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To: usconservative; Thatcherite
[Since evolution stands on literally millions of data points,]

Almost all of which are really assumptions

Nope. Please do not post *YOUR* uninformed ASSUMPTION as if it were fact. You are clearly quite unfamiliar with the actual body of evidence. Go and learn something about evolutionary biology and the massive amount of evidence supporting it, then come back and try again.

With many well published flaws that debunk evolution ...

Uh huh. Sure. Look, over the past thirty years, I've read literally THOUSANDS of attempts by anti-evolutionists to present what they thought were "flaws that debunked evolution". Every one of them (let me repeat that -- EVERY one of them) has fallen flat on its face, usually due to the person being astoundingly clueless about what evolutionary biology actually says, or what the evidence for it actually is, or how the principles of physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc. actually work in practice.

But hey, feel free to give us *your* stab at it, let's see if you can be the first creationist to actually have the "silver bullet" against evolution he believes he does. I'm always open to looking at any good argument or evidence, if you actually have some. But the creationist track record is VERY poor in that regard.

For instance, make sure that the material you have which you think "debunks" evolution actually hasn't already been previously considered and itself DEBUNKED a thousand times over before you came along. Here's an abbreviated list of some of the flawed anti-evolution arguments that have already been found to be flawed:

Index to Creationist Claims

edited by Mark Isaak
Copyright © 2005
[Last update: 19 Aug 2005]

Introduction

CA: Philosophy and Theology

CB: Biology

CC: Paleontology

CD: Geology

CE: Astronomy and Cosmology

CF: Physics and Mathematics

CG: Miscellaneous Anti-Evolution

CH: Biblical Creationism

CI: Intelligent Design

CJ: Other Creationism

Authors
[and no significant data/evidence led dissent about its truth within the worldwide scientific community for more than a century]

Now that's absolutely incorrect!

No it isn't. If you think otherwise, feel free to present the *SIGNIFICANT* amount of *EVIDENCE-DRIVEN* dissent about evolution from within the scientific community from, say, 1880-1980. We'll wait.

You present these thesis as fact, when the reality is many of evolution's own proponents have decided that the evidence does not support evolution,

No they haven't. Feel free to name, say, five if you think you can (out of the "many" you claim exist).

and that too many assumptions and mathematical errors have been made over time to consider the theory of evolution valid.

Wrong again. My, you *have* been reading too many creationist tracts and not enough science journals, haven't you?

Every time a scientist decides evolution is bunk, you in the "darwin community" turn on them, deride them, then pretend they don't exist.

No, just point out the many errors they're making when they turn their engineering degree or whatever to a field they poorly understand. Or in Behe's case, when he inexplicably makes elementary errors in basic biology despite a biology degree -- I sometimes suspect he's "trolling" the creationists in order to make money from book sales. Heck, at times I'm tempted to do that myself, there seems to be a lot of money in it.

Let me see, who was the prominent scientist who was for evolution until he published an article in June of 2004 that debunked Darwin?

Got me. If you're thinking of Antony Flew, you're grossly misrepresenting what he *actually* changed his mind about.

You're free to believe what you like, however false and unproven it is.

Indeed, which is why the anti-evolutionists are free to do so. They believe a lot of utterly false things about science.

The facts are, the more science looks at the "new earth" theory, the "old earth" theory gets debunked and the Bible is proven correct.

...you're free to believe that, even though it's false. If you don't want to go learn any actual science, and just want to parrot creationist falsehoods about the state of the evidence without personally going and *learning* the subject yourself, that's entirely your right.

Just don't try to teach that horse manure in science classes. Telling students lies about science, telling them lies about the evidence, is not acceptable.

Look, you're clearly as much a victim of those lies as the students would be if this nonsense were to get into their classrooms. Someone has fed you garbage, polluting your mind with falsehoods. I blame them, not you. But you *do* have some responsibility in the matter -- now that you have been notified that you've been unknowingly repeating lies, like a too-trusting follower of Michael Moore, you need to go and learn more about the subject yourself, so that you can replace the propaganda in your head with actual knowledge of the topic, and so that you can innoculate yourself from future propagandists. And stop repeating material from the same unreliable sources, until you're able to personally *know* whether it's valid information, or more of the same dishonesties and ignorant presumptions.

68 posted on 09/17/2005 6:50:43 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon
Jeeeez! You dropped the nuke on 'em!

(Have no fear, they won't read a word of it.)

74 posted on 09/17/2005 7:09:11 PM PDT by Coyoteman (Is this a good tagline?)
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To: Ichneumon
Just to add a couple of new points about to be added to the database. _____________________________________________________

Claim CC381. There are too few Stone-Age remains for a long history of humanity.

Evolutionary anthropologists say Stone-Age people, who buried their dead, were around for about 185,000 years, at a population between one and ten million. If these numbers are correct, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies, but we have found remains of only a few thousand. That is more in line with an age of only a few hundred years before history.

Source:

Humphreys, D. Russell. 2005. Evidence for a young world. _Impact_ 384 (June): vi. http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=1842

Response:

1. The fact that some people buried bodies does not mean all did. Even today, common funerary practices include incineration, exposure to the scavengers and elements, and burial at sea.

2. Burial alone does not preserve a body. In acid soil, all organic matter can easily decay in 1,000 years. Moisture, plant roots, digging animals, or a combination of these can also speed decay to the point where nothing would remain after a few thousand years. Fossilization is not a common process.

In the Stone Age, enduring artifacts would likely have been buried only with people of high status, so we would not expect them to be common. _______________________________________________________

"Claim CA115.1: Design arguments converted atheist Anthony Flew to theism.

Design arguments have caused philosopher Anthony Flew to renounce 66 years of atheism and admit that the universe is created. Specifically, he was convinced by the [CI101]complexity of life and the [CB010] improbability of abiogenesis.

Source:

Yahya, Harun. n.d. The scientific world is turning to God.
http://www.harunyahya.com/articles/70scientific_world.html

Response:

1. Anthony Flew's conversion was not to theism, but to deism, a belief that a creator set the universe in motion but has not participated in any way since (Carrier 2004).

2. Flew's one and only piece of relevant evidence for accepting a deistic god was the apparent improbability of a naturalistic origin for life (Carrier 2004). Flew, by his own admission, had not kept up with the relevant science and was mistaught by Gerald Schroeder, a physicist and Jewish theologian (e.g., Schroeder 2001). He later conceded, "I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction" (Carrier 2005). Thus Flew's conversion is, by Flew's own admission, baseless.

Flew remains a deist but calls his belief a "very modest defection from my previous unbelief" (Carrier 2005).

Links:

Carrier, Richard. 2004. Antony Flew considers God--Sort of. _The Secular Web_ (Oct. 10), http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369

Young, Matt. 2005. Antony Flew's conversion to deism: An update. http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000723.html (Jan. 9).

References:

1. Carrier, Richard. 2004. Antony Flew considers God--Sort of. _The Secular Web_ (Oct. 10), http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369

2. Carrier, Richard. 2005. Antony Flew considers God--Sort of; Update (January 2005). _The Secular Web_ (Oct. 10), http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369#January2005-1

3. Schroeder, Gerald. 2001. _The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth_.

79 posted on 09/17/2005 7:30:40 PM PDT by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Ichneumon
Index to Creationist Claims (edited by Mark Isaak)

Many thanks, Ichneumon, for posting these sources; I have a lot of reading to do!

Three things do tend to 'burn' me somewhat. One is when someone claims that ToE is 'incompatible' with core conservative values, so ergo I am not a 'true' conservative. I wish these same people would please make this observation about me to the work colleagues who generally brand me a war-mongering reactionary Neo-Con

Another is when people charge that evolutionists 'believe' in Darwinism as if it were religion. I'm starting to think that this one is so foolish, maybe we better just go along with it, buy ourselves mail-order ordination ($19.99 gets you a legal ordination and a minister parking sticker at http://jonci.com/ReligiousProductsOrdination.dsp) to put that one to rest. Except, we'll all have to legally change our names to 'Steve' first, and I guess that's gonna bump up the cost.

The third 'burn' for me is soi disant Christians claiming to speak for all Christians. Most Christians don't have an issue with Darwin, some do. Which means that most of the heat and none of the light in these threads really does come from a dispute between religious factions, not between religion generally and science.

Or, brother Ichneumon, as it is written in the Book of Mark Issac, CH102, 'The Bible is literal'

94 posted on 09/18/2005 9:44:51 AM PDT by SeaLion ("Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man" -- Thomas Paine)
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