Evolution is a crock

[Sabbath]

Go Nick!

You are great!

 

[Gunny]

 

[RufusAtticus]

In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.

--Hesiod

Now that we've exchanged mythologies, want discuss science?

 

[Gunny]

 

[Sabbath]

Originally posted by gunnysgt

Exactly Gunny!

 

[euphoric]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Now that we've exchanged mythologies, want discuss science?

Somehow I don't see gunnysgt engaging in this debate on a scientific level.  It's not his style.  He seems to prefer prefabricated responses that generally involve cutting and pasting someone else's ideas.  Or he could just keep posting images and banners.

And yes, I also find it ironic.  People like gunny are willing to use technology that science develops to communicate, live longer, be healthier, and generally improve their existence.  But if science dares to suggest that a 5000 year old tribal creation myth isn't the literal description of events regarding the beginning of the universe, suddenly scientists are either liars or misguided morons.  I have a hard time imagining the Bizarroworld where every mainstream scientist is wrong about the enourmous amount of evidence for evolution and common descent, and Ken Hamm is a great defender of scientific truth. 

-brett

 

[WinAce]

Originally posted by Jerry Smith


My deepest sympathies.

Your assessment of what is going on in this one is pretty much spot-on for the participant who started this thread. I would have to say, though that by and large the participants in this forum are more victims of YEC tactics than they are perpetrators of them.

In any case, I hope you will be hanging around here more often.

After reading more of this thread, I feel I have to place a little rant here.

I've been lurking here for a while now but don't have much to add to the conversations. I'm just reading this to get a chuckle.

I usually try to educate people on just why our theories are the best explanation yet proposed for the massive and disparate data we've gathered over our study of biology, paleontology and other fields. I noticed that they often switch when confronted with the hard-core data like common errors in the genome, our fused chimp chromosome, vestigial toenails on manatees and other stuff that only makes sense in light of evolution.

There are basically two types of Creationists:

1. 'Scientists don't believe in god, so they resort to piecing together pig teeth and calling it transitional fossils. They're simply denying his majesty! How could THAT evolve?' (These are the ones you and I are likely to convince, because they're merely unaware of the powerful evidence and buy in to YEC lies hook, line and sinker.)

2. 'My own pet versions of physics, geology, cosmology, biology and other fields are more correct than accepted science. No, I can't answer those problems with my models, but I accept it on faith that they're true'. These are, sadly, the ones you'll never be able to convince. They've signed statements of faith that they're obligated to discard any evidence that contradicts them, so it's too late for them. Short of God telling them himself he used evolution as his mechanism of creation, they're stuck. Depressing but true.

For this reason, I generally engage in such debates only for the benefit of the undecided layman. YEC arguments may sound convincing at first but are ultimately scientifically bankrupt. I know because I've been there and my mind, luckily, survived once I applied the same critical thinking skills I used to discard UFO abductions, ghost stories and the Loch Ness Monster...

There is no hope whatsoever of ever convincing people like Nick Petreley, Randman or Elric (the guy I was arguing with over on Blizzforums). They can say macroevolution hasn't been observed, even though electrons haven't been either but they wouldn't dream of doubting their existence.

They'll quote Gould or others to say how transitional fossils are incomplete or show statis, whereas the full quote has an entirely different meaning.

They'll continue taking on faith that decay rates for a variety of elements and non-radiometric dating, from ice cores to sedimentary deposition to crustal formation to plate tectonic movement to astronomical cycles recorded in sediment to distant starlight, were all reset to point to a much older earth.

They'll ask for fossils that aren't polyploids, because on the slim risk someone can produce the rare item they're asking for they can simply say 'oh well, you can't prove that's not polyploid!'

They won't be able to present any actual evidence for their position, but they'll continue calling evolution and other accepted science a religion or on par with Young-Earth Creationism or other such nonsense.

People like them caused me to ultimately lose my faith because they insisted I wasn't taking the Bible the way it 'was meant to be'. Well, when I looked into it, 'the way it was meant to be' appeared similar to every other creation myth I ever read about--written in poetic language back when people wouldn't know science if it bit them on the behind. Why did God allow some people to be so deluded?

Of course, theistic evolution was intellectually unfulfilling either. It was either accept that my God, who was omnibenevolent and the smartest genius ever to exist, made irreducibly complex systems like the malaria parasite (ugh!) and a genome littered with ancient structures coopted from worms and other life, or convert to agnosticism.

And once that was done, I recognized that the ultimate beginning of the universe was just another god of the gaps argument, one that he was not even a particularly good explanation for.

Ultimately, the only way to effectively find out about our universe is to study it with the error-reducing scientific method--whereas the Bible, Quran and other holy books are very likely mere human inventions from the Age of Myth, nature simply can't be faked and will possess the tell-tale signs of whatever processes, intelligent or unguided, acted upon it in the distant past. And that's something I believe everyone, of any religion or lack thereof, can agree with

 

[chickenman]

gunny, stick to the general apologetics forum, you're doing such an excellent job of witnessing there ( I especially liked the posts about atheism being evil)

 

[Sauron]

Originally posted by Sabbath
Go Nick!

You are great!

It's sort of mock-ironic to note that the very same people who think Nick is "great" are the same group of people who don't have a clue about why Nick is wrong.   They understand neither the science nor the mistakes in Nick's claims and assumptions.

If you asked them to explain either the pro, or the con, side of this argument, they'd be at a total loss to do so.  Since  they can't tell the truth from the error anyhow. 

Which probably suits them just fine, come to think of it....

 

[D. Scarlatti]

petreley was right about one thing:

Originally posted by npetreley

Anyway, enjoy all your ad-hominem attacks, etc. I have other work to do.

Originally posted by randman

Get some work done in your "real" life, and don't worry about these guys' absurd accusations.