|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
Thread ▼ Details |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: There are easy creationist answers to problems evolutionists pose | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7
|
Another low-quality post.
The fact that you can answer weak versions of cherry-picked arguments does nothing to help your case. Indeed, it suggests that you lack good answers to more serious arguments. For instance: There is a very real problem that Kind boundaries are not identifiable. Linnaean taxonomy shows a single tree of life, not a collection of bushes or shrubs. The evidence used to identify relationships is the same whether it crosses the presumed Kind boundaries are not. If the boundaries are there, why are they not seen? It is also a real problem that the Flood was rejected by geologists. Flood belief was dominant in that time. The idea that the Flood would have produced results that look like the product of long ages instead is obviously dubious. The very fact that geologists could come up with successful models based on old-Earth ideas, but not on Young Earth Flood geology ideas is a real issue. Berthault’s work hasn’t exactly done much to change the situation either - unless you are going to assume that the Flood was guided by flumes. Simply asserting that there is some model that is supposed to explain the data is “easy” but it certainly isn’t a good answer.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7
|
quote: Then why don’t you pick better arguments - or at least better forms of the arguments you do pick?
quote: The answers you choose to give are clearly limited by your knowledge, not mine.
quote: So the aim was not to demonstrate that you really had easy answers to even the sorts of objections typically found here.
quote: Of course you have to resort to this pretence of superiority because you can’t handle the intellectual level of the debate. We’ll skip over your foolishness where you try to pretend that my initial comment was an argument.
quote: I would have thought that someone who claims to be as well informed as you would be aware of Linnaean taxonomy. Whether you accept the existence of a single tree of life is irrelevant - indeed my comment clearly implies that creationists do not. The point is taxonomic classification, and its failure to find clear indications of distinct Kinds.
quote: Let us note that this fails to address the point. However it is also based on a major misconception. The taxonomic classifications are based on modern life. The differences between phyla are based on the divergence that has accumulated since the original split. We should expect the early branches to be early - that should be obvious.
quote: Well, no. It’s like saying that to model conditions you have to make the effort to simulate conditions. The fact that the flumes are straight narrow channels makes them a poor simulation of a flood.
quote: The fact that you are dealing with very weak forms of the arguments you do address (as well as your other failures) suggests that you don’t even have good answers to those.
quote: One can only imagine how you’d react if I used similar rhetoric.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7
|
quote: Which is a characteristic of science.
quote: Perhaps you would like to produce an actual example of someone making that claim. So far as I can see the issue is that there is no catastrophic signature that would match the Flood.
quote: I’ll note that this falls far short of making a case for one single catastrophe explaining these examples.
quote: I’ll just note that your salt argument is uniformitarian, assuming that the estimated gains and losses remain constant - and are accurately accounted for. A Christian answers the paper here pointing out that there is no evidence that the total amount of salt in the oceans is increasing, he goes on to point out that large amounts of salt have been removed from the seas, as shown by halite deposits. The nickel argument seems little better. There doesn’t seem to be much analysis of what happens to the nickel in seawater - it’s assumed that it either remains in the water or is accumulated in nodules. If we did not have solid evidence of long ages it might work - but we do. And then we have the amateur sedimentation argument. The fact that it ignores uplift - even uplift occurring today - is a warning sign. As is the fact that it relies on strawman uniformitarianism (a view which seems to be followed only by Young Earth Creationists).
quote: An honest assessment isn’t based on rejecting solid arguments for doubtful ones.
quote: Geologists are quite willing to accept catastrophes when the evidence supports it. That’s a strength, not a weakness.
quote: And yet none of your arguments makes any significant case for the Flood. Even considered alone - the wider context matters and is still a major issue.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
Of course the comment Mike was reacting to was unquestionably true. Answering weak versions of cherry-picked arguments doesn’t help his case.
So Mike’s comment was less than honest and hypocritical since his answer was diversionary rhetoric.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7
|
I would assert that anyone who thinks that they conclude divine creation based in scientific evidence is either deceived or lying.
The Intelligent Design movement, for instance has always been religious in nature. It’s primary goal was not scientific research, but changing science education to better fit with their beliefs. The Wedge document is evidence of this, as is their inclusion of Young Earth Creationists and their beginnings with Of Pandas and People a hastily-rewritten Creationists text book (where even the definition of Intelligent Design was originally given as a definition of Creation). (And there is plenty more evidence. The fact that the IDEA Clubs only admitted Christians as members is further evidence of their religious nature). Indeed, their insistence on changing science education before producing the science to justify it is evidence that they were “already convinced” as is their failure to convince even believing scientists (Kenneth Miller, Darell Falk and Francis Collins are three prominent examples). See Falk’s review of Stephen Meyer’s latest book. Or the discussion of the same book on Peaceful Science Even the amateur ID supporters here seem “already convinced”. One went to great lengths arguing about Dembski’s Complex Specified Information even though he didn’t understand that Dembski’s “Complex” was based on improbability - and was quite resistant to understanding it even after I directly quoted Dembski. Another tried to argue that an alleged analogy was a strong argument (even though it was only alleged to be an analogy, without any evidence), and that accepting it as such was the same as accepting the use of diagrams as illustrations. Needless to say both points are obviously false, so we may include him, too among the ranks of the “already convinced”.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
The Biologic Institute is closing. Axe is taking up a full-time position at Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles). Their publications list reports nothing since 2014 so it seems that it’s been effectively dead for the last few years.
(Reported at The Panda’s Thumb) I guess the Discovery Institute prefers crude Nazi apologetics
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: For a definition it works well enough. And of course, the Biblical usage has very little to do with the concept.
quote: Does it? And I will point out that creationists - who invented their usage - generally insist that fertilisation is not an adequate criterion. It can only show that two species are the same “kind” - lack of interfertility does not show that two species are different kinds.
quote: A kind - in creationist usage - is a phylogenetic grouping. All members of a “kind” are descended from the originally created population - in Young Earth Creationism all current members of a kind are descended from the population on Noah’s Ark (whether one pair or seven).
quote: Now THIS is vague. Do you mean that “kinds” are only useful as a fiction to pretend that the Noah’s Ark story - as interpreted as YECs - could actually happen?
quote: The biggest problem is finding the supposed boundaries. At what point do you decide that evidence of common ancestry should be rejected ? And why, other than theological concerns which have no scientific basis at all ?
quote: Obviously it would be archaeological evidence. Exactly what that evidence would be depends on the time and the site. Nevertheless we can say that the Egyptian culture - for example - has a long prehistory, with considerable continuity. Here is a presentation of some archaeological finds from predynastic Egypt.
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024