Here's one...
http://www.scienceagainstevolution.org/v11i6f.htm - a better breakdown of this data they're so upset about here...
http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=507 - and yet a better representation of this data can be found here...
http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=559 - a stark highlight of how far outside the bell curve the US is on science education. It's not that Americans are undereducated - it's just that science education and awareness is avoided by Teachers to not upset & offend the religious zealots.... path of least resistance that's coming back around to collect it's dues.
Creation isn't taught in the public schools because the Creator or the Designer is God.
A significant aspect of the IDM [intelligent design movement] is that despite Defendants' protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. (
page 26 Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District)
It has nothing to do with whether or not it's true. In the United States religion is protected from governmental interference and there is a long history of Christianity thriving here. Academics in the United States, even in seminaries, long ago abandoned the Bible as history and yet the collective acumen in the sciences are limited to those who have access to higher education and specialized training. It's been my experience that Darwinians are woefully inadequate when it comes to actual scientific details, they prefer to talk in generalities.
but Evolution IS a theory - even if Darwinism isn't.... or whatever darwinism is supposed to be... Creationism though, that isn't even a starter in Science. Happy to assess the evidence for any hypothesis you'd like to put forward tho, especially a falsifiable test?
First of all evolution is not a theory, it's a phenomenon in nature. Darwinism is the theory of natural selection that categorically rejects any miraculous cause. It embodies:
The doctrine that species, including man, are descended from other species. He first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. (Darwin, On the Origin of Species)
Newton said the first rule of science is:
admit no more causes of natural things than are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances,
(Four Rules of Scientific Reasoning. Principia Mathematica. Isaac Newton)
In the same book Newton includes an Intelligent Design argument:
This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed Stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being form’d by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed Stars is of the same nature with the light of the Sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems. And lest the systems of the fixed Stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those Systems at immense distances from one another. (Newton, Principia)
What changed wasn't science, it was the supposition of Darwinian logic. Science and supposition are not the same thing but they are equivocated as if they were just as Darwinian naturalistic assumptions are often equivocated with evolution.
I don't need scientific evidence to NOT accept your particular belief. Do you accept there's a teapot orbiting Mars?
I don't need you to accept what I believe, you already have everything you need. People suppress the truth in unrighteousness and attribute to nature what is rightfully attributed to God:
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. (Rom. 1:22, 23)
I'm not condescending, and in no way would I hold a candle to you if I were either - I think there's a little projection going on there. There's no evidence for your version of your God, I don't even have any scientific evidence to consider, let alone accept. On the other hand, I accept the scientific evidence for the Theory of Evolution because, for starters, that evidence exists. Secondly, it has as few assumptions required while having the most explanatory power.
The evidence doesn't change for me and it's not something naturalistic assumptions gives you exclusive access to. I have access to the scientific evidence, searched relentlessly through the scientific literature and found the Darwinian myth of the stone age ape man to be contrived, conflated and utterly false. Your not embracing science here otherwise we would be talking about Mendelian genetics. You are not backing up what you say from evidence, you post three links you didn't even bother to quote or cite, I'd be surprised if you actually read them.
There are religions being practiced today that have a history outdating the earliest Abrahamic religion by a thousand years. Look into The Vedas of the Hindus for a start.
I did comparative studies of religions before I ever heard of Darwinism.
When the sky above was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsû, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both,
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being. (Enûma Eliš Babylonian Creation Myth)
The pagan elementals came before the gods in ancient mythology. The God of the Hebrews, the same God of Christian theism, the One True Everlasting Most High created the heavens and all that is in them. Especially emphasized in Scripture is the creation of life in general and man in particular. This is nothing new, this controversy has spanned church history.
In regard to the making of the universe and the creation of all things there have been various opinions, and each person has propounded the theory that suited his own taste. For instance, some say that all things are self- originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans are among these; they deny that there is any Mind behind the universe at all. (Athanasius On The Incarnation 296 AD)
There are two possible sources, mythical elementals and God. Charles Darwin's grandfather wrote a myth about creation, Charles actually went into the family business when he wrote On the Origin of Species. Mythography has always been more popular then genuine theism:
Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic Life began beneath the waves.
"ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing. (Erasmus Darwin, Temple of Nature)
Well, I've read Plenty on the subject, particularly here on this forum by those working in the field. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but there's plenty of conversations I've avidly followed, especially the ones you proclaim your opponent was preaching to an empty hall!
Those are often the best ones, usually where you keep getting called out blatantly ignoring a point someone or other has made - telling right there.
Oh yea, I get annoyed with people who want to talk to me in the third person and there is a quote by Francis Bacon I have long admired for it's eloquence and style:
Idols of the Theater are those which are due to sophistry and false learning. These idols are built up in the field of theology, philosophy, and science, and because they are defended by learned groups are accepted without question by the masses. When false philosophies have been cultivated and have attained a wide sphere of dominion in the world of the intellect they are no longer questioned. False superstructures are raised on false foundations, and in the end systems barren of merit parade their grandeur on the stage of the world. (Francis Bacon, Idols of the Mind)
Just love that.
Well, yes, creationists are opposed to it. Evolution is probably the most well evidenced scientific theory we have. Even if the issues pointed out by creationists were half as bad as they'd like to imagine, the Theory of Evolution is still the ONLY Scientific Theory on the diversity of life.
Define evolution. Scientifically it's the change of alleles in populations over time. The Darwinian logic is predicated on the a priori assumption of universal common descent by exclusively naturalistic means. Like all logical fallacies that is an argument that never happened. Define the term or the argument is meaningless and certainly an ambiquise term is useless for postulating a unified theory of natural history.
Again, not an expert, but the accepted science is between 96% and 98% depending on the method of measure. Indels are an observed phenomenon, so not considering them in any comparison is a fundamental mistake. Why wouldn't you consider Indels?
Single-nucleotide substitutions occur at a mean rate of 1.23%...
Orthologous proteins... 29% being identical and the typical orthologue differing by only two amino acids, one per lineage...
On the basis of this analysis, we estimate that the human and chimpanzee genomes each contain 40–45 Mb of species-specific euchromatic sequence, and the indel differences between the genomes thus total ~90 Mb. This difference corresponds to ~3% of both genomes and dwarfs the 1.23% (
Chimpanzee Genome, 2005)
It's 98% and some change if you don't count indels, it's less then 96% if you do. That's why most evolutionists pretend the indels don't exist, they have no way of explaining them.
That aside, I've seen numerous explanatory lectures on the subject, and one by Kenneth Miller about the chromosome fusion comparison between us and Chimpanzees on Chromosome 2. The GENOME Team put forth an evolutionary prediction (i.e. a Falsifiable test) on what they'd find between Chimps and Humans with 24 pairs and 23 pairs of chromosomes respectively, and indeed, this prediction Passed with flying colours!
Thank you, You too!
I've seen all of Kenneth Miller's stuff, he was a key person in the Dover trial. Read a lot of Behe at the time as well. It's not a falsifiable test if you already know the tag element is there. The way falsifiablity works is first you have to accept the inverse logic. If there is an up, there must be a down, if there is an on, there must be an off.
Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must have been created by some omnipotent intelligence. (D. Futuyma, Science on Trial)
Accept the inverse logic and we can start talking about potential falsifiability. Start of with an a priori assumption and these inferences from anecdotal evidence are just another performance in the Darwinian Theater of the Mind. Alas, all the greatest performers have left the stage, the culture wars are over, just little ole me up in the balcony munching on popcorn and watching the show.
By the way, I've just been testing the waters lately, can't believe how this place has cleared out. Always before there would be a troll in every thread getting more vicious with every post. I'm glad the nasty little buggers are gone, I'm thinking this might be a time for an actual discussion. I'd enjoy that, Comparative studies: Fossils, Genomics and Anatomy. Something like that, just haven't had time to put it together.
Grace and peace,
Mark
