AiG's Strategy: Indoctrinate and Isolate

No, there's not. That's because they are two entirely different subjects, quite distinct from each other. They are not on a continuum. You can say this all you like; in practice, creationists are trying to get evolution out of classrooms. Claiming that evolution and atheism are synonymous does not make it so. They're both being honest, they just hold different opinions, as they are entitled to do.Now of course Ken Ham is entitled to his own opinions as well, but he is not entitled to his own facts. Since many of the claims made by AiG are counter-factual, he is not entitled to call them educative. That's why people are calling it indoctrination, not because Ham's opinions are wrong, but because his "facts" are in fact falsehoods.Mutate and Survive

Hi marc. I see that instead of answering my post, you decided to go off on a rant. You certainly are begging the question. You have no evidence that science and atheism are synonymous, indeed, the evidence you cite disproves it.The reader should note here that it is not merely evolution that marc9000 wants to destroy, it is all of science and the very scientific method that supports it. I hadn't seen that Dembski quote before. He appears to have completely lost his marbles.Dembski claims proof of an intelligent designer who claims is the Christian god. He then accuses others of "projecting" religion onto his work. What an astonishing arse. The science in "Black Box" clashed with reality. You think that the philosophy of science was created in response to Behe? That is hilarious! Yes, let's hear from Dr Patterson;

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The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

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I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

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That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

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I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

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Yours Sincerely,

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[signed]

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Colin Patterson

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Yes that's right. If AiG and the ID con closed down tomorrow all it would leave would be a legacy of impotent anti-scientific whining. The fact remains that for as long as they promulgate untruths, AiG will be regarded as indoctrinators. Yes. Definitely yes. Creationists have been sounding the death knell of evolution since before the publication of "Origin of Species". They were wrong then and you're still wrong now.Mutate and Survive

It's so much a matter of whether you find it convincing, but one of whether or not you have a better explanation for the results that radiometry regularly obtains. Can you think of a scenario that accounts for the many correlations between radiometric dating and other dating methods? Does your explanation account for the data better than the current understanding? If not, then logically, you should prefer the explanation that radiometry is accurate. Well if I understand correctly, that pushes the flood back to at least the late Triassic. That's an awfully long stretch of geological time to go without finding any human fossils, whatever time-scale we assume. If the flood is pre-Jurassic, how do you account for this lack of human remains? Okay, so you're convinced that the flood was not responsible for all geological strata. Do you think that any geology can be linked to the flood? A slightly more accurate way of phrasing this would be to say that you could accept Darwin if it were not for the fact that it would require not accepting Genesis. That's the real bone of contention, no? I'm glad you're doing well. I also applaud your efforts to apply critical thinking to these issues. I think you still have a long way to go, but at least you're not swallowing the errors that people like Ken Ham treat as Gospel. It is worth noting that Ham would not approve of your actions; questioning the Bible, attending a secular geology class... these things are anathema to Ham and his ilk. They would prefer that you isolated yourself from any criticism of creationism and kept yourself blinkered like a good little drone. You're not doing that, you're exposing yourself to the other side of the argument. Keep it up!Mutate and Survive