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Author Topic:   There are easy creationist answers to problems evolutionists pose
PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(2)
Message 3 of 111 (885220)
03-28-2021 1:37 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by mike the wiz
03-28-2021 8:14 AM


Another low-quality post.
The fact that you can answer weak versions of cherry-picked arguments does nothing to help your case. Indeed, it suggests that you lack good answers to more serious arguments.
For instance:
There is a very real problem that Kind boundaries are not identifiable. Linnaean taxonomy shows a single tree of life, not a collection of bushes or shrubs. The evidence used to identify relationships is the same whether it crosses the presumed Kind boundaries are not. If the boundaries are there, why are they not seen?
It is also a real problem that the Flood was rejected by geologists. Flood belief was dominant in that time. The idea that the Flood would have produced results that look like the product of long ages instead is obviously dubious. The very fact that geologists could come up with successful models based on old-Earth ideas, but not on Young Earth Flood geology ideas is a real issue.
Berthault’s work hasn’t exactly done much to change the situation either - unless you are going to assume that the Flood was guided by flumes.
Simply asserting that there is some model that is supposed to explain the data is “easy” but it certainly isn’t a good answer.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by mike the wiz, posted 03-28-2021 8:14 AM mike the wiz has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 5 by mike the wiz, posted 03-28-2021 7:12 PM PaulK has replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(1)
Message 10 of 111 (885233)
03-29-2021 2:20 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by mike the wiz
03-28-2021 7:12 PM


quote:
It doesn't suggest that.
Then why don’t you pick better arguments - or at least better forms of the arguments you do pick?
quote:
It suggests you don't know easy answers to the complaints you repeat on boards like this ad-nauseam.
The answers you choose to give are clearly limited by your knowledge, not mine.
quote:
o the absence of more "serious" arguments not being mentioned here is not a conspicuous absence of evidence it is an expected absence of evidence which means the conclusion that I lack good answers would be an implied argumentum ad ignorantiam because clearly the aim wasn't to deal with the more complex arguments so it doesn't imply what you suggest it does.
So the aim was not to demonstrate that you really had easy answers to even the sorts of objections typically found here.
quote:
Of course I don't expect you to know you are making these mistakes given they require a subtle and acute thinker to spot and you are coarse, crude and personal in your poor standard of debate where you focus on character-assassination instead of a fruitful discussion.
Of course you have to resort to this pretence of superiority because you can’t handle the intellectual level of the debate.
We’ll skip over your foolishness where you try to pretend that my initial comment was an argument.
quote:
You always barely state your case. That is, "poor quality". You state something as though it is true if you state it. I don't accept there is any tree of life, for the reasons I give in my short book, I explained that there. I believe I put my book here at EvC forum, so I guess you haven't read the part about the tree of life.
I would have thought that someone who claims to be as well informed as you would be aware of Linnaean taxonomy. Whether you accept the existence of a single tree of life is irrelevant - indeed my comment clearly implies that creationists do not. The point is taxonomic classification, and its failure to find clear indications of distinct Kinds.
quote:
I explained that the prediction for a tree of life is that diversity would precede disparity because it takes a lot of hypothetical evolutionary time to get to the phyla level of change. But what we actually see is that disparity precedes diversity. That's a problem because in evolutionary time the explosion is relatively quick. After all they say something as, "close" as primates, with chimps and humans, would take say 5-10 million years of divergence, so how many millions of years of divergence would it take to get all of the phyla we find in the Cambrian?
Let us note that this fails to address the point. However it is also based on a major misconception. The taxonomic classifications are based on modern life. The differences between phyla are based on the divergence that has accumulated since the original split. We should expect the early branches to be early - that should be obvious.
quote:
This is a naive comment. It's like saying, "unless you assume abiogenesis occurred in an experimental apparatus" if we were to find an example of abiogenesis in the lab.
Seriously?
Well, no. It’s like saying that to model conditions you have to make the effort to simulate conditions. The fact that the flumes are straight narrow channels makes them a poor simulation of a flood.
quote:
I can and have answered the more complex arguments here and at other places so the term, "cherry picked" only counts as rhetorical spin by trying to paint me as someone only mentioning the simple problems because he can't deal with the more sophisticated ones.
The fact that you are dealing with very weak forms of the arguments you do address (as well as your other failures) suggests that you don’t even have good answers to those.
quote:
You tend to IMPLY things about the person FAR TOO MUCH, Paul, most likely because you haven't the intelligence to win in a toe-to-toe debate so you have to fall back on the use of flimsy rhetoric instead.
One can only imagine how you’d react if I used similar rhetoric.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by mike the wiz, posted 03-28-2021 7:12 PM mike the wiz has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 19 by AdminPhat, posted 03-29-2021 1:27 PM PaulK has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(2)
Message 11 of 111 (885234)
03-29-2021 2:59 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by mike the wiz
03-28-2021 7:48 PM


quote:
Generally I don't see how old-earth "uniformity" has born out at all. They constantly need to find new answers.
Which is a characteristic of science.
quote:
It's catastrophe that answers for a lot of things these days, and on a big scale. There is so much evidence that fits with the flood scenario that basically evolutionists behave ridiculously when they pretend it doesn't, they basically argue contradiction by saying local catastrophe would create catastrophic signal but a larger catastrophe wouldn't.
Perhaps you would like to produce an actual example of someone making that claim. So far as I can see the issue is that there is no catastrophic signature that would match the Flood.
quote:
Especially so when sediment-volume would be far more explainable in terms of a flood, for the types of evidence found in modern times they didn't know about back then such as massive evidence of erosional remnants and inselburgs. Planations of a massive scale, explainable as the abative phase of the flood.
I’ll note that this falls far short of making a case for one single catastrophe explaining these examples.
quote:
The fact is what I said was correct, none of this was studied back in Darwin's time and a lot of the new evidence is explained well by the flood but poorly with slow incremental eons
I’ll just note that your salt argument is uniformitarian, assuming that the estimated gains and losses remain constant - and are accurately accounted for. A Christian answers the paper here pointing out that there is no evidence that the total amount of salt in the oceans is increasing, he goes on to point out that large amounts of salt have been removed from the seas, as shown by halite deposits.
The nickel argument seems little better. There doesn’t seem to be much analysis of what happens to the nickel in seawater - it’s assumed that it either remains in the water or is accumulated in nodules. If we did not have solid evidence of long ages it might work - but we do.
And then we have the amateur sedimentation argument. The fact that it ignores uplift - even uplift occurring today - is a warning sign. As is the fact that it relies on strawman uniformitarianism (a view which seems to be followed only by Young Earth Creationists).
quote:
So I don't believe evolutionists are willing to do an honest appraisal of eons, they just REPEAT the dating-claims and don't look at exacting extrapolations and rates that don't favour eons.
An honest assessment isn’t based on rejecting solid arguments for doubtful ones.
quote:
The fact is more and more they argue punctuated catastrophism as some sort of mixture of uniformity and neo-catastrophism.
Geologists are quite willing to accept catastrophes when the evidence supports it. That’s a strength, not a weakness.
quote:
Conclusion; the fact is you had to be born post 1880 to know a lot of this stuff and some of the evidence for a flood recently found is only recently found because they dismissed the idea of a flood all those years ago.
And yet none of your arguments makes any significant case for the Flood. Even considered alone - the wider context matters and is still a major issue.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by mike the wiz, posted 03-28-2021 7:48 PM mike the wiz has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 56 of 111 (885391)
04-10-2021 1:21 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by Phat
04-10-2021 12:06 PM


Re: Calling The Lords Servant
Of course the comment Mike was reacting to was unquestionably true. Answering weak versions of cherry-picked arguments doesn’t help his case.
So Mike’s comment was less than honest and hypocritical since his answer was diversionary rhetoric.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 54 by Phat, posted 04-10-2021 12:06 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(2)
Message 76 of 111 (885717)
04-24-2021 6:13 AM
Reply to: Message 75 by WookieeB
04-23-2021 2:31 AM


Re: Already Convinced
I would assert that anyone who thinks that they conclude divine creation based in scientific evidence is either deceived or lying.
The Intelligent Design movement, for instance has always been religious in nature. It’s primary goal was not scientific research, but changing science education to better fit with their beliefs. The Wedge document is evidence of this, as is their inclusion of Young Earth Creationists and their beginnings with Of Pandas and People a hastily-rewritten Creationists text book (where even the definition of Intelligent Design was originally given as a definition of Creation). (And there is plenty more evidence. The fact that the IDEA Clubs only admitted Christians as members is further evidence of their religious nature).
Indeed, their insistence on changing science education before producing the science to justify it is evidence that they were “already convinced” as is their failure to convince even believing scientists (Kenneth Miller, Darell Falk and Francis Collins are three prominent examples). See Falk’s review of Stephen Meyer’s latest book. Or the discussion of the same book on Peaceful Science
Even the amateur ID supporters here seem “already convinced”. One went to great lengths arguing about Dembski’s Complex Specified Information even though he didn’t understand that Dembski’s “Complex” was based on improbability - and was quite resistant to understanding it even after I directly quoted Dembski. Another tried to argue that an alleged analogy was a strong argument (even though it was only alleged to be an analogy, without any evidence), and that accepting it as such was the same as accepting the use of diagrams as illustrations. Needless to say both points are obviously false, so we may include him, too among the ranks of the “already convinced”.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 75 by WookieeB, posted 04-23-2021 2:31 AM WookieeB has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 78 by Phat, posted 04-24-2021 11:59 AM PaulK has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 95 of 111 (886562)
05-24-2021 4:36 AM


ID gets even less serious about research
The Biologic Institute is closing. Axe is taking up a full-time position at Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles). Their publications list reports nothing since 2014 so it seems that it’s been effectively dead for the last few years.
(Reported at The Panda’s Thumb)
I guess the Discovery Institute prefers crude Nazi apologetics

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 101 of 111 (886642)
05-29-2021 2:36 AM
Reply to: Message 99 by WookieeB
05-28-2021 5:27 PM


Kinds
quote:
No. It is more than that. You are applying a very vague definition, and one that doesn't really fit the Biblical usage well enough.
For a definition it works well enough. And of course, the Biblical usage has very little to do with the concept.
quote:
"Kinds" there seems to refer to divisions of life-forms wherein each division allows for cross-fertility within its limits. So one kind vs another kind could be determined where fertilization ceases to occur.
Does it? And I will point out that creationists - who invented their usage - generally insist that fertilisation is not an adequate criterion. It can only show that two species are the same “kind” - lack of interfertility does not show that two species are different kinds.
quote:
Well, Kinds is not supposed to line up with a phylogenetic system. They are two totally different systems, with different ways of setting properties and both based on different assumptions.
A kind - in creationist usage - is a phylogenetic grouping. All members of a “kind” are descended from the originally created population - in Young Earth Creationism all current members of a kind are descended from the population on Noah’s Ark (whether one pair or seven).
quote:
Well, that really depends now on what parameters you are studying. If you are using phylogenetic system parameters, yes, it would be confusing. But if you were using other parameters, like those that encompass a Kinds meaning, then no, it should not be confusing
Now THIS is vague. Do you mean that “kinds” are only useful as a fiction to pretend that the Noah’s Ark story - as interpreted as YECs - could actually happen?
quote:
Kinds works just fine when you stay within its boundries. Don't mix your Apples and Oranges is all you got to do
The biggest problem is finding the supposed boundaries. At what point do you decide that evidence of common ancestry should be rejected ? And why, other than theological concerns which have no scientific basis at all ?
quote:
What is that evidence? I'm not disputing whether there is evidence or not. I'm just curious what you are referring to.
Obviously it would be archaeological evidence. Exactly what that evidence would be depends on the time and the site. Nevertheless we can say that the Egyptian culture - for example - has a long prehistory, with considerable continuity. Here is a presentation of some archaeological finds from predynastic Egypt.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 99 by WookieeB, posted 05-28-2021 5:27 PM WookieeB has not replied

  
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