A Christian reformer?

[Giancarlo]

Diplomat, none of those sources hold any validity. Especially that of ICR. Creationism is false. Period.

[Evil Knevil]

Don't be sound so close-minded Fez, it makes a mockery of scientific dispassion on which evidence against the blind orthodoxy of Creationism is based.

Oh and scientists don't have to subscribe to 'theories' they subscribe to bodies of evidence.

[Giancarlo]

I am sorry but if you want to find a subject I am stubborn on, this is it. I am deeply angered when I hear creationists try to create some scientifically backed BS reports. Deeply angered. They should get over it! The world is not 6,000 years old.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Fez
Diplomat, none of those sources hold any validity. Especially that of ICR. Creationism is false. Period.

Just like that, eh? Just dismiss everything without even looking at. What are you afraid of?

[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by The diplomat


Just like that, eh? Just dismiss everything without even looking at. What are you afraid of?

The world isn't 6,000 years old.

Accept the reality and not some twisted so called "scientific" BS report.

[Evil Knevil]

Only two of those articles were properly peer reviewed, and none of the conclusions support endorse a 6k Earth.

A few reports does not a theory make.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by The diplomat
proof against human evolution

http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid5.htm

http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid6.htm

Neither of these (nor any of those) offer any proof against evolution. Even if their claims (which, it must be noted, are erroneous based on their own willful ignorance and selective interpretation) were true, it wouldn't prove evolution false, especially considering we've observed evolution in action.

Negative argumentation does not prove anything.

At any rate, I'll turn you to someone who has refuted all of these 9 "problems"

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1366/lapointe.html

At TalkOrigins, they've shown why these "evidences" are full of problems and lies themselves:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/jun98.html

"In all likelihood, you have seen quotes from Nelson that have been taken out of context in order to "prove" that "scientists have doubts about the theory of evolution." One site on the web that has done so is the Top Ten Evidences Against Evolution site, which quotes Nelson and others out of context, and also repeats other legends such as the thoroughly debunked Lucy's knee joint story."

The site your source has been proven to quote Nelson out of context to support their claims. How's that for being dishonest? Check the TalkOrigins link and scroll down to the above quote, there are links showing how that thing is a crock of ****.

logical inconsistencies in natural selection
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid8.htm

These are real stretches. Note they are not all inconsistencies, as the title claims. They are also only logical problems to creationists who are claiming they are problems, based on their perspective of how things should be. A perfect example is this one:

"That living things are suited for their environment better explains the fact that they were created for it not that they evolved into it."

If you can't see the logical absurdity of this statement when you compare it to what evolutionary theory states, then no wonder you believe this tripe.

The notion that living things are suited to their environment because they are designed to be is unsupported. It is also a twisiting of what evolution says. Evolution says that a species adapts via random variation+natural selection. It is the environment that determines the species suitability, not anything else. Species not suitable for an environment die, those that are live.

How does Creationism, if it believes all living things are suited to their environment by design, explain why 99%+ plus of all species that have ever lived are now extinct? There's your own logical inconsistency.

It goes on again and again with each item. Like:

"Similarity among living things points to a common design by a designer who used similar patterns."

This doesn't show an inconsistency in evolution at all! Evolution states systems are similar due to common ancestry. How does the above become more logical, unless one presupposes a designer in the first place? Absurd circular reasoning.

And I love this one:

"We find that the world was obviously made for humankind and this demands more than change for survival but order, interdependence, and design."

Obviously?! Why obviously? Evolution explains why humankind has thrived in our world. The notion we were "made" for it is unsupported, circular logic, yet again.

Geological record
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid9.htm]

And what part of Ecolution does this falsify? Polystrate fossils are far better explained by mainstream geology. If the flood happened, please tell me how successive layers of forest, with rooted trees (amongst transported examples) with identifiable, mature soil horizons form 5/6ths of the way up the geologic column during a catastrophic flood.

The flood, utterly fails to explain the fossil record. Why are single celled bacteria buried before single celled eukaryotes? Why are single celled organisms buried before multicellular? Why are fossil forests not found at the bottom of the gc, given entire layers of paleosols have rooted trees in them, in fact, why are angiosperms & gymnosperms found so consistently at the layers they are found at, given they both produce small plants to large trees?

More on the geologic nonsense of the Flood:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-visit/bartelt4.html

Note the second above talks about your ICR, which you cite. Any clue as to who the ICR is and what they say? Here's a great link to their stupid claims:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-whoppers.html

Evidence supporting creationism (Note that they are all peer reviewed scientific papers)

Whoa...peer reviewed? Where? What scientific journal were these published in? Just because it's trussed up as a research paper doesn't make it peer-reviewed. It was published in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal Vol. 10! Oh, "scientific" journal devoted to proving Creationism! Yeah, I'm sure that's peer reviewed.

Here's some refutation of their geologic nonsense:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-science.html

Note they show how Austin is prone to making false claims and misinterpreting his evidence to support his conclusions.

Here's more on radiodating and why it is a reliable measure of age:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html

"There are many situations where radiometric dating is not possible, or where a dating attempt will be fraught with difficulty. This is the inevitable nature of rocks that have experienced millions of years of history: not all of them will preserve their age of origin intact, not every rock will have appropriate chemistry and mineralogy, no sample is perfect, and there is no dating method that can effectively date rocks of any age or rock type. For example, methods with very slow decay rates will be poor for extremely young rocks, and rocks that are low in potassium (K) will be inappropriate for K/Ar dating. The real question is what happens when conditions are ideal, versus when they are marginal, because ideal samples should give the most reliable dates. If there are good reasons to expect problems with a sample, it is hardly surprising if there are!"

You'll note that just because there are situations wherein radiodating can be problematic does not invalidate its accuracy in all situations. Basic logic.

Regardless, geologist Austin is no biologist, and nothing he posits proves evolution wrong. Bringing dating methods into question doesn't change the fact that we have observed evolution in action. We have observed random variation + natural selection at work. How does questioning geologic aging methods contradict that?

There is no conspiracy. Most scientists just don't really have a choice since evolution is the only secular theory possible.

Only secular theory possible? Why is that? If there is such evidence against evolution, why isn't another secular theory possible? Maybe all the species were planted here by aliens! That's secular, and is possible.

But you seem to be indicating that if evolution is wrong, then Creationism must be correct. False dichotomy. In order to show Creationism to be correct, you must come up with positive evidence for it. You must also explain why everything science has observed supports evolution (as you seem to admit here) yet such things are not correct.

I'm still waiting for you to support your previous claims. Scientific sources would help as opposed to the likes of that page that claims to have the 9 evidences against evolution. Hey, how about 29 evidences for?

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Did you even read it? I did the courtesy of reading yours, you could at least do the same.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Fez
The world isn't 6,000 years old.

I never said it was. I just said that speciation is a theory not a fact.

Frankly, I don't care how old the Earth is. It probably is billions of years old. I firmly believe that life was created by God. Obviously, variations developped within species. But, I don't think the evidence supports the conclusion that all species evolved from a primitive soup of proteins without any God at all.

[Giancarlo]

Boris you do a much better job than I do. I wish I had your skill.

[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Frankly, I don't care how old the Earth is. It probably is billions of years old. I firmly believe that life was created by God. Obviously, variations developped within species. But, I don't think the evidence supports the conclusion that all species evolved from a primitive soup of proteins without any God at all.

Fine believe that. But let me tell you, I do not believe in god and I don't see any reason for it.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Just like that, eh? Just dismiss everything without even looking at. What are you afraid of?

What's good for the goose! You didn't bother to read mine, you just dismissed talkorigins as a source out of hand sans any evidence.

So answer their evidence.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by The diplomat
I never said it was. I just said that speciation is a theory not a fact.

Frankly, I don't care how old the Earth is. It probably is billions of years old. I firmly believe that life was created by God. Obviously, variations developped within species. But, I don't think the evidence supports the conclusion that all species evolved from a primitive soup of proteins without any God at all.

Then why bring up the geologic nonsense of the ICR if you don't even believe it?

Guess what? Just because you choose not to believe it out of ignorance (you seem unwilling to actually educate yourself on what evolution actually says but rather rely on creationist strawman garbage) isn't a problem for science.

Explain rationally why you accept variations within a species but reject that a species could vary enough to become a new one, especially since (as I showed) such things have been observed? Where is this magical barrier between species? Science certainly doesn't support your belief here.

As for the "soup," guess what? We know it can happen. Scientists have recreated the conditions of the primordial earth in a laboratory, and guess what? Proteins formed:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rossuk/abiogen.htm

"In 1953, a University of Chicago graduate student named Stanley Miller working in Harold Urey's lab flipped a switch sending electric discharges through a chamber containing a combination of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water. The experiment yielded organic compounds including some amino acids, the building blocks of life, and catapulted a field of study known as exobiology into the headlines. Since that time a new understanding of the workings of RNA and DNA, have increased the scope of the subject. Moreover, the discovery of prebiotic conditions on other planets and the announcement of a bacterial fossil originating on Mars has brought new attention to the study of life's origins. Exobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe."

Does this disprove God? No. You can believe in God all you want. But please stop making fallacious attacks on what is and isn't scientific fact because it happens not to jive with your belief system.

[Boris Godunov]

Oh, and the fact that you don't understand what the word "theory" is in scientific terms tells me a lot about how much you know of this.

"Theory" in science doesn't mean guess or hypothesis. "Theory" refers to the mechanism of how something works. For instance, the "Theory of Gravity" states that objects of greater mass attract objects of lesser mass (basically). That is independent from "Gravity" itself, which is a fact. Should the theory be wrong, then Gravity still exists, we just need a new mechanism.

Same is true for Evolution. The "fact" of Evolution is established. We know from both direct observation and observational inference that evolution is reality. Random variation + Natural Selection is the theory of how the fact happens. Should that theory be shown to be false (it hasn't), then a new theory is needed to explain the fact of evolution. It does not make evolution itself false.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Did you even read it? I did the courtesy of reading yours, you could at least do the same.

I apreciate that you checked my links. I have read yours.

It seems to me phylogenetics does not necessarily prove common descent. It just proves that all life shares similar "building blocks". If life were designed, it would also have those same "building blocks", because it would make much more sense to design life piece by piece rather than build every life in a completely separate and unrelated way. After all, when engineers design an airplane, they don't start from scratch every time, they build on previous designs.

All airplanes share common characteristics because they were designed that way.

All life is automatically going to share common characteristics since all life shares the same planet, and therefore shares fairly similar environments.

This quote caught my attention:
"Finally, many molecules besides ATP could serve equally well as the common currency for energy in various species (CTP, TTP, UTP, ITP, or any ATP-like molecule with one of the 293 known amino acids or one of the dozens of other bases replacing the adenosine moiety immediately come to mind). Discovering any new animals or plants that contained any of the anomalous examples proffered above would be strong falsifications of common ancestry, but they have not been found."

If other molecules besides ATP are equally acceptable as currency for energy, then why did the others not develop simultaneously with ATP? In other words, if life evolved, and the other molecules are equally acceptable, then why is there not some life that uses ATP, and some life that uses UTP, that evolved simultaneously? I don't quite see why anomalous examples would necessarily falsify common ancestry.

And if only ATP works, then it would make sense that life would only use ATP if it were designed, since you are not going to design something to fail.

That brings me to my other point. The fact that life is most generally well suited for its environment can also fit intelligent design, since logically, if you design life, you are going to design it to fit into its environment. You are not going to purposely design life to fail.

It just seems to me that evolution has to involve circular reasoning to some degree. Since science cannot prove or disprove God, it can only rely on naturalistic explanation. If naturalistic explanation is the only acceptable explanation, then the only logical explanation to why life shares common characteristics, is common ancestry. Therefore, you are automatically going to classify life through a tree of life. Once you have your tree, you have proved common ancestry. But you had to assume common ancestry to begin with, since you are assuming a naturalistic explanation. If life were organized completely differently, scientists would not reconsider common ancestry, they would just draw a different tree.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Guess what? Just because you choose not to believe it out of ignorance.

I don't reject evolution because of ignorance. I reject evolution because I am not convinced by the research and conclusions of evolutionists. When I read that scientists believe they have uncovered a new piece of human evolution, and the evidence is only a partial skull, I have difficulty believing the conclusion on such fragmented evidence.

Explain rationally why you accept variations within a species but reject that a species could vary enough to become a new one, especially since (as I showed) such things have been observed? Where is this magical barrier between species? Science certainly doesn't support your belief here.

I believe variations within a species because it has clearly been observed. The cases of speciation that TalkOrigins mentions, are all minute changes. As MtG said, the time scale is too short to ever observe "significant evolutionary changes".

To put is simply: small variations do not neccesarily prove that a fish can evolve into a reptile.

We know from biology and genetics, that organisms have self-repair mechanisms for their DNA. These self-repair mechanisms will tend to prevent deviation in the genetic structure beyond a certain point. This will tend to work against variation to the point of becoming another species.

Maybe I am a bit confused about what a species is. If the barrier between species is whether or not the two can procreate together, then if I have a child that can't reproduce with other humans, is the child really a new human species? There are humans that are sterile, are they a new human species?

As for the "soup," guess what? We know it can happen. Scientists have recreated the conditions of the primordial earth in a laboratory, and guess what? Proteins formed:

Not the Miller-Urey experiment! That was proved to be false. They deliberately set up the experiment with the perfect conditions they knew would likely form proteins. We don't know that the conditions in the experiment really were the same as on the primordial Earth. They probably weren't. You can't deliberately manipulate an experiment to get a certain result, and then claim the experiment proves what you were hoping it would prove!