What is needed for creationists to connect evidence to valid conclusions

I'm going to continue to try to maintain focus on the topic: This isn't so much an example of inability to connect evidence to conclusions as it is an example of unawareness of any evidence whatsoever, or even basic information. Here's a brief set of explanations of the pieces of misinformation contained above:

• TheDarin: Secondly, science has not proven EVO.
  ​
  Theories are not proven. They become accepted after a lengthy and intense period of review and replication finds them to be an accurate way of interpreting a body of evidence, not only to understand it, but also to make predictions about new phenomena.
  ​
  This indicates a lack of understanding of the nature of scientific theories.
  ​
• TheDarin: you flaunt your monkey to man charts as if they are science.
  ​
  "Monkey to man charts" *are* science because they are supported by evidence and experiment.
  ​
  This indicates a lack of understanding of the nature of science itself.
  ​
• TheDarin: Monkey to man is as much theory as ID...
  ​
  ID is not a scientific theory because it has none of the qualities of scientific theories.
  ​
  This indicates a lack of awareness of the complete lack of effort on the part of ID supporters to actually *do* science.

The parts of the post I commented on are actually just a bunch of unsupported assertions, and as such aren't really examples of inability to draw valid conclusions from evidence. It's actually indicative of a far worse problem, drawing conclusions from personal feelings and opinions while ignoring existing knowledge and even the basic definitions of terms, and not even taking note of the absence of any chain of evidence leading to the conclusion.--Percy

The evidence that might lead you to conclude that you could substitute "ID" for "evolution" and still have a valid paragraph is completely lacking.Also, you're ignoring the evidence of the truth of the original paragraph, such as that creationists do actually teach a strawman version of evolution. Your many misstatements concerning evolution and science just in this thread alone are clear evidence of this.--Percy

As I already pointed out, simply substituting "ID" for "evolution" doesn't result in a valid paragraph. You didn't even get the turnabout right. For example, your first sentence should have claimed that EVO's are lying about creation and creationists, not science and scientists.But more importantly, the back up for Nwr's statements, off-topic though it is, is plastered all over this thread. I've been trying unsuccessfully to nudge the thread back onto the topic, but most people have been posting off-topic corrections to your off-topic misstatements. Another instance of creationist inability to reason clearly. You acknowledge the relationship of man to yeast, but deny a relationship between man and ape? The genetic evidence says you're dead wrong, and even worse, the connection between a 6th century BC religious text and science isn't even tenuous - it's non-existent. You're both ignoring evidence and making invalid connections between evidence and conclusions.--Percy

Rahvin has already addressed the problems inherent in the above statement (and others), so I'll just add my voice to the rest by expressing my amazement at your ability to ignore multiple corrections by multiple people in order to keep repeating the same errors.What you're doing is the same as if I came into a Bible thread claiming, "The Bible's wrong because no way did Jesus deliver the Egyptians from slavery in Jerusalem," and after a hundred posts was still repeating the same errors. People would be posting to me things like, "Dude, get a clue. You're being a real idiot!" And I'd deserve it and worse!People are giving you the straight story about science and evolution. No one's saying you have to accept it, but certainly at least discussion is called for. Persistently ignoring it is just incredibly poor form.Of course, the details of science and evolution are not the topic of this thread, but there are plenty of threads where those are the topic. I thought I could use your posts to further explore this thread's topic of why creationists have difficulty making valid connections between evidence and conclusions, but since you're mostly just ignoring substance and evidence there's little point in continuing in that vein.--Percy

That's not a modern ape at the end opposite man, it's an artist's rendering of an ancient common ancestor of modern apes and modern man. It is probably likely that this ancient ancestor would also be considered an ape, just not a modern one. This would be an excellent example of an invalid connection between evidence and conclusions if you actually had any evidence. Looking at something and saying, "This was obviously designed," does not constitute evidence of design. We know what evidence of human design looks like because we live amidst innumerable examples. We could define criteria for judging whether something was created by humans, like possessing straight lines and 90^o angles and regularity and so forth.But what would be the criteria you apply for a divinely create thing? How do you distinguish between a complex molecule that came about naturally versus one that was designed? ID has no answer for these simple and obvious questions. Something that was an actual theory would have undergone rigorous testing and replication showing precisely how one goes about deterministically determining design, but ID has never done this. That's why it's not science.The ideas of people like William Dembski, Werner Gitt and Lee Spetner define no criteria for identifying design. The best they can do is produce terms like "specified complexity," but they provide no criteria by which to identify it, leaving their ID followers with nothing of substance, just pathetic repetitions of, "If it looks designed, it was."Clearly, ID is not a theory. Perhaps one could say that ID is a theory in search of evidence, except that scientific theories are built around evidence, not the other way around. Successful theories are constructed around real-world evidence, not religious ideas derived from ancient texts. While the human brain is not the result of one mutation, a number of brain abnormalities have been traced to genetic causes, i.e., mutations. Down syndrome is a very well known example. What we are is resistant to drawing conclusions in the absence of evidence. Present the evidence and persuasion will quickly follow. What you're doing is providing evidence not only of the creationist ability to draw inappropriate conclusions from evidence, but even from no evidence at all.--Percy

I already answered this in Message 101, which you appear to have skipped over. What I said was:But what would be the criteria you apply for a divinely create thing? How do you distinguish between a complex molecule that came about naturally versus one that was designed? ID has no answer for these simple and obvious questions. Something that was an actual theory would have undergone rigorous testing and replication showing precisely how one goes about deterministically determining design, but ID has never done this. That's why it's not science.The ideas of people like William Dembski, Werner Gitt and Lee Spetner define no criteria for identifying design. The best they can do is produce terms like "specified complexity," but they provide no criteria by which to identify it, leaving their ID followers with nothing of substance, just pathetic repetitions of, "If it looks designed, it was." I suggest you either respond seriously and sincerely to the responses you're receiving, or do what you've said you were going to do several times already and stop posting.--Percy

TheDarin, you're living proof of the premise of this topic. First, you're unable to understand how the evidence supports evolution, primarily because you're working so hard at not understanding what evolutionary theory actually says.Second, you're drawing conclusions for which you're unable to muster any evidence at all.Third, though much information has been presented to you in the last few hours, you've managed to fail to respond to almost any of it.--Percy

Instead of discussing the topic's premise, creationists seem to prefer providing additional examples of it in real time!If no creationists are really interested in discussing the thread's topic then I don't care very much how far the thread drifts, but I guess I do think it would be a good idea if we stopped responding to total evasions and unintelligible propositions.--Percy

At one point in the discussion a request was made for examples of ID, and the reply was a napkin and a wristwatch. It would be interesting (and on topic!) to see a presentation of the chain of evidence and argument that leads from "human beings design and manufacture napkins and wristwatches" to arrive at the conclusion "therefore an intelligent agent designed and manufactured life on earth."Another way to approach the topic would be to ask how ID could be used to determine whether an ancient stone tool from the stone age had been designed and crafted, or if it was simply chosen because it had the right shape. There is a class of ancient stone grinding/crushing tools that though obviously used for this purpose, show little or no evidence of any crafting into their shape. Paleoanthropologists argue about whether the evidence of crafting is just too subtle given the technology then available, or whether the stone tool was chosen because it already had the right shape, and then through wear during use became even more appropriately shaped. This is precisely the problem that people like Dembski, Gitt and Spetner have claimed to solve, being able to determine design simply by inspection of the design itself without any evidence of tooling and so forth. So how would IDists use their science to tell whether the stone had been modified or simply chosen?The same question can be asked of complex biological molecules, and I did already ask this question a couple times. How does the science of ID tell the difference between a natural complex molecule and a designed one?What all these questions have in common is that their answer would provide an example of creationists connecting the dots between evidence and conclusion, something that the premise of this thread denies that they do.--Percy