Why won’t creationists participate in open and honest debate?

[Edx]

Do you mean Martin Luther King the civil rights activist from the 1960's, or Martin Luther the German Monk reformist who lived from 1483-1546?

He is talking about the Jew hating one.

 

[Handmaided]

Do you mean Martin Luther King the civil rights activist from the 1960's, or Martin Luther the German Monk reformist who lived from 1483-1546?

If you mean Martin Luther the ex German monk, then no. "Luther is also known for his writings about the Jews, the nature and consequences of which are the subject of much debate among scholars, many of whom have characterized them as anti-semantic. His statements that Jews' homes should be destroyed, their synagogues and schools burned, money confiscated, and rights and liberties curtailed were revived and given widespread publicity by the Nazis in Germany in 1933–45. As a result of this, coupled with his revolutionary theological views, his legacy remains controversial." I am a Messianic Jew, he did have some insight but not every word out of his mouth was a golden nugget that’s why I follow God, not man.

 

[Edx]

If you mean Martin Luther the ex German monk, then no. "Luther is also known for his writings about the Jews, the nature and consequences of which are the subject of much debate among scholars, many of whom have characterized them as anti-semantic. His statements that Jews' homes should be destroyed, their synagogues and schools burned, money confiscated, and rights and liberties curtailed were revived and given widespread publicity by the Nazis in Germany in 1933–45. As a result of this, coupled with his revolutionary theological views, his legacy remains controversial." I am a Messianic Jew, he did have some insight but not every word out of his mouth was a golden nugget that’s why I follow God, not man.

But man wrote the books in the Bible and it was comitte of men that decided which books be in the offical version.

 

[Loudmouth]

Do you mean Martin Luther King the civil rights activist from the 1960's, or Martin Luther the German Monk reformist who lived from 1483-1546?

The Martin Luther of letters nailed on church doors fame. This is what he said during a conversation about Copernicus.

"So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth [Jos. 10:12]."

It seems that Martin Luther believed that the Holy Scriptures claimed that the Sun moved about the Earth, and not the other way around.

 

[shernren]

Do you mean Martin Luther King the civil rights activist from the 1960's, or Martin Luther the German Monk reformist who lived from 1483-1546?

German Monk reformist. Martin Luther King "had a dream" but his dreams weren't that extreme.

 

[sonfleur]

What is a dinosaur? And what is a bird?

Here is one very key difference between birds and dinosaurs:

Lung system. Birds have high-performance lungs that could not have evolved from bellows-like lungs in dinosaurs. 'Birds have a complicated system of air sacs which keep air flowing in one direction through special tubes (parabronchi) in the lung, and blood moves through the lung’s blood vessels in the opposite direction for efficient oxygen uptake, an excellent engineering design.' (Scientific American) Also, there is no other type of animal that could have been their ancestor because of the uniqueness of their lung system.

I don't have issues when I look at facts like these because fact fits what God has revealed. For science to prove an evolutionary method for avian lungs, it must prove, or find proof of, a functioning gradual transition from a reptilian lung system to an avian system. In actual fact, any such transition must be immediate and complete for it to work properly, otherwise the transitional creature would die. Archaeopteryx has complete avian lungs (it is not transitional).

 

[Edx]

Archaeopteryx has complete avian lungs (it is not transitional).

Because you think Evolution requires animals to have half lungs?

 

[Chalnoth]

Here is one very key difference between birds and dinosaurs:

Probably not. Lungs are soft tissues that aren't easily preserved during fossilization. So it's hard to find out exactly when such systems would have evolved. But there is suggestive evidence that the avian lung is a relic of the dinosaur lung:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/dino_lungs/

I don't have issues when I look at facts like these because fact fits what God has revealed. For science to prove an evolutionary method for avian lungs, it must prove, or find proof of, a functioning gradual transition from a reptilian lung system to an avian system. In actual fact, any such transition must be immediate and complete for it to work properly, otherwise the transitional creature would die.

Argument from incredulity. Once a mechanism is found for the evolution of the avian lung (if it hasn't been found already), you move on to the next complex system. At what point would you realize that evolution expects us to see complex systems that are apparently irreducibly complex?

Archaeopteryx has complete avian lungs (it is not transitional).

Yeah, not transitional at all: it still had teeth and claws on its wings. No bird alive today has either.

Edit:
And by the way, if there were a designer, why didn't he design other animals with this same lung system? It seems to be quite a bit more efficient than the mammilian lung system. Why didn't we get it? Because evolution explains this quite well: an adaptation that evolved in one line will never evolve again in another line in the same form. Thus we expect some groups of animals to have certain traits that are unique to that group.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Here is one very key difference between birds and dinosaurs:

Lung system. Birds have high-performance lungs that could not have evolved from bellows-like lungs in dinosaurs. 'Birds have a complicated system of air sacs which keep air flowing in one direction through special tubes (parabronchi) in the lung, and blood moves through the lung’s blood vessels in the opposite direction for efficient oxygen uptake, an excellent engineering design.' (Scientific American) Also, there is no other type of animal that could have been their ancestor because of the uniqueness of their lung system.

I don't have issues when I look at facts like these because fact fits what God has revealed. For science to prove an evolutionary method for avian lungs, it must prove, or find proof of, a functioning gradual transition from a reptilian lung system to an avian system. In actual fact, any such transition must be immediate and complete for it to work properly, otherwise the transitional creature would die. Archaeopteryx has complete avian lungs (it is not transitional).

There were once a handful of scientists (John Ruben, Terry Jones, Nicholas Geist, W. Jaap Hillenius, and Alan Feduccia) who've been misquoted by creationist websites as thought they were arguing your way, but as I said, they've since clarified or recanted their positions.

In their initial paper, Lung Structure and Ventilation in Theropod Dinosaurs and Early Birds (1997) they already admitted that "Reptiles and birds possess septate lungs rather than the alveolar-style lungs of mammals", and that"A suite of morphological attributes suggests that dinosaurs and birds are close relatives,"
(Feduccia 1999b)."

In 2003, the main troup wrote another paper titled, Respiratory and Reproductive Paleophysiology of Dinosaurs and Early Birds, in which they wrote; "Like their dinosaurian relatives, Archaeopteryx and early birds also lacked the thoracic skeletal modifications consistent with the ability to have ventilated an avian-style lung." So no, even according to your own sources, Archaeopteryx did not have "completely avian lungs" and neither did any of the other very earliest birds.

But it gets better because they also said; "A fully partitioned, four-chambered heart is thus present in both crocodilians and birds, and not only was its presence among dinosaurs likely, but it also affords little inference regarding metabolic rates in these animals."

Here they say they expect dinosaurs to be bird-like because they are so closely-related. Even in the ealy nineties, there was an admission that "it is possible that a less highly derived, "proto-air-sac" lung may have existed in some dinosaurs," and we now know that is the case as these air-sacs have been found in other maniraptoran dinosaurs like Dinonychus, and even in earlier therapods as distantly-related as Allosaurus. So there is no point of distinction anymore between the primitive lung of the earliest aves and the lungs of some other Maniraptoran dinosaurs. There is now known to have been a functional transitional series into the avian system, and Archaeopteryx was definitely a transitional.

Care to try again? Seriously, I honestly want what it would take to get a creationist to concede that you cannot distinguish birds from dinosaurs anymore, and admit you were wrong about transitions between them.

 

[Dragar]

Hey Aron, can I go around calling birds dinosaurs (in the same way I can call humans apes) and be correct? I sometimes do, but I want to know what biologists call them.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Hey Aron, can I go around calling birds dinosaurs (in the same way I can call humans apes) and be correct? I sometimes do, but I want to know what biologists call them.

Yes, birds are literally dinosaurs just as tigers are cats and iguanas are lizards.

 

[Dragar]

That's so cool. Thanks!

 

[Ondoher]

Here is one very key difference between birds and dinosaurs:

Lung system. Birds have high-performance lungs that could not have evolved from bellows-like lungs in dinosaurs. 'Birds have a complicated system of air sacs which keep air flowing in one direction through special tubes (parabronchi) in the lung, and blood moves through the lung’s blood vessels in the opposite direction for efficient oxygen uptake, an excellent engineering design.' (Scientific American) Also, there is no other type of animal that could have been their ancestor because of the uniqueness of their lung system.

I don't have issues when I look at facts like these because fact fits what God has revealed. For science to prove an evolutionary method for avian lungs, it must prove, or find proof of, a functioning gradual transition from a reptilian lung system to an avian system. In actual fact, any such transition must be immediate and complete for it to work properly, otherwise the transitional creature would die. Archaeopteryx has complete avian lungs (it is not transitional).

So, your argument is that Archaeopteryx has a mix of dinosaurian characters and avian characters, therefore it is not transitional? Is that what you're saying?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Lung system. Birds have high-performance lungs that could not have evolved from bellows-like lungs in dinosaurs. 'Birds have a complicated system of air sacs which keep air flowing in one direction through special tubes (parabronchi) in the lung, and blood moves through the lung’s blood vessels in the opposite direction for efficient oxygen uptake, an excellent engineering design.' (Scientific American) Also, there is no other type of animal that could have been their ancestor because of the uniqueness of their lung system.

And how, pray tell, does this differ from dinosaur lungs? Are you really claiming that bird lungs are irreducibly complex?

I don't have issues when I look at facts like these because fact fits what God has revealed.

Your god has revealed nothing about comparative avian-saurian pulmonary systems.

For science to prove an evolutionary method for avian lungs, it must prove, or find proof of, a functioning gradual transition from a reptilian lung system to an avian system. In actual fact, any such transition must be immediate and complete for it to work properly, otherwise the transitional creature would die. Archaeopteryx has complete avian lungs (it is not transitional).

You have not shown that
a) such a 'transitional' lung system would be fatal,
b) Archaeopteryx has 'complete avian lungs',
c) dissimilarities between lung systems is disproof of avian, descendance from dinosaurs,
d) irreducable complexity exists in avian lungs.
The argument from irreducable complexity is a fallicious argument from ignorance. Your particular inability to comprehend the evolution of lungs (and, for that matter, of Aves from dinosaurs) is irrelevent and subjective.

 

[Handmaided]

But man wrote the books in the Bible and it was comitte of men that decided which books be in the offical version.

Well that's where we differ, I believe the Bible was from God, not man. If God can create the world then he can certainly tell a man what to write. Martin Luther's book wasn't, from God. God doesn't hate the Jews, Jesus was a Jew....

 

[Loudmouth]

Well that's where we differ, I believe the Bible was from God, not man.

Both christians and agnostics/atheists agree that human beings wrote the bible. Where we differ is that christians believe that God inspired those human beings to write those words. That is why quoting bible verses for agnostics/atheists is a non-starter, just as you would be unimpressed by a Hindu quoting Hindu scriptures.

If God can create the world then he can certainly tell a man what to write.

And if Zeus created the world then he can surely tell man to write great epic poems.

Martin Luther's book wasn't, from God.

Martin Luther thought that God's book supported the sun circling the earth. If Martin Luther could be so badly mistaken with his interpretation of scripture, how do you know that modern day creationists are doing any better?

 

[Beastt]

Well that's where we differ, I believe the Bible was from God, not man. If God can create the world then he can certainly tell a man what to write. Martin Luther's book wasn't, from God. God doesn't hate the Jews, Jesus was a Jew....

Isn't it true that exactly the same claim can be made for other proposed Gods and the books which some claim were inspired by them to be written through men?

When it can be shown that many of the false claims in the Bible align with the beliefs of men from that era, doesn't it speak strongly for the idea that the Bible was actually written by men, without influence from a divine being?

Why is it that no god has ever written his own book or performed his own tasks? Books are always written by men and the tasks of their gods performed by nature or men.

 

[Beastt]

Martin Luther thought that God's book supported the sun circling the earth. If Martin Luther could be so badly mistaken with his interpretation of scripture, how do you know that modern day creationists are doing any better?

And Martin Luther certainly wasn't the only one. If you look to ancient Hebrew etchings, drawn based on the original Hebrew text of Genesis, you find the same claims we see in the English KJV, despite the fact that Christians today are taught to ignore this portion of the text as poetic filler. The church itself taught geocentrism for over 16 centuries. Not only did they teach that the Earth was the stationary center of the universe, they defended it violently, punishing and even executing those attempting to present scientific evidence which showed that the Earth circled the sun.

The Bible claims that the Earth was formed covered in water, yet devoid of the atmosphere which planets require in order to capture and maintain liquid water. It claims that plants were growing on Earth before the sun was created and that the sun, moon and stars were created and reside within the Earth's atmosphere. It strongly insinuates a flat Earth which lies stationary and a sun that moves around the Earth. Christians today are taught to ignore these verses as metaphorical or poetic and yet, on each point, until science showed the Bible was wrong, these things were routinely read and believed to be literal. It seems that whenever the Bible is shown to be wrong, believers simply turn away from literal reading.

And in each of these instances, the claims of the Bible are in accordance with the beliefs of men from the time and location where the Bible was originally written.

Take the above image and compare it to a literal reading of the first 20 or so verses of Genesis from the KJV. Then consider that this depiction was developed by those who spoke and read Hebrew as their native language, from the original Hebrew text.

 

[JohnR7]

birds are literally dinosaurs

Your evidence for this is?

 

[JohnR7]

If you put half as much energy into learning the truth, instead of learning lies, you might really know something. As it is, you seem to have forgotten what little bit of truth you did have. Do you enjoy walking in total darkness? Is that a place you like to be?

What you need to do is confront the issue of man inequity to man and the fact that God is not going to take the blame for the mess that man and the devil have made out of this world. God has a plan and He is going to make it right. Without God, then this world would keep right on going the way it has been going.