Creationists: Strut Your Stuff

CalifBoomer, as DrFidelius has noted, my comments regarding the magic replacement were in response to your earlier statements that you could accept that evolution occurs, but that man was created separately. As the good Doc has already pointed out, there is no missing link. We have a fossil record that clearly shows evolutionary development from the australopithecines down through humanity. My comment was more of a question: since there is a clear trail from point A to point B, at which point along that trail would you like to see us insert our special creation? (And why did God allow all the preceding developments to occur, simply to thrust them away and replace the last entry in the line with a “new model”?)

(If this turned away from being a flame-fest and became an actual discussion, DrFidelius is quite capable of explaining how the fossil record is actually a weaker testimony to evolution than several other bits of evidence such as the DNA trail. (He knows that part much better than I, so I will not attempt to muddy those waters.)) However, as DrFidelius has also observed, this seems to have become much more of a “let’s all trade insults” ride with a sign over the driver’s seat that says BBQ Pit. That being the case, I think I’ll let you and DavidB wrestle it out.


Tom~

retraction on the h20 bit, I read it as hydrogen by mistake. How embarressing… i’m acing my chemistry class too.
Sorry!
-bored2001

Someone can claim that evolution is false all they want. But, they should have the stuff to back it up. (Especially here) Like I said, since today’s evolutionary theories are a product of science, then they can be debunked, using science. Maybe not today, or next century. But, it can happen (in theory).

Bored:

I appreciate the herculean effort.

Just for fun.

Yes there are some startling similarities between Christianity and American Indian Mythos. Crow for example is a pretty Christlike figure. Budhism, Islam, Hiinduism, and Christianity are remarkably similar.

As far the missing matter, can basically see to the ends of the known expanding universe Even though we can’t see into a black hole, it is possible to calculate it’s mass from the gravitational pertubations of nearby masses. The mass is still missing.

Yes, I can explain God. God did it. The Bible says so. Where does it say what happened in the first nanosecond of the Big Bang.

I’m glad you like the Big Bang caption argument. I made that one up myself.

As far as the Scientific method. It’s been around for a long while even if it was not defined as such. Look at Euclid who was clearly a great scientist as well as Mathemetician. Look at Newton. The bottom line is that even “good” science is quite malleable. Part of the scientific method is the formation of hypothesis, which is “just guessing”

Yes, my next point was a cheap shot. But hey, I’ll strike any blow I can.

DOn’t know where the electrical current discharges too. It doesn’t exist, so it probably doesn’t. Good catch (this was an easy one though)

You also got the ones right about the cells forming and the oil. I thought the latter was a stumper.

“BULL SHIT. H2O, 'nuff said.” Say what? Where do you think you get helium from water?

You got me on the genes and mutation.
Meant to say based on the observations from eclipses. (THis argument is just so much bullshit so feel free to ignore it.)

Nope, space dust doesn’t account for the erosion.

Wrong about the comet’s too. They are eroding at a great rate as they enter the inner solar system. They don’t pick up anything significant in the trip. THe fact that they are made of ice means they erode VERY fast as they approach the Sun. Sorry.

Yes the topsoil does get eroded by the rain. THis is also a good hint for the previous erosion argument.

Polonium Halos are formed when granite cools. If it cools fast they come out one way if it cools slow they come out another. Most of the granite we find has Polonium Halos that suggest it cooled fast, not over the millions of years science posits.

THe population growth is obvious bs as you mention.

Not talk about polarized atoms, talking about complex organic molecules which should show an even distribution between right and left handedness in their shape, but don’t.

Actually the Mitochondrial DNA does show a common ancestor for all mankind.

Got the hair part wrong.

Got the Mendellian part right.

The gravitational effects of your theoretical black hole would be infitessimal, and not enough to impart the spin of the solar system.

You are right on target with the emotions.

Actually the intermediate fossils are missing, and some of the changes are quite sudden.

Yes, it was a cheap shot, but I was being facetious.

If matter and energy can’t be created and need to be conserved, then how did the big bang create them. String theory and quantum mechanics both point to the spontaneous creation of both matter and antimatter from “the void” for lack of a better term. WHere is it?

I really didn’t mean for those “evidences” to be answered. Since you took the time to do so I felt compelled to reply. If you want to take some second guesses or hear the accepted explanations on some of those items, I’d be glad to share them. You can also find them quite easily by doing a search on the name I credited a couple of posts ago.

Califboomer:

I wasn’t aware of any “rational logic” on my part, but will gladly accept it as a bonus!

I’m glad to see you agree with me and that we are most likely descended from apes. That’s very big of you to admit you were mistaken.

You see guys, you CAN talk sense to people.

Glad we got that all straightened out.

Califboomer:

I wasn’t aware of any “rational logic” on my part, but will gladly accept it as a bonus!

I’m glad to see you agree with me and that we are most likely descended from apes. That’s very big of you to admit you were mistaken.

You see guys, you CAN talk sense to people.

Glad we got that all straightened out.

hehe, well, I admit that was fun. Most of what I said was extrapolations made on my own current knowledge, so I was sure some of it was gonna be wrong.

few problems I see with your explainations.

For religion I was refering to the great historical events such as the flood and such. All those religions that you mentioned influenced each other since they had contact with them. The Indians were isolated.

I serious do not possibly see how anyone could have possibly calculated the supposed mass of the universe and then went on to calculating the real mass of the universe. I simply do not see how. And another question–don’t matter and anti-matter cancel each other out?(Yes, I realize this is counter productive to my argument later on)

Ok, god did it, prove it =)
Oh, and they have calculated what happened a nano-second after the big-bang, but as someone else said, we don’t know the actual physics of the big bang.

As I said before, science proves itself wrong. So does the bible, but they don’t admit that too often now do they? =)

Who knows what that comet has encountered and as I said before, who says it was formed at the big-bang?

I was refering to Isomers. Left and right polarized isomers. Basically the same EXACT structual formula and chemical formula, but they’re different. What explained that is that only one was useable for life as we know it and life as we know it built up those isomers.

I know the mitochondrial DNA part, I was just saying its not a proof for Eve.

Explain the hair part please, I put down what first poped into my mind. There are probably a plethora of other reasons, but i’m far to lazy to think them up.

For the gravity spin. Think about it. It’s the ion thruster concept. The ion thurster provides a force of about a peice of paper against your hand, but it builds up.

For string theory and quantom mechanics–not exactly in my relm of knowledge. But doesn’t string theory say that way way way down on the level of strings energy is matter? Wouldn’t that mean that we could interchange them? That would account for missing mass.

I’d sure like to hear them.

-bored2001
=) :slight_smile: :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh yea, just incase someone skiped my lil post before. I made a retraction on that h20 thing. Whups! :smiley:

scylla:

Actually, what I said was:

Keep going. I’m almost there.

Just a few tweaks…

Any large-scale local flood is certainly going to be remembered in the oral history of any culture. Given the limitations on travel, especially during such a disaster, it might well seem to them as being world-wide. But I don’t recall seeing any references to the great trek to North America from Mt. Ararat in Indian oral history.

We don’t have evidence of what happened before the Big Bang. “God did it” is just one of an infinity of untestable hypotheses. We have no proof of His involvement any time after that.

The scientific method involves rigorous and critical procedures for checking one’s “guesses.” Scientific theory does change, but the previous theory is often either a special case of the revised theory or was valid but for the lack of crucial facts discovered with better instruments or techniques.

We can infer its existence of missing matter, but we can’t see it… yet. That’s ok, we know it’s there, we’ll find it.

A common ancestor is easily explained by the Master’s column on pedigree collapse.

Comets were not made in the big bang. Their atoms were made in supernovas and they probably condensed as the solar system itself condensed. We only have to account for them being ~5 billion years old, rather than ~15 billion. New individual comets are periodically perturbed out of their stable orbits in the Oort cloud by the large planets and perhaps nearby stars.

Although a cell could use either, there is no need to use both left-handed and right-handed amino acids; in fact it is disadvantageous to do so. Since all life is interrelated, whichever one accidentally gained a slight advantage would eventually prevail.

We don’t know the probability of abiogenesis. We also don’t know the range under which cases of that probability are tried. See my earlier post on the “probability fallacy.”

Any relatively small (galaxy-sized or less) collection of interstellar dust will have an aggregate average rotation. Eventually they will transfer their angular momentum to each other and all show the consistent rotation.

The current understanding of Evolution is “Punctuated Equilibrium:” Species stay the same for a while, then show a lot of change in a (relatively) short time. The fossil record is very sparse; there’s a lot of deduction that needs to be done.

When you consider the gravitational potential energy of all the stuff expanding, the net mass-energy of the Universe may well be exactly zero, in which case it is just a fortuitious vacuum fluctuation.


Against stupidity the very gods / Themselves contend in vain.

Any relatively small (galaxy-sized or less) collection of interstellar dust will have an aggregate average rotation. Eventually the particles will transfer their angular momentum to each other and all show consistent rotation.

BTW, I am reasonably certain that the earth’s magnetic field is not decaying, although it does fluctuate. I cannot recall my source for this.


Having an open mind means you put out a welcome mat and answer the door politely. It does not mean leaving the door open with a sign saying nobody’s home

I AM SUPER GOD!

I created this johnny come lately God you puny earthlings worship. Don’t believe me?
Do you think something as wonderful as God just evolved from space slime? You Darwinistic Heathen! Of course not! I created him! Well , gotta go…I’m busy battling the Easter Bunny for control of the Universe! What! Dont believe me! Just prove it isn’t so, you unfaithful smarty pants!

CalifBoomer said:

What the heck are you talking about? Insulting me is one thing, but if you start insulting Gaudere, you’re gonna get everybody in Great Debates pissed off at you!

You haven’t even come close to any of these here – let alone < gasp > answering a direct question asked of you (which you again completely avoided).

Once again:

What “missing link” are you talking about? You say somebody else brought it up; good, then it should be easy for you to explain.

Why do you claim anti-creationists are just anti-theist and then ignore me when I point out a number of theists who accept evolution?

Why is our DNA so similar to that of apes?

Do you accept that, in fact, our DNA is so similar to that of apes?

And those are just the ones from the last message! I’d hate to have to go back and search for all the previous ones you’ve been avoiding.

Ignorance is Bliss.
Reality is Better.

And another day goes by without the creationists posting their evidence in a thread specifically started so they could do so…

CalifBoomer, I’m curious:

do you believe that DNA fingerprinting and paternity testing are completely worthless techniques?

Also, what level of proof do you need to establish human-ape ancestry? It seems to me that the proof is as good as it is for, say, the reptile-to-bird transition, which you accept. What more do you need? Why do you need more for humans vs. apes than for everything else?
What if the Missing Link were found?

-Ben

SO far unanswered:

Missing matter

Conditions of Big Bang

Big Bang, Genesis similarity

Helium

Moondust depth

Lava dating

Polonium Halos

Hair

Heart mountain

Energy and matter formation.

Yes, not all religions have a flood myth. A lot of them do. How are the similarities between religions accounted for?

Good catches on the comets and handedness.
Does anybody think some of these things might constitute evidence?

David:

Are you being sarcastic? Or are you just plain not getting it?

Oh, somebody said something to the effect “The misssing matter, It’s out there, we know it is. We’ll find it.”

Sorry, isn’t the claim of special knowledge without evidence a creationist argument?

You better check yourself for ideological contamination.

No, I think that you’re the one not getting it. Please, Adam, if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it! If you don’t believe that creationism is supported by the evidence, then we’re not talking about you. What I want to see is some of the creationists who do believe that they are supported by the evidence actually put their money where their mouth is.
I do have a question for you, though. There’s a story about Galileo (which I’m probably mangling) in which some clergymen go to his home to talk to him about his belief that there are mountains on the moon. He tells them that if they look through his telescope, they will see the mountains for themselves. Their reply is that they don’t need to look through the telescope, because all they need is belief and faith; evidence is irrelevant.

Do you believe that they did the right thing?

-Ben