"Evolution isn't science"

gosh, its crazy that people would read that and then try to make it out of context. Only seriously dishonest individuals would do that.
 
jesus_freak said:
"Evolution is a fairy tale for grownups." Dr. Louis Bounoure, Director of the Zoological Museum and Director of Research at the National Center of Scientific Research in France, J. Rostand, "LaMonde et la Vie," October 1963, p. 31 from V. Long, "Evolution: A Fairy Tale for Adults," Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Vol 78 (1978), no. 7, pp. 27-32
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From http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Pier/1766/hovindlies/P.html

Hovind attributes this: "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless." to Professor Louis Bounoure, supposedly the former president of the Biological Society of 'Strasbourg'. A creationist web site actually gives a reference: The Advocate, March 8, 1984, p. 17

Lie #315. E.T. Babinski actually contacted French authorities. They revealed that Louis Bounoure never served as Director or even a member of the CNRS. He was a professor of biology at the University of Strasbourg. Bounoure was a Christian but did not affirm that Genesis was to be taken to the letter.

The beginning of the quotation, "Evolution is a fairy tale for adults" is not from Bounoure but adapted from Jean Rostand, a member of the Academy of Sciences of the French Academy. Rostand also wrote that "Transformism may be considered as accepted, and no scientist, no philosopher, no longer discusses the fact of evolution." (L'Evolution des Especes [i.e., The Evolution of the Species], Hachette, p. 190).

The end of Bounoure's quotation is from his book, "Determinism and Finality." It runs, "That, by this, evolutionism would appear as a theory without value, is confirmed also pragmatically. A theory must not be required to be true, said Mr. H. Poincare, more or less, it must be required to be useable. Indeed, none of the progress made in biology depends even slightly on a theory, the principles of which are nevertheless filling every year volumes of books, periodicals, and congresses with their discussions and their disagreements."

In other words, Hovind's quote is complete fiction and he is too incompetent and dishonest to correct it or even check up on it.
 
Jesus_Freak:

I am up for handling this, as you said, as a conversation and not as a time to hit each other over the head with clubs and such. So, please take a metaphorical walk with me into the gut of someone harboring an infection:

All these little bacteria are floating around in this poor mans gut, causing all sorts of problems as some bacteria tend to do. Just like humans, within the bacteria population there is natural variation. This natural variation is genetic and entirely random and is due to mutations that occur (thanks to the random movement of particles). One of these gut-wrenching bacteria has a mutation that causes one of the molecules on his cell membrane to fold slightly differently, giving it a different shape than that of the same molecule on his bacteria buddies. Now remember, this is natural variation due to random mutations, nothing special about it.

The man with this unfortunate infection goes into the doctor. The doctor prescribes an antibiotic that works by grabbing onto our surface molecule of interest and breaks a bond, causing the membrane to rupture and the bacteria to die. The man takes the antibiotic and it kills most of the bacteria, but those one or two that have the strangely shaped mutant molecule are not affected because the antibiotic can not attach. Natural selection is the differential reproductive ability of certain individuals within a population based on expressed genetic characteristics. In other words, in an environment like a guy’s stomach, full of antibiotics, only those bacteria resistant to the antibiotics will be able to pass on the mutation necessary to survive because they are the only ones that will survive and reproduce. So, the poor man develops an antibiotic resistant strain of bacteria, most of the little guys were killed off, but the ones that were resistant to the antibiotic survived and reproduced. The antibiotic acted as a selective pressure. The bacteria population evolved, nothing magical, just the differential reproduction of certain bacteria (with funny shaped molecule) via selective pressures.

And if you will conduct a google search on “antibiotic resistant bacteria” you will find scenarios just like this happen all the time.

“Evolution” is not a simple fact. It is a process that describes so many things out there. The process can be mirrored in business, economics, shopping: do I like these shoes- no. why? They make my feet hurt. Will that shoe continue to sell? Not unless the company changes the shoe so it doesn’t hurt people’s feet, YOU provide pressure (not buying shoe) they respond to that pressure by making a new type of shoe (evolving) or the company will die.

Jesus_Freak: How does this sound so far? Does it make sense?

Oh, and on the “gill slits” in human embryos: They are sometimes referred to as gills because pharyngeal gill slits are one of the characteristics of the phylum we are in (phylum Chordata). For mammals, these embryonic “gills” are correctly referred to as pharyngeal pouches and develop into portions of the head and face. In fish, they develop into gills.
 
jesus_freak said:
There are no links of plant to animal, fish to amphibian, amphibian to reptile, reptile to birds and mammals. There are no links whatsoever. I am still waiting for an answer to this or are we just going to skip over it?
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Of course there are. Did you even bother to look?

Transitions from talk origins

"Animals" are descended from "plants." Animals and plants have a common ancestor.

Also this: There exist impossible gulfs between animal/vegetable, invertebrate/vertebrate, marine animals/amphibians, amphibians/reptiles, reptiles/birds, reptiles/mammals, mammals/humans.
 
jesus_freak said:
There are no links of plant to animal...[/qoute]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Fossil evidence indicates that the diversity and complexity of modern life has developed over much of the 4.57 billion year history of Earth. Oxygenic photosynthesis emerged around 3 billion years ago, and the subsequent emergence of an oxygen-rich atmosphere made the development of aerobic cellular respiration possible around 2 billion years ago. In the last billion years, simple multicellular plants and animals began to appear in the oceans.
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jesus_freak said:
...fish to amphibian...
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Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC212.html

There are several good transitional fossils:
  1. Most fish have anterior and posterior external nostrils. In tetrapods, the posterior nostril is replaced by the choana, an internal nostril opening into the roof of the mouth. Kenichthys, a 395-million-year-old fossil from China, is exactly intermediate between the two, having nostrils at the margin of the upper jaw (Zhu and Ahlberg 2004).
  2. A fossil shows eight bony fingers in the front fin of a lobed fish, offering evidence that fingers developed before land-going tetrapods (Daeschler and Shubin 1998).
  3. A Devonian humerus has features showing that it belonged to an aquatic tetrapod that could push itself up with its forelimbs but could not move it limbs back and forth to walk (Shubin et al. 2004).
  4. Acanthostega, a Devonian fossil, about 60 cm long, probably lived in rivers (Coates 1996). It had polydactyl limbs with no wrists or ankles (Coates and Clack 1990). It was predominantly, if not exclusively, aquatic: It had fishlike internal gills (Coates and Clack 1991), and its limbs and spine could not support much weight. It also had a stapes and a lateral sensory system like a fish.
  5. Ichthyostega, a tetrapod from Devonian streams, was about 1.5 m long and probably amphibious. It had seven digits on its rear legs (its hands are unknown). Its limbs and spine were more robust than those of Acanthostega, and its rib cage was massive. It had fishlike spines on its tail, but these were fewer and smaller than Acanthostega's. Its skull had several primitive fishlike features, but it probably did not have internal gills (Murphy 2002).
  6. Tulerpeton, from estuarine deposits roughly the same age as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, had six digits on its front limbs and seven on its rear limbs. Its shoulders were more robust than Acanthostega, suggesting it was somewhat less aquatic, and its skull appears to be closer to later Carboniferous amphibians than to Acanthostega or Ichthyostega.
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jesus_freak said:
...amphibian to reptile...
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Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC213.html

The main character that separates amphibians (primitive tetrapods) from reptiles (amniotes) is possession of an amnion, which does not fossilize. We have a lot of Permian creatures; some are early amniotes and some likely are not. There are no unambiguous intermediates between the two groups like Acanthostega between fish and tetrapods, or Morganucodon between reptiles and mammals. However, the same uncertainty means there is no clear gap between the amphibians and reptiles, either.
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jesus_freak said:
...reptile to bird...
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Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC214.html
Many new bird fossils have been discovered in the last couple of decades, revealing several intermediates between theropod dinosaurs (such as Allosaurus) and modern birds:
  • Sinosauropteryx prima. A dinosaur covered with primitive feathers, but structurally similar to unfeathered dinosaurs Ornitholestes and Compsognathus (Chen et al. 1998; Currie and Chen 2001).
  • Ornithomimosaurs, therizinosaurs, and oviraptorosaurs. The oviraptorosaur Caudipteryx had a body covering of tufted feathers and had feathers with a central rachis on its wings and tail (Ji et al. 1998). Feathers are also known from the therizinosaur Beipiaosaurus (Xu et al. 1999a). Several other birdlike characters appear in these dinosaurs, including unserrated teeth, highly pneumatized skulls and vertebrae, and elongated wings. Oviraptorids also had birdlike eggs and brooding habits (Clark et al. 1999).
  • Deinonychosaurs (troodontids and dromaeosaurs). These are the closest known dinosaurs to birds. Sinovenator, the most primitive troodontid, is especially similar to Archaeopteryx (Xu et al. 2002). Byronosaurus, another troodontid, had teeth nearly identical to primitive birds (Makovicky et al. 2003). Microraptor, the most primitive dromaeosaur, is also the most birdlike; specimens have been found with undisputed feathers on their wings, legs, and tail (Hwang et al. 2002; Xu et al. 2003). Sinornithosaurus also was covered with a variety of feathers and had a skull more birdlike than later dromaeosaurs (Xu, Wang, and Wu 1999; Xu and Wu 2001; Xu et al. 2001).
  • Protarchaeopteryx, alvarezsaurids, Yixianosaurus and Avimimus. These are birdlike dinosaurs of uncertain placement, each potentially closer to birds than deinonychosaurs are. Protarchaeopteryx has tail feathers, uncompressed teeth, and an elongated manus (hand/wing) (Ji et al. 1998). Yixianosaurus has an indistinctly preserved feathery covering and hand/wing proportions close to birds (Xu and Wang 2003). Alvarezsaurids (Chiappe et al. 2002) and Avimimus (Vickers-Rich et al. 2002) have other birdlike features.
  • Archaeopteryx. This famous fossil is defined to be a bird, but it is actually less birdlike in some ways than some genera mentioned above (Paul 2002; Maryanska et al. 2002).
  • Shenzhouraptor (Zhou and Zhang 2002), Rahonavis (Forster et al. 1998), Yandangornis and Jixiangornis. All of these birds were slightly more advanced than Archaeopteryx, especially in characters of the vertebrae, sternum, and wing bones.
  • Sapeornis (Zhou and Zhang 2003), Omnivoropteryx, and confuciusornithids (e.g., Confuciusornis and Changchengornis; Chiappe et al. 1999). These were the first birds to possess large pygostyles (bone formed from fused tail vertebrae). Other new birdlike characters include seven sacral vertebrae, a sternum with a keel (some species), and a reversed hallux (hind toe).
  • Enantiornithines, including at least nineteen species of primitive birds, such as Sinornis (Sereno and Rao 1992; Sereno et al. 2002), Gobipteryx (Chiappe et al. 2001), and Protopteryx (Zhang and Zhou 2000). Several birdlike features appeared in enantiornithines, including twelve or fewer dorsal vertebrae, a narrow V-shaped furcula (wishbone), and reduction in wing digit bones.
  • Patagopteryx, Apsaravis, and yanornithids (Chiappe 2002; Clarke and Norell 2002). More birdlike features appeared in this group, including changes to vertebrae and development of the sternal keel.
  • Hesperornis, Ichthyornis, Gansus, and Limenavis. These birds are almost as advanced as modern species. New features included the loss of most teeth and changes to leg bones.
  • Modern birds.
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jesus_freak said:
...and mammals.
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Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC215.html
The transition from reptile to mammal has an excellent record. The following fossils are just a sampling. In particular, these fossils document the transition of one type of jaw joint into another. Reptiles have one bone in the middle ear and several bones in the lower jaw. Mammals have three bones in the middle ear and only one bone in the lower jaw. These species show transitional jaw-ear arrangements (Hunt 1997; White 2002b). The sequence shows transitional stages in other features, too, such as skull, vertebrae, ribs, and toes.
  1. Sphenacodon (late Pennsylvanian to early Permian, about 270 million years ago (Mya)). Lower jaw is made of multiple bones; the jaw hinge is fully reptilian. No eardrum.
  2. Biarmosuchia (late Permian). One of the earliest therapsids. Jaw hinge is more mammalian. Upper jaw is fixed. Hindlimbs are more upright.
  3. Procynosuchus (latest Permian). A primitive cynodont, a group of mammal-like therapsids. Most of the lower jaw bones are grouped in a small complex near the jaw hinge.
  4. Thrinaxodon (early Triassic). A more advanced cynodont. An eardrum has developed in the lower jaw, allowing it to hear airborne sound. Its quadrate and articular jaw bones could vibrate freely, allowing them to function for sound transmission while still functioning as jaw bones. All four legs are fully upright.
  5. Probainognathus (mid-Triassic, about 235 Mya). It has two jaw joints: mammalian and reptilian (White 2002a).
  6. Diarthrognathus (early Jurassic, 209 Mya). An advanced cynodont. It still has a double jaw joint, but the reptilian joint functions almost entirely for hearing.
  7. Morganucodon (early Jurassic, about 220 Mya). It still has a remnant of the reptilian jaw joint (Kermack et al. 1981).
  8. Hadrocodium (early Jurassic). Its middle ear bones have moved from the jaw to the cranium (Luo et al. 2001; White 2002b).
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jesus_freak said:
There are no links whatsoever. I am still waiting for an answer to this or are we just going to skip over it?
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I just did. If you can't accept this evidence, tough. Reality is reality, and that reality doesn't support your religion, much less your Medieval notions of science. A is A. All the Bible-thumping and prayer in the world won't change A to B, C, or 7.

Deal with it.
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How come if I quote a creationist site I am slammed, but you can quote all the evolutionist that you want and it is ok?
 
jesus_freak said:
How come if I quote a creationist site I am slammed, but you can quote all the evolutionist that you want and it is ok?
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Because when you quote creationist sites you're not using them as sources. You're using them as the argument itself. When we quote them we're using them specifically as scientific sources to answer a specific question you ask. Big difference.
 
jesus_freak said:
How come if I quote a creationist site I am slammed, but you can quote all the evolutionist that you want and it is ok?
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1) It isn't that you are naming sites, it is the information on the sites you contain. Basically, it is that we have hard data and evidence that disputes some of the claims made on the sites you link to.

2) What makes our linking to sites any different from yours?

The nature of debate is for each side to present a viewpoint, then why they think that viewpoint is correct. Then, each side takes turns finding flaws and whatnot in the other sides' arguments. If, in trying to find flaws, one commits logical fallacy, then the other side has a right and duty to point out the faulty reasoning.

SO

You are coming here and presenting your case, and we are examining that case and seeing what holds water.

In truth, we are finding very little that does. Your material has severe flaws in it. We are a skeptics board, which means we not only demand evidence, but we hold that evidence up to the light of reason. We do not coddle theories, hypothesis, or facts here. As one poster puts in his sig, we ram these things into brick walls at high speeds, then examine the pieces. If the theory/et cetera is sound, then the pieces are from the wall.

Your hypothesis that God created life, the universe and everything is currently being tested, and found lacking. The hard, scientific data simply does not support the premise. Other people have tested the data you've presented, and have not come up with the same results, so now we must scrutinize why. The why, in most of your cases, is that your hypothesis is NOT backed by the factual data. In fact, the factual data refute any such claim.

You have not provided any hard, reliable data for your hypothesis. It really is that simple.
 
Dustin said:
Because when you quote creationist sites you're not using them as sources. You're using them as the argument itself. When we quote them we're using them specifically as scientific sources to answer a specific question you ask. Big difference.
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Erm, and what he said.:D

When we post links and data, we're inviting, hell begging, you to rip it to shreds. We're looking for you to be able to examine it and point out any flaws. It isn't about winning or losing, it's about learning.


Whenever someone challenges a long-held theory and wins, Science doesn't lose. No-one loses. We all WIN! We all learn more about the world around us than we knew before.


Science is pretty darned awesome.
 
jesus_freak said:
How come if I quote a creationist site I am slammed, but you can quote all the evolutionist that you want and it is ok?
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Actually, it is perfectly OK for you to quote creationist sites. The reason you get slammed when you do, is because it is so easy to demolish the dishonest lies such sites spew forth.

And it IS lies. The authors of such sites perform quote mining like the Darwin quote you gave. It is a precise quote, Darwin really did write it, but since they cut it short where they do, you are left with the impression that Darwin did not have an answer. They deliberately give you a incorrect idea of what Darwin said. And they know it. They also know that you're going to trust them and not check up on the quote.

Also, when the authors of creationist sites are informed of their "mistakes" or new data, they ignore it, since it runs counter to their real agenda, which is to push a certain religious idea, not to search truth. And they are perfectly willing to do anything possible to achieve this. Even break the holy rules of their religion.

It is very common for new creationists to come to this or other skeptics sites and present the same old creationist lies, this is why talkorigins has built up a set of creationist claims and just why they are wrong. It is also the reason there are so many skeptics that have so many arguments against you, there is nothing new here, and people are able to argue against you in their sleep. The creationist arguments don't change when new data arrives, the only thing that changes is the nick of the new creationist and the amount of money in the pockets of the creationist booksellers.

Being a lurker to similar discussions to this on other topics has changed my world view on some topics that I believed quite strongly in. And always this change has been to the more "skeptical", less "believing".

You don't have to change your own beliefs over this discussion, but you might change some lurker's creationist belief into a skeptics trust of the scientific theory of evolution. It is very unlikely that you will change any skeptics into creationists. Unless you can show something that has not been debunked countless times already. And that implies that you'll need to do science, and you can't achieve it by quoting creationist sites.

Sorry.

Mosquito - seen it all before, expect to see it all again soon
 
Ok, so clarsct and Dustin had *good* answers. :p

Mosquito - if nothing else, it helps my postcount ;)
 
jesus_freak said:
How come if I quote a creationist site I am slammed, but you can quote all the evolutionist that you want and it is ok?
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A couple of recent posts could more correctly be described as quoting a creationist site misquoting somebody else. I mean, come on, that Darwin quote was grossly dishonest. He was arguing that evolution could explain the eye and you cut him short such that it sounds like he is saying it could not. That cherry-picked quote has been floating around the young-earth creationist (YEC) camps a long time. As someone mentioned earlier, our impression is that Christian YECs are okay with blatantly lying if it leads someone to Christ.

I am neither atheist nor a YEC. Is the word of God so fragile that we must lie for Him? When you take a good hard look at the evidence, if the earth is 6,000 years old then God created the world to look much older than it really is. All the scientific evidence is in remarkable agreement. And it has been looked at a lot of ways by a lot of honest people. It's very hypocritical to cry foul at the researchers and back up your position with lies, half-truths and red herrings.

This fundamentalist fondness for pathological lying on God's behalf is one of the things that sunk the case in Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board: the judge believed the pious Christians perjured themselves to prevent a temporary restraining order on the Pandas books from going through (among other documented lies on their end). That came back and bit them hard. I believe every time it came down to a "he said, she said" the judge didn't believe the defense because he already knew they had no moral barrier to lying under oath.
 
You said evolution isn't science. We're linking to sites that give scientific evidence for evolution. You're linking to sites that give superficial arguments which have been answered in great detail already on sites like Talk Origins. They don't cite actual data, they just cite other authors making the same superficial arguments.

I was raised in a fundamentalist household. When I was in my teens I started reading the sort of books that you are citing. (No Internet back then, but the content is pretty much the same as it ever was.) I was shocked at how little support there was for the creationist viewpoint. Even their own literature used trivial, superficial, irrelevant arguments that I could easily tear to shreds.

You've made a number of claims that simply do not hold up to scrutiny, such as the claim that a flood and ark are plausible and that there are no transitional species. I don't really blame you for making (actually, just repeating) these claims, but the truth is that other people have already refuted them in excruciating detail. If you think these refutations are incorrect, then you need to cite or write something in equal detail. For example, Mark and I linked to pages that name dozens and dozens of the transitional species you claim don't exist. If you do not believe these are really transitional species, you need to find something that goes over them, one by one, and explains why they aren't.

By the way, there really is no such thing as a "transitional species." The whole concept assumes that somehow the bird-reptile species were on their way to the destination of birdhood. They were just as much an endpoint, or target, or "kind" as any bird.
 
jesus_freak said:
How come if I quote a creationist site I am slammed,
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Because they lie, and they admit it when they place the Bible before science.

For example, Wavicle has posted a great lie of omission - Darwin is often quoted on the 'impossibility' of the evolution of the eye. It's great for people like you who think that one man makes a scientific theory stand or fall. It's even better for people like us who can show the rest of the chapter and make the creationist ilk look as deceptive and dishonest as they are.

Is that really the sort of person you want to be? Having to lie about so many things in order to keep your fabricated world in place?
 
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