Creationists PWNED

[GePap]

Originally posted by beingofone
I have learned a valuable lesson by visiting and debating in this forum.

The lesson is - you cannot disagree with the accepted thought of being a crustacean that emerged out of the primordial swamp. You will be expelled from the good ole boy network instantly if you fail to repent of your ways. In fact, you should only want to talk with true heart felt believers. Anyone who disagrees is just not ready for the truth. They should take time to listen, ask questions and ponder the meaning.

Really? Why then do Mr Nice Guy and The diplomat still here? Somehow they make it. Must be natural selection of creationists.

It is perfectly fine to insult, cajol, and denegrate all such lower life forms who disagree. Obviously they have not considered the deep and vast thoughts of the true nature of existence. After all they are doomed to suffer a meaningless existence. Wandering about without the searing fire of powerful intellect that is not open to only your special truth.

That's just standard behavior here with any disagreement of any kind. Your sport teams suck! You mouthbreather!

Your religion is the most exclusive fundamentalist religion I have ever studied or experienced. You just stop talking to those who are not ready for your gospel.

Its not a religion, as there are no rites nor acts to be performed with any regularity (the very meaning of religion). Its a belief.

In fact you are not open to any new ideas except what promotes your already preconceived concept of existence. You have shown me that this is not open debate - it is mere recruiting for your religion.

We are open to informed debate. That is the problem. If you give us non-literary evidence for creationist claims, fine. But that a book says so sadly is NOT informed debate. Other books disagree, so what?

When a person has a cogent, well thought out line of reasoning that disagrees with yours - only a fool would ignore this person. I can only learn from a discusion that disagrees with my viewpoint.
Unless you have a religious belief system that is being threatened.

While doctrine is open to discussion, religion by itself is a matter solely of faith, not reason. How do you argue faith? Faith is by definition beyond arguement.
The taughtology that only a scientific hypothesis can have any merit or truth is just another religion. Any other suggestion that may be true would be like a cat scratching a scrotum.

Science at its apex is still just a guess - yet with enough faith it can become so real.
YES - I see the light.

Science is not a religion, thought some make it a faith (a huge distinction). But at its very heart science is and can't be a faith- its the opposite of faith, it is seeking understanding through experimentation and complete skepticism unless adequate proof is given- it is inherently relativistic except on the one thing, the method by which acceptable evidence is gathered.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by beingofone
When a person has a cogent, well thought out line of reasoning that disagrees with yours - only a fool would ignore this person. I can only learn from a discusion that disagrees with my viewpoint.
Unless you have a religious belief system that is being threatened.

This is the lynchpin and it causes the rest of your diatribe to fall apart. The entire point is that neither Creationism nor ID are "cogent, well though out" lines of reasoning. They boil down to a few logical fallacies that are gussied up with purty language. YOu can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

Your assessment of the situation seems curiously at odds with the reality I see. One can read a history of the evolution/creation debate and easily see that the side that has cornered the market on insults, cajolery, strawmanism and outright falsehood is the Creationist side. Ever since Darwin published Origin, Creationists have come up frothing with accusations of atheism, hedonism, marxism, Nazism, and pretty much every negative -ism imaginable to describe people who accept evolution. I see no such zeal on the part of evolutionary biologists to demonize Creationists. Maybe that's because evolution is a matter of science, whereas Creationism is a matter of a religious/philosophical agenda?

I find the notion of a conspiratorial cabal of scientists seeking to exclude some sort of "cogent" Creationist scientific theory out of some atheistic crusade pretty amusing. Anyone who thinks this hasn't a clue how scientists work or what kind of people are scientists. First, a majority of scientists are people of religious faith. The false dichotomy that one is either a Creationist or an Atheist Evilutionist is the product of Creationists, not scientists. Second, scientists love alternative theories that challenge mainstream thought. If there were any scientific merit to Creationism, scientists would be beating a path to it. But they aren't, and it's not out of an exclusionary snobbery, it's because, simply put, there is no scientific validity to Creationism.

The taughtology that only a scientific hypothesis can have any merit or truth is just another religion. Any other suggestion that may be true would be like a cat scratching a scrotum.

First, I'd suggest looking up "tautology" for both correct spelling and correct meaning, as you got both wrong here.

Second, how else would you expect "science" to proceed except under the assumption that only "scientific" hypotheses should be considered "science?" Should scientists be investigating unicorns and elves and fairies?

Science at its apex is still just a guess

You haven't a clue.

[Last Conformist]

Must be natural selection of creationists.

Teh irony!

[Sava]

PWNING creationists is like beating some retarded kids in the special olympics... It doesn't take much effort, and only the mean-spirited find it funny...









including me.

[trev]

The hardest seems to be the Question about Fish:

As the world was relatively new at the time of Noahs flood, all water was relatively fresh and all fish were adapted to relatively saltfree water, the salt in the sea has mostly accumulated since the time of Noahs flood and fish have also gradually adapted to the increased salt level, but Noahs flood caused no survival problems for fish

What happened to the Dinosaurs?

The dinosaurs were in Noahs boat and continued to live after the flood for several thousand years. A very good poetic description of dinosaurs (one being a dragon - ie firebreathing) is given in the biblical book of Job chapters 40 ( 2nd half) and 41, a description so realistic that it would suggest the author had seen dinosaurs. There are also many reports of pterosaurs from the Indian tribes of America existing to recent times. If you can obtain these sources check them out The Piasa, or The Devil Among the Indians, E.B.Fletcher, p31, 1887, Clay, R., Indian Tribes of Guiana, Taylor and Son Printers, p375, 1868; Karns, H.J., Unknown Arizona and Sonora,1693-1721, Arizona Silhouttes, Arizona,pp105-106, 1954, This book is a translation of Manje's Luz De Tierra Incognita Also an essay by St John Damascene (c 675-749) titled 'On Dragons and Ghosts' has been recently translated into russian and describes dinosaurs, see 'The Works of St. John Damascene, Martis Publishing House, Moscow, 1997. He writes about animals he calls dragons whose description resembles dinosaurs as animals that lived at that time.

There is much more evidence in ancient myths, legends, writings, cave drawings etc that talk about or picture animals that resemble dinosuars that prove that although rare, they did exist to reasonably recent time. In fact Dio [Cassius] the Roman writes about a dragon being killed by a Roman army in the war against Carthage in 3rd century BC, and the skin being sent to the Roman Senate, a skin that was measured to be 120 feet long

Whether a person believes in Creation or Evolution, they should not dispute the evidence that dinosaurs lived until recently. It is because Evolutionists ignore a lot of real evidence about the recent existence of dinosaurs that gives creationism credibility

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by trev
As the world was relatively new at the time of Noahs flood, all water was relatively fresh and all fish were adapted to relatively saltfree water, the salt in the sea has mostly accumulated since the time of Noahs flood and fish have also gradually adapted to the increased salt level, but Noahs flood caused no survival problems for fish

Is any of this based on, you know, science, or is it just conjecture?

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH541.html

Layering of the floodwaters contradicts the Flood model, which proposes that the Flood was turbulent enough to stir up sediments on an incredible scale. The model proposes that the floodwaters became the present oceans, so all the water flowing into the oceans would have ensured that they were well mixed. The freshwater fish would have had no place to find fresh water.

The fact that many fish can tolerate wide ranges in salinity does not mean that all can. Furthermore, the problem applies to more than fish. Freshwater invertebrates are commonly used as indicators of the health of streams. Even a tiny amount of pollution can cause many species to disappear from the stream.

Aquatic organisms would have more than salinity to worry about.

Heat. All mechanisms proposed to cause the Flood would have released enough heat to boil the oceans. The deposition of limestone would release enough heat to boil them again. Meteors and volcanoes which occurred during the Flood, as implied by their presence in layers attributed to the Flood by Flood geologists, would probably have boiled them again. [Isaak 1998] (Woodmorappe [1996, 140] dismisses the problem of volcanoes but ignores all the other sources of heat.)

Acid. The volcanoes which erupted during the Flood would also have produced sulfuric acid, enough to lower the pH of the ocean to 2.2, which would be fatal to almost all marine life. [Morton 1998b]

Substrate. Many freshwater and marine invertebrates rely on a substrate. They anchor themselves on the substrate and rely on currents to carry their food to them. During the Flood, substrates would have been uninhabitable at least part of the time, especially on land. Woodmorappe (p. 141) suggests floating pumice as a substrate, but it would float with the currents, so currents would not bring nutrients to animals on them.

Pressure. The Flood would have caused great fluctuation in sea pressures. Many deep-sea creatures invariably die from the decompression when brought to the surface. Other surface animals would die from too much pressure if forced deep underwater.

I find it curious you would claim that fish could adapt so quickly to living in saltwater or freshwater. The level of adaptation needed to accomplish such a change in that amount of time far exceeds the speed at which evolution occurs. Isn't one of Creationists common complaints that there isn't enough time for evolution to happen?

Yours is nothing but a "Just-So" story: a fantastic explanation devoid of any scientific merit.

The dinosaurs were in Noahs boat and continued to live after the flood for several thousand years.

I'm all ears for how Noah fit tens of thousands of dinosaurs, in addition to hundreds of thousands of other species, all onto a wooden barge about 350 feet long. With one window, no less.

A very good poetic description of dinosaurs (one being a dragon - ie firebreathing) is given in the biblical book of Job chapters 40 ( 2nd half) and 41, a description so realistic that it would suggest the author had seen dinosaurs.

Realistic, but firebreathing? Pray tell, which dinosaur is it that was a firebreather?

I don't think the description in the Bible is like a dinosaur much at all, unless one does some very selective reading and squints real narrowly at the text.

http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Leviathan,_from_the_book_of_Job,_was_a_dinosaur

Leviathan appears also in Ugaritic texts, where it is described as a twisting serpent (echoing language from Is. 7:1) with seven heads. It personifies the waters of the primeval chaos. The rousing of Leviathan in Job 3:8 implies an undoing of the process of creation. [Day, 1992]

It has also been suggested that Leviathan is a crocodile or whale, but its multiple heads (referred to also in Ps. 74:14) make it clear that it is a fantastic creature, such as appear in folklore from all times and places.
Leviathan is clearly described as a sea creature in the Bible. Parasaurolophus, Tyrannosaurus and Apatosaurus are terrestrial.

According to Job 41, Leviathan speaks (verse 3), wears clothes (verse 13), breathes fire (verses 19-21) and is impervious to weapons (verses 26-29). That is clearly not a description of a dinosaur.

The message of Job 41 is that part of nature is indomitable, that "no purpose of God's can be thwarted" [Job 42:2]. That message would lose its meaning if Leviathan was an ordinary animal that humans would be able to kill. The larger message of Job is that God's ways cannot always be understood. That message is best served by leaving Leviathan mythical.

In fact Dio [Cassius] the Roman writes about a dragon being killed by a Roman army in the war against Carthage in 3rd century BC, and the skin being sent to the Roman Senate, a skin that was measured to be 120 feet long

Interesting, but you'll note there is no shred of evidence for this claim. This claim comes from St. John Damascene, writing in the 8th century AD, well over a thousand years after the alleged incident. We have no information on what it was based, and there's nothing corraborrating it at all. Damascene also clearly describes the creature as a serpent--a large snake.

Whether a person believes in Creation or Evolution, they should not dispute the evidence that dinosaurs lived until recently. It is because Evolutionists ignore a lot of real evidence about the recent existence of dinosaurs that gives creationism credibility

What real evidence? There isn't a shred of paleontological evidence supporting the recent existence of dinosaurs. Ancient myths mentioning monsters is hardly a basis for thinking they were referring to dinosaurs. Ancient myths have all sorts of beasts in them. Should we take the Odyssey as fact and believe their are sentient whirlpools in the Aegean waiting to swallow up sailors?

[SnowFire]

I smell shenanagins. I'll play around with the program later, but isn't the whole point of irreducibly complex things that you cannot make them by such a process? I mean, if irreducibly complex things are really irreducible, than it should require direct programmer intervention in order to create one, so clearly the definition is too loose here. I mean, the whole "crashes if you remove any line" thing just doesn't sound like an accurate analogy for determining if something's really irreducibly complex. I can easily see life-forms that are provably evolvable rather simply (or programs) that evolve by changing lines rather than directly adding or removing them that will still fit the definition of "irreducibly complex" used by these people, i.e. crashing if any one line was removed.

The mental concept I get behind "irreducible complexity" is that if you were to imagine a map- stick it in two variables for a nice simple two dimensional map, easier to see in your head- where a dead zone exists surrounding an interior which features something "livable." Any evolution that tried to move towards it would- assuming that the diamter of the zone is larger than the space you can move in one generation- be eaten up by said zone, as their half-wing proved useless or whatever. If you think of it in this way, it's basically impossible to ever get inside there, short of having a lifeform start there, or for a programmer to fudge the rules and let the organism survive over the gap.

If all they proved is that something with locally sub-optimal features will occasionally randomly mutate toward something farther away that's more hospitable, that's hardly news, as it's how many genetic algorithms work. But that assumes that the locally sub-optimal feature isn't deadly, i.e. the "score" of the algorithm is greater than whatever score is deemed minimally necessary. All you have to do is make certain that any creature trying to evolve into a platypus must first stop by "dead weird mammal," and you'll have proven that the platypus was a victim of ID (although doing that in real life is easier said than done!)

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by SnowFire
I smell shenanagins. I'll play around with the program later, but isn't the whole point of irreducibly complex things that you cannot make them by such a process? I mean, if irreducibly complex things are really irreducible, than it should require direct programmer intervention in order to create one, so clearly the definition is too loose here. I mean, the whole "crashes if you remove any line" thing just doesn't sound like an accurate analogy for determining if something's really irreducibly complex.

No, what you describe would just be circular reasoning. The whole point of the ID hypothesis is to claim that systems in nature are so complex that they couldn't have evolved by chance is proof of a designer.

Irreducible Complexity means that there are systems whose workings are such that if one part failed to work, the whole system would stop working. The common analogy they use is a mousetrap. Take away one part, it ceases to work, so it couldn't evolve by chance, since the mechanisms would have had to all evolved at once to develop a working system.

The big gaping hole in this logic is that we see in evolution that organisms tend to adapt body parts to serve different means over time.

Another problem is the IDist assumption, which is utterly baseless, that "half" of what we know to be a working system would, for some reason, be useless. You mention the "half wing." Half a wing would be much more useful than no wing, as less-than-full wings can still be used for gliding, or catching yummy bugs as the ancestors to bats did. As Dawkins noted, 10% of an eye is better than no eye, as that 10% will still give that species a survival advantage over competitors.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by trev
As the world was relatively new at the time of Noahs flood, all water was relatively fresh and all fish were adapted to relatively saltfree water, the salt in the sea has mostly accumulated since the time of Noahs flood and fish have also gradually adapted to the increased salt level, but Noahs flood caused no survival problems for fish

There're two problems with this.

If you agree with the Creationists, fishes wouldn't evolve - at least they would not evolve into different species that are adapted to different environments. There have always been salt water, fresh water, and brickish water fishes.

As for the bit about salinity of sea water, it is a process that takes billions of years. Seeing how only Young Earth Creationists support the Noachian Flood thing, you cannot have both at the same time.

Besides, salinity is only a minor problem. Pressure is a much bigger one. Even if we only assume the Flood added 2000m to the sea level - far insufficient to cover the top of the mountains - there's another 200 atmospheric pressure crushing down on the fishes. All would be crushed utterly.

In fact, every living organisms would be crushed utterly, seeing how all that water was in the air to begin with.

[trev]

As for the bit about salinity of sea water, it is a process that takes billions of years.

Wrong, an analysis of the inflow of salts into the sea will reveal that relatively short periods are required to attain the current salinity levels, no more than 10 million years, and much less time for some types of salts. Using a global flood scenario, with its massive erosion, and therefore accumulation of salt along with inflows from rivers, the current saltiness can be achieved with a young earth. Evolutionist actually need to include unproven salt sinks into their equations to prove why the oceans are not saltier than they actually are.

Besides, salinity is only a minor problem. Pressure is a much bigger one. Even if we only assume the Flood added 2000m to the sea level - far insufficient to cover the top of the mountains - there's another 200 atmospheric pressure crushing down on the fishes. All would be crushed utterly.

.Absurd, illogical reasoning, flood built up over 40 days, any fish can swim to adjust its depth in that time

[trev]

In fact, every living organisms would be crushed utterly, seeing how all that water was in the air to begin with.

Most of the water probably came from the ground, the bible states that the fountains of the deep opened up, not from the air.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by trev
Wrong, an analysis of the inflow of salts into the sea will reveal that relatively short periods are required to attain the current salinity levels, no more than 10 million years, and much less time for some types of salts.

Where is this analysis?

Originally posted by trev
Using a global flood scenario, with its massive erosion, and therefore accumulation of salt along with inflows from rivers, the current saltiness can be achieved with a young earth.

Where is the geological evidence of said "massive erosion?" Where is the geological evidence of a global flood? Where did the water come from? Where did it go?

Originally posted by trev
Evolutionist actually need to include unproven salt sinks into their equations to prove why the oceans are not saltier than they actually are.

Where do you think large deposits of rock salts came from?

Originally posted by trev
Absurd, illogical reasoning, flood built up over 40 days, any fish can swim to adjust its depth in that time

Prove it.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by trev
Most of the water probably came from the ground, the bible states that the fountains of the deep opened up, not from the air.

Don't be ridiculous. If this were the case, the water that came up with have had to have been so hot that it would have boiled the Earth. Noah & Co. would have been poached.

Besides, water escaping in this manner would have to leave evidence by means of erosions of the sides of fissures where it escaped, and balsatic deposis shot everywhere. No such evidence exists.

This is the problem with pat Creationist hypotheticals--they don't know enough about science to make plausible scenarios that take into account all the side effects of what they propose. Vapor canopy, water from the deep, comet or subduction--it all spells undeniable doom for everyone, including Noah.

[trev]

Where is the geological evidence of said "massive erosion?" Where is the geological evidence of a global flood? Where did the water come from? Where did it go?

The water mostly came from undergound aquifers which broke open and burst to the surface, probably due to major earthquakes and added to by rain. The worldwide abundance of sedimentary rock, generally many kilometres thick, hundreds of layers of coal seams over a large area (latrobe valley, victoria, Australia) interpersed with clay,silt layers suggest the type of major deposition of sediments that could only be associated with a worldwide flood. There is no other plausible explanation for the many layers of coal seams in Victoria (They can not have been deposited over a long period of time because of the presence of massive numbers of tree trunks which individually penetrate through multiple layers of coal).
Movement of tectonic plates resulting in a deepening of the oceans will have allowed water to drain from the earth's surface, allowing the flood to end. In general today erosive processes occur quicker than sedimentation processes, so only a catastrophic event could account for the amount of sedimentation worldwide

[Bosh]

Evolutionist actually need to include unproven salt sinks into their equations to prove why the oceans are not saltier than they actually are.

Uplift and subduction. Lots of former sea floor is now no longer the sea floor. Hence the existance of sea fossils and rock salts in all kinds of places.