In addition to my many specific replies... I'm excerpting these short/simple answer/s to Creationist Clowns with answers to 5 of the 15 most common Red Herrings they post. I might add: since this article was writtten, the [transitional-between-species] Fossil record continues to be Filled in (as only Evo would predict), and tons more DNA evidence also continues to be consistent with Evolution. 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense John Rennie, Editor in Chief Scientific American - June 2002 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/ When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination. Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. [......] 1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. Many people learned in Elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do NOT use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a Well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are NOT expressing reservations about its truth. In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the Fact of evolution. [......] Relevent to some more of the recent Creationist Clownery. 10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features. On the Contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example. Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses. Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years. 11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species. Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved. 12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership. Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment. 13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans. Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record. Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution. [......]
In answer to several other recent Fallacious tries. 3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created. This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related. These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galapagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time. The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include Astronomy, Geology and Archaeology, as well as Evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical Evidence and whether they lead to Verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers Test them constantly. Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence. It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.+
Funny, Not a single Creationist challenged my old baby. The OP pretty much covers it. Needs a refresh for the beginner Bible Belt Beauties. This will better arm realists with answers to the most common idiocies of Genesissys. `
None of that is in the bible so everybody put their fingers in their ears and sing along...la la la I can't hear you...
STILL Dead. Coming up on One YEAR and two different sets of godists. They can only post under their own Fallacious OP's Not one challenger. `
By natural, they mean materialistic. For non materialistic causes are dismissed, and therefore would never be looked at, or even considered. This is the self limitation of materialistic science. I am not talking about a creator specifically here at all. But an example would be morphogenetc fields, as proposed by the biologist Rupert Sheldrake. Since this idea is outside of materialism, it is dismissed out of hand. Therefore if a grant was requested to research it, in a scientific manner, forget about it. Evolutionists are extremely self limiting, by the materialistic framework they must operate in.
Sheldrake is a "woo-meister". Sheldrake thinks that the fact that animals such as dogs and pigeons can find their way home is evidence for God. His Big Theory is that organisms have “morphic resonance,” a kind of inherited species memory (think Jung) that helps shape their bodies and behaviors.When others have tried to repeat his experiments demonstrating “morphic resonance,” they have also failed. He's a pseudoscientist with scientific credentials. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/rubert-sheldrake-peddles-his-woo-to-americans/
It's interesting that this article, published in 2002, responds to each and every one of the objections that Creationist raise even today.. In 15 years they have been unable to come up with anything new. They keep bringing up the same nonsense again and again, but never react to these responses.
Creationists are as adamant in their ignorant beliefs as Holocaust deniers are. No amount of facts and data can penetrate their intransigence. This intractable stubbornness is manifest in all parts of society and amongst damn near every belief system. What is really disturbing is that creationists and deniers are small minorities, whereas there are millions of hard core partisans who have blind faith in the righteousness of their "party politics". Bumpersticker makers are happy tho.
I can solve all of this god used magic therefore it bypasses all of this and god did it and your all wrong since your beguiled by the ways of Satan mwhahahahaha. Well my take on Creationists as I see them it all comes down to magic ,er, I mean miracles.
Rubbish.. You just pulled stuff out your arse, or sniffed what others pulled out of theirs. You linked hit piece simply wrote materialistic promissory notes. That is the general tactic used. The part on consciousness was particularly amusing, and they wrote a hefty promissory note with that one. Consciousness is still the hard problem, and Chalmers and Sheldrake could tear your materialism to shreds, or at least its certainty. Materialism is an assumption. Funny that Sheldrake and Chalmers are intelligent enough to understand that, while you seem to be lacking. I would love to see the author of your article debate these two guys. LOL He would be shown to be much more ignorant than he accuses Sheldrake of being. His hit piece would be torn to shreds. It was just a bit dishonest, and the author didn't even know of his dishonesty. Materialism is getting to the place where they must write promissory notes. If physics had followed this path, quantum mechanics would not exist today. But evolutionary biology has invested itself so deeply into materialism, they have self limited. Physics never did that. Physicists never said, classical physics will provide the answers, if we only give it time. So, forget this nonsense of quantum mechanics, and keep the course steady, for some day, with a promissory note, Newton will have the answer. Just keep looking within the classical paradigm. For this quantum stuff, looks like magic, not billiard balls bouncing off one another in very predictable ways. My money says the arise of a self replicating molecule, and its potential to eventually evolve in homo sapiens who could then understand how this happens, is not limited to materialistic mechanics. There is information involved and a source for that information. And it is the same source of the information needed at the quantum level of reality. So the manifestation of life, its evolution requires two primary things, as seen at the quantum level. Energy and information. Sheldrake speaks of the information. I will write a promissory note that is about a future understanding of the information. And this is what is being denied in materialistic evolutionary biology. They reject information and would rather have a religious type faith in chance plus time. Except of course, they cannot replicate this, even when they get rid of pure chance and inject their intelligence and limited understanding. What chance allegedly manifested, cannot be replicated, by taking a short cut of manipulation. In short, this science is not even in the ballpark of real deal science like physics. But physics did not self limit by insisting on never veering away from classical physics. For unlike biologists, they were not emotionally and philosophically invested in their materialism. The Church of Materialistic Evolutionary Biology. .
Materialism is an assumption based on available information and knowledge and a lack of evidence of the supernatural. It assumes that until proven, the supernatural realm does not exist. Much like creationism is a wild arsed assumption of the existence of a god/creator. Your use of the term information indicates you are confusing two definitions of the term. The lay definition and the scientific definition. Evolutionary biology has arisen from observation, investigation, experimentation, prediction and falsification. I might add that there is a dearth of information and factual knowledge representing the "god creation" hypothesis. THAT approach is also rife with assumption, speculation and fallacy and zero evidence to support it. Your simplistic argument that evolutionary biology is too invested in their science to accept new ideas is specious and frankly ignorant. Every day new discoveries are made in genetics, biochemisty, archeology, anthropology, zoology, etc that expand our knowledge and regrettably for you and yours reinforces the main theme. OTOH, there is not definitive proof of spontaneous biochemical reaction that resulted in "life" all those billions of years ago, but there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that all terrestrial life originated from a common ancestor. The fact that every living thing on this planet contains DNA (we humans share 25% of our DNA with daisies) is a strong indicator of the validity of the premise. But by all means construct such fallacious arguments if it makes you feel better. Afterall, your god resides between your ears, like every other theist on the planet.
A scientific theory is supported by extensive research and repeated experimentation and observation in the natural world. Unlike a true scientific theory, the existence of an "intelligent" agent can not be tested, nor is it falsifiable. Your challenge is a false premise (it’s false because it is based upon a non sequitur); that if scientists understand the biology and evolution of a living cell they should be able to construct one from scratch. Our knowledge of biology progresses by deepening our understanding of how biological organisms work. It is incomplete, but that does not mean that the parts we have worked out so far are not reliably correct.
Sure its very complex and difficult to understand but honest - I don't know and neither does anyone else. I'm fine with that its good we cant explain all the questions so we can keep on looking for answers.
Question: Why do most cultures have images and tales of Dinosaurs. Gracias. Moi Got Creationism? Dinosaurs didn't make it on the Ark! r > g And How Do You Explain Creationism!
Because dinosaurs lived on the Earth for over 200 million years and evidence of that existence is found in the fossil record.
(above post compressed for sanity sake/adults here) Most cultures Don't. The have monsters, dragons, etc. Not 150,000,000 year old creatures they were unaware of.
