The bible..
- Started
- Last post
- 571 Responses
- pandasthumb0
Thanks flagellum, that's a fairly dense response and will take me a while to refute, but I'll get back to you.
- flagellum0
granted, detritus. That was a tad off-sides and not a totally genuine statement. Biology does contribute to medical technology. What I should have said is that a specifically Darwinian framework doesn't amount to anything beyond Eugenics and nihilism.
- detritus0
"I have little confidence in the opinions of biologists, since it is a soft science; an extension of physics and mathematics which are hard sciences that actually make a difference in the world. Someone once likened Biology to somewhere between pippeting and stamp collecting. I would concur."
Wow. That's a particularly cretinously insipid personal attack, even for you.
I hope you remember this when, in later years, you have to rely on gene therapy to cure you of your ignora... of whatever ailment your god chooses to inflict upon you.
- flagellum0
Hi pandasthumb,
I have little confidence in the opinions of biologists, since it is a soft science; an extension of physics and mathematics which are hard sciences that actually make a difference in the world. Someone once likened Biology to somewhere between pippeting and stamp collecting. I would concur. My interest is much more in the research of the hard sciences. Having said that, I'll address some of your claims...
First, likening ID to creationism is dishonest unless you are just uninformed. There are both agnostic and atheist ID proponents (David Berlinski, Michael Denton to name a couple). There are countless others in that category too. Then you have Behe, who is a Roman Catholic (far from a Creationist). But this should come as no shock, since ID is simply design detection applied to biology and cosmology (you know, what archaeologists already do in their scientific field). Calculating the bits of specified information in biologica life can hardly be called "religion dressed up as science".
The flagellum: the hand-waving just-so stories that chance-worshipping darwinists tell, won't do. Saying that something has been debunked, does not make it so. Pointing to homology of components in the Type 3 system is rediculous since the system appears after the flagellum appears. Neither does it explain how a nebulous a-telic natural mechanism can construct intricate machinery (which baffles engineering PHD's) which requires all of it's components at once, to function at all. Tell me how Natural Selection actiong upon Random Variation can accomplish such brilliant engineering feats which require such planning and forethought. I'm guessing you don't stay up to date on this issue. Here are some papers that will help:
http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/wd…
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/…
http://www.discovery.org/scripts…As for Entropy: Second Law of Thermodynamics. Order moving to disorder. Loss of information. In a nutshell. And of course it cannot be demonstrated in a lab that there is a correlation between entropy and sin. It's just consistent with the Biblical account.
Nobody denies that evolution occurs. What people like myself question is it's limitations. One must be careful in how they define "evolution". I believe that evolution is a fact - things have changed over time. I believe that Darwin's synthesis of Natural Selection acting on Random Variation is likely a fact too. But that it is greatly limited. As has been experimentally demonstrated with thousands of generations of Malaria and E. Coli, in the labs. In short, Darwinian mechanisms are capable of accomplishing small scale, trivial adaptive change in existing species. So, the "staggering amount of evidence" demonstrates that bacteria can build resistance and that malaria can mutate... and that's with the worst of external selection pressures applied. So evolution is true, in this sense.
However...
It is given far too much credit by it's fundamentalists. For it has not been experimentally shown to generate any novel information with regard to cell types, tissue and body plans. To assert that it has, it to extrapolate from what we DO know experimentally. And this is a huge extrapolation. An unwarranted one. In contrast, what do we observe? We observe a fossil record which demonstrates saltation events: the abrupt appearance of novel body plans followed by long periods of stasis. We do not see the gradualistic model that Darwin predicted. We also see specified information in the form of DNA, at the core of life. So, rather than a Darwinian gradualistic record, we have one that, for all appearances, looks like a highly sophisticated algorithmic computer program executed functions over a long period time, at given intervals (setInterval() anyone? ..you're a biologist... forget it). So I would propose a mechanism of front-loading. All the information was present at the beginning and set to unfold either by external or internal cues. If it's confusing to you, chat with an engineer of programmer (the future of science, at least in the US).
Further, it is patently false that speciation events are "quite well defined, as are their mechanisms". Balderdash. The mechanisms which executed the generation of biological novelty in the past have never been experimentally demonstrated. Again, unwarranted extrapolation from trivial adaptive change (where the information was already present within, just waiting to be realised). Remember what Leo Grasse said over 50 years ago:
"Evolution is largely the unfolding of preexisting rudiments."
As for science "not allowing ID". Nonsense. Science should not be restricted to blind material causation. That is 19th century hogwash. I like my science unlimited in this regard. So are more and more people who don't have pathological commitments to materialistic philosophies.
"the diversity of life on earth can be explained perfectly well by naturalistic processes that we know to exist (i.e. organic chemical processes, genetic mutation, recombination and natural selection). "
HAHAHAHAHA!!! Sorry... but that is patently false. Again, see my above mention of Malaria, E. Coli and unwarranted extrapolations. What fails is this: Darwinian mechanisms as a viable explanation for biological novlelty - despite 150 years of trying to make it be an explanation. It is actually Darwinism which fails Occam's razor, ie. why assert a convoluted naturalistic explanation when engineering and code (what we see replete throughout life) can be easily explained by an engineer/programmer?
I have so much more to say, but I must get some other work done now.
- mrdobolina0
I like the truth.
- gramme0
I like the new guy.
mrdobolina
(Oct 26 07, 11:07)Haha, of course you do.
- Mimio0
Yes, nice work.
- grunttt0
Sandwiches look good, but I could sure as hell use a beer.
gramme
(Oct 26 07, 11:06)surely someone in this thread can turn that water into wine.
- mrdobolina0
I like the new guy.
- gramme0
Sandwiches look good, but I could sure as hell use a beer.
- gramme0
I too apologize if my initial sarcam offended you. Unfortunately, much is lost in the typed word that would otherwise be understood in face-to-face interaction.
- grunttt0
*drops off sandwiches, waters, and cigarettes.
I assume this thread could use some supplies.
y'all have fun!!
- gramme0
I am just fine panda. I didn't answer all of your questions and claims because I and others have answered those same questions from other people in the greatest amount of detail I/we can gather. This discussion has been going on long before you stepped in, so you'll forgive me if I don't pull up every thread where I have ever made a coherent argument for creationism and it's attendant wolrdviews. I intend to discuss this with you via email when I am not actually under a deadline, hopefully this weekend. I actually have work to accomplish, believe it or not, and I really need to stop getting embroiled with you lot.
I think it's hilarious that you call me "vitriolic" in light of the way you talk. I didn't get mad because you "exposed me as a fraud" (nice try), but because you are rude and can't seem to just let your arguments speak for themselves. That ultimately waters down your argument and makes it difficult to take you seriously.
On atheism/humanism, you are simply dissecting my words and taking me out of context. Again, nice try. There's not really much I can do to argue against your unassailable "logic" in that regard...why do I even bother.
It's obvious that you refuse to buy the notion of ID (forget about specifics like Christianity for the moment) mainly because you cannot conceive of something more powerful than your own logic. I learned some years ago that such an approach to life is arrogant, deluded and leads to nowhere but misery and loneliness.
And that my friend is where it all falls down, and that is why we are chasing our tails.
If you care to continue the conversation in a civilized manner, email me:
- pandasthumb0
What I said was that your argument was ass-backwards, not you. And as for being rude - I admit that it irks me to hear people abuse science in the way that yourself and flagellum have here, and yes, I tend to respond with a certain lack of tact and respect. I should clarify that my lack of respeect is for your scientific opinion on this matter - not for you as a person. I apologise for those instances where I got a bit personal. I also apologise for making an unqualified assumption about the origin of your screen name.
PS - thanks for the warm welcome everyone. I realise I'm not a typical kind of patron here, but I did get my ass kicked out of a painting degree at Art School a few years ago, before I switched to science, so I'm not a complete artistic ignoramous :)
- gramme0
no actually he did, in more than one place, but that's ok. I'm a grown man. The term "ass-backwards" is a direct quote. Not a big deal, just don't call me out for making things up when I simply read more carefully than you did.
- pandasthumb0
i had no intention of dispelling your religious beliefs, just debunking the pseudoscientific nonsense that you trot out about evolution.
I realise that I will never change the minds of the pathologically deluded (deluded about evolution, mind - i don't give a toss about your personal religious philosophy), but individuals such as yourself preach the kind of bullshit that you do to subvert and distort the public understanding of real science. As someone in the know, I feel that I (along with the whole of the scientific community) have a duty to set the record straight for those who may be unsure as to what to believe. It is precisely because creationists such as yourself choose to spread your missinformation in forums such as this one (where you know that the majority of people do not have the training or the background knowledge to challenge your lies and distortions confidently), rather than in a genuine scientific forum (where your arguments would be effortlessly and systematically dismantled) that people with genuine knowledge of the subject seek out your distortions and expose them for the frauds that they are.
Of course I'm not surprised that you aren't a scientist, what surprises me is that you seem to feel confident enough in your scientific knowledge to claim that one of science's most watertight theories is a fraud.
As for showing you some literature that disproves the possibility of Special Creation, it doesn't work like that. The onus is on creation "scientists" to provide one single shred of evidence that suggests any more than superficially that it DID happen. It's ridiculous to accept something as fact simply because it's impossible to show that it couldn't be the case, otherwise we could all go around believing that invisible pink unicorns hold up the clouds (hey - show me one piece of evidence that say that they COULDN'T).
As for atheism/secular humanism and the definitions thereof, if you knew what the terms meant, then why did you willfully and grossly misrepresent them in the way that you did? Is it because it's easier to beat down a strawman than to provide a real argument? And yes the terms are related to some extent, but they do not always go hand in hand. All fish have scales (i think) but not all animals with scales are fish.
As for Charles F. Potter saying that secular humanism is a religion - so what? Your using a simple appeal to authority here - just because Charles say it don't necessarily make it so. And in any case, when i said atheism was not dogmatic, i was referring to atheism - not secular humanism. That much should be plainly obvious to anyone who read my post.
What's interesting is that in your response you fail to directly address any of the points that I have made about evolution, and instead resort entirely to ad hominem attacks, vitriolic bluster and a pointless and fallacious argument against my comments on secular humanism/atheism. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings by exposing you as a fraud, but that doesn't make you any less wrong.
- czawada0
He didn't call you "illiterate, ass-backwards idiot" that's how you perceived it.
This is why I was staying out of this thread. I can't keep up with your spin doctor skills.
*Exits thread.
- philipdrumman0
aside from all this scientific mumbo jumbo
when shit hits the fan who's name you gonna call on?
i think with all the nuke talk its time to get it right b-rothers!
- gramme0
*infer with sound cause, I mean
- gramme0
Calling someone an illiterate, ass-backwards idiot tends to ruffle most people's feathers. THis is where I infer, and I think with sounds cause, his angry disposition.
I'm sure you wouldn't be a barrel of giggles if I said that to you, Chris.
He would be much more credible if he simply relied on the strength of his arguments.