Young Earth Creationism Vs. Science (Statler Waldorf Contd)

[Statler Waldorf]

Again argument from incredulity. It is perfectly consistent, just because you don't/won't/can't bring yourself to believe it, doesn't make your argument win out. Stories and myths about gods are fairytales, evolution is a fact.

Ugh, not argument from incredibility, it’s pointing to observed evidence that does not fit your theory. A coelacanth is a fish, it’s very similar to other fish we see today, to suggest that there would be millions of years worth of selective pressures that somehow destroyed or altered all the other fish around the Coelacanth is absurd. You are just believing in a theory that is not falsifiable, bad science. Then you say Evolution is a fact, which of course is a canard. Facts are observations, unless you or someone else observed the evolution of all life on earth from a common ancestor then you can’t say it’s a fact.

Nope Strawman argument. I said coelocanths are consistent with but not evidence for. If we found dinosaurs tomorrow in Loch Ness that would be a surprise but would in no way undermine the ToE. Why would it?, if the animal is successful and well adapted it has no selective pressure driving it forward, that is consistent. You are starting to sound desparate.

Again, un-falsifiable theory, bad science.

Don't apologise; even though you're wrong again. If you had bothered to look at the research it clearly states there is as yet an untested hypothesis that decay of isotopes within the crystal structures of the material is responsible for the suspected C14 anomolies. I have suggested you suspend judgement, until that hypothesis is tested.

Untested hypothesis are just that, untested. Accept them all you want but it’s just a matter of blind faith for you, and not science. Shows a lot though that you would rather accept untested ideas than even admit you might be wrong about the age of the earth.

You're right on this one Statler. Infact I saw a television programme on this only yesterday. A man had this dinsoaur pet and a wife called Wilma. Must be true. God damn! I think the best thing to do with your statement on dinosaurs is to underline it, and move on. I respectfully disagree with your interpretation and so do those incovenient fossils and facts, you might want to look at again.

Actually the fossils that contain soft tissue completely indicate that the animal died very recently since soft tissue cannot survive for millions of years. To say otherwise goes against all of the empirical evidence to the contrary. Rather than addressing this issue, you make jokes about a cartoon. Sad, but not surprising in the least.

Red herring fallacy. Besides from not being a worldview, I plead guilty to being skeptical. There isn't any evidence presented yet for Creationism to be skeptical of? Unless I have missed it that is.

Yes you have missed all of it, again sad but not surprising. Too bad you are not as skeptical of those untested ideas that support your worldview than you are of the actual tested ones that do not support it.

Can you use this model to better explain the evidence we have in phylogenetics, taxonomy, bio-geography, stratigraphy, paleontology. Go for it if you can.

I am sure I can, it’s the same evidence we use to support our model. So maybe you need to be more specific about which evidence you are referring to.

Just one specific example the humble sea urchin first appears in the late Triassic, well after the Carboniferous swamps and forests, the warm reefs of the Devonian, the erratic Silurian tempartures, the glaciers of the Ordivician and of course the Cambrian explosion. If a worldwide flood had buried our poor unsuspecting sea urchins, you would expect to see them in the first deposits, the ones at the bottom (that is Cambrian layers). Why? They are ALL bottom feeders. Trouble is we only ever find the them in the late Triassic onwards ie upper middle deposits. To be honest it is one petty example, but your model would need to state far more and then make some predictions which would enable us to falsify it. The lack of specificty in it means you can twist and turn and makes it deeply unimpressive. As for 6k years ago if you are seriously touting the C14 argument then you have already falisfied it yourself. The best dates for YEC n the C14 samples are around 40k years ago (but then I think the C14 argument should wait for the research to follow so I won't use against your argument, but you should really think about it!)

Sea urchins? This is your amazing evidence that contradicts creation? Well it’s obvious that the “fossil record” is not an actual record of time, but rather a record of death and burial. So I would expect some animals to be buried after others and some to not even appear in the record at all. So your little sea urchin story is consistent with a global flood. More consistent than a Coelacanth appearing in the record “65 million” years ago, disappearing completely from the record forever and then being found alive today. If the fossil record is really a history of time, then where were all the Coelacanths for the past 65 million years?

Fallacies appeal to tradition, appeal to authority. No argument presented here to blunt the attack of bifurcation on your argument.

Showing how some of the biggest supporters of your position disagree with you is not an appeal to tradition or authority. I am starting to think you just throw fallacy names out without really knowing much about them. It’s a cute way of not having to address what I actually said though. Maybe you should show how Evolution and Supernatural Creation are not the only two models possible (in spite of what Darwin and Dawkins think I guess).

Regurgitated Gish, Morris and Johnson I'm afraid. But I'll answer your questions (credit to AronRa) so you can at least accept evolution as the best explanation of the facts. You ask for evidence I give you some. I ask you for evidence you come back peripheral stuff about coelocanths and C14, and then go on about how impossible evolution is. Full answer below if you care to read it.

I read your article, and they don’t define information properly. Changing one letter in a book is not an increase in information (unless it happens to change the meaning of the word, or sentence). Copying a book does not increase information either, all the examples in the article were examples of these. The example with the people who have the mutation is an example of a reduction in information happening to benefit a group of people. This does not show how you could gain in over three billion bits of information in humans by mutation in only 4.5 billion years. To the contrary, observed entropy rates in the human genome show that it would completely fall apart in about ten thousand years.

Can you explain in more detail what you are looking for here from an evolutionary standpoint. Your question seems to be more orientated to abiogenesis?

Abiogenesis and chemical evolution belong to the General Theory of Evolution, so you will have to defend them as well if you are going to accept the theory as a whole.

Find humans in Cambrian rocks, dinosaurs in the Ordivician, Silurian camp fires, Isrealite tribes roaming Permian deserts. There are a very large number of possible falsifications. You have come up with nothing.

Uhh sorry. You already said that finding animals that were thought to be extinct alive today does not falsify your theory (the Coelacanth), and finding animals that are alive today (Maples and Oaks) in “ancient” strata obviously doesn’t falsify your theory, so why should finding people in ancient strata? A few years ago when we thought we may have found human tracks alongside dinosaur tracks in Texas one evolutionist was on record saying, “This is evidence for time travel not that the earth is young.” The fact of the matter is you have a theory that is not falsifiable.

Oh brother indeed! Name one scientist who would argue that a supernatural cause to a natural effect, can be discovered by methodolgical naturalism and evidence gathered in such a way as to reach the level of a scientific theory which predicts results and ones which are repeatable on retesting? If you beleive the supernatural exists fine, good for you just don't waste my time with it nor try to argue that science would be able to uncover it.

Methodological naturalism is only used in the operational sciences. Creationists use it too in the operational sciences. We are talking about origins sciences here. A supernatural explanation in origins sciences is completely legitimate.