Shorter Casey Luskin: Waa, waa — they call me mean names!
Really, that’s the whole of his extended whine in US News & World Report, a long complaint that “darwinists” aren’t nice to him. It’s pathetic, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from Mr Squeaky. You really only need two pieces of information. 1) His opening paragraph:
Most Darwinists involved in the public debate today have one, and only one goal: To stifle free debate on this subject and thereby discourage you, the public, from scrutinizing the scientific evidence for yourself.
And 2) the knowledge that he wrote a 6800 word opinion piece that never once mentions any of that hypothetical scientific evidence for ID. Not one tiny scrap. You know, if I had 6800 words that I began with the assertion that I had scientific evidence for an idea that a shadowy cabal was keeping from the public, I think I’d take advantage of that opportunity to reveal the hidden wisdom that had been suppressed. Funny how they never manage to do that.
For some perspective: my Seed column is about 1500 words. A newspaper column might be 6 or 700 words. Luskin took the opportunity to run off his mouth at extravagant length, and said absolutely nothing.
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEK
And of course, we have precisely the opposite goal: We WANT as many people as possible to understand and scrutinize the scientific evidence. That’s what I’m all about, anyway,
Hey, Casey!
Oh PZ, the IDers don’t HAVE any evidence. You know that.
You know who they do remind me of, though? Theologians.
Which, in a sense, is what they really are anyway.
Scientists are stifling the public debate about evolution and design in order to prevent the public from scrutinizing the evidence.
In how many different ways is that wrong?
love this comment
Lying for Jebus – if your going to believe in magical gods, then you’ll get it all wrong about the nature of the universe & life without necessarily being mendacious.
These clowns can’t even see the obvious – there’s no evidence for their spirit-god-things.
Hey wait a minute! We do have public debate and discussion of evolution. Its called K-12th grade life sciences. Maybe Luskin doesn’t understand, many of us decided not to become grade school teachers, just because he has a pre-K understanding doesnt mean the world has to slow down and hold his mental hand until he gets it.
Tool
oh yeah, the evil evil scientists, refusing to let you just make up shit and claim it’s science.
be glad you don’t live in Germany. Making up shit is in some cases illegal there. (in other cases however, it’s covered by insurance. go figure)
I read this the other day and saw that the commentors bitch slapped him something good!
I have begun to think ID proponents have evidence, but it’s imaginary just like their god.
[intentional quote-mine]
done and done
[/intentional quote mine]
Casey ties himself into some nice logical knots there. I particularly enjoy it when they claim that “ID does not require supernatural creation,” and then reject the notion that natural processes can produce the appearance of design.
Aw, c’mon, PZ, how naive can you be? You have dealt with these people long enough to know that their claiming to have evidence is the evidence. Duh.
Luskin also doesn’t appear to understand the difference between “fear” and “disgust”.
Most Darwinists involved in the public debate today have one, and only one goal: To
stifle free debateeducate the ignorant on this subject and therebydisencourage you, the public,fromto scrutinizeingthe scientific evidence for yourself.Of which Intelligent Designers are noticabbly lacking.
There. Fixed it.
According to the paper in my area (Washington Post), more people in America believe in ESP than believe in evolution. See there Luskin, that’s good news for you. So stop bitching.
It’s quite simple, really. If he had included any evidence, then the Darwinist Conspiracy would have prevented his piece from being published at all! The only way for him to get out The Word is by not mentioning any actual facts, obviously.
Here’s my favorite picture of Casey and his magical unibrow: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v13/CrazyDiamond/blog/dscf8398.jpg
And we are scared of ID, since it’s as stupid as Luskin’s writings are.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
I normally don’t go for ad hominems but Luskin, clearly, leaves us no choice in the matter.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
As usual, those who have nothing to say always have verbal diarrhea.
They are running scared because there is proof of evolution via fossils, embryology, anatomy, genetics and evolutionary biology and they can not handle the hundreds of thousands of solid facts that prove evolution.
It reminds me of the nutter emailer a few posts ago, but some kindly sub-editor added paragraph breaks and fixed up the spelling.
Interesting thread going on over at Jerry Coyne’s blog:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/darwinism-must-die/
His lead argument is based on the tone of internet comments. Oh, my lack of god, he is beyond lame.
Isn’t generating that crap his full-time occupation? I mean PZ is a professor, with this blog as a sideline. But Casey has nothing else to do but write–he’s not out in the field doing ID research, nor in an academy teaching ID–he just sits on his duff making stuff up, and he can’t do any better than that?
Although the title is pretty impressive: “Darwin Believers Hide Fears of Intelligent Design Behind a Wall of Denial and Ridicule”. Wow! He gets faith, insecurity, incompetence, crudeness and rudeness in there in just a few words–slick. Then he rambles on about nothing for a long, long, long time.
As before, the projecting is so perfect that I could copy the text, run a search-and-replace, and use it to explain exactly what I object to about creationists. Casey really doesn’t think about anything, does he?
I like his objections to rudeness. What the hell else are folks supposed to do when they see Casey violating the truth like that–out of reach, out of touch and out of his mind? Explain to him patiently that he’s insane? Talk him down with logic? Use Bible verses as a charm?
If folks are rude, he gets validated. If folks reason with him, he gets validated. If folks ignore him, he gets validated. The blustard gets paid–too bad he doesn’t get paid what he’s worth.
Maybe Luskin is feeling the heat. Several posters at Dembski’s IDCist Blog have called for him to step down.
He’s just lashing out. Death throes one can hope.
Every time a biblotard howls about one of us being rude I think of how jolly and polite Bill Donahue is…
I’ve sometimes asked these morons what evidence they’d present if they weren’t “suppressed” as “non-materialists.”
Curiously, they don’t reply.
Which explains why they have to scream that their “science” is suppressed, for they can’t present any.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Well, of course once Luskin’s ideas are accepted as mainstream then he can feel safe enough to present evidence for them.
Makes perfect christian sense.
Dear Mr Luskin,
Cry more n00b!
I have a weekly get together with friends in which we play video games, and I’ve learned an important lesson from some of my more viciously competitive friends that can be applied to this situation.
“Just because YOU suck at it doesn’t mean it’s a bad game.”
likewise,
“Just because YOU suck at logic and reasoning doesn’t mean evolution is an “elitist conspiracy”.
“Highly influential behind ID arguments was the discovery that life depended upon information, whose structure was not only independent of its physical or chemical form, but whose ordering was not amenable to explanation by physical or chemical laws.”
What does that mean? Really?
“If you actually read the works of Dembski and Behe, you’ll see that they rely not on the arguments of creationists, but on the arguments of mainstream science.”
I assume he means quote mining “the arguments of mainstream science”.
“Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected through science is supernatural.”
Sounds rather useless, pointless, and disingenuous.
I can’t go on. Only this:
Albert Einstein:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
First Forbes, now this. Not that I ever had much respect for these two publications, but now they’re going out of their way to discredit themselves.
Perhaps we ought to campaign to get them to print a piece about the brutal suppression of Pastafarianism. Also, their readers should hear from the Flat Earth Society. Teach the controversy!
Okay, so normally when I imitate Luskin/Behe/whoever I say “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
So with that added ‘K’ at the end, I imagined some obnoxious bug screaming ‘SQUEEEEEEE’ and getting stepped on: ‘SQUEEEEEEEEE*foot stomp*EEK!’
I started laughing so hard I had to explain Luskin to my whole lab. Now we are all laughing.
Win!
Oh, come on, Dr. Myers–at least he used paragraphs…!
SQUEAK I tell you SQUEEEAK!
btw– Luskin and Nazi luver John West will be at OU in the next couple weeks. The SciBlog Overlords gave us video cameras a while back.
Stay tuned for a bounty of lulz ;)
Oh my FSM, 6800 words just to say squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.
Eugenie Scott says that “… creationists are increasingly retreating to their standard fallback strategy for undermining the teaching of evolution: misrepresenting evolution as scientifically controversial while remaining silent about what they regard as the alternative.” Also that “Creationists are fond of asserting that evolution is a theory in crisis because they assume that there are only two alternatives: creationism (whether creation science or intelligent design) and evolution. Evidence against evolution is thus evidence for creationism; disproving evolution thus proves creationism. ”
Original article at the Scientific American site http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-latest-face-of-creationism
So Casey, having no ammo on his own side, can only whine that there isn’t any ammo on the evolution side either. He’s wrong, but a lie told often enough can be powerful.
Thanks for continually poking fun at this guy PZ. Debunking is the best weapon against his lies.
Come on, you can’t really expect him to show his evidence, can you? Every time they try that, you mean scientists refute their claims with “facts” and “verifiable data”. It is a lot of work for them to come up with a new flawed metaphor for why there must be a Designer, and sharing it in a public forum just generates so many examples of why they are wrong. Do you have any idea how hard it is to ignore that much evidence? It is better for them to only share their information with people who already agree with them, so it doesn’t get suppressed by people who understand the biology, chemistry, physics, cosmology, zoology and theology involved.
I would suppose people like Luskin could be classified as bioconservatives. They see that science is driving toward transhumanism where technology might actually impact the very character of human nature creating another kind of human species. This is not natural selection which becomes a mere antecedent to technological selection.
ERV,
It’s “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEK” because Luskin is referred to as the DI attack mouse.
“SQUEEEEEEEEE” without the “K” on the end would actually be considered a term of endearment.
In the slightly butchered words of an Intarwub meme:
“Go cry emo mouse.”
Did I just hear another Squeak? This one sounds like nonsense also.
Actually, Silver Fox, they’re more properly classified as liars and con men.
6800 words? Really? I think that might be about 5 or 6 pages in an advertising drenched rag like USNWR.
They really gave Squeaky that many page? The magazine that likes to tout its opinions of what the best schools are in America?
Does USNWR not see the irony?
you’ve been reading Kurzweil, haven’t you silver fox *facepalm*
I wonder though… are “bioconservatives” against titanium hips, too?
I’m perpetually fascinated by the type of mind that could turn out work like this.
It’s really, really hard to believe that he’s just lying through his teeth. One or two publicly visible creationists, maybe, but there are a bunch of people like this. I know that their livelihoods are based entirely on perpetuating this fantasy, but surely they believe what they’re saying (for the most part). Right?
At the same time, Luskin’s obviously not a total idiot. He’s literate, and can write in a prima facie intelligent way. Yes, a lot of what he writes is childish (as when he turns to comments that make fun of him), but he’s at least a functioning adult.
But if he’s not an idiot and not a liar, how can he (and others) completely ignore the arguments against his position? Creationists are universally terrible at adequately characterizing the positions of their opponents, and never seem to remember arguments that have been brought to bear against them in the past.
Is it really just Lying for Jesus? Have so many people been so twisted by their religious beliefs that they’re all willing to knowingly lie in order to win converts? Or is it just that their beliefs absolutely prevent them from applying the level of intelligence they show in various other endeavors to their ‘debate’ with Darwinists?
I’m honestly troubled by this sometimes.
I’m curious – is anyone familiar with historical precedents for this kind of thing?
Did/do Christian missionaries have a tendency to lie in order to win converts. Does the Catholic Church have a history of dishonesty in its dealings with its believers with respect to religion (that is, leaving stuff like pedophilia aside)?
Why should we believe anything you say, you demented mental midget?
You still haven’t provided evidence for your deity, showing your work. You haven’t shown your work about why there are so many fairy tale buddies. No, pulling out of your ass an assertion that all the deities are one is notevidence.
Bring your evidence before you post anything else. You have become beyond tiresome to me.
#49 was obviously for Silver Fox.
Sorry about leaving that off.
Did/do Christian missionaries have a tendency to lie in order to win converts. Does the Catholic Church have a history of dishonesty in its dealings with its believers with respect to religion (that is, leaving stuff like pedophilia aside)?
Yes.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
Gotchaye: yes and yes.
Gotchaye,
I am completely fascinated too by seemingly intelligent people who seem utterly incapable of understanding the difference between evidence and faith, and utterly ignorant of the scientific method. For as long as I live, I don’t think I will ever get over my incredulity at how these people think.
There is an evolution debate thread getting started at crazy Jill Stanek’s blog. I feel bad that I put a link to a page by PZ in teh comments, because it may send a lot of wingers over here. Didn’t think of that until after I posted.
Does anyone know what evidence for Intelligent Design would actually look like?
I, for one, welcome our new titanium-hipped cyborg overlords.
Gotchaye: If you want an actual recent example, look at the RC’s various lies about condoms in the third world. All done to promote its anti-contraception stance at the expense of protecting against AIDS.
When a teacher sends you to a corner for talking bullshit, or when you fail at a debate for making for a lousy argument, is that called persecution?
No Mr. Luskin – that’s called common sense.
#48,
if telling the missionees that they are factually correct in believing that witchcraft and demons exist but that it is false that the local shaman can drive them out when really it’s the power of the Holy Spirit or Jesus is dishonest, then yes they have a long and evident history of lying.
On Catholicism, Karlheinz Deschner (a German philosopher) has written a huge number of books on this and Christianity in general. His page address (in English) is http://www.deschner.info/index_en.htm
I haven’t read his books, but interestingly they are strongly criticised by the clergy and many theists, curiously I have never come across a criticism from them that contained any significant factually substantial refutation, just denial.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy at the Discovery Institute–great Casey has struck out.
A picture of two hands, waving furiously in the air.
bunnycatch3r: We have been asking them, the IDiots that is, since day one to present us with even one hypothesis of what evidence for ID might look like. We are still waiting while they simply squeak incessantly about how mean us evilutionists are in asking for evidence.
#54,
I suppose they’re hoping to find some molecules that can’t have formed (or joined others) according to known physical laws. That (apart from an autographed by God version of some creature’s genome) is the closest thing to positive evidence I can think of.
I see you scampered off from the other threads where your ass was getting handed to you.
Sven said:
In how many ways is your statement wrong, Sven?
1. Scientists are not stifling public debate.
2. Creationists are trying to stifle public debate by insisting that evolution be muzzled. More than 100 times since 1925, creationists have asked that evolution be completely or partially censored. Intelligent design is just the latest method of muddying the educational waters so nothing about evolution can be seen clearly.
3. IDists don’t want to talk about evolution at all; in fact, most IDists (including Casey Luskin) cannot describe evolution in any accuracy — not enough accuracy to get them through the AP biology test. If they can’t muster a test for smart high school students, how much science can their ID schemes really hold?
4. All ID proposals are about stopping the public from scrutinizing evidence. While claiming to want to talk about “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, for example, IDists howl like the screech owl in Isaiah 34:14 whenever scientists actually talk about the strengths of evolution theory, or try to get such a discussion, or even a list, into the textbooks. One of the things that most terrifies IDists is a serious study of human evolution. They keep complaining about a lack of fossils, as if the 20 known transitional species between other apes and modern man were not enough, let alone the 20,000 or 100,000 individuals who evidence those 20 species. If a teacher talks about human evolution, IDists are the first to cry foul.
5. Hiding under those statements is a serious ethical flaw. The only traction ID can get is if IDists tell whopping fibs about evolution and science, such as the claim that scientists are trying to muzzle IDists.
You know, federal law requires researchers to tell no lies about their work, their proposed ideas, or their results, in order to get federal funding for projects. Have you ever noticed that no IDists ever apply for federal funding? I don’t believe they could get through that gauntlet without risking jail.
Think about it Sven: Where is there an ID lab where you and I can go watch an actual ID scientist working to research ID, in action, in real time, in real space? Can you show us where is the science?
I dare you: Tell me the address of the lab, and who is doing the work. I dare you.
Thanks, John. Yeah, I guess the condom thing is pretty clear-cut, and I suppose the most reasonable conclusion is that Luskin and friends know full well that they’re spewing a bunch of crap. People seem to be perfectly willing to distort the truth or even to just make things up if it saves souls.
Actually…wait, what?
Thanks for the random speculation about transhumanism, but that actually has nothing to do with what Casey said. It was a valiant effort, though. Perhaps you meant to comment on the Kurzweil thread?
Casey is lamenting the materialism of science. In short, he isn’t arguing about what science should be used for, but rather what it is. He’s angry that he can’t cite Genesis in his imaginary publications. Oh, and he whines a little about the pitiless mockery of his stupidity on the internet.
Ed
That was a quote from Lushkin that Sven was saying was wrong. Not one of his own.
Oh yes, and we spoke euphemistically in order to conceal the truth, such as “God called Pastor (or Brother) Ken and Spears to another church”, when in fact Brother Ken had been offered a larger salary we couldn’t match because he could keep butts in pews, or more egregiously in Pastor Spears’ case, because a deacon discovered his wife (the church secretary) and the preacher had been kanoodling. We won’t talk about the number of Youth Ministers and Music directors “called away” due to unspoken trysts with minors, usually self-denying gay teens, or due to discrepencies in the offering plate totals or petty cash drawer.
Witnesses lie, invent, fib -whatever, to convince their target of what God has done for them. Witnessing with friends always invoked a silent “when the fuck did that happen? I don’t remember that! When have you ever done that?!” response in me, but I couldn’t expose the lie because someone’s soul hung in the balance or so I believed.
Creationists. They’re like pets, really. We keep them around because they amuse us, but really they’re harmless.
If Luskin thought about it for a microsecond he’d realize that his entire lifestyle was built and supported by materialists who provide his electricity, produce his clothing, build his computers and cell phones. Yes, Luskin survives on the charity of others, mainly materialists.
I mean, what can a creationist like Luskin do except bay at the moon?
It’s not like a creationist with a weird ideology could stop important research that could benefit all of humanity, like stem cell research …
… er, no, not like that.
Ed Darrell, you’re over-reading and misinterpreting. Sven isn’t a creationist, first of all. He is asking us to list all that is wrong in the statement, not asking why anyone thinks it’s wrong.
Creationists. They’re like pets, really. We keep them around because they amuse us, but really they’re harmless.
Wouldn’t be that smug, Doc Bill. They’re harming science education well enough.
#69: Over at the Richard Dawkins site, creotards and the religious are called chew toys. I rather like that.
Thing is, some chew toys are better than others. Some fall apart after only a little chewing. Some can take a lot more damage. But no fear. Just about the time a chew toy has outlived its usefulness, another one always comes along.
Gotchaye: I honestly don’t know whether people like Luskin are lying or actually believe it for religiously motivated reasons. However, if you read the Wedge Document, which is effectively the Disinformation Institute’s mission statement, then it is largely a political organisation hoping to eventually turn the USA into a type of theocracy. IDiocy, i.e. Intelligent Design, is simply a tactic aimed at weakening science education and targeting the kids.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
In fact, if I was an USAian, I would be inclined to call them traitors and without intending any hyperbole.
After decades of cultivating an army of sympathetic and ignorant followers, they probably feel they are ready to implement this next step in their wedge strategy—turbo charging the whining.
It’s only effective if he’s speaking for a large enough group, and you know how Christians love to feel persecuted.
I’m familiar with the Wedge Document, and I’ve long understood that ID is bankrupt, but, as you say, there’s a difference between believing something for religious reasons and then looking for scientific evidence of it and just fabricating that scientific evidence for political reasons. I’ve got an enormously difficult time understanding Luskin’s position as either dishonest (because of how extremely dishonest it is) or honest (because of how stupid it is), but I guess there’s certainly precedent.
EV: I had absolutely no idea.
Gotchaye. Like you, I really can’t fathom it as my brain tends to break when I try to reconcile the irreconcilable. Though I also wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a bit of better to be a big fish in a small pond than a minuscule fish in a big pond, especially if initially the IDiots shtick appeals. After all, how
infamous would he and his fellow IDiots likely be in other fields if they didn’t have Johnson’s money and the Disinformation Institute behind them.“you’ve been reading Kurzweil, haven’t you silver fox”
No, I am not familiar with Kurzweil but I have read something by Nick Bostrom. Also, I understand that in opposition to Transhumanism there is a fellow named George Annas who says we should view all human cloning and all genetic modifications as “crimes against humanity”.
SQUEAK! I smell a rat.
He is providing scientific evidence for ID. This is exactly what they do, all those beleaugured, reviled, scientists at the Discovery Insitute – they are presenting the evidence – it’s that evidence, there. But we are just too blind to see it!
They think that they are just like Darwin but better (after all they know more than Darwin did, and some of them are real scientists, because he wasn’t).
They look at the world, they remember that Christ died for out sins, and they see God’s work, made my him, EVERYWHERE
Why are we so blind, it’s so mind-numbingly obvious, Darwin didn’t get it right – oh boo hoo, so your daughter died and you lost god – he ran off on atheist crusade and lost his marbles.
You see, as with Darwin, they can look at the natural world and understand how it works – but atheists, they’re lacking that vital piece of the puzzle, that essential bit of science which they never acknowledge – that god did do it. That’s the evidence you refuse to see.
Yes, just like Darwin, ID scientists have taken the natural world and their beliefs, and they’ve sussed it out, just by adding the ultimate piece of knowledge that science lacks. Yes, Jesus.
That’s the belief and the science too – Christ is in every testube. And when unenlightened scientists prove to be so stupid they get really really cross, like the baby Jesus at an abortion.
But please don’t aske them what science they’re doing – because this is them doing it.
And you really can’t argue with that.
It was a beautiful example of ID creationist writing at its best. No science, no evidence, and no logic.
Just Casey showing everyone that he’s just the Disco Toot’s whiny little bitch. Again.
Pathetic moron.
I just saw an old Ashleigh Brilliant cartoon today, with this caption:
“They laughed at Edison and Einstein. But somehow I still feel uncomfortable when they laugh at me.”
You know what really pisses me off? The word ‘Darwinist’.
20 years ago, I would have guessed the definition of this word to mean “Someone with an interest in the life of Charles Darwin” Or perhaps someone that developed a moral code based upon the social commentaries of Charles Darwin. I don’t think I would have associated it with accepting common descent. In comes the Disco ‘tute.
Now the word “Darwinist” is attached to anyone who accepts the current theory of evolution. As much respect for Darwin that I have, I can’t but help think how disrespectful it is to all of the other people who worked on the theory.
No one calls people who believe in gravity ‘Newtonists’ or if you accept general relativity ‘Einsteinists’ Heck, even the spell checker in Firefox recognizes Darwinist as a real word, but flagged the other two as misspellings.
I guess that was their goal. They have reduced a very complex man into a simple title that they can drop on a group of people. At least were right.
Was USNWR taken over by Forbes recently and I missed the announcement?
Or is it that in the age of Obama, all the Republican-leaning media (yep, includes NYT) are under orders to prove their loyalty by acts of irrevocable self-embarrassment during this Darwin Year?
I can hardly wait for Chris Matthews & WaPo to tee up and swing… or did I miss those too?
Yeah, that “Darwinist” stuff ticks me right off. It certainly is a misrepresentation of my reasons for accepting evolution. I dunno if Casey actually thinks we all worship Darwin, or if he’s just pandering for a paycheck.
To make a religious comparison, and to use the “persecuted Christian” tactic of asking if Muslims would accept being treated that way . . .
It’s like calling a Muslim a “Mohammedan”.
I dunno if Casey actually thinks we all worship Darwin, or if he’s just pandering for a paycheck.
The answer could (and probably is): C. Both
They call us (us?) Darwinist because
1) It’s from Darwinism, the well known atheist religion;and
2) It pisses us off.
Why wouldn’t they call it Darwinism?
(We call them “creationist”, after all)
that Bostrom dude seems less insane than Kurzweil. ok then
the anti-transhumanists, or bioconservatives however are the same sort of “i fear all change” as those who feared racial mixing would destroy us all. (actually, they sound a bit like the reactionaries from the X-Men universe)
body-modification on a voluntary basis is harmless (mostly), and gene-therapy and genome modifications can be useful sometime in the far future once the interactions of genes are better known. it’s certainly not a “crime against humanity”
I was going to say *Jazz hands*, but I think in this case the better term might be “spirit fingers.”
Slightly OT, but one of the reasons that they aren’t “Mohammedans” is because of Islam’s rejection of Idolatry. Although it seems to me that Mohammed the man is worshipped in every way possible they claim not – no (current) pictures of him, and the house where he lived, I think in Mecca, is just above a launderette – no plaque, no visitors, and possibly soon to be demolished.
Weird isn’t it?
A friend of mine used to be an illustrator of chilren’s school books for Saudi Arabia.
Foreigners have to do it because, owing to religious restrictions on images of humans, there are very few visual artists in the Kingdom. Young children never paint or draw (now imagine that!) so adults don’t either.
It was restrictive – veiled/headscarfed woman, always walking behind the men…after a while she realised that in drawing the reality she was in a way perpetuating it, and stopped.
No kiddies paintings! Now that’s just plain evil!
For ID evidence: how do we get the sexes, sexual reproduction, organs, self-healing skin, hearts that beat for a lifetime without any external energy source, our computer-like brains, our eyes and the ability to see colors? How do we get all the animals, insects, flowers, food plants?
The Darwinian answer: millions of years of natural selection, adaptation from one celled creatures that just happened to form by themselves, slithering from primordial soup after a Big Bang.
O PUHLEASE! Of course there is adaptation and natural selection within “kinds” of creatures –but simple cells do not evolve to more highly developed, more complex creatures. Mutations today do not produce improvements. No matter how fast (or slowly) creatures evolve, they still remain in the same “family” or “kind.” Dogs beget dogs; cats beget cats; apes beget apes — and you can’t prove it ever happened otherwise with ANY fossil of an extinct creature. Even if creatures share features in their DNA, they don’t procreate out of their kind! But each reproduces after its own kind –just like the Bible says. Doesn’t matter how many billions of years you speculate for the process; you can’t prove those great numbers of years or that any transitions have EVER occured, from one life form to another. There is evidence INTERPRETED as proof by the emperor’s courtiers –Darwinists — but where is the PROOF to convince the child that the emperor is REALLY wearing clothes –when he isn’t?
oh yeah, hearts, our little internal perpetual-motion-machines *snigger*
Whelp… Barb has convinced me. I’m off to pray to Siebog.
They really don’t know anything, do they. That would be funny if it wasn’t so woefully and pitifully wrong in oh so many ways.
Barbie, try doing without food for a while and see how long your heart continues beating without any of that external energy source.
Barb wrote
We have all come to expect this level of uninformed advocacy by the ID crowd. The real tragedy is that a major news magazine considers this to be newsworthy. Is it any wonder that print publishing is in serious trouble?
Totally OT, but I thought this crowd would have some ideas: ID people are always saying “Teach the controversy.” It occurs to me that, like it or not, the controversy has been a significant aspect of American public life, even though it is not a legitimate scientific controversy.
It seems to me that political science class would be the appropriate place to study the sound and furor raised by the ID folks. Of course, that’s probably opening a can of worms that might be hard to address in a public school context. Does anyone know if it has ever been tried?
Barb, your wilful ignorance you spread before us is as pathetic as that of Luskin. You really have no excuse with all the educational resources available to you on the Internet and elsewhere.
May be a Poe, but I’m leaning IDiot.
Yes Barb, I undgerstand – the world just doesn’t make sense to you without Jesus, does it?
It’s that old “there’s god, now what did you say about science?”
Amd you’ve come over to the Court of Darwin to tell us so.
How sweet. But be honest, are you putting such a brave post up at Atheist central to save our souls…or yours?
Well since you’re here on this important project let me tell you something. There’s one thing you religious types just don’t get – imagination. You can’t imagine how science works without worship or prayer, but it does, and so do we. do. Well, it’s that lack of imagination on your part, the lack of an understanding of what it’s like to be different to you, that blinds you to science.
It’s why you insist there’s no evidence for evolution. It’s why you think sciemce is a religion.
And it’s what makes you, ultimately, a moron.
Mwwwwwwahahahahahahahahahahaha
Good one !
Im so thankful for this blog,I would otherwise have never known that such totally ignorant dimwits actually exist for a fact.
Barb’s got me convinced. I mean, if there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.
Seriously Barb, the next time you want to convince “Darwinists” that you’re right, try not to sound like the biggest fucking moron on the planet. Ever wondered why monks and nuns invented vows of silence? Yeah, it was people like you. See, some of ’em actually tried to come up with compelling reasons for believing what they believed, and it just wouldn’t do to have half-wits like you yelping all day long. So, uh, be a good Godly little girl and shhhh.
Pious lies! Pious lies! I am now convinced that the creationist Iders really believe that they will be forgiven for their fabrications and unethical behavior. When pushed as to who they think the designer is the answer is God. I heard Dembski say this and have read quotes from other DI priests saying that they believe GOD is the designer. Their continued insistence that ID is not religion – especially after Kitzmiller – is just another one of their pious lies. But most who comment here know that.
C’non Bard, explain, why does Jesus want you to look stupid?
I mean doesn’t this sound a little…stupid? Even to you, and you’re thinking it?
You stopped thinking properly a long time ago, didn’t you hon?
No one calls people who believe in gravity ‘Newtonists’ or if you accept general relativity ‘Einsteinists’ Heck, even the spell checker in Firefox recognizes Darwinist as a real word, but flagged the other two as misspellings.
Try ‘Newtonian’.
bunnycatch3r #54 wrote:
Something like this.
Hey! Stop dissing Squeak; it’s a very fine and dandy (and free) programming system (See http://www.squeak.org). Connecting it in any way or form with that irritating demented fuckwit Luskin is almost certainly a violation of the DCMA. Or DACM. Or DMAC. Or whatever.
If Barb believes “For ID evidence: how do we get the sexes, … , ” then she likewise has to accept: “HIV, smallpox, cholera, the Black Plague, Ebola virus, the 1918 influenza virus, Brugia malayi, parasitic worms that burrow in your eyes, etc.”
Her putative intelligent designer has quite a penchant for sadism.
Ronald McDonald would like to have a word with you.
No external energy source…
you moron.
Seriously.
NO EXTERNAL ENERGY SOURCE!!@!!!1111
What an utter and complete idiot you are Barb.
If Luskin wants an apology for those of us here who blow raspberries at him, why the fuck won’t he come here and ask for it?
Is it because of the outstanding list of over 100 questions we have for him that he simply refuses to answer?
fucking coward.
I’d like to think that if there really was a god, and we sat in judgment, that he’d look at all the horseshit that the religitards push out and say, “You have a choice…go back and try again to pull your head out of your ass, or burn in hell FOREVER”. And leave us dead atheists where we are- dead. ‘cuz that’s really what’s going to happen.
The IDolators need to be curbed sharply. Ridicule is actually too nice a punishment.
Well yeah.
I though it was obvious that Barb’s whole life is a tragedy.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
no …external…. energy source.
BWWWWWWWWWWWWWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
killing me barb. Seriously. That’s teh best one yet.
HAHhah
HAHAHAHA
ha
ahaha
um
whew.
like all good intarweb biology neophytes, Barb could start by simply looking at Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_sex
hell, PBS even had a nice special on it some time back:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/sex/index.html
not much of a mystery, really.
I can’t believe how uneducated one must be to think such a thing let alone type it. Wow, just wow.
*snicker
Barb bleated:
Goggle “Lensky E Coli” and you’ll discover you’re not quite correct.
that is SO going on fstdt
I’ll look for it there, rev.
;)
Barb has you all cornered and you’re running away! No external energy source!
Don’t hand me this Big mac stuff… once you eated teh Big Mac, it’s not external, it’s internal! HA! See, you evilutionsists do’nt have no comon sense.
Barb, does the expression “dumb as a bag of hammers” mean anything to you?
It should. It describes you perfectly. Now go back to breathing hard in front of your 8 1/2 X 11 black and white glossy photo of Ken Ham gazing wistfully at a saddled triceratops.
As I commented over there:
For 150+ years, tens of thousands of scientists, in dozens of different disciplines, scattered all over the world, have made literally millions of observations, collected millions of pieces of information, and conducted millions of experiments. While there is, and will always be, much disagreement about the details, pretty much all of this confirms that the universe is old, that species evolve, and that natural selection has a lot to do with evolution. How do creationists imagine that scientists achieve this remarkable unanimity of error? A secret book with all the important lies in it handed down from doctoral advisor to newly-minted Ph.D. at the hooding ceremony? Or, assuming creationists think that scientists are merely deluded and not dishonest, how is it that they’re all deluded in the same way? Some sort of Satanic Vulcan mind-meld? I really just don’t get it.
Of course, there is evidence interpreted as evidence. A lot
italics tag fail
suggestion: preview
Well, I’m glad to have brightened your day, Gents! I’ve long ago learned that scorn is the main tactic of the Left –and the evolutionist. Granted, I scorned you a bit first with my naked emperor reference.
I doubt there are many of you posting here who could make a credible defense of Darwinism. I didn’t see any credible defenses. Prof. Myers, the blog host could, I assume.
So food is energy. And I’ll add that the sinus node regulates the heart beat/keeps it going. It’s still amazing –and designed –and empowered mysteriously. AND we can’t really make one anywhere near as marvelous as the real thing. And even if we could, it would only prove that designers, creators, makers are behind everything that exists.
And there ARE smarter guys than all of you, credentialed PhD and MD scientists who DO believe in God –and DO see deficiencies in Darwin’s explanation on origins. They understand and can explain Darwin better than most of the laymen defending him –and that’s why they can see the flaws in the theory and you cannot.
Sorry, but there’s not much that’s still mysterious about the sinoatrial node. Its self-excitatory pacemaker activity results from changes in the permeability of its cell membranes to ions, particularly a decrease in potassium permeability. This is caused by changes in conformation of gated ion channel proteins in the membrane, and results in a steady depolarization of the membrane (change in transmembrane voltage) until a threshold voltage is attained and an action potential initiated. Artificial pacemakers (made by “us”) are common and work just fine (e.g. Dick Cheney).
And it’s not true that the bettter one understands biology, the more “deficiencies in Darwin’s explanation” one sees. Seriously: just the opposite.
@125:
Hell, the Man Himself has a hard enough time getting it right, as these poor sumbitches found out.
C’mon — Barb’s a poe, right?
(In assessing these cases, I always find my cynical misanthropy wars with my tiny flicker of hope for mankind.)
Barb,
You do know that explanation was published 150 years ago, right? It’s been improved somewhat since then, and it’s called the modern evolutionary synthesis.
As for your appeal to authority, have you heard of Project Steve?
Tulse, if you look at Barb’s blog link the sad reality is apparent.
Barb,
please explain your requirement for scientists to believe in god,is there a particular standpoint you are coming from,and that you need to see followed? You seem rather desperate to prove to yourself a certain ideology,as opposed to being open-minded,and,as creationists like to put it,follow the evidence…
And,as has been pointed out to you before,”Darwinism” is not a term scientists use,it is a word created by the
Ministry of Propagandacreationists to indicate that the people that can see that evolution is obviously true are following some kind of religion,which is of course untrue,but truth as we know,does not matter much for the professional liars that the creationists are.Lowell @ 18: “Here’s my favorite picture of Casey and his magical unibrow…”
Holy crap! You scared the shit out of me with that image, because [shudder] I actually look a lot like him! (Including, unfortunately, a natural unibrow…)
She keeps using these words and in the very next breath proves that she doesn’t really understand them. And we mustn’t forget the oh so common religiotard appeal to authority. Sad, but, such is life and creotardation. One day we might be able to cure it, though I hold out little hope in the short to medium term.
Barb: Define “kind”.
Oh Barb, don’t leave us. I may have been hasty in dismissing your views – plaease come back.
No more scorn, allright?
I promise to listen to your arguments.
There now, wicked Pharrgulaites, see what you’ve done – just as she was about to tell us the real truth!
Shame!
When confronted by someone like Barb, one realises with a certain melabcholy how inadequate the English language is: moron, idiot, twit, twerp, nincompoop, cretin, halfwit, fuckwit, knuckle-dragger, shit-for-brains… they are none of them adequate. Could I call on the assistance of those for whom English is a second language? Surely German, or Swedish, or French, or some other tongue must contain a term commensurate with Barb’s stupidity?
Knockgoats asked,
Ex.
http://www.insults.net/html/swear/german.html
has some esoteric gems.
Schweinhund and Dummkopf were the only ones I recognized.
no external energy source.
heh heh heh
It was tough because I was and am laughing too hard.
Asserting it was designed does not make it so. We have hundreds of thousands of pieces of research supporting the ToE. Show me what you have supporting ID.
Go ahead.
How many are named Steve?
What Barb and other creationists fail to realize is that not only do they have to show that evolution is wrong but that their “theory” is correct. So why don’t they trot out the evidence to support their “theory?”
Sven’s cute when he gets all physiological. ;)
Shouldn’t DI’s inevitable downsizing have put Casey out on the street by now? Unless, of course, he kept his job by back-stabbing some other poor shill at DI–all in Xian love, of course!
Howard Ahmanson’s deep pockets have to be petering out by now; he has four or five homo- and gynophobic breakaway Episcopalian dioceses to secretly bankroll, along with about half-a-dozen bishops who can’t muster the mojo to hoodwink their dioceses into taking the trip.
OTOH, maybe Casey is an “Emanuel Goldstein,” and the eeevul Darwinist conspiracy is feeding unlimited public funds to him and DI to keep on grinding all out this too-easily-refuted crap. How about it, PZ? Is DI really Minitruth? Isn’t there a symbiotic relationship here?
Then again, maybe Casey has been quietly downsized, and USeless News & World Distort paid him by the word.
Sven, you first: Yes, I know. We make pacemakers and even artificial hearts –but we design them, don’t we? they are highly complex engineering, are they not?? Get my point? But we’re supposed to believe that our hearts are the random product of natural bio-processes without any designer–over millions –billions? of years –whatever. And somehow, man evolved into 2 sexes. HOw so? if not by design? Why did our eyes evolve the capacity to see color when we think some animals’ eyes did not? Survival of the color-seers over the black and white? I think not. Seeing as how both have survived and are not extinct. The complexity of even the sinoatrial node is evidence of an unseen hand–an intelligent creator at work.
That irrelevant book in Romans 1 speaks of our unbelief this way:
“…since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” (And degrading their bodies is not the God-given design of sex between Adam and Eve in the garden as some have supposed was original sin.)
When we think nature has the power to evolve more complex creatures without Divine design, this thinking is our modern form of idolatry, a way of worshipping creature over Creator. And it HAS led to atheism.
The Book tells us, Psalm 100:3
And Jesus announced He was the Good Shepherd –who lay down his life for the sheep –and became one of them, a sacrificial lamb –“the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” following in that Jewish tradition of an unblemished, perfect sacrificial lamb to atone for sin –starting with the lamb provided by God and sacrificed by Abraham in lieu of his son –and the lamb’s blood that protected the Israelite first born during the Passover escape from Egypt–which ritual was practiced as an atonement for sin even at the time of Jesus’ death on Good Friday/Passover.
There are sincere believers who assume evolution must be true –but a rather long list of scientists, “real biologists,” and other scientists who contend that what we learned from DNA puts an end to the controversy in their educated minds. The inter-dependence and complexity of the components of DNA suggest genius and design behind the molecule. Some of these people are not “Bible-believers” per se, but just don’t think Darwin’s got it right.
Sven, you first: Yes, I know. We make pacemakers and even artificial hearts –but we design them, don’t we? they are highly complex engineering, are they not?? Get my point? But we’re supposed to believe that our hearts are the random product of natural bio-processes without any designer–over millions –billions? of years –whatever. And somehow, man evolved into 2 sexes. HOw so? if not by design? Why did our eyes evolve the capacity to see color when we think some animals’ eyes did not? Survival of the color-seers over the black and white? I think not. Seeing as how both have survived and are not extinct. The complexity of even the sinoatrial node is evidence of an unseen hand–an intelligent creator at work.
That irrelevant book in Romans 1 speaks of our unbelief this way:
“…since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” (And degrading their bodies is not the God-given design of sex between Adam and Eve in the garden as some have supposed was original sin.)
When we think nature has the power to evolve more complex creatures without Divine design, this thinking is our modern form of idolatry, a way of worshipping creature over Creator. And it HAS led to atheism.
The Book tells us, Psalm 100:3
And Jesus announced He was the Good Shepherd –who lay down his life for the sheep –and became one of them, a sacrificial lamb –“the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” following in that Jewish tradition of an unblemished, perfect sacrificial lamb to atone for sin –starting with the lamb provided by God and sacrificed by Abraham in lieu of his son –and the lamb’s blood that protected the Israelite first born during the Passover escape from Egypt–which ritual was practiced as an atonement for sin even at the time of Jesus’ death on Good Friday/Passover.
There are sincere believers who assume evolution must be true –but a rather long list of scientists, “real biologists,” and other scientists who contend that what we learned from DNA puts an end to the controversy in their educated minds. The inter-dependence and complexity of the components of DNA suggest genius and design behind the molecule. Some of these people are not “Bible-believers” per se, but just don’t think Darwin’s got it right.
Barb, quoting the fictional book, the bible, to make scientific points. Wow, the stupidity never ends. If you want to refute science try citing the primary peer reviewed scientific literature. Religion cannot refute science, nor can science refute religion. But science can make religion look silly, which appears to be your problem.
Has anyone pointed out one of the most underlying fallacies in the piece? That is the claim that “scientists are trying to stifle debate.”
In fact, scientists are willing to debate all the time. They just don’t do it on the creationist terms. Aspects of evolution are debated and discussed publically all the time, in the scientific literature and at scientific conferences. That’s the way SCIENCE works.
It seems the complaint here is that science is not carried out in a public forum. But of course, it is. Any interested party can come to a biological conference and confront any presenter any way they want. So where are the creationists at the biology conferences?
Ryan F Stello @ # 137: … http://www.insults.net/html/swear/german.html has some esoteric gems.
“Depp” = idiot?
This is going to upset certain movie fans!
Well this is part of your problem. First you think everything isabout ideology. I am a republican who leans right and knows that evolution is obviously correct. What I see from you is not much of anything in the way of an explanation.
First off, how do you know they are smarter? That is an argument from authority inany event and doesn’t support your case. What exactly are the ‘flaws’ that you see that a trained biologist cannot see? Is it even a possibility to you that the ‘flaws’ are simply not there or fabricated to try and fit a preconceived worldview?
Barb, I hasten to call you stupidbut what choice are you leaving people when you say such INCREDIBLY uneducated things. Not every organism exists in the same environment or even uses that environment in the same way. A primarily nocturnal hunter would have little use for color vision. Likewise our eyes suck at night and our color vision certainly wasn’t designed to be superior there.
This segment your talking about is less than .001 percents ofworking scientists. have you heard of project Steve as alluded to and linked above. The VAST majority of scientists accept evolutionary theory are true. It is absurd to argue about it being false when it is usedin actualresearch daily.
But your other point is astounding in it’s stupidity. DNA confirmed evolutionary biology and clearly demostrated common ancestry among living things. Your not even educated enough to be wrong on this.
Somehow, I posted a duplicate. Sorry.
for Tis Himself –what you and others fail to realize is that the burden of proof is not on the ID theorist to prove a theory of how life began, how the universe came to be. They really don’t know how, even though some of them have a theology about origins and may theorize possibilities. It is still a mystery. What the creationist and ID theorists are saying is that however it happened, it wasn’t by Darwin’s theory of nature creating and evolving itself from a one-celled creature –without guidance, control, design of an intelligence –as by an intelligent BEING. Nor do they see the Darwinian scenario as a likely possibility. And they have scientific reasons for doubting Darwin. I’m not scientist enough to explain those reasons–but any ID website can do it.
Barb, I
heardread you the first time:Do you really want to keep playing this game? You keep asserting your ignorance and conclude that your god-of-the-gaps didit, and I’ll keep pointing out that you’re just ignorant (not meant as an insult, just an observation). Reams and reams of science are out there about the evolution of sexual reproduction (not in Man, but about 750 million years ago in single-celled protists); the evolution of the mammalian heart is a story told by extant animals with various “designs” that quite clearly sketch out an evolutionary pathway; we know a lot about the evolution of color vision (and its loss in nocturnal mammals, which nevertheless keep passing on broken, nonfunctional pseudogenes for color-vision opsin pigments), etc. etc. etc. By the way, natural selection is not really about survival per se, but about differential reproductive success. Yes, animals that can see colors tend to leave more offspring than otherwise identical animals without color vision–in some situations, but not in others.
Keep quothing your Holy Book, and be sure never to learn anything about biology. That way you can hold onto your ignorant opinions with a clear conscience.
Barb, you aren’t a scientist, but a deluded godbot. Abiogenesis is the beginnings of life, and is not included in evolutionary theory. There is work being carried in a biogenesis, and some pieces of the puzzle have been shown. But in no case, does any scientific theory for abiogenesis have god in the theory. God is irrelevant to science.
If you can’t see anything without god, you are wasting your time here.
Your god doesn’t exist, and your bible is a work of fiction.
Barb (#90)
A mere assertion which is not supported by the available evidence. There are plenty of examples of colonial organisms (slime molds spring to mind, although that may just be because this is a thread about Casey Luskin) that represent an intermediate stage between the unicellular and multicellular. From simple colonies, it’s mainly a matter of increasing specialisation of cell type and refining the genetic control mechanisms for such differentiation – the kind of process that can be accomplished by by trial and error, step-by-step. Contrary to your feeble imaginings, there are no huge evolutionary barriers between “simple cells” and “complex creatures” – biological complexity is far more continuous that you think.
Wrong again. Unless, for example, you don’t consider a reduced risk of arteriosclerosis and cardiac disease an improvement.
Silly creationist. Of course no organism is going to produce offspring that belong to a completely different taxonomic Family (although speciation by hybridisation can produce a new species within the same Genus within a single reproductive generation). However, that doesn’t mean that cumulative changes over multiple generations can’t add up to the differences between two species, or the differences between two Genera, or the differences between two Families. At each stage, the organisms would still be reproducing “after the same kind” (i.e., parent and offspring would still be members of the same “kind”), but the characteristics of the “kind” to which they belonged (and hence the identity of the “kind”) would be changing.
It’s really up to you to propose a mechanism that would limit such cumulative change, and to show that the limit corresponds to the taxonomic distance between Families within the same Class. Otherwise, you would appear to be just making things up.
The reason it is interpreted as “proof” (or more accurately, as positive supporting evidence) is because evolutionary theory predicts such observations. The logic of empirical evidence requires that such successful predictions be interpreted as such. Creationism typically makes no definite predictions at all, and the ones that it does make are almost always contradicted by the observable facts. That is why one can say with a high degree of confidence that the theory of evolution is true and creationism is false – because we can appeal to consistent and independent standards of what constitutes supporting evidence.
Ya ever notice how these religiously delusional humans almost always refer to themselves as sheep and lambs? Do they like the idea that they are controlled, herded and led to slaughter? Is that what they really want?
“I am not a numb-baa, I am a free man!”
to Jim C. who wrote .oo1 of working scientists don’t believe in Darwin?
Where do you get your stat?
But your other point is astounding in it’s [sic] stupidity. DNA confirmed evolutionary biology and clearly demostrated common ancestry among living things. Your [sic] not even educated enough to be wrong on this.
But Michael Behe, PhD, molecular biologist prof, IS educated enough –to be more knowledgeable about biology than the average layman. let’s compare apples and apples here –not professionals to the laymen like me who also debate the issue from a layman’s perspective (like the boy who said the emperor was naked.)
DNA confirms common design –in that we do share DNA with mammals. Just because you only know of DNA being passed from parent to offspring, doesn’t mean that other creatures couldn’t be designed with the same DNA to pass to their offspring, now does it? Common DNA for our common characteristics. Just like Chevys and Fords all have 4 wheels –but they didn’t give birth to one another. You could say Ford was first and the ancestor of all, I guess –but actually, all the car designs have separate beginnings by designers. So could the animals have separate first creatures –not the same one. Sure, the Designer could have used the ape as a model for refinement of the human. “Gee whiz, Gabe, give him a better looking bottom that THAT! And let’s tweak that brain to make them more like US. And good heavens, don’t have them eat their own puke! yccch! ”
Why do you refuse to listen to those of us who are scientist enough to understand these things? ID “theorists” in fact have no–zero–scientific reasons for doubting evolution. Their reasons are exactly the same as yours: 1) it sure looks designed to me! and 2) my religious beliefs trump my ability to accurately weigh evidence.
Seriously. You’re wrong on this.
Barb, please cite the primary peer reviewed scientific literature to show ID is correct. That is the only way you can convince scientists like myself you are correct.
Oh, look, one big argument from ignorance. Of course, in this case it isn’t gaps what is known to science that are being exploited, but gaps in what Barb knows of science.
First, evolution isn’t random. Mutation is random, selection pressure most certainly is not.
Second, if you were actually aware of all myriad variations on the heart that have existed historically and continue today, it in fact becomes very believable that the human heart evolved from earlier forms, which themselves evolved from earlier forms, etc. Creationists (which is what you are, Barb, no matter what merkin you choose to replace the word itself) often use the rhetorical device of excluding, ignoring, or dismissing the known intermediate steps to make the whole process seem less plausible, as we see here.
The same phenomenon is at work when creationists bring up the evolution of sexual reproduction. They either ignore or are ignorant of life forms that employ intermediate strategies between differentiated sexes and asexual reproduction, such as hermaphroditic worms, parthenogenic lizards, yeast with an alternating monoploid/diploid life cycle, etc. It turns out sexual reproduction is something that can be done by degrees, and which offers a survival advantage.
Barb seems to dismiss the idea that color vision has a survival advantage. I guess it never occurred to her that being able to distinguish between a wider range of colors would make some predators obvious who would otherwise be camouflaged, and make it easier to distinguish between ripe, unripe, and poisonous fruit.
BTW, the human (and primate) eye seems to have actually lost some color sensitivity from our earlier ancestors. Birds have better color vision.
From simple colonies, it’s mainly a matter of increasing specialisation of cell type and refining the genetic control mechanisms for such differentiation – the kind of process that can be accomplished by by trial and error, step-by-step.
And who does the increasing specialization and refines the mechanisms for differentiation –who does this by trial and error, step by step? Unguided nature? Naaah!
You have great faith. I’d address more of your post, but I have a hair appointment!
Barb, you aren’t addressing anything except showing your ignorance. Either cite the scientific literature or shut up. Welcome to real science.
How much of our design do we share with whales?
Behe has been more than soundly refuted by his contemporaries in biology. That you as a layman are touting him as your example clearly shows you don’t have enough education to discern his obvious errors from the refutations of his work.
If he is thebest example you can offer than you really are lost.
Etha Williams linked to this video several months ago:
And what, pray tell, would stop it? We know life forms have evolved from previous species because we see the earlier forms in the fossil record and we see new forms arising today, with no sign of supernatural intervention. These observations tell us that your own personal incredulity by itself is insufficient to prevent it.
By contrast, we have never observed a single instance of a miraculous creation.
Barb (#154):
1. Behe’s a biochemist, not a molecular biologist.
2. His colleagues at the Department of Biological Sciences Lehigh University – who are also presumably educated enough – unequivocally and publicly disassociate themselves from his views.
3. If you accept that Behe is “educated enough to be more knowledgeable about biology than the average layman”, the you presumably think that his views carry some weight? That he is more likely to be correct than a layperson (like, for example, yourself)? Perhaps then you can explain why Behe accepts the common descent of all organisms and you (apparently) do not? Do you know better than Behe? If so, then why cite him as an authority when you believe him to be wrong?
4. Behe may be educated enough, but he is notorious for willfully ignoring the scientific literature relevant to his claims. To give one example of his failings in this area, this is the man who, on the witness stand at Kitzmiller vs Dover, asserted that that evolution could not account for the immune system, only to be presented with 58 peer-reviewed papers – readily available to him if he’d cared to look – on the evolution of the immune system. So while Behe may be educated enough to be more knowledgeable about biology, he apparently doesn’t care to acquaint himself very closely with any knowledge that would undermine his assertions.
The judge (a conservative Bush-appointee) at Kitzmiller vs Dover concluded: “We therefore find that Professor Behe’s claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large.”
So all things considered, maybe you’d like to rethink citing Behe as someone we should be impressed by. Because I think you’ll find that we already know all about this clown.
Barb, hello again. Nice of you to drop back. I see our courtiers, some less than courtious, have been engaging your opinion on science and its discoveries.
Once again, I ask for an anser to a simple question. What has happened to your imagination?
See, if I find that they’ve discovered where on the genome the autistic-tendency genes lie, I don’t immediately scream that it can’t be so and then decry the strands of science behind it – I say, wow how interesting, what does that mean? If the science behind it were wrong, or the conclusions mistaken, it would be soon corrected.
But you, confronted with clear, unambiguous, real evidence that the earth is billions of years old, all life is descended from a common anscestor and hence related, and that humans are animals like all the other animals, chose to ignore all this and pretend it’s not there.
By doing this you avoid thinking about reality, the real reality that is, not the other kind, and so avoid working out the consequences for yourself.
Most people here, and me, reject god as an unnecessary hypothesesis, but there are many, many Christians who do manage to accept evolution and Jesus. For them, the marvellous naturtal processes that made us are evidence for God and Jesus. And they’re, no they really are, the smart Christians.
But you don’t want to join them, do you?
You think they’re on the same side as the atheists and therefore wrong. Reading a book by, say, Ken Miller or Francis Collins would set you right on this fundamental error.
But please, open your mind. You don’t have to abandon your faith and all the benefits I’m sure it has brought you; you just have to be prepared to find out about God’s Real Design.
And it’ll make you a much smarter Christian. And you’ll still go to Heaven.
Win win, I’d say.
Barb (#158):
Well, it you have any evidence to suggest otherwise, let’s hear it. Suffice to say that again we have intermediates like Volvox, colonies of single-celled organisms that show the beginnings of cell specialisation – particularly specialised reproductive cells (i.e., like multicellular organisms, only a few cells in the conglomerate can reproduce to give rise to a new colony).
Says the person who doesn’t understand the concept of evidence and thinks that the Bible is a reliable guide to the biological sciences.
To be inserted or to be removed?
SC@162
“Now I’m gonna have to tell ’em
That I got no cerebellum
Gonna get my PHD
I’m a teenage lobotomy”
It’s a good thing I ate earlier than usual this morning, so my stomach was empty when that stuff came up on screen. This submission stuff is just a revolting way for humans to act.
Ryan F Stello (#160):
Most of it.
Creationists more so – they still have a blowhole.
And another thing: that God/Adam’s rib/talking snake thing – that’s the alternative?
I mean, really really how likely is that?
You may live in a very different world to me, but surely we’re living in the same universe?
Yeah and he did SOOOO well defending ID at the Dover trial.
I see another pig has shown up for voice lessons. She only knows the aria from Willful Ignorance, but it’s like playing Come to Jesus in whole notes.
Big Dumb:
“I see you scampered off from the other threads where your ass was getting handed to you.”
On that “other” thread I made a credible defense of the propositions 1) There is a God, 2) There is only one God. There is nothing I can do about folks like yourself who are impervious to all reasonable argument.
There is nothing we can do about idiots like yourself who believe in imaginary deities, except point out your mistakes. Which we have been doing–religiously. Now, either show your evidence in a proper logical argument, or shut up. We are awaiting your argument, which we know will contain mistakes.
Thing is, there isn’t any evience that the terminally stupid and stubborn atheist will ever accept.
If we would only take Jesus into our hearts, then all would be explained, and all healed.
Put that way, we’d be stupid not to.
After all, apart from our imagination, our curiousity, and our ability to absorb new sorts of knowledge, what do we have to lose?
I mean what have you lost since religion got you, silver fox?
I’m sure it wasn’t anything important.
You win the prize for Most Ironic! “Projection is mine”, quoth the Silver Fox.
Tell us more, Mr. Delusional; laughter is the best medicine, you know.
And like we told you, your unsupported assertion is not a defense of a position. No matter how many times you say it.
“We are awaiting your argument, which we know will contain mistakes.”
“Which we know will contain mistakes”. You see, therein lies the impervious resistance to reasonable discourse. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The conclusion is foregone before the discourse. I repeat. For those folks who are wedded to self-fulfilling prophesies, no amount of reasonable discourse with dissuade them from their errors.
“A credible defense”, eh? Sorry – Too Stupid, Didn’t Read.
Ooooh ooooh oooh – I see where you’re going wrong!
Geeze. Logic. Try it sometime Silver.
It seems self-ignorance is your besetting sin, Mr Fox.
And you are trying to spread it.
Why?
Oh, come on. Don’t be like that. It’s all the others, isn’t it. They’re so rude.
Well I think you must have something intesting to say, I mean this is a quality blog, right? And you often post here. So why not say something interesting (but hint: it probably isn’t religious (or Libertarian))
Show us you’re more than just another dumb Christian Aplogist.
I double dog dare you.
Sorry, my computer’s got a spelling problem – but then Binary is its first language.
One question I’ve always wanted to ask Creationists is this:
If the fact that animals are well adapted to live in their environments is evidence for the existence of God, would an animal which lived in an environment it wasn’t well-adapted to live in therefore be evidence against the existence of God?
A fish that could swim without any means to swim, or a human body that functioned without any method which explains how or why it can function, would seem to me to suggest miracles — supernatural intervention into the normal course of nature. If so, then you appear to be “winning” either way. Every possible observation, would support your hypothesis.
Do you think that right?
Silver Fox, there will be mistakes in your logic because you do not have the capability of presenting a proper formal argument. Your previous posts have shown us that.
Barb,
Like you, I am not a scientist. I am just an ordinary layperson and I haven’t studied biology since 10th grade. I am not intimately acquainted with the fossil record.
But I trust the scientists, who overwhelmingly, well-nigh universally, accept evolution as a fact. Now you can say, “Well, you are just putting your faith an authority; you are just blindly following your leaders. This proves you worship Darwin.” But that’s not true, and here’s why: I DO know that scientists use a rigorous evidence based method in which they must put forth a testable hypothesis, test it against physical evidence, replicate the results, and subject their results to thorough peer review by trained skeptics.
Why should I even listen to the intelligent design folks until they are willing to undergo this process? Why do they think they have the right to the imprimatur of “science” when they have repeatedly shown themselves unwilling and incapable of complying with the rules of science?
The ID people want me to accept a non-material, supernatural, invisible explanation that tells me nothing about the physical processes by which humanity came into being and they want me to accept it on their say-so without any reassurance that they use an evidence-based method. Indeed, it is apparent that there IS no evidence-based method that is capable of proving or disproving their assertions.
Bottom-line: I may not know the details much better than you do, Barb, but I know can tell which camp is “science” and which is “religion.” And I can tell which is more trust-worthy.
You know, just one more Xtian post there, and I was ready to convert.
Godamn lazy Christianists, you should be out spreading the word all the time!
Well, you just missed me. For want of a presuppositonal apologist, the faith was lost.
Well, no blind worship from me then Godboy.
Have a word with your followers, oh Lord, for they are forgetting their Earthly businees. I mean, you robbed them of them reason, for Your sake give them a kick up the arse or they’ll stop saying your name.
Just suggestin’
@ #76 (comment-1404339):
Something along the lines of: in the land of the microcephalics, the half-wit is king.
And Sastra exposes the religionistas game of heads I win, tails you lose.
It seems it’s all a game of ideological three card monte.
Disgrace to genus vulpes @ #173:
No, you obviously did NOT do this, as no one but yourself considers your idiotic arguments “credible”. If it were a credible defense, it would be credible to people who are not hopelessly deluded. Yours is not.
More faux silver idiocy:
Projecshun: U R DOIN IT RITE!!!11!
“If it were a credible defense, it would be credible to people who are not hopelessly deluded.”
Exactly, The issue is not ability to see credibility, its about maintaining a position, albeit erroneous, because there is so much self-investment in it. It is a common human fault to demonize any opposition and at the same time proclaim vigorously a willingness to dialogue. What people like this are seeking is not understanding but agreement with their flawed propositions.
Barb the brainless @ #143:
Now, I know the “no external energy source” remark has already established that you are a complete fucking moron, but this bit is still pretty damn stupid. Did you borrow this particular idiocy from Ray Comfort, the idiot who claimed the banana was made by god to fit human hands, when in actuality it was cultivated by humans for thousands of years? Do you really want to be drawing your arguments from a known nutcase who can’t even do ten seconds of research on his most famous argument? Oh, yeah, you’re a creationist, you think research is a sin and evidence is the work of Satan!
Here’s a news flash for you: Humans evolved from other species that already had two sexes!! This really isn’t difficult to understand, if you make the slightest effort (yes, I know making an effort to understand anything is against your religion). Every mammal I know of reproduces sexually. So do most birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Sexual reproduction is OLD. It’s been around since long before any human. You can’t understand this because your cult tells you that NOTHING existed before the first humans of your myths. Your refusal to understand reality doesn’t make reality go away.
Here’s another thing: you’re not really attacking evolution. You couldn’t, because you have no idea what the target looks like! What you’re attacking is a strawman that exists only in the hollow heads of creationist idiots. You don’t know the first thing about evolution. You don’t even understand what the theory is about, what it states or predicts. Your refusal to understand is so basic that until you get rid of it you could never hope to understand any of the evidence for evolution. But that evidence exists, no matter how much you deny it. Evidence for your imaginary friend, not so much.
Barb the braindead godbot @ #158:
Translation: I’m utterly incapable of addressing your post, because I’ve sacrificed my brain as a burnt offering to Jebus, so I’m just going to flee in abject terror and fling poo as a parting shot.
Isn’t it odd how the nuts who scream at the top of their lungs “I didn’t come from no monkey” always end up flinging their own feces like chimps?
FAux Silver @ #153:
Again, you have mastered the creationist core competencies: Projection and denial.
Projecshun: U R DOIN IT RITE!!!11!
Come on, there must be a Ceiling Cat, or who would there be to watch us masturbate?
Silver Fox, you seem to be implying any dialog would lead to us accepting god. As usual, you have it backwards. If you dialog with us, god not existing will be discussed and accepted. Now, go away like a good little fool.
SF is absolutely right although he’ll never comprehend that he’s talking about himself and every other theist.
Laurie at #187,
Bravo! Wonderfully put! Thank you on behalf of scientists everywhere.
Nerd of Redhead, OM #156,
Let’s spare Barb, who is not a scientist, from searching the scientific literature (although I encourage her to do so here), since of course there are no peer-reviewed scientific research papers providing data in support of ID. What I would like to know, given this fact, is what she thinks the explanation is:
1. ID is based on supernatural (or otherwise untestable) causation, and thus is not science
2. There is a global conspiracy that has, for decades, prevented even a single piece of data supporting ID from being published in peer-reviewed scientific literature
3. ID proponents are utterly incompetent at performing scientific research
Oh Mr Fox, you sound sulky. No need! Turn that frown upside down!
Now you’ve obviously come here seeking understanding. How precisely can we help? There’s a lot of experitise here, you know. And we’re a bit bluff maybe, but not so bad deep down. What is it in life that’s bothering you. I’m afraid if it’s evilution then I don’t think Pharyngula will help, because this is a scientifish kind of place, but anything else? Hmmmm?
Sastra,
No, silly. That’s evidence for the Fall.
Exactly. Thus creationism must be omni-scientific! Not only is it testable, every conceivable test comes back positive! That’s way better than lame regular science.
Everybody into the root cellar before this woonado kills us all.
Greetings!
Since we have Silver Fox on this evening, who believes in a perfect god (and, indeed, unless I have misread, SF’s entire concept relies on god being perfect..), I have always wanted to ask a question or two.
For instance, does acting on a desire to do evil make one a worse person, morally speaking?
And if so, is the opposite true – that acting upon a desire to do good makes one a better person, morally?
Clarification would be helpful here.
Thanks!
No the christians have gone, sorry. You’ll just have to work out these moral dilemmas on your own.
Still I find that the general atheist advice of “do good, refrain from doing evil” is usually useful when god isn’t there to help you.
Who cares! God is great! Let us rejoice!
We’ll work all that out at some unknown, undefined, and un….Did I tell you how great God is?
Come on, let us tell the children!
“For instance, does acting on a desire to do evil make one a worse person, morally speaking?
And if so, is the opposite true – that acting upon a desire to do good makes one a better person, morally?
Clarification would be helpful here.”
Think of goodness as three concentric circles. The outer circle is the good. For example, if my fountain pen writes then it is good because it is acting in accordance with its nature but that does not make it morally good or holy. The next inner circle is the morally good. For example, if I do a favor for a neighbor in need or give money to a charity, that is morally good. Within the circle of the morally good there is the holy. For example, if I pray or do something to honor God, that is holy. The holy is a subset of the morally good. In short, all that is holy is morally good but all that is morally good is not holy. When God sees goodness, he loves it because he sees a reflection of his all goodness. He recognizes the goodness. God does not bestow goodness by loving something or someone. He recognizes goodness that is in someone or something. Evil is not an entity in and of itself; it is the absence of all good.
You’ve been reading Augustine again, haven’t you?
But do you realize that you didn’t answer the questions, at all?
Maybe you could take a crack at that?
No it isn’t.
The morally good affects other people by (presumably) improving their lives.
Praying doesn’t improve the lives of others. It doesn’t improve God’s life, since God is already eternal. And it doesn’t improve your own life — and if it did, it would be merely selfish.
So the holy is outside the “circle” of the morally good.
And since it’s useless, it’s outside the “circle” of the good as well.
QED.
What does “do something to honor God” mean, anyway? Can you do just anything at all and say that it’s honoring God? Does eating pasta honor God? Does drinking wine? Does drinking water? Does masturbating? Does taking a crap?
I ask only for information.
You did no such thing.
Your entire argument rested on an equivocation between the definitions of “all”. Why should “omnipotent” mean “most-powerful-of-all” rather than or in addition to “able to perform any conceivable action”?
Show all work.
Do you have brain damage? You did no such thing.
actyally, if praying and honoring god is what is in the “holy” circle, then the “holy” circle is actually evidence for the existence of an “evil” circle: praying is negligence, while “honoring god” often takes the form of actively harming another being. the first may be classified as “lack of goodness” but the second is “active evil”
also, that thread you were referring to: I won that one, by proving logically that a perfect god needs to be dual :-p
Now hold on there, all of you claiming victory over Silver Fox, I have to point out it was I who boxed him into the corner in such a way that his only response was to make the egregious error of claiming that you had to prove a god didn’t exist before you could disbelieve in it. All of this ‘there is only one god’ nonsense that he cooked up later on was sophistry born of desperation because he realised that he now had to disprove the existence of every god anyone had posited.
If anyone has the right to hang the silver foxtail to their car’s aerial it’s moi…
oh fine have it. i didn’t REALLY want that mingy hide anyway. really.
Just remember the role I played in calling out his insistence that because you can’t prove a negative therefore the positive is true. I guess the lesson is that Silver Fox has said so much crap that so many of us have called him out on his fallacies at one time or another.
Perhaps it’s worth noting that there’s no ‘i’ in Pharyngula…
So we should call it a win for global Pharyngula in general, spearheaded by the determined Aussies and backed up with strong efforts from all around the planet.
Our scorn of stupidity and fallacious reasoning knows no boundaries!
i only now realized that my night-owlish ways have shifted me right out of the American posting-window into the Australian one.
ah well, at least the beer is better :-p
I think posting here has that effect. I swear Nerd sleeps all of about four hours a night, based on his posting patterns.
Barb #90 “Mutations today do not produce improvements.”
Sickle cell anaemia is caused by a mutation in the b-globin gene. This mutation, while causing anaemia, also protects “sufferers” against malaria. That, I would think in regions of malaria – is an improvement.
Please put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Barb #90 “Mutations today do not produce improvements.”
Sickle cell anaemia is caused by a mutation in the b-globin gene. This mutation, while causing anaemia, also protects “sufferers” against malaria. That, I would think in regions of malaria – is an improvement.
Please put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I usually get about seven to seven and half hours per night. One night last month I woke up with some stomach trouble which took a while to settle down before I could be back to sleep, and posted during that period, so I see how that impression could be formed.
Silver Fox (#204):
I think you mean “but not all that is morally good is holy”, otherwise you’ve just contradicted yourself.
Greetings!
Thanks, SF, for responding.
In your response, I notice two things, the first of which is perhaps non-trivial. If I read it correctly, the basic definition of good is acting according to something’s nature (your example with the fountain pen). The other types of good you mention are subsets of this (moral/holy).
If that is correct, that I assume we can conclude that venomous creatures are doing good when they destroy life, as that is acting according to their nature. When the polio virus destroys a young person’s ability to walk, we should rejoice, as good has been done, yes? (The virus acting according to its nature).
However, a second, and rather larger point, is that you didn’t actually answer my question: does it make an individual a better person if and when they do good?
I understand that this may not be a simple yes/no question, but I can’t actually find any part of your post that addresses this, and I’m not certain what your opinion on the matter is.
Thanks!
I take it back Silver Fox.
You have nothing interesting to say, no self-knowledge whatsoever, and your posts are not up to the standard of this blog. Mr Nerd, Mr Kel, Wowbagger, and every other contributor here has pwned your ass, again and again.
You’re a disgrace to apologetics.
Find another religion where you argumentation is less transparently stupid, if there is one. After all god can only act on his raw materials, right?
Oh, and there is in “i” in masturbation, which is what we’re dealing with here.
“What does “do something to honor God” mean, anyway? Can you do just anything at all and say that it’s honoring God?”
Paying honor to God exercising the virtue of justice, i.e. rendering to another what is due according to equity. Since we are not equal to God we are going to fall short in rendering. Whatever man renders to God is His due but it falls short of equity. In this regard the virtue of religion in annexed to justice. It consists of offering service and ceremonial rites of worship to a superior nature that man referees to as Divine (De invent, ii,53).
“I assume we can conclude that venomous creatures are doing good when they destroy life, as that is acting according to their nature.
A venomous creature, biting people and, perhaps, destroying life is a good snake since by nature that’s what it is supposed to do. It is not, as you put it, “doing good”. If you aim a loaded gun at a victim, pull the trigger and it fires a bullet into the victim, it is a good gun because that’s what a gun does by its nature. Now you’re not doing anything morally good and certainly your action is not reflective of holiness.
You’re not making a whole lot of sense here. You’re saying that basically that that which you’re attempting to do is impossible. You’re not making a good case for any reason to try and bother, in that case.
And what does “what is due” mean, here? What does “equity” mean? You’re trying to sound all legalistic, but the mumbo-jumbo trails off into meaningless jargon.
Why “render” anything to God? If God exists, then God has no needs that require “rendering” unto.
“Service and ceremonial rites of worship”. So taking a crap would count, as long as you do it with enough ceremony?
Silver Fox is incoherent enough normally. If he throws theology into the mix it becomes baffling in its logic. Evidently one has to be as deluded as he is, and in the same way, to understand such nonsense.
SF, if you really want clarity, acknowledge god doesn’t exist and forget all about trying to justify the existence of that imaginary being.
“Lord, of that which I am about to divest myself unto the waters in thy name for purification and transformation, I am truly grateful to have done with.”
Oh, I see, Cicero. Dude, Marcus Tullius Cicero was a pagan. You’re not going to do your argument for Christianity any good by citing him. Why would Christian “service and ceremony of worship” be any better than Cicero’s services and ceremonies to Jupiter?
Here’s a great little video that pertains to our discussion here:
http://www.discovery.org/v/611
Wheee, Barb thinks anything by the DI is of interest to us. What a dumbkopf.
Barb, you might as well show us something from AIG. The Di is equally as bad.
And I looked at the link, but not the video. If that medical doctor happens to be Dr. Egnor then you should maybe read up a bit on him and the idiotic things he says.
Just do a search here and you’ll see.
DAve L We know life forms have evolved from previous species because we see the earlier forms in the fossil record and we see new forms arising today, with no sign of supernatural intervention. These observations tell us that your own personal incredulity by itself is insufficient to prevent it. By contrast, we have never observed a single instance of a miraculous creation.
I don’t believe we have ever observed a single instance of a new species that evolved from a lower life form in recorded history. Fossils of extinct creatures are not evidence of transition –just because they resemble modern creatures. they might be an extinct ANCESTOR of creatures in the same category as a modern creature. Like a species of dog or cat or bird or fish –like a species of human. But NOT a transition from an animal to a human or one kind of animal to another –say fish to fowl, whale to human. I don’t care how many appendages you find on a whale fossil –it won’t be proof that the whale is related by common ancestry. THAT idea will, instead, be a foolish speculation. It is just as reasonable –and I say, more reasonable, to assume the whale with “limbs” is a unique species of whale –not a forerunner to humans.
We’ve seen plenty of new species evolve, we’ve seen new mutations, we’ve seen adaptations, what else do you need to satisfy that evolution is true?
Of course we haven’t seen that, because that’s not how evolution works. Do you understand why we will never see a whale turn into a human? I’ll give you a hint, check out what common ancestry means and then ask yourself if you will ever turn into your cousin…
*sigh*. You don’t understand what a transitional fossil is.
Maybe this will help:
http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/fishibian.html
No-one is claiming that whales are or were “a forerunner to humans”.
Sheesh.
Whales evolved from mammals with limbs, though, and many of the descendants of the whale common ancestor also had limbs.
Nope, it’s Wells. Slightly different search, Barb. You may want to search for this quote:
“Father’s words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.”
Not exactly how he wanted to portray himself in the video, as just an open-minded “Darwinist” who was simply convinced by the evidence, but there you go.
blockquote fail, typo fail. That’s what i get for talking to the wife and typing. Lets try this again
Barb it is painfully obvious that you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.
Before you start denying something you should maybe take the time to understand what it means. Your strawman version of evolution is not even close to reality.
Same story, different liar.
Humans are animals, Barb. Get over it.
Barb, imagine someone came up to you and said:” I don’t believe Jesus ever existed because there is no evidence of three-headed dragons flying around in the skies.” When you don’t understand the basic premise behind a scientific theory, how can you argue against it? It would serve you well to actually read what evolution is and how it works, it may clear up the gross misconceptions you have about the issue.
http://www.discovery.org/v/611
Here is an absolutely fine video that says what I am trying to say -with more credibility for knowledge in science than any of us laymen here.
Hear 3 Scientists who can tell you why they don’t believe Darwin was correct about origin of species, about transitions between species and their journey to skepticism. Their reasons are not philosophical or religious but based on science. They also cite 2 mathemeticians recently published in peer-reviewed journal –and note how careful critics of Darwinism have to be in order to be published. Darwinism is religiously defended by orthodox Darwinians. But that’s not the point of the tape.
Barb,
You didn’t respond to my comment in post #140. To save wear and tear on your mouse wheel, here it is again:
That’s the whole point of the Flying Spaghetti Monster parody of creationism. You folks not only have to poke serious holes in evolution but you have to show that your alternative and only your alternative is correct.
Saying “Mutations today do not produce improvements” doesn’t do anything except prove you’re ignorant concerning evolution, genetics, and mutations. You and fellow your creationists have to show that creationism answers questions in a competent manner that evolution does not answer competently. Otherwise, the Flying Spaghetti Monster wins!
Barb, please stop linking to the Discovery website, it’s about as credible as linking to Answers In Genesis or any other apologetic site. If the Discovery Institute was so sure evolution was wrong and that ID was true, then why didn’t they testify under oath to that effect? They were on the witness list for the Dover trial then pulled out before the trial began?
Barb, those are three ex-scientists. They became ex-scientists the day the stopped following the physical evidence and started believing that the fictional book called the bible had any scientific answers in it. Testimony does not negate physical evidence. As any DA (or defense attorney), would they prefer and eyewittness or DNA evidence. We scientists believe the physical evidence. That evidence backs evolution.
In my post above it should be: “…and your fellow creationists….”
Ze engrish she are not too good today.
Barb,
Go to the closest University with a biology reserch department and walk in. Ask to see one of the researchers, for that matter ask for all of the researchers. When they meet you, ask them what they think of evolution.
When you are done, repeat that for every single major university in the country. When you are done there branch out to any secular country in the world.
When you are done, you’ll see that your three measly scientists mean exactly shit.
But more importantly, is to look at the so called science they are supposedly doing to come to the conclusion that they do,.
You’ll find it is not science, it is apologetics disguised as something sciency.
Barb, that’s the same video you posted earlier. It doesn’t get any better on a second viewing. You should also know that not everyone here is a “layman”.
You’re going to have to google that quote I posted earlier, Wells’ opposition to evolution is entirely due to religious reasons. Or just look up his bio.
Barb, save yourself some agrivation and stop sending us things from the Di or AIG or any of those like minded organizations.
We’ve seen it all before. This site has been in the business of exposing the DI and its hacks for years.
Just do a search for any of the “scientists” you keep throwing at us on this site to see that you are not showing us anything new.
The search box is your friend barb.
Here is a start and here.
Actually, let’s expand on and clarify that:
Citing Wikipedia:
Gosh, a large majority of IDiots don’t even have the courage of their convictions…
Barb, before you say an other word that highlights you lack of knowledge on the subject, go to your local library and check out Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into The 3.5 Billion-Year History Of The Human Body by Neil Shubin. It is a short (about 200 pages) and informal book about. In it, Shubin describes how he learned to become a paleontologist, how his crew figured out where they needed to dig in order to find the fossils that their knowledge of natural history predicts did exist and the pain stacking work that is needed to find such fragile objects.
The amount of training and the knowledge that one must keep abreast of in incredible. But you, Barb, have no comprehension of any of this. You have no respect for the work of others. And you wreck your own potential by embracing your own ignorance as if it is a virtue. Either read up a little on the subject; there are fine books for the lay person and you can find out about them if you ask; or go back to having your hair set. That would be a better use for your time as opposed to arguing with people who actually know what they are talking about.
Barb, while you’re at it, since you stated “Their reasons are not philosophical or religious but based on science”, you should probably know that the Discovery Institute itself has a purely religious goal. In their words: “to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.” Not only a religious goal, but specifically a Christian goal. (This is from their Wedge Document, which was submitted as evidence in the Dover trial.
Whew, my typos are flying fast and furious today.
Maybe I need a beer.
Owlmirror: No-one is claiming that whales are or were “a forerunner to humans.
Sheesh.
Whales evolved from mammals with limbs, though, and many of the descendants of the whale common ancestor also had limbs.
I smile. Where’s your evidence? I understand there are fossils in Pakistan of whale-like creatures with limb-like appendages. And I say, so what? You say, no, the whales have a common ancestor with limbs –and descendents with limbs –but no limbs themselves. Sounds like a bunch of speculative hooey to me. Call me ignorant if you like –and I agree I’m not a scientist –but I understand that fossils do not prove transition –no matter what they are like.
SILVER FOX! Isn’t this a pit of ravenous dogs? I just came over here because someone suggested I should see what a real biologist had to say –the blog host, I guess –and look what I found! One pack o’ wolves after a silver fox –until I got here –such excitement! New prey! Actually, I’m married to a real scientist and am the daughter of one –and they always pointed out the limitations of Darwin’s theory to me. I wonder why they care so much whether we believe in God or not –Darwin or not? I’ll debate it, but I’m not calling them stupid and uninformed even though they haven’t proven they’re not.
KEL –there are hundreds –maybe thousands –of scientists and biology grads who don’t believe Darwin on origins. I may not understand evolution as well as scientists do –but the scientists who doubt Darwin, DO understand evolution –and still do not swallow it.
Over 99% of scientists accept evolution, but that’s not the issue here. The problem is that you are making arguments against evolution by misrepresenting evolutionary theory. The least you could do before opening your mouth on the subject is to inform yourself on how it works – otherwise you just look the fool. Is that reasonable enough to ask? That you actually know what you are talking about?
Barb, deluded as ever. And no real evidence like ever. What a fool.
Owlmirror: No-one is claiming that whales are or were “a forerunner to humans.
Sheesh.
Whales evolved from mammals with limbs, though, and many of the descendants of the whale common ancestor also had limbs.
I’m sorry –I should have italicized all of the above in my post No. 252. It was Owlmirror’s quote –not partly mine as it appears.
Over 99 per cent of scientists swallow evolution whole? proof? Bet you didn’t count the ones I know in your survey. Sadly, some in university positions don’t dare tell if they are skeptical of darwin’s tenets or they can be denied tenure or refused employment. You can see what happens to people who disagree –right here on a blog devoted to Darwin. SCORN is heaped on.
Barb all they have to do is show their work. So far, nothing.
Shorter Barb- So you have evidence, it is all hooey to me.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm#earth
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA111.html
“Of the scientists and engineers in the United States, only about 5% are creationists, according to a 1991 Gallup poll (Robinson 1995, Witham 1997). However, this number includes those working in fields not related to life origins (such as computer scientists, mechanical engineers, etc.). Taking into account only those working in the relevant fields of earth and life sciences, there are about 480,000 scientists, but only about 700 believe in “creation-science” or consider it a valid theory (Robinson 1995). This means that less than 0.15 percent of relevant scientists believe in creationism. And that is just in the United States, which has more creationists than any other industrialized country. In other countries, the number of relevant scientists who accept creationism drops to less than one tenth of 1 percent. ”
If you just look down Pharyngula, check out the post on Project Steve.
YOU can’t show work proving Darwin’s theory of origins because no one has proven Darwin’s theory of origins. You only interpret findings to be proof –you don’t prove it. ID scientists and creationists won’t show work telling you exactly how life came to be because that’s not their hypothesis.
But they can show you proofs AGAINST Darwin in their scientific observations –as when they talk about genetics.
I wish I had credentials like these in order to be more credible on this topic:
“I am Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. I received my Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. My current research involves delineation of design and natural selection in protein structures. In addition to teaching and research I work as a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.
In addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, I have also written editorial features in Boston Review, American Spectator, and The New York Times. My book, Darwin’s Black Box, discusses the implications for neo-Darwinism of what I call “irreducibly complex” biochemical systems and has sold over 250,000 copies. The book was internationally reviewed in over one hundred publications and recently named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.” Michael Behe, PhD
Here is a link to what he says concerning Miller vs. Luskin –and he does note that intelligent design theorists aren’t necessarily arguing against common descent, but against unguided naturalism behind origins (the atheistic aspect.)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3DGRQ0IO7KYQ2/ref=cm_blog_pdp
Behe writes, “It’s pertinent to remember here the central point of The Edge of Evolution. We now have data in hand that show what Darwinian processes can accomplish, and it ain’t much. We no longer have to rely on speculative scenarios that overlook barriers and problems that nature would encounter. Random mutation/natural selection works great in folks’ imaginations, but it’s a bust in the real world.”
Barb, to accept the creationism, creationists need to do two things: (1). show that evolution by natural selection is false, (2). show that creation is true. Now one can do (1) by doing (2), but we seldom see that. Instead we just see (1) and (2) is assumed as a default. Even if natural selection didn’t shape us, that by no means makes creationism true. There needs to be evidence to show creation happened.
As it stands, the universe is 13.7 billion years old. And that has nothing at all to do with evolution, it’s to do with astronomy. We have seen galaxies over 13 billion light years away, and with the cosmic background radiation we have a marker as to how old the universe is. As it stands, the planet and the rest of the solar systerm is ~4.6 billion years old, and again this has nothing to do with evolution, it’s to do with nuclear physics and geology. The first life appears in the geological strata around 3.8 billion years ago, complex life around 700 million years ago. Again this is not because of evolution, it’s the findings of palaeontologists.
The reason that evolution is used as an explanation is because it explains the findings of palaeontology, it explains geological and geographical distribution of fossils and animals, it explains common anatomy and the divergence of anatomy, it explains the similarities and differences found in genetic code. As prominent evolutionary biology (and Christian) Theodosius Dobzhansky “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
Incredible how much words one can spout in defense of one’s own ignorance. If Barb placed the same effort to actually learning anything, we might have something here.
#259
Barb,
NO ONE, and that includes Prof. Behe, has presented data refuting evolution in any peer-reviewed scientific research papers.
Of course you don’t prove it in science, that’s not how science works. Instead you make falsifiable predictions and see whether those are validated or falsified. At present, in 150 years of research on the matter, not a single piece of evidence has come forward that has falsified evolution. By contrast, the evidence that has validated evolution has been staggering. We have seen natural selection in action, seen adaptation in action, seen mutation, seen speciation in multiple forms, looked at the genetic code, seen morphological relics, seen genetic relics; mutation and selection by all accounts has passed test after test. Evolution by every experiment ever conducted so far is valid.
Gallup poll, eh? random sampling? I don’t think that works in this case. No one asked my husband.
Fortunately, some of the most articulate scientists are those who explain what’s wrong with Darwinism.
I wonder why you all care so much. The non-Darwinists aren’t having any negative effect on scientific progress –they follow the scientific method –How did behe get published in refereed journals if he were such a kook??? There is an astronomy prof who has made important discoveries, published in refereed journals–and he believes in design behind creation. His is an Hispanic name, but I can’t recall it offhand –and I believe he has been denied tenure? because of his failure to celebrate and honor ST. Charles Darwin.
Did you see the movie about Ben Carson, MD, the greatest pediatric neurosurgeon in the world, raised by an illiterate single mother in Detroit? He is a devout Christian –probably not into Darwin all that much I’ll bet.
My point –you don’t have to be atheistic or a Darwin devotee to be outstanding in science. So really, what’s your beef???
No, you’re confused. Palaeontology is science. Evolution is science.
God is a bunch of speculative hooey.
Since you didn’t read the article I linked to, it looks like you want to stay ignorant of what a transitional fossil is.
You can remain ignorant if you hate science so much, but you don’t get to make claims based on that ignorance.
What are their fields, and on what evidential basis do they deny that evolution is real?
It’s not the belief in God per se that bothers (although I will argue against the idea of God, since it is a completely incoherent concept). It’s the denial of the hard work of biologists and palaeontologists and geologists all over the world, based on nothing more than ignorance, and sometimes, outright lying.
It’s been pointed out that there are biologists who do accept evolution and common descent, and explain it within the framework of believing in God. Would you read book(s) by these biologists that explain why evolution is real? If not, why or why not? If you read the book(s), would you accept that believing the scientific consensus on the age of the earth and the evolution of life could in some way work with believing in God? If not, why not?
I wonder why Behe is so fascinated with irreducible complexity. You’d think that Muller never put out a paper in 1918 showing not only how such systems would emerge but predicting that we should find those systems all through nature.
Orr’s review of Darwin’s Black Box is quite scathing.
http://bostonreview.net/BR21.6/orr.html
Barb, still no citations to the primary peer reviewed scientific literature with hard physical evidence showing evolution is wrong. Yawn, what a boring ignorant troll. Come back with some physical evidence that matters, not opinions. Opinions are worth the electrons need to post them.
And yet Behe was unable to convince a religious, Republican, Bush-appointed judge that anything about ID was science worthy of being taught.
*sigh*. Wrong. Tenure is not an automatic privilege. Tenure is granted based on academic achievements. He was not granted tenure because he was an academic failure.
http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/gonzalez
Your husband is a biologist? Then could you ask him why you won’t see a whale turn into a human?
Sure there are, there was a great article in New York Times that had an intense discussion on the word Dawrinism… oh wait, you mean evolution? Well no. The ones who go against evolution aren’t taken very seriously and as it stands there isn’t any evidence to support any concept of how life emerged other than the darwinian story.
They aren’t having an effect on science? Just look at creationism in the classroom and in the academic bills. As it stands, what over 99% of scientists accept as the emergence of life, only 14% of the American population does. No effect? Are you having a laugh? And they follow the scientific method? Great! Where’s the science behind what they preach?
let me get this straight – no-one worships Darwin! Nor does it say anywhere you have to be an atheist to accept the Darwinian story of evolution. The majority of scientists in america believe in a god in some form or another, yet still almost all of them swallow that story you are so desperately trying to tie to atheism. No-one is asking everyone to be an atheist, no-one is asking anyone to worship Darwin, evolution says nothing on the topic of God. Hell, even most mainstream churches accept that evolution happened. And why? Because the evidence points to evolution!
As the Archbishop of Canterbury said [paraphrased] “To imply that God played around in the process implies that God didn’t do a very good job in setting up the laws of the universe.”
actually barb, Id/creationism doesn’t have a hypothesis at all, a hypothesis being a testable and falsifiable statement.
also, even if it were possible to completely disprovedthe ToE, you’d still need to deal with all the theories in chemistry, astrophysics, nuclear physics, linguistics, (to name a few fields), and then disprove each and every single one of them thoroughly.
and at that point, all we’d get is nothing, not some by-default conclusion of goddidit. you cannot prove something only by disproving something else
My point –you don’t have to be atheistic or a Darwin devotee to be outstanding in science. So really, what’s your beef??? – Barb
Our “beef” is with creationist lies. It’s that simple.
Bwaa-Haa-Haa! Barb is now basing her ideas on made for cable movies.
Oh, and Barb, please take the time to learn. You seem to think that evolution is a splitting point between atheism and belief in a god. Please look at Ken Miller.
And, as other, more knowledgeable people will point out, evolution is to be found in the field of medicine. Be it from finding new drugs to fight of ever evolving illnesses to now and why a body brakes down.
I, for one would never knowingly consult with a medical professional who denied evolution. That person would be lacking in just a baseline professionalism.
Barb wrote:
I’m not a scientist either – but it doesn’t take much common sense to see through the creationists’ argument. All they’re doing is looking for gaps, places where we haven’t yet worked out the mechanisms. They provide no viable scientific alternatives; it’s just assumed that, if science can’t explain it, a god must have done it.
Think about the history of religion. Our ancestors thought the sun and the moon were gods, others believed that thunder and lightning were the result of gods fighting in the sky. But science eventually showed that this was untrue, and these phenomena have a purely physical explanation.
Why should we stop trying to apply the same principles to life? We were wrong about other natural phenomena, and we’ve still yet to see any positive evidence for the existence of anyone’s god.
Simply put: gaps ≠ gods.
So far evolution provides the best explanation for why things are the way they are, and that’s how science works. Those ‘scientists’ from the DI and AIG and the like have proven themselves to be far more interested in lies, deceit and politics than science – and even their few attempts have ended in embarrassment for them; all the so-called ‘irreducibly complex’ systems have been proven to be nothing of the sort.
Liars for Jesus are still liars. And having to lie as much as they do seems a bit strange for the people who claim to know ‘the truth’.
Kel writesBarb, to accept the creationism, creationists need to do two things: (1). show that evolution by natural selection is false, (2). show that creation is true. Now one can do (1) by doing (2), but we seldom see that. Instead we just see (1) and (2) is assumed as a default. Even if natural selection didn’t shape us, that by no means makes creationism true. There needs to be evidence to show creation happened.
First, creationists and ID people believe in evolution within species by natural selection –micro-evolution. They don’t dispute that.
And I guess some of the ID folks don’t dispute common ancestry –though creationists do.
Both groups believe there must be a designer behind the design of life and the universe.
Nature itself is PROOF of a designer –all the complexity and interdependence and highly sophisticated engineering behind all the bio processes are EVIDENCEs of a designer –even a loving designer. The best proof of the God-story we have is the resurrected Christ who told us the God of the Jews is the God for all people –I’ll always believe a resurrected, sinless man when I see one. I accept the testimony about HIm in the New Testament. His resurrection is also an argument against the slow Darwinian process of natural selection being behind the origin of all species. A God who can resurrect or heal people instantly doesn’t need Darwin’s method for originating all the life forms.
Darwin’s method is an explanation for the emergence of life without a creator.
But I don’t believe that disproving Darwin necessarily proves God to the determined unbeliever. There is at least one prominent atheist scientiest who was on the creation/evolution PBS debate a few years back, who considered Darwin to be in error. Disbelieving Darwin did not make him believe in God.
However, believing in Darwin has led many people to embrace atheism.
Kel Evolution by every experiment ever conducted so far is valid. Behe says not. Wells says not. And a whole host of other scientists say not.
Barb, it’s quite simple. If you want to convince us that God played a hand in nature, simply show us that proof. Instead all you’ve done is appeal to authority and tried to play off Darwinism as a religion which people follow blindly. Instead how about showing evidence of God’s hand in nature, that’s all anyone here is asking for. We don’t care that a few people reject evolution, because it matters not that an idea has 100% conformity. Quite simply the evidence for evolution is there, and there’s not the slightest evidence for any proposed mechanism of any ID hypothesis. If you can show otherwise, great! Bring on the peer-reviewed research.
confirmation bias and anthropomorphising is not evidence, much less proof.
also, explain how polio, smallpox, the Guinea Worm, or the placement of the human reproductive system (you know, the one that causes thousands of deaths in childbirth) can even vaguely suggest a loving creator?
Hi Barb. Every declarative sentence you have typed so far is wrong. Your appeals to authority are silly. I don’t know what kind of scientists your husband and father are, and I’m going to forego the sardonic speculations that spring to mind, but please realize that their religion-based opinions mean squat. Wells, Simmons (MD, not a scientist), and Axe (?) in your video are either lying (Wells) or, like you, desperately hanging on to specific religious beliefs in the face of vast amounts of evidence to the contrary, evidence that is accepted by (according to data, which are not nullified in any way by the Gallup organization’s abject failure to include your husband) 99.85% of scientists in relevant fields.
I do not see any point in continuing to engage your ignorant attitudes, but perhaps this will start a small, gnawing voice of reason to start muttering in the still-rational part of your subconscious. Or not, whatever.
Knock goats, Creationists aren’t lying. They are just disagreeing –sincerely. Did you go to the link I suggested?
http://www.discovery.org/v/611
Barb,
Since you’re so impressed with scientific qualifications, you should be aware that several of the people posting on this thread are not “laymen” but working scientists – Sven, ERV, Nerd of Redhead, Brownian, and Ichthyic, for example. Others of us are scholars trained in evaluating evidence and possessing far more knowledge of the subject than you. In other words, you’re wrong in assuming that we all wallow in ignorance as you do.
Quite a firm grasp of random sampling you have there.
Articles about ID? Where are they?
Great. We’re going to get the dippy Barb version of Excreted! Oh, well. Can’t be worse than the original.
Someone may have already provided you with the link to this program, but here it is anyway:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html
I encourage you to watch it.
The only difference between macro and micro evolution is time. And we have observed speciation, that variation between populations has ceased in transferring genes and the separate populations are free to accumulate over time. When you have the development of new features, when you have a means to weed out those features through selection, and you have a barrier that prevents those features from ever being mingled, then you have evolution. Trying to distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution is like trying to say that walking 100km is impossible because we only observe people taking a step at a time.
Appealing to authority again, can you knock that off please? I could list of a huge list of scientists who would agree with this statement, including religious ones. But it would be a pointless exercise. Again, show me the evidence.
Again, it’s not a matter of believing in Darwin! It’s all about the evidence, and on some accounts Darwin was wrong. But the general idea of common ancestry, of natural selection, and of variation in a species, those have been demonstrated to be correct time after time.
Oh, Wells is lying all right. Everything he says in that video he’s written before elsewhere, and everything he’s written has been refuted multiple times. He knows that. Yet he says the same old shit anyway as if he didn’t. That’s lying. He’s clearly lying about when he started “doubting” and why he went to Berkeley in the first place.
Are you lying too, Barb?
Barb, please show some physical evidence for your imaginary god. Something that would pass as being of divine will by scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers. Without a god interfering in natural processes, creationism and ID fall apart. Show either the physical evidence for your god or shut up. Simple hand waving won’t do. I’m talking recent signed letter from god with flaming letters, or something like Moses’ eternally burning bush.
Barb, most of the people here were familiar with DI and AIG years before you dropped in. And nothing you have said has not been said by others like you dozens of times just in this one blog and millions of times elsewhere.
You have nothing but your self imposed ignorance and made for cable movies. Right now, all anyone is doing is playing with you like a cat plays with a mouse. And you are too deluded to realize that most of us are laughing at you.
Sven, I never asked you to address me –or for all the jackal behavior on this forum –just by offerng my views.
So feel free to ignore me. Won’t bother me in the least. There are too many of you to respond to in time allotted! all marching in lockstep together.
Appeals to authority make a lot of sense since i don’t claim to be a scientific authority myself. As for MD’s not being scientists –ACtually, a lot of biology profs and research scientists (not all) wanted to be MD’s and couldn’t get into med school –or couldn’t build a practice.
My husband with a bio major did research at med school as a med student, qualifying him for a PhD inaddition to the MD –only he didn’t bother to write a dissertation he was invited to write as he didn’t need the Phd–and he did research at the ARgonne labs in under grad — so I think he’s a scientist, even if an MD. My father was a chemist –and had to learn about evolution as part of his studies. I’m sure they would have qualified for the Gallup poll of “real” scientists.
Not appealing to authority -just saying again, not every scientist swallows Darwin.
they can say that until they turn blue. until they can show how they’ve falsified those experiments, it’s just talk.
Well no shit. Again, could you stop acting as if we are using darwin as an authority ourselves? Evolution by natural selection and common descent are accepted by scientists worldwide, not because Darwin wrote about it, rather the evidence supports it. If you don’t think it’s correct, show evidence of why. Bring out the peer reviewed articles that Behe or Wells or anyone else has made. Show that the science exists behind your point of view, that’s what everyone here is asking for.
Quite so, and now I will stop.
Greetings!
Thanks for the reply again, SF.
You are making a substantial distinction between being good (which you seem to equate with ‘effective’ – for example, a ‘good’ bomb would cause a great deal of destruction) and doing good.
(This would seems to suggest, BTW, that if a fountain pen fails to work, it’s evil.
This from: ‘being good’ = acting according to its nature, and ‘evil’ = an absence of good.
That’s a little odd and seems like a terribly banal definition of evil, but it not vital, so moving on…)
That’s fine, we can then remove ‘being good’ from the equation and once again return to my question: does doing good make one a better person? In other words, is there a difference in a being’s state of (let’s try the term) holiness, before and after a (positive, holy, etc) moral deed?
I hate to keep asking the same question over and over, but it seems that I’m having some trouble in getting an answer for it.
Thanks again!
Barb, I have been a working scientist for 30+ years. Why do I believe evolution versus creationism/ID? Simple. There is no unrefuted physical evidence for god. Period. End of story. There is 100,000+ papers in the scientific literature showing physical evidence for evolution. Like the CSI shows, I follow the evidence.
As for MD’s not being scientists –ACtually, a lot of biology profs and research scientists (not all) wanted to be MD’s and couldn’t get into med school –or couldn’t build a practice. ahahahaha, that’s fucking hilarious. that’s like comparing mechanics to engineers and saying engineers wanted to be mechanics, but couldn’t afford to open shop. fixing stuff < finding out novel stuff. but the fact that your husband is an MD pretty much explains that misplaced superiority complex
Janine, Ignorant Slut — You and Rev.Bigdumbchimp –would do well to get new screen names.
You just go ahead and laugh –it’s not joyful. It’s just scorn and mockery. Your derision says more about you than about me.
Psalm 1: “Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.”
Why cast your lot with the mockers and scorners? Seriously, there must be less derisive ways to deal with those who disagree.
Barb wrote:
How is a story proof of anything? And what makes the Christian story any better at explaining things than the Hindu story, or any other religion’s mythology? No doubt you were born into a Christian family; wow, how fortunate for you – to have been born into the one true religion when there are all those others out there.
And if the Jews got it right about god, why didn’t they accept Jesus? Who’s to say they weren’t correct in spotting a bum huckster when they saw him, and made the right choice in shipping him off to become a piece of bad performance art?
Funnily enough, Barb, if your god existed and wanted us to not be atheists, all he’d have to do is show us one resurrected man (verified by science) and we’d all believe in him. How could we not? All we ask for is evidence*.
*A two-thousand-year-old book, on the other hand, isn’t evidence for anything other than the human capacity for denial and self-indulgence – something you yourself are doing a spectacular job of right now.
You posted on a public forum. That means the anyone who stumbles upon your words is free to comment. As for the jackal comments I have to ask you this. What if you came across a person who insisted that 2X3=5. You point out that the person is wrong and that persons insists that their is a political agenda behind it.
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, call you ignorant. It would seem that you are in deed stupid.
Um. Care to back that up or are you talking out of your ass again?
shit, blockquote fail. let’s try again
ahahahaha, that’s fucking hilarious. that’s like comparing mechanics to engineers and saying engineers wanted to be mechanics, but couldn’t afford to open shop. fixing stuff
but the fact that your husband is an MD pretty much explains that misplaced superiority complex
Wow, Barb the shithead not only cites DI, but the bible, a notorious work of fiction, in a vain attempt to cite authority. Sigh. Delusion, stupid, and ignorant.
Barb is now quoting scripture at me. Damn but now I have egg on my face.
Exactly.
Jadehawk, “misplaced superiority complex??” being married to MD. You mean I have confidence? I always did have confidence in thinking and writing –even before marriage. I don’t care if you call it misplaced confidence.
I made a legit point. You think MD’s aren’t real scientists. That is nuts. It is harder to get into med school than into a PhD program in the sciences. That doesn’t mean that the MD’s are smarter or more accomplished –but you have no basis on which to say MD’s aren’t scientists.
If you want to talk about ONLY biology profs and bio-researchers as real scientists, your Gallup poll gets smaller yet. It is they AND the MD’s who are the experts in genetics. Genetics was my husband’s area of excellence in med school –and somehow, he just didn’t come out believing in evolution–and he didn’t think his profs did either.
Barb wrote:
[a few lines of meaningless drivel]
Oooh, a quote war. Sweet. Allow me to retort:
I wont believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners,
No devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
You’re always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
And its the same the whole world round.
The hurt I see helps to compound,
That the father, son and holy ghost,
Is just somebody’s unholy hoax,
And if you’re up there you’ll perceive,
That my hearts here upon my sleeve.
If there’s one thing I don’t believe in…
Its you,
Dear god.
XTC Dear God
Barb, can you explain why anyone should take Creationists or Intelligent Design proponents seriously when they have demonstrated that they are not capable of doing, nor are they even motivated to try and do science in the first place?
Also, Janine, can you pick a more pleasant sobriequet? Like maybe “Janine, Vociferous Violent, or “Janine, Strident Strumpet,” or “Janagina Dentata”?
#299
How were they on gravity and atomic theory?
[from Missionary Manual]
“When all else fails, quote the bible at a non-believer. For the words of God are so holy that the demons inside will be forever cast out. And in an a instant the skeptic will realise his foolishness and be at one with the lord. The truth is written in the Psalms.”
Honestly, what do Christians expect a non-believer to do when they see someone quoting the bible? Do they expect the non-believer then and there to renounce the “wicked lies of Charles Darwin” and fall on their knees in glory? Do they think that non-believers haven’t ever heard from the bible and that somehow the words are revelatory? Do they expect non-believers to be grateful for the experience?
actually, the difficulty of getting into a school program says nothing about whether it’s science or not, or else graduates from the Yale Art program would be scientists.
MD’s are scientists the same way someone who speaks Spanish is a linguist: just because you know how to use it, doesn’t mean you are an expert in it.
the superiority complex comes in where you said that scientists are wannabe-md who didn’t make it, which is pathetic, untrue, and a clear case of delusion.
We can if they don’t use the scientific method. Science ≠ intelligence; your MD husband might be smarter than all of us here put together, but that doesn’t mean he’s allowed to dismiss the scientific method when not doing so would make the invisible sky-fairy angry. Intellectual honesty, not intelligence tells us the science should be applied to everything, not everything except what makes you uncomfortable because of your determination to cling to your archaic superstitions.
A question: when your husband practices medicine, does he treat people according to what science has taught us about the human body, or does he use what the bible taught us about medicine? Does he prescribe drugs, antibiotics and surgery or does he anoint them with oil and pray to his god to heal them?
a scientist is someone who DOES science, not USES science. all of us use science to some degree, doesn’t make us scientists though.
Also, Barb, can you explain how medical doctors are doing research in evolutionary biology, and explain why a medical doctor’s opinion would have equal or greater weight concerning evolutionary biology than actual biologists or biology professors?
Barb, can you also explain how quoting from the Bible disproves evolution, even though evolution has been observed and documented for centuries?
Barb projects:
In reality, Barb, it’s you and your fellow religious delusionals who are marching in lockstep–well, trying to. The folks that you misunderstand here are running free and happy through the world, enjoying the sunshine and swimming in the rivers. Nobody is beating time, nobody is giving orders, nobody is training for war. Folks are looking at the trees, asking questions, talking, investigating, living and loving. That’s completely alien to you–incomprehensibly alien, even–but it is fun. Try it sometime. Folks here will be happy to show you around.
Barb, still no physical evidence for your imaginary god. What’s the matter? You know you are lying?
I can think of many instances where the scientific community is torn on the theory of evolution: gradualism vs punctuated equilibrium, gene-centred evolution vs higher forms of selection, individual selection vs group selection, darwinian selection for all or spandrels, out of Africa or or multiregional origins, the importance of genetic drift, the role of randomness, whether large or small populations fuel evolution, etc. There’s a huge list of genuine controversies about the theory of evolution where there is profound disagreement among scientists. The reason it seems so united is that every other day, biologists have to defend their profession from religious fanatics.
Barb, Wells is lying. You’ve been shown evidence that he’s lying. Now you should explain why you think he’s sincere, because it looks like dishonesty on your part when you say he’s sincere, when you damn well know he’s not.
Still waiting for Barb to back this up with something.
Barb? Are you somewhere consuming external energy sources?
Barb wrote:
Why is it bad to be in consensus when you’re right? Here’s an analogy of how stupid what you’re claiming is:
Science:The earth isn’t flat. It’s basically a sphere.
Pharyngula: Agreed
Barb: Oh, you’re all just in lockstep with each other.
Pharyngula: ???
being married to MD
an MD is not a scientist, for the record.
what scientists do:
-formulate hypothesis to explain an observation
-test hypothesis
-publish results in journal
what MDs do:
-use a tremendous existing knowledge base and apply it to observed symptoms to make a diagnosis.
-see if it works.
not the same thing, surely even you ca see that?
There ARE those with the title MD that actually DO research, and publish results, but then they aren’t MDs anymore, they are scientists.
In point of fact, one does not need a degree at all to do science. It’s simply the practice of the list I mentioned above.
Doctor’s are typically far too busy actually diagnosing illness to do science.
…and that one is intelligent enough to get a degree as an MD, or a PhD in the sciences, does not in and of itself guarantee that one will actually do research and BE a scientist.
Nor does one’s level of overall intellect guarantee one is not mistaken about any given speculation regarding a particular observation or pattern.
If you could travel back in time, and bring Einstein with you to the present day, I wonder if he would still disagree with the value of Quantum Mechanics.
How we determine what works in science is not via authoritarian fiat, as people like Wells (who I was in grad school with, btw), or other Discovery Institute schills would have you believe.
No, it’s through the work of dedicated scientists that devote their lives and time to actually trying to TEAR DOWN the hypotheses constructed to try and explain what we see around us. THAT’S how science actually works; there is no effort at “proof”, there is only effort to falsify. That which remains after many attempts to falsify, and that which continues to bear out consistent predictions, is what science accepts as “supported”.
the Theory of Evolution has had over 150 years of tens of thousands of published scientists attempting to falsify it, to tear it down, to make predictions based on it that fail.
It’s still there, because none of those tens of thousands of scientists have managed to falsify it; rather the results of all those attempts have indeed served to refine and strengthen it as we learn more and more about how life works, and we discover ever more of the fossil record.
NOTHING, not the human genome project, not anything we have discovered in the fossil record, not any novel species or phenotype we have discovered, counters the basic tenents of the modern theory of evolution.
We have invited those who feel evolution is false to go ahead, and just like any scientist interested in researching how the variability we seen in life on earth arose, and continues to change, prove the current theory false through research, and put forward a testable theory that BETTER explains what we see. This has been an open invitation as long as the theory of evolution has existed.
Regardless of how some you take for authority might make it seem, those here who have told you there is no published research falsifying evolution from any ID supporter are correct.
After 150 years, there are NO supported challenges to the current theory of evolution.
That you personally don’t like what it says, because it may or may not conflict with your personal worldview is entirely irrelevant as to whether the theory itself is both accurate and has predictive value.
ID is not only not a theory of evolution, it simply cannot be made into such. It not only is not accurate, it has no predictive value whatsoever.
so, it hardly even matters that ID isn’t science; it’s simply of no pragmatic use whatsoever.
With that in mind, why would you, Barb, be so selfish as to try to suggest that we discard what works, and has been shown over 150 years of testing to have much relevance and pragmatic value, for something that is entirely empty and worthless, with no predictive value or pragmatic value whatsoever?
Why Barb, would you condemn the world thus simply to preserve your unique worldview?
Did anyone mention to Barb yet that Jonathan Wells is a disciple of “rev” Sung Yung Moon? That his graduate tenure at Berkeley was entirely paid for by same?
If not, that should do it, and then I have a question:
Barb:
Is Rev. Sung Yung Moon a true christian?
Don’t mind if I do!
Barb here’s something for you…
Provide us one, just one piece of empirical scientific research that you believe refutes all of evolution.
Not one of your DI scientists saying he doesn’t agree with evolution, actual research. That means a testable piece of research that is falsifiable. It’s easy to proclaim that evolution is false but you have to show why it is false.
Go ahead.
Just one.
We’ll be waiting.
As for MD’s not being scientists –ACtually, a lot of biology profs and research scientists (not all) wanted to be MD’s and couldn’t get into med school –or couldn’t build a practice.
Along with RBDC, I have never heard this one before. For the record, the competition to get into a good graduate school to do research as a scientist is just as tough as getting into a decent medical school. Having taught basic biology to freshman of both stripes (premed and prescience), I see not one whit of difference in ability between the two groups, either.
The only way I could understand making such a statement is if she knows students that have gone to work for a biomedical research facility after flunking out of medical school?
If that’s the case, I got news fer ya Barb, holding a test-tube does not a scientist make.
That said, other than trying to lend false credibility to her husband, I can see no reason for even making the statement she made above.
Goddamnit, I nip off for a few hours to help out at the leper colony, and find this thread once again infested with useless christianists. Is this the best they can do? I mean if posts here, the duodenum of atheism if you will, are so poor one only wonders whether christ will have any followers left come the rapture.
I’m insulted – look at the quality of the regular posters here, the level of erudition, the wit, the insults…and what do we get from the side of ignorance – silver fox, facilis, and now….Barb.
Christ on a stick did PZ throw a stupid party and forget to pass out invites?
OK Barb, now listen, one simple little question for you, all right? Just one – and it’s this:
Why does Jesus want you to appear stupid?
Shouldn’t be hard for you, struggling as you no doubt do everyday with thoughts of theodicy and presuppositionalist aplogetics and trinitarian unity, why do you come here to be insulted and appear ignorant?
I mean, it can’t just be heaven-points; witnessing is better done in public where at least one person might wink at you in agreement; and you’re problably too dignified in real life to do that placard-streetcorner thingy – so why come here? Is it ‘cos Jesus died ridiculed? If so, then surely he wouldn’t insist his followers emulate him…
But my theological speculations soon run out. So suppose you tell us – why are you writing here, appearing witless, in front of a hostile crowd.
Or is christianity intrinsically just….stupid?
Well?
Here’s your chance Barb, can you show a mechanism in nature that is contrary to evolution? We have seen mutation and natural selection in action. We have seen variation within populations, and processes of speciation that prevent any more gene transfer. Most scientists feel that all these conditions are enough to facilitate the evolutionary process and account for life as we see it in nature. (there’s horizontal gene transfer as well in the mix, but viruses injecting DNA is kind of a sidenote to the process)
So not only do we have a theory that has the explanatory power to account for life on earth, we have precise mechanisms of how that theory works. We have good knowledge on how mutations work and how they are passed down from generation to generation. We know how genetic inheritance works and how sex plays a role in creating variation. Natural selection has been observed in nature countless times, we’ve seen evolutionary arms races take place as well. So the science behind evolutionary theory is well established. The evidence for common descent is overwhelming.
So just what is wrong exactly with the Darwinian tale? Are the mechanisms presented incapable of doing their job? Is it that while the mechanisms are capable, there is another force at play? If so, please demonstrate to us how it happens. This is your chance to shine, show the evidence please. You have an open platform to lay out the best possible case that evolution cannot account for life or that while it can account for life the better explanation is _______. Until such time, it feels like you are doing nothing more than pissing in the wind, and doing so because you have a religious conviction.
Most people here would be able to give you quite a convincing argument as to why the evidence points to darwinian evolution, they could look at several forms of evidence and match the observation with the theory. Why is that? Because the controversial nature of Darwin’s theory has meant that meticulous testing over the last 150 years has taken place. Each objection to evolution has had to be accounted for because of it’s fundamental shift in how we view our role in nature.
It’s the evidence as to why many of us are convinced about evolution, so if you have evidence against, or evidence that your current view is better then please bring it to the table. Attentive ears will be on hand.
So suppose you tell us – why are you writing here, appearing witless, in front of a hostile crowd.
Some time ago, was a frequent poster here and on Panda’s Thumb by the name of “For the Kids”. Her logic and presentation was pretty much identical to Barb’s here. She kept making the same exact arguments, on a near daily basis, for at least a year.
Denial is a powerful psychological defense mechanism.
Barb simply is unable to grasp the information we are giving her here. Any attempts to actually do so will be quickly rendered moot by her automatic employment of denial, and she will “reset” on a daily basis to “square one”.
there is simply no other way to maintain that level of ignorance and inaccuracy in the face of information and reality.
This is why I have often said that you can easily recognize creationists of this strip (meaning the vast majority of them) by their employment of projection and denial.
It’s also why I say that while fun to poke them with a stick (and occasionally useful to onlookers!), one should never be under the impression that any evidentiary argument will be able to penetrate their fortress of psychological defense mechanisms.
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
– Winston Churchill
That this mindset is so prevalent should worry the APA (American Psychological Association) to no end. So far, the only response I’ve seen from then is basically:
Any delusion shared by enough people is not considered to be a delusion (I shit you not – look it up sometime).
To sum up why I laugh constantly at people like Barb, I give you a quote from one of my favorite posters here:
“Science disagrees with religion for not being empirical or scientific, while religion attacks science for being a religion.”
– brokenSoldier
Damn. You’re right.
Yeah, I know, Icthyic – a pseudonym, eh, bit fishy I reckon – but why do they do it? I mean I don’t go on christian sites opining on the tri-partite division of the godhead, or some such bollocks, because that would just get me scorned and insulted.
Is it just a US fundy thing? Of course, we’ve got religious nutters here too, but they’re less vocal and fear mockery more.
Sigh. Why is religion so poorly argued? I’m beginning to think there’s something bogus about the whole thing.
Hmm… If I recall from the archives, FTK was a stupid dolt who would ignore all evidence we presented and just try to preach to us. Maybe PZ needs to check the URL and see if it is in Kansas. Wouldn’t be the first troll to morph.
Barb @#259:
Barb @#274:
Interesting. You highlight a large disagreement between ID-ists and creationists, one which puts at least some of the former in agreement in part with evolutionary biologists. Yet you yourself certainly sound like you disagree with them; you reject that portion of ID in favor of creationist dogma, yet offer the ID-ists as authorities.
Why do you do this? Those same ID-ists would agree that humans are related to apes, and that whales had a common mammalian land-based ancestor. They would no doubt use the same arguments from anatomy, molecular biology, and genetics that an evolutionary biologist would use. Do you think that the authorities that you cite are wrong? If so, why cite them at all? If they explained why common descent was correct, would you just reject them because they did not accept your dogma, even though they believe in God and God directly interfering in evolution?
Really, could you make up your mind what it is you believe, and why, and stick with that?
By the way, could you simply ask your husband what he believes about common descent, and why? I’m just curious about which side of that particular question he happens to be on. Are you sure that it’s the same side as your own?
t why do they do it?
to test their own psychological defenses.
Once they’ve become convinced in their own minds that their concentric shells of rationalizations are impregnable, they typically will test those rationalizations by allowing themselves to be fired upon.
what’s really funny is that even though there are massive holes blown in their fortifications, they will still go on as if they haven’t even been scratched.
I’ve seen it countless times before, and will no doubt see it countless times again.
as to whether this is peculiar to the US… I rather doubt it, given that we have Ray Comfort from New Zealand and Ken Ham from Australia…
oh, wait.
:P
Yes, I see. I’m reading Dan Prothero’s book on “Fossils” at the moment. He talks about debating with Duane Gish. Even when, having seen his presentation the day before, Dan rebutted all his points before they had even been put, Gish continued undaunted. His speil was the same, day after day, meeting after meeting, despite anything he had been told.
But there is more to christianity than that. Isn’t there? Isn’t there?
You’d like to think there’s some critical assessment of their own beliefs in there, that through critical self-examination one would seek to eliminate the flaws and follies of what they preach. But really it seems a lost cause. All Kirk Cameron would need to do in order to see why there’s no such thing as a Crocoduck is ask a palaeontologist. Instead he’s spent years parading the same terrible straw-man against evolution and there’s nothing that can shake him from using it. They are like unsinkable rubber ducks, no chance of ever getting through to them.
When the likes of Barb complains about Darwinists stepping in line, it’s nothing more than projection. the remnants of my last irony meter are strewed across my desk.
I love it. Here are the regulars always asking for “proof” and along comes Barb asking for “Proof” and handing the regulars their butts. Its great.
Go Barb
#330
Wait, what? If she were providing proof that would be something else entirely, but….
Ah, Silver Fox, where is your proof for your imaginary deity? We keep asking for the physical evidence, but you are too ignorant to show any. Barb got presnted with a lot of evidence, all of which she ignored. And presented no peer reviewed scientific papers to back up her points. Total failure. Well another brain fart for SF. I’ll open the window to air the place out.
You really are a deluded one, all Barb did was appeal to authority and link to the widely discredited Discovery institute. If you call that kicking our arses then you are as fucked up as she is.
Deluded as ever.
The evidence for evolution is there. It is in the hundreds of thousands of peer reviewed research articles that are out there. Barb ignoring them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Speaking of butts, have you decided on whether or not taking a crap ceremoniously counts as honoring God?
Speaking of “proof”, could you clarify on what you believe about common descent? How about the age of the earth?
I know that you have stated that you don’t agree with a literal interpretation of the bible, so what you actually do believe is true about science is more than a little vague.
If you think Barb is on the right path there SF, maybe then you can answer what I posited in #321. Showing that evolution is either inadequate to explain what we see in nature and / or that there is direct evidence of another mechanism at play. Appealing to the authority of Michael Behe is not a valid argument against evolution – especially when his self-confessed Einsteinianesque concept is not only explainable by evolution, but hasn’t ever been put to the test.
Silver Fox wrote:
Silver Fox is just glad that someone’s taking the heat off him for his faux pas of claiming that atheists need to disprove his god when he cannot do the same for other gods. When you’re dumb enough to make an egregious error like that one you’re glad that someone else can come along and draw attention away from you by being almost as stupid.
my, are you stupid. we have mountains of evidence behind us. put “evolution” into the pubmed search-engine, pick article at random, start learning
Thus brayed the silly old goat:
Please, silly old goat, explain what it is like to be the most stupid person in any room that you enter. And I beg of you, use only words you understand.
Greetings!
Hi again, SF. Glad to see you back. Sorry I’m a bit slow in posting, but I am working on further clarification at #288 or thereabouts.
Thanks!
Go Barb
*snort*
talk about the blind leading the blind.
Silver Fox has really been holding his cards to his chest when it comes to the manner in which his theist god operates in the universe. I wonder if his support of Barb is just letting his true beliefs come out through her arguments, I guess if he did it on his own he would have been eaten alive here… well a bit more so than usual. Man that guy is inanity manifest!
@ Barb:
#259
You don’t need “credentials” so much as you do evidence. That’s the key fact you’re missing through stupidity or are deliberately ignoring through dishonesty. You’re still repeatedly falling for the fallacy of “proof” by authority – and you’re also religiously rubbish at picking “authorities”!
#90
+299
1. Expertise is not contagious in the way you seem to believe it is. You can’t marry into it like money and then simplistically have it yourself to spend or flaunt.
2. As evidence for the above, note how his being a medical doctor completely failed to prevent you from being outstandingly stupid and ignorant about hearts. Either he’s rubbish as a doctor (as well as not actually being a scientist), or you’ve learned nothing about that subject from marrying him. I am mildly curious, though, to know if he really does agree with your stupid statement about hearts.
No, you didn’t. You’re just too religiously stupid to see that you didn’t.
Medical doctors are not scientists. It doesn’t matter how much you lie about that (or those doctors lie to themselves about it – especially the creationist ones apparently). We know better. Only a few scientists also have (separate and largely unnecessary) medical qualifications and do genuine medical science. The rest of the medics are glorified butchers etc. Mere practitioners running through rote-learned rituals and using the discoveries made by others.
You’re also evidently too ignorant to know what a bad “authority” you’ve chosen in Behe. The reason he “thinks” (and I use that word loosely) he showed there wasn’t enough scope for evolution to have happened is that he messed up a simple mathematical calculation – woefully understating the amount of bacteria in soil etc by orders of magnitude. Done properly, his calculation actually shows how plausible evolution is instead.
The thing is, Barb, we’re just not as ignorant as you. So we can already tell when you and your bogus “authorities” are telling falsehoods. We also have intellectual honesty, so we actually care (and check!) whether things are true or not – unlike the religious who’ll habitually tell (and accept) lie after lie, at high speed, without the slightest qualm. Our advantage in generally having higher intelligence is more like icing on the cake after those two factors – though it certainly does help.
insanity or stupidity? He can’t be wholly insane even if his religion is, but certainly delusional. Clearly in his head he is making a difference of some sort to something, whereas we can see that pleasuring himself with the hand he doesn’t need to pick his nose would be of far more use to humanity, and considerably wittier.
Yes, Wasted Neurons, Barb had us there. It was that unanswerable bible verse that did me in, or perhaps it was the novel idea that her personal belief vat, though apparently vast, could not fit a tiny bit of science in.
You, and your fellow drones, are a disgrace to christian nutcases everwhere.
Get that butt over to the streetcorner! Jesus needs your madness, now!
Not that Barb is likely to care but, for the benefit of those who aren’t religiously retarded, here’s that soil example again – with Behe being caught in court under oath at Dover:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day12am.html
NB If you don’t want to read the whole thing, the most relevant part is near the bottom of the page and it’s probably easiest to search for “soil” to get to the nub of it. However, it’s fairly funny from “Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Feature that Requires Multiple Amino Acid Residues” onwards – and of course it’s revealing how often Behe is caught out telling falsehoods throughout the whole thing.
Barb (#255):
I do like these little dismissive exclamations of exasperation when you’re caught out in some particularly stupid error. The lack of shame and self-awareness is almost endearing (emphasis on the “almost”).
And I see that in #259 that you’re still touting Michael Behe. Oh dear. I’ll refer you back to my earlier post here. This is not a man whose ideas are respected by his fellow scientists, not least because he plays fast and loose with the scientific literature and bases his claims on logical fallacies and flawed assumptions (the whole “irreducible complexity” argument being a case in point).
re #264:
Because the stuff he manages to get published is normal science, and doesn’t contain any claims about ID. Like most creationists/ID-ists with scientific qualifications, he keeps the ID stuff for his public, informal output, all the better to circumvent the review process.
Moving on to #274:
Again, you don’t seem to have a very good grasp of elementary reasoning. Yes, biological processes are complex and often show high levels of intricate interdependency. But that’s only evidence of design if you can demonstrate that complexity and interdependency do, in fact, correlate with design. And when we look at things that we know to be designed, we find that there is not a strong correlation – some human artefacts are complex, but many of them are very simple indeed (walking sticks and spoons are rather more common than jet fighters and supercomputers).
Furthermore, when we look at complex, interdependent things in general, we find that with the vast majority of them – i.e., biological systems – we don’t know them to be designed, so they’re not actually any help in establishing such a correlation. So for you to assert by fiat that complexity and interdependence is “evidence” of design is to beg the question in the worst possible way – you’re assumingdesign, not demonstrating it.
Worse than that, you’re actually undermining your own ability to identify design in the first place. We can identify a watch as being designed, partly because we know from experience that there are things called human beings which design and manufacture watches, but also because we know (again from experience) that a watch is made of materials that are not (or rarely) found in nature, and which are arranged in configurations which are not (or rarely) found in nature.
In other words, identifying design is the same as identifying artifice, and the artificial can ultimately only be identified in contra-distinction to the natural. So if you insist that nature is designed (i.e., artificial), then you no longer have anything to contrast the artificial against, and thereby define what counts as artificial and what does not. Which means that you have just abandoned the primary criterion that allows you to actually point to something and say with any degree of confidence “This is designed”, which in turn pulls the rug right out from under the Argument for Design.
So, another big, fat logic fail to add to your steadily accumulating catalogue of fails.
Iain wrote about why Behe has published works in refereed journals Because the stuff he manages to get published is normal science, and doesn’t contain any claims about ID. Like most creationists/ID-ists with scientific qualifications, he keeps the ID stuff for his public, informal output, all the better to circumvent the review process.
YOur interp is erroneous. The peer-refereed journals are typically biased against any criticism of Darwin and won’t print them. Creationists and ID scientists don’t mind the review process –typically love to debate the issues –and in recent years, can’t get the darwinists to participate in such public debates. As one state’s science educator told the state’s science teachers, in effect, “don’t debate them; they know their issues better than you do and you’ll lose.” Creationists invite evolutionsts to such debates and have won in the minds of the audience. But such ID scientists are likely to suffer discrimination in their careers.
The typical claim on this forum is that Creationists and their cousins, the ID proponents (they are both ID proponents) are not real scientists who publish in refereed journals.Well, that assertion isn’t true, is it?
In fact, many ID scientists and creationists have demonstrated excellence in science and are not your common garden variety bottom of the barrel sort as you’d like us to believe. They are usually excellent communicators –which not all scientists are.
also for Aian who wrote: And when we look at things that we know to be designed, we find that there is not a strong correlation – some human artefacts are complex, but many of them are very simple indeed (walking sticks and spoons are rather more common than jet fighters and supercomputers).
Speaking of elementary reasoning, who said anything about design having to be complex in order to be design? I said complexity in function would appear to be engineered or designed. I agree that simplicity can be designed also. Whether simple or complex, natural processes appear to be engineered by a genius beyond all human imagination.
“….you’re assuming design, not demonstrating it.
The organism is the demonstration–the function is the demonstration –the complexity and interdependence –are the demonstration–of design.
You assume that what is designed cannot be natural. You define natural as undesigned, occuring in nature without a Creator/Designer. On the contrary, you have notm cannot demonstrated with logic that the natural occurs without a prime cause/designer.
Teh stoopid it Burnz!
It’s a conspiracy, a conspiracy I tell ya’!
No Barb, you are wrong. Peer Review is biased toward good science. Science that can show its work, that can back up its theories with real research, data and observations.
ID can not and has not done that.
Barb, you have no peer reviewed evidence, and us the old refuted conspiracy complaint. Sounds like somebody avoiding the issue that there is no evidence for your god, for your bible, and for your theory of creation. And that makes you look very ineffectual with your arguments.
That’ll be you lying in your own (or your mindlessly copied) “in effect” paraphrase of what was actually said. How about you produce the real quote instead, Barb. Can you? Dare you? Or do you secretly already know/fear that what was really said was nothing like what you claim was said?
The usual point to be made about creationists is that they are shameless liars and that the debate format is approximately the worst possible format for establishing the truth about anything, since it merely allows liars to lie faster than anyone can possibly refute them. It doesn’t mean the refutations (evidence and logical argument) don’t exist nor that they aren’t incredibly damning of the creationists’ claims. It’s just that the audience isn’t going to get the chance to listen to the refutations – even if it didn’t consist almost entirely of religious retards who are unwilling to listen anyway, let alone think.
Give us the real quote, Barb. Stop being so dishonest.
And while you’re at it, do tell us what your MD husband thinks of your stupidity over perpetual motion hearts. Or if he’s willing to put his reputation on the line in backing you on that, just like you keep trying to drag him in as (feeble) support for you on other matters on which you’re wrong.
Oh, Barb. All of your sentences continue to be wrong.
I’m going to tell you something: I know more about biology than you, your husband, and Behe combined. I taught your husband (and/or multitudes just like him) physiology back when he was a callow, snivelling, grade-grubbing premed undergraduate. I do science, publish it, and peer-review other scientists’ stuff in my esoteric little field of research. I have done so for 20 years now. OK? You want to appeal to authority, you can appeal to me.
You are Very Wrong. There is no systemic discrimination of science journals against creationism, ID, or whatever you want to call it. Science is not about “debating the issues” as you seem to think. It is about collecting data–observations of the natural world–and then using accurate logic to interpret those data. The ONLY reason ID proponents have never published any ID in a real scientific journal is because–please read the following carefully–their conclusions do not follow by valid logic from their observations. OK? That’s it. No secret cabal, no unfair discrimination, no mean old Darwinianists locking arms to keep the righteous truth-tellers out of the exclusive club.
ID/creationism IS…NOT…SCIENCE. Therefore it doesn’t get treated as science by scientists. It’s really just that simple and straightforward. Even Behe doesn’t treat his own ridiculous opinions as science–instead he writes popular books aimed at–forgive me, but this is accurate–ignorant people like you.
OK? I want to assure you again that you do not know what you’re talking about. You make yourself appear more and more foolish with every post. I am trying to be nice to you here by telling you the truth without insulting you (ignorance is not an insult; I am deeply ignorant about many subjects myself).
Please listen to a friendly voice of reason and shut up.
In other words, objects that are just thrown together –rocks in a heap, parts of the watch in the clothes dryer — don’t function. Designed things function in some way (maybe not visual art) –functional things are always designed/engineered to function. Especially when intricately and interdependently functioning.
Completely illogical, seems to me, to think that complex, functional things at the very basic cellular level are not designed for their intricate, complex, interdependent function. Nature is impersonal, not a designer. Design requires a designer.
Hey, look at this silly old goat. Barb just handed Sven his ass.
BHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Barb, you keep saying things are designed without showing us that they are.
You are presupposing design just because you think it is designed or you think it looks designed.
Barb, still with the nonsense. Your opinion/testament is worthless, since you have been proven again and again to be a liar and bullshitter. Show us the peer reviewed literature articles or shut up. Simple way to regain some credability.
Is that your ignorance showing again or merely more lies from you, Barb? How do you explain away the fact that the details now known by science about evolution have changed quite a bit since Darwin’s time?
Yes, shock (mock!) horror, Darwin has long been known not to have been absolutely correct about everything – by the well-educated people anyway, even if the ill-educated religious retards such as yourself aren’t aware. Eg his ideas on blending were never workable. The discovery of genetics then made it clear how evolution actually worked in that area. However, these independent lines of inquiry also ended up confirming just how stonkingly right Darwin was about evolution overall.
So, scientists did criticise Darwin’s ideas over the decades. But, crucially, they did so with evidence and reason, not with bible verses and emotional appeals to personal ignorance like you do. You’re so disgustingly ignorant, about the things you delusionally imagine yourself to be able to criticise, that you don’t even know how obvious your lie is about not being able to criticise Darwin.
Watch as bad analogies continue to fall like rocks from Barb’s mouth. (Yeah, I know I am using an analogy.)
Barb, I don’t know what planet you think you’re on but I reckon the Earth – ie that bunch of rocks just thrown together during planetary formation – is functioning quite well as a planet. Mountains seem to perform the various aspects of their mountainy-ness quite well too. Design is not at all necessary for functionality.
You’re actually making the same mistake as Paley did. And, much like Paley, you’re a bit too stupid to see it. Paley contrasted the watch with everything else around it (grass, rocks etc) in that it stood out as being obviously designed – and that hence those natural things weren’t designed.
Your counsel for me, Professor Sven, is touching –rudeness cloaked in concern. I’m amazed that since I joined around post no. 9o, nearly every comment has been scorn heaped on me. Why do you bother? Am I really dangerous? I’m sure you think so –how flattering!
Scientists of faith have never been hindered by that faith –nor hindered the progress of science–take Dr. Ben Carson, the pediatric neurologist, Behe who manages to be a full prof. at LeHigh and published in the journals. Duane gish who won a secular teacher of the year award in science in Michigan many years ago –a creationist.
Francis Collins is a theistic evolutionist –not ID, per se, but a believer nevertheless. As is Ken Miller. Granted they don’t share the ID or creationist views –but my point here is that people of faith can succeed in science –therefore posters here need not be so committed to atheism for public ed –or for “good science” as most of you seem to be.
Why did you teach undergrad physiology? Med school turn you down?
So, 20 years in your career –34 for hubby’s.
As for whichever one of you said that appealing to an MD spouse for authority is foolish, or whatever, I don’t agree. He’s one I consider a real scientist –whether you all do or not. Medical science IS science and they have to be grounded in the bio sciences to get the MD. My point was –some of you asserted that real scientists are never ID or creationist in their views. Simply not so. I live with an example. And there are MANY such scientists who are not held back in science careers just because they are persons of faith who see error in Darwin’s atheistic conclusion on the origin of species.
*sigh*
I tried.
Barb, your know-nothing obtuseness has earned you every bit of actual rudeness that you are about to receive. It won’t be from me.
By the way, Sven, your disrespectful description of your under-grad pre-meds make me suspect you are probably very hard on them. My husband had an organic chem prof who wanted to go to med school and didn’t get in –he made organic chem miserable for his students. Rumor was that U. of Il accepted his C-student pre-meds into their med school, regarding a C grade from this man as an A.
But your ill-founded opinion is wrong. You don’t get to make up your own facts. And the fact is that he’s not a scientist on the basis of his MD no matter how much you (and perhaps he) like to lie to yourself about it. Your delusions of scientific adequacy are much like your religious delusions. They do nothing to change the reality of the situation.
Someone who’s only an example in your opinion because you’ve already lied to yourself about him being a scientist! The rest of us (the sane ones at any rate), like reality itself, are not impressed by your falsehoods.
So do tell us whether he shares your ignorant beliefs about hearts (your post #90 here including the howler: “hearts that beat for a lifetime without any external energy source”). Have you even told him how you’re making a fool of yourself in public and dragging him into it?
To answer your question, no, you are not dangerous. What is dangerous is that people like you make a fetish of their own ignorance and then expect the rest of us to show that fetish respect.
Barb, you have no respect for knowledge. You have no respect for intellectual honesty. You have no respect for learn. Are you getting scorn heaped onto you? You better believe it. You have earned every scrap of it.
By the way, the fact that you have your own fundamentalist blog is of no surprise at all. We could see that was your bent long before you started spout scripture.
Best of all, you have no way of refuting anything that Sven had to say. That is because he has knowledge and experience in his field. You, Barb, have jack shit.
Students–like blog-commenters–that earn my respect get my respect. Your little fantasy-assumptions about me and my motivations are pretty funny. No, I never wanted to go to med school, because I was interested in doing science. See above for the definition.
Oh, and you can reassure “hubby” that organic chemistry is a miserable nightmare for everyone.
Behe and Gish in one comment
My dumbfuckery meter just exploded.
Barb, Gish is a joke. I huge joke.
This is what Behe’s cohorts had to say about him and ID.
“I” should of course be “A”
Oh sure, see how you all are.
Chew all the juice out of the trolls before I even wake up!
I got as far up thread as Barb @274 – I’ll always believe a resurrected, sinless man when I see one.
So will I.
SEF –what isn’t amazing about the heart and its work?
I can’t believe the obtuseness and foolishness I have encountered here –when it comes to the marvelousness of human beings –of life itself.
As the ancient book says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” Psalm 14:1
I realize that God’s existance may not be the issue for all of you, but it seems that many of you have no awe for life and its marvelous design, the DNA which dictates our every trait and feature using a code made up of trillions of combinations of 4 “letters”– which should lead you to conclude, “There must be a designer/controller/engineer/creator.”
Barb has built her whole life on the premise that a deity must exist and she’s going to blather on with her appeal to authority fallacies and irrelevant conclusions, after all her husband is a DOCTOR and he would be an authority on whether a god exists or not. She’s the Real Housewives of Orange County version of Facilis. Read her blog, it’s a hoot.
Aha – are we at last perhaps hearing a tiny smidgin of truth from you, Barb? Viz. that your husband was rubbish (got a C) at the only actual science he took on his way to being an overpaid, arrogant butcher-of-people; and he’s been been consoling himself ever since with the fantasy that a few medical students from one place got a free pass into university, rather than recognise the fact that universities (unlike you) already know medics are not necessarily the brightest of bunnies at science. A doctor of medicine has a fake title not the real academic kind of doctorate (except in the rare cases where they qualified separately).
Medicine selects more for greed and rote memorisation than for virtue or original thought. And later on it selects for dishonesty too (ie willingly and routinely lying to patients, to relatives and on behalf of corrupt colleagues – it’s in the oath they take). In the UK, doctors originally had to be forced into being in a National Health Service because they didn’t want to look after actual sick people – those who were poor and lived in bad neighbourhoods. They were nearly all in the business for the money, prestige and power, not the doing good aspect.
for Patricia #370 –because I said I would believe a resurrected man.
John 20:29
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
what is your definition of a troll?
Barb we would say the exact same thing to you.
You think it was poofed into existence being pushed by an invisible hand from above.
That leaves little to be amazed by.
Instead the amazing processes that are / were at work to bring us to were we are is in fact way more amazing.
No it shouldn’t and even if it did you can’t show “God did it”
On the other hand scientists are working hard to explain DNA and everything else. When you say god did it, you stop the need for scientific inquiry.
Barb, the authorities on science are working scientists. Not pastors, preachers, or any practioners of other forms of woo. Nor your silly work of fiction called the bible. So, if you appeal to authority, that is folks like myself and Sven, with a PhD in one of the sciences. And evolution is scientific, it is backed up by hundreds of thousands of scientific papers. It doesn’t get any more solid than that. And most scientists areee that evolution happened.
Creationism and ID are religious ideas. They are not science, and will never be science.
That, in a nutshell Barbb, is where you fail miserably. You have to prove there is a designer and not just type your keys while thinking you are the Queen of Logic (you ain’t, Toots). Look up Dunning-Kruger effect Barbie, it fits you to a T.
Rev. BigDumbChimp wrote, “I huge joke.”
and later.
“I” should of course be “A”
No, I think you got it right the first time. : D
Ok that’s it.
Too many typos for me. Back to more interesting things.
Jadehawk – Is that Guinea worm you mentioned above the same one that has to be pulled out of it’s human host through the foot, causing agonizing pain? I saw some worm briefly in a video on YouTube, it was horrifying! (More of gods love.)
Yeah Barb, tell us about no external energy sources again?
Typos I can fix, your stupidity seems to be permanent.
Troll = Barb, good christian wannabe.
All the things which aren’t true about it! Such as your claim: “hearts that beat for a lifetime without any external energy source”. That’s only “amazing” in revealing the depths of stupidity and ignorance in which people like you live your entire lives (and are even allowed out without minders, unless we count your husband as your responsible adult). Though the only people who would still be amazed by it are those among the well-educated intelligentsia who haven’t really encountered many religious retards yet.
So what does your husband, the MD, have to say about your claim of “hearts that beat for a lifetime without any external energy source”? Does he, unlike you, know enough to be aware of an external energy source? Or did he flunk organic chemistry so badly that he hasn’t a clue?
Bigdumbmonkeyrev –“When you say god did it, you stop the need for scientific inquiry.”
O that is so ridiculous!!! Beats anything I ever said that you all have scorned!
Many of the great scientists of history have been God-believers –like Sir Isaac Newton –actually most, if not all of them, before Darwin. And many since.
Barbb, I don’t think you’re a troll, I think you’re TSTKYS.I also know you’re wasting your time here since you are incapable of even considering what you believe is in error. And Babs, Patricia and several others can out-quote you chapter and verse. I no longer have the stomach for any version of the Bible, so I’ll just point and laugh at you.
Jesus was a zombie. I love sci fi!
Barb, your inability to comprehend seems to be boundless.
Yes and they were able to work past just claiming god did it and actually SHOW their work. Newton explained a great many things in physics.
He didn’t just say “God Did it!” and then go about his merry way. This is what you are saying with ID.
Believing in God and using God as the scientific explanation are two separate things Barb.
Scorned? SCORNED? Really Barbb, SCORNED?!!!!
You actually used scorned in casual usage? Oh my, mark how the scorners derideth us!!!
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha….
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.. hehhehehehehe hee…
*dabs eyes*
You’re cute.
Barb, I strongly suspect you to be ignorant of the life and work of Isaac Newton, since you seem to be ignorant of just about everything in science. He wasn’t a conventional god-believer and had to keep that very quiet (to keep his nice cushy position).
But perhaps you’d be able to say just where any god at all comes into Newton’s calculus, his law of cooling, his work on optics (NB there’s a trick one in there for those few in the know) and even his laws of motion and study of gravity or the inventions of the cat flap and fraud-resistant coinage.
The only times Newton tried to shoe-horn a deity or similar supernatural nonsense into things were his areas of massive, blundering, delusional fail – alchemy and angel classification.
don’t forget the chewy, fruit-filled cookies!
For your info,SEF — Hubby did get a c in that one course –most all the class did. The teacher was really hard and known for it and known to give hardly anything above a C –and known to be sore that he didn’t go to med school. Someone who went to U. of Il. told the story about the C’s of this prof being regarded like A’s. MCATS probably showed that accomplishment exceeded the grade.
I know of one top student today in biology who wants to be a researcher. Most all biology majors in every college are some kind of pre-med hopefuls. That suggests that the bio majors getting their phD’s probably didn’t get into med school. Going for the PhD first used to be a path to admission to med school later. And no, that was not my husband’s path though he did PhD project under one of his profs –while a med student.
as for MD’s being butchers and only interested in the money –that wouldn’t be my husband. He is very popular –caring, good, diligent, competent, giving –and handsome and faithful –one of the good guys of the planet. Eat your heart out, girls.
(I’m only bragging because you all are so rude. The rudeness, in fact, was evident before I started here at post # 90.)
And he believes in God, not Darwin. And that does not mean he believes there is nothing to learn or no advances to be made in science –how absurd.
Oh now, Barb is so stupid with religion that I can’t take her seriously even if I were bribed. This type of willful ignorance (missionary zeal) is way beyond proof or logic. She’s just accumulating cautionary tales she can regale the other Bible Study members with how she went into the lions’ den and survived – hell, she gave ’em whut fer!!! And she even converted a few of those evil
atheistsathiests, or at least that’s the way she’ll tell it. (“They were too stoopid to believe that Gawd designed everything!!!! Kin you believe it?!!!”)Ok. Barb, you’ve passed the initiation dare, scuttle of to your little sorority and dazzle ’em with your missionary exploits.
Doesn’t it occur to you to wonder why that was most who were or, crucially, claimed to be so, before Darwin? And not exclusively before him (the way you erroneously imply) but cumulatively before each major bit of god-belief was utterly blown away by some science or other. Eg the science which led to the invention of lightning conductors and it being the churches which refused have them that got repeatedly struck and burned.
Darwin isn’t the singular dividing point you’d like to pretend he is. You and your delusions are up against the whole of reality. More intelligent, better educated and, crucially, more intellectually honest people than you incrementally managed to recognise that old fantasies couldn’t trump the evidence of reality. Some got there sooner than others. Nearly all scientists have got there now.
Are you also ignorant of all history? Have you not read about how non-believers were routinely persecuted by religious nutters – disadvantaged, libelled, tortured, maimed and killed? Have you heard of the inquisition at all? The witch-trials? The examples from biblical times, included by implication in verses you’ve even quoted?! Can’t you see how, throughout much of history all over the world, an atheist scientist might have found it advisable to keep their lack of god-belief to themselves and mouth the platitudes necessary to avoid being tortured by their uncivilised religious neighbours?
What an egotistical idiot you are. You have nothing to support that other than your own inflated ego about your husband’s choice to be an MD.
E.V. You were so close but you failed to hit the home run. …dazzle ’em with your missionary position.
-rim shot-
Barb, I promised not to be rude to you, so instead I will make the simple, factual statement: Every sentence is wrong.
Barb – Exactly why are you posting here?
So what does he have to say about you’re erroneous claim of “hearts that beat for a lifetime without any external energy source”? Why won’t you tell us, Barb? Is it that you’re too embarrassed even to ask him? Do you secretly already know yourself to be an ignorant fool, digging yourself into an ever bigger hole?
Aarrgghh! – spotted too late the “you’re” which should now be “your”. Editing back into posts afterwards is always risky for generating mismatched bits.
Meanwhile, the bit I missed off the previous post was to point out that, of all those god-believing scientists of the past, most of them didn’t believe in your god, Barb. They believed in Greek and Roman gods (if you allow “science” and scientificness to extend back that far), in Egyptian gods, in Hindu gods (and many still will!) and in the Jewish or Muslim or rival Christian versions of gods etc etc. They don’t count as support for your particular imaginary god nor for your version of creationism at all. They actually count against it.
SEF @#389: IIRC, Newton was a secret Unitarian (though I could be wrong, I remember reading about it at some point). He was certainly very strongly religious, but he rejected the Christian orthodoxy of his day in favour of a more intellectually satisfying doctrine. He kept it quiet, though, because at that time his university positions, and his Crown sinecure as Master of the Royal Mint, could only be held by those who professed allegiance to the Church of England (a provision which was intended to guard against subversion from Catholics).
Indeed, my own university place would, 200 years ago, have been conditional on my making a profession of Anglican faith (under the Test and Corporation Acts). I have no qualms about saying that I would have done exactly as Newton did, and taken the oath despite the fact that I don’t believe a word of it.
Sorry for derailing another thread… but at least this time it’s not about politics. :-)
Damn, but I’m sure that’s her only position (Which is why she’ll never admit that hubby gets his chubby on with others besides her, if you know what I mean)
I know dozens of women just like this, she’s not even as hard core as my Mom and my Aunts. Bush league, really. It’s why I can dismiss her for being a delusional clucking biddy here to set us on the blind and narrow path. Barb couldn’t survive if she actually opened her eyes, so she continues on squeezing them tightly shut and offering up her delusional husband as an authority on ID.
(ooooooooh, she’s pissed now)
Just point and laugh, she’ll go away eventually.
Walton – If no one else is using the spanking couch, you may now. It will save you a great deal of time at the keyboard, and it’s what you come here for anyway.
Is that like some sort of ritual burnt sacrifice? Will there be barbecue sauce? ;-)
Barb still hasn’t told us what her supposed authority has to say about the veracity of “hearts that beat for a lifetime without any external energy source”. I’m getting increasingly curious about just how bad that C in organic chemistry was. I, as a non-MD but multi-disciplinary scientist (with medical knowledge as well!) can say quite a lot about the various levels of external energy source.
This is a test of your husband’s scientific prowess (not his manhood or religisity per se) and of your honesty, Barb. Your continued failure to address this question (even blatantly misinterpreting it at one point in an futile attempt to dodge it) is quite revealing in itself.
Is he as much of a failure in all areas of science as you are? Or are you a public embarrassment to him?
Barb spewed:
You wouldn’t happen to be married to that other troll ZR? He was keen on Jesus, claimed to be a doctor, and played the hot spouse card. How big is your TV screen?
Patricia, you know Walton doesn’t spank his monkey, so he has no use for the couch.
yup yup.
luckily though, it’s on its way to being eradicated, primarily because of the effort of that horrible, horrible, failed president and terrorist appeaser Jimmy Carter
OK There’s definitely something going wrong with my typing somehow. I’m absolutely certain that “religiosity” had an o in it the first time I looked back at it in the comment box. And now it has mutated into “religisity” in the final post. Perhaps I accidentally hit a delete key when I passed the mouse back over the text to edit a part before that.
The deviant order of processing in the M$ Windows keyboard messaging scheme, which does differ considerably from the performance of a real physical typewriter, has got me before. There’s probably an evolutionary metaphor in there somewhere …
ewwww, why would I wanna be married to a godbot with a superiority complex? for that matter, why would I want to be married? I’ll take my godless punk boyfriend any day over someone like that.
and asides from bragging about a catch that isn’t… how has any of that refuted the point of him being a butcher or interested in money? (though from the description you’re providing, in his case it seems to be more the prestige, but it may be just you projecting your liking the prestige of being Mrs. Dr.)
Barb’s gone strangely quiet? Could she finally have gone to ask her husband about hearts …
I believe Barb’s repressive sense of propriety has been assaulted. Poor dear. She’ll never understand that she should feel humiliated by the substandard ID idiocy she posted or her colloquialisms normally used by evangelical shysters. Perhaps she has spurned us for our scorn.
hehehehehehehehehaaahaaaahaaaahaaaa hohohohohoh hoooo hooboy *deep breath*
Heart! The motor of emotion!
Sven, there are always a couple of nerds who ace organic chem…
E.V. – Actually I’d forgotten about Walton’s monkey problem. Tsk. Tsk. ;)
Jadehawk – Thanks, I didn’t catch the name of the worm in the video. I’m not surprised that is something President Carter would work on. In my view he is a wonderful person.
RevBDC: (you’re welcome)…
Indeed. Do you claim they were not miserable while doing so?
At some point you just have to point and laugh.
Barb (#348):
Sigh. As I indicated, establishing a correlation between complexity and design involves two possible tests:
1. Looking to see if known products of design are typically complex.
2. Looking to see if complex things are typically the product of design.
The first, if true (and we agree it isn’t) is of limited use – it would only show that design entails complexity, not the other way round. However, it would nevertheless show design to be a typically complexity-producing process, and hence a plausible explanation for the existence of complex things.
The second is the more important test, since it would provide a direct inductive basis for reasoning from complexity to design. However, when we look at complex things in general, our ability to identify them independently as products of design is only possible for a few of them – the known products of human artifice. Biological systems we cannot independently identify as being designed, and the fact is that the majority of complex things cannot be independently identified as the products of design. Consequently, we cannot use complexity as a reliable criterion for design because we have not established any positive correlation between the two.
How do you know that they are engineered? What are your criteria for identifying engineered-ness? Obviously it can’t be complexity, since you admit that simple processes also “appear” to be engineered, in which case the appearance of being engineered cannot depend on the complexity of the phenomenon in question.
Begging the question again. You have made no attempt to show that functionality, complexity or interdependence are reliable indicators of design.
I was pointing out that our ability to identify things as designed relies entirely on our existing knowledge from experience of what designers actually create, and the differences between those things and the things they don’t create. This is an epistemological issue, about the logical basis on which we can justify a claim that something is designed.
Taking Paley’s watch as an example: We know it was designed because we know there are human watchmakers. But even if watches and watchmakers were unfamiliar to us, we could still reasonably infer that it was designed, because it is made of materials (metal and glass) that are not usually found in nature in those particular states, or in those particular configurations. That is what allows us to justify the inference that it was designed. Without that background knowledge of what is typically the product of artifice and what is not, and of the contrasting properties typical of the two categories, we could not tell if the watch was designed at all. If we are ignorant of these background facts, then as far as we would be able to tell, watches might grow on trees, and we would have no reasonable basis for supposing otherwise.
So if you insist on claiming that everything must be designed, then you’re abandoning the distinction that provides any general basis for identifying design in the first place. You can of course fall back on the narrower criterion, of relying on your knowledge of the specific products of known designers, but then you have the problem that in order to demonstrate the existence of design in nature, you have to demonstrate the existence of nature’s designer, and not the other way round.
Either way, the Argument for Design fails, because it attempts to demonstrate a designer by demonstrating design, but in doing so it undermines any possibility of demonstrating design independently of demonstrating a designer. It’s not that I’m arbitrarily defining the natural as undesigned (although the artificial/natural distinction is one of the most fundamental human conceptual dichotomies). It’s that the Argument for Design implicitly requires that one be able to make that distinction, and ends up arguing against its own hidden assumption.
Way to go missing the point, which was that these considerations mean that you are unable to demonstrate that nature does have a designer. I’m pointing out the flaws in your argument here, nothing more.
Oh, and a “prime cause” and “designer” are not the same thing. Learn some theology, if you’re incapable of learning anything else.
Barb?… Oh Baaaaaaarb!…
*cricket* *cricket*
I believe Barb has left us for loftier climes. *snort*
This is the only slack I will cut for Barb. She could have real reasons to not answer back. There is real life to tend with.
Take the weather. A very complex interactive system which is hard to predict. Yet where’s the designer? People gave up on looking for Thor hiding behind the clouds tossing thunderbolts (intentionally or accidentally) once it was obvious he wasn’t there. Your (imaginary) god isn’t there either, Barb. Complexity does not imply design.
What about turbulent flow? There’s complexity in the interactions of vortices but no design. There’s no evidence of Titans under the water, stirring things up with tridents.
Volcanic eruptions of various kinds and lava flows form complicated systems too. Still no evidence of design or a designer behind them. Bye-bye Hephaestus/Vulcan.
In the minds of primitive people (of the past and of today) there are monsters everywhere. They’re the product of delusional (malfunctioning), fearful (paranoid) and greedy minds in people who are desperately trying to do deals with imagined abusers. These monsters don’t exist in reality.
Scientists of faith have never been hindered by that faith
and yet YOU seem to be hindered by it mightily.
contrast one scientist, indeed not hindered by “faith”…
Ken Miller
Miller probably wrote the textbook your local high school or college uses to teach basic biology, as his is the most commonly used.
He’s a devout Catholic.
…with those of say, Dembski or Wells or Behe, who obviously HAVE, like yourself, been hindered by their “faith”.
what do you think the difference is, Barb?
As far as journals are concerned, if you think there are many scientific supporters of ID… there is NOTHING stopping them from starting their own journal to publish any scientific attempts at testing any particular ID hypothesis.
So why haven’t they done that?
If you don’t care about the answers to these questions, then you only deserve what scorn is piled on you wherever you decide to spew your nonsense. Anyone who doesn’t know better is worsened by experience with you.
Does that make you proud?
Do you care that Wells is a disciple of Sung Yung Moon?
Of what practical value is creationism? What grand medical breakthroughs will it lead us to?
Your entire worldview is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Nah, Organic was fun. Miserable was taking P-Chem.
Oh, of course. She would bugger off just when I was about to say I’m bored with plain ol’ bible quotin’. How about bible yodeling, bare-breasted bible charades (difficult, but we love a challenge here) or the bible in pirate language.
woot! I win the morning typo contest, simply by forgetting to close a quote mark!
correct:
Ken Miller
Flouncing, bouncy bare breasted bible beating? Patricia, you are one weird bird. Perhaps you should learn to recite the bible in it’s original Klingon.
Yes, I want this as silly, sexy and geeky as possible.
Miserable was taking P-Chem.
seconded.
got a quarter of the way through it, and just couldn’t take any more.
even gave up having chem as a minor degree (with aquatic bio as the major).
P-chem is what cuts the real chemists from pretend chemists, IMO.
*facepalm* just how fucking idiotic are you Barb?
I see that you decided not to answer my challenge and actually show evidence to support your position, typical creotard.
Yes, that was a single point mutation with an impressive cascade effect on the expression of the entirety of the long sequence following it. Whereas other typos terminate with minimal distortion to the sense of the code.
It’s not an original mutation of course. It happens quite a lot round here – along with the italics one and the various blockquote ones.
@patricia:
https://www.sjmpbooks.com/pirate.html
Arrr.
Klingon would be good!
Totally OT – remember the Strato chess from the original Start Trek? I still have one of those sets in the box it came in. Amazing the crap one will hold on to. ;)
It’s not an original mutation of course. It happens quite a lot round here
indeed. I wonder if there is sufficient selection pressure for Seed to make a modification to auto-correct not-closed quotes and tags…
I saw it happen in another ecoblogosphere (Panda’s Thumb).
Actually Barb will ignore all posts after #384 and pretend that they don’t exist. She will then start posting the same insipid “I’m just stupid with Jesus” and “my Hubby knows more than ANY of you haters” fluff she calls logical and the fun will continue.
Forget SIWOTI with Barb, just point and laugh.
Klingon would be good
your wish is my command…
The Gospel According to Mark (Klingon Translation)
HAW!!! Ha, ha! Oh brother. Thou shalt not shiver me timbers like that. *wipes eyes*
The Reverend Ichthyic hath spoken.
*facepalm* just how fucking idiotic are you Barb?
must you even ask? I thought she worked quite hard to make it abundantly clear exactly how idiotic she is.
:p
AAAARGH!! I’ve got geek cooties! ; p
A couple of completely non-scornful questions for Barb:
1) What is the definition of “kind”? That is to say, what and where is the insurmountable barrier beyond which evolution cannot change a species, even given millions of years?
2) Who or what designed the designer?
E.V. Are you implying that you did not have geek cooties?
One of my favorite HS memories, a guy I knew who knitted himself a long Tom Baker scarf. That was so cute. Seriously, I though it was cute.
The Reverend Ichthyic hath spoken.
Kaplah!
:p
Barb @#362:
Indeed, indeed… and yet Francis Collins and Ken Miller would agree with Sven (and every other evolutionary biologist) that creationism is not science, and ID is not science. You do remember that Ken Miller testified against Behe at Kitzmiller v Dover?
Given that you consider your husband to be a bona-fide scientist, could you please answer the question that I asked above?
What does your husband, the medical doctor, think about common descent?
If he disagrees, could you post his exact words on why he disagrees? You did say that he studied genetics. Does he think that all geneticists — including Francis Collins, who definitely accepts common descent — are wrong? If so, why?
And if he accepts common descent, differing from your own hardcore creationist dogma, on what grounds do you disagree with him, if you think he’s such an authority on genetics and other areas of biology?
Yes, I fall under the modern aegis of Art Fag (non Emo variety. Can you even be Emo past 40?), though I have a whole bunch of Nerds and Geeks as friends.
Yes. You can be emo for a very, very long time.
Believe me, I know.
As for Walton and his endless inane libertarian screeds, I have only one response, which actually was posted by someone else here a while back, but I’ve since adopted as being entirely and sufficiently appropriate:
“I’m much less interested in you and your ideas than you seem to think I should be.”
I’m sunk then. I don’t even know what emo is. There go my cootie points. Frell!
lol, that’s great! Can it apply to africangenesis as well?
emo = goth-punk for manic depressives with delusions of grandeur in poetry. requires ridiculously tight pants and having half your face covered up with hair. makeup is a plus.
Emo is short for Emotional Kid. You know the mopey, dyed black hair, eyeliner, bangs from hell, androgynous, “no one understands me”, death/suicidal ideation, outrageous outfits that just taunt jocks to pick on them sort of person.
For girls just add notebooks filled with poems about death (lots of hearts and skulls) and black nails/lipstick – oh wait… nevermind, that usually describes the guys too.
Oh, a Vogon then. ;) No worries, all of my poetry centers around rhyming with Nantucket.
Oh wait… maybe I am Emo.
I got a t-shirt from Nantucket.
Emblazoned on the front is: I am the Man from Nantucket.
My wife has a t-shirt that says: Oh no he isn’t…
We have two of those children in my town. They get picked on, and beat up regularly by the locals of the gawd hates fags club. I thought they were Alice Cooper fans.
Patricia, I doubt that you have much knowledge of post punk music. Emo is a kind of hardcore rock that stresses a kind of emotional purity. I really do not get it myself. But then, I liked rude fucks like Big Black.
Be grateful it is not Jordan, Minnesota.
A woodchuck who came from Nantucket
Had some wood but refused to chuck it.
He said “I don’t know
Just how much I could throw
If I would, ’cause I won’t, so why don’t you just fuck right off, asshole?”
yeah, needs some work.
I always thought it had something to do with Emo Phillips.
The haircut is what does it.
Holy shite! I played half of that Big Black and my Bulldogs started barking like mad. Whew, that’s strong stuff Janine.
Emos usually fall into the Art Fag category, which doesn’t denote any sexual preference specifically. They tend to be intellectually precocious and introspective (read: navelgazers) and/or the victims of abuse (sad). Many are primed to reject religion and adapt non-theistic POVs.
Art Fags/Music Fags are different than Rockers/Stoners/Bad Boys who may also be into art (usually airbrush work, bleak/eerie photographs and tattoos). Some Art Fags are jocks , but Jocks are rarely art fags.
So emo didn’t come from Emo. Then the question is, RevBDC: is Emo emo?
I know for sure that ELO ain’t emo (I will spare all the torture of a you-tube link).
#458
But I won’t!
I should have known Janine liked Big black.
“Songs about Fucking” was one of my go to albums back in the day.
gee, thanks James. Why they let that guy into the Travelling Wilburys I’ll never understand. Must have been his PA.
PLZ tell me ELO is NOT considering a reunion tour!?
:p
Seeing that Emo Phillips was referenced, I have to go forth and find the Goddess. And I found the bit of weirdness.
It could happen!
Don’t Bring Me Down… Oh dear god, that came out my senior year in high school. Just shoot me, just fucking shoot me.
So much for the trolls. Poor showing today.
It must have been surreal to see Judy Tenuta and Emo Phillips out in public together back in the day.
We’re talking about ELO? I think this is the first time I’ve been made to feel young since I started posting here…
There are Emo kiddies and then there are ELO Kiddies. Any excuse to derail a thread with the detritus of my wasted youth.
I want to have Emo grass that would cut itself.
The are growing mechanical trees these days
They grow themselves to their full height and chop themselves down
I’m sure Barb is showing her fellow christianists the last few dozen posts to show what horrible depraved sinners we are. “They’re so dirty and rude!” “They talk openly about s…e…x.” “Why those heathens insulted poor Barb, bless her heart, and she was only trying to save their souls!” “Did you tell them Earl was a Doctor?”
No reality gets in the way of their truth.
… and then they started playing heathen music!
Oooooo, that’s makes you the worst, Janine! Satan makes kids commit suicide through his ungodly music!
I can make you feel even younger Wowbagger. My brothers and I used to amuse ourselves by singing the themes to The Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, and the Oscar Mayer wiener.
#467
I give some credit to Doctor Who. “‘Cause you can’t beat a bit o’ the ELO.”
Poor pompous Barb. She’s obviously from a time and place where telling people your husband was someone important would make them sit up and listen, no matter how vapid and clueless she was.
Why am I getting an image of Laura Bush?
How horrible it must be for her that society has crumbled in such a way that a person is expected to show he or she is worthy of respect by virtue of intellect, acheivement and character, rather than the fact one managed to ‘snag a good catch’.
She probably blames those awful feminists for ruining it for nice women like her.
OK Patricia, but can you sing the theme to Salem cigarettes? Any theme song for tobacco products, besides Marlboro (Theme from The Magnificent Seven)?
I still remember the damn jingle from The Dallas Times Herald classifieds and they’ve been gone for years. (my … brain… hurts…)
Why am I getting an image of Laura Bush?
Your fantasy life is no concern of mine, but…
:p
Ichthyic, that is not ELO. It is Pilot. I am such a child of the seventies.
I see several people here who might want to invite themselves to this forum:
you’ll have to use the invite link if you don’t have a ravelry accnt.
…don’t let the “knitting” subject fool you. LSG is quite raunchy and fun.
The only tobacco product I paid attention to was Dutch Master cigars. I would practice the show girl strut. My brothers made rude noises the whole time.
Now, now Ichthyic, the only thing wrong with us godless knitters is that we’re uppity towards those of no skill, called crocheters.
Patricia, do you remember when The Flintstones were sponsored by Winston?
Janine – I don’t remember that. But I remember commercials for Listerine, when it was naughty to say ‘bad breath’.
James F, thanks for that ELO drenched Who clip. I have to be honest, while not really much of a fan of ELO, I love Mr Blue Sky and Turn To Stone.
‘muttering something about the seventies’
My favorite knitter:
The last CD I bought was Loreena McKennitt’s An Ancient Muse. (Poor Janine just gagged.)
My favorite knitter:
“…There are some things you can do, and some things an ape can do.”
heh.
My favorite Knitters.
Patricia? Do you run about, stomping on chickens?
Could anyone tell me the time? My wall clock’s broken.
Also, what does this button here do?
Thankyou.
Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?
I am just a sad sad person.
Janine, I’m listening to Steely Dan. How 1970s is that?
No, I don’t think it’s that time – this time, maybe.
The button’s stopped flashing. Is that good?
I’ve got the soundtrack to the UK version of Life on Mars; it’s all 70s stuff, most of which I’d never heard before: Hawkind, Free, Thin Lizzy, Atomic Rooster, Slade, Pink Floyd, Nina Simone, Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull and so forth.
Nina Simone – now she was earthshateringly good. The UK version of Life on Mars is superb BTW
The nine (or so) minute live version of Sinnerman is just mindblowing. I believe the best reason for us to develop the capacity for time travel is so I can go back and see the great gigs throughout history.
The US version has just started here and I’ve recorded the episodes that’ve been on – but haven’t watched any yet. But the original rates as one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
Chicken stomping?! Now thems fightin’ words. That feller better stay away from my girls. *snort*
Only a fool would say that.
I have to like a band named for a dildo.
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs; 1959
How 1950’s is that?
AnthonyK, I think the theme is being tangled up in the seventies. Not that I am paying too much attention.
Reminds me of when I saw the awesome Rammstein in concert – they used a milk- (or similar substance) shooting dildo on stage. That’s good music – muscular, pyrotechnic, somewhat homoerotic, hard dance rock in a language I don’t understand.
Janine, I’m listening to Steely Dan. How 1970s is that?
about as 70’s as the James Taylor I was just listening to a little while ago?
now I’ve moved on (or back) to listening to my Nick Cave collection.
It’s a sunny, warm day here in NZ.
*ahhhh*
in fact, I think I’ll call it a day here and go back outside.
cheers, all.