Posted on 07/25/2009 10:11:21 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
However sharp Gee’s criticisms of the fish crawling out of the water to become man story, however over enthusiastic he is for his own favored explanations he, like the late Jay Gould, is still welcomed and honored and praised as the blurbs on his book show.
But if a creationist, particularly of the YEC persuasion, offered the same criticisms of the fish crawling out of water story in the same words, is there any doubt how they would be treated?
I don't have to defend the views of the YEC or the evolution folks, not being in either camp, but the notion one group is made up of the objective and dispassionate while the other is the epitome of the ignoranti is utter bigoted bilge.
And if academia is under the thumb of a liberal, PC dominated elite, what can one say of the product, the graduates, they turn out?
You mean as pathological liars?
Let me tell you, and I sincerely don't intend to be gratuitously mean, but they have well and fully earned such treatment. They are pathological liars. It's simply a fact. I know this from direct experience. As mentioned elsewhere, I have nearly 200 antievolution volumes, of every variety, but the majority YEC, in my personal library. Granted it was some years ago, but I've taken volumes to the library and chased out footnotes to original sources, and discovered the lies for myself (ironically, undertaking the project initially supposing there might be degrees of merit to some of the antievolution arguments). The lies are deep, pervasive and egregious, and they are completely unbalanced by any worthwhile, countervailing insights.
Sorry, that's just my view and I won't hide it.
In any case, I don't recall a creationist ever constructing a line of argument such as that presented by Gee. They generally just quote (or misquote, or cherrypick a quote from) an evolutionist or other mainstream scientist. So who needs the middle man? I didn't need creationists to learn about cladistics and the debates surrounding it. My copy of Romer's Vertebrate Paleontology covered the topic, as did various other sources. Creationists never introduced me to the Punctuated Equilibrium controversies. In both cases, and every similar case, only later did I come across creationists lying about the topics.
But here's an idea: Bang out a couple of your direct experiences as a post since “pathological liars” is pretty heavy paint to lay on anyone.
Do indeed share since I'm sure most of us don't have anything near 200 volumes of even old Nat. Geo. mags and Popular Mechanics combined.
Whata ya say?
So....
There are two distinctions. Name(label) and Form.
Sometimes FORM change indicates an ‘evolution’ , sometimes it doesn’t.
Use of a NAME is no real indication of lineage.
BTW, Thank you for the very informative, and thoughtful response.
With all this discussion of ‘evolution’, I am reminded that God and nature seem to always throw a ‘spanner into the works’.
Human baby. Grows up, it’s a human.
Caterpillar. Grows up, it’s a butterfly. Absolutely no similarity between the two ‘forms’.
There is a plant that lives on the ocean floor. That is, until it pulls up it’s roots, turns into a snake and swims away.
Nobody is denying that variation within species exists.
The thing that creationists disagree with is that enough variation can occur within a species to result in speciation.
It’s a matter of interpretation of the data. Creationists don’t extrapolate their desired outcome (speciation) by reading more into the observations (variation) than is needed and the assuming the conclusion.
Do indeed share since I'm sure most of us don't have anything near 200 volumes of even old Nat. Geo. mags and Popular Mechanics combined.
Whata ya say?
Sure. Now, this would have been very early 1980's, I think, and I didn't keep notes, just marked up xerox's of the relevant articles, now long gone. But I think I remember enough details of at least one or two examples to relate them. I'll get to that within the next few days.
Fixed it....
And it is perfectly compatible with Christianity.
Only if God lied when He told us....
Gen 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Gen 2:19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.
Seeing the debate about the classification of some recently discovered fossils, sheds some interesting light on the issue.
Seems like the fossils are put where the scientists THINK they should go, not where they KNOW they should go.
Isn't it true that fossils invariably get inserted into the fossil record where they fit best? Where they make the neatest transition, and if they don't, they're considered *dead ends*? And then this fossil record is presented to us are *evidence* that evolution occurs, because look how smoothly all these fossils transition from one to the next?
Sure convinces me..... /s
Sure, why not, you got what you got.
The thing that creationists disagree with is that enough variation can occur within a species to result in speciation.
Um, not really, no.
I mean, this may be your view, but it's not the view of professional creationists, not even the Young Earth, "strict" creationism types at places like the ICR.
They do NOT hold to fixed species, not even "varying" fixed species, but in fact insist that the "original created kinds" in many cases produced many, many species. (Although, for obvious reasons, they don't really like to dwell on it. But, still, they will often get offended and huffy if you imply they are fixed species types like pre-Darwinian 19th Century scientists.)
So, for instance, strict creationists might say that only one pair of, say, the "horse kind" needed to be on Noah's ark, subsequently splitting (speciating) into all the extant species of horses. Likewise one pair of the "dog kind," one of the "cat kind," etc.
Now, let's take "horses" ("dogs" and "cats," btw, are both far MORE diverse). And let's even throw out all the extinct horses (members of the Family Equidae). That leaves only one living Genus, Equus. (There are 34 other extinct genera, spanning a number of Subfamilies.)
That massive pairing down of a large family to a single genus still leaves 7 living species (and many of them contain multiple, well-marked subspecies):
Equus ferus (Subspecies: Wild Horse, Mongolian Wild Horse a.k.a. Przewalski's Horse, and the Domestic Horse)
Equus africanus (Two living subspecies of African Wild Asses, Nubian and Somali, plus the common Donkey or Burro)
Equus hemionus (Onager or Asiatic Ass, 5 living subspecies)
Equus kiang (The Kiang, 4 living subspecies)
Equus grevyi (Grevy's Zebra)
Equus quagga (Plains Zebra, 5 subspecies)
Equus zebra (Mountain Zebra, 2 subspecies)
So, creationists DO allow for at LEAST 7 speciations within the "horse kind". (Actually many more than that, since even creationists would allow many, although not all, extinct Equids in the "horse kind".
I was even at a creationism conference where creationist turtle expert Wayne Friar (I think maybe he was one of the authors of, Of Pandas and People, although I may be misremembering that) dropped the bombshell, as a result of his genetic studies, that ALL turtles most probably belonged to a single "created kind". Think of that: Desert tortoises and sea turtles sharing a common ancestry within the bound of "strict," young earth creationism!
mm: “Nobody is denying that variation within species exists.
The thing that creationists disagree with is that enough variation can occur within a species to result in speciation.”
Stultis:” Um, not really, no.
I mean, this may be your view, but it’s not the view of professional creationists, not even the Young Earth, “strict” creationism types at places like the ICR.”
**************************************************************
Um, yes, really. Have you ever read any of the articles linked to ICR?
Here are some....
http://www.icr.org/article/microwave-evolution/
http://www.icr.org/article/creation-selection-variation/
http://www.icr.org/article/creation-mutation-variation/
http://www.icr.org/article/cichlid-coloration-corroborates-creation/
http://www.icr.org/article/do-creationists-really-believe-evolution/
http://www.icr.org/article/natural-selection-creationists-idea/
If you have to support your science with scripture to fill in the (massive) gaps, then it is not science to begin with. It is Christianity. And Christianity is perfectly compatible with evolution, as nearly all Christians agree. Catholics, for example.
So you think that you know what *nearly all* Christians think?
Did they tell you?
When you add up the Catholics, Episcopalians, and other mainstream Christian denominations who understand that evolution does not threaten their faith, then, yes—you can say that they told me.
All of them? You had time to talk to all of them around the world?
Really?
Assembling bones from different strata into a skeleton is what produced the famous “Lucy” as I recall.
No. They get inserted where they go. Sometimes that conflicts with where paleontologists thought they would go, which is why we get stories like that recent one about T. Rex-type dinosaurs having reached large size millions of years earlier than previously thought.
That's the difference between real science and creation "science." The former follows the evidence where it leads. The latter decides where it has to go and juggles the evidence to get there.
I just looked at a couple of those--don't have time to read them all--and they don't really address Stultis' point. Are you saying zebras, donkeys, and horses are not really different species? Or are you saying they were each represented on the Ark?
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