Coffee House Musings on Creationist Topic Proposals

Meanwhile, you can't describe the process involved in even one evolutionary transition evident in the fossil record ... yet you claim to know how evolution works.

Yep, no doubt about it ... Dr. Gunter Bechly is definitely stupid ...He worked from 1999-2016 as scientific curator for amber and fossil insects in the paleontological department at the  State Museum of Natural History (SMNS) in Stuttgart (Germany), which is one of the five biggest natural history museums in Germany.He also held a teaching assignment at the University Hohenheim in Germany on insect systematics and phylogeny.He has authored or co-authored more than 160 scientific publications, including a co-edited and co-authored book published by Cambridge University Press and a German popular science book on evolution, as well as several book chapters (including three chapters in the latest and largest monograph on the Solnhofen fossil locality and the chapter on insect evolution and systematics in Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia). He pioneered the phylogenetic re-classification of the insect order Odonata (dragonflies, damselflies, and their fossil relatives), made substantial contributions to the question of the evolutionary origin of insect wings, and ranks among the world leading experts on fossil dragonflies and on fossil insects from the Solnhofen and Crato limestones.He has discovered and described more than 180 new species (incl. three new insect orders), and 11 biological groups have been named as eponyms by other scientists in his honor. He served on the editorial boards of five scientific journals (Petalura, Odonatologica, Archaeopteryx, Palaeodiversity, and BIO-Complexity).What a moron!!

Edited by Dredge, .

Troll

Hey Dredge, The Altar Boy, you keep telling us we don’t know. So show us.Show us where we missed the evidence. Show us our errors If you don’t find it here I have about 121 million more for you to look at.You bring stupid to argue, I’ll see your stupid and raise you insane.Go ahead, Altar Boy, be a good little catholic, present yourself to your priest, bend over that image and you find nature’s errors.

"If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14) I'm here because this is where all my friends are ... you, for example. That paper discusses some of the alleged evolutionary steps involved, but doesn't discuss what caused those steps (which is the crux of my argument). The closest it gets is a wild guess about what may have given rise to the development of a double jaw joint.The paper proposes an evolutionary pathway, not what caused that evolution pathway. In other words, it doesn't demonstrate a knowledge of how evolution works.Sorry - nice try, but no cigar.

Edited by Dredge, .

Why are you talking about the Bible? It is totally irrelevant to my argument.Btw, I don't subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation story.

What is the "fact" of evolution?

At the risk of endless repetition, we've agreed with you many times now that we don't have the detailed microbiology of each evolutionary change that happened millions of years ago. If that's what you're looking for, then you're going to be terribly disappointed.That's sad for you but science doesn't need what you insist on having to know that the middle ear evolved - we have the fossils to prove it.By all means carry on trolling, it seems to make you feel important. But it actually makes you look really stupid. (I realise that you don't care about that.)

Not stupid but somewhere along in his life he became a looney! He now basically believes in an intelligent designer for some crazy reason. Many otherwise intelligent people can be total loons about some things and that's what's happened to this doctor. I feel sorry for him but nothing he says has any effect on the reality of evolution.

Another possibility is that a bunch of increasingly desperate churches and religious institutions are pumping millions into his bank account, having finally found a scientist who is willing to sell out ? It'd be interesting to see what house he lives in and what car he drives. Might do a bit of research...

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Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.
  —Friedrich Schiller

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As I caught up reading the last dozen posts in this thread I was moved to reply several times but realized I'd just be saying the same things I'd already been saying and that still haven't received a response. One might be forgiven for not attempting to engage the performer playing the town fool while he's in character.After I retired I began a little game with the occasional cell phone spammers that call. The longer I could keep them on the line the more successful I thought I was (but they're pretty sharp - I've been cursed out a number of times after only 10 or 20 seconds). I wonder if Dredge isn't playing some similar game, believing the longer he wastes our time with nonsense the more successful he is. It's for Christ, so he feels good about himself.--Percy

Wow, I guess you've read all his papers and books. That all sounds like a publicity blurb.One thing I am sure you have noticed in his scientific writing is absolutely no mention of his interest in Intelligent Design, none, nada.I have never met Bechly, but I have worked on research projects with people who have also worked with him on projects. Many in the odonate study community were surprised when he joined the Discovery Institute, but everyone noted that he refused to discuss his views of ID with colleagues. To many, it was fairly obvious that he realized he would lose credibility if he did.I haven't followed his recent work, but what I read of his papers seemed like good science and clearly supports evolutionary history of insects. I don't know how he got involved with the religious fanatics at the Discovery Institute, but his actual scientific research doesn't seem to support anything about ID.

We have transitional fossils.Suppose you take a trip from New York to San Francisco. You take a selfie at the Statue of Liberty. You take a selfie at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. You take a selfie at the Grand Canyon. And you take a selfie at the Golden Gate Bridge.We may not know the exact route that you took between those landmarks but we do know that you went from New York to San Francisco. Our knowledge is confirmed by the evidence of your snapshots.

That's a creationist lie.First, I don't give a flying fuck about "Darwinists". I have never met a "Darwinist".Second, people who accept science know (not believe) that evolution is a fact and they also know that the theory of evolution explains that fact. Similarly, gravity is a fact and the theory of gravity explains that fact. (Mind you, the theory of gravity is nowhere near as robust as the theory of evolution.Only creationists are confused about the difference between a theory and a fact. And you insist on staying confused no matter how many times it's explained to you. There comes a point when feigned "confusion" becomes dishonesty. Biological evolution. What's confusing about that? You certainly are.Evolution is the soundest science we have.

No refusal. See Message 120.