Evolution is a Fact

[USincognito]

The worse is this one http://www.christianforums.com/t7409940/ in the baptist forum
{snip}Person 2: ZOMG liberal. There are liberal forums we shouldn't be browbeaten in the baptist room
{snip}

Post #42 is especially awesome where newbie LiveInSpirit tells veteran PrincetonGuy to "take it elsewhere".

I think we might be too harsh on new comers.
I mean, I know we've heard the arguments a thousand times and it gets frustrating having to repeat ourselves over an over again to deaf ears.
But we come at them with the same force that we use to spar the longer time members and they really can't take it, in the short time that I've been here I can think of more than a few creationists that have come onto these forums and promptly left.

And, more importantly, all well have (or at least those of you who can't help yourselves) is the antics of the village idiot.

Your probably right.... but if you look, there's quite a few gems here on CF that have yet to drop by.

At first glance I'd love to see thefivesolas stop by and be made a fool of, but since his schtick is bluster, preaching and empty boasts I don't see any good discussion coming out of it. We'll see though.

 

[USincognito]

You liked the last one so much, I thought I would be kind and share another one with you:

"…I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science…. It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaws & holes as sound parts." Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, cited by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991) pp. 456, 475.{snip}

I love all the ellipses in that quote!

It gets even better, whatever site he cut and pasted it from got the citation wrong! The letter was to T.H. Huxley, not to Asa Gray. And here's the entirety if anyone is interested.
Letter 2466 — Darwin, C. R. to Huxley, T. H., 2 June [1859?] :: Darwin Correspondence Project

I meant to have added one other word. You speak of finding a flaw in my hypothesis,f2 & this shows you do not understand its nature. It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaws & holes as sound parts.— My question is whether the rag is worth anything? I think by careful treatment I can carry in it my fruit to market for a short distance over a gentle road; but I fear that you will give the poor rag such a devil of a shake that it will fall all to atoms; & a poor rag is better than nothing to carry one’s fruit to market in— So do not be too ferocious.

No where near as damming as the Creationist quote miners would have readers believe.

 

[Hawk007]

<staff edit>

What stuns us is that there are still people who believe in a Young Earth Creation. There is about as much evidence of a heliocentric solar system as Evolutionary Theory after all.

<staff edit>

I guess you also believe God is to weak to create an universe like the Bible said even though it might look old to us and when He created Adam and Eve He threw a few cells on the ground and waited billions of years for it to grow so that He can blow life into them! <staff edit>

When God fed His people led by Moses in the dessert, I do not believe God waited for the manna to evolve or have natural selection before He can let it fall from the sky.......I prefer to live by the Word and not by the world, we all give account of our lives when the time comes.....science does not dictate my thoughts when it comes to my faith in Christ and the Word of God.

All the best.

 

[Hawk007]

If God created the earth, then the earth is God's handiwork. Science is therefore the study of God's handiwork. Evolution is science, and provides predictions and valuble results used in many fields. The evidence is that if God created, he did it though evolution. Evolution is God's handiwork.

That is true, but when handiwork wants to dictate the maker, it is there where the problem lies.....

 

[Sanguis]

It gets even better, whatever site he cut and pasted it from got the citation wrong! The letter was to T.H. Huxley, not to Asa Gray. And here's the entirety if anyone is interested.
Letter 2466 — Darwin, C. R. to Huxley, T. H., 2 June [1859?] :: Darwin Correspondence Project



No where near as damming as the Creationist quote miners would have readers believe.

What Magnum has already demonstrated to us, is that he doesn't understand that when Darwin first made his observations, and wrote TOoS, he didn't know half as much as we know about evolution today. He can't really comprehend that Darwin wrote that over 100 years ago, and thinks science hasn't progressed in that time.

Just as Newton didn't know everything about gravity, or just as Benjamin Franklin didn't know nearly as much as we do about electricity.

 

[Hawk007]

Hi USincognito,

Thanks for the link, this is one smart guy, Dr David Menton....

• Member of the American Association of Anatomists
• Member of Sigma Xi
• Silver Award for Basic Research from the American Academy of Dermatology
• Given 'Distinguished Service Teaching Award' from Washington University School of Medicine in 1991, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997
• Named 'Teacher of the Year' at Washington University School of Medicine in 1979
• Elected 'Professor of the Year' in 1998 by the Washington University School of Medicine Class of 2000
• Profiled in 'American Men and Women of Science - A Biographical Directory of Today's Leaders in Physical, Biological and Related Sciences' for almost two decades

Biography

Professional Affiliation:

• Biomedical research technician at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota in the Department of Dermatology (1960-62)
• Associate Professor of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (1966-2000)
• Associate Professor Emeritus of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine (July 2000)

Education

• B.A. from Mankato State University in Mankato, Minnesota
• Ph.D. in cell biology from Brown University

And the best of it all is the fact that he seems to be a Christian, Amen for that!

 

[Psudopod]

That is true, but when handiwork wants to dictate the maker, it is there where the problem lies.....

Not sure what you mean by this. There is nothing we have found that points to who the creator is, or even if there is one. Science doesn’t say “God didn’t create.” Science merely says “this is the process by which this happened, to the best of our understanding”. There are lots of Christians working in scientific fields, take Francis Collins for example. To him, he looks at the human genome and he sees the handiwork of God reflected in it. Others do not, but this is a matter of faith, not science.

Yes there are some atheists who like to proclaim the idea that science disproves God, but they’re just as foolish and their arguments are often as bad as some of the creationist ones. Having faith doesn’t make you stupid; it can be a very valuable thing. But tying your faith to something that be shown to be false is dangerous, because it either leads people to loose their faith, or refuse to look at the evidence.

 

[Tenka]

I read this short article you linked and the standard is very poor, excepting the brief introduction explaining how laws and theories work in science.
From there, Menton behaves like a base creationist, making a few choice quote mines and jumping at the amateur conclusion that; if we don't directly see it (macro evolution) happen then there is no evidence for it.
Menton is educated in biology and does know better than this, the only explanation is that he is lying for his faith.

In the months ahead, we will see that creation by intelligent design is a vastly more reasonable explanation for the origin of the complexity we see in living things than is evolution by mere chance and the intrinsic properties of nature.

This was written in 1993 and ID has since made no inroads whatsoever and was dismissed by the court as creationism is sheep's clothing.

 

[Hawk007]

I read this short article you linked and the standard is very poor, excepting the brief introduction explaining how laws and theories work in science.
From there, Menton behaves like a base creationist, making a few choice quote mines and jumping at the amateur conclusion that; if we don't directly see it (macro evolution) happen then there is no evidence for it.
Menton is educated in biology and does know better than this, the only explanation is that he is lying for his faith.



This was written in 1993 and ID has since made no inroads whatsoever and was dismissed by the court as creationism is sheep's clothing.

You must keep in mind, at the end of the day this person is still a scientist, I really do not believe it will help for him to lie about things and place it in the media to be analyzed by those who believes otherwise, so like the evolutionists I believe he thinks he is correct.

 

[USincognito]

What Magnum has already demonstrated to us, is that he doesn't understand that when Darwin first made his observations, and wrote TOoS, he didn't know half as much as we know about evolution today. He can't really comprehend that Darwin wrote that over 100 years ago, and thinks science hasn't progressed in that time.

Just as Newton didn't know everything about gravity, or just as Benjamin Franklin didn't know nearly as much as we do about electricity.

I was going to edit in a comment I forgot earlier, but your salient point will make an even better jumping off point to add it to - I think this mentality is most often exhibited by YECs from traditions that rely heavily on proof texting and, except for pop commentaries, generally ignore more contemporary (18th and 19th Cent) writings by theologians. Put more succintly, since they think the Bible is the sole source of inspiration and explanation for their beliefs, they rely on selected verses to support their dogma and tenets. This causes them to think that science similarly relies on the original books or epistles (like Origin or the Huxley letter) in the same way they do.

It's simply incomprehensible to them that knowledge might have increased since the original writings were composed.

Hi USincognito,

Thanks for the link, this is one smart guy, Dr David Menton....{snip}

Judging by his CV his brilliant. I don't know how much you know about American schools, but Massachusetts Institute of Technology is considered one of the best schools in the country (even better than Brown where he got his degree) and Washington University (where Menton taught) is considered to be the MIT of the mid-West.

That doesn't change the fact that he's a Creationist shill and his conclusions are filtered through his religious beliefs. I would place no more value on his pronouncements about evolution than I would on a former head of NASA claiming we never landed on the Moon.

 

[USincognito]

You must keep in mind, at the end of the day this person is still a scientist, I really do not believe it will help for him to lie about things and place it in the media to be analyzed by those who believes otherwise, so like the evolutionists I believe he thinks he is correct.

No. He is not still a scientist. He's left the bench and academia behind in order to shill for a Creationist organization. I'm absolutely sure he believes he's correct, but that doesn't change the fact that he isn't.

His shill work for AiG won't get into the media since it's garbage, but there are still journals and bloggers who analyze it and they're even more harsh on him than I am.
Dr. David Menton is a liar

 

[VirOptimus]

You must keep in mind, at the end of the day this person is still a scientist, I really do not believe it will help for him to lie about things and place it in the media to be analyzed by those who believes otherwise, so like the evolutionists I believe he thinks he is correct.

Science isnt about "belief", its about describing the physical reality. Thats why creationism never can be science and furthermore why it cant be treated like science.

 

[rjw]

I guess you also believe God is to weak to create an universe like the Bible said ...

The problem with that kind of argument is that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deity can do anything and everything. This includes creating universes and causing our daily weather.

If the Bible claims that God created the universe, then equally it claims that God causes our daily rain, wind, frost and snow. It denies that these are natural phenomena.

So are you going to argue that you do accept what our modern meteorologists say with respect to how wind, frost, rain and snow are caused? If so then why not accept what our modern astronomers, geologists and biologists say?

Claiming that you reject the latter because of what the Bible claims, simply begs the question - why don't you reject modern meteorology on exactly the same grounds?


Your arguments display a knowledge of what God or the gods can do and did actually do, a knowledge which I doubt you really have. A god being strong enough to do something is not the same as that god actually doing it. A person claiming that a god did something is not the same as a god actually doing it.


Regards, Roland

 

[Sanguis]

1000 get!

 

[Tenka]

You must keep in mind, at the end of the day this person is still a scientist, I really do not believe it will help for him to lie about things and place it in the media to be analyzed by those who believes otherwise, so like the evolutionists I believe he thinks he is correct.

At the end of the day Menton has a religious belief unsupported by the evidence. That article shows that he denies and distorts what the evidence supports because of his religious beliefs.
He is no longer occupying a position where his credibility and hard science are valued.

 

[Hawk007]

No. He is not still a scientist. He's left the bench and academia behind in order to shill for a Creationist organization. I'm absolutely sure he believes he's correct, but that doesn't change the fact that he isn't.

His shill work for AiG won't get into the media since it's garbage, but there are still journals and bloggers who analyze it and they're even more harsh on him than I am.
Dr. David Menton is a liar

Everyone has a right to their opinion! I have no more reason to believe you and your dogma than any other person, the ones you adore are also human like this man who also have a subjective view on the subject. When some flaws are highlighted, your eyes seem to struggle to see the light, the fact is evolution is not so factual as you might think, some good thoughts on the matter and maybe even potential theories......but lets not blow it up as perfect, please. The observation of evolution is so minute it is hard to think "macro evolution" can be the infallible truth.

Thanks for understanding.

 

[ChrisBot]

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