You geniuses you!

I don't know if you're a bunch of professors or what, every subject is flooded with awesome information and primary references... I have to know the secret, do you speed/photoread? Do you use a secret database of scientific journals? How do you do it!?

Personnally, I don't do it here much. There are some professional scientists that supply real hard hitting primary information.Others, like Sylas, are very well read and experienced at discussing this stuff.Sometimes I know a bit about a topic just because I read a lot. Other times I try a google to see what turns up. TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy has a lot of information all packaged up for us already.The web maybe a tool for liars to diseminate their junk but it is also a tool for others to catch them up. Quote mining is becoming more and more dangerous for creationists as the original context can frequently be found of the web. Some now seem to resort to decades old material that is less likely to be so easily available.I'm impressed too with the information that some of our posters manage to produce. I'm thankful for their help.On the other hand you might note that it is very rare that a creationist drops in with anything new at all. They keep bringing up the same junk over and over. Very few hang around long enough to really discuss it.

I don't know about professors, but there are quite a few high school science teachers and actual scientists doing research as we speak. For us lab rats, the best place for primary literature (at least in the biological fields) is No webpage found at provided URL: www.pubmed.com. By typing in "random mutation natural selection" I got about 260 abstracts from primary literature. Often, all you get is the abstract, but a few referrences will have free access to the complete paper. This is a great place to start if you understand the terminology.Just glancing through the search I did. Came across this paper:Evolution Int J Org Evolution. 2003 Oct;57(10):2197-215.Perspective: models of speciation: what have we learned in 40 years?Gavrilets S.Actually, a really good overview of speciation and how the results of this study's model could indicate punctuated equilibrium in the right conditions (small populations and small adaptive valley).As others have and will reference, TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy is probably the best compilation of evolutionary evidence written more towards the layman. Also corrects creationist distortions of commonly used words within the evolutionary sciences, including "vestigial" and the scientific definition of "the theory of evolution" to name a few.Otherwise, specific google searches are the way to go. Most of the time, ignore dictionary definitions for scientific terms. Try and do google searches to find the connotation that most scientists use it in.

thanks for the advice nosyned and loudmouth!

A couple of other good resources are Scirus:
Elsevier | An Information Analytics Business
a search engine that returns somewhat fewer spam and porn sites than Google on scientific searches, and
PNAS
and
Science | AAAS
the websites of PNAS and Science, two of the big-name general science journals. Both have full access, within some time limits, with free registration. Watch out, though: if you get to browsing them too hard you might forget to eat.

Wow! those sites were great! thanks coragyps and loudmouth, i was actually looking for some peer reviewed lit. on blood clotting and flagella and the works that i couldn't find anywhere, but those databases have a lot!

Yah, Franky, there's some intelligent cookies here, but lemme clue you in. Methinks, some of what these people post is gleaned from the www. When you're new here, you copy and paste links and you get heck for relying so much on links and "quote mining," but after awhile you learn to go to the web links, glean the info and bring it back to your post revised in your own words, giving the impression you're sooooo intelligent. Then once you learn to master this technique, you in turn begin giving the newbies heck with the chorus of others for quote mining. [This message has been edited by buzsaw, 03-12-2004]

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Methinks, some of what these people post is gleaned from the www. When you're new here, you copy and paste links and you get heck for relying so much on links and "quote mining," but after awhile you learn to go to the web links, glean the info and bring it back to your post revised in your own words, giving the impression you're sooooo intelligent. Then once you learn to master this technique, you in turn begin giving the newbies heck with the chorus of others for quote mining.

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Or, you could go to the science websites and actually learn something about science, then come back to the debate more enlightened and less ignorant.It's called education, buz, you should try it out.

I figure most of the websites you consider educational as much of a waste of time as you do the ones I consider educational. Like have you checked out the video clips of "The Exodus Revealed" yet and learned what there is to learn about that subject?

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The immeasurable present is forever consuming the eternal future and extending the infinite past. buz

buzsaw writes:

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I figure most of the websites you consider educational as much of a waste of time as you do the ones I consider educational.

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One important difference between the two sets of websites, yours and schraf's, is where they might lead if one were to pursue the study in earnest. Suppose you became so absolutely fascinated by one of these sets of websites that you went back to school and earned a masters or doctorate in the field. One of those sets of websites might lead to a distinguished career as a doctor or biologist. The other might, if one were very, very, very lucky, lead to a faculty position at a creationist college where one could make a career of closing other young minds to reality. Which would you pick?

Or we all survive the current generation of whitening teeth profs. The generation thing likely does not discriminate.

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but after awhile you learn to go to the web links, glean the info and bring it back to your post revised in your own words, giving the impression you're sooooo intelligent. Then once you learn to master this technique, you in turn begin giving the newbies heck with the chorus of others for quote mining.

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Actually, by reading people's revisions of printed research it does give an indication of whether or not they understood the science. So really, the technique to be mastered is understanding how science works, the terminology, biological systems, genetics, the theory of evolution, and numerous physical and biological mechanisms.For instance, let see if buz can accurately synopsize the following abstract from http://www.pubmed.com and its importance in collecting DNA from neanderthal fossils: If buz feels it is necessary, I would freely post my own synopsis to be judged by everyone. The point I am trying to get across is that we (evos) do know what we are talking about. We are not hiding behind terminology or research access like they were smoke and mirrors. Rather, we have spent portions of our lives trying to understand the way the natural world work by actually studying the natural world instead of a religious text. This seems to be in stark contrast to most creationists who seem to think that a modicum of knowledge from a 6th grade biology class gives them the right to discount millions of man hours put in by well trained and well respected scientists for purely religious reasons.

LM,1. Your premisis that creos bury their heads into the Bible and are blind to obsrvation and study of science, archeology and nature is just not the case. Our scientists, archeologists and researchers have museums, schools, field workers and all the same as yours. It's just that we interpret what is observed differntly. So at age 68, for me to begin spending my time studying in depth what I've looked into quite enough so as to debunk much of it would be fruitless, given I don't likely have a lot of time left to live.2. The more I read you people, the more it appears that the modern secular science class room discourages common sense, logic and plain old wisdom. For example, we all know by observation that in order for any of us humans to produce anything complex, much thought, planning and exacting work must be exercised in order to come up with anything. Otherwise nothing happens pertaining to producing anything. But from preschool on up, our secular schools begin the attack on logic and common sense to begin the process of indoctrinating young minds full of mush that via millions and billions of years, natural selection all by its selfy cobbled together all the intricate wonders we observe without any intelligent planning and creating.I read up on the websites when I need to see where you people are coming from but end up always realizing that it's all based on the assumption that there's no supernatural dimension in the universe to plan anything. Via common sense and logic, I reject that notion altogether.

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The immeasurable present is forever consuming the eternal future and extending the infinite past. buz

see Age Correlations and an Old EarthI offer this as evidence of creos burying their head in a bible and being completely unable to offer any sensible interpretations.

Why would you expect the universe to be a place that makes sense in terms of conventional common sense or wisdom?The universe is complicated, Buz. It's ludicrous to expect it to be a place that makes perfect sense to those with only a casual acquainence with it. We know. What I don't understand is why you believe that "common sense" - aka your own preconceptions - represents a superior epistomology to observation and experimentation.Common sense is not a very good way to know anything. It's too easy for common-sensical things to be wrong.