Hey, your picture just proved that cars evolved!
< /SARCASM! >
Posted on 02/15/2003 4:18:25 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Your fixation on the "missing link" is a throwback to creationist literature from generations ago. Fossils of several pre-human species have been discovered. I've given you a link (post 23), and VadeRetro has posted a pic of the skulls. If creationism were true, there should be NO pre-humans, yet there are quite a few. Don't you find that disturbing?
As for fakes, it's true that a couple of fossils (Piltdown and Nebraska man) were fakes. Scientists established this. So what? You're not really saying that all fossils are fakes, are you? If we were to post a listing of all the fallen clergymen, the list would be huge (far longer than the list of fake fossils), yet it would prove nothing about the value of religion. Therefore evolutionists don't bother with bogus arguments. We leave that to the creation "science" practitioners.
Hey, your picture just proved that cars evolved!
< /SARCASM! >
Since neither creation nor evolution can be duplicated, and given that there is no other scientific model (they are not theories because they cannot be actually tested), disproving the opposing postition is really the only option for conclusively establishing your own view. Based on the evidence, the creation/intelligent design side has done a much better job than the evolution side. There is no evidence which disproves creation, but there are plenty of questions about evolution for which there are no good answers. Behe's Darwin's Black Box is just example, and Behe has not claimed to be a creationist. He simply points out scientific evidence which would preclude macro-evolution. If macro-evolution is not possible, that leaves creation as the only current reasonable explanation.
Of course. But they have no business using con-man tactics to bully foolish school boards into teaching their faith as if it were science.
Where are the transitions?
"Tantelizing allusions" just don't do the job. There are too many outright declarations in Genesis that don't stand up to scientific scrutiny.
It was National Geographic. Mainstream scientists caught the fraud of a couple of Chinese fossil merchants. Creationism has nothing to contribute to our knowledge at all.
I agree. Creationist parents have an absolute right to send their children to schools that will give them a creationist education. But not at my expense.
This always reminds me of a joke -- A man asks God, "what's a thousand years to you?" God replays, "a day." The man asks, "what's a million dollars to you?" God answers, "a penny." "God, can I have a penny?" asks the man. God answers, "yes, in a day."
What impresses me is that the order of creation in both the Bible and science is the same. I love the way the creation story reads in the New King James version (the old too). It is very powerful to me, "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters..." It seems charged with energy and expectancy -- and then God says, "Let there be light, and there was light".
I have never seen the conflict between the Biblical and scientific, unless Christains want to deny process and scientists want to deny God.
I think--at least hope--that most scientists would be happy to let religion be religion if people will let science be science.
These two paragraphs alone show that for Asimov, the issue goes beyond science. Evolution certainly is not as well-proven as the other theories that he names, and his attempt to make that claim shows that he is no better than those he tries to criticize. The cell theory is easily proven by the fact that we can look at cells. The theory of gravity can be easily seen and tested. Quantum theory and relativity are a little more controversial, but both can be tested. The same is simply not true of evolution and particularly the evolution of man. There is some good evidence for evolution. I halfway believe it myself. However, I find those who zealously attack creationists just as tiresome and superstitious as the creationists that they despise.
WFTR
Bill
Creation Paradox, 1
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." (Genesis 1: 3-5)
"And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth." (Genesis 1:16-17)
Comment
God creates day and night on the first day and then makes the stars and the two great lights (sun and moon) on the fourth day (Genesis 1:19). How can you have day and night on the first day without a star? To have a day, there must exist a rotating planet and a sun. Genesis proves that God (or more accurately, the authors of Genesis) could not have known about the structure of the universe, or even the difference between stars and planets.
It is only central to the point because you insist it must be otherwise you don't have any point.
If ONLY intelligent entities can be shown to be responsible for a process (e.g. a computer software program), then it isn't very credible to suggest that non-intelligent entities are responsible for a that or an analagous but unknown process.
The operative word here is 'if' and it cannot be shown that 'only' intelligent entities can be shown to be responsible for a process because the whole universe is nothing but process. You just want to take one process, that can be MAPPED with a mathematical system we call Base 4, and ASSUME because it can be mapped in this manner that it MUST be the result of some 'intelligent entity.' This is why I said you reified Base 4 because Base 4 is a CONCEPT not at THING, and exists only as a CONCEPT in your mind, which your are mistaking as a THING, - the error of which is called Mistaking the Map for the Territory.
That's just jibberish.
Flattery can get you anywhere!
Base 4 math is an order of magnitude of complexity GREATER than Base 2 (i.e. Binary) math. Yet show me where Binary programs form without Intelligent Intervention and THEN we'll be able to discuss whether the vastly more complex Base-4 instructions in DNA could even potentially be formed without Intelligent Intervention.
But the analogy that DNA is a 'program' Begs the Question that it is one. If it were as intelligently designed as you assert it wouldn't result in two headed snakes, or babies without brains. I don't have to provide you with a Base 2 that is created by natural processes because there is a vastly more complex process, Base 4, that has been created by natural processes. Your argument here would be like me saying, "Prove that the Apostles could write before you prove they wrote the New Testament."
But the burden of proof is on you. Where is that mystical non-intelligence-formed Base-2 software program?!
Night and Day, your are the one. It's only you under the moon and under the sun! Good and evil, Right and wrong. Male and Female. Genius and fool. Yin and Yang! Shall I go on? See, as a former Daoist you got the wrong guy here. The whole can be viewed as a non-intelligence formed Base-2 software program. The proofs are endless and you cannot prove otherwise.
After all, I can show PLENTY of examples of such software that has been made WITH intelligent intervention (so I've done my burden of proof - that leaves you out in the cold again)...
But reality isn't 'software' that is just a faulty analogy, leaving you in the dark again. You haven't proven anything other than you make assumptions that you cannot back up, and expect those to stand as aguments.
The Burden of Proof is upon you to prove that anything, anything at all, in nature anywhere is, in fact, intelligently designed. The Universe seems like a pretty haphazard, irrational design to me. We could get exterminated by an asteroid any minute. The DNA program is so random and flawed it produces the most horrendous errors on a regular basis. The sun that I burned my skin with earlier is really killing me with the invisible and undetectable, except by the most sophisticated scientific means, rays embodied within its beautiful warmth.
There is a flesh eating bacteria in a local lake that kills you in a day if it gets in your blood stream, but only does so in one in a million.
The only thing that has ever raised human beings from the muck and mire of the swamp is logic and reason, in the full application of science, and a majority of the planet want to reject that in favor of various superstitions.
Intelligent Design my A*&^^&%#$!
This is a new one--at least to me--in the collection of pamphlet-pasted goodies but if it's like most of the others there won't be any "there" there.
Opinion stated as fact.
There is no evidence which disproves creation, but there are plenty of questions about evolution for which there are no good answers.
One is not required to 'disprove creation' since one cannot prove a negative. The Burden of Proof is upon those who support it to prove ANY EVIDENCE that creation is anything other than conjecture, which they cannot.
If you wish to ignore the fossil records that record the evolution of the horse, or pigs, or whatever, fine. But don't claim there is no 'evidence.' The fact that there are 'questions' means that the mechanism is clear enough to be argued. It doesn't disprove anything.
The real issue is the thought process. Creationism is dependent upon an abandonment of logic and reason in favor of an ideology, and evolution seeks to build a theory based upon available evidence. The dispute is, Do you think or Do you believe? That is all.
Could you be a little more specific?
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