[quote]pushharder wrote:
I will say this, Mak, you are a true warrior for your faith. You have proved that.[/quote]
You can keep harping on about faith, but it doesn’t make it true. Just like wishing for God to be real doesn’t make him real.
1. Evolution IS Happening Now
Adaptation/microevolution IS evolution. Macroevolution occurs, as well.
Macroevolution is defined as an evolutionary transition occurring at, or above, the species level. Creationists were more than willing to run with this so long as they clung to the belief that speciation had never been observed (ICR founder Henry Morris sticks to this in his SCAE article). Once speciation was observed - so many times, in fact, that scientists were forced to develop multiple categories of speciation to distinguish between the types we DO see - Creationists changed their tune to, "Well, this only occurs within “kinds” (always quoted like that), and that speciation is no big deal because the new species is “still a dinosaur”, “still a fly”, or “still (whatever its parent species is)”… all the while ignoring the fact that OF COURSE that would be the case - it really couldn’t be any other way. You can’t outrun heredity, and this shows an almost comical lack of knowledge on their part.
Theynow rely on such statements as unbridgeable gaps between ‘kinds’ and cite absurd examples like never seeing dogs and cats evolve into cogs (ICR founder Morris, again). They clearly don’t realize that this would be much better evidence for creationism than it would be for evolution.
See how Creationists shift the goalposts in response to new scientific data?
2. Evolution HAS Happened
Serially. The only people who claim transitional fossils don’t exist are either lying or grossly misinformed (more than likely due to unwillingness on their part to step away from ICR/AiG for their information).
There are multiple evolutionary lines that have ample transitional fossils available to satisfy just about any unbiased viewer - and even more that, despite their gaps, show a distinct and apparent trend to the extent that anyone who is NOT a foaming-at-the-mouth Creationist would readily admit that they are observing large-scale evolution in action. Dr. Katheen Hunt from the University of Washington assembled an excellent piece on transitional fossils that should answer many questions for those who want more information on this topic.
The problem with Creationists is that they refuse to see these things as anything more than black and white categories - any species ever presented to them has to be one or the other. This is why they continually dismiss transitional forms. Take Archaeopteryx, probably the most famous of examples, for instance. Today, Creationists shout on and on about how it is not a transitional form, it’s just a bird. What they conveniently forget is the fact that before they came to that conclusion, many of them had it pegged as ‘just a dinosaur’. This is, of course, dismissing the obvious characteristics it shares with birds and dinosaurs of that age (some features not seen in birds of today), and the fact that, when it was first discovered it was originally mistaken for a small dinosaur named Compsognathus. And, they seem to be unaware of the fact that another specimen lay in the Haarlem Museum for some time after being misidentified as a pterosaur.
They refuse to see evolution as a continuum. They give show you a color spectrum and tell you to point to a ‘transitional’ color between red and yellow. You point to orange, and they laugh and insist that no, that is clearly more red than yellow, so it belongs in the red category.
The only examples they are willing to give - and supposedly accept - are lame absurdities that wouldn’t occur in the first place (Cameron and his crocoduck).
Creationists simply do not (refuse to?) understand what exactly a transitional form is.
3. Equating Evolution with Atheism
Clearly not the case. Evolution has no position on the existence of God outside of the differences it shows when compared to a literal account of Genesis. It is just plain dishonest for Creationists to claim evolution means a lack of belief in a god.
4. Evolution DOES NOT Violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Well, not unless someone can explain how reproduction, heritable variation, and selection (what evolution is ultimately based on) violate this law - keeping in mind that these happen all the time.
Humans evolved from some sort of ape ancestor - how would one go about measuring the change in entropy from such an ancestor to a human? What is the difference in disorder from walking on all fours to walking upright? From fur to no fur?
I would also like to hear whether or not this law states that order can NEVER come from disorder, or if it is simply more likely that order will revert to disorder/disorder won’t form order. Is entropy a measure of statistical disorder or a way to differentiate between complex/simple designs of organisms?
5. Zero Pro-Creationist Papers in Peer-Reviewed Journals
You mean to tell us that there is some vast conspiracy by the entire scientific community to keep Creationism from ever really seeing the light of day? That there is not ONE editor from ANY non-Creationist journal who would be sympathetic to seeing good science ridiculed as bad and agree to publish a pro-Creationist paper?
Or, it is more believable to assume that these papers are simply rejected on the basis of shoddy scientific practices/conclusions - an idea that ties in the lack of published data with the fact that 95% of the surveyed scientific community doesn’t take Creationism seriously much more nicely than the alternative scenario?
6. Creationism is Unprovable
We can’t test it, we can’t falsify it, it doesn’t predict anything and it offers nothing to our current state of knowledge. Any discrepancy is either ignored (the AiG mission statement) or shrugged off as one of those ‘mysterious ways’ in which God works.
Shit, isn’t there some guy a few pages back who said that we can’t admit the possibility of a God and then deny that He couldn’t have just waved His wand to simply give the ILLUSION that evolution took place? My question would be: what the fuck is the difference? If God made it look as though evolution occurred, then I would imagine evolution would HAVE to be allowed to occur, or else He risks the possibility of us getting wise to his act at some point.
Not to mention it’s pretty fucking ridiculous for God to go through all the trouble of pulling the wool over our eyes in regards to evolution… only to go have someone write about a completely separate version of events in His book.
There’s more, but I’m between classes. I reserve the right to clarify/tweak ideas if I feel they are being misunderstood, since I’m semi-rushing this.
Maybe Kirk Cameron and Richard Dawkins should have a cage match to determine the winner once and for all. Both are complete idiots in terms of their arugments. This is usually the problems I have with the entire creation vs evolution argument.
On the one side you have people like Kirk Cameron who are arguing that schools can’t display the 10 commandments or the Gideons can’t distribute Bibles. Sorry, Kirk, I’m a Christian myself, but the 1st Amendment pretty much takes care of that argument. Besides, I sure don’t want the government involved in running my religious beliefs. Look at the good job they’ve done with everything else. The argument that a banana fits in my hand doesn’t prove anything. A rock fits in my hand too. Should I bash my brains out with it?
Then you have good Mr. Dawkins. He would have you believe that if you don’t believe in Darwinian evolution you are a right-wing nut job hiding behind a make believe God. Good thing he’s open minded enough to point out that Darwinian evolution is still just a theory in the scientific community not a law. It’s also funny how people like Dawkins don’t want to point out the fact that Darwin claimed the caucasian race to be the dominant race based on his natural selection, or that there are other gaping holes in their theory.
By the way, my money would be on Kirk Cameron to win with outside interference from Boner.
ROFL
[quote]BBriere wrote:
It’s also funny how people like Dawkins don’t want to point out the fact that Darwin claimed the caucasian race to be the dominant race based on his natural selection[/quote]
lolololol
[quote]BBriere wrote:
Then you have good Mr. Dawkins. He would have you believe that if you don’t believe in Darwinian evolution you are a right-wing nut job hiding behind a make believe God.[/quote]
Irrelevant to the theory [quote] Good thing he’s open minded enough to point out that Darwinian evolution is still just a theory in the scientific community not a law.[/quote] Epic epistemology fail [quote] It’s also funny how people like Dawkins don’t want to point out the fact that Darwin claimed the caucasian race to be the dominant race based on his natural selection, [/quote] Also irrelevant [quote]or that there are other gaping holes in their theory.
[/quote]
No such gaping holes exist as of today. Therefore it is a theory and not a hypothesis.
I find it funny that creationists try to show that science is false by claiming it is a religion and try to prove creationism is true by claiming it is a science.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I find it funny that evolutionists try to show that creationism is false by claiming it is a religion and try to prove evolutionism is true by claiming it is a science.[/quote]
I find it funny that you find that funny.
I find it funny that the armchair scientists think they will scientifically debunk evolution from their armchairs. I will give US$1 million to the first person to bring me a fossil rabbit in pre-Cambrian rock strata that can also be carbon dated to show it is the same age as said rock.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
I find it funny that the armchair scientists think they will scientifically debunk evolution from their armchairs. I will give US$1 million to the first person to bring me a fossil rabbit in pre-Cambrian rock strata that can also be carbon dated to show it is the same age as said rock.[/quote]
wont happen because carbon dating only works for a few ten thousand years.
After that the isotopes are completely gone.