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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 It is the same methodology. Why are you not understanding this?

Ok, but I was specifically regarding dating techniques. Let's keep it there since I don't want you assuming I dispute all scientific methods, because many are not applicable to my scientific assumption reasoning. I thought this was clear, I hope it is now.

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And BTW, DNA testing has greatly strengthened evolutionary theory. A bit off topic, but since you seem to agree with the DNA testing done for a murder, I hope you realize you are agreeing with the same methods utilized for lineages.

Sure. I'm not that educated on DNA testing in general, basically what I learned from GATTACA and Jurassic Park. I'll take your word for it. I'm not sure how it proves evolution. Enlighten me?

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I am an evolutionist. So's the Pope. Not too bad company, if you ask me.

I won't even get into that. I don't want to offend any Catholics.

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Those cultures do not coincide well with the time and scope of the event. Furthermore, most of those cultures had no idea just how big the world was at that given point in time - a worldwide flood to them may have simply been a heavy monsoon season, or a very bad El Nino, or an incredible Hurricane. The scientific validity of those stories are laughable. You really want me to accept these as evidence?

Heh, no. I agree that many could be taken out of context and some are even completely off-target. I do have to take them into consideration, however, when pondering the history of the world. I mean, they were there, we weren't. That's an easy concept, isn't it?

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What's wrong with examining the strata for evidence?

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What's wrong with examining the biota for evidence?

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What's wrong with examining meteorlogical data for evidence?

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Why are you afraid to invoke any science to examine evidence?

Nothing. Invoke some science to prove evolution there, and I'll give you the Creation counterpart. I'll play this game.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 You really need to stop reading creationist propaganda and start doing a little thinking on your own.

Haha! You read evolutionist propaganda, I read creationist propaganda. I'll stop when you stop. Deal?

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 People believe in evolution because there is evidence to support it. Damn repeat mode is killing me here. Do you honestly read anything else outside of creationist propaganda?

Repeat mode killing me here as well.

Do you read anything else outside of evolutionist propaganda?

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 That explains bias in evolution? What kind of back-ass answer is that?

No, I left the Biblical quote in there just to piss you off.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Interpreted by whom? Seriously, do you have any understanding whatsoever of geography and geology? I'm sorry, but I seriously cannot sit down and give a lesson on thrust faults and lava flows, and how they've occurred over time. You really need to have a better understanding of these things before you present them here. Simple regurgitation of creationist propaganda is getting tedious. Have you not reasoned these things out on your own?

I believe I have a good understanding on how these things work. Let's hear some pro-evolution geological evidence. We'll go from there.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Ahh yes, the old probability of life occurring scenario. Of course, abiogenesis is not related to evolution, but allow me to expand further on this logic: Consider the probability of your own existence. Suppose the Earth is as young as many creationists say it is, about 5000 years old. What then is the probability that you would have been born? Let's generously assume that the average length of a generation over the last 5000 years has been 30 years. Let's also assume, very generously, that the average probability of an individual living long enough to have children and then to actually have them is 95%. The probability that all of your great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandmothers survived and had children leading to you (or to anyone) would then be about 1 in 25 million! You shouldn't be alive. Neither should I. But somehow we all won the lottery. This is a good example of the posterior probability fallacy. The probability of an event occurring, after it has already occurred, is exactly 100%. Just because a given protein is configured in a certain way doesn't mean it couldn't have been just as successfully configured in a bazillion other possible ways. It also borders the logical fallacy of incredulity (or God of the Gaps). How can you defend such fallacious logic?

I said I laughed when I saw this. Using that as a defense is like invoking the Drake equation to prove there is other intelligent civilizations out there. I'm not defending it.

EDIT: I'm out for the night, will continue tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

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Originally posted by Seventil And again... I know you love when I quote well known or old sources, so have a field day with it...

So long as you realize that quoting someone without supporting evidence does nothing to strengthen your case, no skin off my nose.

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Professor D.M.S. Watson, one of the leading biologists and science writers of his day, demonstrated the atheistic bias behind much evolutionary thinking when he wrote: Evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.

For the last fucking time, stop it with this bullshit creationist quote mining! It's completely fallacious and insincere of you to continue:

http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus...ies/lie031.html

...

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So it’s not a question of biased religious creationists versus objective scientific evolutionists; rather, it is the biases of the Christian religion versus the biases of the religion of secular humanism resulting in different interpretations of the same scientific data. As the anti-creationist science writer Boyce Rensberger admits: At this point, it is necessary to reveal a little inside information about how scientists work, something the textbooks don’t usually tell you. The fact is that scientists are not really as objective and dispassionate in their work as they would like you to think. Most scientists first get their ideas about how the world works not through rigorously logical processes but through hunches and wild guesses. As individuals, they often come to believe something to be true long before they assemble the hard evidence that will convince somebody else that it is. Motivated by faith in his own ideas and a desire for acceptance by his peers, a scientist will labor for years knowing in his heart that his theory is correct but devising experiment after experiment whose results he hopes will support his position. It’s not really a question of who is biased, but which bias is the correct bias with which to be biased! Actually, Teaching about Evolution admits in the dialogue on pages 22–25 that science isn’t just about facts, and it is tentative, not dogmatic. But the rest of the book is dogmatic that evolution is a fact!

A secularist logically equates to an evolutionist?

Hmmm, I guess those 40% of scientists who study evolution but believe in a deity of sorts (including mostly Christians) need to be told otherwise.

Bad argument.

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Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist (and self-proclaimed Marxist), is a renowned champion of neo-Darwinism, and certainly one of the world’s leaders in promoting evolutionary biology. He recently wrote this very revealing comment (the italics were in the original). It illustrates the implicit philosophical bias against Genesis creation regardless of whether or not the facts support it: We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Again, quoting a person's statements does not strenghten your argument. This also falls into the logical fallacy of argument from authority.

Argue the substance of the topic. Show me bias, not someone telling me there's bias. I could quote a million people that state otherwise, but that's not a very good support for evidence, is it?

...

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Many evolutionists chide creationists not because of the facts, but because creationists refuse to play by the current rules of the game that exclude supernatural creation a priori.4 That it is indeed a ‘game’ was proclaimed by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dickerson: Science is fundamentally a game. It is a game with one overriding and defining rule: Rule #1: Let us see how far and to what extent we can explain the behavior of the physical and material universe in terms of purely physical and material causes, without invoking the supernatural.5 ... ^ Fun game, is it not?

Are you fucking serious? I've asked this earlier - when and how do you expect scientists to evoke an unsupported supernatural event, insert it whenever they damn well please into supported natural events, and call it "science"?!?

That's unbelievably illogical. You really think this way? Truly sad.

...

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And on the origins and assumptions of science: Many historians, of many different religious persuasions including atheistic, have shown that modern science started to flourish only in largely Christian Europe. For example, Dr Stanley Jaki has documented how the scientific method was stillborn in all cultures apart from the Judeo-Christian culture of Europe.16 These historians point out that the basis of modern science depends on the assumption that the universe was made by a rational creator. An orderly universe makes perfect sense only if it were made by an orderly Creator. But if there is no creator, or if Zeus and his gang were in charge, why should there be any order at all? So, not only is a strong Christian belief not an obstacle to science, such a belief was its very foundation. It is, therefore, fallacious to claim, as many evolutionists do, that believing in miracles means that laboratory science would be impossible. Loren Eiseley stated:

Complete strawman. One can believe in miracles and still believe in laboratory science. But to attempt to dip miracles in with observed, tested, verifiable phenomena is completely fallacious. Keep miracles out of the lab, and everyone is happy.

Many scientists do just that. Why do you have a problem with it?

And the fact that the scientific method was created in a Christian culture is completely irrelevant. Galileo correctly demonstrated the orbits of the planets around the sun, and he was very much in a Christian culture. They refused to believe him and forced him to recant. So what?

That is patently absurd.

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The philosophy of experimental science … began its discoveries and made use of its methods in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a creator who did not act upon whim nor interfere with the forces He had set in operation … . It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption.

Aside of the fact that Eisley predates Darwin (one of his contemporaries, in fact), this says nothing about the validity of how we utilize scientific methodology now. It also says nothing about methodological naturalism, which is where scientific methodolology was derived, and how we observed and understand the natural world.

You seem to be having a difficult time understanding the fact that we simply cannot test or reliably observe supernatural events. Why would you choose to insert such invalid and unreliable events into a clearly observable, reliable, natural world, and then erroneously label it as "science"?

You really don't know what science is, do you?

...

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More biased to come. I look forward to seeing your refutes on them. http://www.answersingenesis.org/hom...e1/chapter1.asp

A rather piss-poor job so far.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Last edited by MisterOpus1 on Jul-29-2004 at 03:17

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Originally posted by Seventil Sigh... there really is no getting through to you. Let me try and break it down: http://www.creationists.org/resp0001.html - Responses from a creationist viewpoint Space and Cosmology? http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c005.html http://www.trueorigin.org/hughross02.asp Bias in Geology? http://creationanswers.net/gensci/STRATEXP.HTM http://www.gennet.org/facts/metro11.html http://www.trueorigin.org/ - Disputes many talkorigins.com issues. I like their FAQ: Five Major Evolutionist Misconceptions about Evolution 1. Evolution has never been observed. 2. Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. 3. There are no transitional fossils. 4. The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance. 5. Evolution is only a theory; it hasn’t been proved. http://www.trueorigin.org/isakrbtl.asp

YOU need to stop posting creationist propaganda and argue the points with me. Answer my questions directly. I demonstrated a very easy example on how evolution occurs. I also gave you an example of evolution occurring with a species in a mere 40 yrs. Your response, please.

YOU need to demonstrate how evolution violates 2LOT?


YOU need to explain how there are no transitional fossils (psst, what on earth are all these, then?: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq...al/part1a.html, follow the links).

YOU need to explain why evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance, even though evolution says nothing of the sort.

I believe I explained about evolution being a theory, and the concept of a theory. YOU need to explain your difficulty with that.

YOU need to explain space and cosmology, geology, and any other weblinks you utilize. Please do so at this time.

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It looks like the education system is working perfectly, oh so perfectly.

*sigh*, unfortunately not, but I think this is an off topic.

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Thank you, Father Out of Context. I'm going to stop defending you taking every comment of mine out of context. Once again, out of context.

Explain in detail how I took your quotes out of context. I followed your reason logically toward the conclusions I reached.

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It is false now. I thought everyone knew that?

Are you being playful or downright ignorant? I simply cannot tell now.

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Oh? Sounds like someone is defending a flat earth. I'm glad to see you're so open minded to think that a scientific theory will never change.

*blink*

What the hell is wrong with you? How many times have I said before that theories are subject to change, based on supporting or unsupporting evidence?

Do you have a reading disability?

The fundamental principles of relativity however, have not changed. Certain modifications have certainly taken place, but the underlying principles have not changed.

The same is true for evolution. Why are you having such a difficult time accepting this?

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Once again, for like the 4th time, I'm not questioning the reliability of their testing methods. I'm questioning the assumptions they based it on.

And once again, I've explained that those premises are highly reliable. What is your problem with high reliability?

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Geological dating methods, especially radioactive ones, are held to be unreliable because they rely on assumptions about constant levels of isotopes throughout the earth's entire history — assumptions which cannot be proved. Prove it.

*blink blink*

What the hell is wrong with you? I just showed it earlier?

Why can you not indulge me and do the same about its inconsistency? Demonstrate now that the rates are inconsistent.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

quote:

Originally posted by Seventil Germ Theory. Here we go. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/ From Pro-Evolutionist Talk Origins http://www.trueorigin.org/spetner1.asp From Pro-Creation True Origin I'm only about half-way done with the rebuttal from True Origins... will comment when finished.

*sigh*

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/spetner.html

This is tedious. Argue the points yourself or do not argue at all. If you do not understand the argument, why are you arguing?

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

quote:

Originally posted by Seventil Ok, but I was specifically regarding dating techniques. Let's keep it there since I don't want you assuming I dispute all scientific methods, because many are not applicable to my scientific assumption reasoning. I thought this was clear, I hope it is now.

According to your reasoning, yes they are. And there's only 1 scientific method. The method is used by all sciences, including evolution. You really need to understand this point.

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Sure. I'm not that educated on DNA testing in general, basically what I learned from GATTACA and Jurassic Park. I'll take your word for it. I'm not sure how it proves evolution. Enlighten me?

In a nutshell, DNA sequencing has done a splendid job of confirming empirical observation. Once again, it utilizes probability, so I hope you have the stomach to accept it. A descent starting point is to take a genetics course, esp. a molecular genetics course. But you can do some basic reading here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html

But what's more, by not understanding or educating yourself on DNA sequencing, but claiming that you understand and have investigated "both sides" of the argument without investigating DNA evidence, that makes you a liar.

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I won't even get into that. I don't want to offend any Catholics.

Why not? The Pope confirms evolutionary theory, is he not authoratative enough for you?

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Heh, no. I agree that many could be taken out of context and some are even completely off-target. I do have to take them into consideration, however, when pondering the history of the world. I mean, they were there, we weren't. That's an easy concept, isn't it?

Do you have any idea what the field of forensics is?

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Nothing. Invoke some science to prove evolution there, and I'll give you the Creation counterpart. I'll play this game.

*blink*

What have I been doing up to this point?

Do you have a reading disability?

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Last edited by MisterOpus1 on Jul-29-2004 at 05:51

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Originally posted by Seventil Haha! You read evolutionist propaganda, I read creationist propaganda. I'll stop when you stop. Deal?

Scientific data is considered propaganda to you?

Noted.

I refer to websites to illustrate my points. Up to this point I have refuted your arguments with my illustrations and basic logic. You, OTOH, refer to creationist websites to quote mine and give dated, refuted arguments.

I'm sorry if I simply don't see it your way. This is usually how a logical debate works - giving supporting evidence for an argument. So far I have seen little supporting evidence for your arguments.

Tedious.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...