\/\/0RF said:
Before I read the rest of your novel, do you know I'm being asked to pay $30 for the privilege of reading that article?
:edit: in fact, can you link to anything besides AOL that doesn't require me to pay?
Unfortunately this has always been my one critical flaw with these debates, I can't just link papers and people can go to them. I can access these due to my university proxy, but I'm unfortunately unable to ensure others can. The difference however (except the AOL site link, which is probably somewhat garbage, somewhat truth, but is supported [the basic controversy, not that the member of the site was involved or things happen the way they describe] by mainstream physics journals that, again, require someone to pay
) is these things aren't like the random internet links to AiG or whatever. All of them exist in print and I've always been careful to provide the references, or at least where these can be found so that they can be looked up in the actual journal.
This whole reason is really why I use journals and dislike sites (not even I will support the AOL link, I just shoved it up there because anyone can read it and it may support my point), journals always have to have a copy that you can't alter on the fly or otherwise manipulate. The kinds of scientific 'ideas' and theories the ICR etc come up with do not, when they make a massive abuse of fact they merely hide it- they have no in print paper to be accountable for after all.
Again, this is where scientists are different than creationists, they end up being accountable for their ideas and ultimately if their results bear out. Creationists never present theories and ideas that can be tested, and the latest lot, the ID movement have already been defeated in the realms of "Irreducible complexity".
Now maybe I AM giving too much credit to ICR faculty by suggesting they might breathe the same air as you, but if someone has a PhD in Biology from Harvard, I'm going to take a huge leap and make the wild assumption that he has a decent grasp of biology.
Here is the thing, so did Haeckel. Remember that Haeckel was (apparently) rather brilliant and had both a PhD in Zoology and a medical degree. He wasn't a credible scientist and probably makes things worse because when he grossly distorted the facts, he probably knew what he was doing. The ICR do publish papers, but even a casual look among them (except a few by Dewitt, which can't be found on Journal search engines oddly enough, library time for me I guess) reveals that very few of those papers had anything to do with creation, and some of them had very little to do with biology as well.
It doesn't make them credible scientists, and I'm surprised that for people with PhDs in biology or physics they make such incredibly basic mistakes. Their article on pollination you linked to earlier, is full of minor technical mistakes and misconceptions. Again, these people have PhDs yet make such basic errors consistently, and defend them as such?
Not to mention, they use horrifically outdated references
1. Robbins, Wilfred, W. T. Elliot Weier, C. Ralph Stocking, Botany: An Introduction to Plant Science, 3rd Edition (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, London, Sydney, 1965) Pg. 98.
Campbell biology (the new edition) has several indications about how tree bark evolved, but aside from this, doesn't the ICR realise that botanical science (like all biology) has advanced a hell of a lot since 1965? Why is it, and this is a general question for anyone who feels like telling me, creationists NEVER reference very recent papers (or only rarely) and often use references from the most archaeic sources they can find? I find any reference more than 2 years old to be suspect, maybe even incorrect! Sure there are exceptions, the original one step growth experiment of viruses was published in the 50's yet is still referenced, but that is because the paper is the very pinnacle of what it tries to do and can't be improved on that much.
Again, for supposedly credible scientists they make basic biological blunders (and if you read that article carefully, you'll notice that it has NO positive evidence of creation and actually doesn't say a lot in reality).
If you want to talk about their ideas, or not, fine. If you want to suggest their theories aren't accepted by the scientific community, I won't argue that. I didn't bring up ICR to suggest that their work is the wave of the future. I understand that you sought to clarify your earlier statement about credentials but it demonstrates how insulting and demeaning your methods of arguing the points are.
Or that sometimes like most human beings I happen to make errors, stupid errors but errors none the less. Again, once pointed out I immediately corrected the initial statement and apologised for any conclusion.
I won't argue though that I'm an aggressive debater (sometimes overly so). One of my many flaws unfortunately.
[quote[When you start putting up pictures of skull comparisons and stuff, that is interesting and informative. When you dismiss the idea of God by comapring Him to a pink unicorn you made up from the ether, that's demeaning to that person's religion.[/quote]
Not exactly, because I share your religion (though you probably weren't aware of that to begin with, yes, I do believe in Jesus and that the ressurection happened in the bible as written,
shocking revelations !
You may feel it got your point across, but there are better ways to go about that than to compare God to a ludicrous fantasy. It looks a lot to me like a straw man, as it's easier for you to deal with something you just made up than to address the God of the Bible, and maybe it's easier to make other people look stupid by addressing the exaggeration rather than the revelation.
Not in particular actually, as I said, it is merely a distraction to take flak while things like alien directed creation, which you could make a decent case for but I won't, I'll let the
Raelians do that for me. For further fun and amusement, raelians are actually supports of the ID movement, but they want to have ID based books where the creator isn't God, but instead aliens from somewhere (it's on their site somewhere).
With such
incredibly credible people as the ICR, DI and the Raelians (who claimed they cloned a human being earlier if you recall) supporting ID, is anyone surprised that they're largely regarded as jokes.
And when you make a simple, blanket statement like no creationist having a decent grasp of biology,
This is some what over interpreting what I have said, I guess because I either didn't word it correctly or because it came off differently than it sounded to me.
I have never met a creationist with a decent grasp of biology, of course by saying 'met' I mean having an actual discussion with them (as on these forums, ICR or once, probably the pinnacle of my debating career, in a lecture theatre and with a 'creation scientist' who couldn't answer a basic question on the number of neck vertebrae in a Giraffe). I haven't met the people from the ICR myself, nor should I have as I don't live in America to do so easily (though I understand these people travel around a lot sometimes). Perhaps they do know their biology, but if they did, why do they make such basic errors or fail to provide positive biological arguments for their view instead of just negative (and usually poorly researched) negative arguments against evolution?
and I did nothing more than present you with a list of people with degrees from accreditted universities (I did not say all, nor did I even defend schools like seminaries because I wouldn't expect you to take them seriously, but come on, Harvard?)
Of course I noticed that, however, a deeper look into the odd one or two of them indicates some very wierd things. They call someone who is just involved with methods of teaching a 'biological scientist' and a philosopher a 'physical scientist'. When you explain to me how a philosopher is a 'scientist' to begin with, with a PhD in linguistics to boot, I'll be more enthused with the credibility of those lists.
And to defend your overly general statement, you don't address the accreditation of the people in question, or make the questionable but at least partially reasonable assertion that "just because they have a real PhD from a real university in a relevant field doesn't mean they know anything about biology".
This is true, if they did, some simple technical errors wouldn't of crept through quite so easily. Of course, if you read those articles you linked to on ICR, you will immediately notice that they are simplified textbook explanations, but don't ACTUALLY give any evidence of design or a creator, just provide meaningless "OH NOES IT COULDN'T HAVE EVOLVED" statements.
I already attacked their 'credentials' incidently last post. I find it odd that someone who has a degree in Neurobiology with such impressive letters, is unable to have papers publised in well recognised journals that would appear on pubmed, especially as they are not creation orientated in any way. I already said that is curious, but like everything, library first internet second.
Posting a completely different person, with a degree that I never claimed to support, does not address my point at all. It's a straw man, and I submit that it's demeaning to people with properly accreditted degrees.
That is true, but then again, in every argument I've had Haeckel is bought up in the same way. Welcome to my world.
If you want to prove Hovind is less credible than these people, you need to establish why. Yes he has a fake degree and is full of rubbish, does having a real degree allieviate the problem of being full of rubbish? From everything I've read, Hovind and the ICR use the same tactics, the same abuses of science or plain manipulations of fact.
You need to explain how the ICR, who use the same tactics as Hovind, is any different aside from having a proper degree (even if it isn't in the correct field of study occasionally).
To carry on with one of your later points, I ALWAYS bring up Haeckel because I can SHOW you the evolutionary frauds, and I know for a fact how I can demonstrate they were exposed and then ridiculed. This is the purpose of writing papers in a credible journal, you are ultimately answerable to your mistakes and journals will demand you retract the paper or the journal will themselves (The MMR-Autism link paper was retracted by the journal for example, but it did a lot of damage to its reputation).
When creationists get it wrong they just edit their websites and pretend they never got it wrong to begin with (See the ICR moondust problem).
[qupte]I want this to be the last word that we have on the subject of degrees, so can we at least establish that I have never come here suggesting that diplomas from degree mills should be honored, and that it would be better to address points directly rather than through straw men (like the albatross argument)?[/quote]
Indeed.
In the interest of full disclosure,
here is a list of Creation scientists with unaccredited degrees. That way everyone's clear on who's educated and who's all papered up. Okay?
Amused. A certain 'creation scientist' I met in first year is on that list. How handy.
... um, no, I get pissy when you use him as a straw man.
Not exactly. Demonstrate how he is different from other creationists first, as I have with Haeckel [and evolutionists, hell scientists in general]. If his false degree is the only problem you have, aside from that, he still argues the same things (though he uses dead arguments as well, this doesn't immediately discredit him, just makes him stupid) and uses similar tactics to the ICR and other creationists in general. How exactly is he different? They both only offer negative evidence of evolution, they both distort facts, they both use archaic references, the ICR got found out on result manipulation and so on. As far as I'm concerned, beyond degree, they are just as bad as each other.
The reason I didn't bring him up was because he was not relevant at all to my point, about scientists with legitimate degrees.
In this case yes, but really, a degree (legitimate or not until it gets found out anyway) doesn't mean a lot if you do not have any credibility.
Explain why the ICR scientists are more credible than Hovind, when they have been found out for the same tactics?
It's pretty obvious why YOU would bring him up, though:
Of course, because he's one of those 'legitimate' Creation 'scientists' that happens to typify what kind of arguments and tactics they use. Ultimately, you've defended the comparison by constantly mentioning that Hovind doesn't have a legitimate degree compared to the ICR scientists. What I implied is that sure, they have a legitimate degree do they do any legitimate science to make them different?
Ultimately? No, it doesn't appear that way. Legitimate degrees are as useless as real degrees if you don't apply them.
This is a wholly untenable statement. I have never once mentioned Haeckel or held him over your head, even though you've been quite happy to throw him under the bus repeatedly to show how unbiased you are. I haven't even mentioned recapitulation or the embryonic drawings (with the caveat that someone else here might have). The only thing I've pointed out are a handful of examples of archaeological/paleontological forgeries that show only that while science as an ideal is pure, its practitioners are not above reproach.
I could of used the scientists in those examples as well. I used Haeckel because I had an over 40+ post debate, on this one issue, trying to correct someone that Haeckels idiocy did not disprove that embryos have similar stages of growth that look similar (absolute fact), just they don't go through a fish stage, frog stage etc. It's just easy for me to use because I know Haeckel and what sort of things he did like the back of my hand.
Again, Haeckel lost his credibility, his ability to have papers published (Scientists are plain unforgiving of cheats) and was ostracised. Hovind is still regarded as one of the leaders of the creationist movement, noting that even if AiG and the ICR don't like him exactly they do not make an effort to point out he is blatantly fraudulent (because, in the end,
so are they) or that his degree is 'fake'.
I propose that 'Creationists' lie and attempt to distort fact worse than any evolutionary frauds, all of which were discovered and completely discredited. No good evolutionary biologist uses Haeckel as evidence, on the other hand, many creationists tote out the same dead arguments even after they have been thoughroughly trounced, or need I get on my rant about the Flagellum (this STILL comes up) again?
[qupte]In the context of that statement, religion also has its ugly stepsisters, but in neither case do I consider that to be representative of the whole nor to disqualify their message.[/quote]
You see, this is where we differ. Hovind is representative of creationists, unless you haven't seen his videos and compared them to what the ICR, AiG and the like produce you probably wouldn't realise that they DO use the same arguments. Of course, there are differences, Hovind is convinced dinosaurs are running around the earth, but then again so is AiG (not sure about the ICR). Hovind uses the occasional dead argument, like the moon dust, but ICR scientists who 'came up' with the idea merely disguised their reference deception rather than admit they made a massive cock up and distorted facts badly.
These aren't 'exceptions' Worf, this is the rule of 'creation science'.
You seem to think I need to apologize or admit a wrongdoing, but in this thread I have been wholly respectful of science and of scientists and the theories mentioned herein. Can you find an instance where I have not? Can you find an instance where I have brought up a Haeckel or similar fraud of note, and suggested that evolution should be dismissed out of hand based entirely on that?
I just put that in there to prod you after your previous statement asking me to 'apologise' to whomever it was earlier. I'm not quite that angsty
Interesting you should use the words "gross distortion of fact". There are many scientists who believe in creation who specifically and openly refute a lot of the garbage claims (moondust being one example) you are talking about here.
Yes, but no official retracted, admission or similar was given to the original publication. For example, they may renounce the moondust theory, but did the individual involved get disciplined or fired? If he had been a credible scientist, who had wrote such garbage into the likes of nature, HEADS would have rolled. As it was, the creationists just disguised the fact they
A) Lied
B) Twisted facts
C) Even went as far to lie about the actual date of the refence!
So if they point out the bad science,
Here is the thing, the gross distortion of method and how they did what they did has 'never' been pointed out by creationists. Just their detractors (and to much delight I can assure you from what I've read).
They don't point out bad science, they practice it.
[qupte]how are they using the same science? And why make it a point to say "stop talking about the moondust, it's a false hypothesis" if the truth is supposedly less important than the message? I think I detect another gross distortion of fact here...[/quote]
No unfortunately, as much as you'd like to believe otherwise, there is a distinct reason why creationists are not regarded as credible scientists, in fact, even scientists at that.
Again, your best way to defend them would be to actually establish an actual prediction creationists have made and verified with experimental evidence.
I myself, know of no such thing.
I should also point out that proliferation of pseudoscience does not make the well-intentioned efforts of others invalid.
Yes, but when you are the one creating pseudoscience the goal is to make yourself look like real science, instead of getting found out. For all intents and purposes this is what creationists do. Is this why the Discovery Institute made a false list of references 'supporting' ID that under scruitiny didn't support their position at all? These incidents which occur over and over and over, that just happen to come from every creationist establishment, are a few frauds making the rest look stupid? Or is this the rule?
Again, look at AiG Worf, tell me where the retraction or admission they are wrong is about the appendix (after many years of immunology, I can safely say their article on the appendix is 100% crap). Then you have a point. Until then...
Garbage science is on the TV all day long, from "4 out of 5 doctors recommend X" to "
gluten-free yeast" (if gluten is a protein and yeast is a fungus, isn't gluten-free yeast something like a cow-free chicken?). The preponderance of this kind of garbage science, most of which seems to end up at GNC, I would surmise does nothing to diminish the work of other scientists in the same field, nor should it.
Gluten is a wheat protein, although to be honest, I'm not sure what they are getting at either there. There are a lot of papers on yeast that produce gluten free extracts, or bioreactors that can isolate off the gluten, but I'm not exactly sure why you would have a gluten free yeast cell, when gluten isn't a part of yeast.
Going back a bit, since we haven't really covered this in a while, as for your earlier dismissal of half of my various statements as being merely philosophical... LOOK AT THE QUESTION. It's a philosophical question unto itself. We know that evolution happens, but when we turn the clock all the way back, we're ALL making inferences.
In the end yes, I'm just not going to make a definitive statement because I believe something, because currently there is actually a fair amount of evidence for how certain ways life may have evolved. Nothing that is conclusive, but such is the way of most evolutionary theoies.
Whether God manipulated our universe into being, or whether an alien race seeded us here, or whether life just tripped over itself... it's an inference based on the available data, whatever that might be for one person or another.
Actually, that was my entire point that ultimately people will interpret their arguments for their own beliefs. For example as I'm sure you'd appreciate, if I was a Raelian I would be dismissing evolution, only I'd be dismissing God using the same biological evidence as creationists, merely claiming that aliens created mankind instead. The differences in belief, not what the actual evidence (or in the case of ID the lack of) would determine that. Ultimately the argument wouldn't go anywhere, because without some form of verifiable evidence neither can prove their position.
And then we go back to square one that once you start talking about things that cannot be directly proven through solid evidence, it becomes harder and harder to call it 'science'. Hence, the oxymoron involved in 'creation science' as they don't perform any science. They merely provide arguments against evolution, but are unable to prove their own idea.
That isn't science, that is just philosophy, but when it comes to rebutting a scientific theory, that is MORE accurate than the theory of Gravity (which in fact, if I felt like it, I could point out is actually LESS proven than Evolution!).
When people talk about large-scale evolution being based on faith or incomplete facts, they are referring to this inference that necessarily must take place when observation is not possible.
Incomplete facts? That depends on what facts you refer too. Large scale evolution is about as much based on faith as gravity is. We may not be able to directly observe it, but Evolution as a theory can make predictions based on the evidence and what would be 'expected' of biological evolution. These predictions bear out, time, and time, and time, and time, and time, and time again. Evolution doesn't require 'faith', the insurmountable amount of evidence establishes that organisms did change from one to another. This is the fact of evolution, like it or not. The theory, to go back earlier, is how this occured. Nobody can say for certain how organisms evolved or why (mechanisms) because we cannot observe what enviromental conditions existed at the time many of these animals lived (although geology can give you clues).
Obviously some people are going to take that one step further and say that evolution is the religion of atheists, and it's probably an unfair characterization to make of scientists who look at science on its face and do not bother with the larger philosophies it might imply. But materialist evolutionism DOES make philosophical claims of pure naturalism, as clearly demonstrated by Dawkins and his theories on memetics.
For some reason everyone thinks I'm atheist. Never figured out why
I don't agree with Dawkins ideas in this particular case, but I'm hardly an expert on what he's wrote on it (I actually rarely read Gould or Dawkings to be honest) so I won't say either or.
I applaud you for making it a point to separate science from philosophy in your arguments, I'm just saying (as I ever have) that the crossover between science and philosophy is not exclusive to Bible-thumpers.
That is true, look at the Eugenics movement. I also know there are many people who say "Evolution disproves God, ROOFLES" and as I mentioned earlier, I really have to wonder how such people come to their conclusion. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in evolution that disproves a creator and the entire goal of the science was never meant to do that (Darwin remember was not some evil Atheist trying to uproot God from the world).
I to a degree, get more annoyed at the scientific atheists than I do with anyone else. In one case it's often simple misapplication of facts, or simply not realising that reading things like AiG doesn't actually tell you anything (just sounds convincing). In the other case it's usually not even based on any solid logic at all, just a hatred of God or *insert diety here*.
Maybe you don't like AiG. Fine. Maybe you don't consider their Technical Journal to be credible. Also fine. It IS submitted for peer-review but I'm now completely lost now on what "counts" and what doesn't. However, this article addresses potential problems with U-Pb dating methods, despite claims of some here that no one takes a serious look at anything other than 14C dating. That is the sole intention of the link. Please don't misconstrue it as anything other than that or parlay it into an entire other set of discussions about meaningless tangential crap.
It is complete crap, because they forgot what zirconian cages are, and in fact the term never comes up (read the article, where are these mentioned, or should I say, the lack thereof?). Did you not read the initial thing I wrote? Zirconian cages solve THE EXACT PROBLEM THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE OUT IS A CRITICAL FLAW.
Thank you for again proving my point that creationists are fraudulent and manipulate facts.
And the Creationist Technical journal is indeed, non-credible and in fact is the tabloid magazine of journals. The very omission of a critical aspect involving how U-Pb dating is verified PROVES this straight away. All of their complaints are meaningless when zirconian cages are also used to establish the date of the rock, because zirconian cages do NOT allow the entry and exit of atoms inside the structure. Now surely if they were trying to prove something, they would have used zirconian cages in their model. This very omission puts the entire paper (and their argument) into disrepute.
I also love the outdated references too.
Renegade Retard said:
Again, evolution has yet to find a solid piece of evidence for it's argument as well. It has instead found obscure facts that it manituplated to fit it's predetermined bias.
This is extremely wrong, and I'm surprised that you would say it unless you don't follow the evolution of certain structures such as the mammalian jawbone (one of the most complete fossil transitions available). There is a whole load of 'solid' evidence for evolution, and more importantly, and what you've missed from the meaning of that statement, is that evolution has made scientific predictions and these bear out.
Of course, if you want to argue that Gravity doesn't exist or is false, you'd have an EASIER time than disproving evolution. You cannot easily, in fact, at all, attack the basic tenants of evolution (natural selection with descent with modification) as bacteria have proven that beyond any doubt (which is the first piece of rock solid evidence, not to mention that the incredible ability of bacteria to develop entire metabolic pathways through nothing more than random selection as well, but whatever, I'm surprised at your statement with the 'research' you have claimed to have done). You can EASILY attack Gravity, you can point out that the gravitation constant, that the entire theory is based on is actually severely inaccurate, and worse yet, may actually be
wrong.
Evolution on the other hand makes predictions from genetics (for an example) and based on those predictions you can 'test' the theory. One such test from a cladistic analysis based on the properties evolution would have predicted in terms of certain proteins from a variety of mammals, had a possible error of 1.53x10^53 or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000153 if you'd rather see the number. Gravity, can get only down to those first two 0's. That shows how *accurate* the predictions made by evolution actually are.
I'm afraid to say, that statement really doesn't sound very well researched.
Of course, maybe you'd like to provide a prediction that ID/creationism has made that has even a remotely similar accuracy to what we get from a simple evolutionary cladistic analysis.
Don't pretend that evolution has proven itself more than creation. It has not.
Absolute rubbish.
Likewise though, there has yet to be absolute proof of evolution. Every time evolution tries to provide a "smoking gun" science later reveals that the assumtion is inaccurate, or even a hoax.
What about the revelation that anthrozoans have hox genes, more importantly, they have some of the same hox genes and that these will develop eyes in even higher organisms (namely drosophila). This indicates that many basics for evolution, that creationists of course like to claim weren't there, already were well before the development of higher animals required the more complex systems. The fact is, there is more than enough evidence that provides solid mechanisms for how organisms evolved (one of them was where hox genes came from and why they were set in the manner they are now, we have an answer to one and now we have an answer to the second one (most recent issue of nature)).
Once again, this just confirms a prediction that would have been made by evolution. Honestly RR, you should know if you've studied biology that when a scientific theory keeps passing prediction, after prediction with almost complete success every time, that it has more evidence behind it than one that fails even a basic predictive test- Intelligent design.
