100 Reasons Why Evolution Is Stupid (Part 1 of 11)

[Shalamar]

For instance, if I'm experimenting to see if a particular fertilizer improves my lawn, and on day 2 I accidently flood the lawn, then the experiment has failed; I can't tell whether the fertilizer helped or not. OTOH, if everything went smoothly and the fertilized patch of lawn died, then the experiment was a success but the "this fertilizer can improve my lawn" hypothesis has been weakened.

No.. You're only taking it on faith! The grass died because of GOD!

 

[jadebox]

I was going to post 'Occam's Razor', but was concerned that David would simply refer to it as just another atheist non-defense defense.

I assumed you left out the phrase "Occam's Razor" on purpose. But, in anticipation of David's response to your post, I wanted to point out that is is a simple concept - one that is taught by puppets on Sesame Street!

-- Roger

 

[X]

I have seen [Hovind] mop the floor with professors at universities who should know what they are talking about and those guys respond the same to him as the people here.

No answers, only an insistance that anyone who doesn't agree can't be educated on the subject. That is dogma. Religious. If they can't give an answer it is a moot point.

You have had many answers.
That they aren't the ones you want to hear is your problem, not ours.

Let me elaborate:

You begin by announcing that "evolution is stupid", and proceed to define evolution in a way that nobody who understands it ever would.

You have a deep misunderstanding of what the theory of evolution is.

This is the reason the answers you get don't satisfy you.

But the simple reality is that the problem lies with you.
You need to educate yourself about the subject your are argunig against.

Because at the moment, your whole argument is the equivalent of "Gravity is stupid because it doesn't explain magentism!"

The definitions you have gleaned from Hovind are fundamentally wrong.

And startign from such a point will only result in your continual protests that nobody has answered your queries.

Well, we have answered you. We've told you time and again that you don't understand evolution or cosmology, that what you are arguing against is not what the theories actually say. The trouble is, you keep asking question that make no sense. They make no sense, because they are based on an egregious misunderstanding of the theories.

But instead of learning something, you dance in glee and say "Look! See! I told you those stoopid evolutionist atheists are dumb! They can't answer a simple question!".

You are appallingly misinformed about the subjects you are trying to discuss. Instead of protesting that we haven't given you the answers you want, and asking nonsense questions, why don't you try learning somethnig.

Take some advice that's been repeated here often enough:

Forget "Dr" Kent Hovind. The man is an imbecile. He lies and distorts habitually, and the information you are parroting from him has no basis in reality. He does not talk about evolution. He speaks about some ******** idea he came up based on his own pathetic (and willful) ignorance of the subject.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

What is supernatural? Science can't test the supernatural, can it? So from a scientific perspective, even in almost complete ignorance, you can't deny God any more than I can confirm him.

No. But there's a catch. If something doesn't exist in our world, and can't be measured, observed or interacted with in any way, then we wouldn't have any way of knowing it existed in the first place. I have video game modding as one of my hobbies, and if I decided to add something to the game that was invisible and incorporeal so that you couldn't see it, touch it, hit it with weapons fire, or otherwise notice it was there in any way, you wouldn't know it was there. Nobody would, unless they got curious one day and decided to explore the game files and found it.

You could say that ah, but God has interacted with the world, with miracles, answered prayers, and even an incarnate who walked among us 2000 years ago. Problem with that is that those interactions are not "supernatural". If praying to God has a specific positive effect, this positive effect can be measured. If miracles happen, they can be observed like any other events in the world. If God chooses to incarnate Himself into a human being, we can look for this human being in history like any other human being (like Napoleon, Erik the Red, Confucius, or Benjamin Franklin).

Either God is supernatural, and we have no way of knowing He's there, which makes him just about as likely to exist as any other conceivable creature, or He's interacting with the world, in which case we can test Him. So to say that "you can't deny God", while technically true, is like saying that I can't deny that there's an invisible puma drawing in the back of every Bible. It doesn't matter if I can deny it or not, because it has no basis to begin with.

I have seen [Hovind] mop the floor with professors at universities who should know what they are talking about and those guys respond the same to him as the people here.

As we have already explained to you, it doesn't matter if you "mop the floor with" anyone or "make them look like idiots" (which is morally questionable enough to begin with). Science is about facts, not your skills as a debater. Given enough practice, I could probably go before an uneducated audience and mop the floor with a scientist believing that Pi=3.14, that the Vikings discovered America, that the Earth is round, that the US landed on the Moon, or that Coca-Cola contains sugar. It doesn't matter, because those things are empirical. They can be tested. If the tests state that a .5 litre bottle of Coca-Cola contains 29 grams of sugar, it doesn't matter if some guy comes along and drags the scientist who conducted the test onto a stage and makes him look like an idiot in front of everyone, because the tests would still indicate Coca-Cola contains 29 grams of sugar.

No answers, only an insistance that anyone who doesn't agree can't be educated on the subject. That is dogma. Religious. If they can't give an answer it is a moot point.

No one is saying he's a liar and uneducated because he disagrees. We're saying he's a liar and uneducated based on what he says.

 

[Olowkow]

Hmmm, perhaps I should have used a smilie. It just seems to me that many evolution deniers manage to criticize science both for changing and for not changing.

Please understand that I knew you were not making those claims. I saw an imaginary smilie.

 

[technoextreme]

Is it possible that the confusion here is one of language? Are you possibly not fluent in English? That might explain some of your replies.

No. I just think he is confused between the what and the why.

 

[Olowkow]

If I may be pedantic for a moment, I don't consider the Michelson-Morley to be a failed experiment. The hypothesis failed spectacularly, the experiment worked just fine.

....

Good point, I agree totally. I should have perhaps worded it differently, or written "failed experiment".

I guess if I were in their shoes at the time, I would have been bummed out for a while at least until I realized what was going on.

 

[sphenisc]

..

 

[excaza]

Somebody may have already noted this, but actually, I don't think it's the same birds changing. As I recall, the observation is that average beak length is variable in the population, but each individual bird's beak stays the same.

I wasn't sure what the study actually said, I just took it to mean that an individual bird's beak changed depending on the season, which would be similar to the dog or tree example I had at the end.

 

[Madalch]

It is assuming that 12 o'clock is the starting point of the diversification.

Like this:

12 can breed with 1 and vice versa;
1 can breed with 2 and vice versa;
2 can breed with 3 and vice versa;
3 can breed with 4 and vice versa;
4 can breed with 5 and vice versa;
5 can breed with 6 and vice versa;
6 can breed with 7 and vice versa;
7 can breed with 8 and vice versa;
8 can breed with 9 and vice versa;
9 can breed with 10 and vice versa;
10 can breed with 11 and vice versa; BUT
11 cannot breed with 12 and vice versa.

11 and 12 are by definition, different species. But at what point along the path does this macro-evolution occur? Now replace this geographic problem with a time problem and the absurdity of saying something as ridiculous as a dog giving birth to an ear of corn becomes clear.

I don't think that's quite right. My understanding is that the species would have arrived at 6:00, and spread slowly in both directions. The ones at 6 could breed with the 5s and 7s, etc, but by the time they finished circling the mountain/lake/ring, the 1s couldn't breed with the 12s.

 

[sphenisc]

No. I just think he is confused between the what and the why.

Really, so you don't think I'm deliberately quote-mining then - I'm just confused?

 

[technoextreme]

Really, so you don't think I'm deliberately quote-mining then - I'm just confused?

Originally yes. Now I think you are just confused as to what an abstraction is. I actually agree with you that why it works that why is completely unknown. That isn't the what which is that energy is an abstraction.

 

[Robert Oz]

I don't think that's quite right. My understanding is that the species would have arrived at 6:00, and spread slowly in both directions. The ones at 6 could breed with the 5s and 7s, etc, but by the time they finished circling the mountain/lake/ring, the 1s couldn't breed with the 12s.

I believe in the specific case of the salamanders discussed in The Ancestor's Tale, the genetic evidence suggests one direction all the way around the mountain range.

ETA: Actually, don't take that as gospel. I just wikied it, and I can't see anything about direction. I may be misremembering it and you could be right.

 

[aggle-rithm]

I've had an epiphany.

You can't fight stupidity with logic. Stupidity will always win, because it doesn't have to work nearly as hard.

You might as well fight it with mockery. It's just as effective and more entertaining.

 

[Olowkow]

I've had an epiphany.

You can't fight stupidity with logic. Stupidity will always win, because it doesn't have to work nearly as hard.

You might as well fight it with mockery. It's just as effective and more entertaining.

Can't argue with that. Just look at some of our politicians.

I think Dawkins and most scientists have just given up trying to play nice. One exception at least seems to be good old Massimo Pigliucci.

 

[sphenisc]

Originally yes. Now I think you are just confused as to what an abstraction is.

I accept your retraction.

However, unless you can enlighten me, I'll stick with my conclusion that David is in good company in not knowing what energy is.

 

[Personal Grudge]

I definitely think this thread is now just feeding a troll. For quite awhile through these 26 pages of posts, I genuinely accepted that David may just be one of the most woefully ignorant people on the planet, completely devoid of rational thought and the capacity to learn.

However, the refusal to even acknowledge what a logical fallacy entails... instead claiming it's just an atheist defense mechanism... there's no way I believe now that he's in any way genuine. He's here simply to get a rise out of people. This explains ignoring all posts that contain answers to his questions, continually misrepresenting arguments even after being corrected, etc.

While I find the information provided in this thread fascinating, perhaps the relevant posts would be better placed in an "Evidence for Evolution" thread. In that manner, the subject can be seriously discussed, David can be properly ignored, and this thread can be left to thankfully die.

 

[excaza]

In other words he doesn't agree with you.

I don't care if he agrees with me or not. I care where this disagreement is coming from. If he said "hey, I looked at all this evidence and this is what I think happened" I would have absolutely no problem with it. However, nothing he says leads me to believe he has spent any time investigating evolution. If he had anything remotely resembling a fundamental understanding of evolution, he wouldn't need to focus so much on using strawmen arguments (like attacking Big Bang Theory) or the "being silly on his part" 'logic' you mention below.

That is just being silly on his part.

Yes, it is silly. But he's not trying to be silly, he's using it as evidence against evolution. It's the same as his "they're trying to say we came from rocks! Isn't that silly!?!?" 'logic.

I have seen the guy mop the floor with professors at universities who should know what they are talking about and those guys respond the same to him as the people here.

Yippee skippy. I already admitted he is a very good speaker (a master debater ), and it doesn't surprise me that people have a hard time debating with him in a real-time setting. It's very difficult to argue against strawman arguments on the spot, particularly when they're of the 'I don't have a tail so I couldn't have come from a monkey' variety. Attempting to explain the fundamental error with that 'logic' requires a bit of time, and generally the audience only hears the scientists sputter out "well that's not really how it works" before Hovnid fires off a few more lines, and this makes them look "foolish". This builds up as the lecture goes on and eventually you end up with the 'mopping the floor' that you're describing. Honestly, it's very clever, and clearly premeditated. It still doesn't falsify evolution.

No answers, only an insistance that anyone who doesn't agree can't be educated on the subject. That is dogma. Religious. If they can't give an answer it is a moot point.

No, the insistence is that anyone who refuses to acknowledge the evidence can't be educated on the subject. You can disagree all you want, but unless you have a reason to disagree other than "everyone's agreeing so I shouldn't," you don't really have an argument to stand on. I don't have a problem with you disagreeing, I really don't, but to go and say that 'evolution is stupid' and using a clear misunderstanding as your reasoning is unacceptable.

It doesn't matter because you can't anwer his criticism with anything other than faith.

Yes, you can. And people have. If I wasn't so lazy I could probably go through his 'dissertation' and point out the errors. I did the first paragraph earlier in this thread, and I'm just an aerospace engineer. Imagine what a biologist/geneticist/anthropologist/paleontologist could do?

Believe as I say. Don't question.

No, you absolutely should question. That's the only way to make progress! But understanding the fundamentals is a crucial prerequisite, one you're apparently completely missing.

 

[David Henson]

No scientific theory has ever ended with anything remotely similar to 'as long as it isn't attributed to a creator'. Scientific theories don't address a creator, because one is not needed as part of the theory. Theories are meant to be as simple as possible, while explaining observations and making predictions.

If adding a god to a scientific theory does not change the predictions being made and does not increase its 'fit' to observation, then it simply does not get added on. And why should it?

We may as well add a cookie recipe on the end of super string theory.

You are absolutely right, and that is the way it should be. I apologize for my mistake. I should have said to consider the possibility of it being or not being the work of a creator shouldn't be the place of science, but from the perspective of those who study the Bible that is exactly what science minded atheists do with science. Not that science proposes either one of those things.

 

[elbe]

I should have said to consider the possibility of it being or not being the work of a creator shouldn't be the place of science, but from the perspective of those who study the Bible that is exactly what science minded atheists do with science.

That says something more about the bias of those who "study the Bible" than an observation on reality.

And many atheists have studied the bible. Why wouldn't they?