15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Scientific American ^ | June, 2002 | John Rennie

[JimSEA]

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

[SunTzuWu]

Bookmark.

[freedumb2003]

>>You are projecting.

And drunk.

And still ignorant of science and general vocabulary.<<

Neither.

And it is you who are ignorant.

Your best bet is to stop, else you will continue to expose your ignorance.

[freedumb2003]

>>There’s no evidence for evolution at all<<

Modern medicine is an illusion. Don’t take them Rx — they are all based on nothing.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Modern medicine is an illusion.

It's not surprising to hear this from a Darwinian.

[ShadowAce]

My doctrine: "Creationism does not offer a scientific alternative to Evolution."

Perhaps, but evolution (the theory) itself is not scientific.

[DoodleDawg]

Irreducible complexity from an engineering and informational science perspective closes the door to anything but intelligent design.

Point 15 in the article addresses that.

[DoodleDawg]

Get this through your head, you charlatan: there’s no such thing as anthropogenic global warming, the gay gene, evolution, or the Tooth Fairy.

Well I guess that settles that!

[DoodleDawg]

Perhaps, but evolution (the theory) itself is not scientific.

Why not?

[DoodleDawg]

There's no evidence for evolution at all.

There is a whole long article at the beginning of this thread that seems to say otherwise.

[tacticalogic]

Well I guess that settles that!

Finally. Now we can get back to carping about "settled science".

[DouglasKC]

With only billions of physical data points and reinforced by physics, geology, biology and almost every other scientific study, it is meaningless. Next time you have a vaccine you can laugh off the “quaint little theory” without which you would probably die.

I laugh off the quaint little theory of macro evolution every single day. The basis of this belief is a non-belief that there's a creator who designed, engineered and built the incredibly wondrous and complex universe around us. The fact that humans can create a vaccine is akin to a monkey being able to put a stick in hole to get termites. Big deal. We'll reach our limit of manipulating what God has created as surely as an ape will reach its limit manipulating what God created.

[mdmathis6]

John Rennie(from the NYU adjunct faculty description...Nope he only has a batchelors in Biology and is not a PHD nor has a masters. He is a big politically leftist anti religious blow hard science writer and not a real working scientist at all! He worked as a lab rat at Havard for awhile and that is the only science he ever did. I’ll bet he dot gentlemen’s “b’s” and “c”’s as well!)

/John Rennie teaches Science Writing in the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. He served as editor in chief of Scientific American for almost 15 years, having been a member of its Board of Editors since 1989. During his tenure he oversaw the modernization and expansion of that venerable magazine franchise to include new titles such as Scientific American Mind and assorted digital media. He edited the National Magazine Award-winning single-topic issues “What You Need to Know about Cancer” (Sept. 1996) and “A Matter of Time” (Sept. 2002). The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies honored him with its 2003 Navigator Award for distinguished service in support of national science and technology policy. He was also a recipient of the 2000 Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science from the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. Rennie received his bachelor of science degree from Yale University in 1981, after which he worked for several years in a laboratory at Harvard Medical School before embarking on his career as a science writer. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The New York Times and other publications. His numerous television and radio appearances include PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, ABC News Overnight, CBS Early Show, History Channel’s Clash of the Cavemen, Discovery Channel’s Apocalypse How and NPR’s Science Friday. As a frequent public speaker, Rennie has appeared before audiences as diverse as those at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee School of Journalism; he has also been featured twice at the World Life Sciences Forum, the BIO International Conference and many other meetings./

Tells you all you need to know his modus operandi...”it’s settled science...a consensus has been reached and so forth... ad nauseum!”

[CodeToad]

“Gee, it’s nice everybody actually read and considered the arguments presented in the article.”

You’re an idiot if you think an article that uses the an invective like “nonsense” is worthy of reading much less commenting on. Such bias is for children’s arguments. What’s next, are going to say my mother wears combat boots?

Moron.

[mdmathis6]

Those who do science correctly and humbly are honest folks with integrity...those who can’t do science...bloviate on and obfuscate what they should dare not!(Like Mr. Rennie)

[BwanaNdege]

I challenge any evolutionist to watch these and then explain how time and random chance created this, let alone how & why these continue to function.

Molecular Machinery of Life

ATP Synthase: The power plant of the cell

Then watch one of the world's leading physicists and Nobel Prize winner, Leonard Susskind, nervously squirm and try to dance around what he admits is absolute evidence of a Designer.

Closer To Truth asks Leonard Susskind: Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind? (if you are impatient and not into Physics, jump to the 6:00 minute mark)

[DouglasKC]

The evolution of the eye from a cell sensitive to light is in the fossilfo record.

What's in the fossil records are instances of "eye" and instances of "cell" that are then incorrectly linked together and called evolution. It's like finding a step stool and finding a couch and then theorizing that the step stool evolved into a couch...on it's own. That's downright silly. What happened was that somebody invented a step stool for a specific purpose and it fulfills that purpose. And somebody created a couch for a specific purpose. The couch didn't "evolve" from a stepstool. There was thought and design put into both of these things.

It's kind of funny too that you seem to believe a light sensitive cell is somehow primitive. Nothing could be further from the truth! Work backwards from light sensitive cell and explain how that was manufactured. How did neurotransmitters evolve? How did the various proteins evolve?

This "explanation" is so simple and childlike as to be laughable. Did this photo receptor layer just spring full formed into being? Did refractive lenses just magically appear? This is what we're (or rather you) have been led to believe. Don't put any thought at all into exactly how complex each and every "label" here is and how delicate the balance is between each component. Just trust and us and believe that somehow magically one thing became another. Don't question HOW or the mechanisms. Just believe.

[Springfield Reformer]

No problem. I too have wanted an edit button for some of my less “elevated” FR posts. But one can see the benefit. Can you imagine how bad it would get here if we could post wildly, edit, then claim we never said thus and such? Oh the chaos! Besides, I think it makes (or can make) us more disciplined writers. My dad used to do crossword puzzles ... wait for it ... in ink!

[mdmathis6]

Starts with Darwin’s presupposition that Christianity is false which is a tautology and he builds his hypothesis from there. From a science stand point, an argument that can not be testable(such as God exists)...is a tautology; science can’t speak to it’s truthfulness or its falsity. Deductive reasoning can lead to an educated opinion that God exists based on observations all around us but such deductions are still based on a presupposition. Most classical science in Western Countries before 1800 or so still proceeded from a “rational” deductive process which assumed that God exists and all knowledge, morality and wisdom proceeded from that “given” belief.

Modern Science prides itself on “inductive reasoning”, that being taking testable data and forming a hypothesis based on the reliability of repeated testing of such data then forming a theory or explanation of that data in a way that creates a cogent picture of what the data shows and why. From there, Deductive reasoning can be applied, or educated guesses on what would happen if such and such were applied or changed based on the original hypothesis.

There are 2 dirty little secrets that an ethical scientist, if he is truly ethical at all, tries hard to avoid....1. the presupposition that any argument, opinion, or statement that is tautologous, in turn must always be considered false and there-fore “superstitious” nonsense and 2. Coloring one’s inductive examination of data so that the data support a pre-conceived notion, to the point that data observed acting contrary to the accepted “inductive” narrative is arbitrarily thrown out(such as Mann’s famously massaged global warming temperature “hockey stick” that he uses to try to assert “man caused” climate change...with his thinly disguised efforts to influence governments to send all men back to the stone age with drastic controls to be placed on population growth. Mann has argued as much politically, aside from his so-called “science”, thus we learn what has “pre”- colored his scientific approaches)

[ShadowAce]

It cannot be tested, and it is not falsifiable.

[Springfield Reformer]

I am sorry for your loss. Cults can make otherwise rational people go to some very strange places. However, I fail to see a logical connection between the Christian Science cult’s fallacy and a straightforward understanding of Genesis. Mary Baker Eddy devised a system that effectively rejects physical reality in toto. Traditional Christian supernaturalism accepts physical reality, but allows that God can, at His sole discretion, act outside that material reality.

And if you are a good Catholic, you already the premise that God does intervene. You believe Jesus rose from the dead, correct? That’s an intervention. It would not have happened but for God acting from outside natural processes such as death and decay.

So whether God acted in creation in some ways that went beyond purely natural processes is a factual question. It cannot be answered by our predisposition to believe it or not. For a believer, the question is not what we can accept about God’s acts in light of current scientific thought, but what does God say He did.

As for what Catholicism teaches, I assume there is no hard and fast magisterial dogma one way or the other. But I would suggest the Roman church had no position on evolution until Darwin postulated it. I suspect the reality is there’s a mixed bag of beliefs within the Catholic clergy. Daniel, what do you think?