Hello atheistforum

[Mister Agenda]

OK, take two.

Back problems are not due to a poor design, they are due to a lack of exercise, sedentary lifestyles, poor posture, abuse and sometimes poor genetics. It is actually darwinian theory which led to a host of harmful back treatmet techniques based on the idea that we used to be on all fours, which today have been debunked and replaced by new models that are in many ways completely opposite to that paradigm.

I am amazed that any medical person was stupid enough to design back treatment around the notion that we used to be four-legged. That's evidence that people can be stupid, not that evolution is wrong. In no way, shape, or form does having quadrapedal ancestors suggest anything about how back problems should be treated. Or is this another case of something done for an entirely different reason now being blamed on acceptance of evolution?

And: http://www.cancertherapyblog.com/cancer-...sceptible/

Darwinist David Shuman said:

‘… no question [that] … the human back, given proper care and rightly understood, is an astonishingly effective mechanism. As much as the more frequently lauded human brain, the human back is the hallmark of our true nobility and a major factor in the … supremacy of … man.’21

They conclude that:

‘… given proper care, a fair shake, and just a little understanding, your back will take on any job you ask of it … . When it fails, in practically all of the more severe cases the failure is due to some sort of weakness

this "truly marvelous hunk of machinery, an amazingly durable arrangement ready to serve the purposes of a ditch digger or a banker, a prizefighter or a stenographer, equally well’ requires only regular maintenance"

And as the article I linked above shows, vertebral fractures are common in human skeletons throughout history and prehistory, no matter the active lifestyle, in comparison to apes. Our vertebra are larger and more porous to better absorb the shock of walking on two feet. In evolution, tradeoffs are inevitable, that same feature makes us more vulnerable to vertebral fractures, especially if we suffer some bone loss, as often happens in old age. I'm not saying it's not marvelous. I couldn't make one. But it's far from perfect.

Rather than paste a bunch of things, I'll address your concerns about the pharynx with this article: http://creation.com/is-the-human-pharynx...y-designed

Retina: http://www.trueorigin.org/retina.asp

If you're too biased to look at them, that's your issue.[/quote]

I was going to read those, but I hate to reward someone who is trying to manipulate me.

As I already explained, I was willing to incorpate evolution and an old age of the earth into my faith but after investigating, I found the evidence sorely lacking and changed my view. It's bad science to believe whatever scientists tell you is true.

It's not science at all. The science part comes before the scientists share their findings.

It's bad science to apply your skepticism to everything except your own views.

I'm not doing science. I'm using what poor skills I have to evaluate as much as I can fairly in the limited time available to me. I accept all scientific conclusions that seem to me to be on solid footing tentatively, in the understanding that new evidence may come along that will need to be taken into account. I don't believe everything someone says just because they're wearing a white coat, I know scientists are sometimes guilty of biasing their findings by cherry-picking, and that a certain percentage of studies will be wrong just because they actually fall into that plus or minus 5% margin of error that many experiments of a statistical nature have to allow for.

I have found inaccurate statements on both sides of the argument. I'll give you a logic puzzle

atheists hate anything that advocates for creationism

A lot of atheists could care less. Atheism is not synonymous with interested in science. And 'hate' is a strong word. 'Exasperated' would be a better description of how I feel. I feel similarly about promotions of communism. Bless their hearts, the poor things mean well but the economics just doesn't work when scaled up above a tribal level.

creationist websites advocate for creationism

Yep.

atheists hate creationist websites

Well, I suppose they keep biologists on their toes by constantly waiting for any sign of weakness to jump on. I suspect they do a good job of convincing people who bounce back and forth from them to science sites that creationism is a sucker bet. On whole, I think they perform a valuable service, better they should have their views out in the open where we can all discuss it and let people make up their own minds.

Are you honestly going to say that every creationist website is just a bunch of deliberate lies? Do you have any idea what a ridiculous statement that is?

I'm not sure it is more charitable to believe that they're that wrong honestly.

Much like you dismissed over 50 young earth dating methods without looking at them, you will also dismiss evidence of anomalous artifacts and out of place fossils. I could give you hundreds of examples.

You don't have to convince me. You have to convince scientists. Earn your Nobel prize by taking it to the lab. I'm not qualified to judge your evidence. I just note that the people who are qualified to judge it think you're cranks. To spend a bunch of time trying to educate myself on the intricacies of dating methods just so I can evaluate the claims of a guy on the internet doesn't seem wise. There are plenty of scientists in the relevant fields who are Christians but accept the current use of dating methods is legitimate. Presumably they would be open to evidence that supports their relgious beliefs but wouldn't be fooled by bad evidence because they're qualified to evaluate it. Convince them.

I think it is a conspiracy in that any idea of special creation is universally shunned by the scientific community, even as the evidence mounts.

That the evidence is mounting is what you're trying to prove. You haven't, yet.

There is more evidence today of special creation than there ever was.

If true, and that amount is actually enough to justify it, the current paradigm will be shifted by the weight of the evidence. If it does, I will think 'Huh, I was sure was wrong about that. Good thing science is self-correcting.' However, I suspect that by 'more evidence', you mean stunts like deliberately using multiple dating methods on the same sample and thinking it proves something when they give different results. That quality of evidence can pile up as high as a mountain without shifting anything.

And some of the famous and most respected scientists in history were theists.

Sure. And I certainly don't dismiss them because of their theism. It's irrelevant, their science stands or falls entirely on its own merits.

Except the evidence from design.

Y'know, there's a theory that accounts for the appearance of design very well, while also accounting for deficiencies of design, and also useful for making predictions about future discoveries. Nitpicking at evolution won't take it down because you lack a coherent theory that even comes close to being scientifically useful. We're imitating biological evolution in computer programs to get 'designs' that it would take too long to think of on our own, some of which we would arguably never come up with on our own because of our mental biases. Prove intelligent design, then you can claim that it's evidence for something.

Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography, and Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.

EJH Cornor, Cambridge
Contemporary Botanical Thought p.61

(on the cambrian explosion)
And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists.

Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker 1986

This is called quotemining, a technique for misrepresenting people. I haven't read The Blind Watchmaker yet, and I don't need to in order to know that Dawkins doesn't stop with 'It is as though they were just planted there without any evolutionary history.'

And does this mean you think some things are 'planted' with evolutionary history and some are not? Are you trying to use the minor puzzle that distinguishes the Cambiran 'explosion' to discard what has been found in fossil beds that have been more revealing?

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker p.1

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.

Francis Crick Nobel Laureate
What Mad Pursuit p.138 1988

That is true. Creationists are constantly looking for a slip of the tongue, so poetic language about design must be curbed because there are so many people out there that equate 'designed by the unconscious process of evolution' with 'designed by a supernatural being' that you can't leave the 'by the unconscious process of evolution' part off if you don't want some yahoo taking your words and trying to imply you think there's a problem with evolution as an explanation for speciation.

Regardless of whatever raw data you have, the interpretation of that data is philosophical.

Yeah, the philosophy is 'go with what works'. I'm fine with that. It's given us a lot.

The evidence is overwhelmingly faulty, but that is all that overwhelming about it. There is more evidence for a young earth than an old one. Ask yourself why you find blood cells and muscle tissue in dinosaur fossils, or why all fossils contain carbon 14 when that should be long, long gone after millions of years.

Ask yourself why you are so quick to jump on anything that suggests that just maybe, there might be something to your odd claims. The jury is still out on the blood cells, but the muscle tissue was fossilized, just in an odd way...still made of minerals, my friend. Carbon 14 has a half-life of less than 6,000 years, and isn't useful for dating organisms dead more than 50,000 to 80,000 years old (conditions may allow reasonably accurate dating of some samples on the older end of the range). Carbon 14 dating is the most confirmed radiometric dating technique because it's range falls within historical times and the results can be calibrated on things we know the age of with certainty. Beats me about why Carbon 14 is detectable in stuff more than 30 million years old. I don't assume a global flood isthe only possible explanation. Do you?

They would have a lot in common with evolutionists then, who keep jumping the gun on finding the "missing link", spreading the story to all of the newspapers, and then having the sad thing debunked a few months later.

History buff, eh? Those were wild and wooly days, for sure.

The difference between you and me is, you abandoned God and bought the story the world sold you. You put down the truth for a pacifier. I came out of the world because I love the one who made it. It's not a dichotomy of science and religion, that doesn't even matter. What matters is what the truth is. You think what man says means something, but God says the thoughts of men are futile. You think the world is wise, God says the wisdom of the world is foolishness. You think what man does is great, but God says what man highly exalts God finds to be an abomination. You think you have a way that works, but scripture says there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end its way is death.

This is just preaching.

http://www.discovery.org/a/2640

This is not, and I stand corrected. I will even resist carping on Behe.

How can you say something like this and avoid the label of pathological bias?

Give me one example of irreducible complexity that hasn't been refuted and I will concede the point.

Information in DNA

Um, evolution kinda depends on that. Darwin didn't even know about the stuff, but knew there had to be some kind of high-fidelity mechanism for inheritance that gets mixed-together in sexual reproduction. We even know where the information in DNA comes from: the selection environment.

That's strange, because the theory of punctuated equillibrium says that evolution can happen very quickly, so quickly in fact that this explains why we don't see any evidence for it in the fossil record.

What does punctuated equilibrium have to do with being able to predict novel species on an island?

So this is all very variable according to evolutionists.

It does seem to make intuitive sense that evolution would go faster when selection pressures change.

In any case, I don't deny speciation;

Thanks for mentioning that, some other things you've said make more sense in that context.

that is how the world was repopulated after the flood. It is something that can happen very quickly even according to evolutionary theory,

Um, not THAT quickly. It takes thousands of generations, even if punctuated equilibrium is correct. New species could have evolved in the time frame of the flood if they had very short generations, but it's hard to explain critters like koalas that way.

and our own observations. You have your long age assumptions about continental drift, I have my young age assumptions, and speciation could support either.

I can respect a disagreement on how fast evolution can occur more than complete dismissal of it.

Secular culture is opposed to Christianity, it doesn't tolerate it. It will tolerate Islam though.

Now you're just being snippy. Muslims shouldn't be allowed to do anything Christians aren't allowed to, and Christians should be able to do anything anyone else can so long as it doesn't involve getting government endorsement for their religion or prosyletizing a captive audience of other people's children.

You can explain mechanisms all day long, which does not speak to agency. Since you don't know where the Universe came from, or how it got here, or why it is the way it is, you are left with an incomplete explanation. You simply cannot say the Universe does not require God to operate when you don't know why it operates. If you think you can then explain the uniformity in nature.

The argument from ignorance bascially takes the form of 'if you don't know the answer to 'X', my answer is correct'. I explain the uniformity in nature by the absence of an omnipotent deity capable of changing the rules at will.

OK, must run, end of this installment.