Creation vs Evolution

[Sultan Bhargash]

Originally posted by puglover
Ha! I left out the couldn't!

Then go back to the post and press the edit button instead of spamming this thread with one sentence at a time as you have done on this page.

Troquelet- you are right, science can't (and usually doesn't) just rest on given facts, but searches further for more potentialities. The point is, if evolution had "jammed" sometime these past 130 years, it would have been supplanted by the new theory of some genius.

Instead we get creationists, focusing on this topic the same argument that can be applied to 1)the earth is flat, 2)humans never landed on the moon, or 3) :santa: - basically "we didn't see it and we don't understand the science behind it so it doesn't exist". Now of course they aren't arguing those particular points, because they're "smarter than that". Fearless even seems to be able to use scientific terms. But it just doesn't make sense to argue this point. Why don't you point out that gravity is still just a theory and argue that it is the hand of God that holds everything in place? Why don't you spend your time telling us why global warming is a hoax or the missile shield will work? Why are you fixated on discrediting on of the least threatening branches of SCIENCE? Only because you think God wants you to, admit it. Well, she doesn't.

 

[puglover]

I have no objection to calling God a she. You can. Because He/She is far beyond that. So I won't argue.

 

[Archbob]

Prophecies are one thing, hard facts are the other. Hard evidence is archiology finds and things. If noah had really built that Ark, why haven't they found it. And explain this, the first religion in the world wasn't Christianity or even a Monothestic religion, why is that?

Remeber, there are also many historical records of the prophecies of other gods(like the greek apollo that came true). So why not believe in the Greek dietes, they have just as much justification as the Christian one.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Originally posted by puglover
I have no objection to calling God a she. You can. Because He/She is far beyond that. So I won't argue.

A pretty minor point in the broader discussion. I struggled with that because I wanted to write "he" which is kind of the default setting, and I think writing "she" is often used as a clever gimmick by wise acres like myself. But I ended up writing she because I wanted to underscore how little we humans can claim to know about "God". What little we learn about his creation we pick up with the best use of the senses and logic that he gave us. Evolutionism, like any of the sciences we have built over time, is a tribute to these gifts of senses. Those who attack it in the fear that it goes against their religion are in reality attacking God's own work in giving us these senses and putting us on this old old planet with the physical evidence to show us where we came from.

 

[puglover]

Fallen Angel Lord,
How do you know that polytheism was the first religion?

 

[puglover]

I don't have anymore time. I need to go to bed. Tomorrow.

 

[Archbob]

Christians often stump Unitarians and Aethists with the following question?

If there no God, then whats the purpose of this universe?

Well this question doesn't even apply because you see, Unitarians and Aethists don't really believe there has to be a point. Why does there have to be a point? The Universe could be just is. And there is another scientific discovery in research right now, that if you add up all the matter in the universe, you get zero. There have been recents discovers of "Dark matter" in the universe and the amount of dark matter equals the amount of matter we can see, therefore the sum of the universe is zero, like it was before the universe started. Nothing can come from nothing so it makes sense. Tme and time again the church has been proven wrong. On example is they prisioned Galieo for saying the Earth was not the center of the Universe. If God was guiding them, how can they be wrong?

 

[FredLC]

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
If you were god, how would you explain microbes to Moses? Would you even bother? Moses was a herder, not a microbiologist. He wouldn't have understood a word of it, nor would he have any vocabulary to describe the pictures with.

This was satisfactorily answered already, but I just can’t resist saying this...

Fearless, if I were God, I’d be able to explain quantum physics to a platypus in three minutes using only 3 random words of the dictionary, all of them deprived of their consonants.

Impossible? Maybe. But isn’t doing the impossible part of the “being God” job description?

This Moses example you gave really is WAY too weak to justify the incoherence... Not to mention that you could equally say that the only reason why God didn’t describe the macro-evolution to him is because “He wouldn't have understood a word of it, nor would he have any vocabulary to describe the pictures with”.

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
Again, I don't do the whole 'chapter and verse thing', but if I'm not mistaken, there is a passage oft-repeated in the Bible about creatures reproducing 'after their kind'. God makes on proto-cat, it becomes many different kinds of kitties. Repeat until biodiversity achieved. Rinse hands thoroughly after use. Do not get in eyes. Store in a cool dry place.

We would keep having “proto spiders” (dry-land species) that are older than “proto fish” (water species). Compartments would still be flawed.

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
Only by very narrow and hotly contested definitions of 'species'.

As I said, I’m not that good in biology. I always heard, though, that the biological definition of species is: “individuals who can reproduce between themselves and generate descendents that are also fertile”.

Care to show me a link that demonstrates the controversy of this definition?

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
Who needs to interpret the fossil record? There are no intermediate species fossils, no gradual progressions of life from one form to another, so what do I need to interpret?

If you look at fossils of creatures that walked only in two legs, used their hands constantly (and that were more refined than that of monkeys but not as much as that of modern humans) and which’s brain cavities size are, in average, between that of humans and monkeys, and you refuse to acknowledge an implication of intermediateness, than I think I’ll just waste time in following that line of arguing.

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
As to last, it seems to be working very well. And lets not forget that the patronizing started with the neo-Darwinists. All I'm doing is responding in kind, a thing that is getting very popular these days.

This also has been satisfactorily answered, but I have to add this... if you really think that acting in the role of victim was working (meaning, that people was really having empathy for your cause due to it being unjustifiably contested), you have a quite a... how can I put this... unique way of seeing things.

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
Difficulties, or results contrary to observation? Incomplete, or outright contradictory?

Difficulties and incomplete. Period.

Fearless, the idea that earth is round is VERY old... it was first conceived by Erastathones, and than much later by Galileo. It was based in empirical but inconclusive evidence, such as the shape of the earth’s shadow in the moon, the shadow of high objects (towers and threes), the study of the other planets orbits, etc…

All those implicate that conclusion, but do not prove it conclusively. This only happened when Yuri Gagarine traveled to space and saw it with his own eyes.

Implication on evolution is alike, and spread to several disciplines. The perfect evidence may be beyond us now, like proving the shape of earth was beyond humanity 500 years ago, but to simply ignore the implications is not a very smart move.

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
Variants, yes. Within the same species.

(…)

Which DNA shows a remarkable ability to repair, and coincidentally, do not appear to do much more than cripple or make cosmetic alterations in any event.

Yeah, yeah, rely on the “DNA can mutate back”.

Of course it can go back to what it was before. But it’s not a “reset”… it’s evolving again.

Remember that evolution is casuistic. A species will tend to privilege the characteristic that better fits the environment. The environment changes, the characteristic too. The environment changes back, than the evolutionary pressure reverts again, than the best characteristic is once again what it was before… so it returns.

But you mind me now, fearless… what if the environment don’t change back?

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
Given that all life on earth uses deoxyribosenucleic acid to code for its proteins, organsims that have similar metabolisms and structures should be as expected to have similar genetic structures as the sky should be expected to be blue on a clear day, not remarked upon as evidentiary of something not otherwise in evidence.

And why they use the same deoxyribosenucleic acid to code for it’s proteins? Because they came from the same source, the same primordial origin – thus evolution.

Of course, you can always get around this by saying “God could make them alike, and could make them different... he simply chose to make them alike”.

It’s the all-purpose get-away posture that I mentioned before.

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
And how many of them were deformed by injury, disease, gentic defect, or just plain young or old and thus not good examples of their species? How many more were outright frauds? Mistakes? How many many more were so incomplete as to consist of little more than a few teeth and some fragments of bone?

By any sane standard of evidence, anything that was not complete, or at least consisted of one complete structure, like a foot and ankle, or a skull and jaws with at least a few teeth, should just be tossed aside. Instead, we are left to take on faith the assurances of some paleo-bio that 'These here teeth came from an ape-man that proves evolution, because this anklebone dug up 90 years ago might be from a related animal.'

Why, in the name of any revered sentient you care to name, would anyone take someone's word for granted in a matter of such importance, on so little (and such questionable) evidence?

Sophism, sophism, all around us…

So, our incomplete but nonetheless HUGE fossil record is composed, in it’s majority, of bones so enormously deformed that they do not represent the general looks of old species.

What is the conclusion that I must get from this? That the bones of the ancients were more resistant to time when they came from deformed individuals, or that the correct, evolution-killing bones that may have being found are being systematically destroyed by the worldwide scientific anti-creationism conspiracy that you mentioned?

Originally posted by FearlessLeader2
No, it merely indicates that I've been huckstered once before in my life, and I'm adhering to the sound principles of common sense espoused in the old saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Than further your application of common sense and admit that evolution theory is a work in progress, and that it has way, WAY more evidence in it’s favor than a text written two millennia ago which is believed to have the truth only because the text itself claim to be the truth.

Regards .

 

[puglover]

FAL,
What does that have to do with our conversation? I never asked that.

 

[Archbob]

Your evidence you the prophets is probably less legit than mine of microevolution being macroevolution in the long wrong. As I pointed out Christian prophets aren't the only ones in history that have been right. The Prohphecies of greek gods(especailly Apollo have often turned out to be right) so which god do we believe in? Besides you have no hard tangible proof(like fossils) to prove creation? The bible doesn't count because all of it is written by believers and is based on faith and not tangible evidence. No one has ever seen God.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

Okay FredLC, when you put it that way, yes, I suppose God did perfectly explain the whole thing to Moses. But I'm willing to bet any sum of money you'd care to name that there are no words in Aramaic for terms like DNA, genetic alteration by conscious will, terraforming via natural processes, etc... In other words, Moses may have seen every secret of Creation, but he still had no way to scientifically describe it to anyone.

Your knowledge of Genesis is apparently badly flawed. The described progression of life in the Creation account matches exactly the described progression in the evolution account.

As to the species definition problem, once again, do a simple search on "Biological Species Concept", and you will have the whole tawdry affair laid out before you. Forget about TO, they're as unbiased as Jack Chick. Just look at the raw data available to the public from the hallowed halls of academia. Something with a '.edu' in the URL. If an ignorant, superstitious, fundamentalist primitive like me can understand it, I'm sure an enlightent and intelligent person like yourself will have no difficulties whatsoever.

-FredLC-If you look at fossils of creatures that walked only in two legs, used their hands constantly (and that were more refined than that of monkeys but not as much as that of modern humans) and which’s brain cavities size are, in average, between that of humans and monkeys, and you refuse to acknowledge an implication of intermediateness, than I think I’ll just waste time in following that line of arguing.

The italicized portions of this arguement are not in evidence, as there is no way to say with certainty how these structures were used. As such, the conclusions drawn from these statements cannot be held as more than speculation, and idle speculation at that. Why is it that I can be held in contempt for stating the inadequacy of Aramaic for scientific description, but any paleo-bio who wants to can make any claim they wish about some bone fragments and be instantly believed, without the need for any sort of corroboration or evidence? You place a great deal of faith in humans and human nature. I think your faith may be misplaced...

The only implication that evolution enjoys is that created by itself. Your claims of multi-disciplinary accord are questionable at best, and outright specious when examined carefully. Intellectual dishonesty is the hallmark of evolution research, and many of the branches that support it as well. This is an accusation that I feel very comfortable making, as history bears many examples of exactly how dishonest many of these so-called 'researchers' actually are. However far-fetched you want to make my claims of a discipline-wide conspiracy sound, the fact remains that my accusations ring uncomfortably true, when dispassionately examined. Paleo-anthropology is one doctorate that would be as worthless as a Liberal Arts degree if any serious blow came to the ToE. All the realted specialties would be similarly affected in that event, so why raise an eyebrow when I suggest that this particular secret club has a dirty secret? Why not instead see if they ARE hiding something? Don't be so gullible. Ye who would know, first must ask the question.

-FredLCAnd why they use the same deoxyribosenucleic acid to code for it’s proteins? Because they came from the same source, the same primordial origin – thus evolution.

Again, facts not in evidence. If this 'primordial origin' could happen in one place once, using DNA, why did it not happen in a hundred others, using other chemicals? IF you make your first assumption, THEN you must follow it with at least that second, AND then with a third, that DNA was more robust, and ate its competition. In that case, should there not be micrscopic fossils of non-DNA based life in the pre-Cambrian era? Well, then, where are they? No, wait, don't tell me. MORE missing links?
(And they gripe when I use the word miracle...)

-FredLCThan further your application of common sense and admit that evolution theory is a work in progress, and that it has way, WAY more evidence in it’s favor than a text written two millennia ago which is believed to have the truth only because the text itself claim to be the truth.

Yet another claim made in either ignorance of the truth, or as a deliberate falsification. Evolution is little more than a likely-sounding story, which all experimental data to date has contradicted, and which continues to be pursued for no better reason than because no one has come up with a better God-free theory.

The Bible has been shown to be widely accurate on every topic scientific and historical that it has mentioned. You seem to be making the mistake that so many other make. You confuse the Roman Catholic Church's actions with the Bible's words. Yes, the RCC ushered in 800 or so years of ignorance and superstition, in order to maintain its control over Europe. Regardless, nowhere in the Bible will you find one word that contradicts Galileo, Copernicus, or pretty much any other scientist whose work went on to gain wide acceptance until Darwin came along. That is a FACT. Archaeologists routinely use the Bible to assist in locating ancient sites, and secular writings of ancient origin usually bear out the events described in the Bible of a historical nature. This is a large body of evidence that tends to support the Bible as a credible work of historical fact, not dismiss it as a book of fairy tales. Your suggestion that the reverse is true is intellectual dishonesty at best.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

Originally posted by Fallen Angel Lord
Besides you have no hard tangible proof(like fossils) to prove creation?

Fossil records, for the record, AGAIN, actively SUPPORT Creation. The lack of intermediate fossils underscores the reality of special creation, and contemptuously brushes aside the idea of evolution by gradual progression.

Originally posted by Fallen Angel Lord
The bible doesn't count because all of it is written by believers and is based on faith and not tangible evidence.

Were you there when it was written? During all 2500 years that it was written, by some 40-odd authors, in various cultures, who managed, despite speaking different languages and coming from different cultures, to produce a work that manages to retain a common theme throughout its length? Are you even remotely aware of just how impossible it is that the Bible even exists? Do you even have the ability to concieve of how difficult it would be to reproduce this literary feat?

Merely by being written, the Bible is concrete proof that miracles DO happen. Every other book written in its time is woefully incomplete at best, if not forever lost to the vagaries of time and entropy. Its survival is yet another miracle.

You took your best shot at the Good Book. It bounced off, without leaving a smudge. Go back to trying to prove the impossible. You'll have much the same results, but it might not be as personally embarrassing.

Originally posted by Fallen Angel Lord
No one has ever seen God.

No one has ever seen air. Or vacuum. No one has ever seen love. I guess none of those exist either. Tell me, have you ever seen a coelecanth? With your own eyes? Touched one? I guess they must not exist either.

 

[newfangle]

Until God reveals himself to me, or I have received any inclination of a divine being, I will refuse to believe in His existance.

I will be a good person, I won't kill anyone, etc...

To me, religion is just something that humans will overcome in the next few centuries. Just look at how quickly it is dying in European cultures. God is dead.

As such, I will support evolution.

 

[The Troquelet]

Please remember, no "missing links" have been found.

On the contrary, what about Austrolipithecus? Archeopteryx? And so on? You're just copying from Fl2's diatribes which I have ALREADY refuted. Repeating known falsehoods does not make them true.

Why did fish eventually come to land? Because there were lush food and resources on land that were unexploited.

So I suppose you could argue that amphibians ARE the missing link.

Evolution IS a religon. Take Buddism. It has no god. Yet it is considered a religon. And it is completely Faith-Based. There is no evidence.

That is complete nonsense. Science, as I have posted before, is taking as many known facts as possible and following them into all possible conclusions, then testing each one until we find a plausible one. Thus the 100 experiments we can make by dropping a pencil 100 times, seems to lead to the THEORY [NOT fact] that there is force called gravity, and while all other solutions to the facts, all other unifying theories, such as the theory that a magical demon lives in the Earth and has some strange sort of pencil magnetism, are POSSIBLE, but NOT PLAUSIBLE. There are, of course, more than a hundred fossils , and an ENORMOUS amount of collected evidence is in favor of ALL scientific theories that ever make it to the common man [and, unfortunately, are usually stated as fact which they are NOT, they are theories]. For example, the theory of the atom, the theory of chemical interactions.

All of these theories are equally corroborated, including evolution. Evolution [and biology/genetics in general] is merely the current battleground between fact and faith, just as astronomy was a few centuries ago and chemistry before that. The outcome, of course, is and was never in doubt. And like astronomy and chemistry, the theory will probably be changed many times as new evidence is uncovered! And, of course, the Church[es] will eventually back down and take a stance of supporting the theory they originally claimed was heresy.

You can't prove what your saying

That's no argument against a THEORY. If, on the other hand, you had said, "There is no evidence behind your theory", any evolutionist would quickly have rebutted you by saying there is more than there is behind any other theory, including that of an omnipotent, allcreating God.

Look at all life. The stars, plants, animals and especially people. Look at our fingerprints. There are billions of molocules. And a sense of right and wrong. That could not just appear. There needs to be an intelligent creator. Namely God.

What you have just said in that post is that the universe is too complicated for mere humans to understand. So what else is new? We were claiming that ourselves!

Plus, the prophets. Look at their predictions of the messiah. It was hundreds of years before Jesus was born. They claimed that God told them of Jesus. Of where he'd be born and his crucifixution and resurrection. And many of the prophicies were fufilled by Jesus' ENIMIES. Some of the prophicies of Jesus could not be fufilled by himself.

I hate to hurt your feelings, but that's not evidence. It's oral history. Even your sacred Bible has been changed constantly since its creation, not only in translation but also in what's been kept and what's been thrown out. One part of the apocryphal Bible talks about a magical phoenix that visits Babylon ever 500 years - thrown out, of course, when mankind realized that phoenixes were a myth. That would have destroyed, for me and reputable scientists, any value of the rest of the "evidence" in the Bible, if the magical crossing of the Red Sea had not already done so.

if evolution had "jammed" sometime these past 130 years

One point that hasn't been made yet is that in humanity's care for the crippled, sick, and so on, and in our exploitation of new medicine, we are slowing DOWN evolution in our own species because obviously people are not building up resistances to diseases, as more sick people are surviving to reproduce.

Which is in no way a bad thing! It's a triumph of mankind over natural forces!

But what it does mean is that if some disease that was vaccinated before it ran its course, like smallpox, returned, it would wreak some pretty massive destruction if we weren't prepared! And that's what some American doctors are worried about - being prepared for all kinds of diseases from terrorist attacks and so forth. But all of this is drifting hopelessly offtopic!

 

[The Troquelet]

If there no God, then whats the purpose of this universe?

Good question. I believe in a God, but just as a physical force which we don't understand and can't detect, that sets in motion all the other forces - like evolution. As for the universe, why does there have to be a point? We are used to giving things, places, people, and objects purposes, because that's how we are made. That's the same part of our makeup that makes us the sole toolmaking animal. I wonder if an animal that just interacts with its environment, such as a bird - do they see the universe as having a purpose? We can say that the universe was made for us because we mold the universe [or the earth, so far] to suit ourselves. What if we didn't do that. Would we still see the universe as having a purpose? A lot of questions, few answers. That's how I like the Universe maybe our purpose is to discover how things work.

to FredLC of course, are you a lawyer? You always say things so much more logically than I can

Okay, and now back to FL2, who I take such joy in talking to, even though he can't hear a word I say since he has me in his "ignore" list!

As to the species definition problem, once again, do a simple search on "Biological Species Concept", and you will have the whole tawdry affair laid out before you. Forget about TO, they're as unbiased as Jack Chick. Just look at the raw data available to the public from the hallowed halls of academia. Something with a '.edu' in the URL. If an ignorant, superstitious, fundamentalist primitive like me can understand it, I'm sure an enlightent and intelligent person like yourself will have no difficulties whatsoever.

So the theory is contested, even hotly so. Don't you realize? This is how it is SUPPOSED to work! That is the mental gap you have as a creationist. You assume that because something cannot be proven true, it must be false. You likewise assume that if something is not accepted as truth by everyone, it must therefore be false.

Neither of these assumptions have any place in the scientific process. NO THEORY SHOULD EVER BE ACCEPTED AS ABSOLUTE FACT. In fact ALL theories are contested by SOMEONE - it's just evolution gets so much attention - and there's more funding for contention from people like you. Which is a good thing!

We can regard creationism itself as a theory - although one with little or no evidence behind it.

The italicized portions of this arguement are not in evidence, as there is no way to say with certainty how these structures were used.

I like debate, but wilfull blindness just gets on my nerves. We can see that the hands were used for dexterous tasks just the same way we can tell what the diet of dinosaurs was by examining their dental structure. Animals with bones the right shape survive longer, do better. If all there is to eat is trees , you can bet a Brontosaurus with excellent flat molars is going to make more little Brontosauri than his sharp-toothed cousin who can't chew up the bark and tough leaves and thus will probably starve to death .

The only implication that evolution enjoys is that created by itself. Your claims of multi-disciplinary accord are questionable at best, and outright specious when examined carefully. Intellectual dishonesty is the hallmark of evolution research, and many of the branches that support it as well. This is an accusation that I feel very comfortable making, as history bears many examples of exactly how dishonest many of these so-called 'researchers' actually are. However far-fetched you want to make my claims of a discipline-wide conspiracy sound, the fact remains that my accusations ring uncomfortably true, when dispassionately examined. Paleo-anthropology is one doctorate that would be as worthless as a Liberal Arts degree if any serious blow came to the ToE. All the realted specialties would be similarly affected in that event, so why raise an eyebrow when I suggest that this particular secret club has a dirty secret? Why not instead see if they ARE hiding something? Don't be so gullible. Ye who would know, first must ask the question.

This is a lot of fine big words and grandiose rhetoric, but there are absolutely NO facts behind a single sentence. The whole thing is a monstrous generalization. I'm interested in HEARING any facts you do HAVE, though. For example, how "these so called researchers" have been "dishonest". I bet there ARE facts behind most of what you're saying - but you're so used to talking in generalities when the circumstances are, unfortunately, that you HAVE no factual backup, that you plum forgot to include some when you did!

Evolution is little more than a likely-sounding story, which all experimental data to date has contradicted, and which continues to be pursued for no better reason than because no one has come up with a better God-free theory.

I am tired of saying this and now I will be rude. Put up or shut up. WHAT experimental data, HOW has it contradicted the theory. WHAT evidence do you have that it is pursued for anything but the truth, which is why people BECOME scientists in the first place. No, your conspiracy theory is not an alternative. Wouldn't an innovative young conspiracy scientist be able to make himself MORE rich and famous by pretending to DEBUNK evolution than by meekly following facts to their rightful conclusion and agreeing with the majority of reputable scientists? That's right, he would. So conspiracy theory falls flat.

 

[The Troquelet]

The Bible has been shown to be widely accurate on every topic scientific and historical that it has mentioned.

You are either sarcastic or insane on this one. I want corroboration! Or silence!

This is a large body of evidence that tends to support the Bible as a credible work of historical fact, not dismiss it as a book of fairy tales.

Hey, there's a difference between knowing what turn to take to get to Nazareth, and claiming that the Red Sea can be split by the power of prayer. Don't mix geography with theology. Knowing where all the towns in the Middle East are, and who was ruler of Rome during the time of Jesus, does not necessarily make each source - including the Bible - suddenly a paragon of truth. Hell, I could tell you that, and I'm an evolutionist - a born liar, right?

The lack of intermediate fossils

FEARLESS: I am NOT going to treat you as an credible member of this debate as long as you continue to state KNOWN FALSEHOODS to support your argument. You are only discrediting yourself by repeating over and over again this acknowledged lie.

to produce a work that manages to retain a common theme throughout its length?

I really hate to take a cheap shot like this, but the strength of the Holy Bible is in its repetitions. And that is not meant sarcastically. Entire phrases, paragraphs, are repeated word for word in different sections - supposedly to drive the point home, possibly because the new author could not think of anything else original enough to go in the bible.

Are you even remotely aware of just how impossible it is that the Bible even exists?

As impossible as the fact that coueism and mesmerism ever succeeded for any length of time! Face it, people believe what they wish. We are not ALWAYS logical creatures

Merely by being written, the Bible is concrete proof that miracles DO happen.

Well, hey, I couldn't ask for a better review of the book - even in the Times All this proves is you really like the Bible - something we established at the beginning of the debate when you stated that you were a creationist.

Its survival is yet another miracle.

You mean the constant edited versions? I don't call that "survival". The monks leaning over their tables copying from one desk-chained book to another? Like I said, it was important to a lot of people. That doesn't make it true - look at all the people who believed in the Four Elements and such tosh - alchemy - mesmerism - clairvoyance, and so on. I like this book does not equal This book states the truth. Except, of course, to “me”. Which is the block that you are stumbling over - you expect us to agree with you for no reason but that.

You took your best shot at the Good Book. It bounced off, without leaving a smudge. Go back to trying to prove the impossible. You'll have much the same results, but it might not be as personally embarrassing.

This is not an argument, it's a personal attack. All it says is that you have run out of steam in the realm of logic and proof, so you will say that I am "shooting at the Good Book" and that I am "embarrassing myself". How, by refuting every argument that you have seen fit to throw at me? Also, "trying to prove the impossible" is a choicely ironic phrase, Fearless... But I won't delve into personal attacks myself.

This is not my best shot either and I am not the best arguer! just the one with the most time

No one has ever seen air. Or vacuum.

Nonsense once more. We INFER these things by, for example, Bernoulli's principle. I might add that our entire theory of chemistry and biology rests on the existence of air, and of oxygen in that air. If there's no air, how can we for example forge iron or steel? Why do objects of same mass fall differently if differently shaped? Obviously, all these questions are ridiculous, because we take for granted that air exists, BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN INFERRED IN COUNTLESS EXPERIMENTS AND IN OUR DAYTODAY LIVES. THAT right there is the difference between air and God. You come up with an experiment to test the existence of God and I will try it out personally. I am not afraid of truth. I believe in God myself. And that is a good note on which to end my post

 

[FearlessLeader2]

Originally posted by newfangle
Until God reveals himself to me, or I have received any inclination of a divine being, I will refuse to believe in His existance.

O, Kaaaaay. Uh, point?

Originally posted by newfangle
I will be a good person, I won't kill anyone, etc...

Riiiiight. Uh, point?

Originally posted by newfangle
To me, religion is just something that humans will overcome in the next few centuries. Just look at how quickly it is dying in European cultures. God is dead.

As such, I will support evolution.

Oh. I get it. Since you don't believe in God, you believe in evolution instead, even though it has no internal consistency or logic, and reaches conclusions that are not supported by the evidence.

Um, have you even considered embracing some third option, or failing that, creating a third option to embrace? I mean geeze, you sound as bad as most Creationists. They seem to think that just because the ToE is grossly flawed and obviously wrong, there is no alternative but to accept Creation. There are other options:

1) Mankind is the product of a eons-long genetic research project carried out by an inhuman alien intelligence or civilization.

2) Passing aliens thought the area showed promise as a future real estate venture, and left behind a terraforming device that has sculpted the raw materials into a civilization ripe for enslavement or other conversion.

3) Solipsism.

4) Some other weird theory.

Don't get me wrong, I happen to think that Creation is right. I've been taking lethal potshots at the ToE for awhile now, and I'm waiting for it to finish bleeding to death through the gaping holes so I can start building my case for my favorite theory. In the meantime, I'm more than happy to defend Creationism from both the ToEers and the BibLits, who are far more damaging to Creationism than evolutionists could ever hope to be. I'll also be happy to pick holes in any of the above four options, should you care to embrace one of them. Most of them have equal credibility as the ToE, so I should have as little or less difficulty shooting them down.

 

[Toasty]

Those who believe in the creation theory vs. the theory of evolution would do well to read The Darwin Awards. It certainly made me a believer .

 

[The Troquelet]

I'm much too tired and cranky to respond to YET ANOTHER of "Fearless"'s posts. But I will do so anyway because I am a masochist! Inflicting pain on yourself is a thankless job but someone has to do it!

So, and this being of course addressed to nobody in particular since the poster of this diatribe has got his fingers in his ears:

I don't NORMALLY defend Newfangle's point of view, but for you I'll make an exception. Where do you get off with the generalizations? Saying evolution reaches conclusions not supported by the evidence, and leaving like that like the smug "debater" you are, will not do. What evidence, what conclusions, how do they contradict? Throwing statements around without backup is not changing anybody's mind. And as much as I may seem like the diehard evolutionist I am perfectly willing to switch sides if you start to show reason [this is a claim anyone can toss around - there is no danger in it]

I like your options. Instead of choosing sanity or insanity, why not lunacy? I WISH the universe were solipsistic, it would make a lot more sense.

And by the way I mean "insane" not as in "crazy" but as in "devoid of reason". Which it is, perfectly. Faith is merely conclusions without hypotheses and evidence. This is why it is called "blind" faith. The argument of faith is "It's like this because it's like this". That is insanity to me - it will lead to infinite loop on a computer, and if humans weren't able to wilfully hide from unpleasant facts a lot of people would spontaneously combust from faith. We don't know how lucky we are.

"lethal" potshots? In a duel, a man stands before his opponent and shoots like a man. He does not take the bullets out of his opponent's gun beforehand, unless he is very very afraid that the other man is a better shot. That is the situation here.

Have you heard the phrase "don't beat a dead horse"? THAT is the situation here. I have taken your every sentence apart and shown you how in some places you use logical fallacies, in others illogical leaps of faith, in another a personal attack, in another sheer insults and unreason.

I responded to the posts of several creationists including yourself on this very page - a rebuttal so long it took three posts to fit.

Obviously, the other evolutionists are hard put to find any place in your illogic that I have not covered. They do not see fit to repeat my posts because they are addressing their comments to THOSE CREATIONISTS WHO ARE ACTUALLY DEBATING. You, sir, are not debating, you are carrying out a one-man oratory routine. You are like a talk radio host - free to state known falsehoods [like saying there are no intermediate fossils] with absolute impunity of real-time correction.

In short, because I am the one doing most of the arguing for evolutionism, and because you are not reading my posts, you believe that you are "winning" this "debate" because you do not read anyone responding to your "arguments". If you would read my arguments and respond to them like a DEBATER, then I would take your claims that Evolution is "bleeding to death" of "gaping wounds" without so much contempt and maybe a little more sarcasm. For now, I merely pity you. No matter how annoying you become, you have taught me that it's better to listen and bear the brunt of the attack than to pop off to dream world where the opposing side is never given a chance to rebut. On the contrary - I have refuted EVERY argument, without exception, that you have cared to bring to the table, and you have refuted NONE of mine. If you find an exception to above rule, I will personally eat my hard drive. This thread, and the above three posts in which I refute your argument, WOULD be a vindication of evolution - if you read them. Since you aren't, I personally don't feel as if the opposing side has been given a chance to respond to MY arguments! So the debate is a failure of communication on both sides thanks to you hiding behind your monitor. I don't know if you would be able to satisfactorily reply to any of my posts, but judging from the factless rhetoric that you post in such great volumes, I doubt it. I do look forward to the day when you take me off the list just out of curiosity, and come read this thread and see how triumphant you seemed when you refused to listen to your opponents. Sensing that my words are wasted, I will for now retire and leave evolutionism to the defence of reasonable Civ Fanatics who are never in short supply

 

[Maj]

Well, after reading many of his posts inside and outside of this thread I've come to the conclusion that FL2 is a lunatic. I don't really want to lay out of the evidence so you'll just have to take my sudden clarvoyance as something of a miracle.

I can understand you've had to take a lot of flak and insult over the course of these debates, but many have tried to make their arguments in the spirit of civility, only to have their comments thrown back topped with sarcasm and ridicule. As a moral absolutist and 'champion of rationality' you had many chances to take the high road, yet decided instead to stoop to condescending tactics. You allowed your anger to take the reins and in doing so eliminated all my belief in your rationale.

What I find most amazing is that you placed The Troq on your ignore list. Why? Because he's offending? My goodness man, take a look at what you're telling people. Don't dish it out of if you can't take it.

I'm finished reading your garbage. You may mask its odour with a formidable command of the English language, but eventually people will see right through your articulate, yet flawed reasoning. By the standards you've employed to guide your willful ignorance and with the aid of my childish nature, I'm placing you on my list.