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"Creation-Evolution Headlines" - Italy Waffles on School Darwinism

Thread ID: 13524 | Posts: 70 | Started: 2004-05-04

Petr [OP]

2004-05-04 15:16 | User Profile

May I introduce OD readers to a top-quality Creationist newsblog, IMHO.

"Creation-Evolution Headlines" scans science news ("Nature" and "Science" included), and gives them a creationist commentary. It does an excellent job in showing how evolutionist dogmas are upheld with constant biased news reporting - something that WNs should be familiar with.

In addition, you quite spontaneously learn to "filter" science news in the same way that WNs already know how to read mainstream political news.

Please at least take a look!

[url]http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev0504.htm[/url]

This particular news piece stuck my eye: (usually these pieces are much more science-oriented)

(Newspiece in blue, commentary in dark green)

[COLOR=Blue]"Italy Waffles on School Darwinism

04/29/2004

It’s not just an American thing; the politicians and scientists in Italy, also, are polarizing around Darwin. The education ministry just dropped a requirement to teach evolution in elementary and middle schools as part of a major overhaul of education guidelines. A news brief in the April 28 issue of Science1 claims that pressure “may” be coming from the “far-right” Alleanza Nationale, part of the ruling coalition government. Earlier this year, it sponsored an “Anti-evolution week” in which a spokesman called evolution the “hegemony of the Left” in Europe and the “antechamber of Marxism”

The backlash by &#8220;leading scientists&#8221; was strong and predictable, reported Access Research Network.  Rossella Lorenzi, writing in The Scientist, said that Darwin was back in school the next day, after the minister of education was inundated by letters and emails.  Letizia Moratti alleged that it was &#8220;absolutely false&#8221; that evolution had been banned from primary and secondary schools; she reassured the press that evolution will be taught starting in primary school.  She even appointed a committee of scientists to provide guidelines for the teaching of evolution.

One of the pro-evolution scientists is organizing a &#8220;Darwin week&#8221; in June, &#8220;in which universities and natural history museums across Italy will hold seminars on teaching evolution.&#8221;  Science points out that the Roman Catholic Church has &#8220;no objections&#8221; to Darwinism, but quips, &#8220;As visitors to the Sistine Chapel can see, Italy has a long history of creationism.&#8221;

Meanwhile, back in cowboy country, the evolution wars are still raging in Darby, Montana (see 02/27/2004 headline).  The &#8220;objective origins policy,&#8221; that allows for criticisms of Darwinism without offering up alternatives, has divided the community.  According to The Ravalli Republic, it&#8217;s coming down to the outcome of the next school board elections.

1“Darwin in Italy,” Random Samples, Science, Volume 304, Number 5671, Issue of 30 April 2004. [/COLOR] [COLOR=DarkGreen]

Interesting that the Italians can connect the dots between Darwin and Marx, but American scientists pretend evolution is religiously neutral. Also notice that Science treats Darwinism and evolution as synonymous. Some evolutionists try to wriggle out of that connection and claim that Darwinism only refers to one discredited mechanism of evolution. Is Darwinism really the hegemony of the Left? We need a research project to see how many hard line Darwinists are also leftists. Bets are the correlation would be high. Most editorials that touch on politics in the elitist science journals usually show a distinctly anti-conservative, liberal-left slant. Even this article didn’t hesitate to label the anti-evolutionists “far-right” but avoided attributing the label “far-left” to the Darwin Party. It is instructive to note that Charlie and his fallen angels were all radical leftists of their day. Just a coincidence, presumably. Also coincidental that Marxists idolized Charlie and closed churches, turning them into museums of atheism.

Science puts the usual spin on the controversy.  Creationism is linked with religion on the one hand, but in the same sentence the writer claims the &#8220;influential&#8221; Roman Catholic church has &#8220;no objections&#8221; to Darwinism.  Well, which way is it?  Michelangelo was Roman Catholic, and depicted God creating man instantly ex nihilo, not by millions of years of time and slime.  Another spin is claiming that &#8220;leading scientists&#8221; [read: Big-Science elitists] are leading the protest.  The reader is presumably left to deduce that all scientists accept evolution but only a few &#8220;far right&#8221; religiously-based politicians are against it.  The power of the Darwin Party is still formidable.  Sadly, the Italian government didn&#8217;t have the guts to stand up to their onslaught.  It not only caved in, but even gave them more than they had before: a Darwin-Party committee to oversee the teaching of evolution.  Anyone want to bet they will recommend &#8220;teaching the controversy&#8221;?

The news item says, &#8220;The government&#8217;s rationale, according to an education ministry official, was that students under 14 are far too young to be confronted with such complex material.&#8221;  Scientist-protestors countered that physics and mathematics are also difficult, but that doesn&#8217;t stop us from teaching those subjects.  Well, then, why do they use that same rationale, that teaching the controversy about Darwin is too complex and difficult for young minds?  A mind that can learn about gravity can just as easily comprehend the fact that Darwinism has major scientific problems.  Italy&#8217;s motherly-protection excuse is weak.  We suggest the opposite approach.  Tell the Marxist-Darwinist-Leftists that Italian children are too precocious and perceptive to be fed a diet of evolutionary just-so stories.

Maybe you thought Marxism went out of style when the Berlin wall fell.  As long as Darwinism is the hegemony of the Left, the Marxists are waiting in the antechamber.  Lest we forget, we should remember what Stalin, the would-be priest who became an atheist after reading Darwin&#8217;s abominable volume, did to the &#8220;creationists&#8221; of his day.  Read this account and you will see why the Italians have good cause for alarm.  It should be required reading during Anti-Evolution Week.[/COLOR]

Whaddaya think?

Petr

Texas Dissident

2004-05-04 15:22 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr]Whaddaya think? [/QUOTE]

Looks great, Petr. Thank you for the heads-up.

Happy Hacker

2004-05-04 15:44 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr]The backlash by Ã¢â¬Åleading scientistsÃ¢â¬Â was strong and predictable, reported Access Research Network. [/QUOTE]

Leading state religous leaders of the atheistic EU state religion... Usually, those "scientists" whose careers look like those of political activists are hardly scientists.

Valley Forge

2004-05-04 17:18 | User Profile

Because it is nearly impossible to get people to quit believing their religion, I suspect that the so-called "theory" of "evolution" will always be with us.

Whatever lip service they pay to the contrary, non-Christians are desperate to believe in something. Hence, the evolution debate isn't about the merits of evolution as science -- it's about a clash of worldviews, and about one side attempting to impose its worldview on everyone else in the name of "science."

Great post -- thanks very much.

And great job on that Phora thread dismantling and dissecting NN's tired bromides. :thumbsup:

Angler

2004-05-04 18:04 | User Profile

I have to ask you guys: For which is there more objective, physical evidence -- evolutionary theory, or creationism? Which has yielded more real-world results, such as predicting new discoveries in biology? In fact, can any of you name one single piece of physical evidence in support of Biblical creationism? Please note that the Bible is not evidence of anything; also please note that evidence that might cast doubt on evolution is not the same as evidence in support of creationism, since it could conceivably be the case that neither theory is correct.

Also, take a look at the following picture (from a Catholic Biblical commentary, I believe). It shows the ancient, prescientific conception of the universe on which the book of Genesis is based.

Petr

2004-05-04 18:24 | User Profile

Well dahling, it is simply a matter of perspective. Creationists and evolutionists observe the same evidence material, but make different conclusions out of them, evos according to their anti-Creator bias and creationist according to biblical parameters.

(And of course there is an increasing number of non-Christian opponents of evolution who just can't miss all that necessity of design in the birth and diversity of life.)

The fact is, evolution is useless, parasitical hypothesis that pretends to uphold the integrity of whole science.

(Let's see YOU name some concrete scientific advancements that aredue ONLY to evolutionism! What is the greatest proof for evolution in your mind?)

Its active proponents (most people just accept it like veritable lemmings) react to all attempts to question its basic premises with EXACTLY the same kind of panic-mongering that organized Jewry practises "all critics of Jews aim for another Holocaust":

"This is outrageous! These people want to push us back to the stone ages! Why do we still have this kind of science-haters (even when their objections are of purely scientific nature) in these enlightened times etc."

You can start looking in here for some pro-creation professional opinions, from the very founders of Western scientific worldview:

[COLOR=Red]"THE WORLD’S GREATEST CREATION SCIENTISTS"

[url]http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs_toc.htm[/url][/COLOR]

And what is matter with that "Catholic" sourceanyways? Probably some liberal nonsense.

[COLOR=Red]"Does the Bible say Earth is Flat?"

[url]http://www.trueorigin.org/flatearth01.asp[/url][/COLOR]

Petr

Angler

2004-05-04 20:10 | User Profile

Petr,

Here are a few of the older predictions made by evolution:

-- Darwin predicted that precursors to the trilobite would be found in pre-Silurian rocks. He was correct: they were subsequently found.

-- Similarly, Darwin predicted that Precambrian fossils would be found. He wrote in 1859 that the total absence of fossils in Precambrian rock was "inexplicable" and that the lack might "be truly urged as a valid argument" against his theory. When such fossils were found, starting in 1953, it turned out that they had been abundant all along. They were just so small that it took a microscope to see them.

-- There are two kinds of whales: those with teeth, and those that strain microscopic food out of seawater with baleen. It was predicted that a transitional whale must have once existed, which had both teeth and baleen. Such a fossil has since been found.

-- Evolution predicts that we will find fossil series.

-- Evolution predicts that the fossil record will show different populations of creatures at different times. For example, it predicts we will never find fossils of trilobites with fossils of dinosaurs, since their geological time-lines don't overlap. The "Cretaceous seaway" deposits in Colorado and Wyoming contain almost 90 different kinds of ammonites, but no one has ever found two different kinds of ammonite together in the same rockbed.

-- Evolution predicts that animals on distant islands will appear closely related to animals on the closest mainland, and that the older and more distant the island, the more distant the relationship.

-- Evolution predicts that features of living things will fit a hierarchical arrangement of relatedness. For example, arthropods all have chitinous exoskeleton, hemocoel, and jointed legs. Insects have all these plus head-thorax-abdomen body plan and 6 legs. Flies have all that plus two wings and halteres. Calypterate flies have all that plus a certain style of antennae, wing veins, and sutures on the face and back. You will never find the distinguishing features of calypterate flies on a non-fly, much less on a non-insect or non-arthropod.

-- Evolution predicts that simple, valuable features will evolve independently, and that when they do, they will most likely have differences not relevant to function. For example, the eyes of molluscs, arthropods, and vertebrates are extremely different, and ears can appear on any of at least ten different locations on different insects.

-- In 1837, a Creationist reported that during a pig's fetal development, part of the incipient jawbone detaches and becomes the little bones of the middle ear. After Evolution was invented, it was predicted that there would be a transitional fossil, of a reptile with a spare jaw joint right near its ear. A whole series of such fossils has since been found -- the cynodont therapsids.

-- It was predicted that humans must have an intermaxillary bone, since other mammals do. The adult human skull consists of bones that have fused together, so you can't tell one way or the other in an adult. An examination of human embryonic development showed that an intermaxillary bone is one of the things that fuses to become your upper jaw.

-- From my junk DNA example I predict that three specific DNA patterns will be found at 9 specific places in the genome of white-tailed deer, but none of the three patterns will be found anywhere in the spider monkey genome.

-- In 1861, the first Archaeopteryx fossil was found. It was clearly a primitive bird with reptilian features. But, the fossil's head was very badly preserved. In 1872 Ichthyornis and Hesperornis were found. Both were clearly seabirds, but to everyone's astonishment, both had teeth. It was predicted that if we found a better-preserved Archaeopteryx, it too would have teeth. In 1877, a second Archaeopteryx was found, and the prediction turned out to be correct.

-- Almost all animals make Vitamin C inside their bodies. It was predicted that humans are descended from creatures that could do this, and that we had lost this ability. (There was a loss-of-function mutation, which didn't matter because our high-fruit diet was rich in Vitamin C.) When human DNA was studied, scientists found a gene which is just like the Vitamin C gene in dogs and cats. However, our copy has been turned off.

-- In "The Origin Of Species" (1859), Darwin said:

"If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."
Chapter VI, Difficulties Of The Theory

This challenge has not been met. In the ensuing 140 years, no such thing has been found. Plants give away nectar and fruit, but they get something in return. Taking care of other members of one's own species (kin selection) doesn't count, so ants and bees (and mammalian milk) don't count.

-- Darwin pointed out that the Madagascar Star orchid has a spur 30 centimeters (about a foot) long, with a puddle of nectar at the bottom. Now, evolution says that nectar isn't free. Creatures that drink it pay for it, by carrying pollen away to another orchid. For that to happen, the creature must rub against the top of the spur. So, Darwin concluded that the spur had evolved its length as an arms race. Some creature had a way to reach deeply without shoving itself hard against the pollen-producing parts. Orchids with longer spurs would be more likely to spread their pollen, so Darwin's gradualistic scenario applied. The spur would evolve to be longer and longer. From the huge size, the creature must have evolved in return, reaching deeper and deeper. So, he predicted in 1862 that Madagascar has a species of hawkmoth with a tongue just slightly shorter than 30 cm.

The creature that pollinated that orchid was not learned until 1902, forty years later. It was indeed a moth, and it had a 25 cm tongue. And in 1988 it was proven that moth-pollinated short-spurred orchids did set less seed than long ones.

-- A thousand years ago, just about every remote island on the planet had a species of flightless bird. Evolution explains this by saying that flying creatures are particularly able to establish themselves on remote islands. Some birds, living in a safe place where there is no need to make sudden escapes, will take the opportunity to give up on flying. Hence, Evolution predicts that each flightless bird species arose on the island that it was found on. So, Evolution predicts that no two islands would have the same species of flightless bird. Now that all the world's islands have been visited, we know that this was a correct prediction.

-- The "same" protein in two related species is usually slightly different. A protein is made from a sequence of amino acids, and the two species have slightly different sequences. We can measure the sequences of many species, and cladistics has a mathematical procedure which tells us if these many sequences imply one common ancestral sequence. Evolution predicts that these species are all descended from a common ancestral species, and that the ancestral species used the ancestral sequence.

This has been done for pancreatic ribonuclease in ruminants. (Cows, sheep, goats, deer and giraffes are ruminants.) Measurements were made on various ruminants. An ancestral sequence was computed, and protein molecules with that sequence were manufactured. When sequences are chosen at random, we usually wind up with a useless goo. However, the manufactured molecules were biologically active substances. Furthermore, they did exactly what a pancreatic ribonuclease is supposed to do - namely, digest ribonucleic acids.

-- An animal's bones contain oxygen atoms from the water it drank while growing. And, fresh water and salt water can be told apart by their slightly different mixture of oxygen isotopes. (This is because fresh water comes from water that evaporated out of the ocean. Lighter atoms evaporate more easily than heavy ones do, so fresh water has fewer of the heavy atoms.)

Therefore, it should be possible to analyze an aquatic creature's bones, and tell whether it grew up in fresh water or in the ocean. This has been done, and it worked. We can distinguish the bones of river dolphins from the bones of killer whales.

Now for the prediction. We have fossils of various early whales. Since whales are mammals, evolution predicts that they evolved from land animals. And, the very earliest of those whales would have lived in fresh water, while they were evolving their aquatic skills. Therefore, the oxygen isotope ratios in their fossils should be like the isotope ratios in modern river dolphins.

It's been measured, and the prediction was correct. The two oldest species in the fossil record - Pakicetus and Ambulocetus - lived in fresh water. Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus and the others all lived in salt water.

Source for this list: [url]http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/evo_science.html[/url]. Not that it matters, but you may be interested to know that the owner of the website referenced is both a Christian and a scientist (more specifically, a computer scientist).

Your turn. Please name one scientific prediction, based on Biblical creationism, that has later been validated by the discovery of physical evidence. An example might be the discovery of geological evidence for a worldwide flood, but that's just one suggestion. There are many possibilities. I'm only asking for one, but it has to be a discovery that was clearly the result of investigation based on the Bible. I.e., someone said: "According to the Bible, XYZ should exist. Let's go look for it." And then they found it. Has that ever happened? If not, then there is no such thing as "creation science," since the whole point of science is to validate theories by using them to predict the future (e.g., results of experiments or exploration).

Feric Jaggar

2004-05-04 20:14 | User Profile

Here's the website that finally convinced me to give up hope in creationism: [url]http://www.talkorigins.org/[/url]

It takes the arguments put forward in the name of creationism and one-by-one shows how and why they don't add up. For me its not about whether you believe in creationism or whether you believe in evolution; rather its whether you can put together an argument that can stand up to critical examination. The creationist arguments fall apart every time. I wish they didn't though...because of my faith, I'd rather be a creationist. Nevertheless I have to go with the best of arguments.

A good book on God and evolution is Finding Darwin's God by Miller. Rev. Polkinghorne has a few out too.

Texas Dissident

2004-05-04 21:34 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Feric Jaggar]Here's the website that finally convinced me to give up hope in creationism: [url]http://www.talkorigins.org/[/url][/QUOTE]

You may have already seen this Feric, I don't know:

[url]http://www.trueorigin.org/[/url]

Q: When was the TrueOrigin Archive website started and why? A: The site began in November 1997 with a single rebuttal ('Five Major Evolutionist Misconceptions About Evolution'), after a well-meaning relative suggested that a few TalkOrigins articles (including Mark Isaak's 'Five Misconceptions') would clear up Tim?s 'erroneous' thinking on the subject. The rebuttal was originally written to demonstrate (for that relative) the application of critical thinking skills and a measure of objectivity in the analysis of evolutionary dogma. It was then 'published' as a web page in hopes of reaching a few other readers. (The relative only responded with silence.)

Q: Why not just contribute to TalkOrigins instead of creating a whole new site? A: In spite of the TalkOrigins publishers' pretense to be 'exploring' the creation/evolution controversy (as if their 'exploration' were characteristically balanced and objective), even a cursory examination of the TalkOrigins content reveals that the site is heavily biased in favor of the evolutionary belief system. There was--and is--no evidence that material from a creationary perspective would meet with anything but the same out-of-hand rejection and/or the customary dismissive derision already poured out on the creationary viewpoint among TalkOrigins regulars. (This probably explains why there are no positive articles regarding creation science there, even though TalkOrigins was establish long before TrueOrigin.)

Q: Why won't you just admit that creationism is religion and evolution is science? A: Because it's not true. Here's why...

First, let's use consistent terminology. 'Creation ism' and 'evolution ism' comprise a pair of opposing worldviews based on different ideologies. Evolutionism is based upon the foundation that only naturalistic and materialistic causes exist for not just life here on earth but the entire cosmos from the point of origin until now. Creationism is based upon the foundation that our world and the cosmos itself testifies to an active Creator, still involved with His creation. The words 'creation' and 'evolution', on the other hand, represent the proposed processes by which things have come into existence, each in accordance with its respective worldview. It is an error in logic to describe the origins debate in terms of one side's worldview versus the other side's process.

Second, let's not pretend that one's worldview or philosophical belief system does not constitute one's 'religion'--no matter how little or how much it has to do with the supernatural in general or the Bible in particular. Regardless of any scientific corroboration, what many (if not most) of evolution's proponents practice is the promotion of one worldview or philosophical belief system (i.e., religion) over and against another. Rarely content to discuss empirical science alone, they regularly advocate humanistic naturalism as a superior worldview or philosophical belief system to biblical creationism. It is therefore an act of self-deception to think that they are defending/advocating a position that is somehow 'not religious' and/or strictly 'scientific'.

Third, notwithstanding widespread popular ignorance (some of it apparently willful), a growing body of empirical science points out serious flaws in contemporary evolutionary thinking, while affirming the biblical creationary model. This hardly renders evolution 'science' and creation 'not science'. On the contrary, the scientific viability of evolution has been brought into question in recent years by an ever increasing number of highly qualified scientific professionals, not all of whom have been biblical creationists.

So perhaps a better question would be: Why won't evolutionists admit that their ideological, philosophical, and--yes--religious belief system has much at stake in the question of evolution's scientific credibility, rather than falsely insisting that the debate is strictly between 'science' and 'religion'?

FWIW...

Happy Hacker

2004-05-04 21:41 | User Profile

Angler, as I have pointed out to you in the past, the big problem of Evolution is that it doesn't happen. Any Evolutionary progress requires mutations yet the only thing any Evolutionist can point to is utterly insignificant, like out of thousands of generations of bacteria, some resistance to marginally effective antibiotics. And, even this is a lucky benefit of degineration, not evolutionary progress.

If Creationism were correct, what kind of evidence would you expect?

The picture of the you link to is a crass caricature, just the same as a picture for Evolution of a blue whale with legs of a holstein cow. For the biblical concept of the universe, we should look at the Bible and discuss the Bible, not one man's picture.

Valley Forge

2004-05-04 23:48 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Feric Jaggar]Here's the website that finally convinced me to give up hope in creationism: [url]http://www.talkorigins.org/[/url]

A good book on God and evolution is Finding Darwin's God by Miller. Rev. Polkinghorne has a few out too.[/QUOTE]

Feric,

talkorigins.org is no less a propaganda site than Holocaust History.org

Just as many important people have a stake in the "truth" of the "Holocaust" and use the Holocaust as an ideological weapon in furtherance of their agenda, many important people have a stake in the "theory" of "evolution" and use it to further their agenda.

Trust me, just as I used to believe in the Jewish "Holocaust," I used to be an avowed atheist, and I am very familair with the material on talkorigins.org and the standard philosophical and scientific arguments against theism.

Trust me, the more you research the relevant science, the more apparent it becomes that counter-arguments against creation on the talkorgins web site are superficial.

Texas Dissident

2004-05-05 00:10 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler]Please note that the Bible is not evidence of anything;[/QUOTE]

Wow, A. That's a pretty bold claim, amigo.

I'm trying to remember who said it, I think it might have been Lee Strobel interviewed on Dr. D. James Kennedy's 'Truths that Transform' radio program, but maybe another scholar I can't remember. Anyway, he stated that with the thousands of original manuscripts that exist of the Gospels and various Scriptural texts, if we were to discount their historical accuracies based on the scientific methods used to verify any ancient text then we would have to subsequently throw out every known 'fact' we have about ancient history as no other text comes anywhere close to having as much supporting evidence of authenticity as do the Scriptures themselves.

And some here label us believers in the Scriptures as being the inerrant, inspired Word of God as 'know-nothings'! Amazing.

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 00:22 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler]Your turn. Please name one scientific prediction, based on Biblical creationism, that has later been validated by the discovery of physical evidence. An example might be the discovery of geological evidence for a worldwide flood, but that's just one suggestion. There are many possibilities. I'm only asking for one, but it has to be a discovery that was clearly the result of investigation based on the Bible. I.e., someone said: "According to the Bible, XYZ should exist. Let's go look for it." And then they found it. Has that ever happened? If not, then there is no such thing as "creation science," since the whole point of science is to validate theories by using them to predict the future (e.g., results of experiments or exploration).[/QUOTE]

Angler,

None of those predictions prove that evolution -- speciation if you will -- has ever happened, that is, that over time Species A has actually changed into Species B.

If that actually happened, the fossil record should be littered with thousands if not millions of transitional fossils -- the fossil record should in fact be pratically nothing but transitions -- so where are they?

This obvious weakness in the theory of evolution is what led the Jew Stephen Jay Gould to develop the so-called "theory" of punctuated equilibrium -- he wanted to account for the absence of transitional fossils. He was well aware that Darwin conceded that the absence of transitional fossils in the fossil record would doom evolution to the trash can of history, so he came up with punk eek -- a theory proposing that evolution happens quickly on the geologic timescale rather than gradually.

So basically Gould came up with the first scientific theory for which the absence of evidence (transitional fossils) is considered evidence (that evolution happened fast not slow and that therefore transitional fossils are less likely to accumlate in the fossil record).

All in all, not very impressive.

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 00:55 | User Profile

This is my personal favorite creation v evol site.

[url]http://www.arn.org[/url]

Not to start a cut/paste battle, but I like the way this guy explains the bankruptcy of Dawinian theory:

Note: ID=Intellgent Design -- the theory that the universe and life were consciously designed

blind watchmaking=reference to the work The Blind Watchmaker by the rabid evolutionist/propagandist Richard Dawkins.

bacterial flagellum=an insanely complex structure present in some bacteria. An example of an "irreducibly complex system" that could not possibly have evolved by any so-called "Darwinian pathway" that has yet been proposed.

"The ID critics have no way to distinguish products of blind watchmaking from products of intelligent design. No evidence the flagellum evolved into existence. What's more, most think random mutation and natural selection (RM&NS) were the mechanism behinds its appearance (propped up by unknown cooption events). But how did they get to this belief? Did they develop some test that allows us to detect the blind watchmaker at work in the past? Did they develop some criteria that represent fingerprints of the blind watchmaker at work and thus identified those fingerprints on the flagelllum? Did they come up with some "filter" for detecting the blind watchmaker? No. No. And no. They have no test, they have no method, they have no procedure for inferring an evolutionary origin by RM&NS. This is because they do not infer; they deduce. They figure that since RM&NS explains the origin of changing finch beaks and probably the origin of HIV, RM&NS likewise explains the origin of flagella and ribosomes. As such, their argument appears to boil down to this:

ÃÂ·The flagella and ribosome are part of cells ÃÂ·Cells self-replicate and evolve by RM&NS. ÃÂ·Therefore, the flagellum and ribosome must have come into existence by RM&NS.

But if the first cells were designed, endowed with flagella, ribosomes and such, front-loaded to evolve into other things, and used to seed this planet, we might also expect finch beaks and HIV to evolve into existence by RM&NS

In fact, thanks to our own genetic engineering, we already know that they all do co-exist. Thus, this whole deductive approach is quite flawed.

What's worse, there is no evidence that the bacterial flagellum evolved. None. Thus, what we have are many educated people who believe something without evidence to support their belief and without a method to validate their belief. Why are we supposed to take their skepticism of ID seriously? If the flagellum was in fact designed, they would be making the very same arguments and holding the very same beliefs."

Happy Hacker

2004-05-05 01:21 | User Profile

Responding to each of the examples below was very easy as they are pretty weak. They're also a reminder that Evolutionists do a lot of pleading with carefully selected circumstantial evidence. Where's the scientific skepticism?

-- Darwin predicted that precursors to the trilobite would be found in pre-Silurian rocks. He was correct: they were subsequently found.

Pre-Siluran rocks? No scientist believes that. Must mean precambrian. I've never seen any precambrian fossil that looked like a predecessor to a trilobite. I don't think there is anything that convince anyone but a True Believer in Evolution. But, the advantage of being an Evolutionist is you only have to look at something and declare it to be whatever you want.

Regardless of Evolution, evidence of precambrian life should be found. Microscopic organisms and bacteria can live deep in the grown, including the ground that served as the bottom of the cambrian seas. But, anyone who is not a True Believer in Evolution would see a serious problem for Evolution with microsopic fossils giving way to the awesome diversity and complexity found in the cambrian (including all major groups of living marine invertabrates, all existant phylum, and many extinct creatures).

All whales have teeth. Some just lose the teeth as adults. Besides, remember the comment about crass caricatures? A transitional animal should have transitional features. An Evolutionst wouldn't be impressed by a mock example of a blue whale with holstein cow legs, neither am I impressed by an animal with a "transitional" whale with a full set of "fully evolved" teeth.

-- Evolution predicts that we will find fossil series.

You can put anything in a row and call it a series.

Rather, trilobites were bottom-dwelling marine creatures while relatively rare dinosaurs ran around on land. Incidently, any scientist finding a dinosaur and trilobite together would do anything he could to interpret his finding as remixing, or some such thing that wouldn't dry up his government grant money.

-- The "Cretaceous seaway" deposits in Colorado and Wyoming contain almost 90 different kinds of ammonites, but no one has ever found two different kinds of ammonite together in the same rockbed.

Yet, they are all ammonites, showing no trend to becoming anything else. Their differences are minor and superficial.

Considering that it's harder for animal to make it to more distant islands, yeah, I would guess that closer islands would have more similiar animals.

-- Evolution predicts that features of living things will fit a hierarchical arrangement of relatedness.

Everything in the world can be fitted into hierarchical arrangments of relatedness. All the Evolutonist does is look for the most parsimonious arrangment

-- You will never find the distinguishing features of calypterate flies on a non-fly, much less on a non-insect or non-arthropod.

Parsimony, not Evolution, is the reason for this. Does Evolution have a law that distinguishing features cannot evolve twice (what about convergant evolution)?

The Evolutionist in first claims that evidence of common ancestory is proof of Evolution and then turns around and claim that evidence of non-common ancestory is proof of Evolution. See, any kind of evidence you can imagine they can make fit Evolution. BTW, while eyes are valuable, they aren't simple. And, why do Evolutionists commonly use something both simple and valuable as proof of common ancestory, like the five digits in a human hand and a bat wing when Evolution, according to you, does not predict such a thing.

Yet, that whole serious of reptiles has all the reptilian jaw bones and a "fully evolved" reptile jaw. Are we to believe that a perfectly good reptile would gain a useless spare jaw joint and retain it in anticpation of becoming a mamel ear and jaw? Why not predict a mammel with a reptilian jaw?

Again, Evolutionists put them selves in a win-win situation, no matter which direction the evidence goes. If humand don't have the intermaxillary bone then there's a clear example of an evolutionary change. If they do have the intermaxillary bone then they must have evolved from mammels.

Humans are closer relatives to white-tailed deer than spider monkeys? How does Evolution predict that?

-- In 1861, the first Archaeopteryx fossil was found. It was clearly a primitive bird with reptilian features.

Like so many of the few "transitional" animals Evolutionists point to, archaeopteryx lacks transitional features. The feathers are "fully evolved" and like the feathers of the most modern of birds. The teeth are "fully evolved." Why shouldn't a bird have teeth?

An example of a loss of function is an example of Evolution? I guess beggers can't be choosers.

-- In "The Origin Of Species" (1859), Darwin said:

"If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection." Chapter VI, Difficulties Of The Theory

This sounds like a variation of the Irreducible Complexity argument which Evolutionists have already declared to be invalid. BTW, how about a hypothetical example of such a structure. And, how would it annihilate the theory of Evolution?

I guess the plants without footlong spurs sat out the arms race, yet they survived. Again, how about a hypothetical example of something that is free?

Another example of degineration being passed off as Evolution, assuming they ever flew. And, again, minor variation within a species is passed off as Evolution.

I predict not a trace of Evolutionary progression can be found within families relative to other families, based on those same protein comparisons.

-- It's been measured, and the prediction was correct. The two oldest species in the fossil record - Pakicetus and Ambulocetus - lived in fresh water. Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus and the others all lived in salt water.

Considering that Pakicetus was found in a river deposit, one need not talk about oxygen isotopes to predict it was a fresh water animal. But, I guess the talk about oxygen isotopes makes the Evolutionist sound more scientific. I would even suggest that Pakiscetus is not a whale except in the Evolutionist's imagination. But, if Pakicetus were a marine animal, Evolutionists would say "Aha, see it is a marine animal, like a whale..."

Happy Hacker

2004-05-05 01:35 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Valley Forge]If that actually happened, the fossil record should be littered with thousands if not millions of transitional fossils -- the fossil record should in fact be pratically nothing but transitions -- so where are they?

Exactly. Evolutionists have never proposed any plausible mechanism for stability. If species evolve, what stops them? Not a stable environment. And, if species can evolve extremely quickly, that compounds the Evolutionists' problem of never demonstrating any significant evolutionary progress of transforming one species into another kind.

There are billions of fossils representing thousands of species that stand as testimant to stability of the species. Evolutionists are forced to comb through the fossils looking for anything interesting that might be used to misrepresent the nature of the fossil record.

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 02:00 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]Exactly. Evolutionists have never proposed any plausible mechanism for stability. If species evolve, what stops them? Not a stable environment. And, if species can evolve extremely quickly, that compounds the Evolutionists' problem of never demonstrating any significant evolutionary progress of transforming one species into another kind.

The reasons underlying the prevailing belief in Darwinism are very similar to the reasons underlying the prevailing belief in the Holocaust. People believe in it because they're told to believe in it from an early age, and because the "experts" believe in it.

And if you don't believe in the Big Cosmic Accident that out of near infinite possibilities all the sub-atomic particles in the universe just happened to come together in the right way to make everything around us -- well then, you're ignorant, you're sick, you're irrational -- just the Holocaust revisionists.

LlenLleawc

2004-05-05 03:49 | User Profile

Good scholarship is hard to find on almost any subject in today's universities (other than some of the inductive sciences like math and physics), no suprise that sloppy scholarship has crept into biology.

I believe the Bible to be authoritative, I also have no problem believing Genesis is somewhat metaphorical. For one thing the steps of creation seem to correspond to the four symbols Air, Fire, Water and Earth. Secondly the "days" of creation begin before the creation of the sun itself, leading me to believe each day was something other than a 24 hour period. I know some here will disagree with me, so let me say ahead of time, I respect your dissent.

Evolution itself doesn't bother me, I consider it possible. The real failure of the academics is to explain the mechanism of evolution. Natural selection, i.e. Darwinism is wholly inadequate. Consider any flying insect; the wings it uses to fly could not have suddenly appeared over the course of one generation. It would take multiple mutations occurring over multiple generations to transform a fly with no wings into a fly with wings - [B]yet not a single intermediary between the two would have an advantage in terms of survival[/B], and hence would not be selected to reproduce at higher rates. For an appendage like wings there could be hundreds of intermediary mutations between a non-winged animal and a winged one. And wings really aren't the most complex organs. Every single organ in every single species would require so many mutations before it would be useful enough to influence an animal's survival that natural selection simply doesn't count. Therefore evolution requires intelligent design as much as does the six day theory.

-Llen

il ragno

2004-05-05 05:30 | User Profile

[QUOTE]Whatever lip service they pay to the contrary, non-Christians are desperate to believe in something. [/QUOTE]

Nearly split a gut laughing at this line. Yeah, we're just burning with envy that you beat us to the best god. You should see the Darwin hymnbook - not a hummable tune in there!

The problem is that there are certain devout types who can only see the world, and everone and everything in it, from their own perspective.

Y'know what you folks need to do? You seriously need to get off your 'atheists-are-fools' hobbyhorse and begin witnessing to your fellow Christians - cos from where I sit, there are only a few thousand of you Honest-to-God Real True Christians and about 200 million Sally Soccermom Prots and John Hagee Evangelicals - and it sure ain't We Benighted Heathens in charge who brought you The Patriot Act and World War 4....it's your partners in knee-ology, your own co-religionists.

Nah, you're not likely to go that route. Atheists are much easier targets than the EZ-Duz-It Christians who shun you and think of you as insane. (Many of whom are in your own families, I'd wager.)

Start by explaining to them how science is just another religion - a false one at that - clung to by desperate fools. Go from there to a detailed dissertation of how it was much better in the old days when people lived till 43 or so and 'medicine' consisted of applying leeches... cos that's God's will.

And careful not to get too close, cos a slammed door can [I]really [/I] hurt your face.

Petr

2004-05-05 06:29 | User Profile

[COLOR=Blue]- “The problem is that there are certain devout types who can only see the world, and everone and everything in it, from their own perspective.”[/COLOR]

Brazen hypocrisy. Most people who “really believe” in the evolution of life (and do not only accept it sheepishly, like most of them do) are literally unable to consider the possibility that the world might be a product of design.

[COLOR=Blue]

”You seriously need to get off your 'atheists-are-fools' hobbyhorse and begin witnessing to your fellow Christians - cos from where I sit, there are only a few thousand of you Honest-to-God Real True Christians and about 200 million Sally Soccermom Prots and John Hagee Evangelicals - and it sure ain't We Benighted Heathens in charge who brought you The Patriot Act and World War 4....it's your partners in knee-ology, your own co-religionists.[/COLOR]

UTTERLY IRRELEVANT DISTRACTION.

(And besides, what is the percentage of WNs among non-religious Whites then?)

[COLOR=Blue]- “Start by explaining to them how science is just another religion - a false one at that - clung to by desperate fools. Go from there to a detailed dissertation of how it was much better in the old days when people lived till 43 or so and 'medicine' consisted of applying leeches... cos that's God's will.”[/COLOR]

Attention here folks – you are witnessing a VERY usual evolutionist propaganda tactic. They are trying to claim that their position and “believing in science” are SYNONYMS, whereas in reality, just to give you a one example, Darwin’s crude ideas about inheritance suppressed the breakthrough of Creationist monk Gregor Mendel’s genetic studies for many decades.

[COLOR=Red]"Genetics: Enemy of Evolution"

“Genetics and evolution have been enemies from the beginning of those two concepts. Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, and Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, were contemporaries. At the same time that Darwin was claiming that creatures could change into other creatures, Mendel was showing that even individual characteristics remain constant. While Darwin's ideas were based on erroneous and untested ideas about inheritance, Mendel's conclusions were based on careful experimentation. Why then did Mendel's work lie unappreciated for some 35 years? No one really knows; therefore, anyone is free to speculate. My own speculation is that Darwin's ideas were immediately adopted because they gave fallen men a justification for ignoring their Creator, even for denying His existence. But by the end of the 19th century, other research had so clearly confirmed the principles discovered by Mendel that evolutionists had to incorporate these principles into their theories. They did so, and have continued to do so, on a very selective basis. Only by ignoring the total implications of modern genetics has it been possible to maintain the fiction of evolution. ”

[url]http://www.cbl.com.au/~bga/genetics.htm[/url][/COLOR]

Yes, and like my earlier link shows, some (or most) of the greatest Western scientists that ever lived were creationists, and some of them conscious opponents of Darwin, like Pasteur and Kelvin.

It was to a very large degree pious Christians, using their God-given gifts to heal the world (like Pasteur and Joseph Lister) who have hugely improved our health and wealth – not the drawers of imaginary “trees of life”.

It is a complete, shameless NON SEQUITUR to say that our modern prosperity resulted from evolutionist imaginings!

The fact is, we can kick evolution right out of our door and keep on living luxuriously!

Do not try to parasitically claim that your position is the only representative of “science” in here, Il Ragno. If you say that majority of officially minted scientists believe (or profess to believe) in it, then I would answer that the current opinion of scientific establishment is also that race is more like a social construct than a genetic fact.

Petr

il ragno

2004-05-05 09:47 | User Profile

As Bette Davis once said: Petr, Petr, Petr. Is this how you 'won' your argument with Neo?

You know perfectly well my comments were in response to Valley Forge's remark

[QUOTE]Because it is nearly impossible to get people to quit believing their religion, I suspect that the so-called "theory" of "evolution" will always be with us. [/QUOTE]

thus nothing I said was [I]hypocrisy [/I] or a [I]distraction [/I] from the topic at hand. In fact, absent the hymnbook gag, I never even [I]mentioned [/I] Darwin.

The same way your slam-dunk 'refutation' of

[QUOTE]Darwin's ideas were based on erroneous and untested ideas about inheritance, Mendel's conclusions were based on careful experimentation. [/QUOTE]

is folderol since, for Darwin to have proven his theories via laboratory experiments would've required him enjoying a lifespan of several hundred years at the very [I]least[/I].

And your Creation-website bio of Mendel - whose work was indeed valuable - is, to put it mildly, horse-puckey. Try this on for size, boychik:

[QUOTE][url]http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rants/0722almanac.htm[/url]

Gregor Mendel (1822)

It was on this date, July 22, 1822, that Moravian monk and amateur botanist Gregor Johann Mendel was born in Heinzendorf (now Hyncice), a tiny village in Austrian Silesia, which was then under Hapsburg rule. A peasant with a passion for learning, owing to the poverty of his family, Mendel noviced at the Abbey of St. Thomas at what is now Brno, Czech Republic, in 1843, was ordained in 1847. He entered the Augustinian Monastery in Brno, which allowed Mendel to study mathematics and science at the University of Vienna. He taught for several years, but eventually gave that up to become abbot of his monastery.

It was in the monastic garden that Mendel made the first experiments in cross-breeding pea plants, combining botany with his mathematical knowledge to produce predictions about dominant and recessive traits. He published the founding theories of genetics before genes were ever discovered, and his researches would have jump-started the science of genetics had not his 1866 paper, Experiments in Plant Hybridization, passed into oblivion because it was published only in the backwater of Brno, and had no champion, like Darwin his Huxley. Difficulty in getting his theory noticed was due also to a lack of mathematical literacy in the field of botany. Mendel's theories were rediscovered posthumously by de Vries in Holland, Correns in Germany, and Tschermak in Austria, in 1900 — and by courtesy his name is given to Mendelism.

Popular writers, such as the website St. Francis Online, say Freethinkers forget to mention, among scientists, "Christians whose faith supported them in their scientific endeavors, like Blaise Pascal, Louis Pasteur and Gregor Mendel."* This is a truly bizarre criticism: Pascal was seriously ill all his life and the work on which we judge his religious beliefs was published only after his death — with modifications to make him appear orthodox. Pasteur was a Rationalist all his life.

As for Gregor Mendel, this so-called "devoted monk,"** and "great Catholic scientist" is not even claimed by the Catholic Encyclopedia. His biographer, Hugo Iltis, was a relative, and in the German original of his 1924 Life of Mendel he gives evidence that Mendel was seriously anti-Christian in his youth and remained skeptical all his life. Mendel wrote an aggressively Rationalist poem, speaking of "the gloomy powers of superstition which now oppress the world," two years before entering the monastery.

How did he end up in a monastery? Iltis shows that Mendel became a monk only to get leisure to study. He shirked his priestly duties whenever he could, and remained a skeptic (that is, a Deist). Failing eyesight and his duties as abbot distracted Mendel from his researches — so much the worse for science. Even after he became abbot, however, he read and annotated Darwin's Origin of Species and accepted evolution, something no orthodox Catholic was allowed to do at the time. Mendel's researches supplanted the dominance of Darwin's idea that evolution occurred by random mutation, complementing it with the theory of inheritance of dominant characteristics.

It is one of the ironies of science history that Darwin was never aware of Mendel's discoveries — which would have provided a much-needed "missing link" of support for evolutionary theory![/QUOTE]

And one last parting shot:

[QUOTE][url]http://www.angelfire.com/pa/greywlf/genetics.html[/url]

GENESIS, JACOB AND GENETICS The Fallacy

by mike mcclellan

Errors In The Bible As a born again Christian for over twenty years, I began to question the many apparent errors, inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible. I am fully aware of the born again believers cry that there are no such things in the "Word of God". Nevertheless they are there and need to be investigated.

As a result of the errors in the Bible, I finally realized that the Bible is not the inerrant word of God. My investigations of the errors finally led to my departure from born again Christianity after having been a Christian for over two decades.

The Fallacy Of Jacob's Breeding Regimen One of the Biblical accounts which causes a great deal of damage to the inerrantist's argument is contained in Genesis 30:37-42 ÃÂ¹

In this account the Bible claims in Genesis, that by having animals view certain objects, patterns and colors while they are breeding, the conceived offspring's markings will be of the same patterns and colors.

In the Biblical story, Jacob took branches from trees and peeled part of the bark or outer coating away, revealing the white inner layer. This resulted in what appeared as a 'stripe' ÃÂ²

The animals in the flocks bred when they came to drink. Jacob placed the peeled branches in front of the flocks of animals where they drank water and bred.

The Bible tells us "...the flocks conceived before the rods (peeled branches) and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted."

Clearly, the writer(s) of Genesis believed that if Jacob put the rods he had peeled in front of the flocks when they came to drink, they would breed and when conceiving, they would produce offspring which were "ringstraked ÃÂ², speckled and spotted".

Modern genetic research is common knowledge today with regard to the appearance of the offspring of a pair of mating animals. With some exceptions, the offspring usually takes on the appearance, shape, colors and even sometimes the attitude of its parents. The genes in both parents determine these characteristics in their offsprings, not what the parents are looking at when the female conceives.

Genesis Writers Had No Knowledge Of Genetics The writer(s) of Genesis, however, obviously had no knowledge of genetics. They believed and wrote what we find in Genesis 30:37-42.

According to fundamentalist born again Christians of today who believe and teach that the Bible is inerrant and that Biblegod, the creator of all things and who is all knowing and all powerful, inspired the writings of the Bible. Not only did Biblegod inspire them, since He is omniscient, He inspired a Bible with absolute no errors, inconsistencies or contradictions.

I cannot dispute the colors of the offsprings from Jacob's "breeding regimen". My concern is that the so called divinely inspired Genesis writer(s) believed that the colors and designs of the offspring were actually influenced by having the breeding animals face the branches carved by Jacob. The writer(s) had no knowledge of genetics. They were believers in fallacies and old wives tales.

Genesis Writers Were Not Divinely Inspired The Bible makes no attempt to dissuade the reader from understanding that Jacob, by having the animals face certain designs carved on tree branches which were place in the watering troughs, attained certain specific results by using this regimen.

The Bible rather describes the process as a matter of fact and makes no indication that Jacob was using a process which was probably an old wives tale. It describes the process as though it was a valid and viable breeding method.

To the writer(s) of Genesis, the "viewing" method of inducing certain characteristics in offsprings made sense to them. It was scribed as absolute fact, not a one time occurrence especially contrived by Biblegod for use by Jacob.

One Christian attempt at explaining "Jacob genetics" appears at the Blue Letter Bible Christian website, where the author at least admits that Jacob's breeding tact was in error and a superstitious belief. He rationalizes that Biblegod blessed Jacob in spite of Jacob's misunderstanding of breeding practices:

"The fact is: God blessed Jacob in spite of his superstitious use of the stripped rods of poplar, almond, and chestnut. Jacob's scheme probably depended upon a faulty notion that vivid visual impressions during the act of reproduction determined the traits of the offspring. He may have thought that placing the varying rods in front of mating animals would result in unusually coloured animals through some sort of hocus-pocus. God seems to have blessed Jacob in spite of his earthly scheming (Genesis 31.11-12). This fits into a broader scheme that runs throughout Jacob's life."

Amazing, isn't it, the lengths to which Christians will go to, to attempt to prove truthful, Bible passages which are obviously faulty and errant.

The New American Bible contains an honest footnote for Genesis 30:39-42 explaining the Jacob breeding regimen:

"Jacob's stratagem was based on the widespread notion among simple people that visual stimuli can have prenatal effects on the offspring of breeding animals. Thus, the rods on which Jacob had whittled stripes or bands or chevron marks were thought to cause the female goats that looked at them to bear kids with lighter-colored marks on their dark hair, while the gray ewes were thought to bear lambs with dark marks on them simply by visual cross-breeding with the dark goats."

The footnote confirms that the people of that day had notions which were faulty.

Farrell Till ÃÂ³ in his magazine, writes, "We know today that the color characteristics of animals is purely a matter of genetics, so a modern, scientifically-educated person would never write anything as obviously superstitious as this tale of Jacob's prosperity. The Genesis writer(s), however, knew nothing about the science of genetics, so to him the story undoubtedly made good sense."

"One thing the Bible definitely is not is inerrant in matters of science."

The Errant Bible The Bible is alleged to be inspired by a God who does not make mistakes. Yet in this instance it appears that Biblegod had no knowledge of genetics. Or perhaps a better way of stating it is to say that the writer(s) of Genesis had no knowledge of genetics and wrote what they mistakenly were taught and believed to be the truth. No inspiration by an all knowing, all pervasive deity was involved.

It takes only takes one error in the Bible to make it errant. This account is one of the many errors found in the Bible. [/QUOTE]

il ragno

2004-05-05 09:50 | User Profile

Oh, yeah: one other thing.

Isn't it odd - and telling - that when folks like yourself and VF derisively refer to credence in such theories as Darwin's, you use the term 'religion' - in the sense of an unwavering, kneejerk and unquestioning belief in arrant foolishness?

Petr

2004-05-05 11:23 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red]- ”Is this how you 'won' your argument with Neo?”[/COLOR]

Yeah, I sure enough discredited that pompous windbag. You should notice that even if someone talks big, he necessarily isn’t so.

[COLOR=Red]- “for Darwin to have proven his theories via laboratory experiments would've required him enjoying a lifespan of several hundred years at the very least.”[/COLOR]

Excuses, excuses.

That guy you quote is an entirely irrelevant punk, a cheap anti-religious scribbler, and you yourself show your own ignorance by relying on such pathetic sources:

[COLOR=Sienna]“Ronald Bruce Meyer is a freelance writer”

“He graduated Baltimore County Community College in 1972 with an Associate in Arts degree, concentrating in speech and theater.”[/COLOR]

In other words, he has no scholarly weight whatsoever in the matters biological, whereas the guy I quoted, Lane P. Lester, is a Ph.D in genetics.

And Meyer’s historical ideas make him look like a complete fool – Pascal wasn’t orthodox in his faith? Well, perhaps not in a strict ROMAN CATHOLIC sense, (he was almost like a crypto-Protestant), but you can check his “Pensees” and read some of the most theistic stuff ever written by a scientist.

[COLOR=Blue]http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0460008749/macinsearch08-20/701-6112382-8586769[/COLOR]

And what the heck has Pascal’s health got to do with his religion? What a pathetic attempt to slander Pascal’s heritage.

Because of spouting this nonsense, I definitely want to see some other source to confirm Mendel’s “skepticism” than this amateur – and we can see this little worm backing down from some of his claims even as a reader letter challenges him!

[COLOR=Blue]- “I would like to point out that Gregor Mendel is, in fact, claimed proudly in the Catholic Encyclopedia from about 1917:”[/COLOR]

And sure it does, in here: [url]http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10180b.htm[/url]

[COLOR=Blue]“Mendel's experiments, on which his fame rests, were commenced while he was still a novice, and carried out in the large gardens attached to his monastery. Dissatisfied with the Darwinian views, then commencing to be known, he undertook a series of experiments on peas which occupied his spare time for eight years.” [/COLOR]

Our sap simply contradicts his earlier statement:

[COLOR=Red] - “I am aware that the Catholic Encyclopedia claims Gregor Mendel.” [COLOR=Black]– and then changes the subject![/COLOR][/COLOR]

The website that I quoted has apparently heard of these secularist attempts to “seize Mendel”:

[COLOR=Blue]”A museum has been erected in Mendel’s honor at the monastery at Brunn, Austria, where he did his famous experiments. Despite the explicit wishes of the abbott of the monastery, however, the display ignores the religious side of Mendel’s life and focuses exclusively on the experimental work (see 05/15/2002 headline). The abbott succumbed to a year of pressure and misinformation against him, only submitting to the secularized display by gaining a promise to hold an annual workshop on bioethics at the site. This shameful rewriting of history will succeed only if we allow it. ”

[url]http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs_4.htm#mendel[/url]

[COLOR=Black] And “Pasteur was a Rationalist all his life”?

Not according to my sources: (and anyways, who knows what this know-nothing considers to be a “rationalist”…)[COLOR=Blue][/COLOR]

[url]http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs_4.htm#pasteur[/url][/COLOR]

“Thus Pasteur’s grandson became seduced by the neo-spontaneous generationists, unaware that the alleged conditions could not have existed on the early earth, and the products were useless, mixed-handed dead ends. Descendent regardless, it was a distortion for Vallery-Radot to assert that Pasteur was favorable to ideas of evolution. John Hudson Tiner said, “Pasteur rejected the theory of evolution for scientific reasons. He was the first European scientist to do so. He also rejected it on religious grounds” (History of Medicine, p. 81). He said, “My philosophy comes from the heart and not from the intellect, and I adhere to that which is inspired by the natural eternal sentiments one feels at the sickbed of a beloved child breathing his last. Something deep in our soul tells us that the universe is more than an arrangement of certain compounds in a mechanical equilibrium, arisen from the chaos of elements by a gradual action of Nature’s forces” (Vallery-Radot, p. 157). This is a clear rejection of Darwinian naturalism.

…

“He was also a creationist and a devout man of faith. He said, “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the works of the Creator.”

…

“At his crypt are inscribed his words, “Blessed is the Man who Carries in his Soul a God, a Beautiful Ideal that he Obeys–Ideal of Art, Ideal of Science, Ideal of the Fatherland, Ideal of the Virtues of the Gospel.” Stephen Paget, a long time friend, who studied his life carefully, eulogized him after his death with these words: “Here was a life, within the limits of humanity, well-nigh perfect. He worked incessantly. He went through poverty, bereavement, ill health and opposition. He lived to see his doctrines current over all the world. Yet here was a man whose spiritual life was no less admirable than his scientific life” (Founder of Modern Medicine, p. 176).

“Was Pasteur a born-again Christian? His son-in-law said that “he believed in the divine impulse which has created the Universe; with the yearnings of his heart he proclaimed the immortality of the soul.” His grandson said, ”Pasteur respected the religion of his forefathers; he had profound Christian ideals, but he was not, as has been asserted, an observant Catholic” (Vallery-Radot, p. 159). John Hudson Tiner claims Pasteur “had devotions each morning, read the Bible and prayed before going about each day’s activity” (History of Medicine, p. 84). Henry Morris quotes him as saying, “Could I but know all, I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman” (Men of Science, Men of God, p. 62). In some quotes Pasteur sounds mystical or indefinite in his concept of God, portraying Him as an Infinity that might be embodied in various religions. We know, however, that people grow in faith and understanding at different times in their lives, so one quote might not fairly characterize the lifetime. Tiner quotes his son-in-law as stating that at the end, “The virtues of the gospel were very present to him. He came to his Christian faith simply and naturally for spiritual help in the last stages of his life” (Founder of Modern Medicine, p. 175). ” [/COLOR]

And rationalist or not, Pasteur did disprove the possibility of evolution by disproving the “spontaneous generation”. It is as simple as that. Not all your chemical juices and electric bursts are going to make a difference, and even if they did, it would most definitely be a sign DESIGN, not an accident.

And from experience I know that there is nothing more bitter, irrational and biased in his attitude towards the Bible than a lapsed apostate, so this is not exactly an “expert statement” we get from this non-entity Mike McClellan.

His objection is covered in here:

[COLOR=DarkGreen]http://www.tektonics.org/oddgenes.html[/COLOR]

[COLOR=DarkGreen]Mr. Green Genes?

Does the Bible Teach Magical Genetics?

James Patrick Holding

Gen. 30:39 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

In this interesting episode, comprising Gen. 30:25-31:13, we have some action in which Jacob uses peeled sticks to try and control what sort of offspring his flocks have. Skeptics bellow about the lack of science here -- and to an extent they are right in their complaints. What Jacob did is obviously a form of "sympathetic magic" - putting a striped object in front of the flocks so that they had "ringstraked," etc. offspring. Yes, Jacob was engaged in bunk. No doubt about it.

However, there is a great difference between the Bible describing a bunko process and endorsing it as true. Genesis says that Jacob did the magical bit, and it says he got the results he wanted, but it does not thereby establish that a valid cause-and-effect relationship existed -- though I do think that the story is intended to make the reader wonder whether one exists, before setting up the "punch line" which takes place in 31:10-13. Here, Jacob indicates that God showed in a dream that Laban was intentionally cheating him. He says:

And it came to pass at the time that the cattle conceived, that I lifted up mine eyes, and saw in a dream, and, behold, the rams which leaped upon the cattle were ringstreaked, speckled, and grisled. And the angel of God spake unto me in a dream, saying, Jacob: And I said, Here am I. And he said, Lift up now thine eyes, and see, all the rams which leap upon the cattle are ringstreaked, speckled, and grisled: for I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee. I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred.

In other words, the reader is now told that God divinely intervened for the purpose of evening the odds that Laban was stacking against Jacob. Jacob obviously did think at first that the sticks were the key to his success, but from events in Ch. 31, it seems that God stepped down on Jacob and disabused him of the notion! As sometimes happens, the Bible is pulling our leg -- and like Jacob had to, it forces us to look in the mirror now and then. (For more on sympathetic magic in the Bible, and a similar lesson, look here; for a related issue see here.)[/COLOR]

And just theoretically, what is this kind of logic:

[COLOR=Blue]“It takes only takes one error in the Bible to make it errant.”[/COLOR]

That is the rule you made up yourself, Mr Skeptic. Not to make any excuses here, but no syllogism says that if Bible should be wrong on one thing, it couldn’t be right about everything else.

Petr

2004-05-05 11:30 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red] - "Isn't it odd - and telling - that when folks like yourself and VF derisively refer to credence in such theories as Darwin's, you use the term 'religion' - in the sense of an unwavering, kneejerk and unquestioning belief in arrant foolishness?"[/COLOR]

No, actually I would prefer the term "materialist anti-God philosophy masquerading as an empirical science".

Likewise, calling evolution of life a "theory" is to give it too much credit - "hypothesis" sounds better.

Petr

Angler

2004-05-05 12:17 | User Profile

Wow, there are a lot of new posts to respond to. Right now this "unsaved, atheistic materialist" has to go do some more of the Devil's faith-destroying work in a physics lab. (One of my ion gauges IS possessed by an evil spirit, by the way -- I don't doubt it for a second! It keeps shutting off all by itself for no reason.) I'll come back tonight or tomorrow and reply to people in detail.

Petr

2004-05-05 12:31 | User Profile

Do you have some official degrees, Angler? I don't have any yet, but my grandfather was a physicist, and my father a sea biologist by profession (examining plankton - what an exciting job! :D )

Petr

Happy Hacker

2004-05-05 15:49 | User Profile

[QUOTE=il ragno]is folderol since, for Darwin to have proven his theories via laboratory experiments would've required him enjoying a lifespan of several hundred years at the very [I]least[/I].

Maybe Darwin had an excuse not to be able to observe what he believed in, but we are no longer have an excuse. Scientists have carefully studied many generations of numerous animals, including many thousands of generations of repadily reproducing animals. Evolution does not happen. Period. The degenerative and the recombination examples Evolutionists show us for proof of observed Evolution reflect the scientific absurdity of the theory of Evolution.

And your Creation-website bio of Mendel - whose work was indeed valuable - is, to put it mildly, horse-puckey. Try this on for size, boychik:

It strains credibility to argue that Mendel only became a Monk and then an abbot for the leisure time. If that was the sort of thing people did, monasterries would be in every city and they would be overflowing with monks. And, as your source claims that Mendel accepted Evolution, where's the evidence of that?

The Fallacy Of Jacob's Breeding Regimen One of the Biblical accounts which causes a great deal of damage to the inerrantist's argument is contained in Genesis 30:37-42

The only error here is the one made by the Evolutionist reading this passage. Jacob had worked for 14 years for Laban - without pay - making Laban rich. That implies that Laban was miserly and unfair. Jacob and Laban struck a deal for payment, Jacob would get all the imperfect (spotted, off-color etc.) animals. And, if Jacob had any good animal, Laban would know it was stolen.

Jacob removed all the imperfect animals for himself. Because Laban knew how breeding worked, he would have thought that he would get to keep all the future animals as there were no more imperfect animals to breed and pass on spots, etc. It is because Laban knew how breeding worked that he agreed to the deal.

But, Jacob found favor with God, God rewarded Jacob.

Happy Hacker

2004-05-05 16:20 | User Profile

[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]First of all, I can't decipher what your sentence means. What is "the degenerative and recombination examples" referring to? If by "recombination" you mean genetic recombination, how does its existence refute evolution? If by "denerative" you mean that things can regress rather than progress (i.e. parasitic worms are degenerate relative to free-living worms), that only confirms that living things are evolutionarily labile.

I didn't say anything about genetic recombination refuting Evolution. I referenced the Evolutionists' conjob of trying to pass off genetic recombination as proof of Evolution. Any real Evolution requires an accumulation of constructive mutations.

What's the difference between parasitic worms and free-living worms that could be accounted for by degeneration? Degeneration is a loss of function. Any real Evolution requires an accumulation of constructive mutations.

The fact of the matter is that humans have experimentally confirmed evolution repeatedly without even consciously attempting to do so. A few thousand years ago we started with wolves and wound up with bulldogs, chihuahuas, and terriers.

Your example is of genetic recombination, free of any accumulation of constructive mutations. Any real Evolution requires an accumulation of constructive mutations.

If we can get from a wolf to a chihuahua in a few thousand years, it's not much of a stretch to argue that one can start with a South America tree-dwelling green iguana stranded on the Galapagos and wind up with a seaweed-eating, jet-black marine iguana after a million years, or that an ape-like animal can develop a much larger brain and an upright posture over 5-million years (and a visit to our inner cities will show you creatures at a halfway point).[/QUOTE]

Anyone who practices artificial selection knows that there are quickly diminishing returns. Any real Evolution requires an accumulation of constructive mutations.

If thousands of generations can turn an ape-like animal into a human, why has thousands of observed generations of bacteria resulted in nothing more than deginerative mutations with a lucky benefit of offering resistance to marginally effective antibiotics? If a bacteria needs an enzyme to process an antibiotic, a reduction in the amount of enzyme (because of a broken gene) might save the bacteria, but it's hardly an example of an accumulation of constructive mutations.

Evolutionists have no examples of Evolution to show us, so they offer these frauds. I stopped believing in Evolution because Evolution does not happen.

Petr

2004-05-05 16:58 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red] - "If we can get from a wolf to a chihuahua in a few thousand years, it's not much of a stretch to argue that one can start with a South America tree-dwelling green iguana stranded on the Galapagos and wind up with a seaweed-eating, jet-black marine iguana after a million years, or that an ape-like animal can develop a much larger brain and an upright posture over 5-million years (and a visit to our inner cities will show you creatures at a halfway point)."[/COLOR]

Can you still inpregnate chihuahua with wolf's semen? If so, aren't they officially still the same species?

In the overwhelming majority of cases, natural selection does NOT reward new innovators but nips them off. You know, "anyone foolish enough to volunteer." It is profoundly CONSERVATIVE mechanism, upholding the biological status quo - it can't create anything new by itself, but should rely on mutations to create new species.

And to rely on mutations to "improve" species is about as realistic as emptying an AK-47 clip on your Ford and hoping that it will "spontaneously" turn into a Cadillac.

Wolf and Chihuahua still have the same basic structure, and so do corn and teosinte, in spite of superficial differences. Could natural selection make wolf grow some entirely new organs like wings? It is still a long way for a fly to evolve into a mammal.

And do YOU have some formal degrees in relevant sciences, AY?

Petr

2004-05-05 17:28 | User Profile

[SIZE=2][[SIZE=3]SIZE=1][COLOR=Red]- “If by "denerative" you mean that things can regress rather than progress (i.e. parasitic worms are degenerate relative to free-living worms), that only confirms that living things are evolutionarily labile.”[/COLOR]

What is this kind of logic? That if degeneration can happen, so can progress? Pure superstition!

(The basic Christian position on mankind is that it is degenerating, not evolving, by the way.)

[COLOR=Red]“Antibiotic and pesticide resistance are examples of novel genes, neither recombination nor knock-outs could produce a new enzyme that can break down or assimilate an antibiotic or pesticide.”[/COLOR]

May we see some authoritative sources confirming this? This Ph.D. in chemistry begs to differ:

[COLOR=Blue][SIZE=2]Anthrax and antibiotics: Is evolution relevant?[/SIZE]

by Dr Jonathan Sarfati

15 November 2001

After the terrorist attack on 11 September, many people fear a new danger—biological warfare in the form of anthrax. Perhaps understandably, many Americans are taking antibiotics such as Cipro (ciprofloxacin) as a preventative measure. Data from the pharmaceutical tracking company NDCHealth of Atlanta, Georgia, show that almost 63,000 more Cipro prescriptions have been issued in the third week of October alone than for the entire previous year. However, this has caused some concern in the medical profession that antibiotic overuse could result in antibiotic resistance in many types of bacteria. Not surprisingly, the humanist-dominated secular media has used phrases such as ‘Bacteria evolve drug resistance very quickly’. Fortunately, in the current round of articles, I haven’t seen repeated the hysterical outburst of one particular evolutionary propagandist who claimed that people will die because of creationists, because they will allegedly fail to understand this vital fact of evolution of drug resistance.

We have covered antibiotic resistance in many articles on this Web site. So here it will suffice to summarize the main issues to enable people to assess critically any articles on this current scare. First some principles:

ÃÂ· Watch for equivocation, i.e. using the same term in different ways in the same article. It’s very common for evolutionary propagandists to define evolution as (1) simply ‘change in a population over time’, as well as (2) the idea that all life came from a single cell, which itself came from a chemical soup. Then they produce examples of ‘evolution’ (1) and use this to prove evolution (2), and then claim that Biblical creation is wrong! However the Biblical creation model does imply that organisms change over time—but these changes would always involve sorting or loss of already existing (created) genetic information, never the gain of new information. But evolution (2) requires the gain of new information. Even if information losing (or neutral) processes could continue for billions of years, they would never add up to a gain of information. Rather, to support evolution (2), evolutionists must demonstrate changes that increase information. If this theory were true, there should be plenty of examples, but we have yet to observe even one. Since evolution (2) is the only issue at stake in the creation/evolution controversy, we advise against referring to any mere change as ‘evolution’—not even ‘micro-evolution’—and reserving the term ‘evolution’ for (2).

ÃÂ· Natural selection is not evolution. This merely weeds out organisms and the information they contain; it doesn’t generate new information. The creationist Edward Blyth discussed natural selection 25 years before Darwin, but recognized that it was a conservative, not a creative, force.

ÃÂ· Mutations are not evolution. They are copying mistakes in the genes. No mutation is known to increase information content; every known mutation has either decreased information content or was informationally neutral. This applies even to the rare examples of beneficial mutations.

To apply these principles to antibiotic resistance, there are several ways that germs can acquire resistance to drugs, none of which have anything to do with evolution from goo to you via the zoo:

ÃÂ· Natural selection: the drugs wipe out all the non-resistant germs, so the most resistant germs survive and multiply. This leads to a whole population that’s resistant to antibiotics. This is not evolution because the resistance already existed in the population. Despite this, the PBS Evolution propaganda series used selection of pre-existing antibiotic resistance in tuberculosis germs as a major ‘proof’. In fact, some bacteria revived from corpses frozen before the development of antibiotics have shown resistance.

Selection for resistant bacteria is a real danger when a patient fails to complete a prescribed course of antibiotics (60 days for Cipro)—i.e. stops taking the drug when the symptoms ease, which just means that most germs have been destroyed. The remnants require the final doses of antibiotic to finish them off, but if the treatment stops, they are free to multiply. This time the drug is far less effective, since the remnant population will tend to be the more resistant ones.

This problem of selection of resistant varieties applies not only to the targeted germ, but all the other types affected by the same antibiotic. This is the main reason that the medical profession is concerned with people taking Cipro for a few days because of the anthrax scare. Indeed the over-use of Cipro could result in many germs that are resistant to this drug, so the concern is very well founded. Antibiotics as a preventative measure are warranted only where there’s evidence that people were in a ‘breathing zone’ of the deadly airborne anthrax spores, not for the milder skin form of anthrax.

ÃÂ· Sometimes bacteria can pass on information to other bacteria, via loops of DNA called plasmids. Sometimes plasmids contain information for antibiotic resistance. But here too, the information already existed, so this is not evolution.

ÃÂ· Information-losing mutations can confer resistance. Such mutations are often harmful in an ‘ordinary’ environment without antibiotics. It is well documented that many ‘superbugs’ are really ‘superwimps’ for this reason—see Superbugs not super after all. Also, some sorts of information-losing mutations evidently cause HIV resistance to antivirals, because the ‘wild’ types easily out-compete the resistant types when the drugs are removed. Despite this, this was promoted as another ‘proof’ of evolution by the PBS series.

So, how can an information loss confer resistance? Here are some observed mechanisms:

o A pump in the cell wall takes in the antibiotic. A mutation disabling this pump will prevent the bacterium pumping in its own executioner. But in the wild, a bacterium with a disabled pump will be less fit than other bacteria because the pump also brings nutrients, etc., into the cell.

o A control gene regulates the production of an enzyme that destroys the antibiotic, e.g. penicillinase which destroys penicillin. A mutation disabling this gene destroys the regulation of the production, so far more enzyme is produced. Such a bacterium can cope with more antibiotic than others can, but in the wild, it would be less fit than normal because it’s wasting valuable resources producing more enzyme than is needed.

o An enzyme is highly specialized to break down one specific type of chemical very well, and hardly affect other chemicals. A mutation could reduce its specificity, i.e. it no longer does its main job so well, and affects other chemicals to some extent too. Normally, a biological system with such a mutation would not function as well, and reduced specificity is reduced information by definition. But sometimes the other chemicals affected happen to be antibiotics, so this type of mutation confers resistance. See further discussion in this refutation of a critic and Not By Chance (top right), ch. 5.

o The antibiotic streptomycin works by attaching onto a precisely matching site on the surface of a bacterium’s ribosome, where decoding of DNA information to proteins occurs. When the streptomycin attaches, it stops this machinery from producing the right proteins, and the bacterium dies. Resistance to the drug can be caused by an information-losing mutation that degrades the surface of a bacterium’s ribosome, which reduces the binding ability of the drug to the ribosome, preventing it from ruining the protein manufacturing machinery.

These principles should be enough to demonstrate that these latest claims about bacteria ‘evolving’ resistance are not a threat to Biblical creation. Despite all this, many evolutionist crow about antibiotic resistance as an amazing ‘prediction’ of evolution. Even aside from the above points, this is revisionist history. Historically, antibiotic resistance first took the medical profession by surprise—even as late as 1969, experts stated that ‘infectious diseases were a thing of the past’. I.e. antibiotic resistance was hardly a ‘prediction’ of evolution, but is really a phenomenon explained ‘after the fact’ by evolutionary language. But as shown, the Biblical Creation/Fall model explains it better.

[url]http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/1115anthrax.asp[/url][/COLOR][/COLOR]

Petr[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 18:43 | User Profile

[QUOTE=il ragno]Nearly split a gut laughing at this line. Yeah, we're just burning with envy that you beat us to the best god. You should see the Darwin hymnbook - not a hummable tune in there! The problem is that there are certain devout types who can only see the world, and everone and everything in it, from their own perspective.

As a generalization, this is true of most people.

But not me.

I used to be an atheist until I looked the evidence and realized that atheism is less credible than Christian theism.

Y'know what you folks need to do? You seriously need to get off your 'atheists-are-fools' hobbyhorse and begin witnessing to your fellow Christians

I don't disagree.

But when traditional Christians are attacked, we will respond.

cos from where I sit, there are only a few thousand of you Honest-to-God Real True Christians and about 200 million Sally Soccermom Prots and John Hagee Evangelicals - and it sure ain't We Benighted Heathens in charge who brought you The Patriot Act and World War 4....it's your partners in knee-ology, your own co-religionists.

True. You're preaching to the choir.

Nah, you're not likely to go that route. Atheists are much easier targets than the EZ-Duz-It Christians who shun you and think of you as insane. (Many of whom are in your own families, I'd wager.)

The realm of ideas is a battlefield, and sometimes a war must be waged on multiple fronts.

Getting other Christians to awaken, see the Nationalist light, and understand that White racialism and Christianity are compatible would be a whole lot easier if the Linder Cultists and their lackeys would stop condeming Christianity as a whole.

Start by explaining to them how science is just another religion - a false one at that - clung to by desperate fools.

Let me try to be a little clearer.

Science itself is not a religion. My point is that ultimately, atheism requires far more blind, absolute, unfounded faith than theism.

If you dropped a stack of 200 quarters from the top of a ten story building, what do you think the odds that they'd end up in a neat, vertical stack on the sidewalk?

Wouldn't you agree that the chances of that happening, while not zero, are pretty damn close to zero?

Yet the materialist atheist actually believes in an event that is indescribably less probable!

Namely, that after the Big Bang all the trillions and trillions of subatomic particles in the universe just happened to come together in the right way -- and what do you know? -- here we are!

In other words, if you just wait long enough, swirling masses of hydrogen and helium, along with a smattering of heavy elements can eventually turn into people.

The materialist atheist actually believes that in all seriousness.

Now then, within its proper scope, I think science is wonderful.

But you have to be careful to distinguish between actual, empirical science that's based on scrupulous observation and the scientific method and broader, metaphysical belief systems based on materialist assumptions that exclude God by definition, but that are actually completely unscientific and unsupported by scientific eviddence.

Now, by saying this, I don't mean to disparage scientists.

Professional scientists and engineers are actually among the people in this world that I respect the most, and if don't go to law school this fall, I will probably finish my BS in Computer Science and Math and go on to do graduate work.

Nevertheless, science is practiced by people with a human nature. As such, they have biases, predispositons, and concerns about their careers and reputations. Ultimately, they are just as susceptible to conditioning by the propasphere as anyone else.

You know that the Jewish Holocaust never happened the way the Jews say it did, yet most historians would not only not mention that, they wouldn't bother to even investigate the question in the first place. Why? Because the propashere tells them not too.

Similarly, the propasphere now tells people that God is dead. So most people believe it. Including many WN who are otherwise very intelligent, thinking people who usually question what they're told.

Go from there to a detailed dissertation of how it was much better in the old days when people lived till 43 or so and 'medicine' consisted of applying leeches... cos that's God's will. [/QUOTE]

I'm not attacking science. That's a misreading on your part.

Happy Hacker

2004-05-05 19:05 | User Profile

[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]Not to sound rude, but have you ever opened a book about genetics or taken a genetics class at any point in your life? Obviously not, otherwise you wouldn't be making such bizarre statements as "genetic recombination created Chihuahuas." If I start with two wolves, in the absence of mutations for anatomical traits that I'm looking for recombination in itself will give me nothing but wolves down the line.

In theory, you an breed together wolves and chihuahuas, resulting in a dog that is a mix between the two. In theory, you could then breed wolves and chihuahuas. I have not suggested that you could breed chihuahuas from wolves because the wolves are a subset lacking the full genetic diversity. This is the fundamental problem of claiming the if you can produce different breeds of dogs then you could produce cats from dogs. The further you breed the dogs, the less genetic variation is available for future progress. (note, I don't deny that there is mutational noise that further differientates wolves and chihuahuas).

Why do you accuse me of not understanding genetics when you know what I say is true?

Also, please explain the logic behind "if a bacteria needs an enzyme to process an antibioitic, a reduction in the amount of enzyme because of a broken gene might save the bacteria." Pray tell, if it needs the enzyme, how will destroying the gene that produces the enzyme save the bacterium?

If you were at all familiar with bacteria that has gained antibiotic resistance, you would know that such bacteria is usually much less fit relative to unmutated bacteria. A common example is if a bacteria needs an enzyme to process an antibiotic but a broken gene cuts down on the production of that enzyme then the bacteria cannot process the antibiotic efficiently enough to kill itself. But, by the same token, whatever it did need that enzyme for, it cannot do as well as before.

Antibiotic and pesticide resistance are examples of novel genes, neither recombination nor knock-outs could produce a new enzyme that can break down or assimilate an antibiotic or pesticide.

Broken genes, not novel genes. How much complexity can a single mutation create? Use your head. The most one mutation can do is throw a monkey wrench into the works. If you are a writer or a computer programmer, how much complexity could a single typo add? These bacteria don't stand around accumulating mutations until they can produce a truly new enzyme.

What the mutation does is cripple the bacteria. Sometimes this has a lucky benefit. But, commonsense and observation both support what I am telling you.

they've acquired a number of structures necessary for their parasitic lifestyle

That parasitic worms have structures not found in free-living worms indicates that they are not degenerate versions of free-living worms.

How about demonstrating free-living worms being turned into parasitic worms? Get a lab, crank up the mutation rate with radiation, use intelligent selection, and in a thousand worm generations you should be able to duplicate what nature would taken hundreds of thousands of generations to do. Of course, things like this have already been tried (especially with fruit flies), and Evolution struck out.

Instead of real examples of a little antibiotic resistance in bacteria or assumed examples of worms becomeing parasitic, you should be demonstrating flying pigs created from nothing but random mutation and selection. When pigs fly, I'll believe in Evolution.

Evolution doesn't happen.

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 21:37 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr][COLOR=Red] And do YOU have some formal degrees in relevant sciences, AY?

Petr[/QUOTE]

I think I remember reading that AY has a PH.D. in math and biology. Don't know what area.

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 22:05 | User Profile

VF: Whatever lip service they pay to the contrary, non-Christians are desperate to believe in something.

IR: Nearly split a gut laughing at this line.

That doesn't surprise me. We have different worldviews. But it doesn't make my observation any less true.

I think it's interesting that many WN/NS types often declare "our race is our religion" when there is no clear reason, as far as I can tell, why atheist WNs should even care about white survival or injustices committed against our people.

According to your worldview, we're all just blobs of protoplasm whirling through the void. If White people die off, so what? There's no instrinic value in these lives. Justice doesn't exist, and it's all just blind matter anyway. Besides, we'll all be worm food in a few years, so why get worked up?

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 22:17 | User Profile

[QUOTE=LlenLleawc]Consider any flying insect; the wings it uses to fly could not have suddenly appeared over the course of one generation. It would take multiple mutations occurring over multiple generations to transform a fly with no wings into a fly with wings - [B]yet not a single intermediary between the two would have an advantage in terms of survival[/B], and hence would not be selected to reproduce at higher rates. For an appendage like wings there could be hundreds of intermediary mutations between a non-winged animal and a winged one. And wings really aren't the most complex organs. Every single organ in every single species would require so many mutations before it would be useful enough to influence an animal's survival that natural selection simply doesn't count. Therefore evolution requires intelligent design as much as does the six day theory.

-Llen[/QUOTE]

Your example supports the contention that the probablity that evolution actually happened is probably close to zero, at least according to the prevailing model based on random mutation/natural selection.

Life requires a designer, just like a work of art.

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 22:34 | User Profile

[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]If we can get from a wolf to a chihuahua in a few thousand years, it's not much of a stretch to argue that one can start with a South America tree-dwelling green iguana stranded on the Galapagos and wind up with a seaweed-eating, jet-black marine iguana after a million years, or that an ape-like animal can develop a much larger brain and an upright posture over 5-million years (and a visit to our inner cities will show you creatures at a halfway point).[/QUOTE]

AY, if you don't mind my asking, since you have formal training in the relevant sciences, what are your thoughts on the bacterial flagellum?

In reviewing the literature, as far as I can tell, even committed evolutionists who are Molecular Biologists have no idea how random mutation/natural selection (RM & NS) could produce that kind of structure.

At this point in time, there is ZERO evidence that the bacterial flagellum evolved.

I found one essay on the Internet attempting to explain how RM & NS could have produced the flagellum, and it was written by grad student in geography. That, of course, doesn't mean he's not right or that his argument is poorly reasoned; I just think it's interesting that professional biologists aren't lining up to explain away the flagellum in the peer reviewed literature and instead have chosen to leave the work in the hands of grad students posting on the INternet.

Abstract: The bacterial flagellum is an example of a complex molecular system with multiple components required for proper function. The origin of such systems is sometimes puzzling, because it is difficult to see how selection could preserve only a subset of required components. Previous work (Thornhill and Ussery, 2000, A classification of possible routes of Darwinian evolution. J Theor Biol. 203 (2), 111-116) has outlined the general pathways by which Darwinian mechanisms can produce such systems. However, published attempts to explain flagellar origins suffer from vagueness and are inconsistent with recent discoveries and the constraints imposed by Brownian motion.

[url]http://www.talkreason.org/articles/flagellum.cfm[/url]

Angler

2004-05-05 23:13 | User Profile

Okay, time to squeeze in a few responses as promised...

[quote=Petr]Do you have some official degrees, Angler? I don't have any yet, but my grandfather was a physicist, and my father a sea biologist by profession (examining plankton - what an exciting job! I have bachelor's degrees in physics and math (dual major) and a master's degree in engineering physics. I'm currently working in a nanotechnology lab, but I may go back to school and go for a Ph.D. at some point -- that's up in the air.

As for marine biology, I understand that that's actually an important area of research. A lot of important discoveries are anticipated in that field.

Now for the responses...

[quote=Petr]"THE WORLDÃ¢â¬â¢S GREATEST CREATION SCIENTISTS"

[url]http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs_toc.htm[/url] Most of the scientists on that list lived before evolutionary theory was even born or a significant number of fossils had been unearthed. Hence, those scientists can hardly be viewed as having "rejected" evolutionary theory.

To draw an analogy, every scientist on that list who lived before the 20th Century believed in classical physics (e.g., Newtonian mechanics, classical electomagnetism) -- yet classical physics is known to be flawed. (It is still very useful in macroscopic applications, however, due to its relative simplicity compared with quantum theory, special and general relativity, and related subfields).

In short, those great "creationist scientists" simply did not have enough facts available to make an informed decision about evolution.

Tex posted some quotes from a creationist site's Q&A that need a response:

[quote=Texas Dissident]Q: Why won't you just admit that creationism is religion and evolution is science? A: Because it's not true. Here's why...

Creationism is based upon the foundation that our world and the cosmos itself testifies to an active Creator, still involved with His creation. And what evidence is there for an anthropomorphic Creator of the sort described in the Bible? Even if there is a Creator, there's no guarantee He created everything as the Bible describes. There's no guarantee that the "Creator" isn't alien beings from another universe. We just don't know.

Second, let's not pretend that one's worldview or philosophical belief system does not constitute one's 'religion'--no matter how little or how much it has to do with the supernatural in general or the Bible in particular. Regardless of any scientific corroboration, what many (if not most) of evolution's proponents practice is the promotion of one worldview or philosophical belief system (i.e., religion) over and against another. It's absurd to place the scientific and religious worldviews on an equal footing in this manner. Science makes predictions and admits its errors in a process of self-correction. The successes of this process are everywhere -- computers, particle accelerators, PET scans, nuclear energy, etc. Religion, in stark contrast, starts with a set of assumptions, or dogmatic beliefs, and then defends them by any means possible, almost always refusing to change regardless of contradictory evidence.

Rarely content to discuss empirical science alone, they regularly advocate humanistic naturalism as a superior worldview or philosophical belief system to biblical creationism. It is therefore an act of self-deception to think that they are defending/advocating a position that is somehow 'not religious' and/or strictly 'scientific'. Evolution does not rule out the existence of God (or even make it less likely). Even if it did, however, that would be irrelevant to the debate. What is relevant is whether or not evolution is true, not the potential consequences of its truth or falsity. The only reason evolution is viewed as a religious question is that a minority of Christians find that it conflicts with certain beliefs that they refuse to give up no matter what. It's just like Galileo's inquisitors -- they refused to look through his telescope to see what he saw.

Third, notwithstanding widespread popular ignorance (some of it apparently willful), a growing body of empirical science points out serious flaws in contemporary evolutionary thinking, while affirming the biblical creationary model. This is simply false. I'd like to see the empirical evidence he's referring to.

This hardly renders evolution 'science' and creation 'not science'. Creationism is not, and CANNOT be, "science" -- it attempts to work backward from the conclusion that the Bible is correct. Hence, not only is it unscientific, it's just plain illogical. Scientific theories are validated by successful predictions. I have yet to see or hear of any successful prediction based on biblical "science." For example, where is the geological evidence for the worldwide flood?

On the contrary, the scientific viability of evolution has been brought into question in recent years by an ever increasing number of highly qualified scientific professionals, not all of whom have been biblical creationists. This is nonsense. Evolution is considered to be extremely well-supported by every single major scientific organization, including the National Academy of Sciences.

Valley Forge

2004-05-05 23:29 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler] Evolution is considered to be extremely well-supported by every single major scientific organization, including the National Academy of Sciences.[/QUOTE]

But as I've already pointed out, the theory of evolution does not gain an once of credibility even if 99.9% of scientists believe that it's true.

Outside of his speciality, a scientist is just another lay person.

So what that means is that the alleged consensus of the scientific community in favor of Darwinian theory that we're always hearing about is in actuality nothing but millions of lay people echoing the views of a few hundred specialists -- many of whom assume that God can't possibly exist, because their world views are founded on metaphysical materialism.

Angler

2004-05-06 00:25 | User Profile

[quote=Happy Hacker]Angler, as I have pointed out to you in the past, the big problem of Evolution is that it doesn't happen. Any Evolutionary progress requires mutations yet the only thing any Evolutionist can point to is utterly insignificant, like out of thousands of generations of bacteria, some resistance to marginally effective antibiotics. And, even this is a lucky benefit of degineration, not evolutionary progress. Just because we can't observe major evolution occuring during our lifetime does not mean it doesn't happen. We cannot observe the interior of the sun, but we are certain that nuclear reactions occur there and provide energy to sustain its burning. We cannot observe atoms directly, yet we know for a fact that they exist through indirect observation and reasoning from known physical laws.

The indirect evidence for evolution comes from the fossil record and from DNA sequencing.

If Creationism were correct, what kind of evidence would you expect? That angel with the fiery, revolving sword whom the Bible says was left to guard the tree of life would be a good start -- seriously. If an angel needed to guard the tree of life in ancient times, why isn't one needed now? And why has no such angel ever been seen? If the Bible is literally correct, then there's an angel out there on this earth somewhere just waiting to lop off some unlucky person's head with that fiery, revolving sword.

I'd also like to see creationism provide an alternative explanation for the extreme similarities between the great apes and human beings, as well as the fossils found of early hominids. Did God decide to make apes look and act very similar to humans in order to deceive us into believing in evolution?

It would also be nice to see some geological evidence for a global flood, but that's not really "creationism" per se.

The picture of the you link to is a crass caricature, just the same as a picture for Evolution of a blue whale with legs of a holstein cow. For the biblical concept of the universe, we should look at the Bible and discuss the Bible, not one man's picture. I looked it up, and it turns out that that picture is actually from an annotated Bible -- a Catholic Bible, but a Bible nonetheless. It merely shows a picture of what the Bible describes in words -- the firmament with its floodgates, Sheol, and all the rest. That IS what the ancient Hebrews thought the Universe was like, and it was a view they shared with their pagan contemporaries. Again: That picture is not a "caricature," but a representation of what the Bible. We've all read the Bible, and everything in that picture is mentioned at some point or another (not only in Genesis, but also in Job and other places).

Think about it: You're defending a viewpoint that holds that two of every species on earth was once fit onto a wooden boat, that water once covered the entire planet, and that an angel with a fiery sword guards the entrance to Eden; yet you call that picture a "caricature"?

As for blue whales growing legs, no one believes any such thing every happened -- though whales do have hip bones. What you seem to insist on forgetting is that evolution is only claimed to have taken place s...l...o...w...l...y, over millions and millions of years, in very gradual increments. No one claims that whales suddenly sprouted legs -- though it doesn't take a very large mutation in the genome to cause a major change in phenotype. All that's necessary is for a mutation to take place which, in the context of an organism's environment, just happens to make that organism more likely to procreate successfully and pass on that mutation.

I have to go again, but I'll respond to more points tomorrow....

Angler

2004-05-06 00:42 | User Profile

Okay, one more quick response tonight....

[QUOTE=Valley Forge]But as I've already pointed out, the theory of evolution does not gain an once of credibility even if 99.9% of scientists believe that it's true. What grants credibility to creationism, then? Just because a lot of people believe in the Bible, does that make it true? (Actually, most Christians are not fundamentalists, but still....)

Outside of his speciality, a scientist is just another lay person. Not really. There is a great deal of overlap across many of the sciences, and certain concepts are ubiquitous (e.g., conservation of energy in a closed system). In addition, many scientists from seemingly disparate fields work together routinely and must gain familiarity with each others' work. An example of this is in the study of protein folding, an extremely important field that draws on physics (particularly thermodynamics), chemistry, and molecular biology. Furthermore, the scientific method is basically the same across all sciences, and that's what's really at the heart of the evolution debate. Essentially, scientists are trained not just to think, but to think critically and not make unwarranted assumptions. Any scientist who attempts to publish results on the basis of "faith" will not get very far.

So what that means is that the alleged consensus of the scientific community in favor of Darwinian theory that we're always hearing about is in actuality nothing but millions of lay people echoing the views of a few hundred specialists -- many of whom assume that God can't possibly exist, because their world views are founded on metaphysical materialism.[/QUOTE]The consensus is not "alleged" -- it's a verifiable fact. You can look it up and see for yourself if you doubt that. And materialism and metaphysics never come into the picture when science is being done -- ever. I challenge you or anyone here to find a refereed scientific publication on the web (there are millions of them) that even mentions materialism or any other metaphysical concept. It just isn't done. Science takes what is known or strongly believed, tests it by making predictions, and adjusts itself according to the outcome. Assumptions are allowed in science, but they are NOT taken for granted -- they must endure repeated testing, and if they fail, then they are discarded.

Valley Forge

2004-05-06 01:50 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler]Okay, one more quick response tonight....

What grants credibility to creationism, then? [/QUOTE]

A fair question. I'd say what gives credibility to creationism more than anything else are the incredibly long odds of life emerging from non-life.

Is it possible that life can emerge from non-life? Sure -- probably anything is possible as long as it doesn't violate the laws of physics or the rules of logic.

It's possible, to use William Dembski's example, that I might beat the world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik ten games in a row.

It's possible that a monkey banging on laptop could type Hamlet by accident.

Neither of those things violate any physical laws. Therefore, the chances that they might happen is not zero -- the chances are just pretty damn close to zero!

Now, let's scale things up. According to the prevailing cosmological model, the universe originated during the Big Bang. If the odds of a monket typing Hamlet are long, what are the odds of the trillions upon countless trillions of subatomic particles in the universe just happening to come together in the right way for life to emerge from lifelessness? I have yet to see anyone in the pro-evolution camp address this point.

And it's not just nutty religious creationists who raise this problem. The Cambridge astromer and mathematician Fred Hoyle (originator of the steady state theory of the origin of the universe) does not believe that evolution happened on the grounds that the theory is just too wildly improbable.

Valley Forge

2004-05-06 01:55 | User Profile

Here's an interesting partial summary of Hoyle's views:

The probability that the simplest life-form could just accidentally arrange itself from particles floating in an ideally prepared primordial soup is very slim. To appreciate just how slim, Hoyle proposes an analogy. He asks how long it would take a blindfolded person to solve a Rubik Cube. Suppose he worked very fast; say, a move a second without resting. According to Hoyle's figuring it would take approximately 67.5 times the estimated age of the universe (allowing the generous figure of 20 billion years since the big bang), for him to reach a solutionÃ¢â¬âabout 1.35 trillion years. Judging from the life expectancy of human beings we could say that a solution of the Rubik Cube could not be achieved at all by a blindfolded person. Yet this is just about the same difficulty as the accidental formation of just one of the chains of amino acids necessary to living cells. In the human cell, Hoyle points out, there are about 200,000 such proteins. The chance of getting all 200,000 by accident is really small. In fact, even if an ideal primordial soup existed, and if it were repeatedly jolted by electrical charges (as in the famous Miller-Urey experiment, the time required for the formation of any one of the requisite 200,000 proteins would be roughly equivalent to 293.5 times the estimated age of the Earth (set at the standard 4.6 billion years).

Yet the odds against the accidental formation of a living organism are considerably worse than the odds against a blindfolded solution of the Rubik CubeÃ¢â¬âthe latter being estimated by Hoyle to be about 50 billion trillion to 1. The trouble is that even a simple protozoan, or a bacterium, requires the prior formation of about 2,000 enzymes, themselves also complex proteins, which are critical to the successful formation of all the other 198,000 or so requisite proteins. The odds in favor of the accidental formation of all 2,000 by accident (never mind the other 198,000), without which no living organism could have come into existence, approaches a truly infinitesimal magnitude. The odds would be similar to those against 2,000 blindfolded persons working Rubik Cubes independently and just accidentally coming to perfect solutions simultaneouslyÃ¢â¬âaccording to Hoyle, roughly 1040000 to 1. Or, to give a more graspable notion of the improbability, Hoyle says, it would be roughly comparable to rolling double-sixes 50,000 times in a row with unloaded dice. Looking at it from the point of view of the expected time lapse before reaching a solution, the predicted heat death of our solar system would have occurred early on, and our Milky Way galaxy would have rolled itself up like a scroll long before a solution could be hoped for.

In the next phase of his argument, the British scholar gets down to bare knuckles. He says that anyone foolish enough to believe that the solution to the life-problem might just come about by accident is guilty of a "junkyard mentality." The basis for this phrase is another analogy of Hoyle's own creation. (Unfortunately, it seems to fit his own proposed solution too, but more about that below.) He asked somewhat earlier, and asks again in his 1983 book, what are the chances that a tornado might blow through a junkyard containing the parts of a 747 and just accidentally assemble it so as to leave it sitting there all set for take-off. "So small as to be negligible," he says, "even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe" (p. 19).

But many evolutionists may not easily be persuaded by the argument against the junkyard mentality. They may be inclined to believe that the analogy of a 747 is quite uninteresting since there are conceivably multiplied billions of possible aircraft designs, not to mention designs for other vehicles yet to be imagined. That is to say, some evolutionists might well be inclined to suppose that there are many billions of possible solutions to the life-problem and that the one which occurred on Earth was as inevitable as the shape of a totally unique snowflake. But Hoyle has anticipated their rebuttal and rejects it. He contends that in the universe as we know it there are uncountable "anthropic" coincidencesÃ¢â¬âintelligent accidents. For instance, he cites the approximate balance of oxygen and carbon atoms. Both are critical to living organisms, and must be present in approximately equal quantities. Otherwise, "a great excess of carbon would prevent the formation of many materials on which life is dependent, rock and soil for example, while a great oxygen excess would simply burn up any carbon-bearing biochemicals that happened to be around" (p. 218).

Or, for another lucky coincidence, take the delicate balance inside the hydrogen atom. Hoyle says:

If the combined masses of the proton and electron were suddenly to become a little more rather than a little less than the mass of the neutron, the effect would be devastating. The hydrogen atom would become unstable. Throughout the Universe all the hydrogen atoms would immediately break down to form neutrons and neutrinos. Robbed of its nuclear fuel, the Sun would fade and collapse. Across the whole of space, stars like the Sun would contract in their billions, releasing a deadly flood of X-rays as they burned out. By that time life on Earth, needless to say, would already have been extinguished (pp. 219-220).

These peculiar coincidences, the balance of oxygen and carbon and of particles in the hydrogen atom (not to mention countless others), Hoyle refers to as "anthropic"Ã¢â¬âalmost human, as if Someone were speaking to us. He points out that there is no reason to suppose that such coincidences are inevitable since there is no end of other imaginable arrangements which would be fatal not only to life but to the very structure of the universe as we know it.

[url]http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-138.htm[/url]

il ragno

2004-05-06 02:22 | User Profile

Valley Forge:The theory of evolution does not gain an once of credibility even if 99.9% of scientists believe that it's true. Outside of his speciality, a scientist is just another lay person.

Petr: That guy you quote is an entirely irrelevant punk, a cheap anti-religious scribbler, and you yourself show your own ignorance by relying on such pathetic sources. In other words, he has no scholarly weight whatsoever in the matters biological, whereas the guy I quoted, Lane P. Lester, is a Ph.D in genetics.

Oh how you boys DO go on! You're a [I]cheap punk [/I] unless you can brandish the proper supercredentials....umm, unless you hold a contrary position even [I]with [/I] said credentials, in which case you're just another shmoe whose opinion should carry no weight.

Anyway, why are we even arguing when almost every argument here for the celestial has been sourced from Creationist websites? I.e [I]here is the answer - now hit those slide rules and somehow prove Him right! [/I]

Happy Hacker

2004-05-06 02:29 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler]Just because we can't observe major evolution occuring during our lifetime does not mean it doesn't happen.

We have observed nature long enough to know that the law of nature is not Evolution. Remember my references to thousands of generations of bacteria. But, even of higher animals, we have observed them long enough to know which direction they're going. They're not evolving.

The indirect evidence for evolution comes from the fossil record and from DNA sequencing.

The reliance of subjective circumstantual evidence betrays the fact that observation shows that Evolution is not the law of nature. I believe the fossil record and DNA sequencing do not support Evolution. I have billions of fossils showing stability vs. your handful of dubious transitionals. I can go out and dig up a fossil tomorrow with 99.999% certainty that it will further build the case for stability of kinds.

That angel with the fiery, revolving sword whom the Bible says was left to guard the tree of life would be a good start -- seriously.

Debating the Bible is not debating science. For all I know, the angel was there just for Adam to let him know that he could never go back.

I'd also like to see creationism provide an alternative explanation for the extreme similarities between the great apes and human beings, as well as the fossils found of early hominids. Did God decide to make apes look and act very similar to humans in order to deceive us into believing in evolution?

There's that subjective circumstantial evidence, again. I personally think apes act a lot more more like dogs than like people. Even birds, beavers and bees build homes. Apes don't.

It would also be nice to see some geological evidence for a global flood, but that's not really "creationism" per se.

A thick global blanket of water-laid rock filled with billions of dead things. At observed rates of erosion, most of the "fossil record" would be destroyed in 10 million years, rather than accumulate over hundreds of millions of years.

the firmament with its floodgates, Sheol, and all the rest. That IS what the ancient Hebrews thought the Universe was like, and it was a view they shared with their pagan contemporaries. Again: That picture is not a "caricature," but a representation of what the Bible.

In the picture, how does the sun and moon come up again on the other side of the sky?

Think about it: You're defending a viewpoint that holds that two of every species on earth was once fit onto a wooden boat, that water once covered the entire planet, and that an angel with a fiery sword guards the entrance to Eden; yet you call that picture a "caricature"?

Not two of every species, two of every kind of land animal.

As for blue whales growing legs, no one believes any such thing every happened

No, but people believe that whales were once land animals with legs. Why do you assume my comment was a reference to the opposite direction?

Valley Forge

2004-05-06 02:58 | User Profile

[QUOTE=il ragno]Valley Forge:The theory of evolution does not gain an once of credibility even if 99.9% of scientists believe that it's true. Outside of his speciality, a scientist is just another lay person.

Hmmm....tell me, IR, did you come believe in Neo-Darwinism based on your own original research?

Didn't think so...

So tell me then, why are you complaining about me and others relying on work done by other people when you yourself have done the same thing?

Valley Forge

2004-05-06 03:04 | User Profile

And by the way, I'm still waiting for you to respond to my point from the other post.

If you dropped a stack of 200 quarters from the top of a ten story building, what do you think the odds are that they'd end up in a neat, vertical stack on the sidewalk?

Wouldn't you agree that the chances of that happening, while not zero, are pretty damn close to zero?

Yet the materialist atheist actually believes in an event that is indescribably less probable!

Namely, that after the Big Bang all the trillions and trillions of subatomic particles in the universe just happened to come together in the right way -- and what do you know? -- here we are!

In other words, if you just wait long enough, swirling masses of hydrogen and helium, along with a smattering of heavy elements can eventually turn into people.

The materialist atheist actually believes that in all seriousness.

il ragno

2004-05-06 03:39 | User Profile

Here is a common fallacy you all make: that atheism is a delineated creed if not an outright religion. In fact, a mirror-image of a religious sect, only built around the worship of nonbelief, with its own holy dogma which is fanatically adhered to by all adherents.

But atheism is simply [I]the absence of theism[/I]! What you are doing is projecting your own interpretation of 'nonbelief', and since a goodly number of believers (not all) cannot envision a life not lived in thrall to a ruling belief-system handed down from a higher power, they reject what they cannot process.

As far as this ridiculous argument is concerned (Mendel=genius; Darwin=God-hating fraud) it is ahistorical and unscientific - and no PhD is required to point it out. For one thing, Mendel himself would have rejected it.

19th-century science was less the search for absolute empirical truth than the search for keys that might unlock doors that might eventually lead to absolute empirical truth. Both Mendel and Darwin found those keys, albeit to different doors, and those doors opened to adjoining rooms. That they were never able to correspond, compare notes, and collaborate is generally understood to be one of the great lost opportunities in scientific history.

What Creationism really stands for - its animating principle - is the debunking of the work and reputation of the 19th-century scientist whose conclusions threaten and offend a portion of the Christian Church (even though Darwin himself made mention of a Creator in his notebooks throughout his life.) It begins with a verdict and worksd backward from there and its one true spiritual father is not Jehovah, but William Jennings Bryant.

Petr

2004-05-06 04:39 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red] - “In short, those great "creationist scientists" simply did not have enough facts available to make an informed decision about evolution.”[/COLOR]

[COLOR=Red] - “And what evidence is there for an anthropomorphic Creator of the sort described in the Bible? Even if there is a Creator, there's no guarantee He created everything as the Bible describes. There's no guarantee that the "Creator" isn't alien beings from another universe. We just don't know.”[/COLOR]

[COLOR=Red] - “Creationism is not, and CANNOT be, "science" -- it attempts to work backward from the conclusion that the Bible is correct.”[/COLOR]

Like you yourself say, there are these kind of people, rejecting the theory of blind chance: [COLOR=Red] - “Many who accept evolutionary theory view it as a process guided by God. I personally have not ruled this out, either.”[/COLOR]

But you see, anti-God fanatics that they are, orthodox evolutionists are allergic even to this kind of mild religiosity, and I’m sure that fanatics like Dawkins despise their faith just as much as that of hardcore Biblical creationists.

[COLOR=Red] - “Science makes predictions and admits its errors in a process of self-correction.”[/COLOR]

[COLOR=Red] - “It's just like Galileo's inquisitors -- they refused to look through his telescope to see what he saw.”[/COLOR]

I’d like to know whether this actually happened, or whether it is just another slanderous urban myth spread by “freethinkers” – like when they like to claim how educated people in Middle Ages thought the world was flat.

[COLOR=Red] - “Evolution is considered to be extremely well-supported by every single major scientific organization, including the National Academy of Sciences.”[/COLOR]

So is racial equality.

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” and “pride goeth before desctruction.”

I give another commentary example from this exceptional newsblog “Creation-Evolution Headlines”:

[url]http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev0504.htm[/url]

/////////////////////////////////////

[COLOR=Navy]“Articles 04/03/2004

The cover story of World Magazine for April 3 is a series of prophetic articles for the Year 2025, called “Darwin’s Meltdown: Intelligent Design scientists ... ponder a future free from the dogma of evolution.” Looking back on how and why Darwinism declined into the “dustbin of discarded ideologies”, four intelligent design leaders, Phillip E. Johnson, Jonathan Wells, Jeffrey M. Schwartz and William Dembski place themselves 21 years into the future and look back on what happened since 1859, 1925, 1990, 2000, 2004 and beyond. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=DarkGreen]Get the magazine just for the artwork: a forlorn-looking Darwin and his pet fish sinking into an ooze of Campbell’s primordial soup. (The articles are entertaining and enlightening, too.) These articles could backfire if they make readers complacent, causing them to think the demise of Darwinism is already a done deal. Right now, the Darwin Party is still a totalitarian regime giving little indication of relinquishing the power it usurped in Huxley’s era (see 01/15/2004 headline). For the prophecies to come true, remember what Doc said in Back to the Future III: “Your future hasn’t been written yet ... Your future is what you make it. So make it a good one!” [/COLOR]

Petr

2004-05-06 04:56 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red]- “As far as this ridiculous argument is concerned (Mendel=genius; Darwin=God-hating fraud) it is ahistorical and unscientific - and no PhD is required to point it out. For one thing, Mendel himself would have rejected it.”[/COLOR]

What are you, a mindreader? The only degree Darwin ever had was a BA in Divinity, by the way.

Check out this scorecard and see if Darwin deserves to be called “a genius” even on a purely secular terms. I get annoyed every time this bland mediocrity (not any “God-hating fraud”) is considered to be among the greatest minds mankind ever produced.

“Darwin’s Scorecard”

[url]http://www.scienceagainstevolution.org/v6i4f.htm[/url]

[COLOR=Red]- “What Creationism really stands for - its animating principle - is the debunking of the work and reputation of the 19th-century scientist whose conclusions threaten and offend a portion of the Christian Church (even though Darwin himself made mention of a Creator in his notebooks throughout his life.) It begins with a verdict and worksd backward from there and its one true spiritual father is not Jehovah, but William Jennings Bryant.” [/COLOR]

Yeah, like your kind would be so concerned with our spirituality instead of despising it all. In reality, you are just pulling another cheap evo-prop trick and trying to play “good-cop, bad-cop” – “even Darwin mentioned Creator” – sorry, not good enough for us, and I’m sure that your respect towards your Creator is just as non-existent as that of Darwin.

Petr

2004-05-06 05:25 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red]- “Oh how you boys DO go on! You're a cheap punk unless you can brandish the proper supercredentials....umm, unless you hold a contrary position even with said credentials, in which case you're just another shmoe whose opinion should carry no weight.”[/COLOR]

That guy WAS a cheap punk who demonstratively got some of his basic historical facts wrong. And Forge spoke about scientists being “outside their specialty”, and this Mr. Lester, Ph.D. in Genetics, commenting on a genetic question, obviously was not.

I really believe this Ponzi scheme really goes on something like this – geologists believe in the evolution even if they can’t find enough evidence for it on their won, because they believe that biologists have the needed proof, and biologists on their turn rely on geologists to supply the needed proof should they lack it own their own.

And so goes the merry-go-round!

[COLOR=Red] - ”Anyway, why are we even arguing when almost every argument here for the celestial has been sourced from Creationist websites? I.e here is the answer - now hit those slide rules and somehow prove Him right!”[/COLOR]

What are your own qualifications, hypocrite? Those creationists I quote have relevant degrees in their fields. And what a megalomaniacal request to “prove Him right!” Do you think we can force you to believe against your own will?

And your reaction is entirely like the sneer “oh, what a nice quote from that kooky revisionist website” in a WW II debate.

Petr

2004-05-06 05:49 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red] - “Essentially, scientists are trained not just to think, but to think critically and not make unwarranted assumptions.”[/COLOR]

Oh boy, you really give me a naive impression in here. I personally believe scientists are exceptionally prone to conformist thinking – if they make any real breaks from the consensus, and don’t immediately become a stunning success, then bye-bye grant-monies.

[COLOR=Red]- “And materialism and metaphysics never come into the picture when science is being done -- ever. I challenge you or anyone here to find a refereed scientific publication on the web (there are millions of them) that even mentions materialism or any other metaphysical concept. It just isn't done.”[/COLOR]

Do you really think that they would announce it openly – or are even conscious of their own mental limitations? How naÃÂ¯ve.

[COLOR=Red]- “That IS what the ancient Hebrews thought the Universe was like, and it was a view they shared with their pagan contemporaries.”[/COLOR]

This only goes on to show what a liberal mess Catholic Church nowadays is. Did you even pay any attention to the refutation article I posted a link to? Here it is again:

[COLOR=Blue]http://www.trueorigin.org/flatearth01.asp

“Does the Bible say Earth is Flat?”[/COLOR]

And as for the angel with a fiery sword - it is a really grand poetic symbol of mankind’s violent separation from God due to the Fall – not even ancients understood it that way you seem to do. In my opinion it takes a quite bone-headed type (which most sceptics are) to take it too literally.

Petr

Happy Hacker

2004-05-06 06:17 | User Profile

In retrospect, we think of Mendel as intending to find what he in fact reported and we perhaps think of him as a Darwinian evolutionist. Both ideas are quite wrong. Mendel hoped that his plant breeding experiments would produce new true-breeding species. (Not only Unger, but Linneaus himself had believed that some hybrids could become fixed as species.) At the same time, Mendel probably believed that higher taxa -- basic body plans for different groups of creatures -- were created directly by God. [URL=http://www.unbf.ca/psychology/likely/evolution/mendel.htm]more[/URL]

Il rangno quotes a source in another message in this thread that claims "Mendel became a monk only to get leisure to study", as if Mendel was a godless bum wanting to exploit the church. Mendel grew up poor and becoming a monk was one way of dealing with poverty. But, if Mendel really were half as godless as suggested then he would simply have become a university professor rather than distract himself with the religious duties of a monk, a priest, and an abbot. Becoming a secular professor would have given him more time to study the sciences and might even have given him the resouces to be more productive in his scientific research.

Mendel provides another example of Evolutionists standing in the way of science. Mendel's discoveries were largly ignored during Mendel's life time because Mendel explained variation in a way that would produce true-breeding species, leaving no room for Evolution. It wasn't until genetics became better known and genetic mutations were discoverd that Evolutionists were willing to accept Mendel's work.

il ragno

2004-05-06 07:20 | User Profile

[QUOTE]Mendel's discoveries were largly ignored during Mendel's life time because Mendel explained variation in a way that would produce true-breeding species, leaving no room for Evolution. It wasn't until genetics became better known and genetic mutations were discoverd that Evolutionists were willing to accept Mendel's work.[/QUOTE]

Gross oversimplification. I refer you to Jan Sapp's fine article here:

[url]http://www.mendelweb.org/MWsapp.html#s5[/url]

and one excerpt that sets out the problem:

[QUOTE]If Mendel and his experiments on peas had been neglected for 35 years they are alive and well today and show no signs of dwindling in curiosity and significance. Since Mendel's "vindication" at the turn of the century, more attention has been given to analyzing and commenting on his experiments than any other experiments in biology. Why is this? What is the power of these experiments? Here we meet with an apparent paradox. Although almost everyone agrees that these experiments are central to modern biology, there is no consensus about their exact significance. Indeed, despite attempts to understand Mendel and his experiments, the great heap of literature addressing his motives, his experimental protocols, his own beliefs about heredity and evolution, and the exact nature of his discovery remains largely incoherent. There are almost as many different interpretations as there are commentators. In fact, just about every possible scenario has been offered to account for them. The interpretations that will be briefly examined in the present study may be summarized as follows:

Mendel was a non-Darwinian. Although Mendel was an evolutionist, he did not entirely agree with Darwin's views and set out to disprove them. (Bateson 1909)
Mendel was a good Darwinian. His experimental protocols and reported results can be explained on the assumption that he had no objections to Darwinian selection theory. (R.A.Fisher 1936)
Mendel was not directly concerned with evolution at all. He placed it on the back burner while he investigated the laws of inheritance. (Gasking 1959)
Mendel rejected evolutionary theory. (Callender 1988)
Mendel laid out the laws of inheritance which justifiably carry his name. (Standard view, see, for example, Zirkle 1951, Mayr 1982)
Mendel was no Mendelian. He was not trying to discover the laws of inheritance, and several Mendelian principles are lacking in his papers. (Callender 1988; Brannigan 1979, 1981; Olby 1979)
Some of Mendel's data was falsified. (R.A.Fisher 1936)
None of Mendel's data was falsified. (see for example, Beadle 1966, Dunn 1965, Olby 1966, Wright 1966, Thoday 1966, Mayr 1982, Pilgrim 1984, Edwards 1987, Van Valen 1987)
Mendel's reported experiments set out in his paper of 1866 are wholly fictitious. (Bateson 1909) [/QUOTE]

Mendel kept no diary and nearly every one of his later champions tied their championing of him to agendas of their own. This makes 'reading' his original intent/thought processes hazy at best, near-impossible at worst. However, while some viewed Mendel's work as complementary to Darwin's and some saw it as contradicting same, none of them offered the hypothesis that Mendel's aim was to discredit Darwin as a "godless bum". The acceptance of evolution was unanimous; the battles were over approaches and surmises. The bull-necked rejection of Darwin as a sheer fraud was the province of Creationists - in fact it is their raison d'etre.

(I recall seeing a Creationist textbook for schoolchildren over 25 years ago that featured artists' renditions of the prehistoric era which included dinosaurs and cavemen [I]in the same illustrations[/I]. Nuff said?)

Scott Paine

2004-05-06 08:11 | User Profile

[QUOTE=il ragno]Here is a common fallacy you all make: that atheism is a delineated creed if not an outright religion. In fact, a mirror-image of a religious sect, only built around the worship of nonbelief, with its own holy dogma which is fanatically adhered to by all adherents.

But atheism is simply the absence of theism! What you are doing is projecting your own interpretation of 'nonbelief', and since a goodly number of believers (not all) cannot envision a life not lived in thrall to a ruling belief-system handed down from a higher power, they reject what they cannot process... [Et al][/QUOTE]Yep. Kudos for tight logic, il Ragno.

Here to learn in lieu of a free press. I thank each of you for making this my new favorite website. Informed, literate and logical with a mix of passion and decorum. Nobody's here to kiss anyone's assertions.

You know what they say about discussing politics & religion? Right. Please resume fire!

Angler

2004-05-06 12:50 | User Profile

And by the way, I'm still waiting for you to respond to my point from the other post.

Quote: If you dropped a stack of 200 quarters from the top of a ten story building, what do you think the odds are that they'd end up in a neat, vertical stack on the sidewalk?

Wouldn't you agree that the chances of that happening, while not zero, are pretty damn close to zero?

Yet the materialist atheist actually believes in an event that is indescribably less probable!

Namely, that after the Big Bang all the trillions and trillions of subatomic particles in the universe just happened to come together in the right way -- and what do you know? -- here we are!

In other words, if you just wait long enough, swirling masses of hydrogen and helium, along with a smattering of heavy elements can eventually turn into people.

The materialist atheist actually believes that in all seriousness. Order can come out of chaos very easily, and it happens all the time. It's a process that occurs in accordance with the laws of themodynamics. Crystals form spontaneously: a system of totally disordered molecules (or single atoms, as the case may be) will form as complex a pattern as necessary in order to minimize a quantity known as free energy associated with that system. This is a field of physics that I have studied in some detail; it's the study of phase transformations. It's not only applicable to crystals, either; it occurs in proteins, polymers, and other macromolecules as well.

Dropping a bunch of coins and having them all land in a stack is not an appropriate analogy, since the realm one is dealing with in that case is the macroscopic, where gravity is the dominant force (rather than the electromagnetic force, which is canceled out in ordinary matter at all but the very shortest distances of observation), quantum effects are unobservable, a great deal of energy is lost to heat dissipation, etc. Matter behaves entirely differently at the molecular level.

This argument has been addressed by creationists before, such as in the following (my comments are inserted in bold):

URL: [url]http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-162.htm[/url]

For ice crystals to form, producing more order, heat must be extracted from the local system and added to the surroundings, or the surroundings must be made more disordered in some way. [This is true.] The agent for causing this ordering of a local system and disordering of the surroundings is the immediate or secondary result of an action by an agent separate from the system. This agent must do work to remove heat energy from the pre-coded structure of the water molecules and their associated hydrogen bonds.[He's already assuming what he intends to prove -- that some "agent" must be involved in the process. That's incorrect. The process described can be the result of external interference, but it generally happens spontaneously in accordance with the laws of physics. I realize that a Creator might be responsible for creating the laws of physics in the first place, but those laws might actually BE the self-existent "Creator." That's a question I haven't made up my own mind about, and I probably never will.]

Whenever the ordering of a local system results in beauty, symmetry, or function, this requires a pre-designed code, and does not happen by chance. [No, it happens according to physical law. Chance IS involved, but the overall collective behavior of a system evolves deterministically according to thermodynamics.] Each physical agent operating at a higher level must function with greater order and power than the effect it produces. [Not at all. Again, the only "physical agent" required for the creation of order from disorder are the laws of TD.] The ultimate cause which controls all secondary processes must have infinite power and organizing intelligence. Such a first cause is called God. [The laws of physics are called "God"? That's a new one.] Thus God either directly or by secondary processes produces order. [That does not follow, and so we're back where we started: Are the laws of physics self-existent, or were they created by a self-existent God or other entity? Either option is fine by me -- something has to be self-existent -- but regardless of the answer, it has no bearing on whether or not creationism is true or evolution is false.]

EVOLUTION AND THE SNOWFLAKE

The growth of crystals has been used as an analogy to support the theory of evolution. The argument is made that since the orderly growth of crystals is a natural process, the evolution of life proceeding from simple to more complex is also a natural process. [Yes, and that argument is correct.] However, we have shown that ice crystals only grow when an outside agent is driving the process against the natural decay process described by the second law of thermodynamics. [He has shown no such thing, as explained above.]

In the case of evolution, the process might go something like this (I'm not a molecular biologist or a biochemist, so the following is a very rough sketch):

atoms --> molecules --> more complex molecules --> macromolecules --> "colonies" of macromolecules with higher-level structures (e.g., proteins) --> viruses --> single-celled organisms --> colonies of single-celled organisms --> multicellular organisms --> more complex organisms --> still more complex organisms --> ...and so on...

The initial steps in such a timeline would be caused directly by thermodynamical laws that tend to decrease the free energy of a system (as in crystal growth from disordered liquid). Once one gets up to the stage of "colonies" of macromolecules, natural selection may start to play a role in addition to thermodynamics, as some colonies may have certain features that allow them greater cohesiveness in the face of environmental pressures. Note that viruses, the next step in the process, are technically not living organisms (at least if memory serves), yet they are certainly capable of reproduction. How did they get that capability? The immense number of macromolecular "colonies" and "colonies of colonies" may have simply led to the emergence of one or more colonies that were capable of reproduction or limited self-repair. Maybe that's where divine intervention needs to come in, but by no means is it certain that such is necessary.

Angler

2004-05-06 14:12 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr][COLOR=Red] - Ã¢â¬ÅIn short, those great "creationist scientists" simply did not have enough facts available to make an informed decision about evolution.Ã¢â¬Â[/COLOR]

Quite trivial way of pooh-poohing these geniuses. Sounds like sour grapes. And Newtonian physics were more friendly to the blindly mechanistic worldview than quantum physics anyways Ã¢â¬â didnÃ¢â¬â¢t Darwin adhere to Newtonian physics as well? ?!?! Petr, do you mean to tell me that the fact that evolutionary theory had not yet even been developed in the time of those geniuses is NOT a sufficient explanation for their failure to consider it? Basically, your argument is like saying, "Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is probably false, since Maxwell (obviously a central figure in classical electrodynamics) did not believe in it." Of course he didn't -- it hadn't yet been developed! And you call that a "trivial" objection?! I'm astounded, Petr.

Of course Darwin believed in Newtonian mechanics, but the initial development of his theory did not take any molecular physics into account, so the point is irrelevant.

[COLOR=Red] - Ã¢â¬ÅAnd what evidence is there for an anthropomorphic Creator of the sort described in the Bible? Even if there is a Creator, there's no guarantee He created everything as the Bible describes. There's no guarantee that the "Creator" isn't alien beings from another universe. We just don't know.Ã¢â¬Â[/COLOR]

Straw man. All we have to do (or can do) through science is to prove the design. For there on, we Christians can start eliminating these other competing theories through our own arguments. But just for starters, mere design will do just fine. Proving that life was designed by another intelligent agent -- something that is a LONG way from being done -- is not tantamount to proving that God exists, though it certainly would be evidence to that effect. It could just as easily have been some great alien intelligence that created the universe we live in and everything in it (sort of like in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Use your imagination -- anything outside of the universe, if there is anything out there, could have created us. We just don't know, yet creationists like to pretend that they do know.

[COLOR=Red] - Ã¢â¬ÅCreationism is not, and CANNOT be, "science" -- it attempts to work backward from the conclusion that the Bible is correct.Ã¢â¬Â[/COLOR]

Another straw man. You try to make all anti-evolutionists sound like Bible-bangers. There are nowadays many scientists who reject orthodox Darwinian evolution, but refuse to submit to the biblical worldview. Their basic creationism (or shall we say designerism) relies on the very reasonable-sounding fact that life on earth is more probably designed than independently developed. I am not setting up a straw man with the above statement, as creationists often refer to their views as "science," and I think it's important to underscore the difference between true scientific investigation and "trying to use science to support dogma." Furthermore, I have never met, either on the Web or in real life, an anti-evolutionist who was not, as you say, a "Bible-banger." Each and every one of them was a Christian fundamentalist who would probably die of a heart attack from sheer emotional overload if he were forced to read a book on evolutionary biology. Perhaps there are some (or even many) exceptions, but I've yet to see even one.

Like you yourself say, there are these kind of people, rejecting the theory of blind chance: [COLOR=Red] - Ã¢â¬ÅMany who accept evolutionary theory view it as a process guided by God. I personally have not ruled this out, either.Ã¢â¬Â[/COLOR]

But you see, anti-God fanatics that they are, orthodox evolutionists are allergic even to this kind of mild religiosity, and IÃ¢â¬â¢m sure that fanatics like Dawkins despise their faith just as much as that of hardcore Biblical creationists. I think your view on this is prejudicial, especially considering the fact that evolution does not disprove the existence of God. NOTHING science can come up with can disprove the existence of a God. It's 100% impossible. Therefore, any "fanaticism" on the part of scientists would have no purpose, and it makes no sense to accuse them of it.

Fanaticism belongs solely to some (but not all) creationists. Why? Because their emotions are tied up in their beliefs. If evolution were somehow proved to them beyond any doubt, they would be emotionally distraught. Their refusal to objectively consider the evidence is a psychological defense mechanism that non-fundamentalists have no need of, since simply belief in God CANNOT be threatened by evolution or science in general.

[COLOR=Red] - Ã¢â¬ÅScience makes predictions and admits its errors in a process of self-correction.Ã¢â¬Â[/COLOR]

Evolutionists rarely ever admit their mistakes (or at least in front of creationists), unless they twisted-arm-forced to it, but the fact is that their theories are so often so infalsifiably vague that trying to make evolutionist withdraw an argument is like trying to nail a piece of jello to the wall anyway. I mean no offense, but you have admitted that you do not yet have a degree in any science, let alone in biology or a related field. Might that not be the true reason why evolutionists' arguments appear vague to you? Of course a person can learn just as much on his own as in school (assuming sufficient motivation and available time), but how much time and effort have you really put into understanding those arguments?

[COLOR=Red] - Ã¢â¬ÅIt's just like Galileo's inquisitors -- they refused to look through his telescope to see what he saw.Ã¢â¬Â[/COLOR]

IÃ¢â¬â¢d like to know whether this actually happened, or whether it is just another slanderous urban myth spread by Ã¢â¬ÅfreethinkersÃ¢â¬Â Ã¢â¬â like when they like to claim how educated people in Middle Ages thought the world was flat. Well, if they had looked through his telescope, then they would have seen what he saw, right? In that case, why would they have persecuted him? The most logical conclusion is that they did not look through his telescope (assuming he offered to let them, which he certainly would have if he was smart).

[COLOR=Red] - Ã¢â¬ÅEvolution is considered to be extremely well-supported by every single major scientific organization, including the National Academy of Sciences.Ã¢â¬Â[/COLOR]

So is racial equality. That is not the case. For example, the American Psychological Association publicly admits that there is approximately a 15-point IQ difference between blacks and whites, and they state unequivocally that the difference is not due to test bias or artifacts of test construction. They do tend to play down the obvious role of genetics in that difference, but only in the reports they release for public consumption. Similarly, the American Medical Association readily admits that there are physiological differences between the races (e.g., in risk of ailments such as diabetes or hypertension).

Ã¢â¬ÅThe bigger they are, the harder they fall,Ã¢â¬Â and Ã¢â¬Åpride goeth before desctruction.Ã¢â¬Â That's often true, but I don't see the relevance. I for one am perfectly willing to accept that evolution is wrong, but it will take much more than "the Bible says so-and-so" to convince me of that. I still want to know why creationists seem to have no problem with science or with taking advantage of all its wonders except when it conflicts with their literalist interpretation of the Bible.

I give another commentary example from this exceptional newsblog Ã¢â¬ÅCreation-Evolution HeadlinesÃ¢â¬Â:

[url]http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev0504.htm[/url]

/////////////////////////////////////

[COLOR=Navy]Ã¢â¬ÅArticles 04/03/2004

The cover story of World Magazine for April 3 is a series of prophetic articles for the Year 2025, called Ã¢â¬ÅDarwinÃ¢â¬â¢s Meltdown: Intelligent Design scientists ... ponder a future free from the dogma of evolution.Ã¢â¬Â Looking back on how and why Darwinism declined into the Ã¢â¬Ådustbin of discarded ideologiesÃ¢â¬Â, four intelligent design leaders, Phillip E. Johnson, Jonathan Wells, Jeffrey M. Schwartz and William Dembski place themselves 21 years into the future and look back on what happened since 1859, 1925, 1990, 2000, 2004 and beyond. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=DarkGreen]Get the magazine just for the artwork: a forlorn-looking Darwin and his pet fish sinking into an ooze of CampbellÃ¢â¬â¢s primordial soup. (The articles are entertaining and enlightening, too.) These articles could backfire if they make readers complacent, causing them to think the demise of Darwinism is already a done deal. Right now, the Darwin Party is still a totalitarian regime giving little indication of relinquishing the power it usurped in HuxleyÃ¢â¬â¢s era (see 01/15/2004 headline). For the prophecies to come true, remember what Doc said in Back to the Future III: Ã¢â¬ÅYour future hasnÃ¢â¬â¢t been written yet ... Your future is what you make it. So make it a good one!Ã¢â¬Â [/COLOR] [/QUOTE]The "Darwin Party"? Oh, please. That's a perfect example of fanaticism. Creationists are forever impugning the evolutionists' motives in an endless litany of ad hominem attacks. Why can't they at least be charitable enough to admit that even if evolution is wrong, its adherents aren't evil servants of Satan with a political agenda? Such rhetoric harms the credibility of those who spout it. It cannot be said enough: EVOLUTION DOES NOT UNDERMINE BELIEF IN GOD. There is no atheistic political agenda behind evolutionary theory; if there were, it would be badly misplaced, since even an ironclad proof of evolution would still not rule out Christianity (other than the ultra-literalist variety).

I've gotta run again, my coffee break is over....

Quantrill

2004-05-06 14:34 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler] Well, if they had looked through his telescope, then they would have seen what he saw, right? In that case, why would they have persecuted him? The most logical conclusion is that they did not look through his telescope (assuming he offered to let them, which he certainly would have if he was smart).[/QUOTE] Actually, Angler, they did look through his telescope to see what he saw, and what they saw did not prove his assertions. For the heliocentric model to be true, there have to be observable parallax shifts in the stars' positions as the earth moves around the sun. These shifts could not be observed using the technology available in Galileo's time, which meant that the heliocentric model could not, at that time, be proven. Therefore, the Church wanted Galileo to present the heliocentric model as what it was at that time -- a theory. Galileo refused, insisted on asserting it as fact, and then went further and began asserting that it showed that certain Scripture passages were false (which it did not, by the way.) Even after this, he got off with only a condemnation. It was only after he forced the issue by mocking the Pope and the Jesuits' leading astronomer in print that the Church arrested him. His sentence was house arrest, during which he had servants and could continue his scientific research. The idea of a terrible, sadistic Inquisition thirsting to burn noble Galileo at the stake is a modernist myth, and you probably don't want to base too much of your argument on it.

Petr

2004-05-06 15:53 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red]- “The bull-necked rejection of Darwin as a sheer fraud was the province of Creationists - in fact it is their raison d'etre.”[/COLOR]

You are erecting a strawman, IR. My main point is not that Mendel was a dedicated opponent Darwin (back then even many real Christians didn’t understand what an enemy of the Gospel evolutionism was), but that genetic science that Mendel discovered forms terrible problems for evolutionists, who are now forced to rely on the pathetic idea of RANDOM MUTATIONS PLUS NATURAL SELECTION PLUS TIME having formed all fauna and flora all by themselves.

And as for the opposition against Darwin, pantheistic influences crippled the fighting spirit of many capable Christian scientist in the 19th century.

In the period of about 1900 – 1950, Darwinism in fact went “out of style”, replaced mainly by pantheistic “vitalism”, and only bounced back as “Neo-Darwinism” in the 1950s, as DNA and mutations were discovered and Darwinism once again looked like even THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE.

Here is somewhat longer description on the origins of “neo-Darwinism”, invented to marry Darwinism with Mendel’s discoveries:

[COLOR=Blue]http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/short_history_03.html[/COLOR]

and

[COLOR=Blue]http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/short_history_04.html

“A group of scientists who were determined to reconcile Darwinism with the science of genetics, in one way or another, came together at a meeting organized by the Geological Society of America in 1941. After long discussion, they agreed on ways to create a new interpretation of Darwinism and over the next few years, specialists produced a synthesis of their fields into a revised theory of evolution.

The scientists who participated in establishing the new theory included the geneticists G. Ledyard Stebbins and Theodosius Dobzhansky, the zoologists Ernst Mayr and Julian Huxley, the paleontologists George Gaylord Simpson and Glenn L. Jepsen, and the mathematical geneticists Sir Ronald A. Fisher and Sewall Wright.5

To counter the fact of "genetic stability" (genetic homeostasis), this group of scientists employed the concept of "mutation," which had been proposed by the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries at the beginning of the 20th century. Mutations were defects that occurred, for unknown reasons, in the inheritance mechanism of living things. Organisms undergoing mutation developed some unusual structures, which deviated from the genetic information they inherited from their parents. The concept of "random mutation" was supposed to provide the answer to the question of the origin of the advantageous variations which caused living organisms to evolve according to Darwin's theory-a phenomenon that Darwin himself was unable to explain, but simply tried to side-step by referring to Lamarck. The Geological Society of America group named this new theory, which was formulated by adding the concept of mutation to Darwin's natural selection thesis, the "synthetic theory of evolution" or the "modern synthesis." In a short time, this theory came to be known as "neo-Darwinism" and its supporters as "neo-Darwinists.”[/COLOR]

[COLOR=Red]- “(I recall seeing a Creationist textbook for schoolchildren over 25 years ago that featured artists' renditions of the prehistoric era which included dinosaurs and cavemen in the same illustrations. Nuff said?)”[/COLOR]

Utterly irrelevant distraction. And Young-Earth Creationists (YECs) indeed believe that dinosaurs and men were contemporaries – didn’t you know that before?

Petr

il ragno

2004-05-06 16:59 | User Profile

[QUOTE][COLOR=Blue]“(I recall seeing a Creationist textbook for schoolchildren over 25 years ago that featured artists' renditions of the prehistoric era which included dinosaurs and cavemen in the same illustrations. Nuff said?)”[/COLOR]

Utterly irrelevant distraction. And Young-Earth Creationists (YECs) indeed believe that dinosaurs and men were contemporaries – didn’t you know that before?[/QUOTE]

1- Utterly irrelevant distraction? Not at all - since this thread is SUPPOSED to be about the battle over what is to be taught to schoolchildren as science, it is entirely pertinent to the discussion;

and mainly, 2- it's ONLY creationists who believe men and dinosaurs co-existed. Again, this is "arrived at" by beginning with a conclusion (the Bible is literally true, thus God created men and dinosaurs on the same "day", thus men and dinosaurs co-existed) and then discarding everything that does not support the verdict. (And if I saw the book 25 years ago, obviously I didn't just figure this out.) Some further silliness on this topic:

[QUOTE][url]http://www.spiritual-answers.com/Life/dinosaurs.htm[/url]

[I][COLOR=Indigo]Were Dinosaurs on the Ark?[/COLOR][/I]

Yes, We know dinosaurs were created because we see evidence of their existence. We also know that all land dwelling animals were created on the sixth day. Therefore we know that at one point man and dinosaur did coexist. We also know that dinosaurs were on the ark (although Noah was probably smart enough to gather small ones) because God commanded Noah to gather two (and in some cases seven) of every species. We believe that the Earth’s environment drastically changed when "….all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened" (GE 7:11). The flood would have destroyed all living creatures (except those on the ark) and created the fossil record evolutionist point to as proof. Once off the ark the survivors would have found a much different environment then the one they left behind (one that no longer contained the water above the expanse called sky). Perhaps one that no longer allowed dinosaurs (or man) to live as long or grow as large. [/QUOTE]

Quantrill

2004-05-06 17:14 | User Profile

[QUOTE=il ragno]it's ONLY creationists who believe men and dinosaurs co-existed. Again, this is "arrived at" by beginning with a conclusion (the Bible is literally true, thus God created men and dinosaurs on the same "day", thus men and dinosaurs co-existed) and then discarding everything that does not support the verdict. (And if I saw the book 25 years ago, obviously I didn't just figure this out.)[/QUOTE] I don't want to jump too deeply into this topic, because I feel unqualified to do so. However, I wish to point out that it is only some creationists (the literal young-earthers) who hold the viewpoint you describe above. It is completely possible to disbelieve in evolution and yet also to disbelieve in literal 6-day creation and cavemen riding on dinosaurs like in the Flintstones. Therefore, showing that these folks are mistaken is not the same as proving that the universe was not created by God.

Valley Forge

2004-05-06 17:32 | User Profile

AY, What about Hoyle's Tornado in a Junkyard? I believe I recall seeing you refer to it as a "fallacy" some time back.

What about irreducibly complex systems like the bacterial flagellum?

Petr

2004-05-06 17:41 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red] - “4) (My personal favorite) The opinions of people educated in the sciences don't count, because they've just been brainwashed in atheist "theology" and Marxist political dogma.”[/COLOR]

I don’t think you understood what I was trying to say, AY. My case goes deeper than that.

If there is any brainwashing going on, it was already implanted to our ancestors in the Garden of Eden by Satan.

There is this basic Christian paradigm that among members of the fallen mankind there exists an active will to deny and rebel against their Creator, and only the intervention of the Holy Spirit can change this situation. ALL humans are natural-born sinners and rebels against God.

Calvinists have developed this teaching to extreme with their doctrine of “Total Depravity”. And may I personally say, the more I observe the DEPRAVED use of their God-given intellects among evolutionists, the more I am inclined to believe in the Total Depravity.

So, if a sinful, ingrateful human being sees even a small chance of “getting rid of God” and being their own gods (“Ye shall be as gods”, Genesis 3:5), they will grab to it.

After all, an evolved man is the ultimate “self-made man” – he doesn’t have anyone disturbing his self-idolatry!

It was in fact a stunning demonstration of human sinfulness and ingratitude towards God that “educated people” JUMPED to accept Darwinism in the 19th century. They behaved like prisoners who used the first possible opportunity to kill their guardian (or so they thought).

Like Dawkins says, only Darwinism made atheism intellectually respectable. An active, instinctive, dislike towards the idea of Allmighty God is all the possible, and un-exhaustible, motivation evolutionists can have. No particular political agendas needed.

Petr

Valley Forge

2004-05-06 18:00 | User Profile

[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]5) Scientists are laymen outside their own field of study

Well, yes, a physicist usually is a layman in linguistics or art history. However, a biologist probably knows more chemistry, physics, and statistics than the guy at the counter at MacDonald's, even though those aren't his fields of study per se.[/QUOTE]

There's no need to suggest that I implied people working the counter at McDonalds have the same credibility as a specialist.

Of course scientists, have broad training in the sciences. So what? That doesn't prove anything.

For example, I seriously doubt that many marine biologists have formal training in physics and physical chemistry (not organic, or biochemistry) beyond freshman year material. (And if I had the time I'd back that up by linking in the requirements for a masters/phd in marine biology from some major universites -- maybe I will later if anyone wants to continue to dispute this point with me).

Likewise, I seriously doubt that most physicists have training in geology beyond the freshman year, if they even have that.

So exactly how much credibilty do you think this kind of minimal training gives people?

Lots of broadly educated people have freshman and sophomore level training in the sciences.

Lawyers do, historians do, network admins do, psychologists do, and so on.

Now then, I'm no expert, but I assume that this complete lack of deep, highly specialized training is the reason that professional physicists don't usually weigh in on controversies in marine biology -- and vice versa, of course.

I assume it is the reason that geologists don't usually comment on controversies in solid state physics, and so on.

Yet -- in what can only be described as a fascinating anomoly -- nearly all scientists regardless of their specialty seem to have no problem weighing in on the evolution controversy, even though evolutionary biology and is actuality a highly, highly specialized field.

It's interesting.

So I'm sticking with my orginal claim until someone convinces me that I'm wrong.

When a scientist that is non-specialist comments on work outside of his specialty, his thoughts really shouldn't be given any more weight than that of any other broadly educated person.

Therefore, statements to the effect of "the entire scientific community believes the Neo-Darwinists model" is are very misleading.

Note IR:

This conclusion does not in any way undermine citations presented on this thread by Petr, myself, and others.

You'll note that Petr alluded to the work of a geneticist.

Last time I checked, geneticists specialized in genetics.

You'll also note that when I raised the issue of the probablity of life emerging from non-life, I referred to Hoyle, an astonomer and mathematician.

Last time I checked, mathmaticians specialized in math.

But keep those straw men coming; your writings are always a pleasure to read :thumbsup:

Happy Hacker

2004-05-06 18:34 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler]Order can come out of chaos very easily, and it happens all the time. It's a process that occurs in accordance with the laws of themodynamics. Crystals form spontaneously: a system of totally disordered molecules (or single atoms, as the case may be) will form as complex a pattern as necessary in order to minimize a quantity known as free energy associated with that system. This is a field of physics that I have studied in some detail; it's the study of phase transformations. It's not only applicable to crystals, either; it occurs in proteins, polymers, and other macromolecules as well.

You stepped into it again. Any tendency of molecules to form amino acids, which in turn would form protein, etc. works against anything required for life, just like if you built ice sculptures, any natural organization tendency of the ice/water/snow will be contrary to maintaining your ice sculptures. That's why life doesn't form spontaneously.

I suppose by "free energy" you mean that the molecules reach an equilibrium. Which is another problem with comparing snowflakes to evolution, snowflakes are dictated by the circumstances and inherent properties, beyond which they cannot go. Life is far beyond any equilibrium with nature. That's why life doesn't form spontaneously.

It's also interesting to observe that your conclusion regarding the error of establishment's intolerance of Galileo's competing theory is that the establishment should be intolerant of competing theories.

il ragno

2004-05-06 20:32 | User Profile

[QUOTE]This conclusion does not in any way undermine citations presented on this thread by Petr, myself, and others.

You'll note that Petr alluded to the work of a geneticist.

Last time I checked, geneticists specialized in genetics.[/QUOTE]

That's fine. I thought Petr, a few pages back, was seriously damaging his case by indulging too freely in attack-dog ad hominems - apparently he's gotten it out of his system and has since conducted himself admirably - as have the other Creationists here.

But I can't help but take one more shot. You must admit it is bitterly amusing that the father of modern genetics is being praised as the better scientist because he is the more devout Christian, while surrounding us in real-time (and causing Christians no end of consternation - and not [I]just [/I] Christians, by the way) is the very real, very scary moral and ethical quagmire of stem-cell cloning: the logical extension of Mendel's pioneering efforts. The 'man of God' inadvertantly opening the door to man [I]playing [/I] God has got to be the textbook definition of 'irony'.

Petr

2004-05-06 23:15 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red]- ”For example, the American Psychological Association publicly admits that there is approximately a 15-point IQ difference between blacks and whites, and they state unequivocally that the difference is not due to test bias or artifacts of test construction. They do tend to play down the obvious role of genetics in that difference, but only in the reports they release for public consumption. Similarly, the American Medical Association readily admits that there are physiological differences between the races (e.g., in risk of ailments such as diabetes or hypertension).” [/COLOR]

But mostly they refuse to make necessary conclusions out of this data. And likewise, biologists again and again notice the INCREDIBLE statistical odds that evolution of life must have had beaten to even get its first cell finished – and they never make any conclusions in favour of Divine design for it, but rather gush on what kind of obstacles the brave Evolution has conquered.

Ultimately their reasoning is classical in its circularity:

“Well, evolution MUST have happened, for otherwise we wouldn’t be in here!”

The possibility of Divine creation is not allowed to have any say-so in this scheme.

Thus, the purely naturalistic origin of all life is taken for granted and it is just the job of scientists to find data to support this hypothesis.

[COLOR=Red] - “I still want to know why creationists seem to have no problem with science or with taking advantage of all its wonders except when it conflicts with their literalist interpretation of the Bible.”[/COLOR]

Now its YOU having an anthropomorphic idea of this deity of “Science”. You seem to think of it as some personal being that you can’t show “ingratitude” against.

And typically, you consider “Science” to be some unanimous monolith, instead of the common arena for many competing factions.

A typical inter-evolutionist conflict that creationists can exploit is the fight between supporters of traditional Darwinist gradualism and "punctuated equilibrium" that was born out of need to explain the huge fossil gaps needed in gradualism. Both sects shoot each other's arguments full of holes, and creationists can say that both are right - against each other, for man did not evolve at all!

And in this mix there ARE indeed some hard-core creationists with full qualifications, like Dr. John Baumgardner here:

[COLOR=Blue]http://www.rae.org/believe.html[/COLOR]

[COLOR=Sienna]"Last year, U.S. News & World Report (June 16, 1997) devoted a respectful four-page article to the work of Dr John Baumgardner, calling him "the world's pre-eminent expert in the design of computer models for geophysical convection." Dr. Baumgardner earned degrees from Texas Tech University (B.S., electrical engineering), and Princeton University (M.S., electrical engineering), and earned a Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics from UCLA. Since 1984 he has been employed as a technical staff member at Los Alamos (New Mexico) National Laboratory." [/COLOR]

Baumgardner on Noah's Flood and catastrophist geology:

[COLOR=Blue]"The great flood of Noah's day?

Dr. Baumgardner: Yes. There's an abrupt beginning to the portion of the geological record that contains fossils. There's a worldwide discontinuity in the record, above which we find fossils, below which we do not. Above that boundary there is abundant evidence that the sedimentary layers were deposited rapidly by processes that were global in lateral extent-a regime dramatically different from anything we can observe on the Earth today The majority of the sedimentary record since that point is the product of global catastrophism. "[/COLOR]

[COLOR=Red] - “The "Darwin Party"? Oh, please. That's a perfect example of fanaticism. Creationists are forever impugning the evolutionists' motives in an endless litany of ad hominem attacks. Why can't they at least be charitable enough to admit that even if evolution is wrong, its adherents aren't evil servants of Satan with a political agenda? Such rhetoric harms the credibility of those who spout it.”[/COLOR]

Oh, please yourself. Your average evolutionist debater treats the creationist challenger, who may have relevant Ph.D.s and all, with the same infuriating condescension and often contempt that you’d show to a preschooler who thinks it is impossible for airplanes to fly. They consider typical creationist to be a lower than a landfill, whining sub-humans to whom you are not actually required to give any concrete detailed proofs. Pox on your house too.

A good example is this planet's evo-propagandist numero uno, Richard Dawkins:

[COLOR=DarkGreen][COLOR=DarkGreen]"Richard Dawkins, the enraged evolutionist of Oxford University, put it this way: “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d [COLOR=DarkGreen]rather not consider that."[/COLOR]

(Dawkins, Richard (1989), “Book Review” (of Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey’s Blueprint), The New York Times, section 7, April 9.)

[url]http://www.apologeticspress.org/rr/rr2002/r&r0209e.htm[/url][/COLOR][/COLOR]

Petr

Valley Forge

2004-05-07 00:07 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr][COLOR=Red] Ã¢â¬ÅIt is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but IÃ¢â¬â¢d [COLOR=DarkGreen]rather not consider that."[/COLORr[/QUOTE]

LOL.

Richard Dawkins is one of the highest priests in the Church of Evolutionism.

He spends his time demeaning the Galileos of our day.

Valley Forge

2004-05-07 00:21 | User Profile

Your average evolutionist debater treats the creationist challenger, who may have relevant Ph.D.s and all, with the same infuriating condescension and often contempt that youÃ¢â¬â¢d show to a preschooler who thinks it is impossible for airplanes to fly.

This distinction between relevant and irrelevant PH.D.s is important. Darwin skeptics, like Holocaust revisionists, get mocked no matter how relevant their degrees are to the issues at hand. Darwinists, in contrast, get a free pass even if their degrees have nothing to do with the issues they're babbling about. A good example of this tendency would be the Zoologist Richard Dawkins dismissing the mathmetician Hoyle's Tornado in a Junkyard argument as "ignorant." Good grief, what a joke. According to Dawkins, this Cambridge mathmatician/astronomer isn't just wrong, or someone who has committed an honest error, he's "ignorant," "insane," or "evil." And yet we're supposed to believe Dawkins and his ilk don't have an agenda. Right.

Happy Hacker

2004-05-07 02:15 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Valley Forge]Richard Dawkins is one of the highest priests in the Church of Evolutionism.

He spends his time demeaning the Galileos of our day.[/QUOTE]

Ain't that the truth.

Happy Hacker

2004-05-08 03:02 | User Profile

[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]The fact of the matter is that inorganic molecules are not inert pieces of junk - they have tendencies to form bonds with certain molecules and not others, are soluble at certain temperatures and pressures in different backgrounds, etc.

Amino acids combine in random order. Most of the preferential combining of molicules and atoms works against the formation of life, not for it. For example, oxygen destroys any organic molicules. Those who believe in abiogenesis have utterly failed to show, without a presumption of naturalism, that there's any reason to believe life formed naturally.

The Miller/Urey experiment, while heavily used for propaganda in school textbooks, was actually a scientific setback for advocates of abiogenesis. The conditions were unrealistically contrived and still demonstrated the antagonistic nature of molecules toward the production of life. If Miller and Urey had a lab as big as all the universe, they still wouldn't have come close to created the simplest life in googol of years.

The "irreducible complexity" argument is just a "we can't currently understand how it works, so let's throw up our hands and say that somebody waved a magic wand and it was all here."

Darwin suggested the irreducible complexity argument as a way to test Evolution, but you say the test is invalid. Angler, earlier in this thread, appeals to a modified irreducible complexity arguement as a test of Evolution. He quotes someone who quoets Darwin, "If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection." If such a thing were found, in a heatbeat you'd just argue that the structure use to serve the host species. The Evolutionist can accommodate every hypothetical observation, making Evolution a scientifically worthless theory, no matter how many times the faithful tell us that it makes predictions or how important Evolution is to tie everything together (these are the properties of religion, not science).

The Creationist doesn't throw up his hands and then sticks God into the gaps of what Science hasn't explained. That's the sin of the "Theistic Evolutionist." The Creationist has a model based on what the Bible says, not on what science fails to explain. It should be to your chagrin that the gaps where science fails coincides with where Creationism says God acted.