I already showed you where you misrepresented Richard Dawkins' opinion in the pathetic clip you offered up. However, you have still ignored my previous post. Reading not your strong point?

(September 22, 2011 at 10:25 am)Carnavon Wrote: Hi, I have no axe to grind I just explain my convictions, as you do. Micro evolution is true, within species and within certain parameters and apparently vaccilates. Life evolves? Yes?

No convictions required. Evolution is a fact, natural selection is the theory which best explains those facts You have already received this answer, don't come back with willfully ignorant arguments. It's good you accept evolution, as there is NO distinction at all between micro and macro evolution. This is a tired argument of the solipsists who claim evolution isn't true. Macro evolution isn't a thing that's separate and different from micro evolution. It is simply the accumulation of hundreds, thousands, millions of micro evolutionary steps. A handy shorthand term to fast forward thousands of years between evolutionary milestones. Ask yourself this, if you accept microevolution happens, what would happen if you accumulate all these steps over 4bn years?

(September 22, 2011 at 10:25 am)Carnavon Wrote: Please refer me to intermediate species (not drawings and fakes).

Consider yourself referred. Go look at talkorigins.org. They have an excellent starters guide for the major intermediate forms recognized by paleontologists.

(September 22, 2011 at 10:25 am)Carnavon Wrote: And how did life start from inanimate material?

No one knows, including theists. There are conjectures and hypothesis only, none have these have risen to the status of a theory. Abiogenesis is the field of research. The problem is we only have a very vague idea about early earth conditions and the concomitant environment in which life began. It is a very complicated question with many, many possible lines of research. Infact it is even hard to tell life from non-life and scientists argue all the time just about that. The only thing we have never seen however is an immaterial hand appear from the sky and zap rabbits into existence. So scientists tend not to start from that premise.

(September 22, 2011 at 10:25 am)Carnavon Wrote: You will know that non-directional changes is implied in evolution. Then how come the eye, lungs etc develope? Why?

This is another ignorant argument. You really need to understand this subject a little better to engage in it, else you fall into the Kent Hovind and Ted Haggard brackets of understanding, ie zip.

Evolution is a remorseless and pitiless process but it is not directionless. Life evolves to adapt better to it's environment. If you are able to tell which way is up because you have some light sensitive cells on your head, you might just benefit from that. You and your descendants might just survive better, and slowly over a very long time those cells.....well you can look that bit up. Lungs are thought to be adaptations from swim bladders in fishes, ie lobe finned, crossoptergians. You see the same adaptation today in the African lungfish, a ray finned fish, that are capable of spending time out of the water; fascinating creatures. It is an example of something called convergent evolution. In addition you will see how the hearing is slightly altered in these fish as sound travels differently in water than in air. They a however still fairly poor at hearing in air as they lack a tympanic membrane.

(September 22, 2011 at 10:25 am)Carnavon Wrote: Maybe an answer to some of the following will also be interesting:
How and why did Single-celled animals evolve (very complex creatures)?
How did it all start -the very beginning?
Natural selection results in changes to different species. If the first single cellorganism were reproduceds somehow (please explain to me why the possibility for reproduction need to have been present), why would it change to something else? Why would the need exist? I would like some light on the subject as you seem quite convinced of your position.

a quiz great:
1. evolution by means of natural selection
2. no one knows
3. sexual reproduction is able to accelerate variations in a species and thusadaptive fitness. It is also fun.

Now are you going to ask: why are there still monkeys?, or have you ever seen a dog give birth to a cat? Or can we move on? Honestly you must think no one here has ever heard these arguments before.

(September 22, 2011 at 11:25 am)Carnavon Wrote: Please explain 'How To Tell Lies and Misrepresent People" for one.

No need to explain, you've got it down pat.

Quote:How and why did Single-celled animals evolve (very complex creatures)?

They are complex creatures NOW but they have been evolving for just as long as we have. In fact because of their generally more rapid lifecycle they have gone through more generations.

Quote:How did it all start -the very beginning?

There are quite a few theories about this, unfortunately the first living thing was probably eaten by the second so the best we can do is work out what is most likely, at the moment that looks like abiogenesis.

Quote:Natural selection results in changes to different species. If the first single cell organism were reproduceds somehow (please explain to me why the possibility for reproduction need to have been present), why would it change to something else? Why would the need exist? I would like some light on the subject as you seem quite convinced of your position.

Reproduction probably started as cells splitting apart when they werent much more than loose bundles of amino acids.

It wasnt until quite a long time into the history of life that sexual evolution started to play a role.

(September 20, 2011 at 11:18 pm)Epimethean Wrote: It's perfectly fine to suggest that the skywizard created man and woman out of dirt and ribmeat, that a tree was planted in their backyard which was illegal for them to eat from, that a critter in the tree conned them into eating from it, that as a result all man is doomed until a dude who is both god and not god, both god's son and also a human comes along to absolve them of something they had nothing to do with, and the endtimes as reported by the scripture readers take a few millennia to be shown inaccurate again and again, and yet you find issue with evolution, Stat?

Yup. I could type out a straw man argument concerning evolution that looked far more ridiculous than the straw man you typed above, but unlike you, I know that straw man arguments are irrational.

(September 21, 2011 at 8:25 am)Zen Badger Wrote: You couldn't, because atheism is not a code of morality. It is merely an absence of belief in a god or gods.

You might as well use Aunicornism(an absence of belief in unicorns) to achieve the objective.

False analogy, disbelieving in the universal and transcendent moral law giver can in no way be properly compared to disbelieving in a magic horned horse.

(September 22, 2011 at 4:37 am)ElDinero Wrote: People have the right to believe whatever they want.

According to whom? Just because you assert this right exists does not mean it actually exists.

(September 22, 2011 at 6:59 am)Zen Badger Wrote: Since you have yet to prove the existance of this hypothetical lawgiver it is rather a moot point.

No it isn’t.

(September 22, 2011 at 8:41 am)ElDinero Wrote: I've had my fill of you. You're a zombie. First you use Expelled to make a point,

I see how this works, so you can use your biased evolutionary sources to try and make your points but he can’t use his own sources to make his point? How convenient!

(September 22, 2011 at 8:43 am)Epimethean Wrote: The bible loves racism-and attendant murder:

From Exodus:

So Moses said, "This is what the LORD says: 'About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt-worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.' Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel."

This is just the icing on the cake, though I am certain the bibblers will come a running to say, "But the NT supersedes the OT, so we cannot be blamed for that, because jeebus took it away from our history."

The fact that xtians love to cite the OT when it suits them makes them proud owners of the whole text.

First of all, how is that racism? Killing every first born child of the nation that is oppressing your people hardly seems like racism. Secondly, before you make such appeals you need to first establish why racism is even wrong in your Darwinian worldview. I know it is wrong because all people are created in the image of God; however, from an evolutionary perspective it just seems to be one group of people out competing another group of people. Darwinism is evil.

(September 22, 2011 at 8:58 am)ElDinero Wrote: This is a bit unfair now. Carnavon must love getting fucked in the ass because at the moment me, Rhythm, Epimethean and Zen Badger have him over a barrel.

Three people making baseless assertions doesn’t make the assertions anymore true you know. I think it’s funny that he is handling three of you just fine.

(September 22, 2011 at 11:09 am)Rhythm Wrote: Firstly, biological evolution and abiogenesis are not the same thing. I don't have the answers there, and neither do you.

Actually they are both part of the General Theory of Evolution, just because you can’t defend abiogenesis doesn’t mean you can just disconnect it from the theory.

Got that cambrian rabbit statler? Want a shovel link? How about evidence for your fairy? What are you doing here btw? Your boy here thinks ID is bullshit too, evolution never happened, remember? It's all in genesis baby.

Your god and gnomes are on exactly the same level until you provide evidence.
(seriously quote tags aren't difficult man, surely not for a learned man of science, who works for the government)

(September 22, 2011 at 4:19 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Three people making baseless assertions doesn’t make the assertions anymore true you know. I think it’s funny that he is handling three of you just fine.

If by handling you mean repeatedly using lies, misrepresentations, debunked evidence and presuppositions, while ignoring easy to understand evidence that has been presented and glossing over the posts he doesn't feel capable of answering, then yes he's doing quite ably.

Since those are the remit of the fundamentalist idiot, it's little wonder you think he's doing so well.

(September 22, 2011 at 4:20 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Got that cambrian rabbit statler?

Don’t need one, the Cambrian epoch is fantasy.

Quote: Your god and gnomes are on exactly the same level until you provide evidence.

Don’t need any evidence; I already proved God exists logically through the process of negation, that’s more powerful than any physical evidence.

Quote: (seriously quote tags aren't difficult man, surely not for a learned man of science, who works for the government)

Neither is basic logic, except maybe for a housewife such as yourself.

(September 22, 2011 at 4:55 pm)ElDinero Wrote: If by handling you mean repeatedly using lies, misrepresentations, debunked evidence and presuppositions, while ignoring easy to understand evidence that has been presented and glossing over the posts he doesn't feel capable of answering, then yes he's doing quite ably.

Since those are the remit of the fundamentalist idiot, it's little wonder you think he's doing so well.

More baseless assertions I see, time to change up the playbook!

Don’t need any evidence; I already proved God exists logically through the process of negation, that’s more powerful than any physical evidence.


You cannot be serious.

(September 22, 2011 at 5:35 pm)5thHorseman Wrote: You cannot be serious.

Dead serious, deductive proof always trumps inductive proof. Surely you know that.