(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: I have just about given up on this guy, so I'm going in, psychoanalyst style!
He refuses to acknowledge real science while claiming his view is the real one... how about we try to find out why that is?

"Real science" is supposed to be based on observation and repeated experiment...yet you believe in a theory that is unobserved, and can't be experimentally validated...and I am the one who refuses to acknowledge real science?

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: I think it's time for some real answers from His Majesty.

Lets do it.

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: 1. According to your posting timestamps and mastery of the english language, I'd say you're living in the United States. Is that correct? Are you from the place generally called "the bible belt"? The US South? Where?

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. Army veteran of 6 years. Married. One son. Currently residing in Phoenix, AZ.

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: 2. Did you grow up in a city, town... village? (do you guys have villages in the US?)

East side, Detroit.

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: 3. How religious are your parents? How religious were your parents/caregivers during your younger years, say, up to 13yo?

My parent's weren't "religious", but my family (in general) all believed in God. Some were more religious than others. I credit my Christian foundation to my big cousin, "Delnora" (Dell). Me and her son (my cousin), were very close as youngers and when I used to spend nights over there, the place was always booming with children's Christian music, children's Christian books...she was always in to the Word, and she was always willing to talk to me about God...I was like 10, and she was speaking to me as if I was an adult because of my mature level with the Word. The whole house was like a holy safe haven. Fond memories.

I am saying that to say that those experiences over her house helped set my entire Christian foundation, and for that I am thankful to her for.

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: 4. How was your formal education up to that age? Public school? public school in a creationist town with creationist bias? Home school? private creationist school?

Of my 12 years in school, two of them were in a private Christian school. The rest was in Detroit Public Schoos (DPS).

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: 5. Back home, did you go to church every Sunday? Did you go there more than every Sunday?

I was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day...ist_Church, and as a SDA, we actually went to church on Saturdays, which was considered the "Sabbath Day". That was as a child...as I got older and matured I took an issue with a few scriptural/doctrinal teachings by the SDA church...but I still love'em.

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: 6. What denomination of churches did you go to, while growing up?

First SDA, then Word Faith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Faith

Right now I guess you can call me a "free agent", not affilliated with any particular denomination. Right now, my main focus is apologetics.

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: 7. How religious would you say your friends were at that age?

I wouldn't say I had any "religious" friends, or at least from what I could tell. I mean, a lot of times the subject of religion is the least thing on most kids minds from the ages of 10-16'ish...the only thing that was on our minds was music, money, girls, sports, cartoons...and not in that particular order.

As an adult, I don't have any friends...but even the aquaintances that I do have, religion isn't a subject that comes up much...but it is good to know that if it does come up...I will be ready

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: 8. You said somewhere that you're african-american. How do you perceive your society's acceptance of your race (or variety, if you prefer)?

I've never experienced nor seen anyone of African American descent be discriminated against or treated differently because of our race...I've never (from what I can tell) experienced racism, nor have I ever seen (from what I can tell) racism in action.

So from my view, society has accepted my race well. I've had a few caucasion women have crushes on me before I've had many different friends with people of different races...I love and embrace diversity.

(November 20, 2014 at 5:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: (do note I said "your society", not society at large... I mean your local personal interaction with everyone else there)

I live in Phoenix, AZ where it seems as if the whites and blacks are the minority (which is saying a lot). I am a lovable guy out here, to answer the question

(November 19, 2014 at 8:49 pm)His_Majesty Wrote: Unless you can prove how life can come from nonlife, no way you can be confident that the theory of evolution is true without intelligent design...and that is a fact.

The first life could have been 'poofed' into existence by magic without affecting the theory of evolution at all. Evolution is what happens to hi-fidelity but imperfect self-replicators over thousands or millions of generations. How you get to the first one is immaterial to the theory.

(November 20, 2014 at 3:10 pm)His_Majesty Wrote: [...] a theory that is unobserved, and can't be experimentally validated...and I am the one who refuses to acknowledge real science?

1) Evolution resulting in speciation has been observed in nature.

2) Why don't you subject your faith to the same evidentiary standards?

(November 20, 2014 at 3:10 pm)His_Majesty Wrote: "Real science" is supposed to be based on observation and repeated experiment...yet you believe in a theory that is unobserved, and can't be experimentally validated...and I am the one who refuses to acknowledge real science?

As I keep telling you, and you keep ignoring like the intellectual derelict you are, "observation" in the case of science does not necessarily mean "live direct observation right in front of your eyes." That helps, and in the case of evolution we actually have that, but the observations science uses can also be observations of the evidence that leads to certain conclusions. In the case of evolution, we observe the way genes behave, the way the fossil record is arranged, the way animal morphology works, and when we couple that with the direct observation of speciation we have, we can deduce the nature of evolution and common ancestry. This kind of deduction is the only way we can ever know anything about the past, for example, or things in the future, like Pluto's orbital period, that I've mentioned before. I know from conversations that we've had in the past that you're happy to accept the efficacy of this kind of deductive conclusion when you think it confirms the existence of Jesus, meaning that the fact that you're dismissing it now when it can be used to come to a discovery that you don't want to be true makes this yet another double standard on your part.

Now, again: what is the mechanism that would prevent genetic differences from accumulating in organisms over time to the point that their offspring transcend species barriers?

(November 20, 2014 at 3:10 pm)His_Majesty Wrote: "Real science" is supposed to be based on observation and repeated experiment...yet you believe in a theory that is unobserved, and can't be experimentally validated...and I am the one who refuses to acknowledge real science?

Evolution has been observed in nature and in the lab.

Speciation has also been observed.

Do you think that forensic scientists, when examining the evidence of a murder are doing "real science"?

(November 20, 2014 at 7:27 am)Bad Wolf Wrote: Hey, His_Majesty. What 'kind' of animal is a platypus?

Maybe it is the only member of its "kind", whatever that is.

I'm real interested to hear HM's accounting of increasingly antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

(November 20, 2014 at 1:16 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: By 'bio-babble' you seem to mean 'scientific explanation of biological phenomena'. It's like kryptonite to people who depend on their ignorance to maintain their opinions regarding biology.

Never. Birds are not derived from reptiles, they're derived from dinosaurs. Mammals derived from reptiles, and there is an exquisite series of fossils demonstrating every important step of the process, including how part of the jawbone of reptiles became mammalian ear-bones.

As far as how birds evolved from dinosaurs, a thousand differences can accumulate over millions of generations. In the fossil record we have discovered over forty dinosaurs with direct evidence of feathers and precursors that give a good illustration of how feathers evolved from scales, a feathered dinosaur (Microraptor) that almost certainly at least glided if not flew outright, and later, Anchiornis with large wings with flight feathers and smaller 'hind wings' than Microraptor (Microraptors legs were feathered in a way similar to wings, so it would have used all four limbs to glide). Anchiornis has more avian wrists than Microraptor, and long legs that make it resemble a Road Runner with teeth and a long tail.

Evolution explains why we find a gradation of fossils from dinosaur to birds in the fossil record, why birds do not precede dinosaurs, why only dinosaurs and birds have feathers, and why we won't find bird fossils earlier than the Jurassic period. They can't exist before their precursors evolved. Creationism doesn't explain any of that, and a bird in the Cretaceous would send evolutionary biologists back to the drawing board scratching their head because an important prediction of evolution will have been falsified.

Interestingly, birds and crocodiles are the only surviving clades of the superclade Archosauria. Birds are in the clade Avemetatarsalia, which includes dinosaurs and pterosaurs which are all more closely related to birds than to crocodiles.

In other words, "time of the gaps" reasoning is being used. Once you start the "it took millions of generations", or "it took millions of years"...once you start to say that, you are leaving science and diving right into the portal of religion.

It happened that fast. You are relying on the unseen...and not only that, but the statement "it takes millions of years", that statement in itself cannot be scientifically validated. You cannot conduct an experiment to draw that kind of conclusion, can you? Nor can you conduct an experiment to predict when the next change would occur.

So you are basically not even using science!!!

(November 20, 2014 at 1:20 pm)Chuck Wrote: Except that group of animals from which mammals would later derive, and which had been called "mammal like reptiles" for about a century, are no longer called reptiles very much in the professional community. When they are still so called, it is not because reptile continue to be considered a sensical grouping of different lineages to which mammalian ancesters naturally belong. Instead they are so called out of habit and out of the fact that most people, due to long history of use of the term, know what you are trying to say if you say it, even if the term might imply things no longer thought to be true if taken to be a meaningful taxonomical term.

Basically, the group of animals formerly called reptiles really belong to 4 separate and distinct lineages. 2 of those lineages are definitely not more closely related to the others in the reptile group than they are to groups of animals that are traditionally not considered to be reptiles. So reptile is a term of superficial similarity. Not a term denoting fundamental relatedness.

Thanks for the clarification, I shouldn't have oversimplified. And I probably should have mentioned that dinosaurs have reptiloid ancestors as well.

(November 20, 2014 at 3:34 pm)His_Majesty Wrote:

(November 20, 2014 at 7:27 am)Bad Wolf Wrote: Hey, His_Majesty. What 'kind' of animal is a platypus?

Maybe it is the only member of its "kind", whatever that is.

Wrong. It's a Monotreme, a kind of egg-laying mammal that shares its lineage with the four remaining species of Echidna. Yet another point at which "kinds" falls flat on its ass, yet the real science gets it right, I suppose.

Quote:In other words, "time of the gaps" reasoning is being used. Once you start the "it took millions of generations", or "it took millions of years"...once you start to say that, you are leaving science and diving right into the portal of religion.

With the exception being that the "gap" you think exists, does not. We have observed speciation and genetic mutation over time; the idea that a thing that happens every time an organism reproduces, as a sheer mechanical behavior of DNA, will continue to happen barring some radical change in the nature of DNA, is not anything of the gaps. Your entire position relies on you ignoring the points upon which you've been upbraided, but your refusal to listen to anyone else does not render the facts you consequently don't understand to be fallacious. It just means you're ignorant.

Quote:It happened that fast. You are relying on the unseen...and not only that, but the statement "it takes millions of years", that statement in itself cannot be scientifically validated. You cannot conduct an experiment to draw that kind of conclusion, can you? Nor can you conduct an experiment to predict when the next change would occur.

So, are you saying that consistently occurring events, over both long periods of time and different demographics, which have been experimented with, don't count as observable evidence? That's kind of a weird position to take; doesn't that mean that you'd also need to believe that accepting the continued existence of reality is also a religion, in order to keep that consistent?

Or is it only persistently occurring, wide ranging events that you personally don't like, that don't count as evidence?

Quote:So you are basically not even using science!!!

The same science you dismiss as bio-babble when convenient? Look, do you care about science or not? Because you can't use "you're not sciencing!" as a denigrating comment if you yourself habitually dismiss science as worthless.