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Ragnarok
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Joined: 27 Sep 2004
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Location: Tucson, AZ, USA.
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 Posted: Mon 18 Jun 2007 0:10 Post subject: |
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| Tiamat wrote: |
| 1. Evolutionists will tell you that there was nothing--no light or energy or space or anything, and then there was a big bang, and everything just appeared out of it, all the birds, elephants, lions, giraffes, et cetera. How ludicrous does that sound? |
Referencing the big bang in an evolution debate is a complete non sequitur. The big bang is a well-supported theory which explains the origin of the universe, and there is much research into what event might have caused it to occur. Secondly, the purpose of theories is to explain the observed facts, not to explain things to the level of the average citizen. Thirdly, this argument relies on the "it just randomly happened" approach, which is not a part of evolutionary theory. The whole purpose of the theory is to explain the mechanisms through which the supposedly improbably events took place.
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| 2. Evolutionists use the language of speculation, which of course means that they don't actually know what they're talking about and evolution is just guesswork. |
All scientists do this to some extent. Are we then to dismiss all of science?
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| 3. The theory of evolution basically teaches that every animal supposedly transformed from a single-celled creature millions of years ago. So, every animal basically transformed into another kind of animal over time. The problem is that there is a huge gap in the fossil record--no transitional fossils seem to exist. So, you can't prove evolution ever happened. It's the Missing Link-- and there's have to be thousands of them. |
First, the conditions required for fossilization are such that the event is a fairly rare one. Most bones simply don't survive to that point. Secondly, to say that there are no transitional forms is to ignore the evidence of the fossil record.
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4. What about those drawings of apes turning into men (like this one)? Well, those are not real proof. The transitional forms simply don't exist.
a) Lucy: most scientists now agree that Lucy was just the skeleton of a three-foot-tall chimpanzee. |
To state that [/i]australopithecus afarensis[/i] and Pan troglodytes are the same species is clearly wrong. Very few, if any, scientists state that the two species are the same.
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| b) The Nebraska Man was really a skeleton totally created by scientists on the evidence of one tooth, which was later found to be the tooth of an extinct pig. |
Nebraska Man was modeled largely on existing data on homo erectus, not solely on the tooth, as the claim states. Also the truth of the matter was found via the scientific method.
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| c) Piltdown Man's jawbone turned out to be that of a modern ape. |
Piltdown Man was a complete fabrication, and, like Nebraska Man, was found to be such through the scientific method.
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| d) Neanderthal Man was just an old man who suffered from arthritis. |
The La Chapelle-aux Saints sample was that of an aged homo neanderthalensis, however, there are numerous other samples of the same species who were in much better health at the time of death. To state that all samples share the degenerative traits of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints
sample, or to ignore their existence is blatantly dishonest.
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| 5. Human beings are very similar to apes. This does not prove that man evolved from apes, just as the modern jet plane and the by plane are similar, but one didn't evolve from the other--they just have a common designer, who used a similar blueprint for each one. Furthermore, primates are not as intelligent as human beings--you can't take them out to lunch, after all. They can't form musical groups or governments. This is not because they're a less evolved version of us, but because they're a different species. |
True, similarities in morphology alone do not show evolutionary links. However, that is not the only evidence for the evolutionary links between humans and modern apes. There is also considerable fossil and genetic evidence.
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| 6. Charles Darwin, the father of evolution who wrote Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, was sexist ("the chief difference is shown by man attaining a higher eminence in whatever he takes up than women can attain"--he says that man has evolved beyond women) and racist (he believed that black people were less evolved than whites. |
The beliefs of the founder of the theory are largely irrelevant, as the current theory of evolution has evolved far beyond what Charles Darwin initially proposed.
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7. All of these scientists have bad things to say about evolution:
a) Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard scientist: "The extreme rarity of transitional forms persists as the trade secret of paleontology."
b) Ernest Chain, Nobel Prizewinner: "I would rather believe in fairies than such wild speculation."
c) Sir Arthur Keith, who wrote the forward to the Origin of Species' 100th anniversary edition: "Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe in it because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable." |
All cherry picked quotes, I'm sure, though even as written, the original meanings of "a" and "c" remain quite clear. "B" requires considerably more context to be understandable.
a: as written above, the process of fossilization requires specific conditions which are not often met. Therefore, it is quite true that fossils of any type (including those which could be deemed "transitional") are quite rare.
c: All theories remain unproved. The most that could be done to any theory is finding something which would disprove it.
And I googled "b" and found no useful results. All the sites I found were creationist ones, which only had that quote. Until the full context can be seen, the quote remains completely useless.
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| Kirk Cameron (one of the WotM guys): "When you learn how to speak to a person's conscience and circumnavigate the intellect, the subject of evolution disappears." |
Ah, yes, quoting a creationist on the validity of evolution. Now there's an unbiased source.
So, Zuca, did I miss anything? Probably did, but I'll let you fill in whatever gaps I left. 
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ZucaTreangeli
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Joined: 01 Aug 2006
Posts: 142
Location: Netherlands
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| Posted: Mon 18 Jun 2007 0:28 Post subject: |
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((Awesome, thanks for playing devils advocate ))
I'm up for it.  
Yeah, I've just been to the Way of the Master website. I feel unclean. But I'll do it since nobody else will-- I'll present creationism (excuse me, Intelligent Design)'s greatest, or at least most obnoxious, argument.
These are my notes from the video. I've edited out most of my comments and now it's a bit more sincere...
The introduction: "Evolutionism" defies logic and is based on blind faith.
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1. Evolutionists will tell you that there was nothing--no light or energy or space or anything, and then there was a big bang, and everything just appeared out of it, all the birds, elephants, lions, giraffes, et cetera. How ludicrous does that sound?
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Straw man argument, evolution doesnt state that, evolution doesnt talk about the beginning of everything, thats called big bang cosmology, and it doesn't state that everything came from nothing, there was something and that "expanded" into the starting universe (and is still expanding, the big bang itself never really stopped, it continues as we speak)
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2. Evolutionists use the language of speculation, which of course means that they don't actually know what they're talking about and evolution is just guesswork. |
It's not guesswork, though the word speculation is right to a certain degree, look at the theory of gravity that explains the phenomenon of gravity, the theory tries to explain as good as possible how gravity works and why it works, but the theory is not a fact, simply because the calculations and everything could never be 100% correct, meaning that theres always a bit of speculation involved. The theory of evolution (which explains the phenomenon of evolution) has the same point.
But thats not a bad thing, when errors are found in the theory of evolution, the theory is changed a bit to represent the new "less wrong" data. To say it is complete speculation is actually wrong, just a tiny bit.
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| 3. The theory of evolution basically teaches that every animal supposedly transformed from a single-celled creature millions of years ago. So, every animal basically transformed into another kind of animal over time. The problem is that there is a huge gap in the fossil record--no transitional fossils seem to exist. So, you can't prove evolution ever happened. It's the Missing Link-- and there's have to be thousands of them. |
First of all, the word "transitional fossil" is very sketchy in the creationist book of anti evolution ism :P, in science, a transitional is basically every animal up to the point of existence. Simply said, through evolution, the species will evolve and change and thus the fossils laid down in this era will be transitional to the next.
There are missing links yes because fossilization is a very precise procedure that doesn't happen with every species or in every places, the missing links are by no means damaging to the theory though because what we do have on fossils show clear lines of descent. Look for example on Whale evolution and Horse evolution, a lot of fossils were found in that direction that complement each other.
Animals do not transform into each other, evolutionists don't say that, this is just another straw man argument.
((on those who don't know what a straw man argument is, basically its making up parts of something that really don't represent that something.. (in this case evolution theory) and then refuting those arguments as if your refuting the real thing))
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4. What about those drawings of apes turning into men (like this one)? Well, those are not real proof. The transitional forms simply don't exist.
a) Lucy: most scientists now agree that Lucy was just the skeleton of a three-foot-tall chimpanzee.
b) The Nebraska Man was really a skeleton totally created by scientists on the evidence of one tooth, which was later found to be the tooth of an extinct pig.
c) Piltdown Man's jawbone turned out to be that of a modern ape.
d) Neanderthal Man was just an old man who suffered from arthritis. |
A: Actually, thats not true at all, I don't even know where that claim really originated but every scientists I talk to accepts Lucy as a hominid.
B: Actually, it doesn't matter what the tooth was, when the tooth was found, scientists were immediately skeptic about it, and through a whole circuit of scientists the conclusion was made that the fossil wasn't really capable of being what was first interpreted.. It was scientists that retracted the primary claim, this is how science works, it is self correcting .
C: Yes, and ?.. Again it was scientists that figured this out, granted, it took 40 years to figure out that it was a hoax, but once again, science isn't impeccable, but it is self correcting, this time it just took a long time for it to correct the error.
D: This is completely false, if not only for the fact that many Neanderthal fossils were found, some with those symptoms, but also many without, so that claim bears no strength at all.
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| 5. Human beings are very similar to apes. This does not prove that man evolved from apes, just as the modern jet plane and the by plane are similar, but one didn't evolve from the other--they just have a common designer, who used a similar blueprint for each one. Furthermore, primates are not as intelligent as human beings--you can't take them out to lunch, after all. They can't form musical groups or governments. This is not because they're a less evolved version of us, but because they're a different species. |
Logical fallacy, planes do not reproduce themselves, thus we would not find planes being descendant from each other.. They cant be descendants, they don't reproduce. And a straw man argument, human beings are not descendant from apes, humans and apes share a common ancestor..
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| 6. Charles Darwin, the father of evolution who wrote Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, was sexist ("the chief difference is shown by man attaining a higher eminence in whatever he takes up than women can attain"--he says that man has evolved beyond women) and racist (he believed that black people were less evolved than whites. |
I would love to see the complete quotes on these ones, I have no doubt they are pulled out of context completely though, the word "race" for instance isn't something that deals with racial issue, colors of people are not "races".
But even if this claim were correct (which it isn't), it has no bearing on the theory as a whole, science doesn't depend on the background of a person.
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7. All of these scientists have bad things to say about evolution:
a) Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard scientist: "The extreme rarity of transitional forms persists as the trade secret of paleontology."
b) Ernest Chain, Nobel Prizewinner: "I would rather believe in fairies than such wild speculation."
c) Sir Arthur Keith, who wrote the forward to the Origin of Species' 100th anniversary edition: "Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe in it because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable." |
These are all quote mines, if asked for I will find the actual text and show that the quote continues and explains that their stance is completely different from the small piece of quote taken out of context, an example is the Stephen Jay Gould one, the complete quote is:
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The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:
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| The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory. |
Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution [directly]. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I only wish to point out that it is never "seen" in the rocks.
Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.
For several years, Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History and I have been advocating a resolution to this uncomfortable paradox. We believe that Huxley was right in his warning [1]. The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism we should reject, not Darwinism.]\ |
As can be seen, the full quote explains something completely different. It simply explains that the original idea of gradualism as posted by Darwin isn't correct, it doesn't speak of the entirety of evolutionary theory.
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And finally...
Kirk Cameron (one of the WotM guys): "When you learn how to speak to a person's conscience and circumnavigate the intellect, the subject of evolution disappears." |
He's the same guy that made the "banana, the atheist nightmare" video, showing that a banana proved god's existence and creation, completely forgetting the fact that banana's are genetically and selectively engineered to be the size and seedless things they are now.. Engineered and selected by humans.. So the words of this guy aren't really that powerful.
Well, rebut away! Or, go and find some better ID evidence.
[size=8]
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Hyraxylos
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Joined: 13 Jun 2007
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Location: Atlanta, GA
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| Posted: Mon 18 Jun 2007 3:01 Post subject: |
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What I don't like is when people arguing against one of the sides don't know how to use certain terms properly, or don't know what they mean. One of the repeated phrases being toted around by zealots in my state is the sentence "Evolution is theory, not fact." This pisses me off since, under the scientific definition of the word "theory", this actually doesn't really make evolution fictional, and scientists are not arguing that evolution is "fact" anyway!
That and I'm sick of people trying to slip Creationism and Intelligent Design into science curriculum, and others are trying to put the Theory of Evolution into church teachings by force. Both approaches are VERY disrespectful to both views and I wish they'd quit embarassing themselves with these shameless antics. 
Myself...? I believe in Intelligent Design; I simply feel that it's logical enough to deserve some belief. But I know better than to try and make it appear scientific. Of COURSE it's unscientific! There are GODS involved! So at the same time I'm also very fiercely against it being taught in science classes (would be disrespectful to any deities involved). I pretty much feel strongly against the idea of any ideology being pressured upon anyone in the wrong environment.
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ZucaTreangeli
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| Posted: Mon 18 Jun 2007 3:18 Post subject: |
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I seemed to have been posting on this the same time as you have Ragnarok, I think we've got it all though.
And yes, "it's just a theory" is quite a bad example. Theory in the scientific community means a bunch of hypothesis's that have been tested and the results were positive, so positive in so many different fields that it is very sturdy.. A theory isn't just one topic, its the accumulation of many that all fit together in perfect puzzle.
Anything in biology for instance has a high chance of being part of the theory of evolution, when it is discovered it might just become another piece of the puzzle.
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Rayadragon
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Location: Somewhere between reality and imagination
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| Posted: Mon 18 Jun 2007 12:15 Post subject: |
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Had to comment on this section:
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| 3. The theory of evolution basically teaches that every animal supposedly transformed from a single-celled creature millions of years ago. So, every animal basically transformed into another kind of animal over time. The problem is that there is a huge gap in the fossil record--no transitional fossils seem to exist. So, you can't prove evolution ever happened. It's the Missing Link-- and there's have to be thousands of them. |
First off, thanks to Ragnarok and Zuca for pointing out that fossilization is a rare event, and what we see in the fossil record does not encompas all of the life that's appeared on this planet.
I always see this argument about the gaps in the fossil record. I'm not going to argue that they're not there, because they are. However, although it's been a while since I had this class, in one of my college classes we went over several types of transitional fossils, just none for ape to human (beyond Lucy and whatnot). The two groups that I remember the best are lizard to mammal and the general evolution of the modern day dolphin. It's possible to trace the general evolution of mammals from lizards through analysis of features of the skulls found in the fossil record. Several types of fossils are classified as being "mammal-like lizards" or "lizard-like mammals" based on the characteristics found in the skull (not completly one or the other).
When you study the fossils of creatures hypothesized to be the ancestors of modern dolphins, you can see the movement of the nostrils/blowhole from the end of the nose to the top of the head. This is characteristic of the idea that dolphins (and other marine mammals) evolved from land-dwelling mammals. This theory is also supported by the presence of vestigial bones where hind legs would be in modern whales and dolphins. While not exactly a fossil, it further supports that these animals evolved from a different source than would probably be expected under ID or creationism.
Sorry I'm not giving better references for this. Again, it's from a class I took a while (almost 9 years O_o;; ago. You can probably google it and find similar info elsewhere.
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ZucaTreangeli
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| Posted: Mon 18 Jun 2007 13:34 Post subject: |
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There is no ape to human evolution... Humans and apes share a common ancestor ^^.
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Ragnarok
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| Posted: Mon 18 Jun 2007 13:34 Post subject: |
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| Rayadragon wrote: |
| Several types of fossils are classified as being "mammal-like lizards" or "lizard-like mammals" based on the characteristics found in the skull (not completly one or the other). |
It's mentioned, to a somewhat humorous effect, at 31:30 in this video. It also destroys the "transitional forms" "argument."
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Rayadragon
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| Posted: Tue 19 Jun 2007 11:30 Post subject: |
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| There is no ape to human evolution... Humans and apes share a common ancestor ^^ |
^_^;;; Thank you! You knew what I meant, in any case...
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| t's mentioned, to a somewhat humorous effect, at 31:30 in this video. It also destroys the "transitional forms" "argument." |
I'm at work so I can't exactly watch the video. What is it stating? I'm just curious...
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