Are there any creationists willing to debate?

JohnR7 said:

Or as BabbleOn8806 said, they get tired of being insulted by scoffers and skeptics and soon come to realize it is a waste of time to try and convince someone of truth when they are hell bound to believe lies.

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So you don't like being insulted. Well, guess what. We don't either. Some of us get tired of being told we're lost and going to hell.

Especially those of us who know we are not! :0)

Arikay said:

Your right, Natural selection is Part of evolution.

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that is true. but for evolution to happen, it takes a whole lot more than just natural selection. it involves DNA mutating to create new traits, new alleles, and even extra chromosomes a lot of times.

Vance said:

This is because they change their definition as needed.

Currently, they are abandoning the "macro-evolution" argument (without conceding it yet), in favor of the "no new information" argument.

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what is the difference. im not wanting a fight, just i dont know what the difference is, unless youre just talking about natural selection.

Yep. and they all do happen. Natural Selection is basically what guides the rest of evolution.

Its like the nylon eating mutation of a bug. The mutation probably happend more than once in history. However, since Nylon is a man made material, the mutation would not be effective and thus was selected out by natural selection. Now however, that mutation gives the bug a special nitche that no other bug has, making the mutation a good one and it was selected in by natural selection.

As far as AIG,

Their definition of Macro Evolution was a change between "kinds." and they claimed that that no animal could change between "kinds."

Now their new claim is that evolution occurs, however, mutations can not produce any "new information" and thus things could not become more complex through Evolution.

Both claims are false.

However, it is interesting to note that in both claims, they leave a word rather undefined. Its rare for a creationist group to explain what a "kind" really is, and its also rare to get them to explain exactly what they mean by "new information." Often it seems its left vague, so that they can change its meaning to try and keep their statement looking true no matter what is found.

fortheloveofmike said:

that is true. but for evolution to happen, it takes a whole lot more than just natural selection. it involves DNA mutating to create new traits, new alleles, and even extra chromosomes a lot of times.

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fortheloveofmike said:

that is true. but for evolution to happen, it takes a whole lot more than just natural selection. it involves DNA mutating to create new traits, new alleles, and even extra chromosomes a lot of times.

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Indeed. It's a good job that we know how all those occur, isn't it?

Karl - Liberal Backslider said:

Indeed. It's a good job that we know how all those occur, isn't it?

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indeed we see them happening all the time. heh.

How many useful mutations have we seen take place in the last 100 years?

Aaron11 said:

How many useful mutations have we seen take place in the last 100 years?

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Immunity to AIDS
Immunity to Malaria

Off the top of my head....

Aaron11 said:

How many useful mutations have we seen take place in the last 100 years?

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while there are examples, remember that humans are a different kettle of fish. we don't need to adapt to things as much now, since if we face a problem, we deal with it. The ways we deal with things are as follows:

clothes, houses, cooking, cars, medicine, surgery, kettles, computers, bakeries, sewage and so on.....

Jet Black said:

while there are examples, remember that humans are a different kettle of fish. we don't need to adapt to things as much now, since if we face a problem, we deal with it. The ways we deal with things are as follows:

clothes, houses, cooking, cars, medicine, surgery, kettles, computers, bakeries, sewage and so on.....

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In fact it is our use of technology that has isolated us from a large proportion of the selective procedure. That is why such harmful mutations such as bad eyesight, heart defects etc. are proliferating throughout the human species and is probably causing an overall reduction in the quality of our genes.....

Mainframes said:

Immunity to AIDS
Immunity to Malaria

Off the top of my head....

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True. Additionally, it has been discovered that there were people in the middle of the Bubonic Plague that cared for the ill, fed them, bathed them, etc. who NEVER fell ill to the plague. Science has found out that their cells did not have the receptors allowing them to bring the virus into the cell. Now it has been discovered that there were men in the middle of the Aids explosion in some of America's known Gay communities in the early 80's, who never acquired the HIV virus or Aids to this day. It has been discovered that these individuals are lacking the same receptors that the folks who survived some of Europe's deadliest plagues were lacking. There is a group in New York City who studies this; they are called, The Diamond Foundation. Very interesting. Nature slowly takes care of itself. They are discovering more people becoming immune to many viruses, the downfall is that the viruses slowly mutate into something else we are not immune to.

Actually, I would have thought that 100 years was MUCH too short of a time from (in evolutionary terms) to be able to observe any specific mutations at all. Maybe so, but I always assumed that it would take much longer to be able to observe anything.

Pete Harcoff said:

This was brought up in another thread, but I think it's worth a thread of its own.

For awhile, the number of creationists actually willing to engage in active debate have virtually disappeared from these forums. Even new creationists that come in seem less interested in addressing issues raised by people on the forum than simply reciting creationist propoganda.

Are there any creationists out there willing to actually debate about things raised in these forums?

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It's highly unlikely that there will ever be meaningful exchanges for a number of reasons.

A. Both sides state as facts things the other side doesn't agree with, not just the creationists. An example would be the flood, which evolutionists (or at least one that I've seen post here) will state "the flood was falsified more than 130 years ago." Now, moving over to talkorigins we see, "Ryan and Pitman wrote Noah's Flood, a book which presents this hypothesis. There are heaps of articles on-line about this, pro and con."
"Pro and con" hardly suggests that the matter has been settled. It may be settled in the minds of some, but certainly not all. I won't even get into the statement that "creation was falsified more than 150 years ago."

B. Bias. Everybody has a bias. You do, I do, Nature & Science do, Ken Ham and Behe do. Two people will read the same article, but come up with entirely different interpretations based on their bias, AiG and talkorigins, where the majority of people will look for material to back up their opinion, are no different.

C. Printed material too advanced...I highly doubt that many people fully understand the arguments they are making, let alone the arguments of the opposition. I'd be the first to admit that plenty of the scientific articles cut and pasted or linked to are above the the comprehension of the three three science classes I was required to take for my degree. It's far too easy to whip out a bunch of stuff and say "Aha! See...(evolution or creation) proved beyond a doubt!"

D. Arguments constantly changing. While much is made of AiG and their things not to debate list, evolutionists have also shifted directions, as witnessed by puncuated equilibrium and the lack of use of dating methods. Although it's easy to see why dating arguments have been dropped...for the sole reason of never being able to prove they are correct. (If a rock is dated at 100,000 years and is correct, it will never be proven to be correct. When something known to be young is dated as being thousands of years old it is known to be inaccurate.) Really a no-win situation for evolutionists, as they have discovered.

E. Time restraints. Debating a position, especially a minority one, is far more time consuming than taking the popular opinion. As one who debates tattoos with Christians and partial preterism, it takes far more time to try and respond to five people as it does one.

A. Both sides state as facts things the other side doesn't agree with, not just the creationists. An example would be the flood, which evolutionists (or at least one that I've seen post here) will state "the flood was falsified more than 130 years ago." Now, moving over to talkorigins we see, "Ryan and Pitman wrote Noah's Flood, a book which presents this hypothesis. There are heaps of articles on-line about this, pro and con."

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Please try to get things straight. Ryan and Pitman are talking about a large but still local flood that may or may not have been the "flood of Noah". The flood of Noah as a worldwide event was indeed falsified by Christian Geologists more than 130 years ago.

I won't even get into the statement that "creation was falsified more than 150 years ago."

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Creation was not falisified 150 years ago but Young Earth Creationism was.


The Frumious Bandersnatch

B. Bias. Everybody has a bias. You do, I do, Nature & Science do, Ken Ham and Behe do. Two people will read the same article, but come up with entirely different interpretations based on their bias, AiG and talkorigins, where the majority of people will look for material to back up their opinion, are no different.

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Yes there are biases. Those who say the young earth creationism is false are biased in favor of reality over a long falisified interpretation of the book of Genesis. The people who orginially falisfied the Young Earth and Global Flood were after all biased in its favor. If valid (Young Earth) creationist "interpretations" exist for things like the fossil record, evaporites, paleosols, trace fossils, angular unconformities and biogeograpy for example, why do we never see them? There are no YEC interpretations of these facts that make any sense at all.

The Frumious Bandersnatch

Vance said:

Actually, I would have thought that 100 years was MUCH too short of a time from (in evolutionary terms) to be able to observe any specific mutations at all. Maybe so, but I always assumed that it would take much longer to be able to observe anything.

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No, actually, "observable" mutations can happen very fast. It is these same mutations that cause cancers. Mutations can be caused by several things like ionizing radiations, carcinogens, etc. Our DNA is undergoing mutations all the time, some less serious, which will code for wrong amino acids, that happens without too much notice on our part, such as, missense mutations but also more serious frame shift and nonsense mutations which code for chaos and a "Stop" sequence. Certain enzymes are typically able to do what is called an "excision repair" a particular enzyme cuts out the damaged area..(without making this too lengthy.)...then other enzyme ligases make repairs to the exision cuts and nicks. If there were no mutations, there would be no cancers. It is these same type of mutations that cause a species to adapt..adaptations happen as a part of the evolutionary process.

We have observed these mutations or some were already immune to AIDS and such?

BTW, that bubonic plague story has nothing to do with mutation.

Aaron11 said:

We have observed these mutations or some were already immune to AIDS and such?

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Same thing. They were immune to AIDS because they were born with the mutation.

BTW, that bubonic plague story has nothing to do with mutation.

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Sure it does. Because of mutaions, no matter how deadly a particular disease is, there's always a possibility of somebody being immune.

Aaron11 said:

We have observed these mutations or some were already immune to AIDS and such?

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They are born immune do to a inherent genetic mutation. They do not have the receptor to take the virus into the cell which is similarly like people who are not able to perform receptor mediated endocytosis, there by, having EXTREMELY high cholesterol numbers for LDL and HDL in the 500-600 range.

Aaron11 said:

BTW, that bubonic plague story has nothing to do with mutation.

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Really??, This information was in a Bio-chemistry book I had to last year in Med. School, the topic was "mutaions"..should I tell them you said so??? Maybe we could have you as a guest speaker, what is your daily rate?