Argument #1: Transitional Fossils

[Coffee Jesus]

Revelation in purple.
Esquilax in black.

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.

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.*

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Hold on just one cotton pickin' minute! You guys are putting me in a no win situation here.

1. I present an argument and it is ok for everyone to quote any source they want. I use AIG and I get lambasted.
2. I put down a link with info to address an issue and I get a warning.
3. I use quotes from Darwin and other scientists and I'm quote mining and called a liar.
4. I share my beliefs and I'm called a nut and a ignoramus
5. I make a slight joke and I get raked over the coals
6. One of your atheist buddies tears me down and they get kudos and high fives

what gives?

continued...

what gives?

Actually, yeah, we do need to stop for a moment and deal with an important issue; it's really very hard to get creationists to take responsibility for the things they do and say, so I'm not going to let up on this until we get an answer from you.

You presented us quotes from Stephen Gould and this Schwartz fellow. Did you look them up yourself, or did you get them from a creationist source? If it's the latter, which source did you use?

When we looked up those quotes, what did we see, Rev? We found, in the former case, that the quote was part of a larger paragraph of text that represented a complete thought, and what you posted was that thought torn in half so that it said the opposite of what Gould meant. There was no way for the person who took that quote to avoid seeing that he wasn't finished talking, Rev. They had to have known that they were misrepresenting what Gould said.

With your Schwartz quote, it took me only a few seconds on google to find that he does accept evolution, which means that your quote, attempting to make it seem as though he was a creationist was wrong too. You posted two quotes that had been manipulated into saying exactly the opposite of what those quoted actually meant.

So what I want you to do is admit that those quotes you posted were wrong. If they came from a creationist source that isn't you, I want you to admit that those sources lied to you, and to us.

Shouldn't be hard for you, since that's what did happen. Just observe where you were in error and were misled, and we can move on. You are genuinely here to find the truth, right? Well, you've just been shown that something you posted wasn't that, so it's time to retract what you said and take responsibility for that.

Well?