Evolutionism's appeal to junk science

[UTEOTW]

Here is another.

“The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes from four-toed, fox-sized creatures, living nearly 50 million years ago, to todays much larger one-toed horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown.”
Boyce Rensberger, Senior Editor of Science 80, in “Ideas on Evolution Going Through a Revolution Among Scientists,” Houston Chronicle, 5 November 1980, sec. 5, p. 15.

This is ,again, an example of taking quotes about PE out of context. For instance, in the same article you also find

"Recent discoveries have only strengthened Darwin's epochal conclusion that all forms of life evolved from a common ancestor. Genetic analysis, for example, has shown that every organism is governed by the same genetic code controlling the same biochemical processes."

While talking about the controversy over PE, he later addresses exactly what is being done here.

"No clear resolution of the controversies was in sight. This fact has often been exploited by religious fundamentalists who misunderstood it to suggest weakness in the fact of evolution rather than the perceived mechanism. Actually, it reflects significant progress toward a much deeper understanding of the history of life on Earth."

Also, a very similar article by the same author appeared in a different newspaper the previous day but without the quote you use. This suggests that the quote may not even be the author's.

 

[UTEOTW]

And another...

The late Dr. Colin Patterson (the most honest evolutionist that I have ever known), senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, wrote in a letter “I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?
. . . You say that I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.” 10 April 1979

But he also said...

"In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . ."

Dr. Patterson "Evolution" 1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

But even better is his response to the quote.

"Dear Mr Theunissen,
Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

Yours Sincerely,

[signed]

Colin Patterson"

It should be obvious by now that he was not saying that there are not transitional forms but that you cannot tell for sure whether a given specimen is on the direct line to another or if it is a side branch.

 

[UTEOTW]

And another...

The late great spokesman for evolutionism, Dr. Stephen J. Gould, wrote:
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however, reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History 86 (May 1977): p. 14.

But he also said...

"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know--as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups."

Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, 1983, Norton, New York.

 

[The Galatian]

Years ago, some creationist decided that evolution could be defeated by dishonestly editing and presenting quotes that made it appear people like Gould believed what they did not.

That shameful tactic continues, possibly because they have little else to advance their argument.

Even the honest creationists among them denounce the practice.

 

[UTEOTW]

Since this thread took such a detour on entropy and has gotten rather long, I thought it might be instructive to briefly list the examples of "junk" YEC "science" we have seen so far.

YECers claim that Neanderthals are just diseased modern humans though no disease could possibly give them the physical characteristics they have. Now genetic evidence is presented that shows conclusively that they are different from modern humans. SO what are they?

AIG claimed that a mutation in the gene for apolipoprotein caused a 70% reduction in effectiveness for removing cholesterol when the abstract actually claims an increased effectiveness.

YEC claims that there is not a mechanism for gaining new information while genetics shows many, many examples of new genes arising through repeated duplication and mutation of a single gene.

Dr. Snelling sends an iron concretion out for dating claiming it is wood. The lab says it is not wood. He says date it anyway. Of course the date comes back wrong. He claims C14 dating does not work.

YECers claim that the Grand Canyon was carved quickly when they cannot explain many of its features such as the mile high walls supposedly carved out of soft sediment that managed to standup and the meanders in the canyons from the slow action of the river.

Dr. Steve Austin dated rocks from Mt. St. Helens. The rocks contained unmelted crystals that would have caused them to date much too old. He also had them dated by a method that could not give an age less than a few hundred thousand to a few million years. When he got the expected age, since it was not 20 years, he claimed the method was flawed. It was actually his sample collection and his data interpretation that were wrong.

AIG claimed that actual, fresh red blood cells were found in a t-rex fossil. What the actual paper claimed was that an exceptionally well preserved fossil was found with what might be fossil cells and even a few heme compounds.

The RATE group C14 dated a diamond. When they got a measurement consistent with what is expected due to natural background radiation, they declared it a failure for C14 dating. It was their presentation of the data that was a failure.

Henry Morris reported that recent lava flows in Hawaii dated to millions of years old. What he did not say was that the scientists were deliberately selecting samples that did not melt and therefore did not have their ages reset. The rocks they collected that had been completely melted dated correctly.

AIG claimed that human lysozyme is closer to chicken lysozyme than to that of any other mammal when it is identical to that of a chimp.

A blatent misquote of Dr. Futuyma was presented.

Then when we had a very bad misquote of Dr. Stanley where he is talking about no transitional fossils being found in an area of the Big Horn mountains in a particular place in time. Of course the time and place information is removed to make it sound like he said that there were no transitionals at all.

We showed how some YECers try and make Archaeopteryx just a bird when it has many, amny features in common with the theropod dinosaurs from which they evolved and that are not shared with extant birds.

While on the subject of Archaeopteryx, we gave a misquote of Dr. Feduccia which seems to say that it is just a bird when in fact he was challenging someone's assertion that it was just a reptile. He actually called it "the most superb example of a specimen perfectly intermediate between two higher groups of living organisms."

YECers try and use SHannon information to claim that no new information can arise in the genome. They claim him because he is the father of the field and is widely respected. But they are alos forced to abandon him as soon as they mention him because his conclusions do not support their claims.

WE showed the major errors in an AIG claim about rapid canyon formation.

We went through several supposed problem assumption for radiometric dating and how these either were not real assumptions or that they were valid assumptions.

We showed where AIG tried to claim that variations in decay rates in fully ionized (heated so hot that all the electrons come off) isotopes does not apply to the real world of geology.

We exposed a YEC claim that donkey milk is closest to human milk when in fact chimps have identical or nearly identical milk proteins to a human.

We showed a false comparison of cholesterol levels in humans and garter snakes.

We showed a false comparison between human blood antigens and sugars in a butterbean. This was tried to say that by blood antigen that a butterbean is the closet living organism to a human. It ignored that butterbeans do not have blood and that chimp blood antigens are all either identical or nearly identical to that of a human.

I then quoted Hovind (Dr. Dino) as saying that sunflower cytochrome C is most similar to that of a human when in reality it is quite different (I actually gave the sequences) but that of a chimp is identical. The same claim was made for a rattlesnake and also shown to be wrong including giving the sequences.

I gave a reference for how strata are slowly folded contrary to the YEC claim that only soft strata can be folded.

We gave an example of how Dr. Austin of the ICR incorrectly selected samples for isocron dating. Since they were incorectly taken, they gave the wrong answer. (Actually, the samples were taken in such a way thatthey were dating something else, the source material for the rocks. This they dated correctly. But Austin did not tell us this.) He cited references that show that he knew he was not selecting samples properly to determine the age of the rocks. His references show that he knew the samples selected would date the source material for the rocks instead. Yet he still claimed it was a problem for isochron dating when in fact the method worked as expected.

The RATE group made the same mistake with some coal samples that they made with the diamonds. They measured the background radiation and then reported that as showing that C14 dating does not work when they got just the answer you would expect.

I showed where Walt Brown and Hovind claim that a mammoth was dated to two widely different ages when in fact it was two different mammoths found 8 years apart in two very different locations.

I showed the YECers are willing to quote Asimov out of context on entropy and ignore all the parts of his statement that disagree with them even though they are claiming that he is an expert on the subject.

I showed that the claim of YECers that the 1984 International Archaeopteryx Conference decided archy was a mere unique bird was false and that the conference attendees actually thought it to be a transitional.

I showed how YECers could not explain the worldwide evidence that we see regarding large asteroid and comet impacts.

I showed a long list of vestigal items in humans that only make sense in the context of common descent.

ICR and others claim that the rate of salt accumulation into the oceans limits their age. I showed that their claims of accumulation rates were false, they are actually residence times, and that the elements in question are actually in equilibrium so you have no way to determine how long they have been in equilibrium.

I then looked at a specific case where Safarti at AIG tries to show that sodium is not at equilibrium. I showed that he misquoted one of his references by a factor of 35 and left out other means of removing sodium completely. Was these corrections are made, soium is shown to be in equilibrium.

I showed how YEC claims about what entropy is are at odds with thermodynamic statements about entropy.

I gave another example from the RATE group. In this Humphreys, Austin, Snelling, and Peczkis... I mean ... and Baumgardner claimed that helium diffusion rates in zircons indicated a young earth. What we atually find is that they give results based on the most inaccurate but most favorable results. When all the data is examined, it actually gives results consistent with an old earth.

I gave an example of Snelling quotinf Dr. Ridley about the fossil record. Snelling makes it sound like Ridley does not think the fossil record is useful when in fact he was claiming that there are even more useful evidence for evolution though there is nothing wrong with the fossil record.

I gave a YEC claim that the moon must be young because it claims that there are still measureable amounts of Thorium-230 found there. I showed that you would expect this since it is part of the decay series for uranium and is therefore made continuously.

We then came across another example of YECers quoting an expert source about how entropy is a problem and ignoring the material right beside the quote about how entropy is actually a driving force towards evolution.

Finally, just above you can see some pretty awful quote mining about the horse transitional sequence and the fossil record in general. Mostly they boil down to one thing. The author was saying that the fossil record is jerky and not continuous. The person doing the mining leaves out the jerky part and makes it sound like the author was saying that there are not transitionals when he was really saying that you should not expect smooth, continuous series.

I left out some things that have been talked about, but this is a good overview of the lies and misrepresentations exposed so far.

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by BobRyan:
It has been pointed out that my post had too much information in it.

Ok --- small bits at a time.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> in a second law world that favors dispersed energy and inert sand?

Knowledge of the second law makes unrealistic the human cry of "Why me?" that is so frequent at times of tragedy. At such times, the only rational response is "Why not me?", even though then it is emotionally quite unacceptable.

Does anyone "notice" the bit about the second law world we live in??

</font>[/QUOTE]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
Then maybe you can tell us how this supports you, since you cut it up into small bits assumingly so that we can all understand it.

Notice "IN" the quote "The second law favors..SAND" .. right here in our little world is FAVORS SAND not molecule-to-human-brain myth.

Get it?

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
Sand is inert because there is not a lower energy state for it to go to.

And so.... you see your error now - right?

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
I get the feeling that you go down this useless entropy reasoning in this thread to either distract from all the actual examples of lying and misrepresentation done by the YEC ...

Again the simple facts are always in direct contraction of evolutionists and their wild speculation...so "back to the facts again".

#1. This thread STARTED with the wild silly stories of eovutionism and showed very clearly the junk science appeals made by evolutionists in many cases USING THE EVOLUTIONISTS confessions to show the pure junk science model they follow.

#2. After it reached a certain embarrassing point for evolutionism YOU sought the "distraction" of trying to find flaws in the YEC science models.

#3. IN EVERY case when your OWN sources show that evolutionism is flawed you come back with the odd response "YES but atheist evolutionists are STILL evolutionists no matter what the difficulty" as IF that "proves something". Whereupon I simply not (time after time) that those atheists had NTHER CHOICE. Evolutionism IS THEIR only home.

This seems to surprise you each time and so you keep going back to it - as if you do not understand the point.

I fail to see how that is helping your case.

IN Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Bob said "You know -- like the one that Richard Dawkings presented you on the claims of evolutionism." -- regarding the claim that evolutionism EXPLAINS EVERYTHING starting from NOTHING.

UTEOTW --
About that quote. The last time you posted that quote, I turned it around on you to show how that expert of your choosing disagreed with you on the claims you make about abiogenesis. You have not reused the quote then even though you usually like tothrow it out every fourth or fifth post.

You know I never noticed that I have not used it in a while.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Here it is again. ONLY now you have no excuse at all for pretending not to get the point.

Richard Dawkins is Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the author of many books including the international best-sellers "The Selfish Gene", "The Blind Watchmaker", and "Climbing Mount Improbable."

FROM : http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/dawk-frame.html
Excerpt –

QUESTION: What is your response to the view that some Christians are putting forward that God is the designer of the whole evolutionary system itself?

MR. DAWKINS: In the 19th century people disagreed with the principle of evolution, because it seemed to undermine their faith in God. Now there is a new way of trying to reinstate God, which is to say, well, we can see that evolution is true. Anybody who is not ignorant or a fool can see that evolution is true. So we smuggle God back in by suggesting that he set up the conditions in which evolution might take place. I find this a rather pathetic argument. For one thing, if I were God wanting to make a human being, I would do it by a more direct way rather than by evolution. Why deliberately set it up in the one way which makes it look as though you don't exist? It seems remarkably roundabout not to say a deceptive way of doing things.
But the other point is it's a superfluous part of the explanation. The whole point -- the whole beauty of the Darwinian explanation for life is that it's self-sufficient. You start with essentially nothing -- you start with something very, very simple -- the origin of the Earth. And from that, by slow gradual degrees, as I put it "climbing mount improbable"[/b] -- by slow gradual degree you build up from simple beginnings and simple needs easy to understand, up to complicated endings like ourselves and kangaroos.
Now, the beauty of that is that it works. Every stage is explained, every stage is understood. Nothing extra, nothing extraneous needs to be smuggled in. It all works and it all -- it's a satisfying explanation. Now, smuggling in a God who sets it all up in the first place, or who supervises the details, is simply to smuggle in an entity of the very kind that we are trying to explain -- namely, a complicated and beautifully designed higher intelligence. That's what we are trying to explain. We have a good explanation. Why smuggle in a superfluous adjunct which is unnecessary? It doesn't add anything to the explanation.

Please notice the devastatig points made.

#1. Evolutionism's claims are PERFECT for the Atheist evolutionist SINCE it "explains everything" starting from "nothing" (read Abiogenesis).

The whole point -- the whole beauty of the Darwinian explanation for life is that it's self-sufficient. You start with essentially nothing -- you start with something very, very simple -- the origin of the Earth. And from that, by slow gradual degrees, as I put it "climbing mount improbable"[/b]

#2. Notice that the atheist seems to admit this whole thing is in fact "improbable".

And as we saw in your own easterbunny style appeals to "entirely imaginary" laws of biochemistry imagining a early cell population composed entirely of racemized chiral distributions, it was pure fiction! The lab was shown to fully support the mono-chiral proteins seen inside the cell membrane of ALL living cells known to mankind!!

Yet still... you dream in your evolutionist - appeals to junk science.

And that is what keeps this thread interesting.

Thanks.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Travelsong]

UT,Paul, I would have given up on Bob weeks ago. I don't know why you choose to continue this debate. Bob has no intention of understanding science. None whatsoever. How many times have you addressed the same things yet he still uses the same arguments. After having kept up with this latest batch of evolution threads I'm forced to conclude he's doing it on purpose. There can't be any other explanation. Even if by some miracle he honestly hasn't caught on to basic distinctions such as abiogenesis and evolution being completely unrelated, it's obvious he has no desire to understand them in any capacity. Bob's purpose is clear: paint any and all evolutionists/old earthers as heretics and distorters of the truth as he sees the truth, period.

There is and cannot be any reasoning with this man apart from the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

It's not just for BobRyan. There are those who read these posts and are forming their opinions. Perhaps there is somewhere among the readers a proto-BobRyan who is still able to reason and has not yet frozen his mind. If he is exposed to both sides instead of just one he may escape the fate BobRyan has chosen for his own mind.

 

[john6:63]

Originally posted by Travelsong:
Bob's purpose is clear: paint any and all evolutionists/old earthers as heretics and distorters of the truth as he sees the truth, period.

There is and cannot be any reasoning with this man apart from the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Since God cannot lie, the Holy Spirit would never lead one away from the truth; only man and his fallible theories can succeed in that.

Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:
If he is exposed to both sides instead of just one he may escape the fate BobRyan has chosen for his own mind.

Speaking only of myself, but I’d much rather stand before the Judgment seat of Christ and find out that I was wrong for trusting the Bible and that evolution was God’s means of creating; than to be ashamed that I allowed the influence of fallible man to guide my heart, rather than the Holy Spirit to lead me in truth.

 

[UTEOTW]

Because of what Paul said.

This is not for Bob. He has shown no interest in learning. He in fact shows a distinct stubborness to continue asserting the same things over and over despite whatever facts may be brought to bear to show how false his postion is. Why he continually posts the same thing over and over I'll never understand. My best guess is that he thinks that he has indisputable, winning arguments here and that he either truly does not understand the responses given to him or that he willfully ignores them because he must be right. You generally do not even see the other YEers come to his support. I think they see how disconnected his arguments are from reality.

But I must answer. I try to tell myself to just let the nonsense go, but I cannot. I will not give these guys an inch. I will challenge every assertion and defend every assertion that I make. If you ever do not answer, they take it as a victory. SO I bring the facts to bear on everything they have to say.

I do not know if it is effective or not, but usually after a thread like this has been going for a while, I like to make a list of everything the others have ignored. There is such a post on the last page. I feel that it is instructive to point out just how many things the YEers must ignore and avoid. You cannot make such a list with me because I challenge nearly everything and if you made such a list, I would dissect it. They usually will not respond even when it is pointed out to them.

But in the end, this is for those who are undecided. I know they lurk through this. Going through such things with Bob or whoever over and over allows me to show just how disconnected they are from reality. It allows me to show just how much they have to willfully ignore to try and hold a position. Look at the entropy stuff. By going over and over he has allowed me to have a long explanation of thermodynamic entropy broken up into small chunks that the layman should be able to understand. I could have never done that if he limited that topic to just a handfull of posts. But spread over pages, I can lay out the case and easily convince those who are reading that Bob is not talking about thermodynamic entropy. It does not hurt to show that he is ignoring most of what his own references say on the matter either.

 

[UTEOTW]

"Notice "IN" the quote "The second law favors..SAND" .. right here in our little world is FAVORS SAND not molecule-to-human-brain myth.

Get it?"

I do, but I do not think that you do. Did you read it before you copied it?

Let me pull out the salient part about sand for you.

"Q: Who cares about the second law of thermodynamics?
A: Anyone who wonders how the material world -- our world of energy and matter --works.

Q: Big deal?
A: The biggest, most powerful, most general idea in all of science. Why paper, trees, coal, gas and all things like them burn (and why people "should" spontaneously catch fire in air), why sand and dry ice even in pure oxygen can't ever burn."

Now do you see. It is not saying that sand is the favored product of entropy as you have it quoted. (More YE quote mining, but this time you did it yourself.) It is pointing out why sand is inert. It is pointing out why sand will not burn. Sand is already in a low energy state. Even in pure oxygen and with a large activation energy (spark) you will not get it to burn. Thermodynamics, with entropy included, tells us this and why.

"And so.... you see your error now - right?"

Oh wait, there it is. I had already pointed this out to you once and you still went back to it. Thanks for quoting me ("Sand is inert because there is not a lower energy state for it to go to.") so that it is clear for everyone to see without going back up through the thread to look for it.

 

[Travelsong]

I understand and I think it's a great benefit to have these debates for those who are discerning lurkers. What I find unbelievable is that you guys are willing to rehash the same material over and over allowing the debate to suffer by remaining so static. When Helen was active in these debates, the discourse was much more interesting because at least she rationally addressed your arguments. Bob here never leaves square one. I'd rather be fed to a pack of starving wolves than try to rationalize with him but hey, more power to you guys. I'm here and still reading.

 

[UTEOTW]

"#1. This thread STARTED with the wild silly stories of eovutionism and showed very clearly the junk science appeals made by evolutionists in many cases USING THE EVOLUTIONISTS confessions to show the pure junk science model they follow.

#2. After it reached a certain embarrassing point for evolutionism YOU sought the "distraction" of trying to find flaws in the YEC science models."

I really do not see where you have done anything to show where OE is "junk." You just keep repeating the same 1 or 2 things over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. You have failed to make any point with this other than to show that you ignore the both the science and the part where your very own self selected experts tell you you are wrong. Don't you remember? Your new source for quoting about entropy has a whole page devoted to why entropy FAVORS the evolution of life instead of opposing it. http://www.2ndlaw.com/evolution.html There it is again in case to wish to go read what your sourse has to say about what you are claiming from it. Let's quote the first two paragraphs. The reader is then free to go read the whole thing.

Many fundamentalist Christians see the theory of evolution as a threat to their faith, evidently because it is not explicitly included in Genesis. (They also misunderstand the scientific application of the word "theory" that the chemist uses in discussing atomic theory or the kinetic molecular theory of gases, ideas as unquestioned by all chemists as evolution is by professional biologists.) This is tragic because it cuts off sincere individuals who are not scientists from understanding the powerful relevance of one of the most important concepts in all of science.

Most disquieting to chemists who are interested in thermodynamics are the misleading statements about the second law and chemistry that creationist spokespeople have made. A few emphases from previous pages in the present Web site and from www.secondlaw.com that bear on this unfortunate situation are developed below. At the end of this page are superior links to presentations of the second law of thermodynamics and its irrelevance to creationists’ arguments against evolution.

You have not made a case at all for OE being "junk." And it was not at some embarrassing point that I started exposing YE for what it is. It was the very beginning. I believe you will see that in my very first post to this thread, the second post overall in the thread from anyone, I told you that I was going to expose the dishonesty of YE since you started a topic on "junk" science. DO you remember? http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/28/2740.html#000001 So again you misrepresent what has happened or what is said.

Now, do you wish to try and defend your cohorts for their dishonesty? http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/28/2740/15.html#000224

". IN EVERY case when your OWN sources show that evolutionism is flawed you come back with the odd response "YES but atheist evolutionists are STILL evolutionists no matter what the difficulty" as IF that "proves something". Whereupon I simply not (time after time) that those atheists had NTHER CHOICE. Evolutionism IS THEIR only home."

Nope.

In every case I have shown you were takingtheir statements out of context. From ignoring Asimov's explanation to you of why entropy is not a problem for evolution to falsely claiming that the conference participants thought that archy was just a unique bird when I clearly showed that the very two people you cited stated in the conference that it was a transitional to your horse evolution quotes where you took quotes about the sequence being bushy and jerky instead of smooth and turned them into quotes about how the series does not exist. No, Bob, I have shown for each of these that it is deception of the part of YEers at work.

 

[UTEOTW]

Originally posted by Travelsong:
I understand and I think it's a great benefit to have these debates for those who are discerning lurkers. What I find unbelievable is that you guys are willing to rehash the same material over and over allowing the debate to suffer by remaining so static. When Helen was active in these debates, the discourse was much more interesting because at least she rationally addressed your arguments. Bob here never leaves square one. I'd rather be fed to a pack of starving wolves than try to rationalize with him but hey, more power to you guys. I'm here and still reading.

I do try and work in new topics as time allows. I have worked in at least a couple dozen just in this thread. He won't respond, but at least the point is out there to be read. And I will rehash them every once in a while to show that all the points are being ignored. The worst thing is that it makes the threads boring and less likely to get read. My cynical side says that this is just his goal.

I had hopes when Gup started posting that maybe he would be a worthy advesary, but he no longer seems interested in looking at anything factual, only in slandering those who do not agree with him.

[ August 05, 2004, 08:38 AM: Message edited by: UTEOTW ]

 

[UTEOTW]

"#2. Notice that the atheist seems to admit this whole thing is in fact "improbable"."

Not that I see.

Remember, you cannot use Dawkins to make religious points, he has no expertice. But in his area of expertice, evolution, look at what he has to say.

"Anybody who is not ignorant or a fool can see that evolution is true."

"The whole point -- the whole beauty of the Darwinian explanation for life is that it's self-sufficient. You start with essentially nothing -- you start with something very, very simple -- the origin of the Earth. And from that, by slow gradual degrees, as I put it "Climbing Mount Improbable" -- by slow gradual degree you build up from simple beginnings and simple needs easy to understand, up to complicated endings like ourselves and kangaroos."

"Now, the beauty of that is that it works. Every stage is explained, every stage is understood."

Now, we see your expert disagrees with what you have to say.

Again.

 

[BobRyan]

My thanks to UTEOTW in pointing out the fact that I exposed the junk science appeals to the failed "horse series" on another thread - but not on this one.

I will post it here.

The reference to Eohippus is absolutely ludicrous. The whole “Horse Series” concept was completely thrown away by leading evolutionists starting in the 1950s!

The preeminent evolutionary paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson believed that horses evolved. But, he was honest enough to admit that the “Horse Series” drawn up a couple of decades earlier, and propagated to this day in textbooks, was a fraud.

“The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature.”…

As already briefly noted, the famous “gradual reduction of the side toes” also is something that never happened…

In the history of the horse family there is no known trend that affected the whole family. …

(The evolution of the horse family, Equidae, is now no better known than that of numerous other groups of organisms, but it is still a classic example of evolution in action, and a very instructive example when correctly presented…)[/

Life of the Past, 1953, p. 119. [Emphasis added - ed.]

Other eminent evolutionists agreed with him.

“. . . some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information – what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic.” Dr. David M. Raup, Evolutionist, Paleontologist and Curator of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 50, No. 1, January 1979, p. 25. [Emphasis added - ed.]

“The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes[/b] from four-toed, fox-sized creatures, living nearly 50 million years ago, to todays much larger one-toed horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown.” Boyce Rensberger, Senior Editor of Science 80, in “Ideas on Evolution Going Through a Revolution Among Scientists,” Houston Chronicle, 5 November 1980, sec. 5, p. 15. [Emphasis added - ed.]

Worse still is that the greatest of evolutionary believing scientists admit that there are no such “series” of any kind found in the fossil bearing layers.

The late great spokesman for evolutionism, Dr. Stephen J. Gould, wrote:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.

The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however, reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,”[/b] Natural History 86 (May 1977): p. 14. [Emphasis added - ed.]

George Gaylord Simpson wrote:

“This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all orders of all classes, both vertebrate and invertebrate.” Tempo and Mode in Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), p. 107. [Emphasis added - ed.]

The late Dr. Colin Patterson (senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, wrote in a letter

“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them

You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?

. . . You say that I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”[/b] 10 April 1979 [Emphasis added - ed.]

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by Travelsong:
I understand and I think it's a great benefit to have these debates for those who are discerning lurkers. What I find unbelievable is that you guys are willing to rehash the same material over and over allowing the debate to suffer by remaining so static. When Helen was active in these debates, the discourse was much more interesting because at least she rationally addressed your arguments. Bob here never leaves square one. I'd rather be fed to a pack of starving wolves than try to rationalize with him but hey, more power to you guys. I'm here and still reading.

Evolutionists are stuck in the mode of "pretending not to SEE the point so they don't have to respond to it".

They then claim that "whatever they make up" is a suitable response AS IF the initial point should no longer be mentioned SINCE they are so fully committed to "pretending not to understand it".

However - as you might imagine - there are a number of readers here who "see through that" otherwise entertaining approach that evolutionists take.

Simply responding that "Atheist evolutionists ARE STILL evolutionists even AFTER the flaw is exposed" -- is hardly a compelling response.

Yet we see evolutionists give this as "the solution" to any problem that stumps them.

How the critical objective mind could be satisified with that is beyond me. But it is testament to the pablum that evolutionism feeds to its membership that they could ever be satisfied with those non-responses.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Bob said -- "#2. Notice that the atheist seems to admit this whole thing is in fact "improbable"."

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
Not that I see.

Remember, you cannot use Dawkins to make religious points, he has no expertice. But in his area of expertice, evolution, look at what he has to say.

Remember that you have given that "same failed response" a dozen times and each time it is fully debunked by pointing out that Dawkings is NOT speaking about religion but about the claims of EVOLUTIONISM. You are then saying "he knows nothing about the claims of evolutionims" in your failed response - which obviously is bogus.

You simply pretend not to notice that problem - and "repeat" that failed answer a few dozen more times as if "repetition will make it a fact" some day.

I suspect for some evolutionist readers - it works.

Notice that Dawkings himself admits that they string of stories told by evolutionism is in fact "climbing mount IMPROBABLE".


Dawkings --
"The whole point -- the whole beauty of the Darwinian explanation for life is that it's self-sufficient. You start with essentially nothing -- you start with something very, very simple -- the origin of the Earth. And from that, by slow gradual degrees, as I put it "Climbing Mount Improbable" -- by slow gradual degree you build up from simple beginnings and simple needs easy to understand, up to complicated endings like ourselves and kangaroos."

"Now, the beauty of that is that it works. Every stage is explained, every stage is understood."

You start with essentially "nothing" -- Dawkings takes this right to the point of ABIOGENESIS - which IS my point.

HIS argument is that God is not needed in ANY step because evolutionism ITSELF is explaining EVERYTHING. (You would think that evolutionists on a Christian message board would now see a red flag in the claims of EVOLUTIONISM... but "no")

Originally posted by UTEOTW:

Now, we see your expert disagrees with what you have to say.

And "that" is supposed to be a compelling answer??

Again - one would have to already BE an evolutionist to go with such a non-response.

In Christ,

Bob