I guess we all will continue to wait since you seem more inclined to address the source of my evidence and not the validity of it.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
I guess we all will continue to wait since you seem more inclined to address the source of my evidence and not the validity of it. [/quote]
I already addressed this. I am not assaulting the source of your evidence. I am clarifying a structural “rule” for This debate. My answer hinges on yours. It’s a simple question.
Everyone here knows what is going on when a poster is asked a direct and simple question multiple times and refuses to answer it. If you are OK with leaving it there, I am perfectly satisfied with that.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I would love to jump into this debate with both feet but can’t.
I’m running one business that’s as busy as ever and assisting full time in helping start another.
Sorry, gents.
However, I must AGAIN point out the faith exhibited in flying colors by the pro-evolution faction. It really does make me smile. No kidding. You’ve been convinced you have mountains of evidence, proof and facts but you have nothing but a house of cards. Honest respected evolutionists – I’ve read their writings and quoted and cited them on other threads – have openly admitted what Cwill has been pointing out. You folks, however, won’t tolerate their “dissent,” their openness, their candor. I’m not sure those of you frothing at the mouth over your cult even know these people exist – people who ARE indeed evolutionists but have admitted the huge inadequacies of the theory. For crying out loud, the whole idea of the Cambrian Explosion was precisely to explain the hu-fucking-mongous dearth of transitional fossils.
Some of you are so much more vested – emotionally and might I even say, spiritually – in your cult of scientism and evolutionism than most Christians are in their creationism. It’s uncanny. And ironic.
And expected.
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God?s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.[/quote]
Congratulations and good luck in your business endeavors.
You know what really makes me smile? The inconceivable amount of willful ignorance that is required to preserve a Literalist Biblical Weltanschauung. I mean, how else can one dismiss the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that indicates that the following statements are true: The earth is 4.54 billion years old. Homo sapiens are only 200,000 years old. Home sapiens are not the only humans species that have existed, but are only the latest and currently extant species of a family tree of at least 17 species. Humans are primates that share a common ancestor with the great apes.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I would love to jump into this debate with both feet but can’t.
I’m running one business that’s as busy as ever and assisting full time in helping start another.
Sorry, gents.
However, I must AGAIN point out the faith exhibited in flying colors by the pro-evolution faction. It really does make me smile. No kidding. You’ve been convinced you have mountains of evidence, proof and facts but you have nothing but a house of cards. Honest respected evolutionists – I’ve read their writings and quoted and cited them on other threads – have openly admitted what Cwill has been pointing out. You folks, however, won’t tolerate their “dissent,” their openness, their candor. I’m not sure those of you frothing at the mouth over your cult even know these people exist – people who ARE indeed evolutionists but have admitted the huge inadequacies of the theory. For crying out loud, the whole idea of the Cambrian Explosion was precisely to explain the hu-fucking-mongous dearth of transitional fossils.
Some of you are so much more vested – emotionally and might I even say, spiritually – in your cult of scientism and evolutionism than most Christians are in their creationism. It’s uncanny. And ironic.
And expected.
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God?s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.[/quote]
No, the TOE is not “a house of cards,” and no, cherry-picking a few old quotes because they appear on an antiscientific uncredentialed creationist’s blog is not criticism, and no, reading the work of evolutionists only through the filter of non-or-pseudo-scientists without expertise is not understanding. Think about that last one: You claim to have better access to “the truth” than do the most educated scientific luminaries in biology departments at Oxford, and Harvard, and Berkeley, and so on…despite the fact that you don’t subscribe to the scientific journals wherein their research and arguments appear, don’t survey their evidence (and could not understand much of it if you did), and generally just don’t give a shit about anything evolution-related unless it has been transmitted to you by an idiot with a creationist website, an agenda, and no qualification – that is, unless it is useful to your cause.
Now, let us pretend that you (not just Push – cwill, Nick) have done the reading – of scientists, not of creationists writing about scientists. Let us pretend that you have surveyed the evidence and seen all the fossils and studied each experiment and read every relevant book. Let us pretend that you subscribe to Nature and Paleobiology and all the other relevant journals (and read their every issue). Let us pretend that you have cared enough to study the TOE not by way of fantastically unrigorous, cherry-picking, outdated, risibly uncomprehensive, unscientific websites and books. Let us pretend that you have done all this, you have seen all of the evidence, and you are nevertheless steadfast in your denial.
In this thought experiment, there are three broad alternatives:
-
You are wrong
-
Scientists are wrong because of incompetence
-
Scientists are wrong because of a conspiracy
Given that you do not hold a relevant PhD, have no relevant training, have no relevant work experience, and are generally the Bob to their Prometheus (this is not an insult: I am exactly the same and am not the least bit ashamed to admit it), whereas they hold thousands of PhD’s and have tens of thousands of hours of training and etc. etc.–given this, we would be foolish to assume [2] above.
And, given the size of the of the evolutionist contingent within the relevant scientific fields – virtually total – we would be foolish to assume [3](conspiracies approach impossibility as their size and scope grow).
Which leaves us with [1]. Note that this is just a way to think about it – this isn’t my argument. My argument will follow on cwill’s answer to the question I asked a half a dozen times yesterday, if, indeed, that ever comes.
All that said, Push, I am glad to hear that business is thriving, and still hope one day to drink strong whiskey with you while laughing at each other’s appalling ignorances.
@smh_23 I don’t understand what it is you think you’re achieving here. Essentially, you seek out folk who’ve painted themselves into a philosophical corner by taking a literalist position + anti-fideism and challenge them to leave the room without getting paint on their shoes. And why? You say it’s a matter of principle? How many times does that principle need to be reiterated? You’re not going to change their fundamental beliefs. Surely you don’t gain any satisfaction from continually shooting fish in a barrel.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Yes indeed. An old fashioned creationist cherry-pick of people who are all proposing a particular brand of macroevolution which was popular for a while. We’ve all seen this kind of thing many, many times before. Incidentally, it’s a tactic which has been shit on by the very people whose words are being cherry-picked.
The good thing is that it’s got a very easy and very logical refutation.
[/quote]
I hope you are talking about actual evidence as opposed to hypothetical scenarios constructed in an attempt to explain away the appalling lack of physical evidence.
[/quote]
The main methodological difference between you and the evolutionist is that you begin with a predetermined conclusion, and then go onto cherry-pick and manipulate “evidence” to confirm your ideological biases. You are so blinded by your ideology that you are unable to understand that the very sources your position rests upon are asserting the validity of cladogenesis. There is nothing scientific or intellectually honest about creationism. [/quote]
The philosophical honesty of creationism is dependent upon whether or not the proponent is appealing to empiricism or faith. Fideists are philosophically honest because they openly reject any notions of a rational basis for their arguments. A fideist can also maintain a level of scepticism on a par with any atheist by both rejecting and accepting empirical evidence without any internal inconsistency through the process of compartmentalising their epistemology into two different streams: a rational, empirical stream and an irrational faith stream.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
@smh_23 I don’t understand what it is you think you’re achieving here. Essentially, you seek out folk who’ve painted themselves into a philosophical corner by taking a literalist position + anti-fideism and challenge them to leave the room without getting paint on their shoes. And why? You say it’s a matter of principle? How many times does that principle need to be reiterated? You’re not going to change their fundamental beliefs. Surely you don’t gain any satisfaction from continually shooting fish in a barrel.[/quote]
I come here with both vocational and recreational motivations. The two are almost never entirely separate. What I hope to achieve is always something to do with me myself, and it is often fulfilled.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
@smh_23 I don’t understand what it is you think you’re achieving here. Essentially, you seek out folk who’ve painted themselves into a philosophical corner by taking a literalist position + anti-fideism and challenge them to leave the room without getting paint on their shoes. And why? You say it’s a matter of principle? How many times does that principle need to be reiterated? You’re not going to change their fundamental beliefs. Surely you don’t gain any satisfaction from continually shooting fish in a barrel.[/quote]
I come here with both vocational and recreational motivations. The two are almost never entirely separate. What I hope to achieve is always something to do with me myself, and it is often fulfilled.[/quote]
Whatever gets your rocks off. But don’t expect anyone to grovel before your empiricism. That’s an engram you’ll have to construct yourself if you want to “achieve fulfilment”.
This is an online forum on a health/fitness site. There are no rules. Is there or is there not fossil evidence showing macro-evolution has occurred? Surely some mutations must have resulted in creatures with odd numbers of limbs and so forth that should somewhere be preserved among the billions of fossils found such as a 3 or 18 winged dragonfly.
Now regale me with the latest theory rationalizing the Cambrian explosion.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
This is an online forum on a health/fitness site. There are no rules. [/quote]
lol, come on man… You have to have at least a loose set of “rules” and “agreed upon assumptions” in order to actually have a debate. Otherwise it’s just people talking past each other and no one learns anything.
(Not that the participants typically change their mind, but the observers often get a lot out of it.)
I’ve watched a bunch of theist v atheist debates on youtube and even though a lot of it (from both sides) is way, way over my head, they have done nothing but educate me and offer a perspective from which to view things differently than I did before.
I still very much believe in a Grand Architect, it’s okay to open up and debate it though.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
@smh_23 I don’t understand what it is you think you’re achieving here. Essentially, you seek out folk who’ve painted themselves into a philosophical corner by taking a literalist position + anti-fideism and challenge them to leave the room without getting paint on their shoes. And why? You say it’s a matter of principle? How many times does that principle need to be reiterated? You’re not going to change their fundamental beliefs. Surely you don’t gain any satisfaction from continually shooting fish in a barrel.[/quote]
I come here with both vocational and recreational motivations. The two are almost never entirely separate. What I hope to achieve is always something to do with me myself, and it is often fulfilled.[/quote]
Whatever gets your rocks off. But don’t expect anyone to grovel before your empiricism. That’s an engram you’ll have to construct yourself if you want to “achieve fulfilment”.[/quote]
Who said anything about groveling?
And you misunderstand my use of those terms. I come here for practice/inspiration, and to test arguments. Because I get paid to do this stuff.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
This is an online forum on a health/fitness site. There are no rules.[/quote]
This is a debate. If there are no rules, then I appeal to my own supreme and self-evident authority, and declare victory. Problem solved.
Again – everybody knows what is happening when, in the course of an argument, somebody refuses to answer a simple and direct question a bunch of times in a row. If you are OK with that, I certainly am.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
@smh_23 I don’t understand what it is you think you’re achieving here. Essentially, you seek out folk who’ve painted themselves into a philosophical corner by taking a literalist position + anti-fideism and challenge them to leave the room without getting paint on their shoes. And why? You say it’s a matter of principle? How many times does that principle need to be reiterated? You’re not going to change their fundamental beliefs. Surely you don’t gain any satisfaction from continually shooting fish in a barrel.[/quote]
I come here with both vocational and recreational motivations. The two are almost never entirely separate. What I hope to achieve is always something to do with me myself, and it is often fulfilled.[/quote]
Whatever gets your rocks off. But don’t expect anyone to grovel before your empiricism. That’s an engram you’ll have to construct yourself if you want to “achieve fulfilment”.[/quote]
Who said anything about groveling?
And you misunderstand my use of those terms. I come here for practice/inspiration, and to test arguments. Because I get paid to do this stuff.[/quote]
I was just messing with you for recreational and vocational reasons my friend. 
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
@smh_23 I don’t understand what it is you think you’re achieving here. Essentially, you seek out folk who’ve painted themselves into a philosophical corner by taking a literalist position + anti-fideism and challenge them to leave the room without getting paint on their shoes. And why? You say it’s a matter of principle? How many times does that principle need to be reiterated? You’re not going to change their fundamental beliefs. Surely you don’t gain any satisfaction from continually shooting fish in a barrel.[/quote]
I come here with both vocational and recreational motivations. The two are almost never entirely separate. What I hope to achieve is always something to do with me myself, and it is often fulfilled.[/quote]
Whatever gets your rocks off. But don’t expect anyone to grovel before your empiricism. That’s an engram you’ll have to construct yourself if you want to “achieve fulfilment”.[/quote]
Who said anything about groveling?
And you misunderstand my use of those terms. I come here for practice/inspiration, and to test arguments. Because I get paid to do this stuff.[/quote]
I was just messing with you for recreational and vocational reasons my friend. :)[/quote]
I laughed out loud, disarmed.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
You (and SM) think you’ve painted folks into a corner.
[/quote]
Nope. I have no desire to paint you into a corner because I’m on your side. I believe you’ve painted yourself into a corner by taking a literalist position yet attempting to ground your argument in reason. I have no fundamental objection to this stance; it’s a purely academic question. In practical terms you end up in the right place.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
-
You are wrong
-
Scientists are wrong because of incompetence
-
Scientists are wrong because of a conspiracy
-
Scientists who unquestioningly and religiously accept evolution as a fundamental due to their:
-
Training
-
Desire to fit in and not make waves with their peers who also “believe”
[/quote]
Fixed.
See, what you’re failing to address are the large number of well respected, well trained and highly qualified true-blue, honest to goodness scientists who do NOT accept (macro) evolution. Yes, they are in the minority when compared to scientists as a whole but their concerns with the theory are valid and their dismissal by evolution believing scientists is invalid.[/quote]
Section 4 is included in “incompetence,” quite obviously. And so [1] still, also quite obviously, wins the day.
About that “large” numbers claim. Large? What is large, pray tell? And whence comes this tidbit? Note the adjectives you used to describe these scientists (this eliminates, for example, surveys which seek out lab technicians and high school teachers and people who give lectures about creationism in VFW halls).
And, more importantly, how many of them are named Steve?