Well if selling out to the naturalistic assumptions of universal common descent makes one, 'uneducatable' then so be it. I take seriously the corrections that are made in the spirit they are intended. The fact is that I reserve the right to remain unconvinced by a line of evidence that never makes the case it's intended to.
Amazing. You claim simultaneously that you will refuse to accept evidence you don't like and that the evidence doesn't do what it is claimed. Had you considered the possibility that it is your pre-determined dismissal of the evidence that makes it appear to you to not do what it is claimed?
I don't know if you noticed Loudmouth made a number of blatant errors in our little formal debate.
I noticed that you did, in fact, I noticed that you made the exact same errors that you've made on the public forums. And not just here, but on EvC as well. You had your errors corrected there bu still other folks, and yet you just came back here, STILL using the same claims.
Not one evolutionist ever corrected him. When Time says that we are 98% the same in our DNA as chimpanzees I didn't see one professional scientist rush to correct this obvious error, the simple truth is the paper they were describing said otherwise.
I see that you have conveniently forgotten the
several discussions revolving around that and similar issues that you made so much of,
including one with me. But that is the YEC way, isn't it? Simply 'forget' all the times you've been called out and proven wrong, and blame it all on the other guys.
Your problem is that you have a double standard and a deep animosity towards people who's religious convictions don't appeal to you.
No, I have a single standard - it has to do with people understanding the material they are discussing and when they make errors of understanding or interpretation that they accept the fact that they made the errors, learn from them, and move on. It is just a coincidence, I am sure, that the majority of people that I have encountered who are unable to do this are YEC types.
Have you ever noticed that there aren't that many creationists posting in here?
Yes. They apparently prefer to preach to the choir, so to speak. Don't like having their precious beliefs questioned.
Occasionally I get an opportunity to have an exchange with one on there, something that doesn't happen in this forum. My objections to mainstream evolutionary views are neither elaborate nor highly technical.
Nor very accurate, relevant, or technically feasible.
Just to be clear, the main ones are as follows:
[*]Chimpanzee ancestors are all but absent in the fossil record, leading me to believe that they are being masqueraded as our ancestors.
Then I submit that your knowledge of paleontology ranks right up there with your knowledge of molecular biology.
[*]The human brain had neither the time nor the means to have evolved from that of apes due to the deleterious effects of mutations on the human brain.
An unsupported assertion premised on a 'folk science' understanding of evolutionary biology and developmental genetics. You still think that there must be some sort of correlation between numbers of mutational events and phenotypic changes, which only serves to support my charge of scientific naivete.
[*]Evolutionists do not accept the inverse logic of their homology arguments which is both intuitively obvious a logical consequence.
I read those words, but they do not seem to have any real meaning.
I bear you no malice and certainly have no political axe to grind. My interest in the subject is philosophical and intellectual. It is unfortunate that you have so much contempt for this profoundly Christian world-view.
Error of interpretation. I don't care about people's worldviews. My contempt is for those who use their worldview as a shield against skepticism and inquiry, who hold their own views as beyond and above scrutiny and declare any attempt to argue against views that are an extension of their worldviews are attacks against their worldview.
I simply make my objections known and let the conversation go where it will.
Except that when it does not go where you are hoping it will, you pull out the worldview martyr card and/or simply restate your original flawed positions, just as you are doing now.
As I have said before, I reserve the right to remain unconvinced.
I reserve the right to remind the readers that you and your ilk use this 'right' to justify ignoring facts and repeating demonstrably erroneous opinions for the obvious sole purpose of propping up your worldview.
Let's see how I measure on the Dunning-krugerism meter:
Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:
- tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
- fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
- fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
- recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.
1. I had
one introduction to Biology class where evolution was never discussed,
Yet here you are, YEARS later, still insisting that your naive, unwarranted, unfounded, repeatedly refuted folk science 'interpretations' are not only reasonable and scientific, but true.
10 on the Dunning-Kruger meter.
No extensive knowledge of Biology is required to see that Darwinism is far more philosophical then it is empirical.
Thanks for adding even more evidence for my charge. 10+++ on the D-K scale.
2. On the contrary, I have a deep respect for the scientists I encounter on here. I wouldn't suffer their many insults if not for the fact that I hope to learn from then and, as hard as it might be to believe, often do.
Demonstrably false claim. I have seen real scientists explain things to you, repeatedly, on this forum and others, year after year, only to see you completely ignore or dismiss those explanations.Not exactly the actions of one who wishes only to learn.
10 on the D-K scale.
3. Close, I fail to see what skills I would require to see blatant and obvious omissions in the evidence.
So, when martyrdom fails, you engage in attacks on the integrity of others... 7.5 on the D-K scale.
Where are the chimpanzee ancestors in the fossil record?
Here and there. Do you really think that Australopithecines are chimps or chimp ancestors? If so, then you just supplied more evidence for point 1.
10 on the D-K scale.
What molecular mechanism(s) are responsible for the nearly three-fold expansion of the human brain from that of apes?
Still using that old canard - more evidence for point 1.
Questions abound and instead of empirical demonstrations I encounter ad hominem attacks.
After you have it shown to you that your hyperbolic claims re: brain size increase simply ignore the actual trends, and after you continue to regurgitate the SAME hyperbolic claims, your lack of knowledge and lack of integrity on the issue is pointed out. These statements are NOT ad hominems, they are statements of fact.
By definition, Ad Hominem arguments focus on IRRELEVANT characteristics of the person rather than their claims. Your claims rebutted/refuted, you continue to make the same claims, rejecting their refutation. It is then that your lack of education, Dunning-Krugerism, etc. is brought up. Such characteristics are not used against your arguments themselves, which have been rendered moot by actual facts, but to help explain why you keep making the same erroneous claims.
Labeling them as 'ad hominem' is just another ploy used by YECs to avoid having to admit their errors.
10+ on the D-K scale.
That fallacious approach makes you vulnerable to the viral intellectual ignorance you are fighting. I mean think about it, what do you really know about Biblical Christianity?
I know that for some people, a strict adherence to their particular version of biblical christianity makes them engage in rampant Dunning-Krugerism.
4. Starting college again in the fall if everything goes according to plan. Presently intending to pursue a Liberal Arts degree but have an interest in the life sciences and would be open to suggestions of how I could be trained in order to overcome my 'previous lack of skill'.
Take a good genetics class, introductory to begin with. Maybe a physical anthropology class, and several higher-level biology classes, including anatomy, and physiology and cell biology.
That is for starters.
Open to any suggestions you might have. Do I need to become more proficient in math, chemistry, biology or perhaps I would do well to explore epistemology and metaphysics?
Metaphysics and such are for those who cannot muster evidence for their claims.
Thanks for the exchange Professor, always interesting to watch you abandon the subject matter and descend into these scathing ad hominem attacks.
Not as interesting as seeing YECs engage the 'poor poor me' routine and falsely label accurate exposures of their shortcomings as ad hominem attacks.
Perhaps it's my unskilled, arrogant ignorance but as far as I can tell, resorting to fallacious lines of reasoning are a way of conceding that positive proof has been exhausted.
Indeed. So one should wonder why you have kept at it for the last 6+ years.
It is fallacious, for example, to insist that there was some nearly instantaneous 3x increase in brainsize in human evolution when you have been shown, repeatedly, that in fact, there is a rather smooth gradation of brainsize across phylogeny. It is fallacious to insist that the nucleotides in an indel should count individually when discussing genome similarities since indels are one-time mutational events.
And so on.
Yes, the Dunning-Kruger effect is alive and well in YEC types. And this is an observation, not an argument, but it is an observation that helps explain why someone would continue to use erroneous arguments for more than 5 years, despite the error having been explained to them the first time they used it (and each time since).