Argument #2: Evolution Of Species

[Whateverist]

Bored now. This worshiper of a mother fucking, cock sucking god is not worthy of interaction.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Revelation777 Wrote:
You guys have dismissed my argument so we now are on a tangent.

As near as I can tell, you have yet to MAKE an argument. You simply post material that has already and frequently been shown to be dishonest, discredited, and not-even-wrong.

1. Ben Stein's film isn't a documentary, it is a polemic.

2. If you want evolution to be wrong, you need to show why it is wrong. You'll also need to demonstrate that the creation model explains the diversity of life better than biology.

3. It doesn't matter if some scientists disbelieve in naturalistic evolution, any more than it matters if your auto mechanic can't fix your plasma TV.

4. It doesn't matter how many people believe in creationism.

5. You need to show why God is necessary for the diversity of life, not just a convenient 'out'.

6. You need to understand that all of us here are familiar with everything you've posted - we've heard it multiple times. The truth content of a false statement does not increase with repetition.

7. I'm delighted that your faith gives you comfort, but your faith isn't nearly as important as hypothesizing, theorizing, testing, and peer review. Not when it comes to science, anyroad.

8. If evolution isn't true, you need to explain why it works.

9. When you steadfastly refuse to give science-based answers to science-based questions, it makes you look a complete fraud.

10. Jesus may love you, but if Darwin were here, you'd break his heart.

Boru

[Rampant.A.I.]

Darwin be damned: somewhere a high school biology teacher is sobbing quietly in a corner due to the same sort of outright rejection of basic science.

[Chas]

I once encountered an ID proponent with a good layman's understanding of evolution. His position wasn't that far from Francis Collins' position, and he didn't misunderstand anything about evolution until he got into molecular biology. If I recall correctly, that discussion was on JREF and because he mostly actually knew what he was talking about, he was kind of challenging.

Just by way of letting people know that people who don't accept evolution and don't TOTALLY misunderstand it do exist. As far as I can tell, the closest person to fitting that description currently on the board is Heywood, and I don't think he'd touch this thread with a 10' pole.

Invite Mr. HEYWORD to the thread.

Who?

If you evolution is changes that take place over time within species that I accept that.

That sentence makes no sense.

[DarkHorse]

No, sir, no. My hope is in Jesus.

Then why don't you get your Jesus to help your case a little bit? Give you some intelligent and REAL arguments to bring to us. Oh, that's right. He doesn't exist.

[Tonus]

Anyways, God shows His creative work to us everyday. He did a great job.

The Human Bot Fly larva would like a word with you.

---

You guys are obviously making sport of me instead of addressing my argument.

Wrong. You made no argument. You made a *claim*, backed by (woefully outdated) opinion. ...and even worse, you dishonestly quote mined the author.

This. The argument was shown to be based on an atrocious quote mine. There really is nothing to do at this point but to mock the guy.

[Confused Ape]

That's a bit skewed. There are creationist scientists, and if I remember correctly the guy who runs the Human Genome project is one.

One of the guys who ran it is Francis Collins. He's a Christian who believes that evolution is the way God did it.

From An Interview

Francis Collins: The evidence is overwhelming. And it is becoming more and more robust down to the details almost by the day, especially because we have this ability now to use the study of DNA as a digital record of the way Darwin’s theory has played out over the course of long periods of time.
Darwin could hardly have imagined that there would turn out to be such strong proof of his theory because he didn’t know about DNA - but we have that information. I would say we are as solid in claiming the truth of evolution as we are in claiming the truth of the germ theory. It is so profoundly well-documented in multiple different perspectives, all of which give you a consistent view with enormous explanatory power that make it the central core of biology. Trying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics

According to Revelation777, Francis Collins is only pretending to go along with evolution because he doesn't want to be ostracised by the scientific community.

[Angrboda]

The game is actually over if you insist on asserting that the game is not over when someone makes a telling point instead of even trying to refute it. Identical retroviral insertions in related species is something that only makes sense in the context of evolution. If you don't address that, you lose.

This critiques your stance on this, I believe game is still in progress.

http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1e.asp

The last section of this 12+ page article does in fact deal with retroviral insertions. (It's a response to http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/...troviruses )

The claim here is that common ancestry is the only viable explanation for “finding [ERVs] in identical chromosomal positions of two different species.” It is based on the premise that ERVs are (and always have been) nonfunctional products of retroviral infection that have, for the most part, inserted randomly into the genome of the host organism. The presumed nonfunctionality of ERVs is thought to eliminate the explanation of design (because a Designer could have no purpose in placing nonfunctional sequences at the same locus in separate species). The presumed randomness of ERV insertion is thought to eliminate the explanation of chance (because the DNA “chain” is too long for coincidental insertion at the same locus to be a realistic possibility). That leaves common ancestry as the remaining explanation.

Again, it is an unprovable theological assertion that God would not place the same nonfunctional sequences at the same locus in separate species. He may have a purpose for doing so that is beyond our present understanding. The objection that placing nonfunctional sequences at the same locus in separate species would make God guilty of deception is ill founded. God cannot be charged fairly with deception when we choose to draw conclusions from data that contradict what he has revealed in Scripture (see Gibson’s comments in the discussion of Prediction 19).

http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1e.asp

So, is it your entire objection that ERVs aren't evidence for evolution and common descent because God "could've done it that way" ?

[Crossless2.0]

So, is it your entire objection that it isn't evidence for evolution and common descent that God "could've done it that way" ?

Yes, that appears to be the crux of this argument. If they are non-functional, God simply had a reason we can't fathom for inserting them into identical locations of different species' genomes. And if they are functional, then God had a reason, etc. Of course, this has fuck-all to do with science and everything to do with preserving a particular approach to scripture at all costs.

It's funny how they don't apply the same reasoning to evolution itself: For reasons we don't understand, God decided to use evolutionary processes to effect his creation. Of course, many Christians do reach that conclusion, which is why I urged Rev pages ago to take up his objections with his fellow Christians, since this entire "debate" really comes down to how one interprets the Bible. As an atheist, I have no stake in the outcome of that pissing match.

[Jackalope]

So, is it your entire objection that ERVs aren't evidence for evolution and common descent because God "could've done it that way" ?

Such "explanations" can be used to dismiss any other explanation, but until they are testable and falsifiable, such explanations will never be more than a working hypothesis.

Evolutionary biology *is* both testable and falsifiable, and actually has explanatory power, something the god did it hypothesis completely lacks.

This response, as far as science goes, is a non- answer as far as I can see.

So the challenge to Rev is to explain why the goddidit hypothesis is the superior explanation. Simply asserting that it could be doesn't hold water.