The Darwin Delusion

gluadys · Aug 24, 2009

marlowe007 said:
I don't see why not. Progressive creationism posits that God went through a "chimera phase" 5-6 million years ago, mixing up human and ape features in various hominids, so he could have similarly gone through that sort of phase 300 or so million years ago with Tiktaalik and others.

God has "chimera phases?" Why?

Sounds like a very ad hoc way to deal with the evidence of evolution.

Also, methinks it would need to be more than an occasional phase. It would need to be a more-or-less constant condition.

Mallon · Aug 24, 2009

marlowe007 said:
Progressive creationism posits that God went through a "chimera phase" 5-6 million years ago, mixing up human and ape features in various hominids

That's the first I've ever heard of that. I'd love to hear more about why God is posited to have gone through a "chimaera phase"...

sfs · Aug 24, 2009

gluadys said:
God has "chimera phases?" Why?

Sounds like a very ad hoc way to deal with the evidence of evolution.

Also, methinks it would need to be more than an occasional phase. It would need to be a more-or-less constant condition.

You can make everything simpler if you simply start out by asserting that progressive creation occurred in a way that precisely mimicked evolution. That way you don't have to keep adding in these ad hoc features as new discoveries are made. Of course, you might then start to wonder why you're bothering with the creationism part, but the ability to not wonder about certain questions can be developed with practice.

marlowe007 · Aug 27, 2009

sfs said:
You can make everything simpler if you simply start out by asserting that progressive creation occurred in a way that precisely mimicked evolution.

That is not my assertion, for there is no logical reason to suggest such a thing when there are GAPS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD.

And unless you're psychic, you cannot predict that new discoveries shall continue to fill the voids. This arrogant expectation is nothing but a pseudo-scientific assumption.

I agree peace4ever. Evolution is a lie, just like "vaccines" and water fluoridation.

Dark_Lite · Aug 27, 2009

marlowe007 said:
I agree peace4ever. Evolution is a lie, just like "vaccines" and water fluoridation.

Yeah, blast those live-saving vaccines that have improved the health of billions... and stuff... Blast them.

Mallon · Aug 27, 2009

I call Poe.

pgp_protector · Aug 27, 2009

Mallon said:
I call Poe.

Or sock

Mallon · Aug 27, 2009

This is the point where you just throw your hands up and shake your head.

marlowe007 · Aug 28, 2009

Mallon said:
I call Poe.

Do I sound satirical? No, I'm quite serious, like Dr. Berlinski...

YouTube - Dr. David Berlinski: Transitional Sequence (Clip 4)

Tiberius · Aug 28, 2009

P4E, you have a very distorted idea of what evolution is. You are attacking a strawman, not the real thing.

Evolution is as much as fact as it is a fact that the Earth orbits the sun, or that Washington is in the northern hemisphere.

gluadys · Aug 28, 2009

marlowe007 said:
Do I sound satirical? No, I'm quite serious, like Dr. Berlinski...

Berlinski's radical and often wrong-headed skepticism represents an ascendant style in the popular debate over American science: Like the recent crop of global-warming skeptics, AIDS denialists, and biotech activists, Berlinski uses doubt as a weapon against the academyhe's more concerned with what we don't know than what we do. He uses uncertainty to challenge the scientific consensus; he points to the evidence that isn't there and seeks out the things that can't be proved. In its extreme and ideological form, this contrarian approach to science can turn into a form of paranoiaa state of permanent suspicion and outrage. But Berlinski is hardly a victim of the style. He's merely its most methodical practitioner.

Daniel Engber, A Crank's Progress, Slate Magazine[2]

David Berlinski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This guy is just a professional skeptic who dismisses Peter and Rosemary Grant as "just a couple of nutty journalists". (He may have been referring to Jonathan Weiner who popularized their work, but he could at least acknowledge that there was 25+ years of very careful scientific work behind Weiner's book.)

You may not intend to be satirical, Marlowe, but you are following in the footsteps of a satirist who has found an eager audience.

marlowe007 · Aug 28, 2009

Sure, attack the man rather than his arguments.

Say, do you know who actually was an AIDS denialist? Bill Hamilton, the man who is widely regarded as one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20th century. And then there's Ronald Fisher, the founding father of the neo-Darwinian synthesis who denied that smoking causes lung cancer!

Just goes to show, you can make anyone look equally ridiculous if you dig deep enough.

Dark_Lite · Aug 28, 2009

So do you actually believe that vaccines are bad?

marlowe007 · Aug 28, 2009

Dark_Lite said:
So do you actually believe that vaccines are bad?

Oh, don't get me started!

The preparation of vaccines is a multi-billion dollar source of profit to the pharmaceutical companies. Disease to them is big business. A healthy population would put them out of business. Proper nutrition is the real way to treat heart disease and cancer.

gluadys · Aug 28, 2009

marlowe007 said:
Sure, attack the man rather than his arguments.

What arguments? There were none in the video clip.

Just handwaving science aside like treating a life-time of research as "a couple of nutty journalists taking a look at finch beaks."

When he presents an argument, let me know.

marlowe007 · Aug 28, 2009

gluadys said:
What arguments? There were none in the video clip.

I guess you only saw the first half...

lawtonfogle · Aug 28, 2009

marlowe007 said:
I guess you only saw the first half...

Even if there are actual arguments in the second half, wouldn't it have been smarter to condense out any non-arguments, or at least put them at the end?

gluadys · Aug 28, 2009

marlowe007 said:
I guess you only saw the first half...

No, I watched it all--including his appeal to ignorance about the evolution of whales. Typical of evolution deniers. They refuse to actually look at or attempt to explain any evidence we DO have and just say "but what about all we don't know yet?"

Well--we don't know it-----yet.

Now explain Ambulocetus natans and the other protowhale fossils we do have from a non-evolutionary perspective.

He can't do that, so he is just flaunting his ignorance and making it sound profound.

Mallon · Aug 28, 2009

marlowe007 said:
Do I sound satirical?

Yes, you do. You sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

No, I'm quite serious, like Dr. Berlinski...

YouTube - Dr. David Berlinski: Transitional Sequence (Clip 4)

Sure, but being serious doesn't mean you understand what you're talking about. Many 9/11, moon landing, and Holocaust conspiracy theorists are also serious, but that doesn't lend them any credibility.
Berlinski's understanding of evolution is a joke. Where did he get this "50,000 changes" number from? What biological meaning does it have? Does he understand that all of life, including the fossil whales he cites, fits within a nested hierarchical pattern? Evolution alone explains that pattern, regardless of the completeness of the fossil record. If we could artificially break the whale evolutionary tree down into 50,000 species, we would still need only three fossils to infer degrees of common ancestry. Does Berlinski understand this? Does he know that palaeontologists and geologists can account for the incompleteness of the fossil record in an empirical way? Does he understand that his is an argument from ignorance? Is he even qualified to comment on evolution given his background? Berlinski admits the existence of transitional sequences, so how does he account for them? What better explanation does he have to offer for them? For all the talking he does, he sure doesn't have a lot to offer.

Here's a picking apart of Berlinski's whale video:
YouTube - David Berlinski and Whale Evolution

sfs · Aug 28, 2009

marlowe007 said:
That is not my assertion, for there is no logical reason to suggest such a thing when there are GAPS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD.

I know it's not your assertion. Rather than make this assertion, instead what progressive creationists do is wait until empirical evidence bears out a prediction of evolution, and then say, "God did it that way." I'm suggesting that instead of going through this procedure again and again, you could save yourself a lot of trouble just by making that simple assertion. You'll save time, and you'll end up in exactly the same place.

And unless you're psychic, you cannot predict that new discoveries shall continue to fill the voids. This arrogant expectation is nothing but a pseudo-scientific assumption.

By your standards, then, evolutionary biologists and geneticists must be psychic, since they keep making successful predictions based on evolution. How odd.

I agree peace4ever. Evolution is a lie, just like "vaccines" and water fluoridation.

Look, making up nonsense about evolution just hurts science (and scientists) and slows down biomedical research a little. Making up nonsense about fluoridation just keeps dentists in business. But making up nonsense about vaccination gets people killed. You talk about things you obviously don't understand, you slander people you know nothing about, and you spread lies that kill people. Words fail me.

The Darwin Delusion

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