Atheism is unreasonable

[His_Majesty]

What you are doing here is ignoring the years of training and experience it takes to do geology (which, as a geologist, I can tell you is a lot harder than you would have people believe). No one in the business says something is "millions of years" old without first dotting every i and crossing every t. In other words, we do the work needed to verify our results. You simply making a counter claim sans any evidence is simply the rantings of a scoundrel.

You may be able to tell how old something is if you conduct the right experiment...but the fact that the animal lived millions of years ago does not imply that the animal is an evolutionary predecessor of an animal that is alive today.

Non-sequitur.

A lot of things in this universe are odd. That doesn't make them any less real. I can't see infrared light even though I know that it exists. More people claim to have seen God in History than macroevolution simply because macroevolution hasn't been around that long, there aren't that may people actually working in the field, and because there are a lot of pre-literate people in the world who have been brainwashed into believing in magic sky daddies and have had an inferior education to counter such nonsense.

Less rhetoric, more evidence.

Yes I can. How? Because that entire paragraph of yours, above, is wrong. We have seen macroevolution in action. It is not "just a theory" as you people like to say.

You've seen reptile-bird changes? When?

There isn't a paleontologist on the planet who would agree with this lie. Paleontology is exactly like every other branch of science in that if you make any kind of "voodoo interpretations you want", all the other paleontologists out there are going to eat you alive, as I am with your rantings right now.

Paleontologists have their presuppositions, too.

Yes we can. In fact, we ruled it out over 80 years ago. You should read the memos when they are passed out.

So you scientifically ruled out God? How?

Evolution is a fact. Life evolves. The theory of evolution explains the fact of evolution. Get over it already.

No you get over it. No one is denying that there is change over time...but there are limits to the changes.

Apology accepted.

So if I showed you a picture of Jesus Christ, I guess that means Christianity is true, huh?

Strawman.

Not at all.

[Jackalope]

The point is, H_M has terrible taste in role models, and he apparently doesn't understand fallacies either.

Precisely. My point was not that Hovind is wrong (though he is, for different reasons), but rather that he's a scumbag, a charlatan, a common con man, with a phony degree from a non-accredited degree mill. I've read the man's "dissertation" - I did better academic work in the 5th grade.

As to the content of his beliefs, well, that's been thoroughly debunked prior by others, and I see no reason to tread that well-worn path again.

[Esquilax]

No you get over it. No one is denying that there is change over time...but there are limits to the changes.

What was it you said earlier?

Oh, yeah:

Less rhetoric, more evidence.

Maybe you should start following your own advice. Where's your evidence that there are limits to the changes? What is the mechanism that limits the changes, and how can you demonstrate its existence?

[His_Majesty]

Besides, you weren't saying Hovind's position was wrong because he was in prison, just that the fact that he was in prison speaks to his moral character.

Moral character has absolutely nothing to do with the arguments he use against evolution, which I happen to find compelling. I don't give a damn about his moral character, because I wasn't referring someone to his body of work based on his moral character, I was referring someone based on his quantity and quality of work against evolution, you know...what we were discussing.

This is like me telling someone about how great of a President I think Bill Clinton was...and someone jumping into the conversation saying "Ahh, but he also cheated on his wife by getting a blowjob in the White House."

Ok, but what the hell does that have to do with the reasons why I feel he was a great President...nothing.

[The Grand Nudger]

You find his arguments against the position which you yourself hold to be compelling? How does that work?

[His_Majesty]

Maybe you should start following your own advice. Where's your evidence that there are limits to the changes? What is the mechanism that limits the changes, and how can you demonstrate its existence?

Well I will put it to you this way; I have no reasons to believe that there are any changes beyond what I've (and any person in history) has ever seen or experimented on to conclusively validate what some people already allege to be true.

I, unlike you people, don't need to go beyond that. I don't have an agenda to push..that is probably why.

[coldwx]

Well I will put it to you this way; I have no reasons to believe that there are any changes beyond what I've (and any person in history) has ever seen or experimented on to conclusively validate what some people already allege to be true.

I, unlike you people, don't need to go beyond that. I don't have an agenda to push..that is probably why.

I will ask you for a third fucking time, based on this quote why do you believe the creation story as it is described in Genesis to explain the origin and diversity of life? If you have no reason to believe something beyond what someone has seen or experimented on then what is your evidence? You have dismissed ours so show us yours.

[The Grand Nudger]

Which isn't a problem for us HM, neither of us has an issue with speciation so we're both evolutionists. You believe that we were created by some god -and then- evolved. I know that we weren't....-and then- evolved.

[Esquilax]

Well I will put it to you this way; I have no reasons to believe that there are any changes beyond what I've (and any person in history) has ever seen or experimented on to conclusively validate what some people already allege to be true.

I, unlike you people, don't need to go beyond that. I don't have an agenda to push..that is probably why.

But you do have reasons. They've been presented to you numerous times. You just dismiss them out of hand on the basis that we can't rule out other means. So your "no reason" is that you do have reasons, just not ones you're obligated to agree with, due to your own pre-existing beliefs. So, your reason is that nobody can stop you from baselessly resisting the actual reasons.

But since you mention it, what is my agenda, here? How do I profit from evolution being true? I'm a fiction writer, not a biologist. Where's my stake in this, since you seem so desperate to accuse others of unfairness?

Oh, and also? You did make a positive claim, you do have a burden of proof, and you're not going to be able to skip out on it: genetic changes occur, the ball is rolling downhill. You are asserting that something will stop a process from continuing, when we have no reason to think that it will. You need evidence for that. You can't just cavalierly dismiss that like you do everything else and expect to come out of that okay.

[rexbeccarox]

Wait... who's got the agenda here?

Who's the one who came to an atheist forum and started a thread called "Atheism is unreasonable"?