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

[MarkT]

I am always honest, and yes I can answer these questions scientifically.

No you can't. A scientific method can only be used to expain what we can see. If evolution is happening then scientifically you need something that will prove your theory, something that's different from saying populations of animals move in and out of an environment. What that is is stating the obvious. If one environment becomes unsuitable, animals leave and move on to another. The frequency of alleles changes. First of all, you should be suspicious of a theory like that which states the obvious and invites the absurd. You can't predict anything except what is obvious. What can you add to this by talking about speciation? Nothing. And what is added by talking about the fossil record? Only that people will connect speciation and leap to illogical unproven conclusions. Like one lady said to me once, "What would prevent speciation from continuing?" Nothing except there might be some limits. But what you're really asking is what would keep an ape from evolving into a human being? Everything! First of all, where did you get such an idea that they do? The idea is irrational. More ape species may be possible in the future but there's no evidence that apes evolve into anything but apes. One population of apes leaves and another moves in. The frequency of alleles changes. A remnant of the total number of ape species remains but they're all ape.

Your opinion is no better than anyone elses. Your interpretations aren't better. And your reasons for believing do not affect the truth of your explanation. Like the lady said, "What else?", as if you have no chioce but you have to accept the absurd. Like they said to Columbus, " Christofero, You will fall off the edge of the world if you keep sailing in that direction. What else can happen?" Plenty if you know that the earth is round.

 

[MarkT]

The principle difference is communal society, everyone looking out for the others, and aiding each other in times need. That trait guarantees enormous selective potential.

Almost every animal lives in a community so there's no need to bring community into it. Running on all fours is a definite advantage so walking on two feet can not be an adaptive trait. And monkeys don't carry tools and their babies can climb trees.

 

[Chalnoth]

No, science doesn't ever attempt to prove anything, because absolute proof when talking about the real world is impossible. Instead science is a self-correcting method that continually tries to improve the accuracy of its description of the real world. We can't ever hope to know everything about the real world, but we have gained tremendous benefits from science over the last hundred years. What is it, do you think, that started the industrial revolution?

 

[Ondoher]

No you can't. A scientific method can only be used to expain what we can see.

Can we see atoms? Or maybe you don't understand the scientific method.

If evolution is happening then scientifically you need something that will prove your theory,

Science doesn't prove things. What you should have said is that you need to determine some ways to hypothetically disprove your hypothesis.

something that's different from saying populations of animals move in and out of an environment. What that is is stating the obvious. If one environment becomes unsuitable, animals leave and move on to another.

Or those individuals best suited to the new environent have more offspring within that evironment thus passing those traits on to the next generation.

The frequency of alleles changes.

Yes, that's true based on what i said above. Within the context of your post, it was a nonsequitur. Changing environments will not necessarily effect allele frequecies.

First of all, you should be suspicious of a theory like that which states the obvious and invites the absurd.

This doesn't seem to follow from anything. It certainly doesn't describe evolution.

You can't predict anything except what is obvious.

What's so obvious about the convergence of independent phylogenies or the correlation between phylogeny and statigraphy? These are predictions of evolution. What about the prediction that there would be similarities between parts of the adaptive immune system and transposons? Is that obvious outside of an evolutionary framework?

What can you add to this by talking about speciation? Nothing.

Speciation has been observed. That's something.

And what is added by talking about the fossil record?

Fossil species fit into the nested hierarhy of species in places consistent with when they lived.

Only that people will connect speciation and leap to illogical unproven conclusions. Like one lady said to me once, "What would prevent speciation from continuing?" Nothing except there might be some limits.

What are these limits and how would we test them?

But what you're really asking is what would keep an ape from evolving into a human being? Everything! First of all, where did you get such an idea that they do?

Because we know that humans and other great apes share common ancestry. We know this due to evidence such as ERV phylogenies.

The idea is irrational.

Apparently not.

More ape species may be possible in the future but there's no evidence that apes evolve into anything but apes.

Other than all that aforementioned evidence.

One population of apes leaves and another moves in. The frequency of alleles changes. A remnant of the total number of ape species remains but they're all ape.

As are humans. We are also primates, mammals, synapsids, amniotes, tetrapods, vertebrates, chordates, deuterostomes, bilaterians, animals, and eukaryotes.

Ape is a containing classification. The descendents of apes will always be apes. Like birds are dinosaurs. And termites are cockroaches.

Your opinion is no better than anyone elses. Your interpretations aren't better.

Except that his are supported by 150 years of continual testing by hundreds of thousands of scientists.

And your reasons for believing do not affect the truth of your explanation. Like the lady said, "What else?", as if you have no chioce but you have to accept the absurd.

It seems absurd that the clocks of two people moving at different velocities should keep time differently. But it appears to be true.

Like they said to Columbus, " Christofero, You will fall off the edge of the world if you keep sailing in that direction. What else can happen?"

Actually, it was pretty well known that the earth was round at that point. Columbus was just of the opinion it was smaller. Lucky for him there was a whole other continent between spain and india.

Plenty if you know that the earth is round.

If you have an alternate, testable hyopthesis that has more explanatory power or is more parsimoneous, then out with it.

 

[Chalnoth]

Almost every animal lives in a community so there's no need to bring community into it.

Some animals are social animals. Others are solitary. Social animals form many different sorts of social groups.

Running on all fours is a definite advantage so walking on two feet can not be an adaptive trait.

No, the advantage depends upon the environment.

And monkeys don't carry tools and their babies can climb trees.

Primate adolescents take a lot of time growing up and learning to climb. They don't require as much time as human children, but a large part of that is because our brains develop late (a necessity due to the constraints of the mother's birth canal). And chimpanzees have been observed using tools.

 

[MarkT]

Nowhere does evolution suggest that all populations should follow the exact same evolutionary path. Quite the opposite in fact: the entire purpose of the theory of evolution is to explain the diversity of life on Earth.

It doesn't say anything about diversity. All it says is the frequency of alleles change. You want it to explain diversity.

The theory of evolution predicts you will see a great variety of life forms, and that it will be possible to classify those life forms into a strict nested hierarchy (this is a fancy way of saying that all descendents of a species will still retain traits of the parent species, while making modifications of their own, but not ever borrowing modifications from a cousin species).

You say that as if diversity isn't obvious. Diversity is not a prediction! Classifying animals is just a game. You can create a group and then create a larger group and then create a larger group. You can create a nested hierarchy if you can find something all animals have in common and then divide them into smaller groups that have things in common, if you don't care that they are not interchangable parts, till you get a nested hierarchy but it's hardly evidence for common descent. You can only differentiate in the broadest sense. That they don't have certain characters is not because nature didn't do it. It's because God did it. The argument that nature didn't do it is not evidence for evolution. Saying, for example, that mammals don't have feathers is first calling animals with no feathers "mammals' and then stating the obvious. There's hardly any way of falsifying this argument. Plus it assumes nature can put feathers on a mammal but it didn't so falsifying begs for a different theory evolution. The fact that mammals don't have feathers does not mean mammals are related by common descent.

 

[card]

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

Not possible.
You cannot defend the indefensible?
You can try, but you will always fail in the end.

 

[MarkT]

As are humans. We are also primates, mammals, synapsids, amniotes, tetrapods, vertebrates, chordates, deuterostomes, bilaterians, animals, and eukaryotes.

Ape is a containing classification. The descendents of apes will always be apes. Like birds are dinosaurs. And termites are cockroaches.

We are not primates or mammals or synapsids. We are not any of those categories because we are not categories. We are creatures of course. You say the descendants of apes will always be apes. That's true. The ancestors of apes have always been apes. The ancestors of man have always been men.

 

[Chalnoth]

It doesn't say anything about diversity. All it says is the frequency of alleles change. You want it to explain diversity.

No, that's the definition of the phenomenon of evolution. That's a different beast entirely from the theory of evolution, which describes a process that explains how the traits of a population (frequency of alleles) change over time. The process is simply this:

1. There is a mechanism for generating diversity.
2. Traits can be inherited.
3. Some traits will improve the ability of organisms to survive and multiply, others will decrease the ability of the organisms to survive and multiply.
4. Over many generations, the average traits of the population will shift, more closely matching the traits of those that survive and reproduce.
5. Sometimes a species will be separated into separate areas. The two separated groups of the population, if they are kept out of contact for long enough, will diverge along different evolutionary paths long enough that reproduction is no longer possible. Forever after, the two species will continue to diverge along completely different paths (this is speciation).

This predicts that over long spans of time, there will be large numbers of speciation events, dividing the tree of life further and further. Thus explaining the diversity of life, and also explaining the nested hierarchy into which all life fits.

You can create a nested hierarchy if you can find something all animals have in common and then divide them into smaller groups that have things in common, if you don't care that they are not interchangable parts, till you get a nested hierarchy but it's hardly evidence for common descent.

But the point is: why aren't there any interchangable parts? Evolution requires that there is no mixture between separate evolutionary lines. There can't, for example, ever be an animal that has both feathers and produces milk, nor can there be an animal with avian lungs and fur. Evolution demands that there be no such interchangeable parts. If you want to take the Intelligent Design approach and compare human engineering to evolution, you find that Intelligent Design expects interchangeable parts to be the norm.

 

[USincognito]

We are not primates or mammals or synapsids. We are not any of those categories because we are not categories.

Right, we're not categories, but we do fall under the definition of categories. Your assertion is not only baseless, but nonsensical.

And let's just forget about the first and third one in your first sentence, lets look at the one I bolded - mammals. How can you say we're not mammals? Is there any definition of mammals you can find that would exclude humans?

 

[USincognito]

Saying, for example, that mammals don't have feathers is first calling animals with no feathers "mammals' and then stating the obvious. There's hardly any way of falsifying this argument. Plus it assumes nature can put feathers on a mammal but it didn't so falsifying begs for a different theory evolution. The fact that mammals don't have feathers does not mean mammals are related by common descent.

You're getting how taxonomic classifications work backwards. Mammals aren't defined by not having feathers, mammals are defined by characteristics they do possess. Before we get into what those characteristics are, do you understand how classification works now?

 

[Chalnoth]

We are not primates or mammals or synapsids. We are not any of those categories because we are not categories. We are creatures of course. You say the descendants of apes will always be apes. That's true. The ancestors of apes have always been apes. The ancestors of man have always been men.

What makes us not these things? For example, consider the classification of mammal as described on Wikipedia:

The mammals are the class of vertebrate animals characterized by the production of milk in females for the nourishment of young, from mammary glands present on most species and specialized skin glands in monotremes that seep or ooze milk; the presence of hair or fur; specialized teeth; the presence of a neocortex region in the brain; and endothermic or "warm-blooded" bodies. The brain regulates endothermic and circulatory systems, including a four-chambered heart.

Basically, there is no consistent way of describing all mammals without describing humans as well. Just as there is no consistent way of describing all primates without describing humans as well. And there is no consistent way of describing all apes without describing humans as well.

 

[Aron-Ra]

I am always honest, and yes I can answer these questions scientifically.

No you can't.

Yes I can. Every question I asked in this thread can be answered scientifically.

A scientific method can only be used to expain what we can see. If evolution is happening then scientifically you need something that will prove your theory, something that's different from saying populations of animals move in and out of an environment.

Atomic theory has also never been proven not even in Hiroshima. That's because a theory is a body of knowledge; of verifiable facts and successfully-tested hypotheses which establish a collection of natural laws. A theory is a study of known phenomenon, and as such cannot be proven. For example, evolutionary theory is better established than the theory of gravity because gravity has already been significantly revised at least once and is still known to be inaccurate. A theory can be disproved or it can be improved, but it can never be proved in the positive sense.

What that is is stating the obvious. If one environment becomes unsuitable, animals leave and move on to another. The frequency of alleles changes.

No, that happens whenever the original population is divided. Very soon, genetic variance will be detected allowing one to trace which lineage an organism hails from. Humans do that a lot now as a matter of legal procedure. This is only possible because of evolution.

First of all, you should be suspicious of a theory like that which states the obvious and invites the absurd.

Like what? Giant invisible ghosts poofing things out of nothing by way of magic words? You can't get more absurd than creationism, which is why it doesn't even count as a theory. Biological evolution isn't absurd in any sense; it is an inescapable fact of population genetics.

You can't predict anything except what is obvious. What can you add to this by talking about speciation? Nothing.

Quite a lot actually.

And what is added by talking about the fossil record?

Volumes, so much that no one knows it all.

Only that people will connect speciation and leap to illogical unproven conclusions.

Such as?

Like one lady said to me once, "What would prevent speciation from continuing?" Nothing except there might be some limits.

You're not making sense.

But what you're really asking is what would keep an ape from evolving into a human being? Everything! First of all, where did you get such an idea that they do?

Human beings are apes right now! That's no unproven conclusion either. We can prove it!

The idea is irrational. More ape species may be possible in the future but there's no evidence that apes evolve into anything but apes.

That's true. That's why we'll always be apes no matter how much we continue to evolve.

One population of apes leaves and another moves in. The frequency of alleles changes.

No no no. Where did you get this loopy idea? Moving to a new residence doesn't change your genetics. Every generation has a bit of genetic variance regardless where they live. The gene pool regulates it to keep that variance within certain boundaries. But if you divide the main population so they can no longer interbreed, the gene pool is dramatically reduced, and will be less able to inhibit that variation.

A remnant of the total number of ape species remains but they're all ape.

And so shall they always be. That's why humans are still apes, still primates, still mammals, still vertebrates, etc. You can never grow out of your ancestry. No matter what your children may become, they will still always belong to your grandparent's ancestry, and that can't ever change.

Your opinion is no better than anyone elses. Your interpretations aren't better. And your reasons for believing do not affect the truth of your explanation.

But we're not talking about opinions here. We're talking about objectively verifiable things now.

Like the lady said, "What else?", as if you have no chioce but you have to accept the absurd.

I have enough that I will never have to believe in magic as you do.

Like they said to Columbus, " Christofero, You will fall off the edge of the world if you keep sailing in that direction. What else can happen?" Plenty if you know that the earth is round.

Columbus knew the world was round before he left; everyone did. It was common knowledge for many centuries by then, and that "flat earth" thing was only popular amongst a few religious nuts on the fringe of the church, rather like creationism is today.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Almost every animal lives in a community so there's no need to bring community into it.

Wrong, and the nurturing sort of community I'm talking about is almost unique to primates. Not even cetaceans can compare to ape societies, and humans are by far the most advanced.

Running on all fours is a definite advantage so walking on two feet can not be an adaptive trait. And monkeys don't carry tools and their babies can climb trees.

Most of their infants can't climb trees, and yes they do carry tools. I've seen a baboon forced to walk bipedally in order to carry a mirror, which he then used to study his own teeth. Baboons don't climb trees even as adults. In fact, nearly all of the Old World monkeys (a group to which humans belong) live on the ground and don't have prehensile tails if they have tails at all. Consequently, they are all hind-leg dominant, and commonly do walk or stand on two legs for the advantages that gives.

Being completely wrong on every point every time doesn't present a convincing case. Try to have some idea what you're talking about before we continue.

 

[Aron-Ra]

It doesn't say anything about diversity. All it says is the frequency of alleles change. You want it to explain diversity.

No, evolution is an explanation of biodiversity via allelic variance.

The theory of evolution predicts you will see a great variety of life forms, and that it will be possible to classify those life forms into a strict nested hierarchy (this is a fancy way of saying that all descendents of a species will still retain traits of the parent species, while making modifications of their own, but not ever borrowing modifications from a cousin species).

You say that as if diversity isn't obvious. Diversity is not a prediction! Classifying animals is just a game. You can create a group and then create a larger group and then create a larger group.

But it has to work! You need criteria that can be tested to demonstrate whether what you're creating is functional or accurate. Nowadays, classification is moving away from the old Linnaean system of ranks in separated categories, and into rankless cladistic phylogenies which are determined genetically. Almost none of the classifications have changed as a result, because they were already so well-researched. But now we have a much more precise way of determining those phylogenies.

You can create a nested hierarchy if you can find something all animals have in common and then divide them into smaller groups that have things in common, if you don't care that they are not interchangable parts, till you get a nested hierarchy but it's hardly evidence for common descent.

I don't know what you mean by "interchangeable parts", but otherwise, yes, nested hierarchies are rather profound indications of phylogeny. That's why Linnaeus was so confounded by them. He was a creationist living a century before Darwin, and was frustrated at his inability to explain what he saw.

You can only differentiate in the broadest sense. That they don't have certain characters is not because nature didn't do it. It's because God did it.

Even if you believe in gods, (which we have no reason to) what's the difference between God and nature?

The argument that nature didn't do it is not evidence for evolution. Saying, for example, that mammals don't have feathers is first calling animals with no feathers "mammals' and then stating the obvious. There's hardly any way of falsifying this argument.

Well, if you were to produce a mammal with feathers, that would do it, wouldn't it?

Plus it assumes nature can put feathers on a mammal but it didn't so falsifying begs for a different theory evolution. The fact that mammals don't have feathers does not mean mammals are related by common descent.

Wow, you're really not making sense now. Nested hierarchies don't make those assumptions. Instead, we note those traits which appear to be derived, inherited, and there's no way mammals could have inherited feathers. Yes, these heirarchies do inevitably indicate common descent, which you could see for yourself as easily as trying to answer my question; what is a dinosaur?

 

[Aron-Ra]

We are not primates or mammals or synapsids. We are not any of those categories because we are not categories. We are creatures of course. You say the descendants of apes will always be apes. That's true. The ancestors of apes have always been apes. The ancestors of man have always been men.

No they haven't. But the ancestors of men will always be men, just as they will always be apes (Hominoidea), as well as Primata, Theria (mammals) and Synapsida too.

Men are apes (etc.) in precisely the same way that ducks are birds. How can a bird evolve into a duck when birds never begat anything but birds?

 

[OdwinOddball]

We are not primates or mammals or synapsids. We are not any of those categories because we are not categories. We are creatures of course. You say the descendants of apes will always be apes. That's true. The ancestors of apes have always been apes. The ancestors of man have always been men.

We are very much primates, and mammals, and synapsids. These are categories that describe certain physiological traits which we DO in fact possess.

It is exactly the same as if I say that I am a computer Programmer, I am a C/C++/C# Programmer, I am an Applications developer, I am a financial analysis applications programmer, I am a automotive industry financial analysis programmer, etc.

Each one is a further classification of what my job is. I exhibt specific traits of each category. However I also have addditional traits which diferentiate me from other members, hence we sub categorize. I am a programmer, but I do not program in Visual Basic so I am not a Visual Basic Programmer. However I do program in C/C++/C# so I fit that category. Since my work is specifically in applications development, and not for instance, game development, I fit that specific sub category.


This is one of the issues which just boggles my mind. For anyone to say we are not an Ape is simply ludicrous and blatantly false. Regardless of what you may think about our ancestry, wether or not you accept that we descended from apes or were specially created seperate and apart from them is irrelevant. We have ALL the characterisitics of the scientific term ape. We are thus apes. Period.

This is in fact a FACT. Not up for discussion any more than me being a finanancial applications developer is. The only way this would not be the case is if we had a significant deviation from the traits shared by all apes. In my case if I was in fact developing "Odwins Odd Penguin Adventure" instead of the Performance Group Composit Report Generator I would cease to be an applications developer and become a game developer.

It really is that cut and dry folks.

 

[Tomk80]

We are very much primates, and mammals, and synapsids. These are categories that describe certain physiological traits which we DO in fact possess.

It is exactly the same as if I say that I am a computer Programmer, I am a C/C++/C# Programmer, I am an Applications developer, I am a financial analysis applications programmer, I am a automotive industry financial analysis programmer, etc.

Each one is a further classification of what my job is. I exhibt specific traits of each category. However I also have addditional traits which diferentiate me from other members, hence we sub categorize. I am a programmer, but I do not program in Visual Basic so I am not a Visual Basic Programmer. However I do program in C/C++/C# so I fit that category. Since my work is specifically in applications development, and not for instance, game development, I fit that specific sub category.


This is one of the issues which just boggles my mind. For anyone to say we are not an Ape is simply ludicrous and blatantly false. Regardless of what you may think about our ancestry, wether or not you accept that we descended from apes or were specially created seperate and apart from them is irrelevant. We have ALL the characterisitics of the scientific term ape. We are thus apes. Period.

This is in fact a FACT. Not up for discussion any more than me being a finanancial applications developer is. The only way this would not be the case is if we had a significant deviation from the traits shared by all apes. In my case if I was in fact developing "Odwins Odd Penguin Adventure" instead of the Performance Group Composit Report Generator I would cease to be an applications developer and become a game developer.

It really is that cut and dry folks.

One of the main problems here is the fact that many people fail to understand how we group things. What makes things part of a group and what excludes things from a group is apparantly a reasonable abstract principle which is not at all well-understood by many people.

 

[bobhope]

One of the main problems here is the fact that many people fail to understand how we group things. What makes things part of a group and what excludes things from a group is apparantly a reasonable abstract principle which is not at all well-understood by many people.

Very true. The concept they fail to grasp is actually very basic, akin to this:

The facts:

• I live in the city of Denver.
• I also live in the state of Colorado.
• I also live in the country of the United States.
• Mary lives in the city of Boulder.
• Boulder is in the state of Colorado.

What country does Mary live in? For that matter, which state?

Evilutionist: "The country of the United States, and the state of Colorado."
Cretinist: "She doesn't live in a state or country, or she does but you didn't say so."

(Sorry, couldn't resist the labels, and I mean no offense by them).

 

[Aron-Ra]

One of the main problems here is the fact that many people fail to understand how we group things. What makes things part of a group and what excludes things from a group is apparantly a reasonable abstract principle which is not at all well-understood by many people.

I must admit you're right about that. I've never understood how so many people I knew seemed incapable of telling a lion from a tiger, or a rat from a mouse, a spider from an insect, or a gorilla from a "monkey". However you define a "monkey", a gorilla is no more or less a monkey than we are. And its not just that either. A lot of Americans can't tell a solar system from a galaxy. Most can't distinguish atheism from material naturalism, and many don't even know the difference between capitolism and democracy, believing that a socialist government is the enemy of both, and cannot permit democratic elections. I'm really at a loss to understand the general lack of perception that is so commonplace in this country.