|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
jrwhite82
Joined: 22 May 2010
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
 Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 6:28 am Post subject: |
 |
|
Underwaterbob:
-many wikipedia articles are written by atheists, in fact the vast majority are heavily biased in favor of evolution. Pravda has already infected the website.
What i constantly find is that articles in the secular media that are somehow favorable to creationism quickly and mysteriously disappear. Its a trail of dead links. Evolutionist puppetmasters and their goons snuff out any uncomfortable facts as soon as they can through their vast etwork of sympathetic footsoldiers. Stories in favour of evolutionism, however- even if proven wrong- never disappear. They are never archived or cached. Rather they are still promoted as legitimate decades after the fact.
| Underwaterbob wrote: |
| Biology Professor Jerry Coyne wrote of Icons, "Jonathan Wells' book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: ... textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction." |
Evolution is fiction not just because of the small selection of examples in the book.... but because of the weakness of whole of the evidence, much of which exists outside of the book.
Jonathan wells is not claiming to disprove evolution with his ten examples. He's just adding fuel to the fire.
| Catman wrote: |
| I'm also waiting on evidence for this vast conspiracy that Junior is referring to. |
People keep mentioning a conspiracy. I never actually used that word. Evolution is an emotive topic with wider and fundamental implications for peoples belief sytem and identity. That is why it tends to polarise. There are very few if any who view the evidence objectively, they are clearly biased one way or the other. Thats because there is a hidden spiritual element to all of this. Its not really all about science, reason, rationality, facts: people believe what they choose to regardless of alll of that (no matter how much they pretend otherwise).,Its a case of wether mens spirits are open to God or not. In most cases they aren't, so subconsciously or not, they look for ways to reinforce evolutionism. If it wasn't evolutionism, it'd be something else. Men want an excuse to ignore God and go on living their own way rather than God's way. thats the essence of whats going on here. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 6:41 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| You, yourself have admitted that fossilization is rare and requires very specific conditions, it's one of your main arguments for a global flood. |
Events that are condusive to fossilisation may be rare, but does not mean that when they ocurr they don't create a massive amount of fossils.
Its not really about rarity. Its the fact that we can be sure most of the variety of fossils have already been found. Because fossil hunters have been at it for 150 years, uncovering fossils in every type of rock and every strata around the world. Nowadays it extremely rare to find something new. In the early days of fossil hunting they were finding new species every other day. That frenzy has now become a tiny trickle. So logically and mathematically we can say that most of what we are going to find ...has already been found. You can't keep pegging your fantasy to what might be found one day (as darwinists might have done in the early days).
. You have to form it on the basis of the vast amount of evidence already collected..
| Underwaterbob wrote: |
| What part of evolutionary theory states that "everything was radically different before"? |
The bit about all lifeforms descending from an initial single cell. Strikes me that a cell looks a bit different to a giraffe or a dolphin. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 7:02 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Brento wrote: |
| In other words, probably less than 1% of all species were ever fossilized. And a small percentage of that 1% have even been found. Yup, fossils are rare. Really, really rare. Sadly. |
Thats a just a lame excuse because you can't find any missing links.
The millions of fossils we've already unearthed are not sympathetic to your fairy story.
That hasn't stopped your "scientists" building a fantasy theory on hypothetical evidence of course. "Ghost lineages" and all the rest. 
| Quote: |
| Wells doesn't produce a single piece of original research to support his position. |
But he's not trying to prove creationism, he's just pointing out the humungous flaws in your theory.
| Quote: |
| Wells mines the standard evolutionary textbooks for exaggerated claims and misleading examples, which he counts as marks against evolution itself |
If the most popular and important pillars of your theory are exposed as lying fabrications (ie all the ones you rely on to decieve masses of schoolkids), then logically yes its "a mark against evolution". |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pucciniphile
Joined: 23 Jun 2011
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 7:13 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Junior wrote: |
| The motivation of someone challenging a theory is irrelevant, only the merit of the argument. |
| Junior wrote: |
| People believe what they choose to regardless of alll of that (no matter how much they pretend otherwise)., It's a case of whether men's spirits are open to God or not. In most cases they aren't, so subconsciously or not, they look for ways to reinforce evolutionism. If it wasn't evolutionism, it'd be something else. Men want an excuse to ignore God and go on living their own way rather than God's way. that's the essence of what's going on here. |
See what I mean about Junior's rules applying only one way?
Junior, I don't know if my spirit is closed to God or if I want an excuse to ignore God,
or whether I just don't see the evidence.
Why should I believe in God, and not say, leprechauns or sea serpents or flying spaghetti monsters? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:51 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Brento wrote: |
| So, not only has information increase caused by mutation been observed in the Nylon Bugs (which you've gone silent on) |
The mutation involved was a frame shift mutation. That is to say it deleted two base pairs, so that all the bases after it are read differently. It worked because it allowed the bacteria to digest nylon. It then passed down its mutated genes to the next generation which quickly multiplied.
However, obviously, it added no new functional genetic information to the gene pool. Rather it deleted previous information. So this doesn't help the cause of evolution.
I know what you will say. That the mutation produced a new readout and thus new information. But the new readout is still just a subset of the pre-existing dna. The mutation did not add new dna, it just shuffled what was already there. A simple re-arrangement.
Tell me, why were the bacteria able to find exactly the right mutation, right on cue at the perfect moment..out of millions of potential mutations? Your theory claims that organisms arrive at the needed mutations by happy accident. That they make thousands or millions of wrong mutations before they get lucky with the right one.
But thats not what we see here. We see an organism engaging in its own genetic engineering. There is an intelligence behind such programming. Because the creator endowed organisms with what they would need to survive in a world he knew would change.
Sorry but for fish to advance to men (as your fantasy envisages), you need the introduction of truly new information to create vastly more complex genomes. This mutation is entirely within what creationism predicts. Sure, in a few rare cases the mutation adapts them better to their environment, but they are still losing genetic information and thus complexity over time.
Get back to me when your bacteria literally becomes something else. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:58 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Brento wrote: |
| We find people with mutations all the time, like people with blonde hair and we've isolated the date of that mutation down to 11,000 years ago. We have a good idea of when/where it came from. |
I never denied that mutations happen....
I'm saying that they do not add new genetic information and cannot be the mechanism to turn molecules into blue whales.
Rather they involve the loss or degeneration of pre-existing dna.
Your fair haired nordics have recessive genes, not dominant. They are genetically inferior to their ancestral africans, which had pigmentation and greater genetic diversity. They've adapted to their land without sunlight by shedding what they no longer needed. But they've taken a step down the genetic ladder in the process.
All you're doin is confirming what creationism predicts. Over and over and over again. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pucciniphile
Joined: 23 Jun 2011
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 2:40 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Junior, why did you expect that article by Jonathan Wells to be so shocking to us? Did you think we've never heard that the Piltdown Man was a hoax? Did you think we've never heard that the Haeckel's embryo drawings were distorted? Or for that matter, did you think we've never heard of Jonathan Wells?
I probably should leave you with Brento's links, but since you have a rule against anyone but you posting links, I'll write a response myself:
Life in a Bottle
I won't address the Miller-Urey experiment because it is off topic. Anyone who can't tell evolution from abiogenesis needs a good dictionary.
Faked embryos
Darwin was afraid to use Haeckel's drawings in his own writings, but Wells doesn't tell us that. Just as Creationist writers would like for their readers to think all Evolutionists support eugenics and Social Darwinism, they would like for their readers to think all Evolutionists support Haeckel.
Junior brought Hackel up in the 200-page thread. I found a study of the textbooks cited by Wells which found that Wells was lying. I cited that study, but Junior continued to believe Wells. Since we are overseas and have no library access to those textbooks, the only way we can know for sure is to order all those textbooks from Amazon and pay the shipping and handling charges. It's not that important to me.
Anyway, Junior seems to use this subject for an ad hom attack. At one point in this thread, he claimed that falsifying the Haeckel drawings constitutes falsifying recapitulation theory. Junior's line of reasoning is:
A implies B.
Not A.
Therefore, not A.
This is called the fallacy of denying the antecedent, or inverse error.
Using this line of reasoning, we could argue that:
If we are in Japan, we are in Asia.
We are not in Japan.
Therefore, we are not in Asia.
Darwin's Tree of Life
I was shocked to read that:
| Quote: |
| Thge fossil record shows that major groups of animals appearing fully formed at about the same time in a "Cambrian explosion," rather than diverging from a common ancestor. |
I thought that the fish appeared in the Ordovician period, the amphibians appeared in the Devonian period, the reptiles appeared in the Pennsylvianian period, the birds appeared in the Jurassic period, and the mammals appeared in the Tertiary period. But you can't believe everything you read.
Wells writes:
| Quote: |
| Biologists have known for a hundred years that homologous structures are often not produced by similar developmental pathways. |
Apparently, he is pretending that only Creationists realize this. But I learned the term parallel evolution from an Evolutionary text. The example given in the text was wings on birds, bats, and insects.
Nothing a Little Blue Can't Fix: The Peppered Moths
Wells' most important source for this chapter is Melanism: Evolution in Action by Michael Majerus. The author of this book cites case after case in which Kettlewell's findings were confirmed by later studies.
Furthermore, the author includes his own photographs of peppered moths in resting places, including tree trunks. To prevent any accusation of fraud, he includes only candid photographs of live peppered moths.
Majerus was understandably indignant when he learned of Wells' out-of-context quotations, and he said so in no uncertain words.
As a result, Wells relegated Majerus to the enemy camp.
Now that Wells has impeached his own best witness, he is left without a case.
Beaks and Birds: Darwin's Finches
Wells cites a case in which a finch population temporarily changed whenever the climate temporarily changed. He presented this as if this were Darwin's whole case.
However, Wells is referring to only one finch population found on Daphne Major, which is only one of the islands in which Darwin found a vast array of finch species.
From Apes to Humans
This is certainly nothing new. I have counted eight times that Duane Gish mentioned the Piltdown Man.
Creationists would like for us to believe that Evolutionists whole-heartedly accepted the specimen until the time that it was exposed. Yet the American anthropologist Sherwood Washburn wrote in 1944, "You could make sense of human evolution if you didn't try to put Piltdown into it." In 1947, Sir Arthur Keith wrote, "If we could get rid of the Piltdown fossil fragments, then we should greatly simplify the problem of human evolution."
Furthermore, Creationists don't want us to know is that this hoax was exposed by an Evolutionist, not by a Creationist.
What's more, the Piltdown hoax was rejected through the same methods whereby Lucy was confirmed. Let's be consistent. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
brento1138
Joined: 17 Nov 2004
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 5:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Junior wrote: |
| Brento wrote: |
| ...probably less than 1% of all species were ever fossilized. And a small percentage of that 1% have even been found. Yup, fossils are rare. Really, really rare. Sadly. |
Thats a just a lame excuse because you can't find any missing links.
|
It is not a lame excuse. It is a valid fact.
Take a moment to consider the very rare circumstances an animal must be in to get fossilized. Since it is such a rare occurrence, we are mainly going to find successful species (species that existed long enough to fall into the probability factor of getting fossilized) plus they must have existed in a region of the planet at the time which had an environment which allowed for fossilization, plus we have to be lucky enough to dig it up (big world out there), and hopefully it will have remained undisturbed. I challenge you: go into the forest with a shovel and see how many fossils you will find. You will be digging for a long time, and you will have found none.
We'll be extremely lucky to find rare species. But guess what? Science is just so incredibly cool, we are still finding several new, undiscovered species, much against the wishes of creationists. For every new species scientists discover, the clearer the fossil record gets. Each new discovery bolsters the Theory of Evolution. Unless we find a fossil of a dinosaur with a saddle attached to it...
| Junior wrote: |
If the most popular and important pillars of your theory are exposed as lying fabrications (ie all the ones you rely on to decieve masses of schoolkids), then logically yes its "a mark against evolution". |
Important pillars? How you could ever consider anything described in that article as "pillars" is beyond me. It's just sensationalist "journalism" which has time and time again been criticized for being non-academic and presenting an unrealistic picture of the evidence for evolution. It twists and distorts information in a way that screams the author came to some pre-made conclusion and cherry-picked whatever he could to "support" his conclusion. It's also designed to mislead people into thinking anything in that article has any relevance to the Theory of Evolution today. They don't. It's old news.
| Junior wrote: |
The mutation involved was a frame shift mutation. That is to say it deleted two base pairs, so that all the bases after it are read differently. It worked because it allowed the bacteria to digest nylon. It then passed down its mutated genes to the next generation which quickly multiplied.
However, obviously, it added no new functional genetic information to the gene pool. Rather it deleted previous information. So this doesn't help the cause of evolution.
I know what you will say. That the mutation produced a new readout and thus new information. But the new readout is still just a subset of the pre-existing dna. The mutation did not add new dna, it just shuffled what was already there. A simple re-arrangement.
|
I don't know if you are shifting your definition of information, if you do not understand information theory, or if you're just hoping that readers / lurkers on this forum are not intelligent enough to understand how mutation / new genetic information works.
Creationists like Junior keep repeating that all mutations are harmful and deleterious, and degrade the genome. They say that mutations can only scramble/shuffle the information that's there, and that mutations cannot produce new "information." Again, I'll try to prove why you are wrong, but I don't know if you'll really care, as the bacteria has remained just a bacteria anyways.
The following discusses in detail why it is considered new information:
Make sure you understand information theory before getting into this. There are several places on the net where you can read about information theory.
Next, click this link which contains the following information I've copied and pasted for you below:
Source: http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm
| Quote: |
My favorite example of a mutation producing new information involves a Japanese bacterium that suffered a frame shift mutation that just happened to allow it to metabolize nylon waste. The new enzymes are very inefficient (having only 2% of the efficiency of the regular enzymes), but do afford the bacteria a whole new ecological niche. They don't work at all on the bacterium's original food - carbohydrates. And this type of mutation has even happened more than once!
So, what is a frame shift mutation?
It happens when a chunk of genetic code (remember those AGTCTAGATCGTATAGC... DNA sequences from Jurassic Park?) is shifted by one or more nucleotides. In DNA, each triplet of nucleotides codes for one amino acid, and each such triplet is called a codon. So, the amino acid Arginine (symbol Arg) is coded by the DNA nucleotide sequence CGT, and also by codons CGA, CGC,CGG, AGA, AGG. Likewise, the amino acid Glutamic Acid (symbol Glu) is coded by the DNA nucleotide sequence GAA, and also by the sequence GAG. There are four types of nucleic acids, which naturally bond in one of two pairs: Thymine/Adenine, and Cytosine/Guanine (T/A and G/C). A thymine (T) on one strand of DNA will bind to an adenine (A) on the paired strand, and so on. There would be 64 different possible amino acids with a three-nucleotide codon (43=64), but several of these are redundant, as shown in the lists above for amino acids Arginine and Glutamic Acid. In biological organisms, there are just 20 different amino acids. Various DNA triplets code for these amino acids, and strings of amino acids form proteins - molecules (such as enzymes) that really do something specific, such as metabolize sugars.
A Frame Shift is a radical mutation in which a single nucleotide is inserted or deleted, causing a shift in the triplets coded by the DNA strand. It's fairly technical, so I'll present what a Frame Shift is by analogy with a different Digital Code, that being the ASCII code used in computers to convert numbers from 0 to 255 into symbols or characters. For example, the ASCII code for the letter "A" is 65, which in binary converts to 64+1, or 26 + 1, written thus: 01000000 + 00000001 = 01000001. For this analogy, we'll just be using the first 128 characters, and so we can use just 7 digits: thus, an "A" then has the 7-digit code 1000001. A lower case "a" is 32 higher than a capital A (which leaves room for 26 letters and a few extra characters), and is thus written 1100001 in 7-digit binary notation (=64+32+1 = 97 in decimal). A "b" is written 1100010 in 7-digit binary notation (=64+32+2 = 98 ). Likewise, a "d" is written 1100100 in 7-digit binary notation (=64+32+4 = 100), and an "e" is written 1100101 in 7-digit binary notation (=64+32+4+1 = 101).
What has all this to do with Frame Shifts, you ask? In this analogy, actual biological proteins or enzymes (strings of amino acids) correspond to words or phrases (strings of ASCII characters). Individual amino acids (such as Arginine) are analagous to individual ASCII characters (such as the letter "A"). Finally, the DNA nucleotides A, T, C and G correspond to the binary digits 0 and 1.
So, let us string together several letters to make a "digital" word. The ASCII digital code for the word "bed" is made by stringing together the 7-digit codes for b (1100010), e (1100101), and d (1100100) to make one long code: 110001011001011100100.
The image below shows what happens when we apply a Frame Shift to the digital code for bed. Here, we shift the "reading frame" by one digit to the left, which requires that we add one extra digit as a prefix. Here, the prefix I chose was the digit 1.
The Frame Shift is not a mild mutation. It is HUGE. We still have a 3-letter string, but each letter is different. Shifting the reading frame one digit gives us three NEW characters: q:(1110001), 2 (0110010), and r (1110010).
This particular Frame Shift scrambles the perfectly fine word "bed" into the unintelligible, meaningless word "q2r." In this case, the Frame Shift is not only a drastic mutation, but has completely altered the meaning of the word "bed." In this case, at least, information has been "lost"or "degraded," just as creationists say will happen ALL THE TIME - EVERY TIME.
And that's where they are wrong. While most Frame-Shift mutations do indeed scramble meanings and degrade information, not all of them do so.
Here's an example of a frame shift creating information: here, the word "gas" is coded as g(1100111) + a (1100001) + s (1110011). When we apply a Left Frame Shift to the long code for "gas," we do NOT end up with a meaningless phrase such as "q2r." In THIS case, we end up with a new, meaningful word: spy.
Similarly, the word "jib," when right-frame-shifted, is mutated into the new word "USE."
As a final example, the word "ICE," when left-frame-shifted, is mutated into the new word "dab."
Certainly, MOST frame shifts will destroy information. BUT NOT ALL - and that is where creationists have it wrong. I have shown three examples where such "Frame Shifts" indeed create new information. After all, in the proper context, the words "spy," "USE," and "dab" actually mean something. Since their meanings are totally unrelated to the original meanings, it is obvious that, at least in this case, the Frame Shift mutation process has created new information. It's important to note that context really means something as regards interpretation of these words. For example, if the word "luz" was generated, that would mean nothing in English, but it means "light" in Spanish. Without a common language and culture, words won't mean anything! It's different with DNA, because the "context" in which DNA strands are interpreted is the world of chemical reactions. The "meaning" of novel strands of DNA lies in how these strands are transcribed, what the new proteins look like, and (most importantly!) how the proteins react with other molecules, perhaps even affecting the organism's lifestyle.
Now, let's get back to Biology, and the case of the bacterium which has evolved the capability of ingesting nylon waste (see Kinoshita et. al.). This case is most interesting. Nylon didn't exist before 1935, and neither did this organism. Detailed examination of the DNA sequences of the original bacterium and of the nylon-ingesting version show identical versions in the gene for a key metabolic enzyme, with only one difference in over 400 nucleotides. However, this single microevolutionary addition of a single thymine ('T') nucleotide caused the new bacterium's enzyme to be composed of a completely novel sequence of amino acids, via the mechanism of frame shifting. The new enzyme is 50 times less efficient than its precursor, as would be expected for a new structure which has not had time to be polished by natural selection. However, this inefficiency would certainly not be expected in the work of an intelligent designer. The genetic mutation that produced this particular irreducibly-complex enzyme probably occurred countless times in the past, and probably was always lethal, until the environment changed, and nylon was introduced.
The image below shows just a part of the 400+-long nucleotide string for the key enzyme (see the Susumu Ohno paper). The original ("old") enzyme's amino acid sequence appears on top, and the frame-shifted ("new") sequence on bottom. The DNA nucleotides appear in the middle for both the old species and the new (one T inserted). Over this small portion of the enzyme, the old DNA coded for the amino acids Arginine, Glutamic Acid, Arginine, Threonine, Phenylalanine, Histidine, Arginine and Proline.
But the NEW DNA strand, which includes one extra T nucleotide, is shifted, and the new string of amino acids is completely changed. The addition of the thymine nucleotide produces a new Methionine amino acid, which, like the conductor tapping his baton, indicates the Start of a new Protein. This is followed by other new amino acids because of the frame shift: Asparagine, Alanine, Arginine, Serine, Threonine, Glycine and Glutamine. The new string of amino acids - the new protein - is completely different from the original.
While most frame shifts of such a key enzyme would destroy the enzyme, resulting in immediate death of the organism, this particular protein happened to react with nylon oligomers. And so it was that a drastic mutation suddenly gave an ordinary sugar-eating bacterium the unusual ability to digest nylon, which just happened to be present in abundance in the little waste pond behind a Japanese factory. The Japanese scientists who discovered strange bacterial mats growing in their scum ponds became very interested in this new ability, and finally found it was all due to a single Frame Shift mutation. The new enzyme is not active on common substrates - the bacteria's old "food" - and plenty were checked. Whether or not these bacteria retain enzymes to digest their former food source, the fact is that the former food source became much less important because of the new-found ability to ingest food from a novel source - nylon waste.
The creationist argument that all mutations must destroy information is clearly wrong. In this case, a mutation has clearly produced new information. That is, unless you want to quibble that the detailed three-dimensional structure and composition of a protein that reacts specifically to nylon is not "information."
Creationists usually counter this example by claiming that the bacterium is, after all, "still a bacterium." It didn't mutate into a whale or a dinosaur. But that's changing the subject. The subject of this essay is "Can Mutations Create New Information."
Science and logic both show the answer is a resounding YES.
Key points to ponder:
* Nylon did not exist before 1935. It is man-made. There are no "nylon deposits" that the bacteria could have lived in prior to 1935. (See http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa980325.htm for the details.)
* Therefore, this organism could not have existed before 1935. Where did it come from? Why, it evolved.
* Thwaites noted that "All of this demonstrates that Yockey (1977a and b), Hoyle and Wickramasinghe (1981), the creationists (Gish, 1976), and others who should know better are dead wrong about the near-zero probability of new enzyme formation."
|
Junior, keep reading that article until you really understand it. I mean, really understand it. Don't gloss over anything. It's very very clear in its explanation. If you cannot get this, I don't know how I can help you. If you still deny that there is new "information" being created, then you're simply denying reality.
It's like saying "Oh, the alphabet exists, so any new word you can create isn't new, it was already there. You're just frame-shifting old letters to get the new word." But the fact remains: it's new information which was not there before. Deal with it.
| Junior wrote: |
I never denied that mutations happen....
|
But you do deny a very important part of it. This is because you believe that all organisms were created in perfect forms and that loss or degeneration of pre-existing DNA is only possible. This is problematic because every time an organism has information deleted, it is gone forever, according to you.
But we see that several organisms, with high reproduction rates, have tons of genetic information remaining. Wouldn't all bacteria eventually just die off in lab experiments? Instead we observe exactly the opposite. If your theory was correct, then eventually, all information would be lost and all lifeforms would literally be born dead creatures until life would simply cease to exist. Absolutely nothing supports that conclusion whatsoever. Not even the Bible (you still haven't told me where it mentions genetics!).
| Junior wrote: |
All you're doin is confirming what creationism predicts. Over and over and over again.
|
Well, since creationists can just say anything, then I suppose it can predict anything. Creationism is not a scientific theory, it is a religious belief. So anything that totally voids creationism will eventually be accepted into it. That is not predictive power, it is accommodation (ie. Neanderthals are humans "just like you and me" [Kent Hovind's words] is one such example). |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:45 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Junior wrote: |
Underwaterbob:
-many wikipedia articles are written by atheists, in fact the vast majority are heavily biased in favor of evolution. Pravda has already infected the website. |
Are the creationist websites - that are your only source - written by unbiased, agnostics then? Just because a source disagrees with you doesn't mean that it's biased.
I propose a deal: if we can't use Wikipedia because of its bias, then you can't use creationist websites because of theirs. After all, we're supposedly debating the validity of the theory of evolution here, not creationism versus evolution.
Let's see who runs out of sources first.
| Junior wrote: |
What i constantly find is that articles in the secular media that are somehow favorable to creationism quickly and mysteriously disappear. Its a trail of dead links. Evolutionist puppetmasters and their goons snuff out any uncomfortable facts as soon as they can through their vast etwork of sympathetic footsoldiers. Stories in favour of evolutionism, however- even if proven wrong- never disappear. They are never archived or cached.
Rather they are still promoted as legitimate decades after the fact. |
Compare this to later on in the very same post:
| Junior wrote: |
| People keep mentioning a conspiracy. I never actually used that word. |
No, you never specifically said "conspiracy". At the same time you are perfectly describing one. Complete with loaded terms like "puppetmasters", "goons", "sympathetic footsoldiers" and mysterious disappearances.
All of it based on what you "constantly find", but have yet to produce a single scrap of evidence for.
| Junior wrote: |
Evolution is fiction not just because of the small selection of examples in the book.... but because of the weakness of whole of the evidence, much of which exists outside of the book.
Jonathan wells is not claiming to disprove evolution with his ten examples. He's just adding fuel to the fire. |
Fuel to the fire... you mean propaganda? I'd certainly classify his book as such.
Last edited by Underwaterbob on Tue Sep 20, 2011 9:10 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:56 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Junior wrote: |
| Underwaterbob wrote: |
| What part of evolutionary theory states that "everything was radically different before"? |
The bit about all lifeforms descending from an initial single cell. Strikes me that a cell looks a bit different to a giraffe or a dolphin. |
Ironically, we have fossils of all three of your examples: single-celled organisms, dolphins and giraffes. As predicted by evolutionary theory, the oldest fossils of single-celled organisms are much older than those of dolphins or giraffes. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 9:27 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Slightly off topic, while poking around, I found this interesting tidbit by none other than Leonardo Da Vinci himself:
| Quote: |
If the Deluge had carried the shells for distances of three and four hundred miles from the sea it would have carried them mixed with various other natural objects all heaped up together; but even at such distances from the sea we see the oysters all together and also the shellfish and the cuttlefish and all the other shells which congregate together, found all together dead; and the solitary shells are found apart from one another as we see them every day on the sea-shores.
And we find oysters together in very large families, among which some may be seen with their shells still joined together, indicating that they were left there by the sea and that they were still living when the strait of Gibraltar was cut through. In the mountains of Parma and Piacenza multitudes of shells and corals with holes may be seen still sticking to the rocks.... |
Yes, even during the Renaissance it was apparent that the fossil record was not created by a global flood. Or perhaps Da Vinci is the mastermind of Junior's conspiracy! I smell a Dan Brown best-seller. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 10:17 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Junior has followed standard ID procedure here: start by attempting to poke holes in evolution while claiming a general belief in a higher power sparking things, slowly move towards a specific God, land on straight up Creationism. This is why we don't teach ID in schools. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
brento1138
Joined: 17 Nov 2004
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 11:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Underwaterbob wrote: |
...even during the Renaissance it was apparent that the fossil record was not created by a global flood. |
What truly boggles my mind is that people today actually believe it is imperative that we must read every word in the Bible as literal fact, historical fact, or predictive fact. Even if we are not members of their religion! What about the thousands of other mythical stories... of which the below are just a sample:
| Quote: |
-Mbombo of Bakuba mythology, who vomited out the world upon feeling a stomach ache;
-Atum in Ennead, whose semen becomes the primal components of the universe
- Ptah creating the universe by speaking
- Kamuy in Ainu mythology, who built the world on the back of a trout
- Izanagi and Izanami in Japanese mythology, who churned the ocean with a spear, creating the islands of Japan |
Literal readings / interpretations of the Hebrew Bible are problematic, as they conflict with reality (see the Harold Camping example). Christians, mainly evangelical Protestants, and in particular, Young Earth creationists / Old Earth creationists, interpret Genesis as a historical, accurate, and literal account of creation. Other sects understand these to be, not statements of historic fact, but rather spiritual insights more vaguely defined.
The crazy thing is that the Old Testament wasn't even written by Christians in the first place. It was written by an ancient ethnic group of people living in modern-day Israel. The Old Testament was not really meant for anyone living outside of Israel, or outside of the Jewish religion. Christians assimilated the story into their own religious text, assimilating the Jewish God Yahweh and claiming him as their own. Jews vehemently deny that Jesus is the embodiment of God. They do not recognize the claims of Christianity which breach their own original beliefs.
Why then should Christians even trust a religion's ancient writing if that religion's people do not believe that Christians are right in their very fundamental beliefs? It's clear to anyone who reads the Bible that there are clearly two Gods completely different from each other: Jesus and Yahweh are not the same entity. It's copyright infringement to the highest degree, plus distorting the original God (not that Genesis wasn't also a word-for-word copy of the Babylonian original, which starred a completely different God(s), who the Israelis viewed as false 'idols').
Imagine if a Chinese company stole a Star Wars movie, and then added on a second half, and called it theirs! George Lucas would be one angry man! There would be lawsuits flying all over the place. It would make headlines, too, if the Chinese fans of the new Star Wars movies believed that the events in Star Wars were real, and that Luke Skywalker, Yoda, and Darth Vader were all actual people who really existed a long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away. They would all admire and love George Lucas, who would be turning in his grave cursing the people who stole his movie away from him! And imagine if the fans of the original Star Wars, who hated the new Chinese versions, were forced at gunpoint to love the new Chinese version! It would be just like the Portuguese Inquisition which principally targeted the Sephardic Jews, whom the state forced to convert to Christianity. Wow. Crazy world we live in.
Anyhow, back to The Flood.
Many people say "Oh, several cultures have stories of a flood." Well, duh! It's scientific fact that floods plagued humans all over the world due to receding ice caps which would grow then contract at much greater speeds than they do now. 10,000 years ago, it was a major source of misery for the common human. Many villages, cities, and entire peoples were destroyed due to mother nature's cruelties. But to believe that the whole world was entirely covered by water is just... insane. Where did all of that water go? Even if all the icecaps melt, we would be fine! (well, maybe not some coastal cities) There's simply not enough water on Earth to cover it completely... and there never was!
I know that Junior has never really argued that the Flood is a real event, but Junior's entire argument that Creationism is somehow valid rests on the Flood as a foundation-stone for Creationism. And it's totally proven wrong if reading the story as fact.
For your amusement:
Problems with the Flood: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
Also, read this interesting article on Wikipedia (mouthpiece of evil atheists, according to Junior!)
Relationship between Christianity and Judaism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HijackedTw1light
Joined: 24 May 2010
Location: Daegu
|
| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2011 1:43 am Post subject: |
|
|
| brento1138 wrote: |
| Literal readings / interpretations of the Hebrew Bible are problematic, as they conflict with reality (see the Harold Camping example). |
Can you see why Harold Camping is a poor example when talking about problems in interpreting the Hebrew Bible?
(There are a number of reasons, actually, but the main one should just jump out at you.) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
