mark kennedy said:
Ok, I know what taxonomy is and taxonomic relationships are a dialectic.
There are elements of it that still are to a diminishing degree. But with the discovery of genetics and its ability to confirm so many of these relationships, it isn't really dialectic anymore, and never was to the degree that you imagine it to be.
I said before and have become increasingly convinced that you are unaware of the philosophical premise you are arguing for.
I wasn't even aware that I was arguing for any premise, nor that I was arguing for anything that could be considered philosophical. Perhaps you could explain to me exactly what that premise that is, explain why it is a philosophy, and present a more reasonable alternative to it?
That string of questions I asked you was to determine if you were aware of the central principles of the modern synthesis.
And those questions demonstrated that you didn't understand it yourself.
I know what evolution is and how it works, it is rooted and grounded in naturalistic assumptions that are suspended by blind faith.
Then you don't know what evolution is or how it works, even though you've said many times that you agree with it "full-heartedly". You contradict yourself frequently. I however have no faith in anything, and wouldn't need any to accept what I do about varying levels of common ancestry, many of which you accept also.
Then I elaborated on the profound significance of these questions:
You forget that I have it in writing, and that I have just displayed it again.
You keep telling me the same things and its all based on how things are catagorized. You link me to a cladistics webpage that may or may not of had some signifigance in our debate. I had not seen most of those terms and you just told me to do a google search and look at the cladistic charts to learn their profound signifigance.
Before I can debate against the Bible, I have to have read the Bible, right? Before I can dispute your position, I have to understand what your position is, right? Then is it so much to ask that if you don't understand a couple of my terms, that you should look them up on any convenient resource, as I must also?
I frankly am disappointed that that was all you had to support these supposed relationships.
I'm disappointed that you think that was all I had. And I'm disappointed in myself that I let you keep me distracted off-topic with all your immaterial and irrelevent prejudices, and that we could never even get to the genetics or the forensic evidence because of your constant side-tracking.
I don't know what I expected but it was a dead issue before the conversation started.
I expected you to answer the questions when and how they were asked, and to show some reason and accountability, which were obviously absent in each of your replies.
You had allready made up your mind and the endless string of insults were due to a lack of substance. I don't know what you thought you were doing but it looked like excited fanaticism to me.
You had allready made up your mind, and the endless string of insults were due to a lack of substance. I don't know what you thought you were doing but it looked like excited fanaticism to me. If you perceive an endless string of insults from me, it was only my attempt to get you to show some accountability.
Ok, so we can call them anything we like as long as we don't accept that God created them supernaturally.
You can still believe God was involved if you want to. Why not? Contrary to all your miserably false allegations, evolution from common ancestry is not grounded in any sort of atheist position, and does not remotely require the exclusion of god, as the vast multitudes of theistic evolutionists prove. What it does is to refute a literal interpretation of what can only be either a parable or a myth, but that we all know can't possibly be literally true.
Then we form as many convoluted relationships as possible and run anyone who believes in special creations through a labyrinth of subjectivly chosen terms. Great plan, I am so glad that you went the trouble to teach me that.
We do not form the relationships. They formed themselves. We merely discover them. And its not our fault that reality is so complex in its myriad details. But you're welcome to blame God for that if you want to. Neither are these terms subjectively chosen. I have tried to prove this to you, but the only way to do that was to get you to answer certain questions which you adamantly refuse to even though you agreed you would when you accepted the terms of the debate.
What you forgot to tell me was that this would be a debate about the veracity of evolutionary taxonomic relationships.
I thought that was clear by the wording of the challenge.
You insisted that the central term, species, could be as subjective as you like.
No, I didn't. I said that since the definition used for most animals and plants was based on the ability to interbreed, then the definition for sexual reproducers obviously couldn't apply to non-sexual reproducers, and that it could only be vaguely estimated in paleofauna by an examination of derived synapomorphies.
Do you really think that there has never been a creationist that was aware of cladistics and remained unconvinced?
I said that no creationist could understand cladistics as well as I do, and remain unconvinced. I honestly don't think any creationist has ever been as familiar with taxonomy as I am, apart from Linneaus himself of course, and even he had to admit that humans are apes though he didn't know how that could be.
From the begining I focused on evolution as a philosophy of science and maintained that genetics is the result of the work of a creationist.
So was taxonomy, lest we forget. The concept of deep time, the ancient age of the Earth was also discovered by a creationist, as was the reality of the extinction of paleofauna that could not be attributed to a global flood. It was even creationists who realized that the Bible could not be literally interpreted, and shouldn't be reduced to mere history. Almost all of what you think is an atheist position was discovered by creationists, most of whom were still creationists after they made these landmark realizations. They just weren't the kind of dogmatic Bibliolaters that you are.
If all we had was the naturalistic materialism of Darwin then you would have nothing but an obscure philosophical argument.
You've yet to indicate any philosophy involved, and you've usually avoided virtually any discussion of the measurable facts we know are involved, and can't be considered philosophical.
I never strayed from my position or asked you a string of cryptic terms that lack any semanitcal meaning.
Most of your questions were semantic, though you don't seem to understand that, but non of mine were. And the fact that you have never strayed from your immaterial irrelevencies has been a large stumbling block in our conversation because you frequently strayed from the topic and refuse to return to it.
You ran me a merry chase but ultimatly you are supposed to convince me that you have the best explanation of our origin.
I did. You agreed with every major point I made, admitting that you already believed most of them yourself. And you admitted that there was no reason to believe in the alternative you offered. But it wasn't supposed to be a chase, and wouldn't have been if you hadn't done so much ducking and dodging.
I am more convinced then ever that this is nothing more then rationalism giving rise to irrationalism (a real philosophical term BTW)
Of course it is, otherwise you wouldn't have used it. Yours is the philisophical position, not mine. I didn't think rationalism was ever an issue here, and don't understand why you keep avoiding the subject the subject and bringing up semantics, and philosophies and "isms" instead.
like it did in Europe about the same time that Darwin's philosophy was being incorporated into the modern synthesis.
Your arguments are indeed irrational, particularly your so-often repeated attempts to associate evolution with atheism, materialism, nazis, communists, and anything else you can think of to make it look bad. At the same time, you're an evolutionist yourself, and somehow don't see how that makes you a hypocrite at the same time.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, was a humanitst.
I didn't realize "humanist" and "Orthodox Christian" meant the same thing. But then, every Orthodox Christian I've ever met has accepted evolution from common ancestry, and I guess that's what you think a humanist is. I didn't realize that one could be a humanist and accept every tenet of the Nicene creed at the same time.
Rev. Robert Bakker doesn't represent Christian theism at large.
Who does? I suppose the Pope represents the majority of Christianity at large. He certainly represents more of that than any other single person. And the pope's position on evolution is the same as Bakker's, oddly enough. Biblical literalist creationists are an extreme fringe group, and the Young-Earth creationists are a desperate minority even within that group. This is true everywhere in the world. Even in the U.S., the only place on Earth where there are a significant proportion of creationists, they are still the minority, and the YECs are still an extreme minority. So you and your ilk most definitely don't represent Christian theism at large, but the larger portion of Christian theism does support Robert Bakker.
Dr. Jill Buettner, is most likely a brilliant scientist but her theology leaves a lot to be desired.
But you don't know squat about her theology except that she is not a doctrinal idolater, worshipping the word of men (the Bible) over the work of God, (reality). And that's the only thing you desire in her theology. That makes a very telling statement about how much you don't understand about Christian theism, or indeed, theism in general. I'm sure she would argue that your theism leaves much to be desired, and having been a Christian once myself, I can see where she would be coming from.
Gregory Mendel laid the foundation for a genuine investigation of how living systems work and was a creationist.
But not a creationist in the same sense that you are are a creationist. Mendel's support of Darwinian evolution implies that his Christianity was similar to that of most reasonable Christians today, which is that it is a belief in each of the tenets of the Nicene creed, but does not require worship of the stories men wrote in the Bible over the creation itself. I have noticed that you can't seem to distinguish between true theology and doctrinal idolatry, and that seems to be the core of all you misunderstandings of both science and religion.
Charles Darwin was not a Christian except in name only,
I suppose "in name only" means he accepted every tenet of the nicene creed, but not some fanatic dogmatist. For some reason, the Christian creed doesn't require an obligate worship of a verbatim literal translation of any author's interpretation of the feelings that moved him to write scripture. So I guess dogmatic Bibliolatry isn't a requirement of Christians, much as you wish it were.
on the rare occasions he makes this profession he expresses lingering doubls as to God's abilitiy to intervene in human affairs.
Only in the works he composed after he lost his faith. Prior to that, he wonders to what extent God was involved, or wished to be involved, and how independant of him he designed his natural systems to be.
This supposed professions never even mention redemptive history and I am convinced that he simply showed his colors when he saw an opportunity to make a name for himself.
What exactly does "redemptive history" have to do with speciation, or descent with modification, or natural selective processes, extinction, procreation, or the survival (or origin) of species? Especially since most of what Darwin wrote about were mollusks and mussels, beetles, and birds, and so on.
Upon realizing the implications of Darwin's book, the captain of the Beagle killed himself.
If that were true, which it apparently isn't, what would that mean? That creationists can't handle the truth? That God can't exist if any part of the Bible is wrong? That Captain Fitzroy couldn't cope with being an ape? Once you realize what an ape is, are you going to kill yourself too? Can God still exist even if the Qur'an or the Bhagavad-Gita are wrong? If so, then couldn't the immortal author of the universe survice an interpretive error in any other human author who wrote the scriptures?