An open debate to Atheists on a creator.

FormerAtheist said:

I think it would be difficult to get natural selection when you have nothing to select from . If I remember right I said we have no theories for how life begin without life you have nothing to select from.

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Oh dear. If the only things that had happened were those we have full explanations for, the world would be a very strange place indeed!

"I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting you really believe what you just said" - William F Buckley Jr

FormerAtheist said:

I think it would be difficult to get natural selection when you have nothing to select from . If I remember right I said we have no theories for how life begin without life you have nothing to select from.

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Looking around, I think it's safe to say that life exists and that we can study it.
Evolution theory is about understanding the processes that existing life is subject to.

FormerAtheist said:

You don't have billions of years you don't have hundreds of millions of years you only have 6 million years to get the 20 different phyla in the Cambrian explosion. 6 million years would not get you a single protein.

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Oh. Wow. No. I think you may have some really major, major revisions to your arguments coming in the near future. The Cambrian was around 500 million years ago. Earth has had billions of years to develop life before the Cambrian.

FormerAtheist said:

I think it would be difficult to get natural selection when you have nothing to select from.

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Variation within populations is what is selected from.

FormerAtheist said:

If I remember right I said we have no theories for how life begin without life you have nothing to select from.

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The abiogenesis hypothesis has been getting more evidence supporting it, slowly but surely. Heck, protocells developed during an experiment in 2013. However, how life originated is entirely irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Doesn't matter if it arose via abiogenesis, a deity making organisms out of dirt, etc. In case you haven't noticed, plenty of theists are also evolution supporters, so you might want to consider that fact when making your arguments.

FormerAtheist said:

You don't have billions of years you don't have hundreds of millions of years you only have 6 million years to get the 20 different phyla in the Cambrian explosion.

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You might want to check the research from the past ~20 years about the Cambrian explosion, instead of just parroting creationist/ID-iot talking points.

The best evidence available is that there was a period of several hundred million years of comparatively rapid body plan diversification, and then an 'explosion' of diversification lasting at a minimum 20 million years and more realistically about 40-45 million years.

There are plenty of unresolved whys and hows about the Cambrian explosion, but the more it is studied, the less mysterious it becomes.

For all your protestations about the 'math' and the 'science', you're apparently unwilling to do the work and the reading yourself. Otherwise, you'd know this.

FormerAtheist said:

Ah atheists. This reminds of a blog/article looking to write about pride. Let me give you the intro:

Pride comes before a fall.

One thing I find remarkable about atheists is their pride and arrogance. They revel in it. It is their downfall. And it can be seen many times. In fact it is their blanket. They are proud of their godlessness and look down those that seem so simple below them. This is the type of thing that leads a soceity over and over again over the cliff. Such an innocent message. So primitive “pride comes before the fall” and yet so true. So everlasting. Cuts to the core.

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Was the highlighted meant to add a touch of comedy or just a further example of what @tas8831 was driving at?

FormerAtheist said:

actually I loaded it into my reading que the moment I read your post and I will probably read it tonight

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I will await your response.

FormerAtheist said:

Cool - 100 pages of paraphrased already-refuted YEC propaganda!

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Actually it could and should be longer. I've been busy lately.

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You are right - there are definitely more than 100 pages of paraphrased already-refuted YEC propaganda.

FormerAtheist said:

Ah atheists. This reminds of a blog/article looking to write about pride. Let me give you the intro:

Pride comes before a fall.

One thing I find remarkable about atheists is their pride and arrogance. They revel in it. It is their downfall. And it can be seen many times. In fact it is their blanket. They are proud of their godlessness and look down those that seem so simple below them. This is the type of thing that leads a soceity over and over again over the cliff. Such an innocent message. So primitive “pride comes before the fall” and yet so true. So everlasting. Cuts to the core.

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Nice example of projection.

I give you a fellow calling himself "OldWiseGuy." Creationist, bible guy. Admits that he is ignorant of evolution and biology, yet believes his claims have sufficient merit to trump those of actual biologists on issues biological. Claims that the gut and the aorta can produce signals that command the larynx to produce vocalizations and that these signals get there via the recurrent laryngeal nerve. I explain that this is impossible. I provide links to medical and anatomical websites describing the innervation of the larynx, the pathway of neural information leaving the gut, etc. His response is 'are you saying we know everything about' this?

No - there is NOBODY more arrogant than creationists in my experience, and that arrogance is borne of the certainty of ignorance, as discovered and described by Dunning and Kruger:

'The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate.'

Any experiments done testing the validity of creation from dust?

FormerAtheist said:

But we can not find any genetic evidence that backs up evolution in fact the genetic evidence points all over the place.

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I forget now who originally posted these on this forum, but I keep it in my archives because it offers a nice 'linear' progression of testing a methodology and then applying it:

The tested methodology:

Science 25 October 1991:
Vol. 254. no. 5031, pp. 554 - 558

Gene trees and the origins of inbred strains of mice

WR Atchley and WM Fitch

Extensive data on genetic divergence among 24 inbred strains of mice provide an opportunity to examine the concordance of gene trees and species trees, especially whether structured subsamples of loci give congruent estimates of phylogenetic relationships. Phylogenetic analyses of 144 separate loci reproduce almost exactly the known genealogical relationships among these 24 strains. Partitioning these loci into structured subsets representing loci coding for proteins, the immune system and endogenous viruses give incongruent phylogenetic results. The gene tree based on protein loci provides an accurate picture of the genealogical relationships among strains; however, gene trees based upon immune and viral data show significant deviations from known genealogical affinities.

======================

Science, Vol 255, Issue 5044, 589-592

Experimental phylogenetics: generation of a known phylogeny

DM Hillis, JJ Bull, ME White, MR Badgett, and IJ Molineux
Department of Zoology, University of Texas, Austin 78712.

Although methods of phylogenetic estimation are used routinely in comparative biology, direct tests of these methods are hampered by the lack of known phylogenies. Here a system based on serial propagation of bacteriophage T7 in the presence of a mutagen was used to create the first completely known phylogeny. Restriction-site maps of the terminal lineages were used to infer the evolutionary history of the experimental lines for comparison to the known history and actual ancestors. The five methods used to reconstruct branching pattern all predicted the correct topology but varied in their predictions of branch lengths; one method also predicts ancestral restriction maps and was found to be greater than 98 percent accurate.

==================================

Science, Vol 264, Issue 5159, 671-677

Application and accuracy of molecular phylogenies

DM Hillis, JP Huelsenbeck, and CW Cunningham
Department of Zoology, University of Texas, Austin 78712.

Molecular investigations of evolutionary history are being used to study subjects as diverse as the epidemiology of acquired immune deficiency syndrome and the origin of life. These studies depend on accurate estimates of phylogeny. The performance of methods of phylogenetic analysis can be assessed by numerical simulation studies and by the experimental evolution of organisms in controlled laboratory situations. Both kinds of assessment indicate that existing methods are effective at estimating phylogenies over a wide range of evolutionary conditions, especially if information about substitution bias is used to provide differential weightings for character transformations.



We can ASSUME that the results of an application of those methods have merit.


Application of the tested methodology:

Implications of natural selection in shaping 99.4% nonsynonymous DNA identity between humans and chimpanzees: Enlarging genus Homo

"Here we compare ≈90 kb of coding DNA nucleotide sequence from 97 human genes to their sequenced chimpanzee counterparts and to available sequenced gorilla, orangutan, and Old World monkey counterparts, and, on a more limited basis, to mouse. The nonsynonymous changes (functionally important), like synonymous changes (functionally much less important), show chimpanzees and humans to be most closely related, sharing 99.4% identity at nonsynonymous sites and 98.4% at synonymous sites. "



Mitochondrial Insertions into Primate Nuclear Genomes Suggest the Use of numts as a Tool for Phylogeny

"Moreover, numts identified in gorilla Supercontigs were used to test the human–chimp–gorilla trichotomy, yielding a high level of support for the sister relationship of human and chimpanzee."



A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates

"Once contentiously debated, the closest human relative of chimpanzee (Pan) within subfamily Homininae (Gorilla, Pan, Homo) is now generally undisputed. The branch forming the Homo andPanlineage apart from Gorilla is relatively short (node 73, 27 steps MP, 0 indels) compared with that of thePan genus (node 72, 91 steps MP, 2 indels) and suggests rapid speciation into the 3 genera occurred early in Homininae evolution. Based on 54 gene regions, Homo-Pan genetic distance range from 6.92 to 7.90×10−3 substitutions/site (P. paniscus and P. troglodytes, respectively), which is less than previous estimates based on large scale sequencing of specific regions such as chromosome 7[50]. "




Catarrhine phylogeny: noncoding DNA evidence for a diphyletic origin of the mangabeys and for a human-chimpanzee clade.

"The Superfamily Hominoidea for apes and humans is reduced to family Hominidae within Superfamily Cercopithecoidea, with all living hominids placed in subfamily Homininae; and (4) chimpanzees and humans are members of a single genus, Homo, with common and bonobo chimpanzees placed in subgenus H. (Pan) and humans placed in subgenus H. (Homo). It may be noted that humans and chimpanzees are more than 98.3% identical in their typical nuclear noncoding DNA and probably more than 99.5% identical in the active coding nucleotide sequences of their functional nuclear genes (Goodman et al., 1989, 1990). In mammals such high genetic correspondence is commonly found between sibling species below the generic level but not between species in different genera."




'All over the place', you say?

Not really. Stop getting all of your information from creationists. They lie. They distort. They embellish. They NEVER test their own claims.

FormerAtheist said:

I make mistakes and am not afraid of them. Not afraid of the truth either. That's why I left atheism. It is not the truth. And science does not back it. You can find a fault or an error, spelling, punctuation and then cry "see we won". But the truth doesn't really work that way.

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No, spelling errors do not mean we won. But the repetitious conceptual errors that creationists - including you - make, which are often accompanied by 'spelling errors' (which is more indicative of a lack of knowledge of the concepts than merely poor spelling or making typos - one of your intellectual brethren referred to "alleles" as "allies" for more than a year despite being corrected dozens of times) show that your arguments are generally at least poorly thought out.

And frankly, I do not believe that you were ever an atheist.

I see these sorts of 'witnessing' tales all the time, and I have never seen such a tale survive much scrutiny. Even 'professional' creationists sometimes tell such tales - take Steve Austin, creationist geologist. He claims that he was an old-earth evolutionist until he studied at Mt. St. Helen's. But it later came out that he had been writing creationist essays under the name "Stuart Nevins" as early as 1976 - i.e, he lied about his 'conversion.'

So please forgive me if I dismiss your conversion tales.

FormerAtheist said:

Well beyond the science which is what first led me away from atheism I have been able to see the destruction of atheism. I have further looked into the history of atheism starting with Voltaire. When societies go full on atheist its full on madness. And the first to go are the Christians. Millions have died as a result. But lets not go back that far lets just look at now. The atheists have been in firm control of the education system in the west for decades. And they have made the kids basket cases. When a kid manages to somehow get through that intact (probably because they came from a small town with less atheism) they get to go to the Marxist boot camp that is college. They walk in thinking their family is good, god is good, country is good and well life is good. But don't worry the atheists have something to tell them. Join us and figure out how miserable everything is. Your family is horrible, you god is dead, your life is meaningless and here's some pills.
And so why is it that the atheist suicide rate is so high? Therapy rates so high?
You come on here to preach to people that are happy. Their lives are not broken. There is nothing to fix.
You say come join my death cult to find the truth.
hahahaha
The truth is if your way was truth it would lead to happiness.
But instead it leads to death.
Oh
And the math and science is not on your side.

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I said something other than personal opinion.

FormerAtheist said:

Well beyond the science which is what first led me away from atheism I have been able to see the destruction of atheism. I have further looked into the history of atheism starting with Voltaire. When societies go full on atheist its full on madness. And the first to go are the Christians. Millions have died as a result. But lets not go back that far lets just look at now. The atheists have been in firm control of the education system in the west for decades. And they have made the kids basket cases. When a kid manages to somehow get through that intact (probably because they came from a small town with less atheism) they get to go to the Marxist boot camp that is college. They walk in thinking their family is good, god is good, country is good and well life is good. But don't worry the atheists have something to tell them. Join us and figure out how miserable everything is. Your family is horrible, you god is dead, your life is meaningless and here's some pills.
And so why is it that the atheist suicide rate is so high? Therapy rates so high?
You come on here to preach to people that are happy. Their lives are not broken. There is nothing to fix.
You say come join my death cult to find the truth.
hahahaha
The truth is if your way was truth it would lead to happiness.
But instead it leads to death.
Oh
And the math and science is not on your side.

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We are all still waiting for your website. Shouldn't it be online by now?

I need something good to laugh at so please don't disappoint us!