Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part 4.1

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Glark said:
Where did I claim that Gould is against evolution? I quoted Gould because he admits there is a lack of transitionals, which he admited is “the trade secret of paleontology”. This lack of transitionals obviously didn’t stop him believing in evolution. Most athesits believe in evolution long before they become aware of any so-called “evidence”.
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Here is Gould on transitionals:
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists – whether though design or stupidity, I do not know – as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. (emphasis added)

S J Gould “Evolution as Fact and Theory” Discover Magazine May 1981.
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Do your lying creationist websites give you that Gould quote? Gould is correct, we have many transitionals such as Archaeopteryx which is transitional between land dinosaurs and birds. We do not have the exact species that Archaeopteryx evolved from, nor do we have the species (if any) that evolved from it.

Gould made a very specific statement about a certain type of transitional fossil. It is false witness to quote him as saying that all types of transitional fossil are rare.

Why do you believe websites that lie to you?

rossum
 
Glark said:
“And the great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent, he who is called Devil and Satan, he who deceives the whole world” - Rev 12:9.
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I must ask myself, is the Bible here telling us that everyone posting here, Glark included, is deceived? That would put a different cat on his posts.

Of course, I might be deceived also in posting this…

Oh. My brain hurts. 😃

rossum
 
Hugh_Farey said:
This entire thread is devoted to the meaning of ‘creation’ with a small ‘c’. Few of us here have any doubt whatever regarding the responsibility of God for his universe. There may be overt atheists or even closet atheists, but most of the evolutionists here have declared at least their Christianity, or their Catholicism.
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Just for the sake of transparency may I say that I am not a believer in any faith, and I accept the theory of evolution as the current, logical, satisfactory (to me) explanation for the multiplicity of species.

I do not see the theory of evolution as in any way an argument against Christianity: I have no wish to use the theory of evolution to affect anyone’s faith in Christianity; I regard people’s faith in Christianity as interesting but on the whole none of my business.
 
Dear Picky, the honesty and clarity of your posts marks you out very clearly as not an adherent of Creationism. With few outliers, there is a direct relationship between the intensity of such a belief and the extent of the misrepresentation, the abandonment of rational argument and the cynical attempts at humour adduced to support it.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
For instance, would I be right in thinking Bradskii is an atheist? Given a debate, I suspect I, with Rossum and perhaps Aloysium’s assistance, could at least get him to question his beliefs. The transparent, persistent, and petulant distortions presented by most of the Creationists on this site are powerful incentives to reject any kind of religion absolutely, particularly any one biblically based.
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Ahem…

And I’d like to think that the reverse may be true, Hugh. In any case, I am constantly questioning my beliefs to some extent. It’s just that I keep coming up with the same answers.
 
My point is that it is not so clear cut to just say, “It says this, they understood it to mean this!”
 
Evolution’s Blunders, Frauds and Forgeries

While most people might be able to name one or two, few are aware of the sheer number of embarrassing deceptions used to prop up evolutionary theory. This book highlights multiple examples that have misled generations. Some, like the famous Piltdown Man fraud, took many decades to uncover while leading evolutionists kept singing its praises to an increasingly indoctrinated public. How many of us know about how a misidentification of the chemical reaction between alcohol and the calcium carbonate in seawater, something chemists at the time were certainly aware of, led leading evolutionists to breathlessly proclaim incipient life covered the ocean floor? Who knows that genera and species were invented to support the fact of evolution? The countless fakes and mistakes are not mild aberrations in a self-correcting march to truth. In fact, evolutionary theory itself comes under severe pressure from the evidence in this book. For instance, diagrams of developing embryos, from a supposedly expert academic, were so useful in persuading people that evolution was unquestionably true that their exposure as fraudulent was ignored. It took over 100 years for this fraud to be re-exposed, and textbook publishers have still been very reluctant to drop it. More recently, National Geographic triumphantly proclaimed a hybrid fossil as an ideal intermediate between birds and dinosaurs. Their forced retraction of this glued-together monstrosity was barely noticeable. Disturbingly, the author also highlights secular work showing that, especially in the life sciences, we are presently in the grip of an unprecedented epidemic of scientific fraud. This eye-opening work should cause many to question their belief in evolution as scientific fact and encourage everyone to critically examine all future evolutionary claims.

 
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buffalo said:
Who knows that genera and species were invented to support the fact of evolution?
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Bingo! A point I have been arguing right along. Species is a man made concept and speciation is a loss of an ability once had.
 
buffalo said:
Who knows that genera and species were invented to support the fact of evolution?

Bingo! A point I have been arguing right along. Species is a man made concept and speciation is a loss of an ability once had.
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Thank you for the reference. I have immediately shelled out the requisite $10 for a download (it is not available in print). I will comment on the book at greater length when I’ve read it, but for the time being will just make a few remarks about the blurb (quoted above).

“Who knows that genera and species were invented to support the fact of evolution?” What, I wonder, does this mean? That Darwin invented the terms genus and species? Or that Evolution was the reason for the invention of these terms? My good friend Wikipedia tells me that Augustus Quirinus Rivinus used the terms genus and species around the year 1700, predating the Origin of Species by 150 years. Needless to say, Rivinus most certainly did not believe in evolution. Jerry Bergman knows this perfectly well, and does not claim either of these things in his book.

Perhaps buffalo will be able to enlighten us.

Interestingly, I think, very few forgers and forgeries are documented in Bergman’s book, although he does claim that there is widespread fossil fakery in China, and perhaps he’s right. By far the commonest “blunder, fraud and forgery” he mentions are misattributions, usually gullible rather than deliberately dishonest.

Most importantly, what Bergman demonstrates in huge and well referenced detail is that every one of these errors, deliberate or not, was brought to light not by Creationists, but by evolutionary scientists, usually within as few years of its perpetration. He knows, of course, but does not point out, that this is exactly how science works. The geocentric universe was an error corrected by better evidence, as was the phlogiston theory of combustion. Science, as I will never tire of reminding you all, is an explanation for observations. Where observations are few, many explanations will fit, but more, or better observations will narrow down the number and refine the remaining ones.
 
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Kei said:
My point is that it is not so clear cut to just say, “It says this, they understood it to mean this!”
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Not without evidence, true. However, from subsequent references to Genesis, it appears that the old testament writers did think the six days did mean six actual ‘twenty-four hour’ days.
 
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It can’t be proven using the evidence on hand, and no, it can’t do anything. But that doesn’t stop the guesswork machine…
 
Kei said:
Such as what? I think there are various facts that show otherwise.
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Possibly. Exodus 20:11 is the usual justification, plus the fact, as buffalo keeps telling us, that the word for day, ‘yom’, occurs dozens of times in the bible, and where it can be detected, almost always refers to 24-hours.

I myself think that Genesis is wholly metaphorical.
 
But buffalo is not correct on that point. You can go to the Hebrew website, Strong’s Concordance, and look up yom if you want.
 
Kei said:
But buffalo is not correct on that point. You can go to the Hebrew website, Strong’s Concordance, and look up yom if you want.
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It’s not that important to me. The whole story reads like a succession of actual days to me, especially with each one ending with ‘evening came and morning came’. I feel that as soon as creationists start to distort the meaning to fit some vaguely accurate science, they get hopelessly tangled up in plants being created before the sun, and trying to fit Genesis 2 to Genesis 1, and so on.
 
How does evening and day make sense without the greater and lesser lights to mark them? Rather it explains the work week, and the end and beginning of each period.

Though of course one easily sees no difficulties between 1 and 2.

I think people are just a tad too caught up in their ways of meaning x over y. What’s important is what it says.
 
Kei said:
How does evening and day make sense without the greater and lesser lights to mark them?
Rather it explains the work week, and the end and beginning of each period.
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It got dark in the evening and light in the morning. I don’t think the writers connected the ‘lights’ with the ‘light’.
Are you suggesting that the days could be 168 hour ‘weeks’?
I think people are just a tad too caught up in their ways of meaning x over y.
What’s important is what it says.
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If it means what it says, we ought to work out what it says.
If it says what it means, we ought to work out what it means.
 
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Hugh_Farey said:
Possibly. Exodus 20:11 is the usual justification, plus the fact, as buffalo keeps telling us, that the word for day, ‘yom’, occurs dozens of times in the bible, and where it can be detected, almost always refers to 24-hours.

I myself think that Genesis is wholly metaphorical.
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Not dozens, over 1900 times and of those, 57 times in Genesis.
 
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