Arguments against Theistic Evolution

[ChristianJuggarnaut]

Lol. I see this may take a while.

Allow to substitute the phrase "not bound by" in place of outside. Then, let's add the phrase "as we currently understand it" after space and time.

So then,

Creationism is a world view that rejects much of Darwinian evolution in favor of a creator not bound by space or time constraints as we presently understand them.

 

[River Jordan]

Creationism is a world view that rejects much of Darwinian evolution in favor of a creator not bound by space or time constraints as we presently understand them.

IOW, it is not bound by any natural/physical laws as we know them.....IOW, it is supernatural.

But either way, I'm good to go with what you wrote.

 

[ChristianJuggarnaut]

So as we have defined creationism I can concede that yes, the ID movement is indeed a movement to support creationism.

I will not concede that ID is made up pseudo science for a political end. It is an attempt to find truth by examining issues through a different set of presuppositions.

You like to make the argument from authority fallacy when stating the consensus opinion of science. Fair enough, however, you take the argument from authority fallacy to a ridiculous position when you make a federal judge the authority in scientific matters.

 

[River Jordan]

So as we have defined creationism I can concede that yes, the ID movement is indeed a movement to support creationism.

IOW, it is a form of creationism.

I will not concede that ID is made up pseudo science for a political end. It is an attempt to find truth by examining issues through a different set of presuppositions.

But it is, and there is direct evidence from how it came about to support that conclusion.

You like to make the argument from authority fallacy when stating the consensus opinion of science.

No I don't. The argument from authority fallacy would be something like, "Evolutionary theory is accurate because the experts say it is". I've not ever made that argument.

What I've done is ask people like you, "Why should anyone accept your claims about evolutionary biology?" That's entirely different.

Fair enough, however, you take the argument from authority fallacy to a ridiculous position when you make a federal judge the authority in scientific matters.

I assume you're referring to Judge Jones in the Dover case.

First, it's important to note that it was the ID creationists who asked the judge to rule on the scientific validity of ID creationism. Second, if you want actual scientists' statements on ID creationism, then...

AAAS Board Statement on Intelligent Design

National Academy of Sciences

You can see more HERE.

So yeah, if you don't want to rely on Judge Jones' opinion, there's certainly no shortage of scientific opinions about ID creationism.

And finally, my conclusions about ID creationism are not at all based on what scientific organizations or judges have said about it. My conclusions are based on a pretty good reading of the subject and comparing it to the data.

 

[Fred Lamm]

River said
Then please explain what you think a "transitional fossil" is. Specific to humans and other primates, what would a transitional fossil between them look like?

Why don’t you give me your definition and I’ll find fault with it, instead of giving you the opportunity to find fault with mine. I know some humans, who with hair added in the right places, would look just like an ape. We already know that apes and humans are similar. Show me an animal that is obviously halfway between two totally different animals. There have to be millions of examples if evolution is true. Show me the animal that is part vertebrate and part invertebrate.

Again you demonstrate that you aren't understanding the information you're reading.

The quote refers to "the common ancestor of the African apes and humans", as in the one and only common ancestor of both groups. That's a separate question than "do transitional fossils between the two groups exist". It's like how you and your third cousins are related, and we can even trace both of your lineages back a few steps, but we can't say exactly who your common great-great grandfather was. Just because we don't know the name of your common great-great grandfather doesn't mean we can't say you're related or identify some of the people between that ancestor and you

I do not misunderstand what I read, as my point was not the lack of the common ancestor fossil, but that the text said there was a lack of hominid fossils from the period before Australopithecus when in fact such specimens do exist. They just don’t fit in to the evolutionary scheme of things.

KP-271 is a single bone (a lower humerus). But the lower humerus of modern humans and chimps is very similar, and we know from more complete fossils that the humerus of Australopithecines is very similar to modern humans. Later analyses (Lague and Jungers (1996)) confirmed that KP-271 anatomically fits within the range of Australopithecines.

Sorry River, but I’m not buying it. Measuring instruments existed in the 1960’s that could easily measure one ten-thousandth of an inch. If you want to know how small that is, take a hair from your head and spit it into 40 strands. Anything smaller could make no possible difference in a comparison that is, after all, a proportional one. Why did it take almost 30 years to make this determination? Human skeletal features have not changed since 1967, but I expect your definition of the range of Australopithecines has. If KP-271 fits within the range of Australopithecines, why isn’t it touted as the oldest example?

And now the conspiracy theories come out. I wondered how long it would take

I do not believe that a conspiracy has to exist for fanatical evolutionists to act from shared dogmatic belief in a theory which, for them, is like a religion. This is not the only example of scientists behaving in this manner. In the early 90’s when they finally repaired the optics on the Hubble space telescope, one of the first things they
did was to try and determine the age of the universe. Well they did the calculations and it turns out the universe was much younger than they thought. They spent six months rechecking the data before they released their findings; the universe could be as young as ten thousand years, and before you repeat the internet storyline that they only said it was 8 billion years, I will tell you that I lived through this period and heard them speak these things. This finding was totally unacceptable to the scientific community and they had to organize a huge conference and debate where they had to come up with a new mathematical approach because the old math couldn’t possibly be correct. You can’t even google the original NASA press releases because your search will say: “some results have been removed”.

So basically no matter what evidence is found, your answer will be either "God made it that way" or "It's all a conspiracy".

Kinda makes this whole discussion pointless, doesn't it?

You still deflect the question; On what basis do you assume that God would not use the same cytochrome c sequence in two different animals? You base all animal ancestry on similar bone structure. Well, birds and humans both have a mesotarsal ankle, yet you believe that humans evolved it independently. Based on your logic, God would never have used the same ankle design (with infinite design possibilities) on two unrelated animals.

First, Menton is a young-earth creationist who works for AiG, and he has absolutely no qualifications in the field of paleontology. Not only that, but the quote from him you posted was not about the specimen we are discussing.

Second....thus we rely on the work of actual paleontologists.

The quote was because you asked about proto-feathers, which Caudipteryx doesn’t possess. You discredit anyone, no matter how educated, who holds a different view than you about evolution. Who made you academic judge and jury for the rest of us?

You are nevertheless guilty of the fallacy of moving the goalposts. Whether or not we can explain exactly how birds evolved from reptiles is irrelevant to the question of whether or not transitional fossils between the two groups exist.

Again I say, horsefeathers! In no other scientific discipline can someone present a theory with no plausible explanation of how it works. This is the reason that your theory is nothing more than a fairy tale.

Well now either you really don't understand what we're discussing, or you're being dishonest. One more time...

The mainstream view among paleontologists is that birds evolved from theropods, which are reptiles. Feduccia and a couple of others maintain that birds and theropods evolved from a common ancestor, which was still a reptile. IOW, their disagreement is over which type of reptile birds evolved from.

Thus, your description of Feduccia is either deliberately deceptive or based in ignorance.

Larry Martin said that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs. Fedduccia said that they did not evolve from theropods. They both disagree with you and I did not misquote them.

For one, by comparative genomics. But I'm still waiting for Behe's "factual" work on irreducible complexity.

I’m sorry but comparative genomics offers no mechanism by which new genetic information is introduced.

So now we're back to that question you wouldn't answer before. What's the difference? Is there some taxonomic line that must be crossed before you will call it "evolution"?

The difference is, River, that no new genetic material has been introduced or created. It’s just one type of already existing genetic material having a greater survival rate than another. They are still influenza, or don’t you rename an evolved creature?
I would like to ask you the question, that if there was no Adam and we didn’t fall in him, them how can we be redeemed in Christ? If Genesis is metaphor, then where does metaphor end and truth begin? The flood or maybe the tower of Babel or why stop now? Maybe all the miracles, including the resurrection are just literary devices? Theistic evolutionists claim that they love God, but the truth is they love God a little and their academic reputations a lot. The truth of God never changes. Why do you believe that the Bible should have to change because of “scientific discovery”, when every year “science” gets revised and what was once held as truth is revealed to be ignorance.

Have a Blessed Day,
Fred Lamm

 

[River Jordan]

Why don’t you give me your definition and I’ll find fault with it, instead of giving you the opportunity to find fault with mine.

Really Fred? You come onto this board, declaring that "transitional fossils" don't exist, but now we find out that you haven't ever really looked to see if they exist, and now can't even define what a "transitional fossil" is?

Given all that, what do you think your opinions about fossils are worth?

I do not misunderstand what I read, as my point was not the lack of the common ancestor fossil, but that the text said there was a lack of hominid fossils from the period before Australopithecus when in fact such specimens do exist. They just don’t fit in to the evolutionary scheme of things.

Again, given the above your opinions on fossils don't really carry much weight.

Sorry River, but I’m not buying it.

So? A person like you who's never studied anything about fossils and can't even say what a "transitional fossil" is doesn't "buy" the conclusions of paleontologists. So what? Why should anyone take anything you say about fossils seriously?

Why did it take almost 30 years to make this determination? Human skeletal features have not changed since 1967, but I expect your definition of the range of Australopithecines has. If KP-271 fits within the range of Australopithecines, why isn’t it touted as the oldest example?

Because it's a small elbow fragment and is too small to really draw firm conclusions on. So now are you going to complain about that too? On one hand scientists are too eager to state things as fact, but OTOH they're too cautious?

It almost looks like you're just going to complain and cry foul no matter what they do.

I do not believe that a conspiracy has to exist for fanatical evolutionists to act from shared dogmatic belief in a theory which, for them, is like a religion.

Then this is indeed pointless. You can just wave away anything that doesn't fit your preconceptions as "those fanatical evolutionists promoting their religion" and never have to think about it again.

On what basis do you assume that God would not use the same cytochrome c sequence in two different animals?

Because it doesn't make any sense. There's no functional reason for God to use the same sequence for humans and chimps, but different sequences for other organisms. Not only that, but sequences for cytochrome c have been used to construct and confirm phylogenetic relationships.

But if there's no functional reason behind those sequence relationships, why it the world would God make it so they look exactly like what we would expect under common ancestry? That makes absolutely no sense at all. Thus, the logical objective conclusion is that the reason for these sequence similarities is common ancestry.

Again I say, horsefeathers! In no other scientific discipline can someone present a theory with no plausible explanation of how it works. This is the reason that your theory is nothing more than a fairy tale.

Of course you believe that. You know almost nothing about it except for how it conflicts with your fundamentalist beliefs, and that's really the heart of the issue here, isn't it? Why else would someone who knows almost nothing about a subject spend so much time trying to argue against it?

Larry Martin said that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs. Fedduccia said that they did not evolve from theropods. They both disagree with you and I did not misquote them.

And now we know for a fact that you're being dishonest. As has been explained, they disagree over which reptiles birds evolved from, not whether birds evolved from reptiles at all.

The fact that you have to stoop to such dishonesty tells me a lot about you and how you approach this subject. Obviously the stakes are high for you....so much that you're willing to be so blatantly dishonest without even a shred of shame. That reeks of desperation.

I’m sorry but comparative genomics offers no mechanism by which new genetic information is introduced.

How do you know anything about comparative genomics? I think we both know the answer to that question....you don't.

So that leads to an obvious question...what causes a person who knows almost nothing about a subject to think himself such an expert in it that he can go around speaking like an authority? Not only that, I wonder if you're expecting everyone else to blindly accept your declarations about these subjects as truth? I mean, should we just pull everyone out of science classes and have them read your posts?

The difference is, River, that no new genetic material has been introduced or created.

So let's introduce yet another question that I'm betting you won't answer. What is "genetic information" and how are you measuring it?

I would like to ask you the question, that if there was no Adam and we didn’t fall in him, them how can we be redeemed in Christ? If Genesis is metaphor, then where does metaphor end and truth begin? The flood or maybe the tower of Babel or why stop now? Maybe all the miracles, including the resurrection are just literary devices?

I've never said there was no Adam or that Genesis is a metaphor.

Why do you believe that the Bible should have to change because of “scientific discovery”, when every year “science” gets revised and what was once held as truth is revealed to be ignorance.

Who said anything about changing the Bible?