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Author Topic:   The Methods of Historical Science to demystify the process for the public:
Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 31 of 33 (850818)
04-14-2019 6:03 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by candle2
04-14-2019 6:40 AM


Not my battle
Edited by Theodoric, : Not my battle

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by candle2, posted 04-14-2019 6:40 AM candle2 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 32 of 33 (850821)
04-14-2019 6:48 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by candle2
04-14-2019 6:40 AM


... , but the results are always the same: all offsprings are of the same kind.
...
But, none of the animals in this group (kind) can produce an offspring of a different kind; only a total idiot would suggest otherwise.
Evolutionists scream and squeal that it is possible (for a male and a female of the same kind to reproduce an offspring of a different kind) if we allow billions of years for this to happen. But, this isn't science; it is fantasy.
...
Observable science clearly proves that kind produce kind.
That is exactly what evolution says, so what's your point? Yet again, are you accusing evolution of saying that we should expect to observe " apes producing humans, or bobcats producing pigs"? (quoting you directly from Message 17). In this latest message from you, you confirm that with:
Evolutionists scream and squeal that it is possible (for a male and a female of the same kind to reproduce an offspring of a different kind) ...
Even though we have explained to you several times that you are wrong in what you claim to expect from evolution and that you are misrepresenting what evolution is and says.
Yet again, please explain to us what your misunderstanding of evolution is that leads you to making such blatantly false statements. If you actually understand what you are talking about, then you should have no problem providing that explanation. But if you are the typical creationist who only knows how to regurgitate the false teachings that they feed on, then you will be unable to.
Edited by dwise1, : cleaned up bold tags

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by candle2, posted 04-14-2019 6:40 AM candle2 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 33 of 33 (875674)
05-03-2020 12:38 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by candle2
02-12-2019 8:05 PM


OK, so you're just a typical, run-of-the-mill, know-nothing, young-earth creationist (YEC). An adherent and propagator of "creation science", that deliberately crafted deception created in the early 1970's from lies in order to spread lies.
How long have you been involved with YEC? Less than a few years? I've been involved since 1981, studying at first then getting involved in on-line discussion starting around 1986 on CompuServe. I also wrote a number of articles for that forum section's library -- when I created my web site in the late 90's, the main purpose of my creation/evolution section was mainly to repost those articles.
You should read an essay I wrote in 1990 in response to a CompuServe member asking me why I was involved, Why I Oppose Creation Science (or, How I got to Here from There), since it recounts my early experiences. Basically, after an initial lackluster exposure to creationism in 1970 (basically two claims, one of which was blatantly bogus), in 1981 I was surprised that creationism was still around. Thinking that there might be something to their claims after all, I started studying it in order to find out. What I found was that each and every one of their claims that I looked into turned out to be false. They had nothing! And in the four decades since then I have seen a very great many more creationist claims. Guess how many of those claims had any validity to them? Not a single one!
Here's a little story from around 1991 that I tell in the section on my index page where I offer advice to both creationists and non-creationsts. From the sub-topic, "Learn all you can about 'creation science'":
quote:
This also cuts both ways. For the non-creationist who wants to fight "creation science", you have to know all you can about "creation science". The opposition to "creation science" was built by scientists and teachers who in the 1970's had been suckered into a "creation/evolution debate", the creationists' standard travelling snake-oil show, in which they were chewed up piece-meal and spat out. The problem was that they didn't know what they'd be up against, but rather thought the debate would be about science. They could immediately identify their creationist opponent's statements to be complete nonsense, but they didn't know how to explain that fact to the audience in the very limited time the debate format offered them. Plus, many creationist claims lie about what a scientific source says, so they'd have to be able to look up that source in order to show that was not what it actually said, again something that cannot be done in a debate format. But in a few years after having learned about "creation science" and its claims, those scientists and teachers were more than capable of refuting those creationist claims in a debate.
By knowing those claims, you won't be deceived by them and you will know how to respond to them.
Similarly, if you are a creationist then you do need to know all you can about "creation science". Most of its claims have been around for decades and each one has a history, which includes its having been refuted and how it was refuted. Almost no creationist has any sense of that history, because none of his creationist sources will tell him about it. They even think that those decades-old claims are brand-new. I have actually seen many creationists present a list of old often refuted claims confidently claiming that they "remain unanswered by the evolutionist" (an actual quote from a creationist site that he continues to claim years after learning otherwise), only to be utterly dumbfounded as he watched every single claim get ripped to shreds. For example, at an amateur-night debate I witnessed a young creationist get completely blown away when he got up and announced a "brand-new scientific discovery that will blow you evolutionists away", which turned out to be a then-decade-old claim that was refuted as soon as it was published (Setterfield's claim that the speed of light has been slowing down) and the "evolutionist" half of the audience burst out into uncontrollable laughter while at the same time trying to explain to him why that claim is bogus. It was the young creationist who found himself "completely blown away" by the truth.
The main problem for creationists is that their camp and its literature won't tell them the truth about their claims and certainly not those claims' histories. Creationist books are filled with bogus claims that were soundly refuted decades ago and each new generation of creationists picks up those books thinking that that is the latest and greatest information. Then they go out and try to use those claims and they get shot down in flames -- even Answers in Genesis creationists Dr. Jonathan Sarfati and Dr. Don Batten warn of the disasterous effects that can have on a creationist and on his faith.
In order to learn about "creation science", a creationist needs to go to the opponents of "creation science". Only by reading the critiques and refutations of creationist claims can a creationist learn about "creation science" and to prepare himself to discuss those claims. Or at the very least to learn which claims to avoid using. This falls under the heading of knowing your enemy and yourself.
To reiterate, your problem is that these claims that are new and "eye-opening" for you have been around for decades and have been completely refuted decades ago. The vast majority of them come from the 1970's and earlier, undoubtedly long before you were even born. Your creationist handlers are more than happy to teach you those claims and the exact wording with which to present them, but they will never tell you their history, including that they have all been refuted and how they were refuted. It's the fulfillment of P.T. Barnum's prophecy that "there's a sucker born every minute." Yes, candle2, you're that sucker. However quickly they lose followers to learning the truth about those creationist lies, just as quickly they get another fresh batch of suckers to lie to and deceive.
You need to learn the truth about your claims. You need to learn their history and how they were refuted. You will never learn that from creationists, who will only continue to lie to you. Instead, you need to go to the critics of "creation science", because that's where the truth lies. Here are a few resources:
  1. The TalkOrigins Archive -- Newsgroups are the discussion forums that were formed in the early days of the Internet using Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), before the World Wide Web (which uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). talk.origins was the newsgroup dealing with creation/evolution discussions.
    After the HTTP web was established, talk.origins created the TalkOrigins Archive, which hosts many articles (including research into and refutation of creationist claims), feedback messages (many from creationists feebly trying to issue challenges), and a number of special projects. This is a very good source of information.
  2. An Index to Creationist Claims -- In Message 1336, JonF already gave you a link to this, but of course you ignored it in a desperate effort to preserve your ignorance. It is one of the TalkOrigins projects in which Mark Isaak collected all the creationist claims he could, categorized them, and provided a short refutation of each one along with a bibliography. As I address your claims, I shall look it up in the index in order to demonstrate its usefulness.
  3. How Creationism Taught Me Real Science, a YouTube video series by Tony Reed -- Since you strike me as borderline illiterate, maybe watching videos is more your thing. I like this series mainly because the title reflects my own experience with creationism, that I have learned a lot about real science by researching creationist claims. You could too! The format of Tony Reed's videos is that he starts with a creationist claim that looks incredible, so he has to investigate. You could start with some of your own personal favorites.
  4. My own Links Page -- It contains links to my other pages and to other sites, including to former creationists:
    • The pages I reposted from CompuServe; eg, my "how I got started" essay (mentioned above), examination of leading creationist Dr. Duane Gish's unsubstantiated claim on national TV of a protein that showed humans to be more closely related to bullfrogs than to chimpanzees along with examination of several other creationist lies about protein comparisons, Dr. Henry Morris's Human Population Model, responses to a CompuServe creationist's 23 Points Against Evolution, geological evidence of an ancient earth, the Omphalos Argument (that God deliberately created our "young earth" with the mere appearance of great age), my own version of Richard Dawkins' WEASEL program plus a mathematical analysis showing why it works so phenomenally fast.
    • Later pages I've written post-CompuServe; eg, my quotes page, the "Creation Model" as published by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and which creationists go out of their way to avoid presenting to the public, the serious problems with the common creationist claim of "The Astronomical Improbability of Proteins Forming by Chance", my research into creationists' utterly bogus claim that an old moon should be covered by a layer of meteoric dust more than 200 feet thick (their own sources actually predict a layer about one-third of an inch thick), Pascal's Wager which a proselytizer had tried to use on me in the form of "after-life insurance", the handout for a presentation on creationism that I gave at church, an example of a typical "hit and run" email that I get from creationists who attack me for things that I have never written on my site (ie, they never bother to actually read what is written), my explanation for how our encounters with creationists typically go which is confirmed by another creationist, a case study from a real-world incident in which a public school teacher taught a "balanced treatment" creationism using creationist "public school" materials to elementary-grade students and how it turned some of the students into atheists, the highly popular creationist "leap second" claim that at the rate the earth's rotation is slowing down the earth couldn't possibly be millions of years old let alone billions (debuted in 1979, decisively refuted in 1982, and more than three decades later is still with us), Kent Hovind's Solar Mass Loss Claim which completely collapses when you do the math (which is why in his videos Hovind advises that none of his followers try to do the math), an examination of creation debates featuring links to several articles and web pages on the subject.
    • Links to other sites:
      • The National Center for Science Education (NCSE).
      • The TalkOrigins Archive, including direct links to 18 of its articles on subjects such as A Critique of ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project, Isochron Dating, Creationist Whoppers, Jehovah's Witnesses' dishonesty, Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale, Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, Horse Evolution, history of creationists' bogus human footprints with dinosaurs claims, Gentry's false polonium halo claims, an examination of the different kinds of creationism, the Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth-Moon System, Paleoanthropology Links, Fossil Hominids and the evidence for human evolution, Comparison of all hominid skulls (survey of 10 creationists who disagree which fossil hominids are "100% ape" or "100% humans"; some even changed their minds showing that there actually is no distinct dividing line as creationists falsely claim), Introduction to Evolutionary Biology, Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution, Former Creationists (Post of the Month: November 2002), Morton's Demon (Post of the Month: February 2002).
      • How Creationism Taught Me Real Science, a YouTube video series by Tony Reed (see above)
      • Dr. Allan H. Harvey's Essays. Dr. Allan H. Harvey is a Christian and a scientist (Ph.D. Chemical Engineering) who had written essays about science and religion. I found them to be of interest mainly because he also recognizes the detrimental effects that "creation science" has on faith and on anyone being able to even consider converting. He also deals with "God of the Gaps" theology and with an infamously bogus creationist claim that in the mid-1960's a NASA computer calculating the positions of the moon ended up finding Joshua's Long Day.
      • A former creationist's old site. Ed tells how he nearly became a living example of how creation science can destroy faith. Nor was his pastor any help; he advised Ed to flee the truth rather than to face it. Rather than fleeing the truth, Ed suggests that if Christians were taught the truth from the beginning, instead of creation science's contrary-to-fact claims, then their faith would not be shattered when the facts of nature become inescapable.
      • Carl Drews' site. Carl Drews is a fundamentalist Christian who has never seen any conflict between his faith and science and is thoroughly disgusted by creationists' lies. He had to leave his church when his pastor explicitly advocated using lies.
      • Glenn R. Morton. A creationist-trained geologist who went to work for oil exploration companies, hiring a number of fellow creationists to work with him. They all suffered severe crises of faith when confronted by rock-hard geological evidence that they had been taught did not exist and could not exist if Scripture were to have any meaning. Creationism drove him to the brink of atheism. His old site carried personal stories of himself and of others who either had their faith destroyed or nearly did by creationism.
      • Creationist Geologic Time Scale: an attack strategy for the sciences. by Donald U. Wise, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Research Associate at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA. This page contains a lot of interesting and useful information relating to geology and to the history of the creationism movement.
      • Glen Kuban's Paluxy Site. Glen Kuban is a former YEC who visited the Paluxy River to study the "manprints" found there next to dinosaur prints. He found that those "manprints" were not what creationists like Carl Baugh had claimed. He has studied the prints extensively and published several reports on them, which has prompted many creationists to abandon the Paluxy tracks as evidence.
      • What About Carl Baugh? An essay by a professional YEC, Dr. Don Batten of Answers in Genesis (AIG) in which he warns of the dangers and damage done by creationists using false claims.
      • Josh Zorn's Testimony. Josh Zorn is a Christian and a scientist who describes his conversion to YEC and his painful crisis of faith when he realized that YEC is false. He also writes at length about the quality of science in creation science, the relationship between science and Christianity, and the harm that is done by false creation science claims.
      • Christianity and science, are they contradictory? by Dr. Lorence G. Collins, a PhD Geology of the Department of Geological Sciences at California State University Northridge. He wrote this page as a kind of FAQ to refer creationist respondents to when they would start out by accusing him of being anti-Christian and "a typical Godless scientist ... who is determined to demonstrate that science and religion are conflicting and contradictory". Rather, he has been a practicing Christian all his life, had led Lay Witness missions for 20 years, and continues to seek "to bring people to Christ." He goes on to examine issues of biblical literalism and inerrancy and the role of integrity in Christianity.
      • Dr. Kenneth Miller. A believing, practicing Christian, a self-described creationist (since he believes in a Divine Creator, though not in YEC), and a PhD Biology and Professor of Biology at Brown University. He has also been acknowledged by the Institute for Creation Research as one of the ablest debating opponents that they had encountered.
      • Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens. Dr. Wiens provides some very good information about radioactive decay rates and dating methods, as well as explaining how creation science misrepresents that information. This is a well-known and respected site that creationists are frequently refered to. Just having creationists read it before a discussion on radiodating has been known to cause those creationists to either entirely change the subject or suddenly disappear.
      • Troy Britain's Creation-Evolution Locus. We "met" online in the CompuServe fora that housed creation/evolution discussions in the early 90's. His introduction to creation science was being witnessed-to by a creationist, which made him think that there must really be something to it. Of course, his experience was the same as my own; when he started studying "creation science" he was outraged to discover that it was just a pack of lies.
      • QUESTIONING: An Examination of Christian Belief. I also "met" Merle Hertzler online on CompuServe in 1993-94. He was a former fundamentalist and ex-Christian, but that was a couple decades ago so I don't know about his current position. In 1993, he argued on CompuServe for young-earth creationism and was one of its better, more coherent advocates. But he found that position indefensible and within a year went over to the side of evolution. On his site, his page, Did We Evolve? describes that process.
      • Genesis Panthesis by D. Jon Scott -- at this framed site, click on the link to "What is the Inspiration for the Genesis Panthesis Website?". Scott had been a very active creation science follower and propagator who used to run his own discussion board on the issue. Then one day he was finally confronted with the evidence that he had been taught could not possibly exist, a transitional form. Unable to explain it away and equally unable to ignore it, his faith completely unraveled, just as creation science had taught him must happen. Now he is strongly anti-Christian. Ironically, that "transitional form", Archaeoraptor turned out to be a hoax. Yet it did the trick just as well as the real thing, triggering the booby trap installed by "creation science" to destroy his faith. The point is that creation science had wired his faith to self-destruct in the face of contradictory evidence, whether real, faked, or imagined.
  5. DWISE1'S CREATION / EVOLUTION POSITION STATEMENT. One of the perennial problems with my creation/evolution site has been to explain my experience while keeping it succinct. On this page I just wrote the whole thing down.
Next we'll start going through your claims.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by candle2, posted 02-12-2019 8:05 PM candle2 has not replied

  
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