Why are we so bad at this?

It's not just homology. If we found a living or fossil species that shared homology with birds and mammals this would disprove the theory of evolution as we know it.Rather, it is the NESTED HIERARCHY that leads to the conclusion of common ancestry and evolution.I would strongly recommend you read George Romanes' 1882 essay "The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution". It isn't perfect, but it knocks a lot of topics out of the park. For example, it describes the relationship between intelligent design, evolution, and parsimony.

quote:

---

For, be it observed, the exception in limine to the evidence which we are about to consider, does not question that natural selection may not be able to do all that Mr. Darwin ascribes to it: it merely objects to his interpretation of the facts, because it maintains that these facts might equally well be ascribed to intelligent design. And so undoubtedly they might, if we were all childish enough to rush into a supernatural explanation whenever a natural explanation is found sufficient to account for the facts. Once admit the glaringly illogical principle that we may assume the operation of higher causes where the operation of lower ones is sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, and all our science and all our philosophy are scattered to the winds. For the law of logic which Sir William Hamilton called the law of parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the observed effects—this law constitutes the only logical barrier between science and superstition. For it is manifest that it is always possible to give a hypothetical explanation of any phenomenon whatever, by referring it immediately to the intelligence of some supernatural agent; so that the only difference between the logic of science and the logic of superstition consists in science recognising a validity in the law of parsimony which superstition disregards. Therefore I have no hesitation in saying that this way of looking at the evidence in favour of natural selection is not a scientific or a reasonable way of looking at it, but a purely superstitious way. Let us take, for instance, as an illustration, a perfectly parallel case. When Kepler was unable to explain by any known causes the paths described by the planets, he resorted to a supernatural explanation, and supposed that every planet was guided in its movements by some presiding angel. But when Newton supplied a beautifully simple physical explanation, all persons with a scientific habit of mind at once abandoned the metaphysical explanation. Now, to be consistent, the above-mentioned professors, and all who think with them, ought still to adhere to Kepler's hypothesis in preference to Newton's explanation; for, excepting the law of parsimony, there is certainly no other logical objection to the statement that the movements of the planets afford as good evidence of the influence of guiding angels as they do of the influence of gravitation.

​

. . .

​

Now, since the days of Linnæus this principle has been carefully followed, and it is by its aid that the tree-like system of classification has been established. No one, even long before Darwin's days, ever dreamed of doubting that this system is in reality, what it always has been in name, a natural system. What, then, is the inference we are to draw from it? An evolutionist answers, that it is just such a system as his theory of descent would lead him to expect as a natural system. For this tree-like system is as clear an expression as anything could be of the fact that all species are bound together by the ties of genetic relationship. If all species were separately created, it is almost incredible that we should everywhere observe this progressive shading off of characters common to larger groups, into more and more specialized characters distinctive only of smaller and smaller groups. At any rate, to say the least, the law of parsimony forbids us to ascribe such effects to a supernatural cause, acting in so whimsical a manner, when the effects are precisely what we should expect to follow from the action of a highly probable natural cause.
--George Romanes, "The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution", 1882
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, by George J. Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.

---

What matters is how well their arguments stand up to the observable facts. You can call them informed or intelligent, but science doesn't care. What matters is the data and how well they are able to work with it. All I have seen from those people are really bad arguments (e.g. arguments from ignorance/incredulity) or misrepresentations of the data (e.g. Sanford's genetic entropy). When you see denial of science from people who reject the theory of evolution, what other conclusion are we supposed to arrive at? If you reject that a plane can fly, will they start falling out of the air? No.The same for the theory of evolution. Nothing in the science changes because some people refuse to accept the theory. We still have mountains of evidence demonstrating common ancestry and evolution, and that doesn't go away because some people reject the theory and refuse to address this evidence. The point is that there is no such thing as a completely different animal, at least not in an objective sense. If, as you claim, you accept the nested hierarchy then you would already know that. All life shares features at some level, so there are no completely different species.

By definition, anyone who rejects macro evolution cannot be considered informed or intelligent people as your list of your fellow religious nutjobs confirms. Or you can acknowledge that rejection of evolution is, in fact, science denial. You really have to be twistedly religiously motivated to not know the reality of evolution as science has proclaimed. That is, after all, your personal motivation for being anti-science. Science trumps your conception of god. It means you lack logical reasoning, critical thinking skills and intellectual honesty. And you’re doing so purposefully. You are knowingly ignoring reality for a fantasy that was handed to you 3500 years ago complete with the wealth of knowledge and reasoning of that time. A talking snake for god sake, Mikey. The shame you must see looking in the mirror. ‘Cept you don’t see the shame. Those scales are still covering your eyes. Again, it’s not that you cannot see the reasoning or the mechanism behind evolution (macro/micro being all the same) but acceptance of the fact of evolution destroys your religious illusion. Again reality punches your god in the nose. Exactly bass ackwards, as usual, Mikey.We accept what the settled science says because there are no reasonable reasons not to.I said ‘reasonable’, Mike. Your macro/micro bull cannot be considered reasonable in the face of the scientific facts. First you have to kill more reality. Good luck with that, not. You have so many deficiencies it is difficult for someone like Percy to not slip off into teacher mode. You need so much help.

Oh bullshit. Your intention is to kill evolution because the reality of the mechanism denies the very idea of your god let alone its supposed supreme powers. Then you deny the science that informs evolution which is based on the foundations of dozens of other disciplines. You reject science.Typical priest.

On its face, I'm willing to go way, way, way out on a limb and accept the possibility that someone could bring down one of the most well supported theories in science. However, when their arguments boil down to obvious arguments from incredulity and ignorance . . . well, it's a bit disappointing. At least Flat Earthers and Plasma Cosmology crackpots have arguments that are more scientifically entertaining.I think a lot of these issues could be cleared up if ID/creationists understood the concept of nullius in verba, or "take nobody's word for it". It's the motto of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific institute in existence. It's a good motto. What it does is remind scientists that their conclusions need to be based on objective data, not just their say so.Something is designed? Really? Why? Because so-and-so says so? Is that it?If that is all they have, then I take a pass.Irreducibly complex systems can't evolve? Why? Because Behe says so? Nullius in verba. I would say we accept the settled science because it predicted what we found in the universe, and continues to explain new discoveries. When our technology allowed us to sequence many different genomes it could have completely overturned the theory of evolution. It didn't. Instead, we found what we predicted we would find. We found an unmistakable and clear signal of mutation, selection, and shared ancestry throughout the data."Arguments against macroevolution, based on so-called gaps in the fossil records, are also profoundly weakened by the much more detailed and digital information revealed from the study of genomes. Outside of a time machine, Darwin could hardly have imagined a more powerful data set than comparative genomics to confirm his theory."
--Dr. Francis Collins, "Faith and the Human Genome"
https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PSCF9-03Collins.pdfYet another essay I strongly encourage all Christians to read, especially those Christians who think evolution is an atheist conspiracy. The essay was written by a Christian for Christians, and by someone who is actually intelligent and informed.

The "this" in the thread's title is persuasion, and in the opening post I was asking why we've been so unsuccessful at persuading creationists over the years. I then consider Scientific American's answer to this question (briefly, that you first have to build trust and rapport) and reject it in the case of the creation versus evolution debate. That approach might keep the discussion more civilized, but it won't convince anyone.--Percy

Humans are stubborn, so people are less likely to trust someone from outside their group than within their group. I think this is true for the vast majority of humans, including myself.If creationist believing Christians are going to change their mind I think it will need to come from within Christianity. BioLogos is one organization that is attempting to do just that, but they do run into a lot of resistance from their fellow Christians. There's a bit of anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism that also has to be overcome.It's also a matter of tradition. People don't like to change their views later in life. It may be a matter of waiting for the creationists to die out.

If creationism were an actual discipline, that could be true. But it isn't. Plus, the culture it's a part of is one of adherence to old ideas guarding them against new information or new interpretations, rather than one of finding what they had gotten wrong and then correcting it.Their world is a PT Barnum one: There's a sucker born every minute. Every new creationist is fed PRATTs that are decades, even centuries, old while shielding them from any of those claims' long history of having been refuted. Not only are they told that these are the "latest scientific findings", but also that "no scientist has been able to respond to it", both of which are outrageous lies.So while waiting for the old creationists to die out, they are being constantly replaced with near-exact clones. It's like the old adage of the human body completely renewing itself over the span of seven years with old cells dying and being replaced with exact copies.But old creationists dying out is not their only source of attrition. Most obvious are the new creationists who continue to dig and learn only to discover what a complete lie creationism is. A far greater source of attrition is the approx. 80% of their children who grow up to run away from that religion as fast as they can; while I want to attribute that to their having been raised on creationism, the greater reason is the trauma of growing up in that faith. That is why they have to depend so much on recruitment instead of growing the next generation (kind of like the Shakers who practiced abstinence so they had to adopt a lot of orphans).

What I am wondering is if this can continue in the presence of Google. As your posts have described over the years, one could have been honestly ignorant of the evidence prior to 2000. That just isn't the case anymore. Everyone has access to nearly unlimited knowledge on a device that sits in their pocket. That includes all of the evidence for evolution, like transitional fossils. Not only that, but the DNA sequencing revolution of the last 20 years has produced evidence that is orders of magnitude stronger and voluminous than the fossil evidence, but admittedly harder for the common person to understand.To be a YEC today it takes a willingness to be so incurious that you never Google something as simple as "transitional fossils". Can YEC survive easy access to knowledge? I guess we will see.

We are already living that dystopia (which will become far worse). The Fountain of Information also serves much better as the Conduit of Misinformation. The Internet is just like the Bible: you can use it to support any position or prove any assertion.OK, so I just Google'd "transitional fossils" to prove my point and the first creationist link (AiG) didn't show up until a third of the way down the second page. Darn!So I tried it on YouTube (link to the search page) and got similar results, except the creationist videos showed up sooner and in greater numbers, though the non-creationist ones still dominated ... slightly (the first one was sponsored, the second was from the ICR, the third was by Erika "Gutsick Gibbon", and the fourth was a teaser for "How to Train Your Dragon").But I still feel my point to be valid. You are just as likely to find misinformation through Google as you are to find actual information. And if you are biased in selecting which to choose from the list of hits generated in the search, then you will tend to go with whatever would confirm your bias. That would be especially true if the search word is common within your in-group but not used outside it.
Worse, some innocent mind stumble upon creationist content and be corrupted by it -- I'm clearing out my books and I am very reluctant to release my creationist books back into the wild (via a used book store) where they could corrupt young minds, but I also don't want to endanger my own grandkids.But your point is also valid, since the Internet (eg, Google, YouTube) does offer far greater opportunities for exposure to the truth than existed before. Some of the callers into atheist chat shows used to be believers and they thanked the hosts for having exposed them to new ideas.If nothing else, creationists can now readily find refutation of one of the most fundamental creationist lies: "No scientist has been able to respond to this claim." When they find Erika or Forrest Valkai carefully and thoroughly explain what's wrong with those claims that creationists think are unassailable, then they become less confident of their own invincibility and more likely to start to think and to question.Unitarian-Universalist catch-phrase: To question is the answer.

Thank you for your response.I find it interesting, because you're pointing out a problem here akin to ID's 'Irreducible Complexity', a variation upon it. Your examples aren't clear cases of things that are evolutionary impossibilities. (Both are also a variation upon a god of the gaps argument)You're pointing at things that scientists just don't have evidence/an answer for yet. But the problem with these, is that you're suggesting that the barrier is right there, but you won't commit to that.Because once you do, and when more fossils are found that shatter that barrier, you'd have to commit to accepting there is no barrier. As long as you don't commit to saying "This is a clear barrier", the actual examples you're giving don't matter, because if evidence is found, you can just move on to a different example.Do you see the problem with this approach? Scientists have found various barriers of evolution, we can very easily say that evolution doesn't allow a mammal to suddenly become a bird for instance, if we were to find that sudden change in the strata, that would be a serious challenge to evolution, our understanding of it would be incorrect.And yet in the hundreds of thousands fossils we've found all over over the world, in the different layers, all of them seem to have not only a correct placement in time, but also in form and function. There's fringes where we don't have all the details, but we don't find fossils that don't fit how we explain things with evolution.Yet creationists can't pin down the barrier they perceive between micro and macro evolution. In fact, they can't even specifically define WHEN micro evolution becomes macro evolution.Yet they will claim it's impossible but the only examples given, are those on the fringes of what we've found while the rest is being ignored. You don't find weird anomalies in the fossil record of strange changes that can't be explained by evolution. No, what we find is cases where don't have enough information to fully explain how something happened.It reminds me a little of the Futurama skit where two scientists challenge eachother on ape/human evolution and keep going down a line of transitional forms, it's satire that very clearly explains the problems with this. Every new fossil is a discovery for science, but for Creationists, it's another reason to say 'ahah, more gaps!' So my question is, these examples you give, do you see them as a clear line of the barrier you say you don't know where it is between micro and macro?If you don't, why are these examples relevant because solving them means nothing.If you do, if they are solved, would that mean you agree micro and macro don't have that barrier or would the barrier simply shift to another point, and why?

Percy, sorry to take so long to reply.In any event, I doubt if you know what a Christian is.You seem to think that they should not have strong
convictions. You also seem to think that they should be
as timid as little puppies.I am well established in my faith. I am not fickle in any
things pertaining to the will of God.I don't relent to unfounded criticism, especially from those
who do not know God.I admit that I have a certain vernacular, but I never reply
when I am angry.When entering the orphanage, at the age of nine, I was
terrified of the world. A big part of the time, for the first
month or so, I would have in a 55 gallon drum.I left the home at the age of eighteen, having poor social
skills, which only intensified for a number of years.I hated God as much as anyone could; however, I knew that
He existed. I was terrified of burning in hell, which caused
me to hate Him more.Eventually, God turned His attention to me. I have no idea why,
but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened for me.It didn't happen overnight. In fact, it took years for me to
change. The change was slow, but God was leading it.This kind of change does not happen overnight. It was slow;
it was methodical; and, it was permanent.The biggest and most important change is my genuine love
and concern for others. This is why I spend a large part of
my time doing things that benefit others, including God's
animals.I talk about God's love for humanity. I talk about how He has
a plan that will save the vast majority of humans, but it wii be
at His predetermined time.If God was able to touch me so deeply, and to change me life
so dramatically, He will do the same for others. The exceptions
will be for those who completely refuse to accept Him.Perhaps, I do appear at times to be harsh and opinionated,
but it is not my goal to do so.This is presently a world controlled (with certain limitations)
by Satan. I speak out about his lies and deceptions.Burning in hell, evolution, an unloving God, etc... are the things
I condemn, not those who believe these lies.There are great evils that exist in this world, and it is merely
a questioning nature that wonders why God allows these
evils to continue.But, this overwhelming evil, is not of God, even though He
allows it.I have stated the reasons that God allows it for now, but it
falls on deaf ears.

Thank you for sharing how your faith has shaped your life. Clearly it means a lot to you, and it isn't something I would ever want to dismiss.But my earlier message wasn't about your sincerity, faith or your life story. I was reacting to how your faith often finds expression here. It often seems dismissive, accusatory, or even contemptuous toward others. If it's not your intention to sound harsh or opinionated then your comments need to reflect that more clearly.I don't expect timidity or surrender. I’m simply hoping for an open, inquisitive and mutually respectful discussion, especially here where there are such a variety of viewpoints. Personal strength and faith are important, but they can be expressed without disdain for others.--Percy