Roger Ebert and others question Johnny Hart's latest B.C. comic(calls Darwin stupid)

Poynter ^ | 05/01/05 | Poynter

[TFMcGuire]

"Look at you denying the last 200 years of accumulated evidence. Yes, 200, not 150"

Actually take it back a couple millenia. The Greeks actually entertained ideas of evolution such as spontaneous generation etc. But "accumulated evidence,"? What a riot! Tell me why we can still identify fossil dragonflies down to species by their wing venation.

Your ability to organize a group of organisms from simple to complex doesn't establish genetic relationship.

As a profound student of biology, you know that in replication and transcription of DNA the process must overwhelmingly copy accurately thousands upon thousands of nucleotides.

You also are aware than in studies of accelerated mutation (your vehicle for evolution)induced by mutagens, beneficial changes are not seen. 50 years before Darwin, Wallace showed that natural selection works to keep a species constant.

" You guys have about the intellectual curiosity of the average Grand Inquisitor. Identify Heresy and burn it"

You evolutionist are the intolerant ones. Clemson fought to keep one of my professors from earning a PhD in entomology because he believed in Special Creation. They were not successful.

" Unsupported assertion, strike two. There is a lot of research going on in abiogenesis right now. Science would not be doing this if it had given up on the idea. Hint: You, Duane Gish, and the Morrises are not "science.""

They are doing research because they haven't been able to make it happen. They're drowning men grasping at floating straws. They don't dare give up on the idea. It's all they've got.

" I come from West Virginia. Now tell me, if it makes more sense to impute everything to the great Intelligent Designer because nothing can happen without Him, where then does the Intelligent Designer come from? Don't dodge, this time. Don't lie about what you're able to understand or remember. Don't be another seminar snake-oil salesman."

I'll bet you have been to more seminars than I have. :)

I know about God's origin because He has told me in His Word. You have heard it too. But you refuse the Truth because you'd rather be in the bondage of false teaching.

" I have cited positive evidence for evolution. It is a far tighter hypothesis than "Goddidit" and might have been falsified before it ever began."

You have cited no evidence nor can you. Evolution is not a hypothesis because a hypothesis is a reasonable guess.


" For instance, faunal succession, the progression of life on Earth from a few simple forms to the many complex ones of today, might never have been noted, or might have proved on further investigation to be some sort of illusion or statistical fluke of the early data. To this day, some people like the Morrises still try to deny faunal succession, claiming that in fact all life forms are sort of jumbled together in the fossil record, really. Well, it's interesting that some people can stay so militantly ignorant after all this time. But, no, we have faunal succession. One good unshakeable Precambrian rabbit would have falsified evolution, but instead it looks more like Genesis is not literally true."

You cannot demonstrate from the fossil record that any organism above the level of genus gave rise to a different genus.

Yes, fossils of modern organisms are found in the same strata at different places in the world as organisms which are though to have become extinct before the new organisms emerged.

you are dishonest in that paleontologists assign an age to a stratum on the basis of index fossils found in it. Geologists assign ages on the basis of the stratum itself and one quotes the other and they go merrily on their way proclaiming, like the Bander-log in Kipling's Jungle Books, what profound people they are.

How do you explain human artifacts in deep geologic formations?

" You had no more wit than to brag how unfalsifiable your "no spontaneous generation" mantra is. Even if we make life in a lab from inert materials next week, you've got it lawyered. When I pointed out the Catch-22 game there, you answered with a lame "You're another." But, as I just showed you, my theory IS falsifiable, although it's getting mighty late for the more obvious falsifications to show up."

Guess what? You still have not showed spontaneous generation ever to have occurred. You are not scientific because your experiment is not reproducible. And your hypothesis is not testable.

You're a master of science fiction.

Show me real science. I love it. But don't throw the emperor's new clothes at me and expect me to buy it. Evolution is the superstition of the 20th century. You guys are like the Ptolemaics, insisting that everybody buy your beliefs and threatening biblical literalists with expulsion from academia if we don't.

By the way, the Diluvian view of fossil and geologic formation is very much alive among scientists today.

You go through life believing you're a monkey and then you die and face the judgment of a God who loved you so much He died for you. What a sad, sad existence.

[VadeRetro]

Actually take it back a couple millenia.

OK, but I was talking about how many years worth of evidence you are denying. Read much?

Tell me why we can still identify fossil dragonflies down to species by their wing venation.

If you think you have some evidence for something, cite a source or spell it out. Don't make me guess what you're talking about. Dragonflies as a taxon have been around longer than most insect groups. Perhaps since the Devonian, I forget. I don't think any modern species go back that far. That's actually bad for you, if nothing is older than 6,000 years.

Your ability to organize a group of organisms from simple to complex doesn't establish genetic relationship.

The fossil record did that. It's faunal succession. There may be dragonflies in the Devonian, but there aren't any dinosaurs and there certainly aren't any mammals. I don't see you running up volunteering to deal with that.

You also are aware than in studies of accelerated mutation (your vehicle for evolution)induced by mutagens, beneficial changes are not seen.

Funny. Here's one I know of off the top of my head. That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?

50 years before Darwin, Wallace showed that natural selection works to keep a species constant.

Wallace was contemporary with Darwin. Selection pressures can be conservative or radical, depending upon whether things are staying the same or changing. You are trying to beat me over the head with your own ignorance and idiocy. Furthermore, this is typical Creation Science. The problem is not that you are doing it wrong, but that you are doing it right. You are scummy people doing a scummy thing and we will learn nothing by tearing science down for you.

You evolutionist are the intolerant ones. Clemson fought to keep one of my professors from earning a PhD in entomology because he believed in Special Creation. They were not successful.

That's too bad. Science should be the domain of people who are trying to learn something, not unlearn something.

I'll bet you have been to more seminars than I have. :)

You'd lose.

I know about God's origin because He has told me in His Word.

If your protestations about your version of things making more sense are to themselves make sense, you have to be able to state this origin. Otherwise, your so-called superior explanation is just the ultimate in question-begging. How many times do I have to ask you to reveal this information? I am not aware that it has been published anywhere, including in the Bible.

I asked you not to dodge. You dodged. You lose. You are a fraud and a charlatan.

They are doing research because they haven't been able to make it happen.

You don't do research in an area where you've given up. You said science has dismissed the idea. That statement was false. Hello? Earth to Bozo!

You have cited no evidence nor can you.

A flat-out lie. Read the post. Hint: Follow the link. If the "proof" of creationism is that no one can make you see or acknowledge the evidence accumulated since about 1800, your science needs to go on the junkheap of history with communism.

You cannot demonstrate from the fossil record that any organism above the level of genus gave rise to a different genus.

Wrong again. The people who ran your seminar lied to you.

A Tree-Dweller Becomes Two.

The dashed lines show the overall trend. The species at the bottom is Pelycodus ralstoni, but at the top we find two species, Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus. The two species later became even more distinct, and the descendants of nunienus are now labeled as genus Smilodectes instead of genus Notharctus.

Nothing you're saying is turning out to be true. If you had any integrity, that should bother you. But you wouldn't have got this far if that were a problem.

Yes, fossils of modern organisms are found in the same strata at different places in the world as organisms which are though to have become extinct before the new organisms emerged.

Vague. I think you'd like to deny faunal succession, but you can't, so you mumble.

How do you explain human artifacts in deep geologic formations?

There are no genuine human artifacts older than a million or so years. Some crackpots say differently, but no such claim has ever stood up to examination.

Guess what? You still have not showed spontaneous generation ever to have occurred.

Did I say I was going to personally leap ahead of the current research and create life for you on this thread? Again, you said science has rejected this possibility. Funny, they sure publish a lot of papers in that area.

Show me real science.

So you can pretend not to have noticed it?

I love it.

Who do you think you're fooling? You have a religious horror of 1) Geology, 2) Biology, 3) Cosmology, 4) Nuclear Chemistry (to the extent that it supports an old Earth, which is totally), etc. A Witch Doctor is a Witch Doctor.

By the way, the Diluvian view of fossil and geologic formation is very much alive among scientists today.

Nothing you're saying is working out to be true, here. This is just another one. ICR is a cult website. Neither they nor any other YEC organization do any real research. No, Steve Austin isn't doing real research. Notice I anticipated you there. No, you won't notice.

You go through life believing you're a monkey and then you die and face the judgment of a God who loved you so much He died for you. What a sad, sad existence.

I follow the evidence. That's what science is about. Religion is about something else. If you realize that and accept that, then you don't have to lie about the evidence anymore. Science got over you a long time ago. Now you need to get over science.

[TFMcGuire]

" OK, but I was talking about how many years worth of evidence you are denying. Read much?"

You are mad. Evidence? You are the victim of an elaborate fairy tale set forth to trap and expose pseudointellectuals.

Read much? Hey, West Virginia, I.Q. much? :)

"Tell me why we can still identify fossil dragonflies down to species by their wing venation.
If you think you have some evidence for something, cite a source or spell it out."

What is common entomological knowledge does not require documentation. The fact that they can still be identified as the same species after 5 billion years (evolutionary time spans) shows that as Darwin's betters knew, Natural selection works to keep a species constant not change it.

" The fossil record did that. It's faunal succession."

Rubbish! The fossil record provides greater biological diversity than we see today. Many of these organisms are extinct; many lived concurrently. In a twisted mimicry of Dr. Frankenstein, you boys cobble these unrelated organisms together in increasing "complexity" (Do you know why that word is in quotation marks?) to manufature an untenable monster.

Your organophosphatases in CULEX SPP. are not mutations. they are expressions of recessive alleles found in nature.
Albinism and polydactyly are examples of mutations.

Ever take a university-level genetics class.

"I'll bet you have been to more seminars than I have. :)
You'd lose."

I think you may believe, based upon your world view, that a liar is more fit than someone who is always truthful.

I believe you are lying.

After all, who can blame a monkey? Nothing is immoral for a simian. They lie, steal,fornicate as they please.

" I asked you not to dodge. You dodged. You lose. You are a fraud and a charlatan"

You guys put together Piltdown, believed it, and foisted it on the world and I'm the charlatan?

Only Creationism is scientific because it alone had an observer. It alone is reproducible in the laboratory, and it alone can be explained mechanistically.

Hope I spelled it correctly without my 3 x 5 handy.

Show me spontaneous generation or evolution supported by empirical evidence (that is demonstrated in a laboratory).

Have a great day!

[VadeRetro]

Read much? Hey, West Virginia, I.Q. much? :)

This from a dolt reading from his ICR seminar notes.

What is common entomological knowledge does not require documentation. The fact that they can still be identified as the same species after 5 billion years (evolutionary time spans) shows that as Darwin's betters knew, Natural selection works to keep a species constant not change it.

I'm reading you. Are you reading me? Obviously not. You seem to think "dragonfly" = "a species." What do I expect from a clueless creationist seminar clone?

"Dragonfly" = taxnonomical Order Odonata. An order is a high-level taxon. For instance, Carnivora is an order. Lions, chihuahuas, polar bears, and skunks are all in the same order. I am unaware of any dragonfly species unchanged over a period of 5 billion years. The Earth itself is only 4.5 billion years old. I'm arguing with a goddam fifth-grader here. You don't know doodle or squat of the material you claim is wrong.

How do you know it's wrong if you are profoundly and abysimally ignorant of what it says?

Rubbish! The fossil record provides greater biological diversity than we see today.

Only to the extent that most of the species which ever lived are now extinct. However, we live in a time of high diversity. For much of the fossil record, we see lower diversity than at the present. You just have this wrong You don't know anything at all about what science actually says, versus the creationist talking points. Evidently, ICR got to you before you made it out of grade school.

Here's the story.

The whole mammalian radiation and the flowering of the primate tree leading to humans comes in right at the end, there. Most of the time Earth's been around, there's been nothing made of more than one cell to populate it. You either didn't know that or you weren't telling the truth about it, were you? But of course, in your funny universe, all that time never happened. And it's not as if you have a coherent story for why the stars shine from so far away, the Earth looks so old, and if there was an Intelligent Designer he took a billion years to fall out of love with simple bacteria before experimenting with big cells with nuclei.

When you mentioned dragonflies before, I challenged you to deal with the lack of dinosaurs and mammals back when those first members of that Linnaean order appeared. You forgot to deal with that. I guess the seminar forgot to tell you the handwave for that one.

So you just repeated the same dumb-dumbism, "clarifying" it by revealing you don't know a species from an order. Thank you for the clarification.

Think how dumb you might be if you were born in West Virginia, Dipsh*t!

Your organophosphatases in CULEX SPP. are not mutations. they are expressions of recessive alleles found in nature.

There were none of the genes involved before 1984. There are multiple copies of them now. If that isn't mutation, you need to get off your butt and show what it is.

I'm the one with all the evidence here, but you're the one taking 24 hours to compose empty "You can't make me see"-isms. This is ICR science? Yes, indeed.

Ever take a university-level genetics class.

No, but you're the one who hasn't said a true thing yet, not I. I wasn't wrong when I predicted you wouldn't have the integrity to be bothered by it, either.

I think you may believe, based upon your world view, that a liar is more fit than someone who is always truthful. I believe you are lying.

Believe what you want. You guys have all the seminars and all the seminar posters. What I didn't know from reading Scientific American for the last 30 years, I learned online in front of everybody refuting seminar mantra spewers like you. No doubt you're astounded that I seem to know all the refutations for all the falsehoods you're spouting. Surely I've been to some kind of seminar to be able to do that! No. I've simply been keeping score on you guys for the last 6 years to see how many good arguments you do have. I've researched quite a few of your claims myself when I didn't initially know what to think. You don't have a single good penny in your whole piggy bank.

And, frankly, being called a liar by someone who argues with your patent dishonesty is not threatening.

You guys put together Piltdown, believed it, and foisted it on the world and I'm the charlatan?

Yes, indeed you are! That somebody faked Piltdown in 1912 does not entitle you to attempt to pull my hat down over my eyes and dance around me. That shouldn't even need to be explained, but it's just another thing you're dumb as a stump about. Talk about situational "Holy Warrior A**hole" ethics, you're it walking and talking.

Only Creationism is scientific because it alone had an observer. It alone is reproducible in the laboratory, and it alone can be explained mechanistically.

Curious combination of Catch-22 lawyering and nutcase ranting. I'll tell you what, Seminar Monkey. You have ceased to amuse, and we've pretty well plumbed the depth of your education in just these few exchanges. You may have the last word. Abuse the crap out of it to string together all the course material you want. I won't bother with you, as you're exposed enough already. Take the cheapest shot you got.