Start communicating

I'mmmm Backkkkkkk! Actually, I will be in an out for a few weeks.

Edx said:

Boy you do love playing semantics games. Youve been defensive of the Creationist position from the start. You were asking a rhetorical question, as that is how it is phrased and in context that is what you meant.

Is English your first language?

Ed

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How many creationists have been on this thread? Possibly one and I am afraid that I may have chased him off, that was way back in the beginning of the thread and I am not going to take the time to review it all right now. Point is this, both the theory of evolution and the theory of creation and the theory of intelligent design have problems when we look only at the scientific evidence presented. If the evolutionist arguements are the only thing presented, then all other arguements are going to question the evolutionist view where problems exist. The same would be true of a discussion that was extremely biased on the creationist side, all arguements would present the weaknesses in the creationist arguements. Etc. This does not automatically mean that I am creationist if I point out the weaknesses in the arguements. what it means is that there are weaknesses in the arguements.

Edx said:

No, the result of this comment shows you believe there are credible Creationists.

Here's a brief summary of this topic...

You disagreed with my statement that "there are no credible creationists" to which you replied ."A quick web search shows us reputable, well educated scientists that hold to the toc or id". So I said:

"Like I said, there are no credible Creationists that do not...

1. ... pretend they are qualified to comment or know what they are talking about.

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So, a degree in a scientific field is now a pretense of being qualified. I think that is the first time I have heard that one. Thanks for enlightening us. The list I presented included the acedemic creditials of each person.

2. ... intentionally distort, mislead or misrepresent anyone or anything.

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You are assuming that because the list was compiled by the ICR
that all those on the ste distort or mislead. to which I said, take your pick of those not listed with the ICR, you of course refused siting me as being lazy, so here is a list for you to choose from, after you have looked them all up, we can talk about individuals and then we can see who is being lazy.
http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/01-evol1.htm
http://socialjusticereview.org/articles/evolutionary_theories.php
http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/anti-evolution/
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-176.htm
http://www.helpforhomeschoolers.com/Article5.htm add to this the list I already gave you and then get back to me. Remember my claim was individual scientists so look each one up seperately that is, if you aren't too lazy to look at the sources I presented to you.

3. ... ignorantly distort, mislead or misrepresent anyone or anything.

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This is not something we can know about an individual unless they tell us they are. What someone knows or doesn't know is not for us to know. That is the problem with your claims about this thread. The OP ask people for their understanding of words and terms, not a discussion about who was right and who was wrong. In other words, what do you know and don't know. that is why I did not correct gluady's about theory and hypothesis, because I needed to know what she understood, not "teach" her anything. You can not know what someone knows unless they reviel it to you. But, you aren't willing to revise your criteria, so we will assume that scientific degrees from a reputable college or university equals lack of ignorance on the topic. That would be a fair place to be on this criteria.

4. ... have wild paranoid conspiracy theories."

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Haven't read one of those on the issue of our origns yet, so that would leave all these as viable. Move on.

Note that the criteria for the above is exactly the same as the later one asking for a credible scientific Creationist source. You then replied to the above with: "I guess that would beg the question what do you mean by credible creationist?" And thus began the long semantical drivel of an argument as to what credible means. For more than a few exchanges I gave you the link to my other topic which was asking for a credible scientific Creationist source which you must have ignored, since it was only when I directly copy and pasted it in a separate post did you actually acknowledge it and reply to it properly (page 19, post #190). You then claimed my challenge was totally unfair, and again continued to fight me on what credible means.

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Actually, I just made the connection that your whole point was to get arguements on your other thread. You really need a creationist to help you out there and not someone like me.

Later, in reply to the above post, we see you are complaining about a point in that above challenge (page 20, post 199) After I explain what I meant by point 1 of the criteria, and show how it isnt actually unfair, you cite Louis Pasteur. "Would you say the same of Louis Pasteur?". I then told you why Louis Pasteur couldnt be a Creationist source. I also had reminded you at various points previously that when I said there are no credible Creationists I meant modern ones, as scientists in Darwins time werent the antiscientific self deceptive variety around today - so Louis Pasteur didnt fit that either.

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From my research Pasteur was a creationist. In addition, you were given an oppertunity to specify and you refused. None the less, I gave you Pasteur and added a list of modern scientists to which you called me lazy because I gave you the right to pick and choose which you wanted to look at so as to not bind up your exceptions and thus keep the discussing to a miminum to which you continue you with this nonesence and personal attacks. Get over it. You don't have to like me, like my style, agree with me, heck, you don't even have to understand my words, but that doen't excuese your attack of my personhood or my goals for being here. I have been honest and upright with you and whether or not your believe me is not my burden but yours.

You then must have got desperate and threw ICRs list at me claiming victory, and also warning me, "you must discredit every scientist listed" as presumably that was the only way you considered it possible for me to prove you wrong. You were also still fighting me on Pasteur in the same post. I reminded you that you were being lazy to throw ICRs list at me, when I was saying. "you know as well as I do that even if I did refute them all here you could just throw another list at me." I also reminded you that ICR are inherently unscientific, and in that list they have their own fake-scientists, so of course the rest were extremly dubious. But I told you if you truly believed ICR to be a valid source you were free to do this properly by choosing any 1 or 2 of the individuals on that list, and allow us to look at what they have said by presenting it here. You also completely ignored that, twice. (page 28+30, post #280+300)

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Actually, I used their list because I found it convenient.

You also misrepresented my challenge by saying things like "You challenged me to find a credible creationist site" which of course I didnt, since a source doesnt have to be a website in itself. And despite giving you all kinds of examples of what would discredit them, and the degree of ignorence and dishonesty I was talking about, you still insisted on misrepresenting it as a totally unfair impossibility. In the same post you also say "I never claimed a credible source, ... I claimed a credible scientist". Now it was probably due to your own ineptitude through not paying attention that you had actually cited Pasteur in a direct responce to the posts about the 'credible scientific Creationist source challenge', but then instead of admitting that when it must have became apparent, you instead argued through it blaming it all on me claiming I wasnt listening to you.

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Already addressed move on.

Unfortunately, Pasteur didnt count for either point anyway. He did not fulfill what I asked for in a credible Creationist, as barring every other reason which I had already told you about, I already had said previously that I was talking about modern Creationists. So no match there then. In regards to your ICR list you have totally ignored both times where I have told you to cite someone properly (even from that list if you want), and not be such an intellecual coward about it by presenting it in the way that you did. So what we are waiting for now is again for you to either show me a credible Creationist, or a credible scientific Creationist source. Like I said this should be quite simple if there were such individuals, as there are a lot of Creationists on the internet

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Addressed above.

The thing is Razzel, I didnt actually ask for credentials. What I did say about them was, "....I would also add that it is not necessary that they be qualified in a relevant field, though that would of course elevate their credibility far higher than someone without, but then they run the risk of knowingly stating flasehoods because they are already aware they are." -- (page 26, post 254)

And be carefull, you wouldnt want to make the appeal to authority fallacy.

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I don't even know what your point here is. What I did was like a list of scientists that have creditials that believe in creation rather than evolution. Which covers my claims.

See above for everything else you say in this post. And you didnt meet the challenge. Pasteur didnt count for either point, and your list was a dishonest and cowardly cop out. I said if you wanted to use that list you could, but I told you to pick 1 or 2 of those individuals who you feel are the best examples and present them here along with a link to something they have written. I told you that twice which was totally ignored both times..

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Covered so many times now I am beginning to wonder what your point really is, if you are just one of those people who can't accept when he is wrong or his challenges are met.

I have no agenda. You have shown me only one person that might fit the challenge, Louis Pasteur. Someone we cant even be absolutely sure was a Creationist anyway, let alone a source for it. Thats how little Pasteur fits. I also told you many times that scientists that had Creationist beliefs back then were not like the anti-scientific variety around today, so you knew I was talking about modern Creationists. Pasteur doesnt fit either point. Your ICR list is a cop out.

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I gave you a whole list of people of whom you have the freedom to choose from the entire list whom you would like to look at closer.

Why on earth do you keep bringing up this court room nonsense! I keep telling you that a court room is not relevant in any way to this discussion, and that it has no resemblance to the scientific method. Ive told you this over and over again, and yet you continue to use it for an analogy. This is also the second time you have said that peer review is like a jury. Its unfortunate, I know, that it doesnt fit your argument that Creationist sources are comparable, but Im afraid peer review doesnt work anything like a jury, Razzel, so Im afraid you just have to deal with it.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/p/pe/peer_review.htm

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Well, lets break it down a bit, you were the first to bring up the courtroom, but that is not the issue, just please keep the discussion and your comments straight. Second, I presented my findings from this thread to my peers for review, so why don't you believe what I found? Maybe because the peers that I presented it to were biased! If the peer review is biased, the results will be biased as well.

Note the first sentence in the "HOw it works" section of the above reference, only one or two people are required to review. If all of those people are biased to accept the results as evidence of evolution, what do you think will happen? That is why we have minds of our own and the capacity to think and reason for ourselves.

I dont know what you were really after, but it wasnt communication. Apparently this isnt the first time you have acted this way either. If it isnt intentional, why do you think you get into these arguments every single time and with every single person? Why is it that it always everyone elses fault that they cant communicate with you? We gave you answers to your questions but very soon it became clear that you werent interested in learning, only arguing in endless subjective semantical circles. You dont admit you are wrong, use your own definitions of words, and you pretend things you say really meant something different when it suits you (for example see end)

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Whatever.

Talk about a change of direction. First you said you only have to be believable to be credible, and now you are saying you have to be without any bias at all in order to be credible.

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Actually, my claim has always been that credible is a relative term and therefore is not a sound discriptions of anything scientific.

Youve been wrong a lot more times than just 2! (and what were those times I would like to know)

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let's look at it honestly for a moment okay?

1. You claimed that "if anything" Evolution borrowed from Genesis. (page26, post#255) You totally ignored your error, even when I pointed it out more than once.

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The claim was made that the theory of creation borrows from the theory of evolution. I pointed out to you that if either theory borrowed from the other it would have to be the other way arond in that the theory of evolution did not exist when the theory of creation was put forth in the Gen account of the bible. This is simple time frame understanding and doesn't require a science degree to determine that my children are descendants of me and me of them. Come now, do try to understand something, even the simplist things. It would be to your credit.

2. You wrongly cited Pasteur, and continued to fight me on it. You then eventually totally ignored my responce, so you didnt have to admit you were wrong.

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Actually, I accepted your reasons for not liking Pasteur to meet the criteria though it was not specified in the criteria given and I gave you further scientists that were "creationsist" so hummm, I wonder where I was wrong and how I didn't accept your claims????

3. You have repeatedly misrepresented peer review and science as working like a jury and a court room, despite constant reminders that it simply does not work like that. You ignore your error, and are still at it.

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Well, you were the first to bring up the courtroom, I simply was working with the example you brought up, if you remember, (if not look it up) my original reference was the difference between who knew more about a crime, the police investigating or the judge hearing the case. My point is that if it is a biased review, it is not unbiased and does not necessarily equal fact.

4. You cited a page that didnt contain anything relevant for Louis Pasteur, even though you claimed it was. You never admitted that you were wrong and ignored it as you eventually did everything in regards to Pasteur.

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Humm, the site I thought I referenced you to was all about Pasteur, I wonder what site got in the post instead.

5. You were wrong when you claimed I wasnt reading properly when I answered your "why are origins important?" question, with "because Creationists want it taught in school". In order to save face you pretended you were talking about something else, only you got hopelessly confused when you said "the question was not ...directed at what is taught in school." and "The question was totally unrealated to school". Which unfortunately meant you completely contradicted yourself when you said, "why is it important enough to even teach in schools? That was the original idea behind the question". It seems you are in such a rush to put people down with arrogant patronizing claims of them not listening and of how incredibly inconsiderate they are for not understanding you, that when you make a mistake like this instead of admitting it, you just try and pretend its someone elses fault to try and cover it up.

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Actually, I thought there was a communication problem and that we could communicate to clarify but you had no interest in understanding the question and by the way, the last time I checked, the comment, "why is it important enough to even teach in schools?" does not mean why are we teaching evolution but rather why is our origins so important that it must be taught in school. What does our origins have to offer us and is more important than our present or our futures at least when talking about science. But that's okay, you misunsers6tood the question and have no interest in understanding the intent of the question but I am expected to appologize. That is the same kind of nonesence that has prevaded the discussion from the start and is exactly why I asked for communication rather than "teaching" on the issues presented. Sorry, I won't appologize for your stuborness, because quite simply, I don't have any control over your behavior.

And theres plently more.

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Bring them on, I'd like to see how you have twisted my words to assume what it not there and refuse to communicate, proves interesting and more evidence for the predictions I have made and tested here.

JohnR7 said:

This is something I have been trying to address for a long time. In fact I would be content if both sides of the issue could just get their ideas and beliefs out there, without even having to decide who is right and who is wrong. Creationists are not so concerned if people accept or reject their position. So much as they just want what they believe to be fairly and accurately represented.

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Feel free to carry on the torch, I don't know that I have made much headway.

gluadys said:

Welcome. What sort of shows do you put on?

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We take scraps of wood and remake it to use the natural variations in color and texture to make quilt type designs, then make that into home decor. Thanks for asking, the show is Fri., we are expected to do exceptionally well, if I can have everything ready!

Point is when we are doing science, scientific evidence is the only sort it is legitimate to present. That is why there are no scientific theories of creation or intelligent design. They don't present scientific evidence.

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Dont' know what you are trying to say here.

As for the "problems" of the theory of evolution, most presented by anti-evolutionists are not problems at all. They are grounded in misrepresentations of evolution, not in the scientific evidence.

This is not to say there are no open questions in the science of evolution, but they are generally not the same questions as non-biologists think they are.

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Agian, even the scientiest that observe the tests, present on occasion problems with assuming the findings to be evidence of the toe yet when someone comes here and raise the same questions, they are told that they have no understanding of science. Get real.

Granted. But if you are getting your ideas about weaknesses in the theory of evolution from creationist sources, then the real weaknesses are in your arguments, not in the the theory of evolution.

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I can only speak for myself here, but I don't read all the creationist mumbo jumbo not the evolutionist mumbo jumbo as a general rule. The questions I raise are based on the understanding of the evidence as presented it it overlaps the arguments of the individual theories, there is a problem somewhere in the communication of the evidence or it the way it is being applied if so many people have the same problem. That is why communication is necessary.

Edx said:

Whats that got to do with it? Im saying you are defensive of the Creationist position, and have sounded very much like a Creationist in every respect.


Evolution theory is a scientific theory, none of the others are. These "problems" you claim exist, I assume you got from a Creationist source.

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Then once again you have evidenced the problem with relying on assumptions to determine fact.

There is no problem presenting legitimate problems with evolution, but Creationism is about denying it regardless. Creationism isnt science, its apologetics.

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What does creationism have to do with this discussion?

There are only weak Creationist arguments, as they have nothing on their side.

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We can talk about that if you like, we have started a look at the theory of creation on another thread, it would be good for everyone to understand what the theory says before making judgements about it's accuracy.

Except we havent really been discussing the science in this thread. If we start you usually ignore it, claiming thats not the discussion. We have been correcting your presentation and misunderstandings of science and evolution. You cant tell us you are pointing out weakness' in evolution when you dont know what the theory is or how science really works. All you do is show your ignorence.

Ed

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This thread is about communication, you and others have made it about who is right and who is wrong and who believes what and who is .....never listening, never learning, never communicating about the differences but always judging.