The Deception of Evolution and the Fossil Sequence

[MoreCoffee]

The main problem is that your definition is so vague and all-encompassing to become meaningless.

If I train over the course of months for a marathon, is that a religion?

If sit down and read a book cover to cover, is that a religion?

If I spend a lot of time and money collecting 19th century teapots, is that a religion?

It's a dictionary definition so don't complain to me.

Religion = a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It's a dictionary definition so don't complain to me.

Religion = a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.

And you are still only addressing half of the challenge. It is dishonest to try to change the argument after you join it. One more time not only do you have to show that atheism can be said to be a religion, though I disagree that the definition that you cited includes atheism it still fails since Christianity would also be a religion by that definition.

I will be right back with AV's claim that you said that you could defend.

Here it is:

"I came up with a definition of "religion" that both excludes Christianity as a religion and includes atheism as a religion:"

So how does your definition exclude Christianity?

 

[Subduction Zone]

No, it failed utterly. If you want to try again have at it.

Here is the post where I first challenged MoreCoffee to defend AV's claim. Please note the "it failed utterly" referred to AV's definition and I challenged you to defend his claim. Instead of doing that you have merely been trying to prove that you could find a definition that could possibly be applied to atheism calling it a religion. You erred by not understanding the challenge, even though I repeatedly explained to MoreCoffee how he was not responding to the correct question.

 

[The Cadet]

Not scientific "dating" methods, but the unquestionable faith (held by all evolutionary mystics) that the earth is extremely ancient in a way that facilitates the mysterious evolution of all life on earth from a common seed. (i.e. millions and billions of years) This is a sacrosanct creed never, ever, to be questioned.

We have used radiometric dating to date rocks back to billions of years ago. This puts a minimum age on the earth itself. There's no faith involved here, beyond the faith that rates of radioactive decay don't change. And, to put this simply, if you could find any way to change the rate of radioactive decay, you'd be in for at least one Nobel - nothing so far has managed to change it.

Well AV, I'm still waiting for you explanation of why you discredit speleomeths. Or, perhaps you are realized that you are in way over your head with a baseless supported claim? Or is it that when you said deep time doesn't work, you realized that you were contradicting your own idea of embedded age?

What he's talking about is the rapid fossilization of objects through concretion.

...Which is not really fossilization at all, follows completely different mechanisms than most dinosaur fossils, and can be shown to be different.

 

[florida2]

It's a dictionary definition so don't complain to me.

Religion = a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.

Then why do you insist on keeping with such a weak definition from one particular dictionary?

 

[GrimKingGrim]

Atheism = "lack of belief in God" = a belief that God is unnecessary to explain the universe.

Done.

In that sense Atheism is a religious position in that it is a set of beliefs about the ultimate cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. Saying you "lack belief in God" is simultaneously a positive metaphysical claim whether you like it or not.

This "lack of belief" thing is just a trick used in order to cowardly avoid defending one's metaphysical worldview.

It is essentially no different than saying Theism is the "lack of belief in a universe in which God is unnecessary". Anyone can flip their position into a "lack of belief" of the opposite.

As far as I know, modern atheists were the first ideological sect that began running away from the prospect of actually defending their beliefs like this.

The rest of your post is irrelevant and wrong.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Done.



The rest of your post is irrelevant and wrong.

And not only that. The challenge was not to just show that atheism can be defined as a religion, though his answer was very poor there was one huge problem with it, Christianity was a religion too by that definition, therefore it failed. The challenge was to find a definition that included atheism, but excluded Christianity. He knows that that is hopeless.

 

[lifepsyop]

To revisit one of the initial arguments in this thread...

No, because amphibians and fish also have articular bones in the jaw. The situation you imagine would be a violation of Dollo's Law. Dollo's Law may not be as unbreakable as the laws of physics, but it strains credulity to have jaw bones evolve into earbones and back again in just the same arrangement. In this case it is clear which are the derived forms. And they appear after the original forms. And continued fossil discoveries will either reinforce, or contradict, this conclusion. So far, the conclusions have been reinforced.

Sure, I can explain it further. Simply put, mutations that impact actual traits are less common than ones which do absolutely nothing. Considering that something such as a jawbone's morphology can be the result of thousands of mutations if not millions of them, some being mutations so rare that the now prevalent trait could have originated in less than a dozen organisms, the chances of it all happening again in reverse order are practically nonexistent, especially considering the fact that in order for it to occur, we would have had to have an environmental change in which all those previous mutations were not an advantage, time for evolution, and to have the traits later be at a disadvantage in the original environment to a significant extent. This just doesn't happen in nature, most mutations can be beneficial in a wide enough range of environments that the chances of this all working to occur naturally is just plain impossible. But this is considering a complex structure such as a jawbone.

This is a good example of evolutionists making specific predictions about their theory, only to be forced to accommodate the failure afterwards. Notice how insistent the above posters were that these kinds of complex trait reversals would never be expected to occur in evolutionary history. Not only unexpected but essentially "impossible".

Now let's take a look at the literature where evolutionists have recently asserted the exact opposite, that complex morphological traits have evolved, disappeared, and re-evolved numerous times.

Evidence for repeated acquisition and loss of complex body-form characters in an insular clade of Southeast Asian semi-fossorial skinks. - Siler, Brown 2011

"Evolutionary simplification, or loss of complex characters, is a major theme in studies of body-form evolution. The apparently infrequent evolutionary reacquisition of complex characters has led to the assertion (Dollo's Law) that once lost, complex characters may be impossible to re-evolve, at least via the exact same evolutionary process. Here, we provide one of the most comprehensive, fine-scale analyses of squamate body-form evolution to date, introducing a new model system of closely related, morphologically variable, lizards. Our phylogenetic results support independent instances of complete limb loss as well as multiple instances of digit and external ear opening loss and re-acquisition. Even more striking, we find strong statistical support for the re-acquisition of a pentadactyl body form from a digit-reduced ancestor. Our study reveals that species of the genus Brachymeles exemplify regions of morphospace (body plans) previously undocumented in squamates. Our findings have broad, general implications for body-form evolution in burrowing vertebrates: whatever constraints have shaped trends in morphological evolution among other squamate groups (excluding Bipes) have been lost in this one exemplary clade. The results of our study join a nascent body of literature showing strong statistical support for character loss, followed by evolutionary re-acquisition of complex structures associated with a generalized pentadactyl body form."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21884062

Notice how the above-quoted evolutionists will now automatically transition to accommodate that which they previously railed against with total confidence as being beyond reasonable consideration for the theory. Isn't that bizarre?

Returning to the substance of the OP, as we can clearly see, Evolution theory could potentially accommodate countless different narratives and phylogenies by claiming complex features either independently evolved in multiple lineages, and/or underwent reversals to the feature's previous states. Of course, the explanation for this will always be "Natural Selection did it".

Evolution is an amorphous fog that settles around the shifting landscape of data.

 

[lifepsyop]

Done.

The rest of your post is irrelevant and wrong.

Uh huh. It was so "wrong" that you were incapable of pointing out why. What a great way to debate, just cross out the arguments you can't respond to.

 

[GrimKingGrim]

Uh huh. It was so "wrong" that you were incapable of pointing out why. What a great way to debate, just cross out the arguments you can't respond to.

You went off on a flawed basis. Your argument failed before it began. You'd be just mistaken by arguing atheism demands an extreme love of shrimp. You lack fundamental knowledge, why waste my time dismantling a fundamentally flawed argument? Everything I crossed out was flawed because it didn't fit the description of atheism.

 

[lifepsyop]

You went off on a flawed basis. Your argument failed before it began. You'd be just mistaken by arguing atheism demands an extreme love of shrimp. You lack fundamental knowledge, why waste my time dismantling a fundamentally flawed argument? Everything I crossed out was flawed because it didn't fit the description of atheism.

Sorry but everything you wrote is wrong. You are so wrong that I don't need to explain how. Why waste my time dismantling a fundamentally flawed argument?

See how far the discussion goes playing those games?

 

[GrimKingGrim]

Sorry but everything you wrote is wrong. You are so wrong that I don't need to explain how. Why waste my time dismantling a fundamentally flawed argument?

See how far the discussion goes playing those games?

All I see is a petty attempt to mock me. You extended past what atheism is and tried to make an argument off of it. This is the second time I'm telling you this. I don't know what to tell you. You were wrong, take that as you will.

 

[AV1611VET]

Still waiting AV.

Run these things, whatever they are, through my Boolean standards and see what comes out.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Run these things, whatever they are, through my Boolean standards and see what comes out.

Your so called "Boolean standards" are incorrectly applied.

 

[AV1611VET]

Your so called "Boolean standards" are incorrectly applied.

You're welcome to think that.

But then, I'm not the one scratching my head.

Rick is.

I'm curious to see if he can run them through my standards, misapplied or not, and come up with the answer.

(Can you, by the way?)

 

[GrimKingGrim]

You're welcome to think that.

But then, I'm not the one scratching my head.

Rick is.

I'm curious to see if he can run them through my standards, misapplied or not, and come up with the answer.

Allow me to see these boolean standards oh wise one

 

[RickG]

Run these things, whatever they are, through my Boolean standards and see what comes out.

Hmmmm? Okay! Ching...chang...bong...Boolean...AVstandards......bounce...trounce... beep beep.

Ah! Yes, I see now. A complete lack of knowledge applied to a topic (Speleothems), yet feels justified in trashing it, even though he has no idea what the scientific use for it is. Why am I not surprised? Reminds me of the poster yesterday that tried to pass of Amino Acid Chronology as a radiocarbon dating method. Good Grief!

 

[AV1611VET]

Allow me to see these boolean standards or wise one

My Boolean Standards:

1. Science says it, Bible says otherwise = say otherwise
2. Science says it, Bible is silent = agree with science

 

[GrimKingGrim]

My Boolean Standards:

1. Science says it, Bible says otherwise = say otherwise
2. Science says it, Bible is silent = agree with science

... ... So you agree with evolution and rock dating methods as well as fossil dating methods. Okay then why are you arguing for the opposite?

 

[AV1611VET]

Hmmmm? Okay! Ching...chang...bong...Boolean...AVstandards......bounce...trounce... beep beep.

Ah! Yes, I see now. A complete lack of knowledge applied to a topic (Speleothems), yet feels justified in trashing it, even though he has no idea what the scientific use for it is. Why am I not surprised? Reminds me of the poster yesterday that tried to pass of Amino Acid Chronology as a radiocarbon dating method. Good Grief!

I'm totally lost here.

Do you now have an answer you so passionately wanted of me?

I hope so.

You see ... there's an old saying:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

So I hope any further questions to me along this nature, Rick, can be answered without I having to do it for you.

I hope.