it miiiiight be post length?
     only happens with me with huge posts.
     I’m not sure, but since I started responding to individuals one at a time, rather than in one giant message.

     “You may notice my response looks a little disoriented, that is because I hit on each of your points, and it was a little bit (ok, it was difficult) to connected each of them without sounding like Im jumping all over the place. I guess, if you wanna read what I have to say, youll bear with me…”

     I do envy people who can respond to things without having to cut up the toher post into tiny pieces >_>’

     Something I totally fail to do and makes my replies look.. terrible.

     “You missed the point of what I was trying to say. I dont “deny” what evidence you have found, I find faults in your logic based upon my logic whose foundation is on the principles of ID. Same goes for you and evolution.”
     Logic has been seen as universally true by every thinker in history. Theist and non-theist alike. I cannot… really see how it could be otherwise.

     If you’re talking about the implimentation of logic, then fine. But logic itself? That would remove all possibility for anyone to agree on anything, ever.

     “Dont make your bias look nice just because you believe you follow science the way it should! The science exists, and we both look at it. Just because you follow a belief void of a god doesnt mean your interpretations of that science are any better than mine.”
     Actually it does.
     You’re adding in an unscientific assumption, and starting with a conclusion. No matter how you want to cut it, your position is not scientifically supported because you are not going about things following the scientific method.

     “And now your saying you never denied a god existed?!”
     I never denied the possibility. Assuming this is a reply to me… which it mgiht not be… um…

     *Cough*

     Anyhoo moving on.

     “You know you dont believe in God, so why would you say that?”
     A different thing from denying the existance of one. An important distinction, I feel.

     “Also, where are all these evolution/theists? Ive never met anybody that believed both were true…”
     I dunno them off the top of my head. They usually are the less… vocal… religious types.
     But about 40-50% of professional scientists in the US are religious.
     That you’ve never met any might simply be a amtter of geography and because on a subject like this many people shy away from mentionning any views that mght be considered “moderate” for fear of abuse from both extremes.

     “The fact that I, nor anybody I have ever known, has met an evolutionist/theist should be proof enough they dont exist (or are at least few in number).”
     heh
     How about this as proof?
     Poll results of people who accept evolution far exceed the amount of the population that could be considered nonreligious.

     “Murder is murder no matter where you live.”
     Unless it’s execution. Or he’s on your property. Or he’s the wrong colour/religion.
     Plenty of exceptions have been made throughout history.

     “but having the possibility of changing large things like cutting peoples hands off, of which I thought was considered radical even in a Muslim community…dont watch the news, they have a tendency to show only the bad to you…personally, I have friends that live in such countries and they continue to have “in tact” hands…guess what…they are Christians, too!”
     Those are usually religious courts. they tend to only apply their laws to muslims. And even then it’s rare. Just like few people were burned at the stake as witches in Christian history, but it did happen.

     “Simply saying kin ALWAYS get priority over others would be easy for an evolutionist to claim, but hard for him to explain. This fact shows that moral choices are made to protect all people, not just kin.”
     it’s fairly easy to explain, Kin are most like you genetically. So most of your genes still pass on if you put kin ahead of strangers. This applies to larger groups, like tribes, states, nations as well, though to lesser and lesser extents.

     “Chances are, those other people do not carry any of your genes (personally speaking)”
     Actually they do. Almost all of them in almost the same combination.

     “Protecting those people would, generally, not help you much (in an evolutionist world, that is).”
     Actually it would. Consider it as an example of game theory.
     One stable point would be as you assert, everyone out to look after themselves and no one else. But it’s not the highest stable point.
     The highest stable point is when people assume that other people won’t betray them, and don’t betray other people, and that those who DO betray people are dealt with harshly enough to act as a deterrant. You still get people acting bad, but not too many.
     Essentially what we have now.
     The society which reached the highest stable point would be the one who succeeded.

     “As you look at extensions to your logic about kin, you start noticing contradictions within. You observe a man 35 years of age (just a random number I guessed, could be any age) who has to care for his parents because they are no longer capable of taking care of themselves. What advantage does that play in evolution?”
     Elderly parents is a modern phenomenon. The life expectancy of people pre-modern age was about 35.
     It’s not been a problem long enough for there to be any significant evolutionary preassure involved.

     And again you mistake the issue. As long as morality exists individual results of this need not be beneficial, they’re just side effects of the overall benefits of the system.
     Same with the rest fo the examples given.

302. Redem
     November 27th, 2007 | 09:57

     “Another contradiction lays in child/parent abuse. Where does this come along in evolution? If evolution were true, a parent abusing his/her children would be suicide! There is always the possibility that abuse from parents could eventually lead to the child’s death without the chance for the child to continue passing on their genes of which arose directly in response to the abuse. You also fail to explain how a child who abuses his parents ends up in a juvenile home instead of continuing to receive assistance from the parent(s). If the parents receive abuse from the child, shouldnt they continue to take care of them simply because they carry the best hope for passing on their genes? After all, what is a little abuse compared to the possible halt of your genes to the overall pool?”

     Again, side effects of mostly beneficial systems. Such as the human brain being intelligent, when that system breaks, usually due to environmental rather than genetic problems, problems arise. But it’s rare, and has no significant impact on the evolution of the species as a whole.

     “You cannot learn parts of morality without understanding all of morality while at the same time maintaining its usefulness.”
     Oh?
     It seems to me that morality is more or less instinctive, and needs no understanding at all. Animals do instinct quite nicely. Us for example.

     “If evolution is when one individual gains a favorable trait compared to the rest of the individual’s species, then you cannot explain how morality survived the test of evolution. If the entire society doesnt follow a moral trend, it has absolutely no value whatsoever! In short, if one individual in a society gained morality (a “favorable” trait), it would put him in a position of being “unfavorable” within the total society. If the passing of “favorable” traits to offspring is the basis of evolution, the initial passing of morality would be that of an “unfavorable” trait, which would result in a backwards motion, huh? Instead of evolving into a “better” creature, you actually evolve into a “worse” creature and then, over an extremely large amount of time, would eventually evolve into a creature who was better than the original…And dont forget, evolving takes a hefty amount of time to accomplish, so this creature would witness hundreds of generations of his own “kin” being at a disadvantage…hmm, doesnt sound very intelligent to me…”
     Morality isn’t a gene thing. So it doesn’t work as described here.
     It’s a part of brain structure, which does develop slowly and with advantages along the way. morality comes from social interactions. So social animals simply learn to cooperate to mutual advantage first and foremost. Morality then develops to counteract individuals who… take advantage of such cooperation without really contributing.
     At a basic level it’s simple reciprocating. If I help you get food, and thne you don’t share it with me, I won’t help you in future.

     Your strawman version treats morality like hair colour, or soemthing equally genetically based. Something that is there or not. Something that needs to be in everyone to be an advantage.

     “There is proof #1. Creatures without a brain cannot have morality. Therefore, they live in an immoral state where the only thing that matters is themselves.”
     Surely “armoral” would be a better term? “immoral” just doesn’t work when we’re talking about things that are essentially organic machines. No more “immoral” than a falling rock.

     Also, this point seems to be unrelated to the question you are discussing.

     “There is proof #2. Even with a brain, at an early stage, it is impossible for a creature to comprehend morality. Therefore, the only alternative would be to live only for itself, which would be immorality.”
     Again I don’t see your point? Theydon’t really think at this stage, they just… react. The brains just route information around a bit.

     Your third point I dealt with already. So um…

     yeah.

     Basically you are trying to define morality in such as way as to make it impossible for anything to be moral toher than us.
     That is why science would have trouble identifying it. You define anything that we observe as simply not “real” morality.

     The definition of morality you are trying to use necessitates conscious thoughts. Thus making it impossible for anything that does not think to be moral. Not a definition I am prepared to use. Morality is not thought. I do not THINK before I step in to help my friends, or to give my little sister a hug if she needs it.

     So by YOUR definition these are not moral actions, just predisposed behaviours. I can only act morally if I sit back and compose a minor thesis in my mind on the subject of morality.

303. Redem
     November 27th, 2007 | 10:50

     ““Both.”
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity#History_and_origins
     http://www.livingwaters.com/witnessingtool/browse.shtml#darchaeology

     Those fall under the “the existance of London in no way endorses the truth of the harry potter series.” I rpeviously mentionned.

     “That was a joke. They don’t exist but only in your mind.”
     My reply was a joke too
     Because there are hundreds of transitional fossils representing the transition between humans and ancient primates. As well as thousands more representing extinct cousins.

     “actually it’s true. Lot’s of people mock evolution, biased or not.”
     Yes, No doubt. But the claim is still false, I can find NO experts who make that claim. And, yes, I did look. Just like a researched the other factual claims made.

     “That’s my point. It’s not that science evolution is false or non-existent but that their claim that apes evolve into humans is a joke because they don’t have the actual proof to prove it, except in their minds.”
     This one fossil was never used to support the claim of common ancestry… so it not being hominid is unrelated entirely to the point you just claimed to be making…

     The fossils we use to support the common ancestry are the ones that were actually earlier hominids…

     “Until then, if you don’t find it before your time is up on earth, won’t you stop by a church or talk with a Christian to hear God’s Good News?”
     Better things to do on a sunday

     ““Fraud by some people looking for a bit of fame, exposed by scientists.”
     You know what evolutionist scientists should do? Plant some fake evidence to prove that apes evolve into humans to get back at the creationists. “THEY MUST PAY FOR WHAT THEY’VE DONE TO US!!””
     The implication seems to be that this was desperation on the part of the scientific community because they eneded some fossils…

     That’s just a lie dude. Bearing false witness is not very nice :p

     “yet they are non-transitional. Come back when you find the ’smoking gun’”
     I never claimed they were. I simply corrected the picture you were painting of a small number of neanderthal specimens.

     “Not against evolution as a natural law but against evolution as a scientific law.”
     No one was making that claim though…

     “Yea that does suck. But just suck it up and take it like a man. Nothing too serious. It’s a matter of Creationists picking on the nerdy scientists.”
     Quote mining is not simply “picking on” scientists. It’s abusing their words to try to make it look like they said something they didn’t, in order to trick people into thinking worse of evolution than the full quote would have. It’s lying.

     “Exactly your predicament. Nature speaks of God’s nature (Romans 1:20). You enjoy what God has created for you to study, yet you fail to recognize God as the one who created that for you (Romans 1:25). You should thank God for that. Read (Romans 1:21-23)”
     Which only matters if you’re already a believer. Doesn’t help me at all.

     These are a aprt of the thing that I do not believe in, remember.

     “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural
     Keyword: COMPREHENSION. not apprehension. Whatever is unexplainable to science is simply ignored or at best, apprehended with a ‘rational’ explanation of the irrational.”
     No claimed supernatural phenomenon has ever stood the rigeurs of scientific testing.

     “Which doesn’t prove apes evolve into humans.”
     I never claimed it did. it shows only that those traits are not uniquely human, as was claimed.

     “Think of it like this: picture a small bi-plane and a jumbo 747 jet. They’re both very similar. After all they have co_ckpits, engine, seats, wings, etc. But does that mean the 747 evolved from the plane? Not at all. It just means they have a common designer.”
     Actually yes. Just not biologically. The designs evolved over time :p

     But your analogy fails because planes don’t reproduce or mutate. Life does.

     “The designer used a similar blueprint for each one and the same with us and apes.”
     Does that include retroviral insertions at the exact same points in our DNA? Weird design parameters.

     “The real proof, however as you already know, are the fossil records, aka “missing link”, the actual proof.In reality, this is what you actually have: you and the monkey, apes and humans. The “supposed” transitional forms are the “missing links” to prove that apes evolve into humans. But, IMHO, the ’smoking gun’ doesn’t really exist, they’re just in your mind, wanting to justify your theory.”
     Hard to find something that is defined by it’s non-existance. We have, however, found plenty of ancestral hominids showing transitions towards humans. What exactly are you looking for? We have fossils from clearly not human apes, not even hominids, all the way to humans. I’m not entirely sure what more you want here.

     “The airline bookie chuckles. Funny that.”
     Very droll.

     “Complexity complexity. That’s why we’re not related sherlock.
     I think you’ve been watching one too many “Jungle Book” movies.”
     never seen any, actually.
     And we are realted, we simply have a more complex brain. There is nothing unique about us, the differents are quantitative, not qualitative.

     “oh and I suppose this whole comment board just happened on its own as well.”
     Nope, but as with your plane example, message boards don’t reproduce and mutate.

     “Nonetheless, that’s how the father of your science thinks of the value of man and women.”
     You want to examine some of Newton’s views? They’re far worse. Does that mean all of motion is stained by them? I don’t think so.

     Or shall we examine the views of the early church leaders? Why not go further back? To the views of the founders of your church? Or those of the founders of Judaism? Shall I recite liviticus versus?

     “Of course not. It just goes to show that you follow a leader who isn’t perfect.”
     Who has ever claimed he was perfect?
     And no one “follows” him.

     “Read Genesis 1:27. God made them equal.”
     And then recinded it immediately, apparantly. He certainly doesn’t treat them equally.

     “Then we’re both on the same boat.”
     When did I make an appeal to authority fallacy?

     “If you really want to look for evidence for the bible then look here: http://www.carm.org/bible.htm”
     Again this doesn’t meet the London test. Nothing here proves anything that under contention.

     “Do you consider yourself a good person?”
     Reasonably.

304. Redem
     November 27th, 2007 | 11:34

     ““…one outstanding fact of the fossil record that many of you may not be aware of; that since the so-called Cambrian explosion…during which essentially all the anatomical designs of modern multicellular life made their first appearance in the fossil record, no new Phyla of animals have entered the fossil record.”
     —Steven J. Gould

     Evolutionary biologist and Professor of Geology and Zoology at Harvard University, Speech at SMU, Oct. 2, 1990.”
     What of it?

     “So allow me to get this straight: Punctuated Equilibrium explains the process of speciation ONLY, which is when small populations can adapt by slight variations over a very short period of time.”
     No. It represents the idea that a lot of differentiation can occur in a geologically short period of time, given the right circumstances.

     “But a lab monkey knows that these variations and adaptations have never been observed in nature or recorded in the fossil record to advance beyond just producing another specie of the parent ‘kind’, which is arguable of its definition.”
     Arguable indeed. You can define it as loosely as you like, without ever having to conceed defeat. Gotta love language like that.
     And it is untrue, the rest of your claim. We have fossils of these, you’ve been linked to some already, and simply ignored them.

     “Punctuated Equilibrium does, however, bode well for you because it doesn’t require any fossil evidence to substantiate that evolution perpetually continues on to produce UNLIMITED CHANGE.”
     Actually it does require evidence. And there was enver a claim fo unlimited change.

     “But regardless of how brief each incremental change lasted, wouldn’t we expect to find JUST ONE fossil that reflects 1/10th, 1/4th, 1/2, 3/4th, or 9/10th of an actual transition in an existing feature?”
     Actually no, given how sparse fossils are. We have a single full example of a TRex, for example. and those lived accross a span of millions of years.

     Luckily we do have them.

     *Fins evolving into legs
     http://home.entouch.net/dmd/04_Acan_flesh_reconstruct.jpg
     http://home.entouch.net/dmd/transit.htm

     * Mouths evolving into beaks
     This one doesn’t even require much imagination, dude.
     http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html#cranial-features

     * Legs evolving into wings
     More of an arms than legs thing, but I digress.
     See above. The acheo’s wings are not like those of modern birds.

     *Nostrils evolving into blowholes
     I don’t think soft tissues fossilise in water, so I doubt there’s much to find. Not much of a leap fo the imagination though.
     But just about anything you wanna know on whale evolution can be found here.
     http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/babinski/whale_evolution.html

     * Legs evolving into flippers
     Again the soft tissue thing. We’re essentially talking about webbing, that’s the main different between the two.

     “writing forward means writing it before the book is complete or published.”
     I’m aware of that. I was being sarcastic.
     To be blunter, that quote was fake.

     “Can you give an example of JUST ONE fossil that display organisms with features ‘in transition’ instead of fossils that appear to have a natural progression? Examples would be fossils that have PARTIALLY FORMED leaves, flowers, fins, feathers, beaks, legs, hands, fingers, etc., NOT just different sizes and shapes of leaves, flowers, fins, feathers, beaks, legs, hands, fingers, etc.”
     Define “partially formed”.
     Rudimentary leaves are still “full formed” leaves. Fully formed fins are still “fully formed”. You seem to be asking for some sort of crippled freak.
     Earlier versions of all of those are in the fossil record.

     “Careful what you say now, though. The moment a creationist busts out funny jokes that are clearly an after dinner candy, they will start flaming you for it…”

     Your definition of funny is vastly different from my own. It’s certainly mockery, but mockery isn’t necessarily funny. It all seems so… strained. Mockery for the sake of mocking, rather than for it being funny.

305. karlito31
     November 27th, 2007 | 19:27

     “Think of it like this: picture a small bi-plane and a jumbo 747 jet. They’re both very similar. After all they have co_ckpits, engine, seats, wings, etc. But does that mean the 747 evolved from the plane? Not at all. It just means they have a common designer.”

     That if you belive both of them materialized out of thin air somewhere in 1970s.
     LOL, is that “Young aviation” proposal?

     Any other way around this is perfect evolution case.
     Once, someone threw a rock ….

306. wah
     November 27th, 2007 | 21:48

     @karlito31
     LOL. you got it all backwards. Planes can’t materialize out of thin air. It was built from the ground up by a designer and builder. It had a purpose. And so is life. You think evolution can logically explain how the animal phlya popped into existence in the Cambrian Explosion, fully formed, besides a comet? I don’t think so.

307. Redem
     November 27th, 2007 | 22:15

     Someone asked for a single example of someone who accepted evolution and was religious.

     Kenneth Millar.

     http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/darwinanddesign.html

     Check “The Flaw in the mousetrap” section of this for something written by him.

308. Redem
     November 27th, 2007 | 22:24

     http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/

     Ken Miller’s own website is a better source methinks.

     “LOL. you got it all backwards. Planes can’t materialize out of thin air. It was built from the ground up by a designer and builder. It had a purpose. And so is life. You think evolution can logically explain how the animal phlya popped into existence in the Cambrian Explosion, fully formed, besides a comet? I don’t think so.”
     Yes. For two reasons. One, the explosion was a period of 40 million years or so. Only short on geological time scales.
     Two, because not all phyla originated in that time period,
     Eleven of thirty two metazoan phyla appear during the Cambrian explosion. One appears before it, and eight after it. Twelve have no distinct fossil origin.

     The most likely reason for it was simply that the earth was just coming out of the biggest ice age it had ever experienced. Suddenly there was a huge amount of free space and resources for creatures to exploit, with little direct competition, except from predation which also exploded at that point.

309. karlito31
     November 28th, 2007 | 17:49

     “LOL. you got it all backwards. Planes can’t materialize out of thin air. It was built from the ground up by a designer and builder.”

     nah,
     youll get it eventually.

310. Redem
     November 29th, 2007 | 07:49

     “:lol: You’re kidding right?”

     Nope. Not in the least.

     “So you’re basically saying you don’t need God. In a nutshell.”

     We don’t.

     “What do you think about comparative religions?”
     I don’t think about them at all.

     “That maybe so from the evolutionists’ POV, but the hands-on paleontologists and ‘the data that they have accumulated tell a very different—and more objective—story.’”
     That is from the paleontologists point of view.

     “Below is an article on Tim Wallace’s rebuttal of Mark Isaak’s “Five Major Creationist Misconceptions About Evolution” concerning paleontology’s qualifications of “transitional fossils.”
     What about it?

     Essentially he is painting disagreements on where exactly fossils should lie into some sort of lack of transitional fossils. It’s the complete opposite, there are too many for some areas of the fossil record, so that it is difficult to place them in order correctly. Because specimens do not fit into any current groupings, it can be difficult to classify them properly, that is where the disagreements come from.

     “Substantial differences exist between such systems as breathing, vision, circulation, locomotion, etc., both in general configuration and in the critical details. Faced with the absence of empirical evidence for transitions in these systems, few evolutionists bother to speculate on how these systems could have successfully “transitioned” from one to the other, or how an intermediate version could possibly provide the needed functionality for either the “original” or the “descendant” system during the alleged transition.”
     Here for example he makes the same error as you did previously. Thinking that transitional forms must have crippled systems that don’t work properly while they are being modified. And is also ignoreing that like they should, true scientists are discussing what they can study. Bones and teeth are the only things that really fossilise. Discussions of the evolution of soft tissues would be mostly speculative, and would not fit in with those doing hard science. Although the evolution of those things is discussed.

     “Steven Stanley, highly-respected authority from Johns Hopkins, has this to say on the lack of a transitional fossil record—where it matters most, between genera and higher taxa (in other words, immediately above the [often arbitrarily and subjectively defined] species level and upwards):”
     This part is simply wrong. It is preciesly the transitions between major taxa that are easiest to place and study, and which are most abundant.

     And I suspect a lot of these quotes are quote mined. It seems to be usual in these cases. The gould quotes especially.

     I could go on, but… it’s a little long to work through point by point.

     Also…
     ” * Evolution has never been observed.

     * Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

     * There are no transitional fossils.

     * The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance.

     * Evolution is only a theory; it hasn’t been proved. ”

     The first is a lie. The second is just stupid. The third is a lie. The fourth is a complete strawman, and the last is just plain stupid, again.

     No source claiming these can be considered credible.

     “Partially formed like the transitional forms you find between wolves and dogs but with respect to the origin and early diversification of the various animal phyla in the Cambrian Explosion some 550 million years ago.”
     Those are not partially formed though, not in the sense you seem to be asking for. If you mean in the same sense that earlier dogs were “partially formed dogs”. Then an and all ancestral species would be examples of what you are looking for.

     Check the page I shows you previouslly on whale evolution for a detailed series of examples.

     “Which earlier versions? The ones where all the animals suddenly appeared out of nowhere?”
     They don’t though.

     “What ‘ya talking about? Experts from both sides always make claims, true or not.”
     People make claims. We were talking about experts, which is another matter entirely.
     I’ve not been able to find anything resembling that claim on anything other than creationist websites.

     “Lucy is taught in publics schools that it’s the perfect missing link between apes and people. All the elementary kids learn about Lucy.”
     They also learn about “orbiting electrons”. These are simplified versions of events for children.

     “What is Lucy? Grossly ape-like features. 3 1/2 feet tall. Skull with very ape-like features, not even human-like. In fact, critical and analytical evolutionists don’t even claim that. Lucy had long arms, almost carried the knuckles on the ground. Strong muscles attached to the shoulders indicating Lucy was good at swinging in trees. curved fingers which are grabbing on tree limbs. Curved toes indicating that it was good at swinging in trees.”
     Lucy looks nothing like that. For a start we cannot see her facial features, except in very vague detail.

     “One of the most striking characteristics possessed by Lucy was a valgus knee, which indicated that she normally moved by walking upright. Her femoral head was small and her femoral neck was short, both primitive characteristics. Her greater trochanter, however, was clearly derived, being short and human like rather than taller than the femoral head. The length ratio of her humerus to femur was 84.6% compared to 71.8% for modern humans and 97.8% for common chimpanzees, indicating that either the arms of A. afarensis were beginning to shorten, the legs were beginning to lengthen, or that both were occurring simultaneously. Lucy also possessed a lumbar curve, another indicator of habitual bipedalism.”
     From the wiki.

     “Personally, if you ask me, I think the “Lucy’ bones are exaggerated.”
     And what of the other 150 of the same species?

     “So, IMHO, human evolution is BAD NEWS, alright? If you look CRITICALLY.”
     If you look “critically” enough, you can deny just about anything.

     “And there’s a lot of embarrassing moments in the history of human evolution as well.”
     At least as far as the creationists are concerned.

     “Nebraska Man, okay?”

     See my previous comments on this. Basically, this was NEVER used to support or develop the evolution of men. It was simply an error by some scientist and quickly corrected.
     Only creationists ever bother to mention it.

     “IMO, your missing links are missing in the millions.”
     No fossil species exists in the millions. Even those lasting millions and millions of years.

     You’re asking for an unreasonable level of evidence.

     “Note Gould’s quote:”
     Already dealt with.

     “So even Gould said “the evidence is not in the fossils themselves but rather in the INFERENCE. IOW, how good is your ‘imagination’ to ‘imagine’ these missing links between these types of organisms”
     You have a problem with inference then? No, inference is not about imagination. It’s about extrpolating the evidence.

     “They exaggerate ape-like features of the former and exaggerate human-like forms of the latter.”
     Proof please.

     “Why? Based on geological sedimentary rock records using the Early Cambrian time scale, all the fully formed creatures, clams, fishes, inverberates, corals, phylum, don’t even have a hint of an ancestor below the lowest layers, underneath the earth’s crust. As we all know they call that the Cambrian Explosion because it looks like as if life just exploded into existence, as if God CREATED it that way.”
     See my previous refutation of this claim.

     Also, if god created them all of a sudden in the cambrian explosion… so what?
     They still evolved from there.

     “Now the evolutionists have drawn ‘dashed’ lines joining the base of these lines that supposedly connects all the radically types of organisms, thinking as if they have one common ancestor, which basically means they’re basing this strictly on faith. They don’t have those missing links. IOW, abruptive appearances of these fossils and stasis is what we see: ‘non-change with time’.”
     Except we do see change with time. So unless god continually replaces dead species with similar ones… you’re simply wrong.
     The dashed lines are simply extrapolations. Just like if we look deep enough there would be a dashed line representing unknown ancestors in your family tree. That does not mean they don’t exist.

     “Bottom line, my gist on evolution is that it takes as much faith in your line of work as it does for me.”

     Nice claim, but.. you have no evidence to support yours. And we have quite a lot of it (understatement) to support us.

     “The simple fact is that the transition series are pure fantasies. They are basically ‘guesswork’ based on a presupposition of evolution and a comparison of specific body parts while ignoring others.”
     Is this is true, then why do so many different lines of evidence match up? fossil records, genetic analysis, biochemical similarities, behavioural and anatomical similarities, etcc…
     There is no reasonw hy these should all agree, if they were wrong, and yet they do.

     “If you’re talking about Neanderthals, Cro-magnums or early human tribes, etc, then sure they’re related to us. But the relation between us and apes are still guess-work.”
     No, I was talking of actual ancestors like Australopithicus or Homo ergastor.

     “And so is making exaggerated scientific claims that humans came from apes based on evolutionary presuppositions and educated guesswork.”
     Unless we’re supported by evidence. Which we are.

     “And from this expanding cloud of hydrogen and gas you got stars all by accident. and planets just happen to form by chance and on this one little chunk of rock called Earth, chemicals got more complex spontaneously”
     I prefer the term “gravity” myself. Which makes all of that inevitable, not chance.

     The same with the next claim. It’s just chemistry, not chance. The rules of chemistry are inevitable.

     “not only that but man is still evolving and man’s next evolutionary step will be an awakened consciousness and man will realize he is god himself.”
     Now, even more than the rest of that, this is just plain ridiculous. That in no way resembles anything approaching anyone’s actual opinion.

     “That’s what I wanna challenge by looking at things of science.”
     Any particular reason why you think it’s impossible for that to happen without conscious direction?

     “Exactly my point. Supernatural phenomenon is basically out of the realm of science. That’s why they fail.”

     No. They have not failed because they are supernatural, they have failed because they turned out not to be.

     “But the evolution theory does.”
     No, only your strawman version of it does.

     “Actually they do. Planes are mass-produced. Planes are revised to improve features and better models.”
     neither of which is reproduction or mutation.

     But if you want to go down that road, they the Jet did evolve fromt he BiPlane.

     “You’re talking about God here. If he can create the cosmos by scratch I’m sure he can figure SOMETHING out.”
     And thus we reach the unfalsifiability again.
     Assuming that god does exist and did design all of those creatures. Then the only possible reason for retroviral DNA insertions is to fool us. So you’ll have to forgive us for being fooled.

     “Because I can tell you right now that paleontologists and geologists say one thing but evolutionists say another about the evidence.”
     Not really, no. Only if discussing different points.

     The smoking gun you demand simply does not exist. We have creatures with human and non-human features. What else could you possibly want?

     “Certain primates are said to have the intelligence of a 5 year old child but they can’t talk. They can go, “oo oo oo oo ah ah ah ah ah” But they can’t talk like we can.”
     No. They don’t have the vocal cords we have. They can be taught sign language though. Which is just as good, just not vocal.
     They can clearely understand words and ideas and concepts. But no matter how smart they are, they cannot speak unl;ess they have voice boxes and speech centres capable of producing speech.
     You’re being unfair to them, again.
     Deliberately defining intelligence in such a way as to make it impossible for something to be intelligent unless it can hold a conversation in the usual human manner of speech.

     “I don’t see why evolutionists have to ‘degrade’ ourselves down to animals.”
     We are animals by any reasonable definition of the word animal.

     “Again, they do. Message boards can be copied and modified.”
     Then again I will say that they evolve.

     “If you want to pick a real fight then try this: Charles Darwin vs Jesus Christ.”
     Sure. Why not. Darwin never asked peple to hate their families, or to leave them to fend for themselves in bronzeage Israel. Or stole a horse, that we know of.
     Or has 4 mutually exclusive accounts of his death.

     Also we can be fairly sure he actually exsited.

     “Prove it. Take me verse by verse.”
     Let’s seeeee… Apparantly he deliberately gave women painful childbirth, and that’s in pre-anaesthetic days, and all he gave adam was um.. the adam’s apple?

     Not very nice of him.

     He also made them prizes of war for his conquering soldiers to “take”.

     As for versus, meh. Google it. It’s not exactly a secret.

     “The fact that you used Gould’s quote to illustrate your point, whether it was right or not.”
     Errr… that’s not appeal to authority. That’s quoting what someone said.

     Appeal to authority is when you claim, or imply, they’re right simply because they’re famous.

     “The bible has stories (exaggerated or not) where the people and places can be reliably verified to actually happen in real history through written accounts/testimonies and archaeological verifications of items, biblical events and places. Look it up.”
     And the parts that can be verified are not the parts that are under contention.

     “Reasonably enough to pass Judgment Day?”

     Depends on the qualities needed. Afterall, faith is also required, and I don’t have any of that. Nor would I have faith even if I had belief.

     “Just admit that the lack of fossil evidence and the dearth of transitional forms composing a reasonably minimum continuum means that the fossil record is a disaster for the theory of evolution”
     But it isn’t true. Why would I admit it something that is untrue?

     I have linked you to the transitional forms before, and you never paid any attention to them.

     ““Students may very well wonder why the fossil record has so many seeming holes in it. If so, the opportunity should be seized to show the value of mathematics.”
     The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Educational Benchmarks, (F) Evolution of Life”
     Not sure why you quoted this, it merely explains that fossils are rare. Which they are.

     “Yes it does explain that. Even though you are essentially correct from a general perspective, your answer basically explains how the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise in a short period of time, speciation. And because the fossil record doesn’t accommodate the slow gradual process expected by Darwinism, an alternative explanation called Punctuated Equilibrium was offered to explain the sudden appearances of organisms. Yet a scapegoat to account for lack of gradual fossil evidence.”
     refining a theory to account for evidence is a good thing, not a bad thing. No matter that you wish to paint it as one.

     “And what right circumstances are those?”
     I stated earlier actually. When this subject was first raised.
     But essentially in periods of lower competition, for various reasons, diversity increases rapidly.

     “Because even geologists admit that changes in the fossil record are trivial, particularly in cases of fossil types like an ammonite”
     And why exactly does the opinion of people who are experts on rocks matters over the opinions of those who are experts on fossilised animals? Just curious.

     Also, cite me a source showing that geologists, as a whole, claim this please.

     The lack of major change in some species is not a problem for evolution, dunno why you’re implying that it would be. Just means that they’ve not physicially changed much.

     “The differences among these things are trivial!”
     No, they’re not. The changes are enough that they are very different species. They are highly adapted to their niche, which has not changed much over the years.

     “Nope again. My claim is true because the links you pointed me do not really account for the apparent missing gaps, which backs up the claim that the absence of these variations and adaptations have never been observed in nature or recorded in the fossil record. IOW, the complete gapless observations from crustaceans to humans are non-existent.”
     You seem to demand that we have every single creature that ever livbed fossiliesed before you’ll be happy. And then you’ll probably ask us to fill in the gaps between parent and child.

     “it is mostly used as an excuse to explain any abruptive appearance of new species that gradualism can’t account for, like when there’s NO EVIDENCE.”
     No. It is used to explain why there are long periods of stability with short periods of change, when that was not what is expected.

     “My question is how come you can’t find a full succession of one creature turning into another fundamentally different kind of creature? If that’s out there somewhere, I wanna know about it. I’m interested in truth. But I don’t think it exists, alright?”
     This entire species is represented by 8 specimens.
     That is why you will never get a “full succession”, because the fossils are too rare.

     But this is clearly not a bird, it has non-avian features. And clearly not a reptile, it has non-reptilian features. It is a transition between the two.

     It is does not fit into either of the two groups.

     It is one of what you claimed earlier do not exist. A transition between higher taxa.

     “‘It should also be mentioned here that full-fledged crow-sized bird fossils have been found in strata believed by evolutionists to be 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx (and as old as the oldest fossil dinosaur), making the “transitional” nature of Archaeopteryx (between dinosaurs and birds) less defensible than ever before.’”
     it may not be directly ancestral of all modern birds, but that was never the claim. Just that it was a transitional species. More likely it was a cousin lineage to ancient birds, that died out.
     Regardless, it clearly shows the development from reptilian features to avian ones.

     “No, it’s true. Well it could be true as much as it could be fake. There are no absolutes remember? ”
     Oh, there are absolutes. And if it is real, cite me a decent source for it.
     It would be a matter of historical record.

     “Who else knows the weight of the earth”
     Ummm… the ancient greeks did, I think. Not exactly correct, but close enough. Modern man has measured it extremely accurately though.

     *Innocent smile*

     “Okay. That’s an interesting point you’re trying to make but what you should be referring to is war, not genocide.”
     Fighting against someone is war. Murdering their children is genocide. Raping and enslaving their young women and girls is just sick.
     All were sanctioned.

     “http://www.livingwaters.com/good/ (Please go through the entire presentation.)”

     Ummm.. what was the point in that?

     I think I passed number 2 though
     Go me.

     “If you actually went through the whole test then you should realize by now that the claim that absolute morality doesn’t exist is absolutely absurd because you know in your heart that at least one of those commandments is absolutely immoral for anyone, anywhere, at any time.”
     At least one? Hmmm… which?
     None of them seem absolutely immoral at all places and times.

     “If the discussion is too ’simple’ for you and not enough intellectual then I’m sorry I can’t do anything about it.”
     it’s only a problem when the simple version is wrong.

     The simple idea most poeple ahve of a scientific law is that it is absolutely true. But they’re not. They’re mostly mathmatical relations or abstractions. For example, the laws of thermodynamics describe how an ideal gas acts with regards to heat, preassure and volume. That’s it. They’re not even “absolutely correct”.

     If they were then the universe would be a diffuse cloud of hydrogen with a bit of helium in it. It’s not.

     The laws are useful, but they’re not “correct”.

     That is why I often be more specific than you, because the simple descriptions are often incorrect in detail, even if they are useful abstractions.

     “you’ve just condemned yourself…not because of anything that says in Scripture because NATure itself TESTifies of GOD that His existence is WRITTEN throughout nature all around about…Now if that’s the case, if that’s really true..:hmm:..that really says something to scientists. Because a scientists does what? He studies the things that are made, doesn’t he? He studies the things of nature…Scientists….I’m sorry…are without excuse. If they say, “There is no God…” ABOVE ALL people, they’re without excuse.”
     If it is written there, it is not in a language I can read.

     There are two main problems here. No matter who you are, study of nature will not lead you to christianity without a christian convinceing you of it. It’s simply inconceivable to think otherwise. There is nothing about christianity to distinguish it from any other religion, even if you could be convinced of the general idea of a desginer in the universe. There is nothing about that design which specifies the christian one must be it.

     And secondsly, I see nothing in the universe which needs an intelligent creator. Nor do I see a necessity of the unniverse itself needing one.

     “Can you I get a rock like that by time and chance? What would I say if you told me that a theory that just random process over a long ages may have produced that rock. Because it is a rock BTW. What would I say to your theory? Obviously it’s BUNK right? Obviously we can see the sharp edge, the point, we can see the base, obviously it’s an arrowhead, we might say that the invisible Indian is clearly seen being understood by the things that is made even his ingenuity and dexterity so that the archaeologists won’t have an excuse if he says that thing happen by chance”

     The way nature works, such an artefact is implausible tio have happened naturally, because erosion does not make shapes like that. It blunts, rather than sharpens because it hits raised areas, like edges, easier than anywhere else. Simply maths.

     You are of course making an alalogy with life. But it doesn’t work because the way nature works DOES allow life. It’s just chemistry.

     “So what is to forbid us from using that same kind of reasoning when we look at the biological world around about us? Can we do that as scientists? alright? I THINK we can do that. and so on we go.”
     But we don’t really.

     What we know is what the natural world does. And what it does is make rocks smooth by eriosion, and make them flake apart by “onionskinning” And various other things. None of which make arrow heads.
     So we know that arrowheads are not made by nature.

     We also know how life works, because it is just chemistry. Nothing more than that. And life is possible.

     “But can you keep breeding dogs by selection and get a porcupine or something radically different? No!”
     Actually, yes. Given sufficient time.

     But since we would kill anything that wasn’t sufficiently canine looking… no.

     “Because there seems to be a brick wall, you can only go so far and you get this much variation and that’s it!”
     because they’re trying to breed a better animal, not a different one.
     Also, there is no brick wall as such. Just that the traits we desire from the animals is costly to them, so the preassures we exert are less and less able to overcome that cost.

     Diminishing returns really.

     “IOW, God made coc_kroaches, believe it or not, with LOTS of variations among them, ok?”
     Or mutations, more likely. Given that we have observed them occuring we know they happen. A lot. And that they alter biochemistry enough to allow some individuals to survive thing that are lethal to others.

     “But natural selection has no creative ability whatsoever. It CANNOT create anything new.”
     Of course not. Mutations do that. Natural selection is what eliminates the bad traits and advantages the good.

     “So when Darwin wrote his book on ‘Origin of Species by Natural Selection’ he made a big mistake because every biologist knows you can’t create anything new by that means. This is where mutations comes in.”
     He didn’t know the source of variability, that was discovered later by other scientists. It changes nothing though.

     “In fact, it’s absolutely fatal to that organism, if you don’t keep him alive in the laboratory he’ll perish. Not much of an evolutionary future in a fly like that.”
     Which would be eliminated by natural selection.

     Evolution in action.

     How is this a problem? Only beneficial mutations would spread.

     “Everybody knows…They’re taking creature to ever-increasing levels of disrepair of degradation. They’re taking creatures downhill, not up.”
     Not true. The mutation that generated nylonase is an extreme advantage to the nylon-bug.

     As is the mutations that increases resistance to malaria in humans. Unfortunately it also causes sickle-cell anemia. Which is why the latter is more common in areas where the former is a problem.

     “The chances of that happening are very slim.”
     it doesn’t happen all at once though.
     Many of these things are presnt in birds already. You, for example, blink when you hit your head. Most animls probably do.
     So that’s not something new.

     The beak, tongue, and protective tissues, all would probably evolve concurrently. That is, slowly as a result of many mutations. No single mutation will give a normal bird a long sticky tongue. But a short sticky tongue would be useful anyway. As would being able to hit into soft wood lightly to get bugs out. Thus not needing a lot of padding or a super long tongue.

     But those who do have the hardest beak can break into harder trees, and get more food than other kinds. So that’s an advantage, leading to a continual arms race in stronger beaks, and better brain padding. This is the sort of thing evolution is best at, competition.

     Nothing miraculous about it.

     “Because radio-isotope dating is very theoretical, it has major problems with its dating”
     Very theoretical? No.

     Not in the least. They’re the single most reliable thing we know of. All of our most accurate clocks are based on the decay rates of radioactive atoms, because the rates are a constant. This is due to the reason why they decay in the first place, which is due simply to probability. Nothing more complex than maths. The inside of an atom is as shielded as it gets, from everything except at super high temperatures. So the inside of an atom is stable to a specific degree, and in radioactive substances this leads to a specific half life of the substance.

     And we are talking precision that is not known elsewhere. There is no instance of any substance ever decaying at a rate other than it’s half life. And we have been looking.

     That was all before we learned more about subatomic physics of course. The more we learn the more certain we can be about it.

     We can calibrate it by other processes of constant rate, emzyme rates for example. Or against objects of known age.

     They check out.

     Not “very theoretical” as you put it.

     “But here’s the funny thing that happens, according to geologists, when you get further and further back in history, you get pretty good correspondence and then you get even further back, right around 3,000-4000 B.C. when we start running out of historical records, the difference between the historical and radio-carbon dates start increasing enormously.”
     As far as I can tell this is untrue. Evidence please.

     “You’d expect that as you get further back the method would breakdown IF there was a global flood in the not too distant past.he bible talks about a global flood and if a global flood really happened then it would really upset the equilibrium that radio-carbon dating method depends upon.”
     And I fail to see how this even enters into it, to be honest.

     What does flooding have to do with it?

     “You can do the arithmetic and let’s assume the oceans are 1 billion years of age, even though scientists tell us they’re much older, but let’s assume their 1 billion. At that rate of input how thick would be the sediment layer be on the ocean floor? 100,000 ft. IOW, the thickness sediment layers in deep ocean basins is about 200 ft.”
     Assuming that your math is correct, and the last time I actually checked a claim like this it was woefully off, that was the moon claim btw, about it’s recession.

     A) You’re assuming a constant rate of deposition. B) You’re assuming that silt only enters the oceans, and doesn’t leave it. For a start the weight would depress the oceans in respect to the land, secondly, such deposits are compressed into sandstone. That’s why they’re called sedimantary rocks.

     “Naturally things tend toward disorder.”

     *Twitch*
     Oh god you had to go here. >…<

     Life is simple, at base. Just tiny little molecular machines that make copies of themselves. No more than that.
     The reactions themselves are not all that complex either.
     The complexity itself comes from the massive number of reactions that affect other ones. Called emergent complexity. Even incredibly simple systems result in highly complex actions. Actually an interesting area of computing… but that’s way off topic…

     “YOU KNOW THAT GOD EXISTS”
     No. I don’t.
     And if I did, frankly to hell with him. I don’t like your god all that much.

     “The ID movement has been going strong in the past few decades.”
     By moving beyond all that silly science and just appealing to the public. And trying to infiltrate schools.

     Silly scientists, and their need for logic and reason and evidence.

     “And that’s why it’s the center piece of our public education system – they’re not gonna give that up so easily.”
     As far as I know, it’s a minor module of a not particularly well taught subject. Hardly the “centre piece of our public education”.

311. for the LOLs
     November 30th, 2007 | 14:09

     hey Mr.X post this also for the lols
     What.The.Bleep.Down.The.Rabbit.Hole.2006.LIMITED.DVDRip.XviD-iMBT
     http://www.mininova.org/tor/442725

312. wah
     December 3rd, 2007 | 10:26

     It doesn’t matter if I agree with your logic or not since you’ve failed to understand mine. Because you argued point by point from the lack of analyzing my whole argument in its broader context, your responses consequently contradict the logic of your thinking. I’ve come across many of you biologists and don’t know why you are so adament in trying to prove the General Theory of Evolution on the basis of the Biological Theory of Evolution with your irrational illogical fallacious conflations – it’s undeniably futile. Until all your theories of everything becomes irrefutable fact, science will never satisfy its ultimate goal, you’ll never have enough evidence as it is to factualize the ToE, let alone GTE until you know absolutely everything there is to know, no matter how much more you have than anyone else’s and if you’re so sure the rest is out there, then that’s where your faith lies, okay? We have enough reliable evidence and more upcoming because that’s all is needed, even as we rest completely on the Lord’s faithfulness. IME, I find many evolutionary propagandists who are guilty of the deceitful practice of equivocation, that is, switching the meaning of a single word (evolution) part way through an argument. A common tactic, “bait-and-switch,” is simply to produce examples of change over time, call this “evolution,” then imply that the GTE is thereby proven or even essential, and creation disproved. You are a materialistic scientist, a uniformitarian of philosophical naturalism, a perfect example of the atheistic bias present within the scientific community, and a typical biological historical evolutionist who uses the common logical fallacy of conflation, whose logic unfalsifiably presupposes the GTE is fact (when it is just a theory) simply because biological evolution refers to common descent and is true (which I don’t have a problem).
     —————————————————–
     “it’s only a problem when the simple version is wrong”
     Well, it’s also a problem when the reader has tunnel-vision or has a habit of conflating two totally different things or debates for the GTE when a degree in evolutionary biology curriculum is completely lacking in any courses in philosophy of science, logic, critical thinking, or any other coursework which teaches the students the basis of logic and logical fallacies.

     “Nope. Not in the least.”
     Then the joke’s (burden of proof’s) on you, unless you can show me verse by verse how your interpretations fit with the context.

     “Darwin never asked peple to hate their families, or to leave them to fend for themselves in bronzeage Israel. Or stole a horse, that we know of. Or has 4 mutually exclusive accounts of his death. Also we can be fairly sure he actually exsited.
     Apparantly he deliberately gave women painful childbirth, and that’s in pre-anaesthetic days, and all he gave adam was um.. the adam’s apple? Not very nice of him. He also made them prizes of war for his conquering soldiers to “take”. Murdering their children is genocide. Raping and enslaving their young women and girls is just sick. All were sanctioned. As for versus, meh. Google it. It’s not exactly a secret.”
     ROFL! Those accusations are so silly I’m not gonna even waste my time dignifying them with a proper correction, especially the Jesus hating their families – that’s one of the most weakest Jesus attacks I’ve seen. You know it’s not a secret that people grossly misinterpret the bible and publish their works via books, internet, etc because of their lack in philosophy. It apparently appears that since you are an evolutionist fundamentalist you seem to be an expert at taking allegory as literal, reading the Bible as if it was written yesterday for you personally, in English, using inappropriate generalizations, overgeneralizations, arguments from ignorance, contextual error, misinterpretation, ideology, and even strawman, and exegetical fallacies.

     “There is nothing about christianity to distinguish it from any other religion”
     Yes there is. Jesus Christ died for our sins. BTW, your erroneous conclusion is yet another one of the common logical fallacies of linking Christianity with other religions: universalism.

     “what was the point in that?”
     If you’re serious, you’re conscious is seared my friend.

     “Depends on the qualities needed. Afterall, faith is also required, and I don’t have any of that. Nor would I have faith even if I had belief.”
     Quality needed: perfection. There is no other way to pass JD but through JC (John 14:6).

     “You seem to demand that we have every single creature that ever livbed fossiliesed before you’ll be happy. You’re asking for an unreasonable level of evidence. What else could you possibly want?”
     Well that’s the kind of unreasonable evidence that the GTE demands. Even if you’ve found all 99,999 puzzle pieces (out of 100k) together, the last one makes all the difference.

     “That is from the paleontologists point of view. And why exactly does the opinion of people who are experts on rocks matters over the opinions of those who are experts on fossilised animals?”
     The changes you’d expect from evolution produces effects on bones and rocks. So there HAS to be a collaboration between different experts if you want to validate the science communities’ consensus of a theory that implies changes in rocks and bones.

     “Basically, this was NEVER used to support or develop the evolution of men.”
     And I NEVER argued that it was but to SHOW you how DESPERATE these men really ARE.

     “It was simply an error by some scientist and quickly corrected.”
     That’s an understatement. It may have been quickly corrected by him but the science community was FOOLED for almost a DECADE. A DECADE! and not just them – the public too.

     “See my previous refutation of this claim.”
     If it’s not based on geological sedimentary rock records then your refutation is invalid. Paleontologists have stopped using the tree long ago.

     “Oh, there are absolutes…”
     I wasn’t arguing against the absence of absolutes. By that you admit the possibility of absolute knowledge, truth, and morality. You can’t be absolutely sure about that either because your statement is not absolute (if you deny absolute knowledge) you don’t know everything, which leaves that possibility open for you.

     “You’re being unfair to them, again. Deliberately defining intelligence in such a way as to make it impossible for something to be intelligent unless it can hold a conversation in the usual human manner of speech…We are animals by any reasonable definition of the word animal.”
     I believe YOU’RE being unfair to US by melding us with them. You’re deliberately defining the significance of something based on something else that is less significu_nt.

     “But it isn’t true. Why would I admit it something that is untrue? I have linked you to the transitional forms before, and you never paid any attention to them.”
     I didn’t say ‘complete’, which means it’s still valid and you should admit it. And yes I did. There are gaps in them.

     “None of them seem absolutely immoral at all places and times.”
     I wasn’t arguing against that either. Keyword: ANY. And it doesn’t matter if every single one is absolutely immoral. It just takes ONE to break them all. In fact, the WHOLE commandment (in general) is absolutely IMMORAL because everyone but God fails at least once.

     “No source claiming these can be considered credible…I’ve not been able to find anything resembling that claim on anything other than creationist websites…Also, cite me a source showing that geologists, as a whole, claim this please…And if it is real, cite me a decent source for it…Evidence please…You’re asking for an unreasonable level of evidence.”
     Most of what you’re asking for can simply be found in pro-creationist sources or pro-evolutionary sources. Obviously you’re looking for something contrary to evolution so you should know where to look. Show me the actual bones and I’ll give you what you want. It’s not so much too ask for, is it?

     “Nothing here proves anything that under contention.”
     Evidently, you’re contenting your critique of the bible on so many common exegetical fallacies all at once: the evidential or superior knowledge fallacy are just a couple. You should read up on higher criticism and bible hermeneutics before attempting to properly criticize it.

     “Proof please.”
     Look in the school textbooks yourself. The ‘in-between’ forms ARE the exaggeration. In the end, the burden of proof is on you to prove your GTE.

     “Appeal to authority is when you claim, or imply, they’re right simply because they’re famous.”
     It’s not famous. It’s authority, knowledge and position (Romans 2:1).

     “From the wiki.”
     ‘The claim that Lucy walked upright was largely based on the appearance of the leg and hip bone. However, like all australopithecines, Lucy has long forearms and short hind legs. Australopithecines also have curved finger and long curved toes. Curved fingers and toes in extant primates are readily recognized as having no other purpose other than full or part time arboreal (tree-dwelling) life. It should also be noted that bipedal walking is common among living Gorillas and some Chimpanzees. However, this mode is not truly bipedal, and is more accurately referred to as knuckle-walkers. Living nonhuman primates and australopithecines are probably analogous in this regard and neither can therefore be considered any closer to humans than the other. ‘Charles Oxnard, former director of graduate studies and professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, who subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis stated: “The australopithecines known over the last several decades from Olduvai and Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat, are now irrevocably removed from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in a direct human lineage. All this should make us wonder about the unusual presentation of human evolution in introductory textbooks, in encyclopedias and in popular publications. In such volumes not only are australopithecines described as being of known bodily size and shape, but as possessing such abilities as bipedality and tool-using and -making and such developments as the use of fire and specific social structures. Even facial features are happily (and non-scientifically reconstructed.”. (The Order of Man: A Biomathematical Anatomy of the Primates, p332.) Another challenge to Lucy was discovered in the Tugen Hills of Kenya in the year 2000. The specimen was alleged to show capability for walking upright — and was dated 3 million years earlier than Lucy.’ From the Creationwiki. I don’t trust wiki or Evowiki that much, esp when they have logical fallacies in their own “list of logical fallacies.”

     “Now, even more than the rest of that, this is just plain ridiculous. That in no way resembles anything approaching anyone’s actual opinion.”
     Exactly. It’s ludicrous, isn’t it? But THAT’S the road evolution is approaching.

     “The smoking gun you demand simply does not exist.”
     That smoking gun is the GTE’s smoking gun. I didn’t demand it because it doesn’t exist, except in your mind.

     “Evolution in action.”
     While that proves evolutionary biology, that doesn’t prove the GTE.

     “No fossil species exists in the millions.”
     I know that. It’s to make a point that you’re missing so much. But if you want to get technical like you have a habit of doing, then it would be true if I was talking about molecules, or less.

     “Then the only possible reason for retroviral DNA insertions is to fool us.”
     Absurd! That’s the same as “The only possible reason for being born on Earth is to fool us the sun was revolving around us.”

     “No. It is used to explain why there are long periods of stability with short periods of change, when that was not what is expected…..refining a theory to account for evidence is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
     It was simply created as an excuse for lack of evidence while the explanation was added on LATER to justify its usage, when its creation was justified on absence of evidence.

     “Ummm… the ancient greeks did, I think. Not exactly correct, but close enough. Modern man has measured it extremely accurately though.”
     You weren’t reading the entire poem in context. It seems you are having a problem reading things in perspective. If that’s case, most of your responses was out of false assumptions.

     “No, I was talking of actual ancestors like Australopithicus or Homo ergastor.”
     Ooh. So you’re talking to sound like it’s true when it’s really not but you’ve simply convinced yourself. I see.

     “Not sure why you quoted this, it merely explains that fossils are rare. Which they are.”
     Rare fossils = opportunity to exaggerate claims based on numbers.

     “Here for example he makes the same error as you did previously. It’s about extrpolating the evidence.”
     the only error made is pointing out that the theory of evolution, mind you it’s called theory, is ultimately speculation and presuppositions.

     “Any particular reason why you think it’s impossible for that to happen without conscious direction?”
     Any particular reason why you think it’s impossible to debate without using a loaded question?

     “It’s simply inconceivable to think otherwise.”
     That’s another fallacious statement because you’re using a double standard.

     “Silly scientists, and their need for logic and reason and evidence.”
     True scientists don’t conflate totally different things.

     “representing unknown ancestors in your family tree…And then you’ll probably ask us to fill in the gaps between parent and child.”
     Yet you’re conFLATING a human family tree to the EVOLUTIONARY TREE, AGAIN!

     “It’s about extrpolating the evidence. The dashed lines are simply extrapolations.”
     More like logical fallacies from exaggeration out of desperation. Conflating biological evolution and the general theory of evolution. It SOUNDS meaningful but it doesn’t.

     “Unless we’re supported by evidence. Which we are.”
     My statement takes your evidence into account as well. Basically, you’re evidence doesn’t solidify the GTE. So what do you do? You make an exaggerated guess on what you actually have. IOW, you actually have enough only to prove evolutionary biology, but what you actually don’t have, which is only in your mind, of which you need in order to prove the totality of evolution, you use to try to prove the GTE. You’re conflating it.

     “Is this is true, then why do so many different lines of evidence match up? fossil records, genetic analysis, biochemical similarities, behavioural and anatomical similarities, etcc…
     There is no reasonw hy these should all agree, if they were wrong, and yet they do. And we have quite a lot of it (understatement) to support us.”
     That’s like saying: “There is a great deal of evidence for biological evolution. Therefore the general theory of evolution is true.” Your conflating it again through logical fallacy there my friend.

     “It is a transition between the two. Regardless, it clearly shows the development from reptilian features to avian ones.”
     They’re older than most of its alleged ancestors, which is a BIG problem for you. Sounds like another case of wishful thinking and illogical conflation.

     “Nothing miraculous about it…Life is simple, at base. Just tiny little molecular machines that make copies of themselves. No more than that.”
     Your objection to my perspective doesn’t really mean anything since you’re using a tautology fallacy to connect things where there’s already a connection to an obvious conclusion. I’m sorry but your lack of critical thinking prevents you from recognizing anything beyond the basics of simplicity. IOW, for someone who studies the scientific intricacies and complexities of theories and laws of evolutionary life, you’re unable to see anything past the narrow framework of which the science of evolutionary biology as indoctrinated you into. Where as you see a baby’s conception as just a natural biological result from sexual reproduction, which is obviously true, I also see it as a miracle from God. Metamorphically, that’s no different from you seeing a carnival as machines, electrical bulbs, woodwork and fabric, I see the amazing colorful bright lights, smell the food in the air, and feel the fun atmosphere. Even for a pessimist I can be optimistic. But for someone who studies life you sure do take it for granted. I guess you see life in monochrome as opposed to me seeing it in vibrant colors. Different strokes for different folks.

     “The way nature works, such an artefact is implausible tio have happened naturally, because erosion does not make shapes like that….So we know that arrowheads are not made by nature.”
     But it didn’t, you see? Of course not. That’s common knowledge and doesn’t really mean anything. You see, I never argued that it was made by nature, as was the previous comment above. It’s made by the Lord. You may try to explain it away with rationality and logic but the almighty Lord is able to ‘bend’ the rules of science; He made it after all. It’s so evident that since you were arguing against me for the same thing as I was, you’re weren’t reading it context and that’s why you ended up tautologizing. Wow. You need to learn more about critical reading and writing, let alone thinking.

     The above two comments indicates that (1) in both of my original statements, I was advocating the same thing, that God was the ’special causation agent’ behind it all in both cases. (2) Both of your tautology responses contradict your logic because in your first response, you were arguing that it’s just nature and how things normally work (nothing special). Then, in your next response, you argue it’s not nature. Well it’s either nature or not nature in both cases. You can’t choose both otherwise your logic is flawed. This indicates that you have failed to read them in the proper context. Because of that, you apparently have at least one logical fallacy in your entire logic, inconsistency.

     “Which makes all of that inevitable, not chance. It’s just chemistry, not chance. The rules of chemistry are inevitable…It’s just chemistry. the way nature works.”
     That’s just another tautology fallacy. But I agree with you in the sense that is not simply chance, as the atheistic evolutionists hold in respect to the GTE’s view on creation. It seems you are more interested in the natural flow and processes of life rather than its actual causation. That is what the atheistic evolutionists claim in the cosmic sense before the creation of anything, by chance, not purpose. Unless you don’t adhere strictly to all these logics, your line of reasoning, atheistic world view, biological evolutionary world view and GTE world view could all well be contradicting each other. While biological evolution makes no claim as to the origin of life and allows for the possibility that it was originally created, the general theory of evolution claims that life originated by chance through abiogenesis, a speculation for which there is neither evidence nor comprehensive explanation. Further, while biological evolution says only that life changes over time, but allows that some biological diversity may be the result of creation, the general theory of evolution holds that this change occurs without limits, and that all biological diversity is due to evolution, another speculation for which there is neither evidence nor comprehensive explanation. I was referring to a broader perspective. Open your mind. However, my analogies pushes the ’cause in question’ beyond your straw man logic, which is also flawed once again because you’re attempting to justify a regress argument within an infinite regression. IOW, your answer basically pushes the question further back into a topic eventually outside of which evolutionary biology does not simply have a falsifiable theory, which is the ultimate cause of existence [and then on to nature, chemistry, matter, life, etc.] The first is covered by philosophical arguments beyond this debate such as ontological, cosmological, teleological and the anthropic principle, which BTW advocates that the crucial steps in the evolution of Homo Sapiens is so improbable that the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and so incinerated the Earth before it would occur and the odds against the assembly of the human genome are between 4 to the -180(110,000)th power and 4 to the -360(110,000)th power! But such assertions, accurate or not, are not up for debate.

     “If you look “critically” enough, you can deny just about anything.”
     Aspiring PhDs in evolutionary biology programs are not taught anything of the nuances of philosophy of science, logic, logical fallacies, critical thinking, or metaphysics. What you are taught is a great number of facts about evolution, and in order to pass your exams, you must be able to repeat all the facts about evolution you have been taught. You need not think critically. You need not evaluate analytically. You need only repeat what you have been told. What critical thinking does occur (in your dissertation research, for instance) is always done within the materialistic and evolutionistic paradigm. You may think critically, but not too critically. And when you graduate and face creationists on the field of philosophy of science, you are steeped in the ideas of evolution, convinced it is the truth and science, and become infuriated by creationists who have not earned a PhD who somehow feel entitled to question your dogmas. Many philosophers of science, even evolutionists, recognize this problem, and frequently point out the foolish arguments made by even the most prominent evolutionists. That’s on the order of, Homer Simpson’s “facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!”

     “This part is simply wrong…The first is a lie. The second is just stupid. The third is a lie. The fourth is a complete straw man, and the last is just plain stupid, again…They don’t though….Lucy looks nothing like that…Except we do see change with time….Nice claim, but.. you have no evidence to support yours…No. They have not failed because they are supernatural, they have failed because they turned out not to be…No, only your straw man version of it does…neither of which is reproduction or mutation…Not really, no. Only if discussing different points…Then again I will say that they evolve….No, they’re not…Actually, yes…..Or mutations, more likely….Not true….Not “very theoretical” as you put it……”
     I bluntly disagree with ALL those points. I am not going to argue on them because not only is your logic emphatically flawed in some of your responses (just to name some like non sequitur, tautology, circular reasoning, double standard, manufacturing facts from a theory), I’d simply be stating the opposite for the rest. But that’s not to exempt creationists, such as myself, from logical fallacies as well, like proof of assertion (only because either it was first used by you or the burden of proof was on me, or vice versa). As for biology students, IME they appear to learn a great deal about grant-writing, but absolutely NOTHING about philosophy of science and it is clearly evident throughout your argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science). All your logical fallacies, while not entirely yours, have rendered your entire position in vain which is expected coming from someone of your background. So stop trying to lure me to the ‘dark side’ or convince me that the GTE is fact. Arguing with me will not hide the light which has already exposed your denial. Personally I’d agree to disagree altogether.

313. wah
     December 3rd, 2007 | 12:53

     “Not in the least. They’re the single most reliable thing we know of…physics of course. The more we learn the more certain we can be…against objects of known age. They check out.”
     Of course it’s reliable when you’re talking about the comparable measurement of things that are already known but that doesn’t mean anything when you’re using the radiocarbon dating for the purpose of measuring the unknown age of dead bones and rocks. While you’re correct in what you actually said, they’re both totally different and conflating both of them will not help your case. I find it surprising that many scientific authors cite their agreeable determinations as ‘proof’ of their beliefs considering the way radiocarbon method is generally used to yield inaccurate and unreliable results, gross discrepancies, uneven and relative chronology and selected dates actually being accepted dates, all in the field of the GTE science (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Basically, radiocarbon dating is a joke when it comes to the GTE because many times scientists contradict themselves with collected data, or even worse in Gould’s case, become inconsistent in what they actually say rather than what the evidential data states. There are many examples where geologists, paleontologists and archeologists who physically test the evidence found in the field and then onto the lab themselves whose data reflects differently than that of the evolutionists’ interpretations. That is why we get one group of scientists who work behind the desk come to a different conclusion and tell the public schools that this means that proves everything versus the other group of scientists who actually work with the evidence and corrects them and says no this only means that but not everything. At McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic, carbon-14 tested the blood of a seal, freshly killed, and showed the seal had died 1,300 years ago. Carbon dating results stated that a lake Bonney seal, known to have died only a few weeks before, had died between 515 and 715 years ago. Carbon-14 dating showed that the hair on the Chekurovka mammoth was 26,000 years of carbon-14 age but the peaty soil in which is was preserved was only 5,600 years of carbon-14 age. Two Hawaiian lava flows, which happened only about 200 years ago in 1800 and 1801, was measured by scientists to be 164 million and 3 billion years. The shells of Melanoides tuberculatus snails living today in artesian springs in southern Nevada are indicated to have an apparent age of 27,000 years by it’s Carbon-14 contents. If you base your argument upon those kind of dates on unknown things and theories instead of laws, it would be wise to ignore them because they simply imply pervasive contamination and ancient variations in carbon-14 levels.

     Does science prove there is a Creator or no Creator? The answer to both is an astounding ‘no.’

314. Redem
     December 6th, 2007 | 08:26

     “It doesn’t matter if I agree with your logic or not since you’ve failed to understand mine.”
     I can understand it, and pick out it’s flaws. Which is the problem you seem to be having.

     “Because you argued point by point from the lack of analyzing my whole argument in its broader context, your responses consequently contradict the logic of your thinking.”
     Responding to individual points brought up, to expose their flaws for the msot part.
     There is no real overall context needed when the points are wrong.

     “I’ve come across many of you biologists and don’t know why you are so adament in trying to prove the General Theory of Evolution on the basis of the Biological Theory of Evolution with your irrational illogical fallacious conflations – it’s undeniably futile.”
     What is the “General Theory of Evolution” and “Biological Theory of Evolution”?

     Seems another pointless creationist distinction based on what you can no longer deny

     “you’ll never have enough evidence as it is to factualize the ToE, let alone GTE until you know absolutely everything there is to know, no matter how much more you have than anyone else’s and if you’re so sure the rest is out there, then that’s where your faith lies, okay?”
     Again, the use fo the word “faith”. For someone who dislikes conflation so much, you do a lot of it yourself.

     There is a difference between “faith” as used to describe my faith that reality is real and that my chair won’t suddenly turn into a chicken, and religious faith.

     “A common tactic, “bait-and-switch,” is simply to produce examples of change over time, call this “evolution,” then imply that the GTE is thereby proven or even essential, and creation disproved.”
     That is evolution. That is what the term means. Change over time, or more technically the change in alelle frequency ina given population over time.
     That is what the word means, so when we observe this in the field, or a lab, or int he historical records, we can safely say that it is a fact that species evolve.
     From there we can look at all of the historical data, and see how life evolved from extremely primitive forms into the modern day.

     “You are a materialistic scientist, a uniformitarian of philosophical naturalism, a perfect example of the atheistic bias present within the scientific community, and a typical biological historical evolutionist who uses the common logical fallacy of conflation, whose logic unfalsifiably presupposes the GTE is fact (when it is just a theory) simply because biological evolution refers to common descent and is true (which I don’t have a problem).”
     Yes, damn those scientists and their logic. Evidence and reason is such a chore when you have a reality you want to deny.
     You also conflate secular and atheistic. Shame on you.

     “a degree in evolutionary biology curriculum is completely lacking in any courses in philosophy of science, logic, critical thinking, or any other coursework which teaches the students the basis of logic and logical fallacies.”
     What university would this be? They all have different courses, afterall. So I’ll need something to support this claim as being representative of at least the majority.

     “:) Then the joke’s (burden of proof’s) on you, unless you can show me verse by verse how your interpretations fit with the context.”
     Just read it dude. It was a joke mostly, and I can’t be bothered to go into it.

     “Those accusations are so silly I’m not gonna even waste my time dignifying them with a proper correction, especially the Jesus hating their families – that’s one of the most weakest Jesus attacks I’ve seen.”
     Not really an attack, so much as things he said/did.

     “taking allegory as literal”
     So it’s not an historical record then? Goood. Glad we agree

     “Yes there is. Jesus Christ died for our sins. BTW, your erroneous conclusion is yet another one of the common logical fallacies of linking Christianity with other religions: universalism.”
     That only matters if we first assume it’s true. Which I’m not gonna. So again, there is nothing to distinguish yours from everyone else’s. Your religion is linked with othe peoples, in so much as they are all religions. That’s not a fallacy dude.

     “Well that’s the kind of unreasonable evidence that the GTE demands. Even if you’ve found all 99,999 puzzle pieces (out of 100k) together, the last one makes all the difference.”
     So you admit to demanding an unreasonable level of evidence. Nothing in science has that kind of evidence, not even the existence of gravity. Not even the reality of reality is proven to that level.

     “The changes you’d expect from evolution produces effects on bones and rocks. So there HAS to be a collaboration between different experts if you want to validate the science communities’ consensus of a theory that implies changes in rocks and bones.”
     Not really, unless physicists need to agree with biologists on the workings of mitochondria before we can accept cell theory. Which is a moot point, your claim is unfounded, as well as irrelevent.
     Evolution makes no changes to rocks, it just requires them to be dated properly. That’s the geologists contribution to it.

     “And I NEVER argued that it was but to SHOW you how DESPERATE these men really ARE.”
     But they’re NOT. They, at that time, had many fossils. They did not require one, and did NOT present this one as some sort of human ancestor.

     “That’s an understatement. It may have been quickly corrected by him but the science community was FOOLED for almost a DECADE. A DECADE! and not just them – the public too.”
     And this part’s just a lie.

     Or you were lied to, either/or.

     “If it’s not based on geological sedimentary rock records then your refutation is invalid. Paleontologists have stopped using the tree long ago.”
     You really should go read it.

     “I believe YOU’RE being unfair to US by melding us with them. You’re deliberately defining the significance of something based on something else that is less significu_nt.”
     By your definition people who cannot talk are not intelligent. This shows your argument is flawed.

     “There are gaps in them.”
     There are gaps between you and your parents, that doesn’t mean you’re not descended from them.

     “because everyone but God fails at least once.”
     God killed many many people. So he fails them too.

     “Most of what you’re asking for can simply be found in pro-creationist sources or pro-evolutionary sources. Obviously you’re looking for something contrary to evolution so you should know where to look. Show me the actual bones and I’ll give you what you want. It’s not so much too ask for, is it?”
     Yeeesh, a mixed bag of quotes there. You want the bones? How about the fossils? They’re good enough. A basic overview is easily available in any biology text or website.

     So um. do you have any responses to my actual points there or are you just conceeding them?

     “Look in the school textbooks yourself. The ‘in-between’ forms ARE the exaggeration. In the end, the burden of proof is on you to prove your GTE.”
     Been there, done that. You’ve had your evidence, and admitted that no amount of evidence is good enough for you.

     “From the Creationwiki.”
     uh-huh…

     “Exactly. It’s ludicrous, isn’t it? But THAT’S the road evolution is approaching.”
     It’s not though. It’s a made up claim of where it’s going, it in no way resembles the reality of it.

     “That smoking gun is the GTE’s smoking gun. I didn’t demand it because it doesn’t exist, except in your mind.”
     bah. It doesn’t exist because you define it out of existence. You define it as a single piece of evidence, while at the same time repeatedly stating that no single piece of evidence is enough, you need huge amounts of it.
     It doesn’t exist because your definition of it ensures that it could never exist.

     “While that proves evolutionary biology, that doesn’t prove the GTE.”
     Which only exists in your mind

     “Absurd! That’s the same as “The only possible reason for being born on Earth is to fool us the sun was revolving around us.””
     I fail to see how the two are in any way connected.

     “It was simply created as an excuse for lack of evidence while the explanation was added on LATER to justify its usage, when its creation was justified on absence of evidence.”
     There is evidence though, as I have said repeatedly. Mostly between higher orders, and not at the species level, which is where punctuated equilibrium is dealing with.

     “Rare fossils = opportunity to exaggerate claims based on numbers.”
     Or it represents how rare fossils are.

     Which is the more parsimonious explanation, I wonder.

     “Any particular reason why you think it’s impossible to debate without using a loaded question?”
     Because they’re useful at times.
     Now answer the question please.

     “That’s another fallacious statement because you’re using a double standard.”

     Really? So if you had never seen or read a bible, and had never spoken to someone about one or in any way been exposed to that material ro those who believed in it, how would studying the universe lead you to Christianity?

     It’s a ridiculous idea.

     “More like logical fallacies from exaggeration out of desperation. Conflating biological evolution and the general theory of evolution. It SOUNDS meaningful but it doesn’t.”
     Good thing that fossil finds fill in those gaps then, isn’t it?

     The tiktallik, for example.

     might be spelt wrong.

     “you use to try to prove the GTE. You’re conflating it.”
     Only you make any distinction. I’ve never heard a scientist use the term “General theory of Evolution”.
     Seems that you’ve split the theory fo evolution into two parts, and then accuse us of conflating the two. Nice trick.

     “Your conflating it again through logical fallacy there my friend.”
     No difference between the two, answer the question or conceed.

     “They’re older than most of its alleged ancestors, which is a BIG problem for you. Sounds like another case of wishful thinking and illogical conflation.”
     Older than what?
     You seem to be talking nonsense here.

     “Metamorphically, that’s no different from you seeing a carnival as machines, electrical bulbs, woodwork and fabric, I see the amazing colorful bright lights, smell the food in the air, and feel the fun atmosphere. Even for a pessimist I can be optimistic.”
     It is coloured lights and machines and such. And if we were discussing how a carnival works, I would be discussing those things, at another time i might just enjoy it. Same with life, I can both discuss how it works and enjoy it. The discussion moves towards somewhere where discussion of what life is at the molecular level and you turn this into me not enjoying life, somehow.

     “But for someone who studies life you sure do take it for granted. I guess you see life in monochrome as opposed to me seeing it in vibrant colors. Different strokes for different folks. ”
     You guess wrong. I simply don’t look at it from behind your comfortable blinders

     “Wow. You need to learn more about critical reading and writing, let alone thinking.”
     Agreed, you do.

     lol

     I can do it too.

     “I never argued that it was made by nature”
     No, you made an argument based on the appearance of design, ignoreing that the only real hallmark of design is that it defies the natural order of things, and that’s not conclusive. Life does not defy any natural order, and thus the argument from perceived design fails.

     “Well it’s either nature or not nature in both cases. You can’t choose both otherwise your logic is flawed. This indicates that you have failed to read them in the proper context. Because of that, you apparently have at least one logical fallacy in your entire logic, inconsistency.”
     Again you fail to comprehend.
     Rocks do not erode into such shapes, thus intelligent intervention is encessary. Life is merely chemistry, thus none is needed.
     No fallacy, just your lack of understanding.

     I think you need to learn the meaning of the word “tautology”.

     “But I agree with you in the sense that is not simply chance, as the atheistic evolutionists hold in respect to the GTE’s view on creation.”
     They don’t think that though.
     Again with the conflation of atheism and evolution. *Sigh*

     For someone who seems to have found a new wod to throw around a lot, you make a lot of fallacies yourself. For example this strawman, and most of the following paragraphs.

     “the general theory of evolution claims that life originated by chance through abiogenesis”
     Care to cite a source for this?

     ‘cos… seems to me.. you’re making this all up

     Evolution and abiogenesis are seperate theories in no way connected, except in the trivial manner that all theories are connected.

     Then we have some more confusion with your “GTE”, and various other things. Ho-hum.

     “IOW, your answer basically pushes the question further back into a topic eventually outside of which evolutionary biology does not simply have a falsifiable theory, which is the ultimate cause of existence [and then on to nature, chemistry, matter, life, etc.]”
     No, I think your reasoning is to keep pressing back until you find a nice gap you can push the word “god” into. No mine.

     Mine is to answer things as best we can.

     “The first is covered by philosophical arguments beyond this debate such as ontological, cosmological, teleological and the anthropic principle, which BTW advocates that the crucial steps in the evolution of Homo Sapiens is so improbable that the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and so incinerated the Earth before it would occur and the odds against the assembly of the human genome are between 4 to the -180(110,000)th power and 4 to the -360(110,000)th power! But such assertions, accurate or not, are not up for debate.”
     pah! None of those make any such advocacy. And I find your numbers suspect, care to prove them?
     Then care to explain why a low probability matters? I can make big numbers too, if you like, toss a coin a thousand times. The chances of you getting that particular order is incredibly low, does that mean god specifically chose it for you? Not low enough? Toss one a million times, the numbers will be astronomical then.

     Also, would you like to explain why you miss the point of probabilities? To predict the unknwon. The REAL probability for life being exactly as it is now is 1. It’s a known.

     The 3 argument you mentionned have been the subject of debate for hundreds of years, and they’re no stronger now than when they were first uttered. All of them fail to do what they set out to do, prove the existence of god. As for the anthropic principle, I really doubt you understand it.

     “Aspiring PhDs in evolutionary biology programs are not taught anything of the nuances of philosophy of science, logic, logical fallacies, critical thinking, or metaphysics.”
     P{ossibly true, they would have learned that in previous years and should really have studied those on their own anyway. If you want to enter a field some independant research is expected of PhD students.

     But again, I doubt it. Critical thinking is pushed hard in all science degree courses.

     “I bluntly disagree with ALL those points. I am not going to argue on them because not only is your logic emphatically flawed in some of your responses (just to name some like non sequitur, tautology, circular reasoning, double standard, manufacturing facts from a theory)”
     pah. I didn’t expect much, but a little honesty would be nice.

     A large section of counter points you decide you dont want to (or can’t) deal with. Which you decide to simply blanketly dismiss. I could do that too, I suppose, but I value honesty a little too much.

     “So stop trying to lure me to the ‘dark side’ or convince me that the GTE is fact.”
     Ya know I would love to know more about this “GTE” you seem so afraid of.
     Sounds like an interesting strawman, probably burns quite nicely. We could make anight of it! A few beers some bbq, and a big heap of burning fallacy!

     “Personally I’d agree to disagree altogether. ”
     Nah. I don’t think so. I’m not interested in a draw

     “radiocarbon dating is a joke”
     Proof please.
     Unless it’s used improperly, it is very reliable.

     Of course creationists love to use it improperly, so that they can then crow about how it didn’t give the right answer. When used properly there is no documented case of it being “wrong”.

     “At McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic, carbon-14 tested the blood of a seal, freshly killed, and showed the seal had died 1,300 years ago. Carbon dating results stated that a lake Bonney seal, known to have died only a few weeks before, had died between 515 and 715 years ago.”
     As I said, if not used improperly. Like these cases.
     You can’t use it for recent things, because the amounts of C-14 on earth have been changed massively by both atomic bombs and by the burning of fossil fuels.

     “Carbon-14 dating showed that the hair on the Chekurovka mammoth was 26,000 years of carbon-14 age but the peaty soil in which is was preserved was only 5,600 years of carbon-14 age.”
     This one threw me for a bit, but given the numbers, I think you mean the Vollosovitch or Dima mammoths. In which case this is a known case of creationist lies.
     Unless you don’t mean this case, so um.. feel free to cite a source.

     “Two Hawaiian lava flows, which happened only about 200 years ago in 1800 and 1801, was measured by scientists to be 164 million and 3 billion years.”
     Another case of improper use of dating methods.
     For a start the lava itself was NOT dated, but the xenoliths within it, which contain excess Argon. Secondly the lava itself was known to be too young for K-Ar dating to give accurate results.
     The lava “can be said to contain no measurable radiogenic argon within experimental error.”

     Accurate results could have easily been obtained via intellectually honest methodology.

     “The shells of Melanoides tuberculatus snails living today in artesian springs in southern Nevada are indicated to have an apparent age of 27,000 years by it’s Carbon-14 contents.”
     again with the misuse of carbon dating. It’s fun isn’t it
     And very close to nuclear testing sites too.

     “it would be wise to ignore them because they simply imply pervasive contamination and ancient variations in carbon-14 levels.”
     Or you could date them properly.

     “Does science prove there is a Creator or no Creator? The answer to both is an astounding ‘no.’”
     has anyone been claiming that it did?

315. Redem
     December 7th, 2007 | 09:41

     “The GTE holds to the following historical claims: BB, Abiogenesis, Com. Desc. Cosmic Chronology. The GTE should not be confused with biological evolution, which is simply the process whereby characteristics change within a population over time (natural selection, speciation, genetic diversity).”

     So basically you define “GTE” as the entire history of the universe, as opposed to other people, who don’t.
     Ok for you I suppose, but no one else uses those terms in that way, this is probably where a lot of your confusion comes from.

     “http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/origines/myth.htm”
     You link to another creationist who seems to have been the one to coin the term, and not a scientist using the term. I think this is proof enough of what ths term is for.

     “the theoretical aspect of common descent is an unfalsifiable historical claim based on unfalsifiable philosophical assumptions, and is disputed by creationists as a non sequitar logical fallacy.”
     Except for the pesky fossil record which could falsify common descent, but instead supports it entirely.
     Also, all philosophical assumptions are unfalsifiable, fyi.

     “You have faith that life came from non-life w/o external intervention or that the theory will be proven someday.”
     Actually, no. I simply see no reason to say that it hasn’t been. I’ve not been advocating any theory of abiogenesis in here, afterall.
     I can accept “I don’t know yet” as an answer, I don’t need to fill those gaps with the word “god”.

     “It shows how life evolves. That’s no dispute. Just don’t use all that scientific data as historical proof that life ultimately came from non-life.”
     It’s not, I think I said a few times that none of this has anything to do with the origin of life. Indirectly, admittedly. We are discussing the theory of evolution here, with some religion sidelines, not the origin of life.

     “That’s hardly detrimental compared to evolutionists who do the same thing and tell everyone else that fact and theory should be treated as one concept.”
     I’ve seen no one say that.

     “The students appear to learn a great deal about grant-writing, but absolutely nothing about philosophy of science. The vast majority of evolutionary biology programs are similar to this one. Harvard’s program is even less structured than this one, and like this one, requires no coursework in philosophy of science, logic, or critical thinking.”
     Nor do the physics or chemistry faculties, I checked.
     Seems that these things are covered in the science skills section, under the scientific method.

     And also, grant writing is an important skill all scientists need to learn. They can do no work without a grant.

     “What I admit to is demanding the same amount of evidence that the theory demands to be proven fact and no longer a theory. If that day arrives where the theory is no longer unfalsifiable and officially called a fact or law, then there would be no more experiments to test in that particular field. It’s not so much as I’m demanding that much as it is that the theory claims that life spontaneously came into existence from nothing, so, in essences, we have to test an experiment to create life in order to observe the theory in action. The demand of evidence (or conceivable experiments) speaks for itself in the theoretical claim”
     That’s not a claim of the theory of evolution, however.
     So why would any scientists in that field be interested in “proving” it?

     The theory of evolution is falsifiable, and has not been despite continual rigorous attemps to do so.

     “Sedimentary rocks contains fossils and ammonites species found in them haven’t been found to reflect evolutionary changes, unless you want to use punctual equilibrium as an excuse to explain that.”
     No need to. This is simply wrong.

     There are no changes because they didn’t change, evolution doesn’t require them to.

     “Nonetheless, the fossil record does not support the theory of evolution as much as special creation.”

     Only in the sense that it is possible that every fossil was the result of god continually replacing species that die out with new ones that look similar to them, but not quite exactly like them. it does not support an explicit biblical genesis account. Noah’s flood and all that.

     “But they sure made up a picture of it and its wife to make it look like or imply it’s human-like.”
     An artist working for a non-scientific magazine equals “they” now?

     “Basically, it was an official mistake that took ten years to officially correct, even though the science community generally knew it was a mistake after 8 years of its discovery.”
     Did you read your own link?
     The man who discovered the tooth and made the initial wrong classification called the drawing “a figment of the imagination of no scientific value, and undoubtedly inaccurate”
     And later it says “Although the identity of H. haroldcookii did not achieve general acceptance in the scientific community, and although the species was retracted after ten years of its discovery, creationists are using this episode as an example of the scientific errors that they say undermine the credibility of palaeontology and hominid evolution.”

     It was in NO way an “official” mistake, and was never widely accepted by the scientific community, who didn’t care much about it, let alone be desperate to promote it as a “missing link” as you claimed earlier.

     “I have. And it doesn’t matter because paleontologists who have any sense dropped the evolutionary tree.”
     By which you mean “Those who agree with me”.

     “Not really. Monkies aren’t people.”
     Your definition of intelligence is flawed.

     “There are no gaps between child and parent. They’re a direct physical link between each other. You can’t get any closer than that.”
     Really? So you can look at two bodies and easily see if they are parent and child?
     No.
     You cannot.

     “God can’t contradict His own nature, even His morals. The Lord has to carry out justice to punish the wicked as just as a court judge who has justified authority to sentence a child molester or crime offender to death/prison by the law.”
     You’re avoiding the issue. Which is that by his own defintions and laws he is a sinner.
     Of course you will say he is not bound by those rules, but I’ve never considered “do as I say, not as I do” to be a particularly laubible trait.

     “i’ll admit as soon as you admit there’s no evidence for the theory of evolution.”
     But there is

     Lots of it.

     “I don’t see anyone creating a perfect fully functional human hand from nothing or mutating a fish into a human.”
     Neither of which are should be possible under the theory of evolution, so why their lack is a problem I dunno.

     “Experiments to prove the theory of evolution that life can evolve from non-life means scientists will have to conduct an observable experiment where we can create life. IOW, be god ourselves.”
     That’s abiogenesis, not the thoery of evolution.

     And it is a work in progress, yeah. It’s really just a technical problem though, there’s no conceivable reason why it won’t work eventually, it is just chemistry afterall. We have managed artificial viruses, a good start.

     “In fact, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogenesis#Human_attempts_to_create_life
     tells us that man is attempting to create life to support abiogenesis, an evolutionary origin of life model that’s one of the historical claims of the theory of evolution”
     That article needs serious editing.
     But anyway, most of those were not “human attempts to create life” but were studies in creating organic molecules from non-organic processes.

     In the next bit you respond to me question by linking to the abiogenesis wiki page. I had asked you for a source showing that abiogenesis was a part of the theory of evolution. This wiki page does nothing of the sort, it merely explains abiogenesis.

     Try again?

     Also, please note the 2nd law of thermodynamics section, it supports on of my earlier refutations >.<
     A really annoying one.

     “What this implies in the context of both origin of life models, abiogenesis and intelligent design by God for evolution and creationism respectively are no more scientific than the other.”

     They’re still not equal though. As abiogenesis is a science in which experimentation is done and hypothesis discarded/supported in the process. ID does no research, and creates no hypothesis to test.

     “If indeed the process of abiogenesis is formed in the lab and life creates, it’s plausibility and actual manifestation of a mechanism for the origin of life was only possible through deliberate design of intelligent minds.”
     Nothing we do in labs would be impossible outside of them. That’s kinda the whole point.

     It would show quite plainly that no supernatural intervention would be needed for life to exist. And there would be a difference between two different kinds of experiments. Those where we engineer new life forms, and those were we simulate pre-biotic relicating biochemical machines to see how they act in various environments. The former not supporting abiogenesis much but showing that life does not require a supernatural creator, and the latter showing that it is explicitly possible for it to have happened in nature.

     “IOW, despite repeated attempts under every reproducible circumstance, atheistic scientists have been unable to reproduce a reasonable method for the origin of life without a creator, nor do they have a clear understanding of the chemistry involved.”
     Every reproducable circumstance? There’s been how many, a dozen that I know of, experiments ont he subject. hardly every possible circumstance. And if, as you say, we don;t fully understand the chemistry involved, then how can we know if that is all of the possible circumstances?

     Obviously we cannot and have not exhausted the possibilities.

     “Believe it or not, many evolutionists have now chosen to remain agnostic on the actual origin of life, and will frequently try to dodge the issue by claiming that abiogenesis is not part of the theory of evolution.”
     It’s not though. It’s in YOUR special definition that includes the big bang and a few other scientific theories all rolled into one, but it’s not included in the one scientists use.

     The clue is in the title. Theory of evolution, the explanation for how life changes.

     “You’re charging that someone coming to saving knowledge of Christianity is inconceivable but in the OT there have been non-Christians who were directly approached by the Lord Himself”
     Well that kinda breaks the “no knowledge” clause of my question, in that they were led towards christianity by someone. That is not what I asked.
     Without any sort of knowledge, do you really think someone would become a christian?

     “That’s observable fact according to historical-legal-documentation. Historical claims backed with historical evidence.”
     There is historical evidence for the holy spirit visiting paul now? This I gotta see.

     “Either way, the smoking gun is in your head as in theoretical thinking and not empirically observable like biological evolution.”
     The smoking gun is defined as to be non-existent. While you stick with taht, the rest of the world will move on with the real evidence.
     I would consider the entire mountain of supporting evidence to BE the smoking gun
     And to repeat again, the theory of evolution is entirely falsifiable, you just gotta do so, and earn yourself a nobel prize.

     “Evidence supporting biological evolution, not the theory.”
     Not the theory you’re talking about, but the one everyone else is talking about.
     The theory of evolution.

     “rare fossils are rare and it certainly proves species evolve into different varieties of its species kind but don’t treat it as if it proves the entirety of GTE. The GTE is more like a philosophical world view that challenges the Christian world view rather than a scientific theory, even though it’s heralded as one.”
     On the matter of common descent, to describe the ancestors of whales as being the same “kind” of animal is to stretch the definition to absurdity.

     “You’re saying: “There is a great deal of evidence for biological evolution. Therefore the general theory of evolution is true.” This argument is fallacious, because while biological evolution makes no claim as to the origin of life and allows for the possibility that it was originally created, the general theory of evolution claims that life originated by chance through abiogenesis, a speculation for which there is neither evidence nor comprehensive explanation.”
     To repeat myself, I have always been talking about the theory of evolution, not your “GTE”, I’ve made that clear through repitition, and explicitly stating it. So no, I haven’t been saying anything like that.

     “They note changes in the size of finch beaks, and infer (without evidence) that bears can evolve into whales. They note superficial changes in structure change by natural selection, and infer that the structure itself evolved by the same mechanism.”
     Short term, relatively small observed changes are proof of concepts. The larger scale of the fossil record is where support for larger changes is found.

     ““I’ve never heard a scientist use the term “General theory of Evolution”.”
     G.A. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution (Oxford, UK Pergamon, 1960), p 157. The idea is ancient in origin, being held by Greek philosophers such as Anaxagorus, but was recently revived in Europe and America during the secularization of the 19th century.”
     I doubt the term is greek in origin, it’s not in greek for a start, and uses fairly modern terminology. Perhaps the idea that you are talking about is, that of a naturalistic history of the universe, but that’s another matter entirely, and not something anyone but you has been talking about.

     “Darwin observed changes in the shape and size of the beaks of finches. From this observable and very minor example of biological evolution, he created a general theory of evolution, that all species diversity is a result of biological evolution.”
     No. From that and many other observations and experiments he derives the theory of natural selection, and derived the common descent of species from that and from the fossil record.

     “As he stated in The Origin of Species: “In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale. (On the Origin of Species (1859), original edition, p. 184)” Darwin omitted this story in other editions of Origin (because it was received as preposterous), but regretted his revision: “I still maintain that there is no special difficulty in a bear’s mouth being enlarged to any degree useful to its changing habits. (”More Letters of Charles Darwin,” 1903, page 162).”
     Which is not the same as saying that whales evolved from bears.

     Also, I agree with him. There is no special difficulty with his view of how things could go for a bear.
     Seems entirely reasonable.

     “Then you’re really arguing against Richard Dawkins because I was simply pointing out that he made that argument which he himself basically says that biologists must admit that there is a design, falsely made by nature. But you and I knows it’s absurd even though evolutionists tell us that in public school by inference. Your views basically contradicts his, thereby inconsistent with your own logic.”
     Nope. I agree there is an appearance of complexity which may be mistaken for design by some people, and is. And that the appearance in no way means it was designed.
     This is in no way contradictory.

     “So you must admit that it’s possible that life is created by external intervention.”
     Yes, as I stated before. But whether it did or not has no bearing on the subject at hand, how live changed over time.

     “Creationism has an answer for that which biological evolution doesn’t. But the theory of evolution is now being used in an attempt to provide an alternative answer. A new answer that is philosophically inferior to the answer given by the Christian world-view.”
     Not all answers are equal. Some are based on things like evidence, and some are based on the make-believe of cattle-sacrificing israeli primitives.

     “Think again. It’s not a conflation by my opinion. It’s a fact that atheism and evolution are a married couple since their views are very similar. That’s why they make a good couple.”
     All of science is related to atheism in the same way that evolution is, in the “this is how the world works” sense.

     “The scientific community, above any other subgroup of the population, has become overwhelmingly atheistic. According to a 1998 report in Nature, a survey by Edward Larson found that, “among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever; almost total”. Interestingly, the biologists in the National Academy of Sciences were found to possess the lowest rate of belief of all the science disciplines, with only 5.5% believing in God.”
     This is a surprise how? Religious people in america tend to grow up with the notion that evolution is evil or wrong implanted in their minds by pastors and parents. Many won’t be able to overcome these ideas and study the evidence with a clear mind. Science in general, but evolution in particular. Religious people select against themselves in high level science positions.

     “This decline in belief in biologists strongly indicates the nature of the cause, and the ability of the teaching of evolutionary biology to turn people away from a belief in God.”
     Or is a symptom of the creationists rejection of modern biology.

     “From these statistics it would appear that higher education, and particularly specialization in the natural sciences will indoctrinate students into naturalism or an atheistic view of the world.”
     Or would indicate that smarter children are less likely to buy into the creationist rhetoric and lies.

     “Evolution may be better called evolutionism as it is considered a religion by many.”
     All of those “many” are creationists.

     “Sounds like an agenda don’t it?”
     No, sounds like paranoia, to be honest.

     “Life can never happen until God adds the last ingredient.”
     Oh? Proof of this claim please.

     It seems to me that we have never found any “magical” ingredient that makes life special.

     “Tons upon tons of prophecies was fulfilled in Jesus Christ but scientific study showed that just 8 prophecies would take a scientific probability of 1 in 10 to the 27th power.”
     LMAO, no.
     Many many messiah figures arose in the world over time, many also claiming to fulfill a lot of the same criteria as Jesus. He is by no mean unique, or even the first.

     And the odds cited here are supported by what exactly?

     “You don’t know every crack in the universe so you can’t disprove it.”
     Even if we did, you would simply claim that god was undetectable by our senses. Hence totally unfalsifiable.

     “As for as anthropic principle I know a great deal on it more than you think and I don’t care about proving it to you either.”
     Oh, it needs no proof, I agree with it totally. I just think you don’t understand it

     “IOW, it’s like you saying, “No. There is no God.” and you can figure what I would respond to that.”
     For some fo them that might hold, but not for them all. Besides which my claims are rarely specific enough to warrant actual citations.

     “Considering that it can be used improperly and IS by both sides is proof.”
     Proves nothing more than some people misuse it for various reasons.

     “LOL. And that’s a kids book too! It’s elementary common scientific knowledge. Everybody should know that, unless they’re a hermit hiding in a cave. LOL. I can’t believe I’m referring you to a pre-school kids book. My Gosh REDEM. are you that uninformed?! haha. ”
     Maybe, or maybe the text is wrong. Google has no records of it either.

     Also, I’m not american, so chances are we grew up with different text books.

     “We don’t have to assume it’s true to recognize its uniqueness because no other religion makes that exclusive claim that is supported by more historical-legal-documentation. IOW, even if it’s not true, for the sake of discussion, it is still unique in its claims.”
     No more unique than any other sufficiently complex religion.

     “It’s a fallacy to link Christianity with other religions because essentially at its core it is not so much a religion as it is having a personal relationship with God the Creator”
     Uh-huuuuhhhh…

     Nah, it’s still a religion. Attempts to redifine it notwithstanding.

     “Jesus Christ, the One who died for us on the cross, resurrected and conquered death and gives eternal life for anyone who believes on Him. He is God descending to become man, and saving His people through a selfless death and resurrection that lifts him up to Lordship over the heavens and the earth. That story is unique.”
     Only in the irrelevant details. Apart from that it’s a reitteration of ealier messiah claimants, like Krishna or a few dozen others.

     “oh. I’m sorry. Does one of us HAVE to agree with the other? I didn’t call for a stalemate if that’s what you’re implying.”
     That was more tongue-in-cheek than anything else, really.

     “I’d rather stay where I’m at and have you come over to our camp so you can enjoy God’s salvational blessings and be the person that God has called you to be but I think that’s never going to happen ever.”
     All I ask is a little.. proof. If that’s too much then… *shrug*

     “Neither am I going to concede into a life of hopelessness and meaninglessness driven by atheistic and secular evolutionism views that we are biological machines rather than the creation whom God deems worthy to His calling.”
     I would prefer the ugly brutal truth to a comfortable lie any day of the week.

     “Lol. Yea. sure. You weren’t kidding. Not in the least. right?”
     Kidding in the sense that it was amusing to say it, and isn’t something I particularly wanna debate. A throw away comment, rather than a joke, if you prefer that phrasing.

     “I feel it’s more edifying in ministering to speaking people through the heart rather than the mind. Like it or not pal you’ve opened ‘a can of sweet n’ sour fruits’ .”
     And I prefer to speak to people’s minds, trusting them to use it.

     “bones and fossils don’t support the theory that humans actually did evolve from apes; it just proves how life evolves, the process of biology.”
     What are we missing? We have the fossils of transitional forms from early apes to modern humans, a whole long series of them. We have the knowledge that animals evolve. We know our genetics and biochemical and anatomical and behavioural similarities. The only reasonable conclusion is that we share a common ancestor with modern apes.

     “I only concede to the notion that you are more ‘enlightened’ or ‘edified’ or even ‘entertained’ from this experience than I because it appears you’re enjoying this more on a egotistical level.”
     Trust me I am not in the least entertained by these posts. They’re a chore to be honest, especially given the clumsiness of the medium.

     “Through all of this, have you learned from me anything beneficial for you personally? I hope so but I really doubt so. Because I haven’t learned anything substantial or edifying for that matter from you either, at least anything that changes my views on things. We need to end this “thing we have” soon because it looks like we’re wasting our time on each other.”
     Learned nothing more than how easy it is to deny the obvious
     Irony notwithstanding.

316. citizen762
     February 8th, 2009 | 05:06

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     Thunderf00t
     potholer54
     AronRa
     DonExodus2

     …and for creationist astronomy ownage..
     philhellenes
     AndromedasWake

     …and go tho this channel and watch all the episodes of Cosmos by carl sagan
     KosmosLF

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