Coccyx - tale of a creationist disinformation post

[Bible Research Tools]

You said that the separation for church and state did not exist for the first 150 years of the existence of America. Yet it CLEARLY DID. So you're lying.

Anyone as ignorant of the U.S. Constitution and American History as you should not be throwing around the word "Liar".

And that's just your own reading and yet there's no evidence of Hitler being a 'Darwinist'. So lie #2.

Yeah, sure . . .

As were the vast majority, if not all, of the slave holders in the US at the time as well.

Christians don't own slaves. Christians are instructed to serve, not to be served:

"You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." -- Mar 10:42-45 NKJV​

Dan

 

[USincognito]

Have you never seen laboratory sedimentation experiments?

You mean the one where they take sand in a separating funnel and then claim one can scale that up to a planetary flood? I would think an engineer wouldn't get in by those sorts of shenanigans.

 

[USincognito]

So-called separation of church and state is a man-made construct invented by anti-God communists at the ACLU, and forced into law by a corrupt judiciary who usurped that power from the states and the people.

You have probably never heard that before.

You're right. I've heard some crazy assertions regarding church/state, but I've never heard that particular crazy before.

 

[Bible Research Tools]

The United States has never allowed a formal religion to be involved with the government . I don’t know who told you otherwise but they were wrong .

You are ignorant of the Constitution. Did you know that one of the first official acts of the first Congress of the United States in 1787 (the Congress that debated and approved the Constitution) was to set up the offices of Christian Chaplains for the two houses of Congress?

It is a good thing for the first Congress that the constitution-hating wackos from the ACLU were not around or they might have been sued, though it would not have been for so-called "separation of church and state" since Thomas Jefferson didn't coin that phrase until 1802; and surely it would have taken the ACLU a while to figure out how to misapply the phrase to their advantage (and freedom's detriment).

america doesn’t have an official religion and is FORBIDDEN to form one.

The intention of the 1st Amendment was to ensure the U.S. Congress did not endorse and support an official denomination, such as the oppressive Church of England which many had fled from, including some of my Quaker ancestors. The official religion of the United States was non-denominational Christianity until about the mid-20th century, and congressional chaplains were chosen from various denominations of Christianity.

The First Amendment did not apply to the states and the people, but rather was intended to protect them so they could be free to worship any time and any place they chose, including public schools and forums. And that was the case until the 1960's, or later, until the strong arm of tyranny came crashing down on them.

For the record, some of the early state constitutions lawfully endorsed a particular Christian denomination as the official religion. The purpose of the constitution was to protect the people from the federal government (and, in some instances, the state governments), not to suppress them.

If hitler understood evolution he would have known that humans are a single species and he wouldn’t have misused evolution to destroy the people he did

You are aware that eugenics supposedly "evolved" from Darwinism, are you not? In fact, Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, is credited with coining the term. His goal was supposedly to perfect the human race by getting rid of the "undesirables", while multiplying its "desirables", according to a PBS essay on eugenics that mentions him:

Evolution: Darwin: In the Name of Darwin​

Have you ever read this by Stephen Jay Gould?

"Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory. The litany is familiar: cold, dispassionate, objective, modern science shows us that races can be ranked on a scale of superiority. If this offends Christian morality or a sentimental belief in human unity, so be it; science must be free to proclaim unpleasant truths. But the data were worthless. We never have had, and still do not have, any unambiguous data on the innate mental capacities of different human groups—a meaningless notion" [Stephen Jay Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny." Stephen Jay Gould Archive, 1992] ​

Dan

 

[Bible Research Tools]

All completely irrelevant.You implied that the "favoured races" in the title of On the Origin of Specieshad something to do with human races and racism. That implication was wrong. Like every other creationist I've seen make that connection, you haven't withdrawn your statement. You have demonstrated convincingly your degree of intellectual integrity.

Who are you to tell me when or when not to withdraw a statement? Whether I do or not is none of your concern.

Darwin told us what he meant by the term "favoured races", in regards to humans, in his book "The Descent of Man":

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised [e.g., FAVOURED] races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage [e.g., UNFAVOURED] races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised [FAVOURED] state , as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the [UNFAVOURED] negro or Australian and the gorilla." [Darwin, Charles, Affinities and Genealogies, "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex." John Murray, 2nd Ed, 1888, Chap VI, p.156] ​

The fact that you don't like the term is irrevelant.

Dan

 

[Bible Research Tools]

Sure do. So when you wrote, "There simply does not seem to have been enough time (enough generations) for the many millions of differences to have become fixed," you were what, deliberately trotting out garbage? Having a little laugh at the thought that someone might take your words for a claim that you believed and could support?

No, Stephen, I was "trotting out" reality.

Dan

 

[USincognito]

You are aware that eugenics supposedly "evolved" from Darwinism, are you not?

Primarily because it's not true. Eugenics has a long history extending back to the Spartans and artificial selection is the opposite of evolution.

"...Stephen Jay Gould?"

To be honest, most of us don't give a fig about Gould's writings other than paleontology. He was quite opinionated and wrote a lot of things that Creationists have been quote mining for decades.

 

[Bible Research Tools]

. Darwin thought that the differences between the races was due to education. He thought of hunter gathers in general as savages likened to animals

Perhaps so. He did write this:

"Obviously no animal would be capable of admiring such scenes as the heavens at night, a beautiful landscape, or refined music; but such high tastes are acquired through culture, and depend on complex associations; they are not enjoyed by barbarians or by uneducated persons." [Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex." John Murray, 2nd Ed, 1888, Chap III, p.93] ​

"Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection. The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion." [ibid. Chap V, p.143] ​

Dan

 

[Job 33:6]

No, Stephen, I was "trotting out" reality.

Dan

So you make something up, someone calls you out on it and requests your justification, and instead of justifying your words through actual evidence, you just say...nothing. Nothing at all.

You've done this a handful of times now.

 

[Job 33:6]

Ive been awaiting your responses for days now in the other topic regarding burrows. Now here.

Please explain how the tracks of 500 species of dinosaur have been captured in the middle of a megasequence, if said megasequence was deposited by a massive wave.

@Bible Research Tools

 

[Job 33:6]

And, I just want to add, that the described formation from earlier is in the middle of a megasequence.

If you separate your waves, then you don't get a megasequence, you would get two megasequences. And this formation being in the Mesozoic means that massive flood waters hypothetically would have already passed through the area with the deposition of prior megasequences.

So, to simply things, the planet at this stage has already been flooded and had already had thousands of feet of sediment deposited in the form of pre existing megasequences . Another incredibly massive tsunami starts up, is half way through depositing it's strata, then the dinosaur tracks appear from hundreds of species.

@Bible Research Tools you claim that I am misunderstanding the story. If so, please elaborate.

 

[Bible Research Tools]

What fraction of pseudogenes have been found to be functional?

From what I have read, virtually none in 2006:

"Of course, some might argue that these are actually functional elements placed there by the Creator for a good reason, and our discounting of them as"junk DNA" just betrays our current level of ignorance. And indeed, some small fraction of them may play important regulatory roles. But certain examples severely strain the credulity of that explanation. The process of transposition often damages the jumping gene. There are AREs (ancient repetitive elements) throughout the human and mouse genomes that were truncated when they landed, removing any possibility of their functioning." [Collins, Francis, Deciphering God's Instruction Book, "The Language of God." 2006, Gen 1:20, p.136] ​

But by 2015, that same scientist was implying we should not rule any out:

"In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, 'turns out to be doing stuff.'" [Zimmer, Carl, "Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?". New York Times, 2015]
​

Do identified functions of pseudogenes include the entire gene?

You would know much more about that than I do. I read a while back that functions are difficult to characterize, so I am waiting it out until it is not so difficult.

Why would any designer use processed genes as a design element?

That assumes there is such a thing as a "processed gene", and/or that our idea of what makes a good "design" is the same as the designer. I seem to recall Richard Dawkins and Ken Miller asking similar questions about the human eye, before we learned it was a masterpiece of engineering genius, complete with its own version of "fiber optics".

Dan

 

[Bible Research Tools]

but that’s all you’ve been doing is complaining about evolution without refuting anything . Pointing out misquoted real mainstream scientists . Quoting pseudoscience practioners as if their nonsense is or should be accepted by the scientific community, despite the fact that they have zero evidence for their assertions.

I will agree there is zero evidence for evolution.

Demonstrating that you absolutely do not understand science is not evidence against a major scientific theory.

There is certainly no real evidence for evolution, only imaginary evidence, such as imaginary whale flukes and flippers on land animals, and so forth.

I sense you like tit-for-tat; but life is short. If you have anything worthwhile to add to this conversation, please do before I move on.

Dan

 

[pitabread]

I will agree there is zero evidence for evolution.

What is bizarre to me about these types of assertions is how blatantly at odds they are with reality. Even if you don't necessary *agree* with the theory of evolution, to suggest there is absolutely no evidence to support it is just being silly.

It's similar to how creationists will claim there are no applications of evolution even though evolution is used in real-world applications.

It's the most bizarre form of reality denial and I just can't wrap my head around how one can do that.

 

[USincognito]

I will agree there is zero evidence for evolution.

There is certainly no real evidence for evolution, only imaginary evidence, such as imaginary whale flukes and flippers on land animals, and so forth.

What is bizarre to me about these types of assertions is how blatantly at odds they are with reality. Even if you don't necessary *agree* with the theory of evolution, to suggest there is absolutely no evidence to support it is just being silly.

It's similar to how creationists will claim there are no applications of evolution even though evolution is used in real-world applications.

It's the most bizarre form of reality denial and I just can't wrap my head around how one can do that.

Since he's such a big fan of authority and quotes, I wonder how he'll hand wave this one away.

Dr. Todd Wood, Creationist baraminologist
The truth about evolution

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.​

I wonder what Dr. Todd Wodd knows that BRT doesn't.

 

[Bible Research Tools]

Again, the formation discussed in bolivia is in the middle of a megasequence. Dinosaurs would not have had any time to walk around if they were being carried hundreds of miles by giant waves, as per Kurt Wise.

Again, the megasequences were formed by surges, not by waves; and it was not 5 surges that covered the entire continent. Dr. Wise explains the coverage in the sedimentology video.

Secular geologists have determined that the water levels rose and fell between each megasequence. The first -- the Sauk -- would have been the most powerful.

I am reading about the Bolivia find now, and it appears it is in the Upper Cretaceous. Is that correct? If so, that would be the last full megasequence -- the Zuni. I don't have a map of that sequence, but this is how the first three megasequences mapped out in South America.

This is the first one -- the Sauk -- on three continents:

Dan

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Anyone as ignorant of the U.S. Constitution and American History as you should not be throwing around the word "Liar".

Oh I will call you a liar on it. Since it is clearly written in the First Amendment of the US Constitution; "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Yeah, sure . . .

Real mature response. Hitler wasn't a 'Darwinist'. He only is in your own petty imagination.

Christians don't own slaves. Christians are instructed to serve, not to be served:

"You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." -- Mar 10:42-45 NKJV​

Dan

Who are you, who does not know your own history?

 

[Brightmoon]

You think the western interior sea is part of your creationist fantasies?!?! It’s well known that there was a sea once covering the middle of the USA during the Cretaceous. Note that, the Cretaceous not the few months of the Flood. They find marine reptiles like mosasaurs there. The oceans spread over the land because the sea levels were higher and the tectonic plates were interacting in such a way that the continent was being pulled down.

 

[Job 33:6]

Again, the megasequences were formed by surges, not by waves; and it was not 5 surges that covered the entire continent. Dr. Wise explains the coverate in the sedimentology video.

Secular geologists have determined that the water levels rose and fell between each megasequence. The first -- the Sauk -- would have been the most powerful.

I am reading about the Bolivia find now, and it appears it is in the Upper Cretaceous. Is that correct? If so, that would be the last full megasequence -- the Zuni. I don't have a map of that sequence, but this is how the first three megasequences mapped out in South America.

This is the first one -- the Sauk -- on three continents:

Dan

And?

Where is the part where you actually explain how I am wrong?

A simple "I'm not sure" would be fine. Same with the burrow/bioturbatiom topic, you don't seem to have a response. Which is ok. There's no shame in not being familiar with geology if you aren't a geologist to begin with. The only shameful act is standing by unsubstantiated claims.

 

[Ophiolite]

That is a bizarre statement. Perhaps you should read up on western civilization. A good place to start is the Annenberg Learner which has a 52 course series on the Western Tradition, taught by the late UCLA professor Eugen Weber. It is a real eye-opener to those who have brainwashed by the post 1960's public school system:

Resource: The Western Tradition​

Perhaps you should stop being so patronisingly arrogant.
1. I was not a product of the post 1960s Public School system.
2. I was not a product of the American school system.
3. I have made a passingly sound autodidact study of Western Civilisation.
4. My central point is that you conflate Western civilisation with US civilisation. While the two are clearly related there are deep and profound differences. Moreover you appear to be ignorant of the fact that you are doing this.

If they cared about our children they would support the teaching of the tenants of the New Covenant.

Nice switch, we were talking about children not their parents, but such manipulation won't work here. Address my point directly. Are you still claiming that atheist/agnostic children don't care about other children, or do you concede that you were mistaken in that claim?

I am pretty certain that the power-hungry lunatics Marx and Engels were Darwinists; and there is little doubt that many power-hungry Nazis' were also Darwinists.

You are doing it again. We were talking about Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, etc. I challenged you on your claim and instead of addressing it, you move the goalposts. That is intellectually dishonest. Please stop if you wish this exchange to continue in a reasonable fashion.

​

Let me quote that part again, so everyone will know why you are so morally indignant:

"No free society can remain free, if it can even survive. without the belief by both citizens and leaders that they will be held accountable in the afterlife for their sins (which they will!)"​

There is nothing out of the ordinary in that statement. That is what American Christian's have traditionally believed. Do you not like American Christians? Do you despise our tradition?

I take strong exception to the fact that you claim that without the threat of eternal damnation I and others are incapable of behaving in a moral fashion, following high ethical standards. Do you still insist this is the case?

That position has absolutely nothing to do with my views on American Christians. During my time living in Dallas and during many subsequent visits to the States I knew, worked with and socialised with many American Christians and not a single one so much as hinted that they thought as you do on this point. Please do the right thing and detract your offensive remark.​