So would you say at least "selection" is governed by specific laws or operates within specific parameters only, and that it has purpose?
That it's governed by specific laws is a gimme. That you could call this "purpose" is not; I'd need some definition for "purpose". Is it a "purpose" when the environment changes, so that certain patterns of pigmentation are favored over others? You use "purpose" a lot but I rarely, if ever, know how you're applying it or why you
would apply it in that situation.
Actually, it's nothing of the kind. I just wanted the truth to come out so that ordinary folk could judge who is really presenting the most credible arguments,
Yes, let's do that with quantum physics too! See how well "the man on the street" understands that.
Newsflash:
not everything can be boiled down to a 5th-grade level! In science, people who are not well-educated on a subject should not be educated by debates. They should be educated in
school on the subjects where the debate is effectively over (and make no mistake, the debate is and has been over for
decades when it comes to evolution).
You want a great example of why live debate is such a
terrible format?
Watch some of that debate. You might notice something - Knechtly doesn't actually
debate. He preaches. And here's the sad thing:
it works. He comes off as more self-assured, more convincing, and more well-read than Dillahunty, despite the fact that
none of his points actually hold up to any scrutiny. In fact,
Dillahunty calls him on this near the end of the debate, which is probably the high point of the whole farce. But it still plays
really well to the audience, because, well, Knechtly is charismatic, and his points
seem to make sense, especially if you have a Christian predisposition.
In peer review, or even just a written discussion, Knechtly would have gotten
shredded. Because in that format, baseless assertions can be called out, one by one. Arguments can be dissected in a way that the live, formal debate format just does not allow for. And if someone repeats a point that was rebutted without addressing the rebuttal,
they can be called on it. Case in point:
but it's plain to see that you're all running scared.
You know, there's a certain irony in here...
This forum is proof that no-one really gets anywhere with these topics
Yeah, it is. See, here's the thing. We've given you numerous very good reasons why:
- The debate is a bad idea as a whole
- The format could hardly be more poorly chosen
- Creation Ministries International is not worth debating with even if we were to debate this topic
- The argument that "the man on the street could judge who is really presenting the most credible arguments" is terrible
And you've pretty much hand-waved them all away (or ignored them to reiterate the same bad point again) and acted as though we were "running scared". You're repeating points that were already rebutted. I wonder if this would have been so easy to spot in a live discussion. I also wonder
why no-one really gets anywhere with these topics. Surely it couldn't be because one side just isn't listening?
Or maybe it is. I mean, in your evolution/creation on trial thread, where after one poster repeatedly claimed "mutations cannot lead to new information", I dropped something like 50 peer-reviewed papers discussing
exactly those mutations on him. What happened? A retraction, maybe moving forward from there without making the same mistake that nobody versed in the field of genetics would ever make? No. No retraction was issued, no apology made; he just left the thread and didn't come back. Or in that self-same thread, where another poster made a mistake with regards to the mutation of the peppered moth, and I pointed it out, citing the primary literature and pointing out that yes, it was in fact a novel mutation. Was an admission of mistake forthcoming? I don't know, maybe it was but he just never got around to it; the thread was locked because "general apologetics".
Scientific debate
does tend to move forward. Koonin, whose work is bastardized quite regularly on these forums, is probably not wrong when he says that we need a new evolutionary synthesis, and that new discoveries in horizontal gene transfer lead to some rather significant changes to the tree of life (this does
not mean that we throw the whole thing out for eukaryotes!). The science has moved forward significantly in the last 50 years, thanks to honest researchers trying to learn more about the world. The core of the theory is still not wrong (just like the core of newtonian mechanics is still right, despite being supplanted by relativity, because the observations are still valid), but as our understanding increases, so does our ability to reframe and correct our knowledge.
By contrast, how has creationism done? Young earth creationism is no further along the path to legitimacy now than it was decades ago when the movement started. It has lost court case after court case, and all the while it has been completely incapable of providing anything even
resembling positive evidence for creation. Instead, all it has done is try to poke holes in or deny the evidence of an old earth and evolution, and it hasn't even contributed anything of value in doing
that, as the arguments presented are never particularly valid.
So I ask you - why do
you think that the conversation keeps failing?
Oh, and while you're at it, when you write to CMI, maybe you should ask them why that
embarrassment of an article on the Lost Squadron is still up on their web page.