Fairytale?

[FishFace]

No. Thats your opinion, the ToE doesn't offer a correct explanation of anything since it is a tautology and nothing more.

If it's tautology, then it's true. But I'd like to know what part of:

1. Some organisms are fitter than others;
2. Organisms pass their fitness to their offspring with small variations;
3. The fitter organisms produce more offspring;
4. The population gets fitter over time.

Is tautological.

 

[Split Rock]

Oh, you wanted me to prove that evolution is a tautology in one thread? Oh thats brilliant,...its also typical of the ridiculous ideas of some of the evolutionists on this board.

I hope you didn't expect me to respond to any of this, its just ridiculous. It appears as if you haven't exerted any mental effort at all in formulating this post. I'm sorry, but I'm just not up for this today, maybe another day with you, really.

Wow, I really must be taxing you today, huh?

I ask you to explain why evolution is a "useless tautology" and you claim I am being ridiculous.

I point out that if the theory of evolution directly led to the Holocaust, then it logically (opps.. bad word) follows that if there was no theory of evolution, then there most likely would never have been a Holocaust, and you again claim I am being ridiculous.

Maybe you should lie down and get some rest.

 

[Split Rock]

If it's tautology, then it's true. But I'd like to know what part of:

1. Some organisms are fitter than others;
2. Organisms pass their fitness to their offspring with small variations;
3. The fitter organisms produce more offspring;
4. The population gets fitter over time.

Is tautological.

Sorry FishFace, but BigDug cannot answer your question, because you are just being ridiculous!

 

[Loudmouth]

your not listening. I make no appeal to Richard Weikart as an authority, I DO make an appeal to the facts and references he cited in his very thoughtful and largely undisputed(except by you) book about German history.

Where are these facts and references?

Given that I already had to clarify that Weikart's and my own position is that Darwinism has 'led' to the gas chambers of Auschwitz,

How? How does Darwinism lead to genocide?

I can say that evolution is merely a religious philosophy, and I can say that evolution should be termed Darwinism it is just a matter of opinion.

Wrong again. Evolution is a scientific theory which states nowhere that one should slaughter Jews. So please tell me how you get "slaughter Jews" out of the theory of evolution?

Evolution, as it is known today would be very much differentiated between evolution as it was in the time period which Weikart chronicles.

The theory of evolution has never suggested nor supported genocide, now or then. What you are thinking of is Eugenics which is neither Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, nor Evolution.

But in the final analysis, no matter if the term "Darwinism" is appropriate for the ideas present in the book and whether evolution itself is a religious belief are both matters of opinion.

It is a matter of fact that evolution is a scientific theory that has never suggested that humans should commit genocide.

I certainly believe that evolution is merely a religious belief which in fact needs more faith to believe than Christianity,

Creationists believe a lot of nonsense, this being one of them.

but I would always preclude that belief as an opinion, as yet undetermined by science. I certainly respect my opinion, as I do the opinions of others, but I have no problem differentiating between opinion and scientific fact.

Obviously, you do have a problem differentiating between opinion and scientific theories. You also confuse the words "is" and "ought".

 

[BigDug]

@loudmouth and split_rock
If you cant tone down your emotional outbursts, I'm going to ignore you, its as simple as that. I don't want to ignore you, but you don't seem to have any grasp of what I am saying and seem to be just blabbing negativity. Projecting your idea of 'creationists' on me,... it sounds like you've been drinking.

@fish_face
this thread is not the place for this discussion, apparently the concept of staying on topic is lost on some of your cronies, but I would be glad to address you point in a separate thread, ...that is, if I could figure out what your point is. The idea of fitness of a population and an individual is something I don't mind discussing, of course, you might want to be a little more specific about what you want to say.

The idea here is supposed to be the discussion about why evolution is perceived as a fairy tale, the reason is because it is unscientific and unsubstantiated as far as I can see, I suppose you can show me the evidence for evolution? Go ahead, but I suggest you try to take just one aspect of your theory because I am going to want to see it in detail. In other words, at the very least, be prepared to show me sources of everything so I can look at it myself, I would never just take your word for it.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

The idea here is supposed to be the discussion about why evolution is perceived as a fairy tale, the reason is because it is unscientific and unsubstantiated as far as I can see, I suppose you can show me the evidence for evolution? Go ahead, but I suggest you try to take just one aspect of your theory because I am going to want to see it in detail. In other words, at the very least, be prepared to show me sources of everything so I can look at it myself, I would never just take your word for it.

Evidence for Common Descent? Sure:

• 1 Evidence from paleontology
  • 1.1 Fossil records
    • 1.1.1 Extent of the Fossil Record
  • 1.2 Evolution of the horse
  • 1.3 Limitations
• 2 Evidence from comparative anatomy
  • 2.1 Homologous structures and divergent (adaptive) evolution
    • 2.1.1 Pentadactyl limb
    • 2.1.2 Insect mouthparts
    • 2.1.3 Other Arthropod Appendages
  • 2.2 Analogous structures and convergent evolution
  • 2.3 Vestigial structures
• 3 Evidence from geographical distribution
  • 3.1 Continental distribution
  • 3.2 Explanation
  • 3.3 Evidence for migration and isolation
  • 3.4 Continental drift
  • 3.5 Oceanic island distribution
• 4 Evidence from comparative physiology and biochemistry
  • 4.1 Universal biochemical organisation
  • 4.2 Molecular variance patterns
  • 4.3 Out of Africa hypothesis of human evolution
  • 4.4 External link
• 5 Evidence from antibiotic and pesticide resistance
• 6 Evidence from studies of complex iteration
• 7 Evidence from speciation
  • 7.1 Hawthorn fly

Ripped straight from Wikipedia. I realise it's bad form to quote encyclopaedias, but its so damn succicent!

Oh, and:
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution


For your convenience.

 

[Split Rock]

@loudmouth and split_rock
If you cant tone down your emotional outbursts, I'm going to ignore you, its as simple as that. I don't want to ignore you, but you don't seem to have any grasp of what I am saying and seem to be just blabbing negativity. Projecting your idea of 'creationists' on me,... it sounds like you've been drinking.

If anyone has been drinking, it seems to be you. Your hypocrisy concerning emotional outbursts and claims that I am "blabbing negativity" are what is ridiculous, not any of my posts. But.. I tell you what. I will save you the trouble of ignoring me. I will put you on ignore instead. Bye bye

 

[MoonLancer]

IMO evolution is atheistic... who honestly takes theistic evolutionists seriously other than theistic evolutionists that is?

FoeHammer.

Who takes Creationists seriously, other then Creationists? Theistic Evolution is apart of Mainstream Christianity. Your view is the minority I am afraid.

*edit* whoh, long thread. did i come at a bad time?

 

[Aron-Ra]

Its not an opinion. I stated a sequence of facts which are all easily verifiable, and all of which your author misrepresented. We can confirm this. So my "opinion" is not a factor.

Really!? Now I suppose your gonna help me figure out what an opinion is?

Sure, I'd be happy to.

Definitions vary of course, but they all agree that an opinion is subjective rather than factual. For example, when your author said "Darwinism" was cruel, merciless and apathetic, there is no standard by which we could prove or disprove his claim. That's his opinion, and he's welcome to it, warped though I think it is. My opinion is completely opposite. I think evolution is a fascinating field of study which only enhances my appreciation of nature and life in general.

But the other things I cited from him can be disproved, and everything I said can be vindicated factually.

I saw several points in your little expose, yet none of them were accompanied with any sort of reference to an authority other than your own perspective. Of course, perhaps you did have such backup, but for one reason or another I expected them to actually be in the summary you provided.

They actually came prior to your post. I didn't cite "authorities" because authority opinion is considered generally worthless compared to facts. So I listed facts instead, and I did mention them to you; like the fact that -whether he intended them to be public or private- everything Hitler ever wrote which was significant enough for circulation declares that he believed in God and considered himself a Christian and a Catholic specifically. This fact is easily verified, and your author should have known that, but likely ignored just as I suspect you will also.

Cite one instance where you think that happened. Because I backed everything I said, but your author did not.

How about I just start with the first piece of uncorroborated nonsense I foundwhich happened to be the first sentence you printed)

This article makes the same mistakes that all creationist arguments make.​

All creationists arguments? This word 'all' itself absolutely smacks with the kind of extreme over exaggeration which only accompanies the lowest of emotional states. All arguments about what? About Hitler? All creationists? Even the panspermia guys? Even the Muslims?

The "panspermia guys" tend not to be creationists, but otherwise, yes. And there is no emotion or exagguration involved. I prefer to be academic, and can defend every part of my statement as verifiably accurate.

I guess the biggest thing is the lack of tact in trying to catagorize 'all creationist' into some type of box which I don't believe that you can possibly know. It is a bigotry and prejudice

It is again a demonstrable fact that creationism, -be it Islamic, Christian, or Hindu- can be accurately categorized as the fraction of religious believers who reject both the conclusions and methodology of science where either is perceived to conflict with their sacred dogma, which must be defended as a-priori. Much of Christian creationism, for example, is openly-opposed to the scientific principles of rationalism, uniformitarianism, and methodological naturalism. All forms of "creationism" are defined as such because they propose "supernatural" [magical] creation as opposed to any natural explanation.

The "same mistakes all creationists make" refers to a collection of falsehoods on which all forms of creationism are based; among them being (1) that sacred scriptures were written by supernatural beings rather than the men who really wrote them, (2) that anyone's "interpretation" of these man-made myths should, (or even could) be considered infallable or "absolutely" authorative, and (3) that anything which challenges their mythos must necessarily be atheist. These falsehoods are in turn based on the false notion that if any creationist's personal favorite doctrine is refuted, then they tend to think their version of God cannot exist and neither can anyone else's either. The view that the Bible, the Qur'an, and the Bhagavad-Gita (among others) are treated as though they were each "the divine word" and are worshipped as such is why creationism qualifies as idolatry. In point of fact, even if all the holy books were completely wrong about God, that still wouldn't mean God did not exist. It only means that men shouldn't pretend to know what they know no one even can know.

Your author repeated the foundational falsehoods of creationism when he tried to equate evolutionary theory with atheism, and when he tried to present evolution as a religion. All creationists try to do that even when they know it isn't true. He did it again when he described 'social Darwinism' as a subset of evolutionary theory, which only reveals his ignorance of both science and politics. Creationists commonly misrepresent the scientific perspective with sensational emotional pleas also.

your not listening. I make no appeal to Richard Weikart as an authority, I DO make an appeal to the facts and references he cited in his very thoughtful and largely undisputed(except by you) book about German history.

As I've just explained, his article wasn't thought out very well at all, and could be easily refuted by anyone. And I've several times requested the facts to back him up. But you still refuse to list them. I think that is because you haven't any facts on your side, and I think that is because your assertions are all false.

As a separate issue, I do recognize Richard Weikart as an expert of German history.
I'm afraid your going to get the two things confused again, but thats ok.

I'm not the one who's confused.

No, you cited propaganda full of emotional pleas and assertions which are demonstrably false.

This is another unreferenced claim, what emotional pleas are you talking about?

As I already referenced earlier in this thread, most "evolutionists" are Christian, and most Christians are evolutionist. Your author, like all creationists, pretends that the "crevo" debate centers on religion vs atheism, but it doesn't. It centers on whether one should worship dogma as divine or whether one should pursue scientific methodology.

Another claim I already referenced was Hitler's many testaments to theistic belief -and the utter lack of any reference from him to support the creationist's claims that he was either atheist or an evolutionist.

what IM doing is responding to what now appears to be intentional misunderstandings to my original offer of a reference as a gesture of good will in the interest of intellectual development.

The "deliberate" misunderstanding is your own alone. False and slanderous propaganda can never be offered in "good will".

Given that I already had to clarify that Weikart's and my own position is that Darwinism has 'led' to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and was not the leading factor, I can assume that I am either not being believed, or I am not being understood.

What I do not understand is what fact could possibly have lead you to such a conclusion? Because I've heard this claim from many creationists, but none have been able to justify it with anything other than a gross misunderstanding of everything evolution ever was.

Having said all that let me at least add that there were some good points of debate in your expose, and I don't want to discount them at all, so I would appreciate your clarification on the following aspect:

Rather than mention evolution as it really is, it is mislabeled as "Darwinism" and presented as though it were a religious philosophy to be "believed in​

Your making two points here and your tying them together, but let me address them as if they were one,( you may correct this if you want as I hardly can dictate to you or any other person how you must phrase things and I don't claim to know what you meant to say). So let me say simply that there is a group of people who agree with you and there is certainly a group of people who do not. The reason why I have described this point to be 'mere' opinion is because it is just that, completely subjective. I can say that evolution is merely a religious philosophy, and I can say that evolution should be termed Darwinism it is just a matter of opinion. I think that you'll find in this case however that the term Darwinism fits Weikart's book better because he systematically traces the history of ideas from scientists to scientists from Darwin to Hitler's culture of death. Evolution, as it is known today would be very much differentiated between evolution as it was in the time period which Weikart chronicles. (late 19th to early and mid twentieth century) So given that evolution now, and evolution then are very different animals, and given that historians generally use last names to describe the history of ideas(as opposed to the history of events) usually use last names. Also I think your making fundamental mistakes in your careless catagorizations of creationists. Number one, Weikart never, EVER makes any assertion whatsoever about his affinity for creation OR evolution, so it is not known if he is even a creationist to begin with, though I think that he probably is, number two you are confusing the use of the term Darwinist coined by Intelligent Design advocates with the term used by historians.
But in the final analysis, no matter if the term "Darwinism" is appropriate for the ideas present in the book and whether evolution itself is a religious belief are both matters of opinion.

I will concede that evolution is very different today than it was in 19th century England, not just because science has advanced, but because England's attitudes have advanced also. Still, unless you can produce some actual citation to the contrary, and I doubt very much that you can, then there can be no link between anything Darwin actually proposed and the motivations of the nazis; (1) because the fascist perspective directly contradicts Darwin's work, and (2) because Hitler himself stated flat-out that his motivations were based on his religious beliefs and not on his understanding of science.

I certainly believe that evolution is merely a religious belief which in fact needs more faith to believe than Christianity, but I would always preclude that belief as an opinion, as yet undetermined by science.

Faith is actually defined as A firm, stoic, and sacred conviction which is both adopted and maintained independent of physical evidence or logical proof. However, evolution neither requires nor desires faith. Instead it relies on scientific methodology which acts as the antithesis of faith. Evolution is an inescapable fact of population genetics, and can be confirmed myriad ways. Not only that, but all religions commonly accepted as such have a series of traits in common; thus religion can be accurately defined as a doctrine of ritual traditions, ceremonies, mythology, and associated dogma of a faith-based belief system which includes the idea that some element of ‘self’ (be it a soul, consciousness, or memories, etc.) may, in some sense, continue beyond the death of the physical being. This is indicative of religion because these traits apply to all religions and only to religion. However none of them apply to evolution, and I doubt very much that you could produce any justification for your claim that evolution is a religion, because that would not be a matter of opinion. It is an objectively-determinable fact that evolution is not a religion.

I certainly respect my opinion, as I do the opinions of others, but I have no problem differentiating between opinion and scientific fact.

Yes you do.

 

[Loudmouth]

@loudmouth and split_rock
If you cant tone down your emotional outbursts, I'm going to ignore you, its as simple as that. I don't want to ignore you, but you don't seem to have any grasp of what I am saying and seem to be just blabbing negativity. Projecting your idea of 'creationists' on me,... it sounds like you've been drinking.

What emotional outbursts? I have stated my case in very even language and have asked for substantiation for your claims. Where is that substantiation?

 

[BigDug]

I have no interest in discussing anything with people who cannot differentiate between fact and opinion. Sorry, Aran-RA of whatever your name is, it is clear that you cannot understand simple things, and that your opinions have clouded your head therefore I cant offer you any help. Of course, because your overly opinionated, and cannot concede as a matter of pride, it is really doubtful that your going to learn anything from anyone, neither is there any help available for you. Clearly your agenda is to promote your own already well established opinions, and you have no real desire to learn anything. Undoubtedly you will feel vindicated in thinking that noone could possible answer your points, and therefore further bury yourself in your own delusions. In other words, if you constantly cling to error, noone can ever teach you anything. In my opinion therefore, you are a walking flame war waiting to happen, and I feel bad for anyone who would want to attempt to disagree with you. The only kinds of argumentation that is even possible with you would be delegated to a kind of glorified "Is it" -> "Is not" type of exchange whcih would be fruitless for anyone. I honestly have no idea what you might gain from such a world view except for perhaps a feeling of satisfaction you might get from feeling that noone has properly answered you when in reality, noone wants to try to answer someone who cannot admit he is wrong. So once again feel free to walk away thinking you are right, however I imagine that most people can recognize your bigotry, predudice, and willing ignorance.

 

[TheOutsider]

Hold on. I need to go buy a new Irony-Meter.

 

[Loudmouth]

I have no interest in discussing anything with people who cannot differentiate between fact and opinion.

Is this a fact or an opinion:

Nowhere does the theory of evolution state that we should commit genocide.

Sorry, Aran-RA of whatever your name is, it is clear that you cannot understand simple things, and that your opinions have clouded your head therefore I cant offer you any help.

Is it or is it not a fact that Nazi's said exactly what Aron-Ra quoted? Those seem to be facts.

 

[BigDug]

Hold on. I need to go buy a new Irony-Meter.

Thats pretty original. You cant actually come up with your own opinion so you resort to one-liners which you have already used in other threads by basically saying:

Oh no, thats what YOU do.

Thats genius. You should be proud of yourself.

 

[TheOutsider]

Thats pretty original. You cant actually come up with your own opinion so you resort to one-liners which you have already used in other threads by basically saying:

Oh no, thats what YOU do.

Thats genius. You should be proud of yourself.

Just trying to add some levity, kiddo. No reason to get all wound-up.

 

[BigDug]

Is this a fact or an opinion:

Nowhere does the theory of evolution state that we should commit genocide.

That would be an assertion that you would like to claim as a fact.

Is it or is it not a fact that Nazi's said exactly what Aron-Ra quoted? Those seem to be facts.

indeed, those would be good things to determine, but until he admits his clear avoidance of facts in the points I addressed, I am certainly not obligated to answer what little substantive points he might have actually had. What point is it to talk about real facts with someone who can't understand the difference between his opinions and facts?

But once again, the quotations he made may or may not be true statements, he would need references to back them up, he would also need to determine if Hitler himself was telling the truth. Or perhaps, he believe everything Hitler said? Then also he would need to show ALL of Hitler's speeches, and he would need to show them in context.

Weikarts book did all these things, and did not rely on the speeches of a madman to verify itslef. Weikart's book is undisputed in academia, and is one example of history being presented in a true, referenced, researched way.

So are they opinions or facts? That remains to be seen, but since Aron-Ra cannot seem to see where his own interpretation veers from fact, I am not going to waste my time trying to look at the presence or absence of actual facts with him.

 

[TheOutsider]

That would be an assertion that you would like to claim as a fact.

Seriously though, why are you still pursuing this? "Darwinism caused the Holocaust" is a logical fallacy called Appeal to Consequences (an argument that concludes a premise to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences) Even if Hitler had a shrine to Darwin in his closet, that doesn't make the Theory of Evolution any more or less true.

 

[dukeofhazzard]

Hold on. I need to go buy a new Irony-Meter.

Did your old one wear out? Around here??

 

[TheOutsider]

Did your old one wear out? Around here??

I need to start buying them by the pallet.

 

[dukeofhazzard]

I need to start buying them by the pallet.

I'll bet Costco has 'em in bulk AND at a discount ...