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Author Topic:   There are easy creationist answers to problems evolutionists pose
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 68 of 111 (885653)
04-21-2021 4:06 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by WookieeB
04-19-2021 8:14 PM


Re: Already Convinced
Frankly, I cannot tell what you are talking about because you keep using the word "creationist" with different meanings and without any attempt to identify which meaning you are using, thus committing the creationist sin of "semantic shifting" whether intentionally or not.
Before I start to drill down and try to untangle your mess (I do have lots of other tasks to attend to), here is the site abstract from the creation/evolution section of my web site, which should clear up a lot of your confusion. And an added bonus is that it explains more about the Two Model Approach which is fundamental to "creation science":
quote:
Creation/Evolution Site Abstract:
The focus of this web site is "creation science" (AKA "scientific creationism") in the USA. The existence of "creation science" in other countries are primarily due to the export of "creation science" from the USA.
In the USA, the most common discussions about creationism are within the context of a very narrowly sectarian set of Christian beliefs about Divine Creation which ignores the beliefs of the majority of Christians about Creation. I have heard many mainstream creationists complain bitterly about the Fundamentalists having usurped the word "creationism". Keeping those objections in mind, for the sake of brevity on this site I will still use "creationism" to refer to fundamentalist Christian creationism, which is primarily what we're talking about anyway.
Basically, creationism is belief in supernatural creation and a creator. Within Christianity it is belief in their God as that Creator. Generally they don't try to get into the details and they accept what science learns about the world and the universe as discovery of the nature of God's Creation. As such, they find no contradiction between science and Christianity.
Fundamentalist Christian creationism is primarily what is called "young-earth creationism" (YEC) and is typically bible-literalist in nature. Basically, YEC insists on a literal interpretation of Genesis, especially of the creation accounts. In so doing, they use their beliefs to dictate how the world and universe must be in order for their religion to be true. When reality ends up being different, which it most often is, they reject reality in favor of their beliefs. That leads them to reject the findings of science that conflict with their beliefs and even to have an attitude that science conflicts with religion to the point that they think science is attacking their beliefs.
The basic tenets of YEC include:
  1. A young earth that was created about 6,000 years ago.
  2. That Noah's Flood literally happened as reported in Genesis.
  3. The fixity of species, such that there is no such thing as evolution.
  4. The origin of Man being completely separate from the origin of other animal species.
See my page, The Creation Model, for a more complete list of the tenets of YEC as taken from a creationist article. That same creationist article also reveals how they play the game of "Hide the Bible", in that it presents their "two different creation models", one biblical and the other "scientific", side by side such that we can plainly see that they are identical save for very superficial rewording. Well, it was written by a lawyer.
Sadly, a far-too-common YEC belief is that if their claims are not true then the Bible is totally wrong and God does not exist. Of course, their claims are not true, so basically YEC has the unfortunate and unintentional effect of teaching that if the world is really as it actually is, then that disproves God. Therefore, YEC accomplishes what even the most anti-God anti-theist could never accomplish: disproving the existence of God (but only if you accept their false premises).
 
Basically, "creation science" is a form of YEC that is a deliberately crafted legalistic deception designed in the early 1970's to circumvent the US court system's then-new rules disallowing religious reasons for barring the teaching of evolution in public schools -- basically that killed the "monkey laws" that had been in effect since the 1920's. Since they could no longer use their actual religious reasons for opposing evolution, creationists invented the lie that they were opposing evolution for "purely scientific reasons, nothing religious about it." They created this deception by superficially scrubbing their materials and arguments of all overt religious references (eg, remove Bible quotes), even reducing God to "some unnamed Creator". Critics of this approach have long called it "the Game of 'Hide the Bible.'"
The application of "creation science" is to provide a fake façade of opposing evolution for "purely scientific reasons". This was originally intended to circumvent the Lemon Test which blocks them from basing their opposition to evolution on their actual religious grounds, but they quickly applied it to make appeals to the general public's sense of fairness by calling for "equal time" and "balanced treatment" -- indeed, most creationist state laws and school board policies have been based on "equal time" and "balanced treatment" arguments.
Their intellectual framework is the "Two Model Approach" (TMA) which posits two-and-only-two-mutually-exclusive "models", the "creation model" and the "atheistic evolution model". Even though many rank-and-file creationists have never even heard of the TMA, it does form the basis of almost all "creation science" strategy, tactics, and arguments. The application of the TMA is to make very vague statements about the "creation model" (being very careful to avoid any specifics) and then "prove" it solely by attacking their "evolution model" in order to "disprove" that, thus "proving" "the only alternative" without ever having to present, discussion, support, or defend that "creation model". The TMA has been described by critics as a book consisting of two chapters: Chapter One "Evolution", and Chapter Two "Everything That's Wrong with Chapter One." Evidence of its wide-spread use by creationists is in how many creationist books and debates (especially from the ICR) start out establishing the TMA and then consist almost entirely of attacking the "evolution model"; in debate, creationists are notorious for avoiding their own "creation model" even to the point of adamantly refusing to present it, to discuss it, or to defend it. Indeed, virtually their entire "mountains of evidence for creation" end up being nothing more than attacks against their "evolution model" (which bears almost no resemblence to actual evolution).
The TMA is a form of fallacy called a false dichotomy (AKA "false dilemma"), which is a contrived either-or argument whose sole purpose is to deceive your audience. Its problems are many; here are just a few:
  • Although it's described vaguely as "any ideas about a Creator", their "creation model" is actually highly specificly fundamentalist Christian young-earth creationism -- refer to my page, The Creation Model, which quotes directly from an ICR article describing their "creation model". All other "ideas about a Creator" get consigned to their "atheistic evolution model", though creationists will usually avoid talking about those with a lot of mumbled equivocation.
  • Everything that does not belong in their "creation model" goes into their "atheistic evolution model". According to the late Dr. Henry Morris of the ICR (President and co-founder), that includes "most of the world's religions, ancient and modern." So the irony is that their "evolution model", which they describe as being "atheistic", is predominantly theistic! Furthermore, since most Christian ideas about creation do not agree with the strictly young-earth-creationist tenets of their "creation model", then they end up in the "atheist evolution model" which leads us to a double irony of Christian ideas being deemed "atheistic."
  • Even the non-religious elements of their "evolution model" bear almost no resemblence to actual evolutionary theory or teachings. Instead, they're a horrendously huge mish-mash of old abandoned ideas and misconceptions about evolution that have nothing to do with actual evolutionary theory. Therefore, despite all the creationist attacks on these elements of their "evolution model", they never actually strike anywhere near evolution. All they end up disproving are those wrong ideas and misconceptions. In addition, they are able to misrepresent scientists criticizing and rejecting those wrong ideas and misconceptions as them rejecting evolution.
    Make no mistake about it, actual evolutionary theory is part of their "evolution model". They just leave it completely alone and never go near it.
  • You cannot possibly prove their "creation model" through the TMA. The only way you could do that would be to disprove each and every single individual element of their "evolution model" -- this would be necessary since none of those elements depend on each other and even contract each other. Given the vast number of those individual elements, that task would be intractable (ie, theoretically possible, but it would take so much effort and time as to be practically impossible). Given that the vast number of those elements are theistic and given our inability to test or disprove the supernatural, that makes that task impossible.
    It would be far easier and much more practical to prove their "creation model" by presenting it and presenting actual evidence for it. But that is one approach that they avoid like the Devil.
  • The TMA is a sword that cuts both ways and can be used far more easily to disprove the "creation model". This can be done in two ways:
    • Since every part of their "creation model" depends on each other, showing just one of them to be false would be enough to disprove the entire "model". Since the claims of young-earth creationism are false (eg, the earth being young, Noah's Flood), that would be easy to do. And, by the logic of the TMA, disproving the "creation model" automatically proves the "evolution model."
    • Since showing just one part of the "evolution model" to be true would prove the "evolution model", by the logic of the TMA that would automatically disprove the "creation model." Actually, I think that creationists do realize this possibility, which is why they are so strongly motivated to keep it from happening, even though they're the ones who created this logic bomb to begin with.
    But of course, since the TMA is a fallacy, its logic is invalid. Though that's little comfort for creationists who have bought into it.
  • The creators of the TMA had a fundamental misunderstanding of what a model is. Basically a model is a detailed description of how something works. A model is constructed from an understanding of the mechanism it is to describe based on actual evidence gathered. Key to the development of the model is repeated testing and confirmation against actual evidence. Therefore, an inevitable by-product of model-building is the accumulation of evidence.
    The TMA's two "models" are not proper models. If they were, then in the construction of their "creation model" they would have ended up with a large body of actual evidence for creation (as opposed to false attacks against their misconceptions about evolution). But their inability to ever present any such evidence very strongly suggests that none exists.
    We should note that another name for "model" is "theory".
In 1987, the US Supreme Court exposed the "creation science" deception (Edwards v. Aguillard (1987)), thus eliminating its usefulness in court. At that point, creationists quickly adopted a parallel creationist movement, Intelligent Design (ID), in what has been described as a new game of "Hide the Creationism." Now most of the arguments presented to the public are about complexity and there is almost no mention at all of young-earth claims, but among the faithful the same old YEC claims and arguments continue to circulate and be presented. Although ID has been exposed as nothing but a smokescreen for creationism (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005)), no replacement for ID has appeared yet.
 
Conclusion
While young-earth creationism is an actual religious belief, it has the unfortunate feature of making strict demands on how the real world must be in order for their faith to survive. Since those demands are contrary-to-fact, that creates serious problems for believers such that they must either keep themselves ignorant or they must engage in serious self-delusion in order to keep their faith. Unfortunately for them, they cannot always succeed in those efforts.
"Creation science" is a deliberately crafted legalistic deception that had been used to deceive the courts, the public, school boards, and state legislatures in order to advance their agenda of removing evolution from the schools (and now any other science they don't like, such as climate change). Those efforts continue in the present, albeit under the guise of "Intelligent Design".
This form of creationism depends on false and deceptive claims and on misrepresenting science and evolution and it makes its followers' faith dependent on those false claims. Over the years, I have encountered many ex-creationists, many of whom either lost or nearly lost their faith because of YEC and its false claims. In addition, it presents Christianity as depending on lies and deception, which drives many people away. Use of those false claims are not only counterproductive, but also destructive. It not only does not serve their cause, but it also works against it.

 
BTW, in Message 57 I requested of you a definition for "evolutionist":
DWise1 writes:
Now to return the favor, riddle me this!: Define what an "evolutionist" is! (please note that an exclamation point is quite appropriate for a command, though not absolutely necessary, whereas a question mark almost never is (ie, there could be stylistic or narrative reasons, such as to convey the speaker's great uncertainty in issuing that command as discussed above, but those are special cases).
I assume that you are familiar with that uniquely creationist term, "evolutionist", and would not be surprised to learn that you have often used it yourself.
So just exactly what is the definition? And how would you know to classify someone as an "evolutionist"? What are the other characteristics assigned to one who is an "evolutionist"?
 
Well, since you obviously will never reply, I will note that almost every single creationist source that even began to offer any kind of definition for "evolutionist" basically classified anybody, regardless of religious belief, who accepted evolution was an "evolutionist". And that they were all atheists!
Which would include the vast majority of Christians.
Well?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by WookieeB, posted 04-19-2021 8:14 PM WookieeB has not replied

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


(1)
Message 69 of 111 (885659)
04-21-2021 6:30 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by WookieeB
04-19-2021 8:14 PM


Re: Already Convinced
Another interim post sharing some more information from my C/E index page which should prove useful or at least interesting. What I'm posting here is a very short summary, so follow the links to the rest of the text.
From the section, A Few Basic Facts:
These are a few basic facts that I will develop here on my creation/evolution site.
  • If you are truly a creationist, then you should trust God's Creation over Man's fallible interpretation of a book.
    As the song says: "Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world."
    Creationists are engaging in fallible human interpretation of a Man-written book, both of which are flawed due to their having been produced by Man, and then trying to impose that highly flawed interpretation upon Nature (which creationists must believe is God's Creation) and insisting that if Nature does not comply with their highly flawed interpretation then God does not exist.
    If your theology has you believing things about the world which are contrary to observed fact, then you really need to look into that and to think seriously about what you are doing.
  • There is no inherent conflict between science and religion.
    Basically, the two deal with different kinds of questions. Science deals with the "how?" questions, such as "How does the world work?" Religion and philosophy deal with the harder and more interesting questions of "Why is this the way it is?" Two entirely different kinds of questions.
    When religion insists on claims which run counter to reality, then it creates a conflict which is entirely unnecessary. When that happens, then religion needs to step back and re-evaluate those claims for whether they are truly necessary. Theology is Man-made and hence fallible. When theology is found to have gotten something wrong (as it inevitably must), then it should be corrected. Finding that you need to correct theology has nothing to do with God, but rather with Man's understanding and misunderstanding about God.
    There is no way for science to disprove God. Rather, it is bad theology such as "creation science" and "God of the Gaps" which leads to disproving God.
  • Naturalistic explanations do not exclude nor disprove God.
    A far too common creationist belief is that naturalistic explanations exclude and deny God. That is simply not true. That view appears to be based on the false theology of "The God of the Gaps", in which God exists within the gaps of human knowledge.
    Those views ignore the simple fact of Christian doctrine that God is omnipotent and is Sovereign over Nature. That is in direct opposition to the idea of the "God of the Gaps" who is weak and must hide in constant fear from Nature. Being omnipotent and Sovereign over Nature, not only can God do anything, but He is also free to use and to work through nature processes.
  • There is no inherent conflict between Creation and evolution.
    That should be self-evident, but you may not realize that if you use the wrong definitions that young-earth creationism imposes on you.
    By Creation I mean Divine Creation, the creation of the everything by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god, YHWH (if you are a Christian, then, yes, that is your god's name transliterated from the Hebrew). I am not adding on any sectarian theology. It's the simple statement that God created.
    Of course, creationists then add on all kinds of requirements and extraneous details, most of which are wrong (which is inevitable since they were created by fallible humans). If God created the world, then the world must be true to what God had done. If your ideas of Creation require the world to be very different than how we observe it to be, how it actually is, then you need to rethink your ideas.
    Similarly, by "evolution" I mean actual evolution, not the grossly distorted mischaracterization of creationists' "evolution model."
    Basically, evolution is what happens when life does what life does. There's nothing magical about it. If you've got populations of organisms living and reproducing, then evolution is happening. The moment that God had finished creating life, evolution would be happening. Even if God had chosen to get life started through natural processes such as described in abiogenesis, then as soon as that life or proto-life could reproduce then it would be evolving.
    There is no inherent conflict between the two ideas, creation and evolution. The only possible conflict comes when you choose to define them so as to create conflict. Defining them to create conflict would be like defining Creation and nature in order to make them conflict, which would make absolutely no sense at all.
  • Christians must not lie.
    That is what I had been taught constantly as a Christian over half a century ago and that is what I keep hearing from Christians. Yet I also repeatedly observe creationists lying about everything and anything they can -- I've asked them for decades to explain how they can justify their actions and they refuse to respond.
    I quote from an article in Christianity Today:
    • Integrity is important for the Christian. The Scriptures are clear about that, especially in the Proverbs.
    • Lying is wrong. Don't lie, even if you don't mean to. And make it right if you do.
    • As Christians, you have a higher standard than even the journalist. You aren’t protecting the reputation of an organization or a website, you bear the name of your King.
    • If your friends and families cannot trust you with this type of news, many will not listen when you seek to share the good news of the gospel.
    That should all be self-evident, especially to any Christian. Yet for some reason creationists act completely oblivious to those basic truths.
  • A lie is still a lie.
    Technically, in order to be guilty of lying you must be aware that what you are saying is a lie. By that logic, if you think that the lie you are repeating is true, then you are technically not lying. However, that does not make that lie stop being a lie.
    Regardless of whether you know that it is a lie, a lie is still a lie and you are still telling a lie even though you might claim to not be lying technically. Morally, that feels like an extremely fine hair being split.
  • A falsehood has the same detrimental effects whether or not you know it to be false.
    You may repeat a falsehood without knowing that it is false, but your intent has absolutely nothing to do with the consequences of your action.
    When you spread a false teaching, even if you believe that teaching to be true, you will still do the same harm as if you knew it to be false.
    Therefore, it is your responsibility to verify your claims before you spread them. And when you learn that one of your claims is false, then it is your responsibility to stop using it. And it is also your responsibility to issue a correction to everyone you had told that false claim to. Refer to that article in Christianity Today if you still cannot understand why you have those responsibilities.
    I will note here that creationists are notorious for continuing to use false claims even after they have admitted them to be false. That is one of their more odious characteristics.
 
From the next section, My advice to both creationists and non-creationists:
  • Never just believe what a creationist tells you. Always verify it.
    To begin with, creationist claims are notoriously bad and utterly false. Verify them before you use them.
    Assuming that you are a creationist who is dedicated to the truth, wouldn't you want to only use those claims which prove to be true? If a claim proved to be false, would you want to use it anyway? Well, duh, if you're a creationist who doesn't care for the truth but only wants the convincing-sound "ammo" to use for proselytizing, then you wouldn't give it a second thought. You'd be ready and eager to use whatever lie or deception you can in order to serve your god. We see your kind all the time and that is one of the reasons why we reject your false religion.
    Actually, it's a good idea to approach non-creationist claims with the same skepticism. It's just that decades of experience has taught us that the creationist claim is almost always guaranteed to be bogus.
  • Practice good scholarship.
    Cite your actual sources. Do not just copy what your source says his source was, because he was probably lying about that too (very common of creationists). When a source is cited, then go to that actual source and verify what it says. That is especially important when verifying a creationist's claim; in many cases, the first and only necessary step in decisively refuting a creationist claim has been to read his purported source. When you quote a source either directly or indirectly, do so accurately. Do not misrepresent what your source says.
    Give your readers enough information for them to look up your sources themselves. After all, why wouldn't they want to read your sources to verify what you have said?
  • Learn all you can about science.
    So many creationist claims are based on a misunderstanding of the science, such that just knowing something about the science purportedly behind a claim can alert you to what's wrong with that claim.
    One of the benefits of researching creationist claims is that you do learn a lot about science along the way.
  • Learn all you can about evolution.
    Creationists' main stock-in-trade is misunderstanding and misrepresenting evolution and all their claims "refuting" evolution are based on those misunderstandings and misrepresentations.
    The better you understand what evolution really is, the less you will be deceived by those creationist arguments. And, if you are a creationist who wants to fight evolution, then by understanding what evolution really is you will know to avoid using those false arguments and fighting those strawman caricatures, and instead be able to concentrate your efforts on actually addressing evolution itself and addressing its real problems, not the fake BS other creationists waste their time and efforts dishing out. Why waste your time and effort? Do something meaningful!
  • Learn all you can about "creation science"
    For the non-creationist who wants to fight "creation science", you have to know all you can about "creation science". 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. As a result, far too many budding creationists present "brand-new science that will blow the evolutionists away" and instead are themselves blown away and shot down in flames when their decades-old claims are refuted to their face. 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 as well on how it discredits Christianity in the eyes of on-lookers.
    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.
  • Don't be afraid to read from both sides
    Creationists, do not be afraid to read what your opponents and critics say. That information can only help you. Non-creationists, do not be afraid to read what creationists say and write. Instead of taking another non-creationist's word for it, read for yourself the actual claims in the creationists' actual words. And creationists, don't take another creationist's word on what science is and teaches, but rather go straight to the source for the truth.
  • Teach your children.
    This one is directed primarily at creationists. The primary target of the "creation science" political agenda has always been to keep evolution from being taught in the public schools. I believe that that is very misguided and counter-productive for the creationist cause. If you are a "culture warrior" fighting against evolution and you want your children to grow up to be "culture warriors" too, then you would want them to be properly trained and properly armed. But in order to fight evolution, both you and they will need to know all you can possibly know about evolution (ie, know your enemy yet again). If you send them into battle not knowing anything about their enemy, they will surely be defeated and will very likely suffer "spiritual death", i.e. losing their faith. Do you really want that to happen to your children?
    Knowing all they can about what evolution really is can only help your children. They will know which creationist claims and arguments are worthless and hence know not to waste their time with those. They will be able to discover and exploit evolution's real weaknesses and problems which "creation science" knows nothing about because of its misunderstanding and misrepresentation of evolution. And they will be immune from the crises of faith that arise when they discover that you had been lying to them all their lives through "creation science". Remember that even Christian sources place the disaffection rate of youth raised in the faith at 65% to 80%; only one child in five will remain in the faith when they grow up.
    For non-creationists, teaching your children will help to immunize them against being deceived by false creationist claims.
  • Honestly assess how what you discover should affect what you believe.
    Creationists, this will perhaps be the hardest piece of advice for you to follow, but it is also one of the most necessary. This is because "creation science" is holding your faith hostage in very real and dangerous ways. Creationists will tell you that their claims must be true or else "Scripture will have no meaning" (John Morris, ICR) and will insist that should evolution turn out to be true then you should throw your Bible onto a trash heap and become a hedonistic atheist (a position which I have seen creationists insist on most adamantly). They will even go so far as to claim that if evolution is true then God does not exist, or else is a Liar who does not deserve worship. They make your very faith completely dependent on "creation science", thus holding it hostage.
    Those teachings of "creation science" have caused many creationists to lose their faith. Combined with how it also drives others away from ever considering converting to Christianity as a viable option, "creation science" is perhaps the single greatest contributor to the growth and spread of atheism.
    So then, what is your honest and considered assessment of the consequences of discovering that "creation science" is wrong? That is something that you really do need to work out for yourself.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by WookieeB, posted 04-19-2021 8:14 PM WookieeB has not replied

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


(1)
Message 72 of 111 (885668)
04-22-2021 2:57 AM
Reply to: Message 70 by WookieeB
04-21-2021 11:19 PM


Re: Already Convinced
As I've already said, I frankly cannot tell what you are talking about because you keep using the word "creationist" with different meanings and without any attempt to identify which meaning you are using, thus committing the creationist sin of "semantic shifting" whether intentionally or not.
Also, I'm starting to suspect that you are just trying to muddy the waters and generate confusion. Confusion is a creationist's best friend.
I have already established the context of "creationist" that is being used in this forum. If either of us deviate from that established context, then we need to qualify the term; eg, I will refer to "actual creationists" as those who believe in Divine Creation but not in the lies of "creation science". I suggest that you also qualify your terms properly so as to avoid generating confusion.
 
In your Message 61:
You mention here and throughout the rest of your answer of a "movement", which makes it sound more-or-less like a formal group. So assuming that is correct, would a person that is not part of this 'movement', but that holds similar beliefs as you describe, be a creationist?
Within the context of this forum, creationists are opponents of "evolution" (in scare quotes because they never ever attack evolution, but rather some strawman boogeyman they've created and labeled "evolution" even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with actual evolution -- what part of the Two Model Approach and its bogus "evolution model" did you not understand?). Traditionally they've been YECs employing the lies and deceptions of "creation science", but creationists have mutated and diversified over time to include old-earth creationists and IDists (who have their own set of lies and deceptions).
Do please try to keep up.
And why would you think that the anti-evolution movement would be some formal organization complete with membership cards and a national HQ? It's diverse and decentralized, consisting mainly of small local groups usually associated with churches of a certain theological persuasion -- indeed, many such churches actively include "creation science" as part of their doctrine.
There are also local creationist groups dedicated to the decades-old anti-evolution practice of pressuring local teachers, schools, and school boards to keep evolution out of the classroom or to get creationist "equal time" "balanced treatment" curricula included. In a number of cases, individual teachers who are creationists (eg, Ray Baird, John Peloza, Roger DeHart) will unilaterally sneak creationism into their classes. Some have even run as stealth candidates to get elected onto the school board and into other public offices that they could use for their cause. Other groups will work on the state level lobbying state legislators to propose state laws restricting evolution or promoting the inclusion of creationism. Some groups will work to pressure textbook publishers to remove evolution from the textbooks (not sure how well that effort is going).
There is no national leadership, but there are nationally known organizations (eg, ICR, Answers in Genesis) and creationist writers and lecturers (eg, Kent Hovind, who doesn't write but rather gives presentations and does debates) whose words, claims, and arguments get taken up by the sprawling landscape of small local creationist groups.
And the Internet has made the dissemination of creationist nonsense far easier and wide spread. One classic example that keeps cropping up is a "shrinking sun" claim that talks about 300 years of data gathered at "Boyle Observatory". In reality, that data was gathered at the Royal Observatory between the years 1863-1953, so ninety (90) years, not 300. But some creationist made those mistakes and now it's plastered all over the Internet. Garbage in, Gospel out. But now you should know that whenever you read about "300 years of observational data collected at Boyle Observatory" that you are reading a totally bogus claim.
That's all, nothing mysterious about it.
Message 61:
I suspect that today they are not very prevalent, as I have not encountered anyone that even comes close to embodying majority of the many features and tactics you describe. It seems most of your experiences are with limited cases and occurred a long time ago. Where have these factors been displayed in the 21st century?
Even though their activity ebbs and flows (not to be confused with the 60's rock duo, Flo and Eddie), they have not gone away. Since most of their activity is local and rises no higher than the state level in some other state, news of their activity remains local and hence we don't hear about them. But they're still there doing their thing. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) would report on such activities, being the national-level clearinghouse for the Committees of Correspondence, and their website used to post news of creationist activity in various states, especially new creationist state bills and laws as well as any court action (when I checked their site the other day, they had redone their site and I couldn't find that "in the news" section).
 
Now please try to get this straight. You keep worrying questions of motivation and other trivial matters (like a dog worries a shoe by chewing on it all the time). That is not the issue! Stop letting that distract you!
Rather, the issue is that:
  1. The basic creationist deception is that they oppose evolution for purely scientific reasons, not any religious reasons in any way or manner. The truth is that their opposition is for purely religious reasons which are suspect even within the realm of Christian doctrine.
  2. They don't even oppose evolution, never had, never will. Rather, what they oppose is their fraudulent "evolution model" which has nothing at all to do with actual evolution. They have created a monstrous strawman boogeyman which they call "evolution" even though it has nothing to do with evolution. They keep attacking their strawman boogeyman proclaiming that they are disproving "evolution" and all the while they are keeping as far away from actual evolution as they possibly can.
  3. Not sure about how it was in the beginning of the anti-evolution movement, but it did certainly become a YEC movement rather quickly (eg, Seventh Day Adventist George McCready Price advancing his "flood geology" in the 1920's and 30's). The general sentiment among creationists tends to be that if you do not believe in a young earth then you are an "atheistic evolutionist" -- they may have relaxed that since assimilating ID, but I'm not so sure. A great many "scientific" claims in "creation science" are young-earth claims. And they are all bogus.
  4. The major problem with "creation science" is that it is a pack of lies and deception.
    When I started studying "creation science" in 1981, I was particularly interested in the young-earth claims. Refer to my page, Why I Oppose Creation Science (or, How I got to Here from There), for the full story. Basically during my time with the Jesus Freak Movement in 1970 I was given two specific creationist claims: living molluscs carbon-dated to be thousands of years old (it took a few decades before I could find a scientific reference, surprisingly from a Kent Hovind presentation, and it turns out to just be the "reservoir effect" and the clams were using dissolved carbon from limestone instead of from the atmosphere -- radiocarbon techniques depend on it being atmospheric carbon that is incorporated into the tissue) and the infamous "NASA computer that found Joshua's Lost Day" (refer to a Christian's essay on that, Thoughts on "Joshua's Long Day" -- while there, check out his other essays; he has a few things to say about "God of the Gaps" which plays such an enormous role in ID with their love of "goddidit").
Then in 1981 when Dr. Duane Gish's traveling snake-oil show came to town, I was surprised that they were still around, so maybe they have a point to make after all -- I had duty that night and could not attend the show.
From that point on, every single time a creationist brought up an "objection", i knew precisely why it was wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by WookieeB, posted 04-21-2021 11:19 PM WookieeB has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 74 by WookieeB, posted 04-23-2021 2:17 AM dwise1 has not replied

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


(1)
Message 73 of 111 (885673)
04-22-2021 10:58 AM
Reply to: Message 70 by WookieeB
04-21-2021 11:19 PM


Re: Already Convinced
DWise1 writes:
My position basically boils down to this:
If you honestly and truly want to fight evolution, then at least do it right!
Learn everything you can about evolution and then attack it, not some stupid strawman caricature of it.
And do so honestly and truthfully!
By refusing to fight evolution honestly and truthfully, but rather using "creation science" instead,...
How would one "honestly and truthfully" fight evolution? You obviously dont allow any religious arguments. And frankly, I don't blame you on that front. They are entirely different categories?
Since evolution, in the context being used here, is a scientific study, and any evidence used in favor of it is scientific, then any evidence against it should also be scientific in nature.
Yet you apparently will not allow that either. If by default there can be no scientific evidence against evolution, as any claim in that manner is, to you, a lie because it really is a religious argument, then there is no viable option to "fight evolution" and "do it right!". You ask for honesty and truth, but exclude any possible evidence in that manner as unable to be honest or true.
Thus, if you are not using the formal fallacy, you are then being disingenuous.
Absolutely untrue! Perhaps even bordering on a damned lie!
First, it should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer (an engineering catchphrase that was popular when I was at Hughes Aircraft) that a religious argument would be inappropriate in a scientific discussion, so why would you even begin to raise such a specious objection? Is that a tell (a term I recently learned in my poker class)? Are you yourself being disingenuous? Are you yourself a dishonest creationist? We have most certainly seen far too many creationists start out posing as innocent and fair-minded only to then reveal how died-in-the-wool creationist they are. Is that what we are seeing here?
And, no, it is not at all a situation of:
Yet you apparently will not allow that either. If by default there can be no scientific evidence against evolution, as any claim in that manner is, to you, a lie because it really is a religious argument, then there is no viable option to "fight evolution" and "do it right!". You ask for honesty and truth, but exclude any possible evidence in that manner as unable to be honest or true.
You are ignoring the simple fact that creationists never ever address evolution nor ever present any evidence against evolution, but rather they have created an incredibly stupid strawman boogeyman which they have called "evolution" to scare themselves with.
If you actually want to address evolution, then address evolution itself, not some stupid strawman of your own invention! What is wrong with you people? How can you not understand that?
And even your religious objections are misguided and just plain wrong. As is said of guided missiles that have lost lock on their target, you keep going stupid. What is wrong with you? You have created your strawman boogeyman to pose some kind of existential threat to your religion that actual evolution simply does not pose. Just so you can go into some religious frenzy that actual evolution would never cause. Again, what is wrong with you people? Is it that idiotic Christian persecution complex where you have to imagine that you are being persecuted and when that persecution doesn't exist you have to create it yourself? Jebus H (BTW, check out my very informative page, "Jesus H. Christ": Why "H"?, but you have to be willing to learn a little Greek).
 
Yes, there can indeed be scientific evidence against actual evolution. Your fake "evolution" boogeyman is nothing but pure bullshit which falls apart the moment that it is examined. So your accusation is nothing but a bullshit lie.
You want to actually fight evolution? Well then fight evolution itself, not your monstrous bullshit lie that you call "evolution". And in doing so don't use bullshit creationist lies about evolution, but rather address the actual problems with actual evolution. And do so honestly.
That is how you would fight evolution honestly and truthfully. The truth is right there in front of you and you refuse to see it. What is wrong with you?
Could there be any evidence against evolution that would be honest or true? Yes! So present it already! What the frak is wrong with you?
Two professors at San Diego State University (SDSU), Frank Awbrey and William Thwaites (I have to be careful to avoid any reference to T&A) were leading debaters against the ICR master debaters (such as Drs. Henry Morris and Duane Gish whom I have seen them go up against in 1985 -- do please play with "master debaters" as much as you may please, since it would be appropriate for creationist arguments). They created the only true two-model class I have ever heard of in which half the lectures were given by members of the ICR which at that time was less than 30 miles away. Their class was shut down after all the campus Christian clubs rebelled against it. Guess Christians cannot tolerate truth and honesty.
Here's the thing, after 15 years of those debates, they retired. Read their article about their decision, Our Last Debate: Our Very Last. In that article they describe having entered into the debates with the hope and expectation that:
quote:
... a creationist would dig up a real biological paradox, one that would prove to be an interesting brain-teaser for the scientific community. We hoped that we could use the creationists to ferret out biological enigmas much as DEA agents use dogs to seek out contraband. ... While we had discovered that every creationist claim so far could easily be disproved, we still had hope that there was a genuine quandary in there somewhere. We just hadn't found it yet.
What they did discover after those 15 years was that none of the creationists ever presented any real paradoxes or genuine quandaries. The creationists had no actual case to present.
Creationism has proven to be nothing but pure bullshit. Period. What part of that do you still not understand?
 
So if you really want to fight evolution, then do so honestly and truthfully.
Honestly means that you address and fight evolution itself, not some bullshit lie pretending to be evolution.
Truthfully means that you use real objections that address real and actual problems with evolution, not bullshit creationist lies.
It can be done. So why do you refuse to do it? Is there something wrong with you?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by WookieeB, posted 04-21-2021 11:19 PM WookieeB has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 75 by WookieeB, posted 04-23-2021 2:31 AM dwise1 has replied

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


(1)
Message 79 of 111 (885731)
04-25-2021 12:09 AM
Reply to: Message 77 by Phat
04-24-2021 11:55 AM


Re: Already Convinced
Am I right, David?
Generally, yes. And certainly far closer to correct than WookieeB would ever allow himself to get.
From my perspective, dwise1 is arguing that creationists y definition are lying about the science that they collectively create and challenging established science, which is more mainstream. Though one could argue that science-at-large is continually evolving and growing new theories and directions, dwise1 sees the Creation Institute and perhaps AiG as dishonest.
It is quite true that creationists have a very long and astoundingly consistent history of lying about science and promoting false claims. It's like hearing Trump (and now the GQP) say something: with such a long and unbroken record of lies and deceptions, you must never take anything they say at face value but rather you must verify everything!
And in the case of the ICR and AiG and other professional creationist organizations, their goals are not only to battle against a contrived boogeyman that they created and which they call "evolution" (see below), but also their goal is to proselytize using "creation science", thus "saving souls" through deception. Though at least AiG has made a few attempts at honesty, including the occasional articles of "claims we really wish creationists would stop using".
The tradition of compiling false claims of "scientific evidences for creation" ("evidences" is a uniquely apologetics expression) extends back to at least to the 1920's, mostly through the efforts of the Seventh Day Adventists. The immediate progenitors of "creation science" creationists (who are strongly YECs) borrowed very heavily from that body of false claims and added their own, especially in the 1970's. WookieeB complained that those claims are "old" since the references he said he found dated from the 1990's, but in reality they go back decades even before that. And they were soundly refuted many decades ago, but the creationist literature makes no mention of that fact, but instead tells each new generation of creationists (suckers born every minute) that these claims are all new findings that scientists have never addressed (yet another big creationist lie).
Rather, the reason WookieeB couldn't find much since the 1990's was because creationists were working hard to hide the YEC behind a smokescreen of ID false claims and arguments. But those old YEC claims are still out there being circulated within the YEC community and surfacing mainly from inexperienced creationists who are not yet hep to the ID jive.
Further on the question of the inevitability of creationist honest.
For the Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. topic Pressie in Message 1080 had replied to Dredge's misquoting of S.J. Gould by himself quoting S.J. Gould's complaint of being constantly misquoted by creationists including "—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—" and then asked Dredge whether he had done the same through stupidity. RAZD replied in Message 1081 (26-Jul-2017) with:
RAZD writes:
Dawkins' "ignorance is no crime" gives three other alternatives, which includes mendacity ("design"), ignorance and insanity ...
But I have been giving this a bit of thought and would like to break it down slightly differently:
There are Five types of people that don't understand how evolution works:
  1. people too stupid to understand the concepts. These are the unfortunates. It is not their fault.
  2. people ignorant of the concepts, possibly through no fault of their own. These are the fortunates -- they can be cured via education. A good starting source is Berkeley: Evolution 101.
  3. people that have been misinformed. These are the deceived. It may be possible to cure them with education, however the victims need to be willing to learn, and willing to give up the false concepts they have regarding how evolution works. Cognitive dissonance comes into play here when this affects core beliefs that are strongly held.
  4. people who are charlatans. These are the people that do the deceiving of others. These are the deplorables. They too can be deceived (and likely deceive themselves), however they continue to present falsehoods even when they have been corrected. Trolls also fit in this category.
  5. people who are clinically insane. These are also unfortunates, as it is not their fault.
Enjoy
In that same topic, I presented some ideas I'd been developing about the evolution of dishonesty in creationists based on their increasing levels of activism and experience (Message 1174, 02-Aug-2017). Basically, the more active they become, the more they gain experience which shows that their creationist claims are false. Since creationist theology demands that those claims must be true or else "then Scripture has no meaning" (and all that entails for biblical literalists), they cannot afford to admit the truth even to themselves so a pattern of self-deception and dishonestly establishes itself. The longer they remain active and the more active they become, the more they experience the ever mounting truth about their false beliefs and the more dishonest they have to become to maintain the illusion. Or else they finally admit to themselves that it's all a crock, but their mission of using it to deceive others into "Salvation" is far more important than the truth. And the higher up the creationist hierarchy they climb, the more highly dishonest they must become. And how they justify that to themselves, nobody knows because they won't talk about it.
As I tried to explain it to Dredge in Message 1176 (02-Aug-2017):
DWise1 writes:
Dredge writes:
But generally, speaking creationists are honest, since honesty is a very important requirement of their religion. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit demand honesty.
They may start out honest, but "creation science" corrupts them very quickly. It starts with being taught that if the claims of "creation science" are wrong, then God does not exist (or something to that effect; actual mileage may vary case-by-case). Then whenever the believer encounters any evidence contrary to "creation science" or any of his YEC beliefs, he has to start lying to himself, to deceive himself. One creationist lie follows another, creating a slippery slope that turns him into a dishonest hypocrite, a typical creationist.
I have no doubt that some honest creationists exist, but being honest they would know that their claims have very serious problems so, being honest, they would be very unlikely to present them in public and so we never hear from them. And typical creationist hearing them would find what they have to say to not be convincing enough to use.
 
Above you quote WookieeB as saying:
So, per your definition in Message 72, "Within the context of this forum, creationists are opponents of "evolution"". That means opposing evolution == creationist. And per you, "creationists never ever address evolution nor ever present any evidence against evolution" (which you even bolded)" We already agreed that scientific evidence is the only valid kind. So if opposing evolution == creationist and creationists never ...present any evidence against evolution, then it results in what I effectively noted that according to you, "by default there can be no scientific evidence against evolution".
You say that it is possible to fight evolution honestly and truthfully, but your premises actually make that impossible. Whenever any even begins to try to put up a fight, you automatically categorize them as creationists, which you have a priori already determined is a category group that cannot present valid evidence.
Where does he get that nonsense from?
First he violates the Square of Opposition from formal logic. I identified creationists within the context of discussion on this forum as those who use "creation science" and similar false teachings to oppose evolution (though they have no idea what evolution even is). That he misconstrues as the position that anyone who opposes evolution is a creationist. Wrong! The premise, "Some who oppose evolution are creationists", does not lead to the premise, "All who oppose evolution are creationists". So the words that he is trying to put into my mouth are simply not valid.
His false claim is just that, false: "You say that it is possible to fight evolution honestly and truthfully, but your premises actually make that impossible." As I explained to him carefully (Message 73):
DWise1 writes:
So if you really want to fight evolution, then do so honestly and truthfully.
Honestly means that you address and fight evolution itself, not some bullshit lie pretending to be evolution.
Truthfully means that you use real objections that address real and actual problems with evolution, not bullshit creationist lies.
It can be done. So why do you refuse to do it? Is there something wrong with you?
What creationists have done and still do is to lie about what evolution is. Their "evolution model" is filled with false ideas and misconceptions of evolution, which is what they attack instead of attacking evolution itself.
Creationists have created a Frankensteined boogeyman constructed of stitched together misconceptions and falsehoods. All their claims about and arguments against evolution are actually solely against their false "evolution" boogeyman and have nothing whatsoever to do with actual evolution. And it doesn't help much that none of them can understand their own claims, but rather those claims seem to confirm their own misconceptions.
This page at Berkeley, Misconceptions about evolution, lists several common creationist misconceptions about evolution and corrects them. On the same site is the much referenced Evolution 101.
And of course that creationist boogeyman "evolution" does not just misrepresent and lie about evolution, but it also includes a plethora of bogus young-earth claims which lie about other sciences such as astronomy and geology and population dynamics, etc.
So if one wants to actually oppose, evolution, then one needs to address evolution itself and not that bogus creationist boogeyman.
So why do creationists constantly lie about evolution and science? Mostly because it serves their purposes of deceiving their audiences. Of course, most of them are just scientifically illiterate and don't know any better, especially if they get most of their "science" from creationists. But there are those creationists who do know better and yet still push the lies. That is some deliberate lying there.
 
WookieeB writes:
I'm not a creationist.
So just out of curiosity...are you a believer?
Frankly, he's running a fowl ... err, afoul of the Duck Theorem.
He looks like a creationist. He sounds like a creationist. He smells like a creationist. He probably also walks like a creationist (however that would look like). What else can he be but a creationist?
He certainly would not be the first creationist to try to hide behind false denials. If I had a nickel for every creationist who claimed not to be a creationist, I could play video poker for much of the night.
But if he is not a creationist, then it's up to him to make that case. Let's not hold our breath waiting for that to happen.
Edited by dwise1, : Replaced creationism's false "evolution model" with summary; the original is repeated in the next message

This message is a reply to:
 Message 77 by Phat, posted 04-24-2021 11:55 AM Phat has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 89 by WookieeB, posted 04-30-2021 9:19 PM dwise1 has replied

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


Message 80 of 111 (885732)
04-25-2021 12:11 AM
Reply to: Message 75 by WookieeB
04-23-2021 2:31 AM


Re: Already Convinced
I'm not a creationist.
Really? Not as if we have never heard that one before. If I had a nickel for every time I was fed that line by a creationist, I could play video poker for a good long time.
So we need some kind of corroborating evidence to back up your claim. The problem is that the Duck Theorem has you pegged as a creationist. You look like a creationist. You sound like a creationist. You smell like a creationist. You probably also walk like a creationist. So you must must be a creationist.
You need to demonstrate convincingly that you are not a creationist.
Please state what you are. Define what you claim that you are. Describe your position fully enough to show that you're not just blowing smoke.
For that matter, what do you even mean by "creationist"? You've been tossing so much word salad in order to generate confusion that nobody can keep track.
I did give you a way out though. All you have to do admit you have been using the formal fallacy "affirming the consequent" and then realize that anyone that opposes evolution is not necessarily a creationist. How is that for a dichotomy?!?
I did not claim that. You are the one who are trying to twist my words around and make false claims about what I've said. Just like a creationist would do!
And you have any idea what a dichotomy even is?
Stop tossing word salad.
DWise1 writes:
...but rather they have created an incredibly stupid strawman boogeyman which they have called "evolution" to scare themselves with.
As for this, I'll reiterate my prior request. Provide an example, THE EXAMPLE!
Certainly! Mind you, this will not be complete, but it should get the job done.
As I've stated, what creationists have done and still do is to lie about what evolution is. Evolution is biological evolution, the study of the cumulative effects over many generations of populations doing what life does: procreate, survive, procreate, survive, rinse and repeat. Procreation creates genetic variation through recombination, genetic mutation, and other factors (some of which we have not yet discovered). Survival involves an individual's fitness, including characteristics of others within the context of the population's society (eg, nurturing, altruism), etc. Those who survive long enough to reproduce and are allowed to participate in procreation (varies from species to species) have their genes represented in the next generation and the gene pool in each generation is a bit different from the previous generation's. So actual evolution is simple biological evolution and what that results in.
But to creationists, "evolution" is something altogether different -- though exactly what they think it is is very difficult to discover since they won't answer any questions about what they think it is, so we have to try to deduce it from their arguments. They will present "evolution" as requiring some kind of magical processes (the more ridiculous that they can imagine those processes to be the better for their purposes of creating a strawman), which is not true of actual evolution (as just described above). They have presented "evolution" as some kind of religion which is atheistic and which denies God and wants to destroy God, which is absolutely ridiculous (I believe that John Peloza even tried to use that argument in court; his lawsuit against his school was thrown out as being frivolous, but the appeals court that that was too hasty and reviewed it only to themselves throw it out as being frivolous). And they have presented "evolution" as some grand all-encompassing anti-religious philosophy that seeks to destroy Christianity, but that is absolutely ridiculous since actual evolution is just simply the study of what happens to populations after generations of them simply doing what they naturally do. No magic, no kind of religion, no philosophy, just Nature.
Even when creationists try harder to pretend to address actual evolution, they get that completely wrong because they are still trying to attack their "evolution" boogeyman. The processes of actual evolution involve the interplay between increased variability (eg, through mutation) and natural selection (this is especially seen in experiments with genetic algorithms), but creationists present distinctly separate arguments that, first, selection can only remove traits and never add new ones, and second, that mutation is random and provides no direction for change, but creationists never team the two up together as actually happens in actual evolution because that would reveal their deception.
They appear to believe that speciation happens suddenly from one generation to the next, usually using their bastardization of Punctuated Equilibria (which actually happens over many generations which do not usually make it into the fossil record) which they falsely describe as "a snake lays an egg and a bird hatches out." Completely ridiculous! In reality, speciation in actual evolution takes several generations within a population -- did I forget to mention that individuals do not evolve, but rather populations do, a simple fact that creationists constantly overlook in order to create "objections to evolution" which have nothing to do with how actual evolution works. So a very common "objection to evolution" is that an individual of the new species suddenly appeared in a single generation, but where could it ever find a mate that had done the same instantaneou "evolution" thing in the exactly same way? In actual evolution, the entire population had been evolving over several generations, so when, for example, the first 100% chicken finally evolved, then the rest of its flock were still only about 99.99% chicken, which is plenty close enough for breeding (actually, chickens can also breed with their ancestral species, the red junglefowl, which would be roughly 0% chicken). In one "chicken or the egg" argument, creationists not only fail to understand how speciation works, but they also claim that every single system in the chicken's body would have to have completely re-evolved from scratch (eg, reproductive systems, skeletal system, nervous system, etc). Why would they think something so completely idiotic and ridiculous? Nobody knows, because they refuse to explain it. It just sounds convincing to their creationist audience so they keep using it. Like the argument about lizards evolving into birds, because lizards need their front legs to run with -- well, nobody but creationists would claim that birds evolved from lizards, but rather from Coelurosaurs which were therapod dinosaurs (about as distantly related to lizards as to turtles or mammals) which were almost all bipedal (eg, Velociraptors). Yet another ridiculous creationist claim based on nothing more than their not understanding anything about evolution.
Their probability arguments are just pitiful. Their dedication to instantaneous change seen in their ideas on speciation extends to expecting all change to happen all at once. For example there's the claim of modern proteins "evolving" by just falling together in a highly specific amino acid sequence in a single event, "evolving" by pure chance (there are a whole slew of other "by pure chance" arguments which equate "evolution" to pure chance, which is contrary to how actual evolution works). So of course they come up with some astronomical improbability of that ever happening and hence it couldn't have. Well first, I'm not aware of any protein that has every single amino acid so highly specified that any change at any locus would destroy that protein. In most proteins, a small number of amino acids are specifically needed in specific loci as part of active sites on the protein, some other loci on the protein can take any of a particular type of amino acid (of which there are 4 types, as I recall), and then about half the loci are purely structural and can accept any of the 20 amino acids used in proteins. Creationists don't understand proteins.
There's another class of related creationist claims that has pretty much died down because it was so horrible: comparing protein differences between species. Different species have the same proteins, but there are differences in their amino acid sequences. Basically, the fewer the differences, the more closely related those species are. Creationists tried to make claims of comparisons conflicting with accepted science (eg, humans and bullfrogs, rattlesnakes and humans (a documented case of a deliberate lie by a creationist)), but all their claims were bogus; see my page, The Bullfrog Affair.
But please notice how creationist's fake "evolution" can't even keep its story straight. They both claim that no amino acid in a protein could be changed without breaking the protein, and they also make claims based on the fact that many amino acids in a protein can be replaced by other amino acids. Science has no problem keeping all that straight, but creationism is completely hopelessly lost.
And the other problem with those claims about proteins just falling together by chance is that that is not how it would ever work. Rather, proteins would have evolved. Having stuff fall together randomly in a single attempt uses what Dawkins called single-step selection which is infamous being highly improbable -- after each failure, you start again all over from scratch. But while creationists' strawman boogeyman "evolution" uses single-step selection, actual evolution uses cumulative selection in which small changes within a population that work a bit better in each generation are inherited by the next generation as its starting point such that they accumulate over time. While each individual change may have low probability, the overall probability complete failure of each and every attempt in the population (eg, hundreds or thousands of individual attempts each generation) over each and every generation is so vanishingly small as to make change by cumulative selection virtually inevitable. I couldn't believe it either, so I did the math. It works and that's how I finally understood why it works.
Those are just a few examples of how the creationist boogeyman "evolution" misrepresents and lies about actual biological evolution. Of course, their "evolution" is also filled with claims that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with evolution nor biology, including a plethora of bogus young-earth claims which lie about other sciences such as astronomy and geology and physics and population dynamics (eg, Dr. H. Morris' pet "human population growth model"), etc. But we were specifically talking about how their false "evolution" is not the same as actual evolution.
So if one wants to actually oppose, evolution, then one needs to address evolution itself and not that bogus creationist boogeyman. Hopefully, that should now be so clear that even you cannot fail to understand it.
So why do creationists constantly lie about evolution and science? Mostly because it serves their purposes of deceiving their audiences. Of course, most of them are just plain scientifically illiterate and don't know any better, especially if they get most of their "science" from creationists. But there are also those creationists who do know better and yet still push the lies. That is some deliberate lying going on there.
 
DWise1 writes:
Now to return the favor, riddle me this!: Define what an "evolutionist" is!
Umm, OK. Lets type this in google..... and.....
{noun. a person who believes in or supports a theory of evolution, especially in biology. a person who supports a policy of gradual growth or development rather than sudden change or expansion.}
That seems fine to me.
Nope, that lazy cop-out is inadequate.
Explain the characteristics that "evolutionists" are supposed to have.
Creationists describe "evolution" and "evolutionists" as "atheistic". Why? What is their justification? How could actual evolution or any science have anything at all to do with atheism?
That is yet another example of their boogeyman "evolution" fraud.

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

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


Message 82 of 111 (885751)
04-25-2021 2:20 PM
Reply to: Message 81 by ringo
04-25-2021 11:40 AM


Re: Already Convinced
And if he weren't a creationist, he'd be able to explain his true self quite easily.
Though, yes, if he's a creationist then he would be stuck because he wouldn't be able to fake it.
One classic case of a dyed-in-the-wool YEC trying to fake it was one who showed up saying that he was open-minded, could go either way, and stuck in the middle wanting to weigh both sides, etc. I took him at face value (a common tactic of mine against creationist claims, which works mainly because they don't understand their own claims) and discussed it with him. It took no time at all for him to lose his cool and come out full blown Bozo YEC on us.
WookieeB has already given us one of the classic tells of a creationist playing this deceptive game: repeatedly whining that we are attributing things to him without ever revealing what his position actually is. Similarly, a local YEC (not that viciously lying local YEC activist I've mentioned) with actual technical training (in chemistry) has engaged in debates in which he raises several questions about science. I've asked him several times what his point is and he just sits there with a coy smile on his face and denies that he has any point. Creationist dishonesty wears various faces.
As I seem to recall, WookieeB is an IDiot. So he will deny being a "creationist" but rather will say he's a "design proponent". Though he's far more likely to be a "cdesign proponentsist", as per the smoking gun glitch in the Of Pandas and People manuscript's global find-and-replace presented in the court case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), that led to that court showing that ID is nothing more than yet another smokescreen to hide their disingenuous religious intent.
 
WookieeB has been asked to come clean. Let's see if he can or will even try to. Personally, I don't think there's enough soap in the world for that.
 

 
{
Johnny Carson Show Carnac the Magnificent joke: "The hottest show on TV." "Reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show."
I remember when people would stay home on Saturday night to watch the MTM Productions TV shows which were classic.
In one episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show Lou Grant shows up to work in a pleasant mood and not hung over as usual, but it's because he's still drunk from the night before. I might be conflating episodes here, but Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White) who's always trying to snag him as a lover asks if he would like her if he's drunk enough. He thinks for a moment and says "Yes, if I were drunk enough." Then as soon as she leaves overflowing with joy he mutters, "There's not enough booze in the world!"
}

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


(1)
Message 83 of 111 (885752)
04-25-2021 2:31 PM
Reply to: Message 77 by Phat
04-24-2021 11:55 AM


Re: Already Convinced
An important and very meaningful ADDENDUM to my Message 79 reply to your Message 77.
I stated quite truthfully and correctly:
DWise1 writes:
It's like hearing Trump (and now the GQP) say something: with such a long and unbroken record of lies and deceptions, you must never take anything they say at face value but rather you must verify everything!
That does not mean, as WookieeB will no doubt try to distort it to mean, that absolutely nothing those invertebrate liars say can ever be trusted. Rather, that is to say that we must verify everything they say and only then can we trust what they have said.
So if we verify something a creationist says and find it to be true, then we would trust it. For that matter, if we can verify something that a Republican says and find it to be true, then we would trust it.
As if that could ever happen! But then that's the joy of being a pessimist: 99% of the time you have the satisfaction of being right and then 1% of the time you are pleasantly surprised.
Edited by dwise1, : changed "conflate" to "distort"

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


Message 84 of 111 (885760)
04-25-2021 3:59 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by WookieeB
04-23-2021 2:31 AM


Re: Already Convinced
BTW, I would submit robertleva's proposed topic as a prime example of that false and completely bogus creationist boogeyman "evolution model" in action. Message 1.
In that post, he completely separates Natural Selection from the various sources of increasing genetic variation.
Exactly as I described creationists doing in propagating their lies.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 86 of 111 (885775)
04-26-2021 11:33 AM
Reply to: Message 85 by jar
04-25-2021 4:09 PM


Re: Already Convinced
I have not yet determined it is classic creationist ********** and instead will attribute it to simply the product of an education that has taught him how not to think and to avoid actually thinking.
This "natural selection acting all on its own lonesome cannot create new features" claim is a "classic" creationist "argument". Or at least it's been around for several decades. Dr. Henry Morris (PhD Hydraulic Engineering, which makes him an expert in biology and evolution ) included it in his book, Scientific Creationism. I have the latest, the 2nd edition from 1985, and I have no doubt that this claim was also in the first edition (1974). I also have no doubt that he had gotten from creationist sources going back to the anti-evolution movement's 1920's heyday (where he had gotten his material for Flood Geology).
WookieeB complains that Google'd references to creationist claims go back to the 1990's, though they also go back several decades before that. As usual, he completely missed the point. The point is that so many of these claims have been around for about a century now and they are still being used despite having been refuted repeatedly (AKA PRATTs, "Army of the Undead").
What normally happens is that creationists repeat any old claim that they think sounds convincing -- go to creationists' sites and you will see the exact same list of claims with the exact same wording on each of them (the penultimate source usually ending up being Kent Hovind, but he just did the same thing by repeating other creationists' claims claiming them to be his own (now that he's been kicked out of the family business, his son Eric still uses Kent's material but claiming to have written them himself)).
Then a new creationist hears or reads one of those claims, thinks it sounds convincing, and so sallies forth to confront "evolutionists" with that "new scientific information" only to get shot down because it's an old claim that has been refuted for as long as it's been around. That is the truly "classic" aspect of this.
Here's an example. Around 1990 I was involved in some "amateur night" debate events where anyone who had a case to make could get up and present his case. This young creationist (maybe about 20 years old) got up and announced that he had a "brand new scientific discovery that will blow you 'evolutionists' away!": the speed of light has been slowing down. Immediately, the entire non-creationist half of the audience burst into uncontrollable laughter mixed with attempts to explain why that then-decade-old claim by Setterfield is wrong. Instead of blowing "us 'evolutionists'" away, his own use of an outdated and false creationist claim blew him away. Creationist, meet your own petard. He had no idea what had just hit him.
Truly pitiful though that it's even possible these days to still find anyone so fundamentally misimformed.
That's the result of the generally poor quality of science education in the USA. The reasons are many and include science textbooks filled with errors and misconceptions (most are written by professional textbook writers, not scientists -- we saw that play out when California was shopping for new biology textbooks in the late 1980's), science teachers lacking schooling in science so they teach their own misconceptions (eg, PE teachers being assigned to teach biology as in the case of creationist John Peloza, my son's middle school biology teacher being the home ec teacher), lack of funding, etc.
But a contributing set of factors come from creationist activities, including pressuring textbook publishers, school boards, schools, and individual teachers to exclude evolution. That also includes running creationists as stealth candidates for the school board and individual teachers engaging in their own creationist agenda.
Frankly, I think that opposing the teaching of evolution is the single stupidest and most self-defeating thing that creationists could possibly do. As Sun Tzu is frequently quoted:
quote:
Sun Tzu, Scroll III (Offensive Strategy):
  1. Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
  2. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.
  3. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."
(Sun Tzu The Art of War, translation by Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, 1963)
If creationists truly want to fight and defeat evolution, then they must learn everything they can about evolution! Duh? Then they could concentrate their efforts on attacking the real problems of evolution instead of wasting all their efforts on false and ineffective claims as they've been doing. Plus their long history of false claims only serve to discredit both them and their religion and god. They've been shooting themselves in the foot for so long that they have no more toes to lose.
Furthermore, if they want their children to also become "Christian soldiers" to carry on the War Against Evolution into the next generation, then, wishing their children to be successful warriors, they should want to arm them with all the knowledge of and intel on their enemy, evolution. Instead, they are stripping their children of any effective weaponry and sending them forth blindfolded and burdened with ignorance to be slaughtered. They are keeping their children ignorant both of their enemy and of themselves, so they are certain in every battle to be in peril.
To quote Scott Rauch, a former creationist warrior against "evolution":
quote:
I still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed.
And to quote from memory from a radio interview with the then-governor of Mississippi defending his campaign for education reforms:
quote:
We know that ignorance doesn't work, because we've already tried it!

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


(2)
Message 87 of 111 (885956)
04-29-2021 7:19 PM


Online Event: Dr Eugenie Scott on What People Get Wrong about Evolution
Here's the MeetUp page: Login to Meetup | Meetup
Sunday, May 9, 2021
1:00 PM to 3:00 PM PDT
on ZOOM
Dr. Eugenie Scott: What people get wrong – and sometimes right – about evolution
quote:
The Humanist Association of San Diego is proud to bring to our Southern California community the former Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education: Dr. Eugenie Scott.
Among scientific theories, evolution is one that everyone “knows”. But lots of what people “know” about evolution isn’t so: it’s scientifically unsupported or wildly misunderstood. And sometimes the tidbit of information is wrong, but there’s an underlying grain of accuracy. After spending over 30 years explaining evolution to the public, I’ve learned a few things about what people get wrong, and I have some ideas about why. I also have some suggestions for communicating evolution better, should you be in a situation where you might be able to steer someone in a more accurate direction.
Dr. Scott was Executive Director for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE).
She also was a university professor teaching physical anthropology. She told this story when I saw a presentation by her about 25 years ago.
Surprisingly, many biology departments do not teach evolution to their undergraduates -- maybe they're saving that for grad school. So her physical anthropology class would include biology seniors who needed one more science class to meet their general ed requirements and they figured her class would be an "easy A". Poor fools! For one thing, she most definitely taught evolution in her class.
That meant that these biology majors were learning about evolution for the first time. As the semester progressed, she would watch these bio majors for that "aha!" look to show up on their faces as they would suddenly realize, "So that's why ... ". Up to that point, they had had to memorize biological facts with no idea why it was that way. Now they understood why.
Dr. Scott had presented that story to illustrate the truth of Theodosius Dobzhansky's statement that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", American Biology Teacher 35:125-129 (March 1973), p. 129 (complete article available at that link):
quote:
Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light, it becomes a pile of sundry facts -- some of them interesting or curious, but making no meaningful picture as a whole. . . . Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. As pointed out above, the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.

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


Message 90 of 111 (885981)
05-01-2021 12:24 AM
Reply to: Message 89 by WookieeB
04-30-2021 9:19 PM


Re: Already Convinced
DWise1 writes:
Frankly, he's running a fowl ... err, afoul of the Duck Theorem.
He looks like a creationist. He sounds like a creationist. He smells like a creationist. He probably also walks like a creationist (however that would look like). What else can he be but a creationist?
Well, then, since it is your charge, you should be able to take some definition from your walls of text in all your prior posts and clearly indicate -
How I look like a creationist?
How I sound like a creationist?
How I smell like a creationist?
C’mon? Justify yourself!
Since the Duck Theorem was being invoked, that dictated the formulation. Duh?
What you write, what you do, how you conduct yourself are all typical of how creationists conduct themselves.
Especially a creationist who tries that very tired old dodge of claiming to not be a creationist and responds by acting very indignant and insulted at being identified as a creationist, including cries of condemnation for being "so misjudged and falsely accused!"
In every single case of that tired old dodge that I have witnessed, the creationist eventually is unable to maintain the deception. In many of those cases, he even turned out to be a YEC!
And here you are going through all the typical motions of that very old creationist dodge. Everything you're doing just reeks of "creationist." Including how you keep distorting and misrepresenting what I've written in typical creationist manner.
And one favorite bit of sophistry that creationists like to use is argumentum ad dictionario, arguing over definitions (they commonly will turn to dictionary definitions) in order to create confusion and to lead their opponent into a quagmire. You know, like what you've been doing.
That is why we have requested that you support your flimsy assertion that you are "not a creationist.":
DWise1 writes:
You need to demonstrate convincingly that you are not a creationist.
Please state what you are. Define what you claim that you are. Describe your position fully enough to show that you're not just blowing smoke.
For that matter, what do you even mean by "creationist"? You've been tossing so much word salad in order to generate confusion that nobody can keep track.
And of course, you have dodged that. In typical creationist fashion.
I was referring to YOUR site(s) that you frequently link. All your arguments, quotes, rants, etc, appear to be no later than the 1990's. I asked you for some example that you can point to from this 21st century. Yet all you can do is claim in some nebulous manner that they are there, but not actually state any specifics.
So to be clear, what I am saying is: all your examples are fringe and old. The issues you keep claiming to be fighting against only get modern traction because YOU are the one bringing them up. TILT!
Get with the modern age.
Hard to tell whether you are speaking out of abject ignorance or trying to practice a deception.
Go into any fundamentalist Christian bookstore and look at the creationism books and materials -- if they do not have an actual creationism section, you should find them under "apologetics". You will find those same "old fringe" claims throughout those books, in 2021!
Hang around other creationists. Many of them will still be YECs. Of course, when they present themselves to the general public, they'll hide their YEC behind the smokescreen of ID, since that's the current tactics. But among themselves, they'll still share those "old fringe" YEC claims. And in sermons and seminars, those YEC claims will still be repeated and pushed to each new generation of creationists.
All you need to do is to pull your head out.
Thus, despite your saying: “if you really want to fight evolution, then do so honestly and truthfully”, your very actions so far invalidates any chance of that.
Actions speak louder than words, and your actions have shown you will allow no opposition to evolution that doesn’t result in a charge of “creationist”.
Completely untrue! In fact, that's a fucking lie!
Show me a case of opposition to evolution that is honest and truthful! Do you know of any?
True, all the cases of opposition to evolution that I have seen have depended on misunderstanding and even misrepresenting evolution, so those cases were not honest nor truthful. That includes false conclusions about the effects of evolution (eg, creationist beliefs that it "disproves God" or turns believers into atheists (rather, that is what I've seen creationism do)).
But do not falsely accuse me of never allowing for any opposition to evolution just because no one has ever presented an honest and truthful case.
Why don't you present an honest and truthful case? Preferably a scientific case. And do please avoid any misrepresentations (which would of course void any claim of it being honest or truthful).
Are you even able to?
 
And don't forget to present your own position in order to offer some support for your bare assertion that you are "not a creationist."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 89 by WookieeB, posted 04-30-2021 9:19 PM WookieeB has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 103 of 111 (886652)
05-29-2021 12:38 PM
Reply to: Message 102 by JonF
05-29-2021 10:55 AM


WookieeB writes:
"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.
Creationists, at least the ones that try to think, abandoned that criterion decades ago.
That reminds me of when arch-creationist former member Faith had inadvertently proven macro-evolution (and upon realizing what she had just done, she immediately started back-pedaling at relativistic speeds).
One common clade is the "felid basic kind", AKA "Felidae". That "basic created kind" consists of two genuses, the Pantherinae and the Felinae. Within each genus there are many cases of hybrids which creationists will ironically cite. The thing is that between the two genuses there are no hybrids (actually there is at least one case of hydridization which was a huge surprise to scientists).
So here we had a testable case of felid evolution. And the creationists still avoid that test.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by JonF, posted 05-29-2021 10:55 AM JonF has not replied

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


Message 104 of 111 (886653)
05-29-2021 1:13 PM
Reply to: Message 98 by WookieeB
05-28-2021 3:51 PM


Re: Already Convinced
To begin with, Mike the Over-the-side-Urinator (Whizzer) went straight to that dired old false claim about sea salt which was refuted decades ago!
Go to Mike's profile. He is supposed to be active on some "Evolution Fairy Tales" forum, yet he offers no explicit links to that (very odd approach that). Hmmm. What is he trying to hide?
Not exactly. Simply, dwise1 has not presented any modern views of contemporary "creationinsts". All his examples are from pre-2000. So my charge that his examples are old are indisputable.
Just starting off, Mikey offered his "sea salt" argument. In your criteria, that would be an old and obsolete claim, yet that self-same "old and obsolete claim that "creationists somehow magically no longer use"" is still being used by creationists.
Sorry, but you fracking stupid creationists have to get your stupid lies straight.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 98 by WookieeB, posted 05-28-2021 3:51 PM WookieeB has not replied

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


Message 105 of 111 (886654)
05-29-2021 1:43 PM
Reply to: Message 98 by WookieeB
05-28-2021 3:51 PM


Re: Already Convinced
For example, dwise1's rant in Message 41 about an argument over Moon dust is a type of evidence that has been discouraged to be used, even pre-2000, by (those who I think are) contemporary creationists.
By which you completely missed my point (how typical of a creationist).
That entire issue of that moon dust claim is the very dishonesty of the creationists. Oh! They've since then added some wording to prefaces of some creationist books that tries to distance themselves from that moon dust claim. At the same time they continue to publish and sell their books that continue to spread that self-same lie -- Amazon.com right now at the very instant I'm writing this, so how much more "current" do you require?
Amazon.com
That takes you directly to Dr. Henry Morris' book that contains that moon dust lie. It is still a current source of creationist lies which continue to be made despite having been refuted so many times before.
What more do you need?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 98 by WookieeB, posted 05-28-2021 3:51 PM WookieeB has not replied

  
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