At what point does it become dishonest?

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I think it is intellectual dishonesty (in the form of fooling onesself) combined with varying degrees of desperate denial.

It is easier to take an entrenched view and defend creationism beyond reason. It is easier to throw verbal stones and then scatter to the boosom of one's preacher/church and tut, tut about all the evil athiestic scientists. Makes ya feel all warm and good inside, not to mind self righteous. If you can come up with a few good ones you can even write a few books that will appeal to the masses of others who just don't want to think or face the intellectual or spiritual difficulty that areas of grey demand.

If you believe you have 'the truth' no amount of evidence matters.

Saves a lot of time and effort or having to think.....
 
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Naraoia

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I think it's all a matter of necessary denial. Any and all evidence that goes against creationism is, by default, bad evidence and doesn't merit further consideration. End of story. There may be attempts to set the evolutionist straight, speaking to evolutionist arguments, but it's never done honestly, that is, with an open AND fair mind. Evolutionary evidence first receives an "It can't be true" stamp.
Morton's Demon?
 
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ChordatesLegacy

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There are no transitional fossils.
In fact this is a major problem for evolution.
Evolution must should great numbers of transitions for even one line of something.
No cheap pinpricks of fossils and pronouncements of transitions.
A transition must have many transitions beside it to verify its a transition and not just a creature adapted to its world with bits and pieces coincedentaly different creatures have.
Evolution has tried to go cheap on transitions when its great claims need them by the heap.


Is this what you are talking about in the opening post.

RB just ignores mountains of evidence to make this statement (BOLD ABOVE).

128124.JPG

What you mean I don’t exist ROB, I used to live in water around the clock, but now I am heading for the hills.
 
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Molal

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I think creationists seriously believe they are right and that evolution is wrong. I think it's less about dishonesty and more about cognitive dissonance. To hold a literal interpretation of genesis will lead to cognitive dissonance when contemplating the data supporting theory of evolution.
 
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Cabal

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A picture is worth a thousand words --- I just don't have the time to type them all.

Or in this case, FOUR WORDS! :p

Or are there 996 other words describing the lurid shade of pink in the background of that image? ;)
 
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Cabal

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I'd stop short of calling it outright dishonesty, but there are plenty of useful descriptive catchphrases that get bandied about, e.g "wilful ignorance", "cognitive dissonance", although I suspect "doublethink" would suffice.

When God can break the rules at will, it makes things a little tricky. "The laws of science always work! (Except for those empirically unprovable times when they didn't! Hallelujah!)"
 
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BananaSlug

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Many of the people who believe the falsehoods of creationism simply do not know enough about science to know any different. Those of us who are educated can easily spot the errors in logic, the misconstruing of scientific words and processes, and other errors.
 
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AV1611VET

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Many of the people who believe the falsehoods of creationism simply do not know enough about science to know any different.
Oh, really?

Do you know enough about science to take this challenge?

Let's see you answer w/o a falsehood.
 
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eMesreveR

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Oh, really?

Do you know enough about science to take this challenge?

Let's see you answer w/o a falsehood.

Science says: We're not sure, but we can guess. Let's get more data and test more theories.

At least Science doesn't pretend to know when it really doesn't.
 
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AV1611VET

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Science says: We're not sure, but we can guess. Let's get more data and test more theories.

At least Science doesn't pretend to know when it really doesn't.
But it pretends to know enough that it can say this ---
Many of the people who believe the falsehoods of creationism simply do not know enough about science to know any different.
--- ?

What's a "falsehood of creationism" from a scientific perspective, anyway? The earth before the sun?
 
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Nathan Poe

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But it pretends to know enough that it can say this ------ ?

What's a "falsehood of creationism" from a scientific perspective, anyway? The earth before the sun?

One need not know everything before one can recognize lunacy. Oftentimes, "knowing enough," is sufficient.
 
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BananaSlug

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I looked at your thread AV, sorry, my forte is biology not physics/cosmology. Try to think of a biology question and I will answer it.
Falsehoods of creationism include arguments against any form of dating techniques, mangling the definition of "transitional fossil" or other scientific terms/definitions, and much ado about logical fallacies (especially after numerous corrections).
 
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AV1611VET

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Try to think of a biology question and I will answer it.
Can you explain Punctuated Equilibrium to me in kindergarten terms? And do you personally subscribe to it?
 
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sbvera13

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Can you explain the Bible to me in monosyllabic grunts?

Can you explain trigonometry in kindergarten terms?

Really, AV, you are sabotoging the response before you get it. You should accept the answer to your question in a form of language appropriate to the subject.
 
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AV1611VET

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Can you explain the Bible to me in monosyllabic grunts?

Can you explain trigonometry in kindergarten terms?

Really, AV, you are sabotoging the response before you get it. You should accept the answer to your question in a form of language appropriate to the subject.
Fine --- can you explain it to me at all?

And just for your information, the crux of the message of the Bible is right here ---
1 John 5:12 said:

He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
--- nineteen one-syllable words.

So --- yes I can explain It in "monosyllabic grunts".
 
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Nathan Poe

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Fine --- can you explain it to me at all?

To you? Probably not. To someone willing to learn? Far more likely.

And just for your information, the crux of the message of the Bible is right here ------ nineteen one-syllable words.

So --- yes I can explain It in "monosyllabic grunts".

You realize that 99% of your own theology has nothing whatsoever to do with "the crux of the message," right?
 
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ChordatesLegacy

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Can you explain Punctuated Equilibrium to me in kindergarten terms? And do you personally subscribe to it?

This seems to be Kindergarten level; so there’s every chance you will understand it.

LINK TO TEXT

Punctuated equilibrium is more an observation than a theory of evolution. However, this observation is easy to explain by using some general insights from the systems approach. Consider a typical fitness landscape, in which there are valleys separated by ridges. If the evolving system has reached the bottom of a deep valley, there will be almost no change, since variation will fail to pull the system out of that hole. This is a negative feedback regime, in which chance fluctuations will be counteracted, pulling the system back to its equilibrium position at the bottom of the valley.
On the other hand, if there is only a small ridge separating the valley from a neighboring, deeper valley, then a chance event may be sufficient to push the system over the edge so that it enters the other valley. Such a lucky variation will become increasingly likely when the fitness landscape changes so as to reduce the height of the ridge. Once over the ridge, the descent into the new valley will go very fast. This is a positive feedback regime in which deviations from the previous position are amplified. This means that the system will evolve very quickly to a new, fitter configuration. If we would check the evolution of the species in the geological record, we would find many fossils corresponding to the position at the bottom of the valley where the organism remained for so long, but few or none corresponding to the crossing of the ridge, which happened very fast on the geological time scale.
The systems approach can help us to understand more profoundly how a small variation can produce a major change. Indeed, organisms, like all systems, are organized in levels, corresponding to their subsystems and subsubsystems. Each subsystem is described by its own set of genes. A mutation in one of the components at the lower levels will in general have little effect on the whole. On the other hand, a mutation at the highest level, where the overall arrangement of the organism is determined, may have a spectacular impact. For example, a single mutation may turn a four-legged animal into a six-legged one. Such high-level mutations are unlikely to be selected, but potentially they can lead to revolutionary changes.
A fundamental example of such a major change is the metasystem transition, where a system evolves in a relatively short time to a higher level of complexity.

Reference:
Gould S.J., and N. Eldredge. 1977: Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered. Paleobiology 3, pp. 115-151.
 
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ChordatesLegacy

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Fitness landscapes = kindergarten level? :scratch:


Well you are probably right; but it’s most differently 6-10 year old level.

When I was a boy, I would spend hours creating such fitness landscapes, but first you had to find two ant nests, back then that meant red and black, close together and spike the ground between the nests with niceties, such as jam, sugar, dead insects etc and then sit back and watch the warfare.

I know this is not the best analogy, but I think most 6-10 year olds have an idea of boundaries, and that feeling of excitement and fear of what lies beyond.
 
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