Coffee House Musings on Creationist Topic Proposals

It seems that all the new topic proposals by creationists/ID proponents grossly mischaracterize evolution and then think members of EvC will defend any of those sill versions of evolution.They also seem to think that people on the science side of this argument are as lazy as the creationists are and never actually put any work into research and broadening our knowledge.All we ever get from them is "evolution is bad and it's a religion, just like us."So the newest member at EvC, BISQUITCUTTER21, seems to think "If an unintelligent living organism came out of nature's goo and it was of one sex what are the chances another similar unintelligent organism came out as the opposite sex.", is a description of evolution. The Evolution of SexDoes anyone think he will realize he's wrong when we tell him, if this pathetic thread proposal is promoted? I predict he will ignore us and spout other total BS mischaracterizations of evolution.I'm bored and procrastinating when I should be working.

We're arguing with uneducated nutters, there's really no point.

Yeah, the quality has gone down a bit, but really that's who we've been arguing with all along, uneducated nutters.

Remember that they are Willfully Ignorant.When they want to be ignorant there is no surprise when they remain ignorant.

I wonder if he got that off Kent Hovind. I don’t think that AiG or the ICR would publish anything that bad. Of course he could be a troll. Poe’s law is a pain like that.

Yeah, I remember kids resistant to learning anything and kids that wanted to know how everything worked. The former always puzzled me.The willfully ignorant seem to be afraid of everything, especially people who know more than them. They fear knowledge and see it as a threat.

It sounds like Kent Hovind's level or Kirk Cameron.

More like Jack T. Chick with Chick's Tracts.

Is he or isn't he?Maybe a kid stepping up to slay the dragon. Let's find out. It may ultimately be maddining, ehh, most probably will end up maddening, from the absolute unresponsiveness and imperviousness to logic. But, maybe this one will put some intellect behind their musings. Or at least some humor.Take a chance. Go for it.

Strange how you never hear scientists saying, "Creationism is just another scientific theory that uses evidence!". It seems creationists start out already believing that their beliefs are inferior to science because they are both religious and based on faith. That's my guess as well. When someone fails to understand that the majority of species on Earth are asexual, where can you really go from there? Will such a closed mind even let in the additional facts of hermaphroditic species?

Does he believe this? How strongly?Is it possible he could be honestly ignorant? And willing to talk?Might it be interesting to find out?

On the plus side, at least we can tell what this creationist is talking about. That's more than we can say for another recent poster.

There is the problem that so many of the members of the Christian Cult of Ignorance and Deceit have been taught that God made males and females.Blame it on Genesis 5:2.But they have never been taught that there are asexual critters and critters that change sex and critters that normally have more than two sexes and critters that are both male and female at the very same time and it's all right and normal and reality.So much of modern evangelical fundamentalist conservative Christianity is depraved on account of the fact that they have been deprived of education and information because their parents and pastors and elders and priests have lied to them since birth.

Overall I agree with your assessment, but I always hold out the hope that a dialogue could be established. I'm the model of the happy pessimist: 99% of the time I have the satisfaction of being right and then on rare occasions I'm pleasantly surprised.A perennial problem with creationists is that they have no idea what they're talking about. That's not a bug, but rather a feature. Creationism has been constructed to get everything wrong, the better to fool everybody with. Because their goal and purpose is not to seek truth, but rather to convince (I recently heard again Martin Luther's infamous quote in which he approved of lying in order to gain converts, a form of the ends justifying the means, which the Radical Religious Right of the 80's identified as "secular humanism").That means that even when they learn the truth, they will stick with their lies solely because those lies sound more convincing. Refer again to my page-still-under-construction, Fundamental Differences Between Scientists and Creationists, which compares those differences starting with scientists seeking truth and creationists seeking to convince and discusses how that manifests into the two very different endeavors. We see that at work in the GQP where they spout their "alternative facts" even when they are fully aware that they're lying, but they stick with their lies in order to convince their followers.The basic problem stemming from their misunderstanding/misrepresentation of evolution is that it leads them to many false conclusions. Indeed, most creationist claims make absolutely no sense in light of what evolution actually is, which is why I keep trying to find a creationist who will tell us what he means by "evolution". EWolf is the most recent attempt, but I have no doubt that he will not return let alone answer my questions in Message 2042 which include: Another example not found on this forum is a "the chicken or the egg" travesty:

quote:

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Q: Which came first? The Chicken or The Egg?
A: It wasn’t a chicken or an egg…it was two chickens! A male and a female. Sexual reproduction requires a male and a female. The first male chicken needed to have 100% functional male stuff and the first female chicken needed 100% functional female stuff. They need to be at the same place at the same time. They can’t wait for millions of years for the opposite sex to evolve. They need a muscular, circulatory, respiratory, skeletal system and many others as well. Before the chickens can make an egg, they need an environment with the right temperature, the right food, the right amount of oxygen the right amount of gravity etc. The answer to the chicken and the egg is someone with incredible intelligence instantly designed an adult male and an adult female at the same time, at the same place, and the place had the right temperature, gravity, food etc. The Garden of Eden story answers the chicken and the egg question.

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Implicit in that travesty are fundamental misunderstandings of how speciation would work. Trying to piece those together (with absolutely no input from creationists outside of that text):

• "It wasn’t a chicken or an egg…it was two chickens! A male and a female. Sexual reproduction requires a male and a female. The first male chicken needed to have 100% functional male stuff and the first female chicken needed 100% functional female stuff. They need to be at the same place at the same time. They can’t wait for millions of years for the opposite sex to evolve"
  ​
  So that begs the question of how chickens evolved (actually, they were bred through domestication, but the natural process was still fundamentally the same). The creationist misconception appears to be that one "kind" suddenly gives birth to another and different "kind" all at once. I am confident that that's how that creationist was thinking about this because he would not only repeatedly play the card of "a dog giving birth to a kitten" or "why don't we see apes in the zoo giving birth to ape-men?", but he would also repeatedly misstate punctuated equilibria as "One day a snake laid an egg and a bird hatched out." None of which has anything at all to do with evolution!
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  Here's a more accurate account of the evolution of the chicken. People captured several red junglefowl and domesticated them. Domestication involved generations of selective breeding. In experiments in Russia with wild silver foxes, it took less than 10 generations to domesticate them into lap dogs. So with the proto-chickens, you started with a flock that was 0% chicken and over generations that flock slowly became more and more chicken-like until you arrived at a flock that was 99% chicken. And then out of that flock of 99% chickens we get an individual yard bird that was 100% chicken.
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  Where would that chicken find a mate? From within its flock, of course! There was no need to "wait a million years" for that chick to show up, because a whole flock of prospects was already right there right then! A 100% chicken could still mate with a 99% chicken, duh? For that matter, 100% chickens can still mate with 100% red junglefowl (indeed, the chicken gene pool has leaked so heavily into the red junglefowl gene pool that it is virtually impossible to even find a 100% red junglefowl anymore). In addition, we hear so much creationist blather about "basic created kinds" include the ability of closely related species to interbreed that even they are saying that this "where oh where would he ever find a mate?" "dilemma" just simply does not exist. Until they find that inconvenient, of course.
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  And where would those mates have gotten their "jiggly bits" from? (actually, chickens don't have jiggly bits; that seems to be much more of a mammal thing) The same place that we got ours, from our parents! But that discussion is in the next list item.
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• "They need a muscular, circulatory, respiratory, skeletal system and many others as well."
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  Yeah, and where did they get those from? Uh, from their parents, you think? The craven stupidity of these creationists can be just too painful to watch.
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• "Before the chickens can make an egg, they need an environment with the right temperature, the right food, the right amount of oxygen the right amount of gravity etc."
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  Already existed. And if those conditions went away, then even the pre-existing species would not be able to produce eggs, so none of that pertains to a new species. That "concern" is just BS.
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• "The answer to the chicken and the egg is someone with incredible intelligence instantly designed an adult male and an adult female at the same time, at the same place, and the place had the right temperature, gravity, food etc."
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  No. They evolved (albeit within the confines of domestication by humans). No need to invent some deus ex machina bullshit to explain away something that happens naturally.

BTW, there's a 2014 Christian film, A Matter of Faith, with Harry Anderson (of the sit-com, Night Court) playing a secular college biology professor pushing evolution with the chicken-or-the-egg question. Nothing more was covered in his class, just that one question. Like the "God is Not Dead" movie which grossly mischaracterized how philosophy would be taught in a college, it gives us the impression that none of those filmmakers ever attended a single day of college in their collective lives. This film even included a scene with a creation/evolution debate which never once touched on either subject. Don't worry; it left Netflix years ago. 
Not really done on this topic, but my Tequila intake is starting to catch up with me.

True, but I really suspect that none of them have had any exposure to biology or any description of actual evolution. They have only been exposed to the rubbish they post here and the source of their mistaken description is also someone they trust because of religious authority. The brainwashing that religion accomplishes is amazingly efficient at closing their minds to new information. It is quite extraordinary that every single creationist, no matter which branch, cannot provide an accurate description of evolution, let alone show they understand it, or indeed, of creation science/ID either. Well, the last time we heard from him was from the hospital... Aw well, the thread will still be here.I don't know much about tequila, but I had a shot of some really smooth Tequila in a Mexican restaurant in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan years ago. It was free when we paid our bill and there was no need for salt or lime, this was sipping liquor. When I was at a dragonfly meeting in Austin, Texas in 2019 a professor friend made her recipe of prickly pear margaritas that took her several weeks of complex preparations beforehand. They were the best margaritas I have ever or will ever have! (I have to say that)