Britain's Greatest Hoax: The fraud of Piltdown Man and of Evolution.

Started by Xavier, July 30, 2018, 12:33:21 AM

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John Lamb

Quote from: GloriaPatri on July 31, 2018, 01:25:07 PM
And more simpler things do develop into more complex ones in nature. A fertilized ovum develops into a complex foetus. A seed grows into a tree. Simpler elements combine into more complex ones all the time. As far as things breaking down in nature, that is true. But you forget that evolution does not happen in one lifespan, but rather happens over many, many generations. Each generation is genetically slightly different from the one before it. As those changes add up you'll eventually have a new organism.

False analogy. A fertilised ovum is formally a human being, so it growing into a foetus and eventually a grown man is no evolution of its form but merely an unfolding of what it already has, the actualisation of its potential. The same with an acorn growing into a tree.
A rock, however, has no potential to turn itself into a fish or a bird; its essence or form does not have that potential. This is why mechanistic evolution is impossible, and why the only evolution that makes sense intellectually is a theistic evolution where God is performing many millions of miracles over many millions of years. Of course, why an all-powerful God would employ such a redundant method of creation is the reason that theistic evolution itself is implausible, but at least it is not irrational and absurd like mechanistic evolution.
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

John Lamb

The best way to break the illusion that mechanistic/fortuitous evolution is anything like a reasonable hypothesis is just to have a good look at a dog or a bird, or any animal really. If you can look at such a marvel of form, of structure and organisation, and still imagine that no mind was involved in its formation, but that it came about fortuitously (i.e. by chance) like a rock falling down a mountain, being chipped away at, and arriving at the bottom as a perfect replica of Michelangelo's David - then you are stupid or heavily brainwashed. You can cringe and whine all you like about this being an "argument from incredulity" and a "logical fallacy", but that can't do away with the basic intuitions of the human mind, which were given to us precisely to keep us grounded in reality when our "scientific theories" became pure fantasy.

"The philosopher tells us that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy, in a tea-kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so; and it is very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to its nest. But we painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our principal interest to the difference in their forms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts in the two things are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings; not to speak of the distinction of volition, which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or mode of force. The kettle chooses to sit still on the hob; the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it, which appears to us the more interesting circumstance."
Ruskin

"Must I not here express my wonder that any one should exist who persuades himself that there are certain solid and indivisible particles carried along by their own impulse and weight, and that a universe so beautiful and so admirably arrayed is formed from the accidental concourse of those particles? I do not understand why the man who supposes that to have been possible should not also think that if a countless number of the forms of the one and twenty letters, whether in gold or any other material, were to be thrown somewhere, it would be possible, when they had been shaken out upon the ground, for the annals of Ennius to result from them so as to be able to be read consecutively,—a miracle of chance which I incline to think would be impossible even in the case of a single verse."
Cicero
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

GloriaPatri

Quote from: John Lamb on August 01, 2018, 05:09:29 AM
Quote from: GloriaPatri on July 31, 2018, 01:25:07 PM
And more simpler things do develop into more complex ones in nature. A fertilized ovum develops into a complex foetus. A seed grows into a tree. Simpler elements combine into more complex ones all the time. As far as things breaking down in nature, that is true. But you forget that evolution does not happen in one lifespan, but rather happens over many, many generations. Each generation is genetically slightly different from the one before it. As those changes add up you'll eventually have a new organism.

False analogy. A fertilised ovum is formally a human being, so it growing into a foetus and eventually a grown man is no evolution of its form but merely an unfolding of what it already has, the actualisation of its potential. The same with an acorn growing into a tree.
A rock, however, has no potential to turn itself into a fish or a bird; its essence or form does not have that potential. This is why mechanistic evolution is impossible, and why the only evolution that makes sense intellectually is a theistic evolution where God is performing many millions of miracles over many millions of years. Of course, why an all-powerful God would employ such a redundant method of creation is the reason that theistic evolution itself is implausible, but at least it is not irrational and absurd like mechanistic evolution.

A rock is not a living organism that produces genetically distinct offspring. That you even attempt to use that as your argument shows that you have little to no understanding of basic biology.

Maximilian

Quote from: GloriaPatri on July 31, 2018, 01:25:07 PM

I am hoping that you, and Xavier, and anyone else really, could limit your questions to purely scientific matters.

Of course you are. Keep the discussion within the box of atheist secular preconceptions. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

Where does life come from? How did evolution get started? Science has NO answers for these questions. And so they simply declare the questions off limits.

Quote from: GloriaPatri on July 31, 2018, 01:25:07 PM

And more simpler things do develop into more complex ones in nature. A fertilized ovum develops into a complex foetus. A seed grows into a tree.

This is so insulting to my intelligence that it makes me hate evolutionists. The enormous amount of condescension on display by evolutionists is unrivalled in human history.

There is really only one argument for evolution, "People who don't believe in evolution are uneducated, barefoot hillbillies from the Ozarks. Do you want to be one of them?"

That argument is reasonably successful from a propaganda perspective -- although nowhere near as successful as evolutionists would like to pretend -- but it explains nothing about the origin of life.

Mono no aware

Quote from: John Lamb on August 01, 2018, 05:25:21 AMThe best way to break the illusion that mechanistic/fortuitous evolution is anything like a reasonable hypothesis is just to have a good look at a dog or a bird, or any animal really. If you can look at such a marvel of form, of structure and organisation, and still imagine that no mind was involved in its formation, but that it came about fortuitously (i.e. by chance) like a rock falling down a mountain, being chipped away at, and arriving at the bottom as a perfect replica of Michelangelo's David - then you are stupid or heavily brainwashed. You can cringe and whine all you like about this being an "argument from incredulity" and a "logical fallacy", but that can't do away with the basic intuitions of the human mind, which were given to us precisely to keep us grounded in reality when our "scientific theories" became pure fantasy.



To the contrary, I feel like all you have to do is consider the flightless birds.  Wings, but no flight.  When I look at an ostrich, I don't wonder at the organization of its form.  I think to myself, "what is this freakish thing?"  It looks, in all likelihood, to be the awkward product of evolution.  Kiwis barely have wings at all: theirs are just tiny nubs, like the vestigial little leg protrusions on some snakes.  All of this indicates evolution.  Now, cats, I can concede, are pure marvels.  No animal suggests a designer more than the feline: they are perfect in both grace and savagery.  They have an uncaring majesty.  To watch a cat stalking its prey never fails to captivate me.  But what cats say about the nature or goodness of the creator, it may be best not to inquire.  As William Blake well put it: "what immortal hand or eye / could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

John Lamb

Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 07:12:24 AM
A rock is not a living organism that produces genetically distinct offspring. That you even attempt to use that as your argument shows that you have little to no understanding of basic biology.

But you're the one that believes rocks can breed themselves into birds in a mere few billions of years.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on August 01, 2018, 08:38:19 AM


To the contrary, I feel like all you have to do is consider the flightless birds.  Wings, but no flight.  When I look at an ostrich, I don't wonder at the organization of its form.  I think to myself, "what is this freakish thing?"  It looks, in all likelihood, to be the awkward product of evolution.

That's just a matter of perspective. Just because they don't get off the ground, doesn't mean they aren't flying. Watch a video of an ostrich running and explain how it could manage it without wings/feathers for lightness and balance.
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

Mono no aware

Quote from: John Lamb on August 01, 2018, 08:42:59 AMThat's just a matter of perspective. Just because they don't get off the ground, doesn't mean they aren't flying. Watch a video of an ostrich running and explain how it could manage it without wings/feathers for lightness and balance.

No, I take the point.  I didn't mean to say that the wings had no usefulness to the ostrich any longer.  Clearly they do.  But the fact that they have wings, and use them for something other than flight, suggests evolution.  Just as Kiwi having wings that are barely there at all also does; those are wings that have no usefulness and have all but gone away.

Similarly, humans have retained the arms we share with the the apes, having an advantageous range, dexterity, and grasping capacity, useful even outside of living a life in the trees.  Whereas being bipedal, we've lost our prehensile feet, which are great for an arboreal lifestyle but a hindrance to making a living running around on the plain.  When I consider both the similarities and the differences, it's not difficult to contemplate descent.  I think dogs are the greatest example: when you consider the descent of the chihuahua from the wolf, it's hardly any feat to consider a descendant of the chihuahua as different from it as the chihauhua is from the wolf.  At some point you would get closer to a rodent-like creature that would be not only be a different breed, but a different species.


GloriaPatri

Quote from: Maximilian on August 01, 2018, 08:31:50 AM
Quote from: GloriaPatri on July 31, 2018, 01:25:07 PM

I am hoping that you, and Xavier, and anyone else really, could limit your questions to purely scientific matters.

Of course you are. Keep the discussion within the box of atheist secular preconceptions. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

Where does life come from? How did evolution get started? Science has NO answers for these questions. And so they simply declare the questions off limits.

Quote from: GloriaPatri on July 31, 2018, 01:25:07 PM

And more simpler things do develop into more complex ones in nature. A fertilized ovum develops into a complex foetus. A seed grows into a tree.

This is so insulting to my intelligence that it makes me hate evolutionists. The enormous amount of condescension on display by evolutionists is unrivalled in human history.

There is really only one argument for evolution, "People who don't believe in evolution are uneducated, barefoot hillbillies from the Ozarks. Do you want to be one of them?"

That argument is reasonably successful from a propaganda perspective -- although nowhere near as successful as evolutionists would like to pretend -- but it explains nothing about the origin of life.

Evolution presupposes the existence of living organisms; abiogenesis is a separate matter. Just because there has been no settled answer to how life emerged from non-life does not mean that life itself does not evolve over billion of years.

As far as education is concerned, it is true that the population that does not believe in evolution does correlate strongly with the population that did not earn an education beyond high school. But that's not the point I was making. Greg said that he believed it impossible for simpler things to evolve into more complex things over billions of years. Yet you do see simple single-celled organisms (a fertilized ovum) grow into an organism of trillions of cells (a fully developed human fetus) over a period of 9 months.

Quote from: John Lamb on August 01, 2018, 08:42:59 AM
Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 07:12:24 AM
A rock is not a living organism that produces genetically distinct offspring. That you even attempt to use that as your argument shows that you have little to no understanding of basic biology.

But you're the one that believes rocks can breed themselves into birds in a mere few billions of years.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on August 01, 2018, 08:38:19 AM


To the contrary, I feel like all you have to do is consider the flightless birds.  Wings, but no flight.  When I look at an ostrich, I don't wonder at the organization of its form.  I think to myself, "what is this freakish thing?"  It looks, in all likelihood, to be the awkward product of evolution.

That's just a matter of perspective. Just because they don't get off the ground, doesn't mean they aren't flying. Watch a video of an ostrich running and explain how it could manage it without wings/feathers for lightness and balance.

No proponent of evolution believes that "rocks can breed themselves into birds in a mere few billions of years." That you think so shows that either you are extremely ignorant of evolution, or being intentionally intellectually dishonest. Take your pick.

Maximilian

Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 09:13:14 AM

Evolution presupposes the existence of living organisms; abiogenesis is a separate matter.

No, they are not separate. They are 100% the same question. "Where does life come from?"

Men have been asking this question for (at least) 6,000 years. Your secular science provides no answers.

Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 09:13:14 AM

Just because there has been no settled answer to how life emerged from non-life does not mean that life itself does not evolve over billion of years.

It means that evolution and theories about evolving over billions of years provide no answer to the most basic question to which men need an answer in order to know how to live.

Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 09:13:14 AM

No proponent of evolution believes that "rocks can breed themselves into birds in a mere few billions of years."

That is exactly, precisely what proponents of evolution believe.

GloriaPatri

Quote from: Maximilian on August 01, 2018, 09:24:09 AM
Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 09:13:14 AM

Evolution presupposes the existence of living organisms; abiogenesis is a separate matter.

No, they are not separate. They are 100% the same question. "Where does life come from?"

Men have been asking this question for (at least) 6,000 years. Your secular science provides no answers.

Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 09:13:14 AM

Just because there has been no settled answer to how life emerged from non-life does not mean that life itself does not evolve over billion of years.

It means that evolution and theories about evolving over billions of years provide no answer to the most basic question to which men need an answer in order to know how to live.

Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 09:13:14 AM

No proponent of evolution believes that "rocks can breed themselves into birds in a mere few billions of years."

That is exactly, precisely what proponents of evolution believe.

Find me one, just one, proponent of evolution who seriously believes that rocks 'evolved' into birds after billions of years. I'll be waiting.

Maximilian

Quote from: GloriaPatri on August 01, 2018, 09:35:21 AM

Find me one, just one, proponent of evolution who seriously believes that rocks 'evolved' into birds after billions of years. I'll be waiting.

All of them, every one. When you believe in evolution, that's what you believe.

Check out a few of them here:


GloriaPatri

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed not only misled the evolutionary biologists it interviewed, it also selectively edited their statements during production in order to push an agenda. That's not a credible source for any evolutionary biologist believing rocks evolved into birds. Especially given that the scientific definition of evolution is "Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations." Rocks are not biological populations. So stop talking out our your ass and provide an actual peer-reviewed paper from a biologist that states that rocks evolved into birds. Or any living organism for that matter. You won't find one. At best you'll find a speculative paper concerning abiogenesis and how the first organisms might have emerged from non-organic molecules.

Mono no aware

I've never seen Expelled, but the subtitle, "No Intelligence Allowed," seems to be as juvenile as saying creationists are all backwoods snake-handlers.  I think there are sincere and intelligent people on both sides.  Max is more intelligent than I am, and he's a creationist.  I'm moderately intelligent and I've variously held the positions of creationism, theistic evolution, and evolution.  I think it has less to do with intelligence and more to do with bias.  If you start with a belief in the inerrancy of the bible, then I think you have to reject evolution.  There are very few creationists who aren't religious.  The only prominent anti-evolutionist I'm aware of who isn't religious is David Berlinski.  He's an interesting case.  I guess he'd be classified as "not religious, but pro-religious."

In the end it really all depends on where you're coming from.  Theistic evolutionists try to have it both ways and seem willfully ignorant of the amount of sadism their position necessarily ascribes to the creator.  Creationism, to my view, is the more immediately satisfying of the theistic schemes, even though it's at odds with DNA and the going science, and requires at least some level of belief in a conspiracy theory.  Gloria Patri and I used to to argue over evolution, but what we now have in common is the agreement that if you consider Vatican II, the NOM, St. John Paul II, and the apparent defection of the Church, then it's hard to see how evolution isn't incontrovertible.

Vetus Ordo

Quote from: Pon de Replay on August 01, 2018, 10:09:03 AMTheistic evolutionists try to have it both ways and seem willfully ignorant of the amount of sadism their position necessarily ascribes to the creator.

How so?
DISPOSE OUR DAYS IN THY PEACE, AND COMMAND US TO BE DELIVERED FROM ETERNAL DAMNATION, AND TO BE NUMBERED IN THE FLOCK OF THINE ELECT.

Michael Wilson

I watched "Expelled", and basically it demonstrated that there is no real debate on evolution that is allowed in the Scientific Community. Various scientists give their experience of being punished for daring to call evolution into question. There is also a funny interview with Richard Dawkins, in which he claims that life came to Earth carried here by extra-terrestrials.
"The World Must Conform to Our Lord and not He to it." Rev. Dennis Fahey CSSP

"My brothers, all of you, if you are condemned to see the triumph of evil, never applaud it. Never say to evil: you are good; to decadence: you are progess; to death: you are life. Sanctify yourselves in the times wherein God has placed you; bewail the evils and the disorders which God tolerates; oppose them with the energy of your works and your efforts, your life uncontaminated by error, free from being led astray, in such a way that having lived here below, united with the Spirit of the Lord, you will be admitted to be made but one with Him forever and ever: But he who is joined to the Lord is one in spirit." Cardinal Pie of Potiers