(April 23, 2014 at 11:52 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: #1 - welcome to a world that we chose by rebelling and introducing sin, chaos, unfairness, and disorder

According to the story, we didn't even know right from wrong when we 'chose' to 'rebel'. And who leaves a couple of mental children alone with his worst enemy, and leaves magic fruit they're never supposed to eat around only as a test of whether they'll eat it if he knows what they're going to do in advance? It's a nonsensical just-so story, like other ancient people's stories on the origin of things: Why the chipmunk has stripes on its back (clawed by a bear), How the elephant got its trunk (stretched by a crocodile), How the snake lost its legs (cursed for tricking people into eating magic fruit).

(April 24, 2014 at 10:43 am)Revelation777 Wrote: What about what these scholars have said?

"transitional fossils have not been found because they don't exist" (Jeffrey H. Schwartz, University of Pittsburgh professor of anthropology).

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution" (Stephen J. Gould, evolutionary paleontologist of Harvard University).

Okay, now you've gone and made my blood boil. This is nothing more than a lazy con job, or a deliberate lie, Rev. The Gould quote is a fairly common creationist quote mine, and it's horrendously dishonest on its own, but I'll admit, I actually had to go and check out the Schwartz one myself, something you should have done before you posted it. Do you know what I found? Do you know why he said that?

I do, because I bothered to look.

Quote:Jeffrey H. Schwartz, University of Pittsburgh professor of anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences, is working to debunk a major tenet of Darwinian evolution. Schwartz believes that evolutionary changes occur suddenly as opposed to the Darwinian model of evolution, which is characterized by gradual and constant change. Among other scientific observations, gaps in the fossil record could bolster Schwartz's theory because, for Schwartz, there is no "missing link."

Schwartz might disagree on certain aspects of evolution, but he does agree that it happens. Would you not agree that attempting to characterize is as though he thinks otherwise is dishonest, Rev? Don't you think you should retract these statements of yours, and apologize if it turns out that you were just so lazy that you took your creationist source as gospel without bothering to research?

And if that's the case, what does it say about the source you used, that it really did outright lie like that?

Oh, and just to cut you off ahead of schedule, you might be tempted to focus on the last line of that quote I posted here, about there not being a missing link. Don't. For one, it says that for Schwartz there is no missing link, and the opinion of one guy- who's already going against the scientific consensus- is not automatically reality. In fact, there's numerous transitional forms on the path toward humanity, more than enough, and I posted a link to all of them way back at the start of this thread. Don't lie again by saying you've not been shown them.

*Drops the mic.*

(April 24, 2014 at 3:12 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: Evolution deals with the adaptation of existing life and speciation.

Abiogenesis deals with the production of life from inert matter.

1. Life is unlikely to have arisen from inert matter. It is likely to have arisen from highly reactive matter through many intermediate stages in a chemically protracted process.

2. These stages undoubtely saw multiple intermediate forms that possesses some, but not all, of the characteristic structures, processes, and functions of what we might definitely call life. This would be the gray zone in the progress of abiogenesis where things are produced that are not quite inanimate matter, but may not be quite full fledged life either.

3. What drove these intermediate form towards full fledged life is undoubtedly an evolutionary process involving natural selection.

Evolution and abiogenesis may be separate theories, but the process of abiogenesis dependents intimately upon the process of evolution process by natural selection to complete.

Abiogenesis would be impossible without the process behind evolution.

Rev, you have been dishonest a lot here. Seriously, repeatedly, and demonstrably dishonest. Continuing to do so after multiple challenges leads me to believe that this dishonesty is intentional. Why are you doing this? And I really would like an answer other than you are not intending to be. That might have been good enough on page one. But not on page 41, after repeated attempts to call you out.

So why do you think it is okay to quote mine, misrepresent facts, and outright lie?

(April 24, 2014 at 7:59 am)Revelation777 Wrote: [Dear Sir,
Is everything in your life false unless you can see, touch, understand, and prove?

You can believe anything at all if you don't believe evidence.

(April 23, 2014 at 10:24 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: God's Word is true, however, if that were flawed, which it is not, then I stand on sand. I have found it to be true and consistent in my life and in the lives of many.

How did you find it to be true without going in a circle? You know that people of many other religions would say they've found THEIR scriptures to be true and consistent in their lives and in the lives of many.

(April 24, 2014 at 3:26 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: So why do you think it is okay to quote mine, misrepresent facts, and outright lie?

So he can demonstrate that not only does christian cosmology have little basis in fact, christainity can not even claim to be beneficial by making people behave better and more honorably.

Rev, did you really think you could get away with blatant quote-mining? Even if you were genuinely convinced that what you posted was true, did you honestly think nobody would check?

If you're going to spread lies, that's one thing. But please don't take us for idiots as well.

(April 24, 2014 at 7:59 am)Revelation777 Wrote: [Dear Sir,
Is everything in your life false unless you can see, touch, understand, and prove?

No, but those which contradicts what can be firmly established through what can be seen, touched, understood and proven is certainly false.

Your bible is firmly in the catagory not only of what thus false, but what has also done the most spectacular damage to humanity by its falsehood. It is not just a innocent foible to be a fundamentalist and creationist. In the face of 21st century understanding of science and the natural world, it is an inexcuseable, and unforgiveable, moral crime.

(April 24, 2014 at 3:31 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Rev, did you really think you could get away with blatant quote-mining? Even if you were genuinely convinced that what you posted was true, did you honestly think nobody would check?

If you're going to spread lies, that's one thing. But please don't take us for idiots as well.

And if he really didn't know that this stuff was a quote mine, well, now he has a live example of his trusted creationist sources caught in a deliberate lie. That should prompt him to actually reconsider trusting them, if he's actually interested in examining all this honestly.

The key word there is "should". The other one is "if".