I don't know about that site. I just know you have to carefully check out what's online. I also know that gut feeling, affect, emotion, is a very important part of the knowledge process.
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Atheism vs. Christian
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Oh, baloney. Nobody is putting pressure on anyone to retract anything. Also, you are getting off your original topic and not responding to anything I said in my posts.
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Ana the Ist
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I don't think Michael Ruse believes what you think he believes. Try reading this interview with him...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienc...l-ruse-on-evolution-creationism-and-religion/
Michael Ruse doesn't think creationism is valid....
"he famously testified in McLean vs. Arkansas in 1981 that creation science – a form of Christian creationism that claims to be scientifically valid – should not be allowed in public science classes, because it features virtually none of the characteristics of true science."
Michael Ruse doesn't believe in objective ethics/morality....
"What I argue, however, is that ethics is somewhat different, and that the notion of an objective ethics is incoherent and unneeded."
When Michael Ruse is referring to evolution as a religion...he's speaking metaphorically. He's saying there's a difference between the scientific study of evolution...and the notion of evolution that most people have as a part of their worldview....
"By professional evolution I mean the kind of work done in biology departments at Boston University or Florida State University, using Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. By popular evolution, I mean a kind of world picture which tries to give an overall explanation of things."
Michael Ruse also thinks that not believing in evolution is a result of poor education. He believes wholeheartedly in evolution. He thinks creationists are "deluded"...
"But although I think creationism is false and dangerous, I’m more inclined to think that the proponents of creationism are caught in a cultural timewarp, and that they are deluded rather than evil."
So before you waste too much time about how an atheist philosopher of science said something about evolution and religion...you should consider why you misunderstood what he was saying.
Is it because you got his quote from a creationism/religious website? Did the website take the quote out of context...and just drop it in amongst some argument that was supposed to be against evolution? Why do you think this website would be deliberately misleading???
The answers to those questions will actually help explain why most of this thread is so wrong. The sources that you choose for information are horribly biased and don't care one ounce about the truth of anything. They cherry-pick little quotes and tidbits of information that support their biased viewpoints...with no regard for evidence, facts, context, or reality in general. They are catering to the ignorant by spoon feeding them what they want to hear and keeping them ignorant of anything else.
It's the same reason why your OP is wrong. The reality of the situation in the U.S. (and most of the 1st world) is that christianity is on the decline...atheism and the non-religious are on the rise. Church attendance is down...and still declining. Christianity is desperately trying to fight the fact that it's not only out of touch with the times...but increasingly shown to be factually incorrect when taken literally. When you add on the notion that people simply don't need it as much to get the sense of community that they crave...and it's easy to see that christianity isn't "winning" anything. It's an old worn out horse that's being put out to pasture and it's just trying it's best to not end up as glue.
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Ana the Ist
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Ana the 1st,
You wrote quite a bit and I appreciate you took the time to do so. Unfortunately, my current commitments do not allow me to address all that you wrote but I will endeavor to respond to the points you had the most emphasis on.
So here is my response:
1. re: the charges of cultural time out warp/out of touch with the times, etc.
There is a logical fallacy called the appeal to novelty. To put it in layman's terms, newer is not equivalent to truer.
There are many things which are very old like logical truths, mathematical truths, historical truths, etc. which are as true now as they were when they were first introduced.
For example, President Washington being the first president of the United States was just as true in 1885 as it is now.
Truths can be time tested and build up a reservior of facts which support them. New theories with less accumulated evidence are often overturned.
So I am sorry to say, you committed a logical fallacy
2. re: allegation that creationism is dangerous
Actually, in the case of WWI and WWII evolutionary racism and social Darwinism played a major role. Hitler was a fanatical evolutionary racist who wanted to advance the "German master race" and extinguish/dominate "lesser races". Social Darwinism played a significant role in terms of German aggression in WWI and in other ways too.
Evolutionary racism was responsible for a number of historical woes and as is the case of Social Darwinism. And then there is the role of Darwinism when it comes to eugenics, communist ideology, etc.
For further details and elaboration on the above, see: http://www.conservapedia.com/Social_effects_of_the_theory_of_evolution
3. The charge of bias
Bias, a distortion of the facts, needs to be proven and not merely asserted.
Often when people are experiencing cognitive dissonance (are in a state of denial), charges of bias are thrown about. But mere charges don't prove anything.
I certainly did show for example that pressure was put on Popper and he never truly changed his views on evolution. His subsequent edition of a book contained the same words he got flack for.
You certainly didn't prove that Ruse's earlier more emphatic words being softened/backpeddled later were not the result of him being pestered like what happened with Popper.
4. The charge that I don't care about the truth
Of course, you didn't prove this charge and you are not a mind reader.
5. re: the allegation that Biblical Christianity is being shown to be increasingly wrong.
Actually, here is the true situation: more and more archaeological finds are confirming the Bible; science is showing that the health related laws of the Old Testament were ahead of their times by thousands of years; medical science and social sciences are showing the benefits of religious belief; studies on prayer which shows the efficacy of prayer which were confirmed occurred with Bible believing Christians and not other religious faiths; social science data is showing that the Protestant work ethic is highly correlated to prosperity; Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson who is an atheist declared: "Through a mixture of hard work and thrift the Protestant societies of the North and West Atlantic achieved the most rapid economic growth in history";atheists have higher suicide rates; religious people in the United States per capita donate more to charities and spend more time volunteering; secular Europe has the highest proportion in the world of total ill health and premature death due to alcohol; secular societies have more significant problems with loneliness than highly religious societies, in highly secular countries in Europe there was recently a rash of people doing unspeakably depraved things with animals and this was reported in major newspapers and laws were passed by legislators to curb this depravity (this did not occur in the more religious parts of Europe and elsewhere); and evolutionary claims are being increasingly debunked.
And I am just touching on the tip of the iceberg in terms of Christianity being shown to be increasingly right and irreligion shown to be increasingly wrong.
For the citations and further information on the above, see:
Atheism statistics: http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_statistics
Christianity statistics:http://www.conservapedia.com/Christianity_statistics
Evidence for Christianity: http://www.conservapedia.com/Christian_apologetics_websites
Rebuttals to atheist arguments:http://www.conservapedia.com/Rebuttals_to_atheist_arguments
Religion and crime reduction:http://www.conservapedia.com/Religion_and_crime_reduction
Atheism and health:http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_health
Atheism and its negative effect on culture:http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_culture
Atheism and science: http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_science
The Bible and sound health practices: http://www.conservapedia.com/The_Bible_and_sound_health_practices
6. Contemporary state of religion and projections based on demography and immigration
Furthermore, the world is seeing a global resurgence of religion and highly religious immigrants who have higher fertility rates are pouring into to the first world and this is expected to continue and secularism is expected see a reversal in the 21st century.
In April of 2010, the British academic and agnostic Eric Kauffmann declared that "the rate of secularisation has flattened to zero in most of Protestant Europe and France."
Due to evangelical churches growing and liberal churches dying, there is a surge of "strong religion" in the USA. Nondenominational churches, almost exclusively evangelical, now represent the second-largest group of Protestant churches in America, and the fastest growing section of the American religious market... There are religious demography scholars indicating that church membership is at an all time high in America.
Pentocostalism is exploding in the world now and has been called by a leading sociologist of religion as being the fastest growing religious faith in the history of the world.
Please see:
Growth of desecularization: http://www.conservapedia.com/Growth_of_global_desecularization
Christianity and atheism statistics: http://www.conservapedia.com/Christianity_vs._atheism_statistics
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As you can see above, you said "some falsehoods".
You are repeatedly wasting my time with invalid allegations.
You have a sour and angry disposition.
Please do not post to me anymore. I am not interested in what you have to say.
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Yes, I did. I didn´t make the statement you put in my mouth, though.
Another instance of quote mining noted.
If you want to exchange compliments with me, try via PM. It´s off topic, and it doesn´t help your case.
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Oh, c'mon. You are relying exclusively on "Consrvapedia.' tht os run by a conservative-fundamentalistic attorney Schlafly. It's been up and running since about 2006. It's about the worst possible source you could use. Even conservative Christians have been avoiding it and denouncing it strongly, ever since it announced its project to rewrite the English Bible so as to remove any terms that might support the "liberal bias." Hence, it recommends dropping the story of Jesus and the adulteress and as well Jesus' prayer on the Cross. Talk about rewriting and tampering with Scripture to suit your political biases! And you think a solid Christian should use this site?! Are you now wanting to rewrite the Bible and cut out what you don't like? Also, its scierntific merit has been called into very serious question. The Royal Society reviewed it and advised the public to be more careful where they look for accurate scientific information. Scientific American went after it, saying it "implies Einstein's theory of relativity is a liberal plot."
Also, your knowledge of Nazi mythology is way off base. Himmler didn't want evolution at all. What he wanted to do was replace Christianity with early pagan German beliefs. Another big Nazi idea was that of the ice planet. Aryans originally existed on a ice planet that collided with earth. Aryans then started mating with earthlings and this led to the inferior races. Interestingly enough, Hitler didn't like any of this because he feared it might offend German Christians. Regarding the role of Christianity, German churches had long promoted vehement anti-semiticism. Martin Luther wrote a major work entitled "The Jews and their Lies," in which he recommended denying Jews citizenship , putting them to hard labor, and also said burn their book and the Jews. Luther totally hated Jews, peasants, and gypsies, all of whom he believed were children of the Devil. He recommended the knights go among the peasants and slaughter them as one would mad dogs. The only real difference here between Luther and Hitler is that Hitler had the technical means to carry out Luther's plans.
Again, your post was full of serious misunderstandings and mis- information. Again, I strongly recommend you rely on more solid sources of information.
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re: Macroevolution formula
Ana,
A few things:
1.Have you looked up the word macroevolution if you are not familar with the term?
2. Second, please read this resource about microevolution/macroevolution in terms of what evolutionary scientists have conceded about the issue: http://www.conservapedia.com/Evolution#Microevolution_vs._macroevolution
Do you see now that leading evolutionists have indicated that microevolution is not synonymous with macroevolution and that "macroevolution as a field of study is completely decoupled from microevolution"? If so, do you see the implications of this? If you do see the inplications of this, what are the implications?
3. Often hard sciences have preciseness, predictability and usefulness.
For example, in physics: mass times acceleration equals force which is often expressed as: F = MA
Yet, there is no "macroevolution fornula" which is widely accepted among scientists and widely used by scientists.
Please read this article for further explanation: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/03/evolution-and-problem-of-time.html?commentPage=2
The lack of quantification and usefulness as far as macroevolution is not surprising since evolutionism is not science and merely pseudoscience.
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Genetic fallacy is a logical fallacy. Stop being illogical.
In addition, the Conservapedia articles I chose are all highly footnoted and sourced so your complaint is petty - especially since you have not pointed out any errors in the articles.
Third, if you look through my posts I don't use Conservapedia exclusively as a source. You are being inaccurate. You claim about the unreliability of my particular article sources is rather hypocritical given your inaccurate statement.
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The macro-micro distinction actually came from Russia. Popular as it may be among certain lay circles, it is not at all used in science. The reason is that such a distinction is irrational. You cannot posit one without the other. The laws of science do not stop at your stove, do they? The same applies to the "spaces" between the species. The laws of science apply everywhere. Therefore, it is irrational to arbitrarily posit some stopping point where the process of evolution ends, such as between the species. That seems what you want to do. OK, fine for you. But forget it for those of us truly interested in science. Also, again, you are using totally ridiculous sources to support your points. Are you gong to join the crusade over at Conservapedia and rewrite Scripture, omitting what you don't like, out of your prejudice against liberals? If so, good luck. See how for you get with the truly Christian community.
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My response to you:
As Dr. Roger Lewin commented after the 1980 University of Chicago conference entitled “Macroevolution”:
“The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. … At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.” [Emphasis added]
Dr. Roger Lewin, “Evolution Theory under Fire,” Science. Vol. 210, 21 November 1980. p. 883-887.[91]
”
In 1988, the prominent Harvard University biologist Ernst Mayr wrote in his essay Does Microevolution Explain Macroevolution?:
“ Among all the claims made during the evolutionary synthesis, perhaps the one that found least acceptance was the assertion that all phenomena of macroevolution can be ‘reduced to,' that is, explained by, microevolutionary genetic processes. Not surprisingly, this claim was usually supported by geneticists but was widely rejected by the very biologists who dealt with macroevolution, the morphologists and paleontologists. Many of them insisted that there is more or less complete discontinuity between the processes at the two levels—that what happens at the species level is entirely different from what happens at the level of the higher categories. Now, 50 years later the controversy remains undecided.
...In this respect, indeed, macroevolution as a field of study is completely decoupled from microevolution.[92]
See: http://www.conservapedia.com/Evolution#Microevolution_vs._macroevolution
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I think this resource is useful to various posters in this thread:
Atheism and logical fallacies:
Atheism and logical fallacies:
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"No macroevoution formula".
Giggle.
That's like saying "no physics formula" or "no medicine formula".
As for the hardness of evolutionary biology, do you know about the Price equation? The Hardy-Weinberg law? Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection?
Here's a University of Lund blog with a couple of dozen hard laws of population genetics.
Also some light reading, for those inclined to education:
Some Mathematical Models in Evolutionary Genetics
Evolutionary dynamics in structured populations
The Mathematics of Darwin’s Legacy
Laws in Darwinian Evolutionary Theory
Mathematical Structure of Evolutionary Theory
Review of Population Genetics Equations
Giggle.
That's like saying "no physics formula" or "no medicine formula".
As for the hardness of evolutionary biology, do you know about the Price equation? The Hardy-Weinberg law? Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection?
Here's a University of Lund blog with a couple of dozen hard laws of population genetics.
Also some light reading, for those inclined to education:
Some Mathematical Models in Evolutionary Genetics
Evolutionary dynamics in structured populations
The Mathematics of Darwin’s Legacy
Laws in Darwinian Evolutionary Theory
Mathematical Structure of Evolutionary Theory
Review of Population Genetics Equations
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Gene2MemE,
Both evolutionists and creationists believe in natural selection, adaptation, microevolution and breeding.
In fact Darwin borrowed some of the ideas of creationist Edward Blythe when it came to natural selection.
I specifically asked for a "MACROEVOLUTION FORMULA".
Also please read this:
source: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/03/evolution-and-problem-of-time.html
Evolution and the problem of time
You may recall that over the years, I have repeatedly asked various evolutionary True Believers a very simple and straightforward time-based question, to which there absolutely must be an answer, and they not only have been unable to answer it, but frequently tried to deny it was either a) relevant or b) possible, thereby demonstrating that they don't understand ANYTHING about their own faux-scientific faith. But the speed of evolution, and of the underlying mutations, is absolutely central to understanding the theory, as well as determining whether it is total nonsense or not:
Mathematicians keep refining π even though they know it to more than 12 trillion digits; physicists beat themselves up because they cannot pin down the gravitational constant beyond three significant figures. Geneticists, by contrast, are having trouble deciding between one measure of how fast human DNA mutates and another that is half that rate.
The rate is key to calibrating the ‘molecular clock’ that puts DNA-based dates on events in evolutionary history. So at an intimate meeting in Leipzig, Germany, on 25–27 February, a dozen speakers puzzled over why calculations of the rate at which sequence changes pop up in human DNA have been so much lower in recent years than previously. They also pondered why the rate seems to fluctuate over time. The meeting drew not only evolutionary geneticists, but also researchers with an interest in cancer and reproductive biology — fields in which mutations have a central role.
“Mutation is ultimately the source of all heritable diseases and all biological adaptations, so understanding the rate at which mutations evolve is a fundamental question,” says Molly Przeworski, a population geneticist at Columbia University in New York City who attended the Human Mutation Rate Meeting....
A slower molecular clock worked well to harmonize genetic and archaeological estimates for dates of key events in human evolution, such as migrations out of Africa and around the rest of the world. But calculations using the slow clock gave nonsensical results when extended further back in time — positing, for example, that the most recent common ancestor of apes and monkeys could have encountered dinosaurs. Reluctant to abandon the older numbers completely, many researchers have started hedging their bets in papers, presenting multiple dates for evolutionary events depending on whether mutation is assumed to be fast, slow or somewhere in between. You know you're dealing with QUALITY science when scientists start substituting variables for concrete numbers depending upon what they want the results to be. Here is the money quote: “The fact that the clock is so uncertain is very problematic for us,” he says. “It means that the dates we get out of genetics are really quite embarrassingly bad and uncertain.”
As I have repeatedly predicted, genuine genetic science is eventually going to kill evolution by natural selection deader than phlogiston or the Flat Earth theory.
Please read the information below:
Both evolutionists and creationists believe in natural selection, adaptation, microevolution and breeding.
In fact Darwin borrowed some of the ideas of creationist Edward Blythe when it came to natural selection.
I specifically asked for a "MACROEVOLUTION FORMULA".
Also please read this:
source: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/03/evolution-and-problem-of-time.html
Evolution and the problem of time
You may recall that over the years, I have repeatedly asked various evolutionary True Believers a very simple and straightforward time-based question, to which there absolutely must be an answer, and they not only have been unable to answer it, but frequently tried to deny it was either a) relevant or b) possible, thereby demonstrating that they don't understand ANYTHING about their own faux-scientific faith. But the speed of evolution, and of the underlying mutations, is absolutely central to understanding the theory, as well as determining whether it is total nonsense or not:
Mathematicians keep refining π even though they know it to more than 12 trillion digits; physicists beat themselves up because they cannot pin down the gravitational constant beyond three significant figures. Geneticists, by contrast, are having trouble deciding between one measure of how fast human DNA mutates and another that is half that rate.
The rate is key to calibrating the ‘molecular clock’ that puts DNA-based dates on events in evolutionary history. So at an intimate meeting in Leipzig, Germany, on 25–27 February, a dozen speakers puzzled over why calculations of the rate at which sequence changes pop up in human DNA have been so much lower in recent years than previously. They also pondered why the rate seems to fluctuate over time. The meeting drew not only evolutionary geneticists, but also researchers with an interest in cancer and reproductive biology — fields in which mutations have a central role.
“Mutation is ultimately the source of all heritable diseases and all biological adaptations, so understanding the rate at which mutations evolve is a fundamental question,” says Molly Przeworski, a population geneticist at Columbia University in New York City who attended the Human Mutation Rate Meeting....
A slower molecular clock worked well to harmonize genetic and archaeological estimates for dates of key events in human evolution, such as migrations out of Africa and around the rest of the world. But calculations using the slow clock gave nonsensical results when extended further back in time — positing, for example, that the most recent common ancestor of apes and monkeys could have encountered dinosaurs. Reluctant to abandon the older numbers completely, many researchers have started hedging their bets in papers, presenting multiple dates for evolutionary events depending on whether mutation is assumed to be fast, slow or somewhere in between. You know you're dealing with QUALITY science when scientists start substituting variables for concrete numbers depending upon what they want the results to be. Here is the money quote: “The fact that the clock is so uncertain is very problematic for us,” he says. “It means that the dates we get out of genetics are really quite embarrassingly bad and uncertain.”
As I have repeatedly predicted, genuine genetic science is eventually going to kill evolution by natural selection deader than phlogiston or the Flat Earth theory.
Please read the information below:
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No, my comments are not hypocritical. I have given you very accurate material. So don't try and give me this "hypocritical" stuff.
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"As you have repeatedly predicted"? Oh, c'mon. You are in no such position to predict anything like that.
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