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Author Topic:   Lucy (Australopithecus)
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 12 of 88 (819934)
09-15-2017 10:28 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Porkncheese
09-15-2017 9:25 AM


Posting a bare link is not a response and is against forum rules, as you've already been informed.
You also need to tell us what is at that link in your own words. Failure to do so will get you the disrespect that you earn from such misbehavior.
The reason for that rule is because we have seen too many creationists link to a source that is either a creationist source (as you have already done) or else it says the opposite of what they think it does because they don't understand it (or else lifted part of it out of context in order to misquote it).
As a result, we do not waste our time chasing your rabbits down your rabbit holes. Say what you intend to say and provide the link as support -- or provide a quote from that link along with the link so that we can verify the quote. But don't discredit yourself by posting a bare link.
Edited by dwise1, : rabbit holes

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Porkncheese, posted 09-15-2017 9:25 AM Porkncheese has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 20 by Porkncheese, posted 09-15-2017 11:24 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(3)
Message 31 of 88 (819997)
09-15-2017 3:26 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by Porkncheese
09-15-2017 11:24 AM


If your saying I have used a religious based argument show me where...
No, I did no such thing. Rather, you used a Jonathan Wells video as a source, plus I strongly suspect that he is the main source of the creationist claims that you keep posting, like the OP of this topic. Add to that that Wells' reason for opposing evolution is religious, since it is part of a crusade he's on to defend his religion (he's a Moonie) from Darwinism -- even though Darwinism poses no danger to any religion except for those religions that believe in things contrary to reality.
Part of your confusion is that too many people use "creationist" differently. In most discussions, "creationist" means "opposing evolution and other aspects of science", which is how we're using it. How that happened is because originally opposition to evolution was purely religious and based on beliefs that were predominantly Christian and increasingly biblical-literalist.
That religious basis becomes obscured because of the creation of "creation science" in the 1970's as a deliberately crafted deception intended to fool the US courts. After Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) led to the striking down of their "monkey laws", the anti-evolution movement quickly learned to their dismay that their old purely religious objections could no longer be used to argue against evolution being taught. As a result, they created "creation science" through which they falsely claimed that their objections to evolution were all "purely scientific, nothing religious about it." Part of that creation was to take their "public school edition" creationist textbooks and superficially scrub them of any overt and explicit reference to God or to the Bible; their opponents refer to that as their "playing the game of 'Hide the Bible'." Their books and websites try to give the appearance of being non-religious, but that is a deception.
The "intelligent design" group started out a bit differently, but even most of them chose to oppose evolution for religious or philosophical reasons. They are better at hiding that than the "creation science" crowd (CSists). For one thing, CSists' claims and arguments would scatter-shot over over a broad range of scientific fields, leading them to pretend to be expert in fields that they knew nothing about -- that frequently shows in the ignorance mistakes in many of their claims. OTOH, IDists tend to stay close to their own areas of expertise, so their kung-fu (read "bullshit") is much stronger than that of CSists. An added advantage for IDists is that they have nothing to do with YEC claims, whereas CSists are married to a "young earth", the weakest part of their package.
Early on, IDists worked with CSists and when McLean v. Arkansas (1982) and Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) exposed "creation science" to be religious in nature, CSists switched their game to "Hide the Creationism" by adopting ID claims. Then (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, (2005) exposed ID to actually be "creation science" and hence religious in nature, but we haven't yet seen the next stage in the evolution of creationism.
So in these discussions, creationists are those who oppose various sciences, including evolution, for whatever reasons, which ultimately seem to always turn out to be religious.
Otherwise it sounds as though you dismiss a source if written by a creationist regardless of weather the argument is secular.
Creationist arguments only appear to be secular. That is the fundamental deception of "creation science". They have to claim that their argument is "purely scientific, nothing religious about it." If I had a nickel for every time a creationist started off a "secular argument" and ended up trying to convert me to his fundamentalist Christian cult, I could fly over there and take you out to a very nice dinner.
The only purpose of a creationist claim is to convince. And they don't care how much they have to lie and deceive in order to convince you and, much more importantly, themselves.
Apparently 15% of the leading ToE scientists are in fact creationists anyway.
This has already been debunked. For that matter, that YouTube link you gave only runs for a couple minutes and cannot reach 12:00.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 20 by Porkncheese, posted 09-15-2017 11:24 AM Porkncheese has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 32 of 88 (820000)
09-15-2017 3:56 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by jar
09-15-2017 12:21 PM


Re: there is no culture of truth or honesty in Creationism.
Perhaps he said 15% of top scientists are Christians. But it is absolutely impossible for someone to be a Creationist and honest when it comes to science.
Perhaps this is a point at which to discuss terminology.
By all rights, being a creationist should just mean that you believe in a Creator. Specifying anything more should just narrow down what specific kind of creationist you are.
Unfortunately, YECs have usurped that term for themselves and have perverted it to mean their particular fundamentalist YEC beliefs along with their particular perverted form of anti-evolution. That is basically the meaning that we are applying here, though broadened to include a number of other forms of dishonest anti-evolution.
Please note, Porky, that the problem is not just that they are anti-evolution, but rather that they are dishonest and practicing deception in ways that have very bad effects on society and on individuals. If somebody had honest objections to evolution, then they would be heard out -- though unfortunately first they must get past the massive poisoning of the well over many decades by creationists, for which they would need a lot of patience and a thick skin (unlike a kid we both know).
So what about the believers in Divine Creation who do not believe in that form of perverted anti-evolution? What are they supposed to call themselves?
Well, biologist Dr. Kenneth Miller, considered one of the foremost opponents of creationism, calls himself a creationist. So does geology professor Dr. Steven Schimmrich, who is also an evangelical Christian and a long-time opponent of creationism (I just emailed a request to repost his old pages).
So a creationist can indeed be honest when it comes to science, but that depends on what kind of creationist he is. Of course, the "creation science" or ID kind of creationist cannot be honest, because their doctrine is based on lies and deception and on the practice of deceiving their audiences.
No Creationists have ever come up with any new data or done any honest "Creation" research. It is simply impossible.
It is possible, but we never hear about them because they cannot gain any traction even in the creationist community.
The purpose of creationist claims and arguments is to persuade, therefore the most important test of any creationist claim or argument is in how persuasive it sounds. If a claim sounds persuasive, then it will be used regardless of how utterly false it is. But any that does not sound persuasive will go unnoticed regardless of how true it is.
There are creationists who do conduct honest research, but as a result of their honesty their research is ignored by the creationist community and we outside that community never hear about it. Instead, all that we ever hear about are the claims that are highly sensationalist and utterly false.
Simple natural selection of creationist claims. Truth and honesty drive down the level of sensationalism and so those claims are selected against while the sensationalist false claims are selected for.
There is no culture of truth or honesty in Creationism and quite frankly, there cannot be {in} such a culture.
Amen to that!
I started working out the fundamental differences between scientists and creationists. It's very unfinished: Fundamental Differences Between Scientists and Creationists
Basically, scientists are trying to discover something and they have to rely on each other's research, so they are motivated to test others' research and to detect and correct mistakes, frauds, and shoddy scholarship, thus making science self-correcting. All creationists want to do is to convince, so they don't care how false and shoddy another creationist's work is, so mistakes and frauds never get corrected, thus making creationism eternally perpetuating lies.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 33 of 88 (820001)
09-15-2017 4:05 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by Porkncheese
09-15-2017 12:14 PM


Re: there is no culture of truth or honesty in Creationism.
I dunno some dates might not match up or something?
And again you make reference to your leaning towards young-earth claims.
Do you want to talk about it? What claims are you referring to? What is your source for those claims? Should I start a new topic for that discussion?
I think that verifying even a few of those young-earth claims should prove very eye-opening for you. Unless you've already been sucked so deeply into creationism that that will cause you to go into denial -- well, we've already seen those symptoms with your other refuted claims.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by Porkncheese, posted 09-15-2017 12:14 PM Porkncheese has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 45 by Porkncheese, posted 09-15-2017 11:44 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 81 of 88 (820365)
09-19-2017 3:34 PM
Reply to: Message 76 by Phat
09-18-2017 10:45 AM


Re: there is no culture of truth or honesty in Creationism.
The armchair psychologist (without a degree) within me says that ...
As long as we're armchair psychoanalyzing ... Besides the usual teenage rebellion and his knowing everything, this could also include factors of Porky's reaction to his parents' concerns and warnings as they see him being sucked into a cult, namely into fundamentalist Christianity by way of creationism. And being Catholics having to live amidst fundamentalist Christians, his parents would be well aware of their predatory practices.
First, that he's being proselytized is evident from his consumption of creationist materials and his adoption of creationist arguments, misdefinitions, and attitudes (eg, the false dichotomy of believers all being creationists and of those who accept evolution as all being atheists). Add to that the extreme defensiveness he displays whenever we show that a creationist claim is false or that creationists use dishonest methods.
For supporting evidence of creationist proselytizing tactics, we first have the testimony of Bill Morgan, a local creationist activist and the worst pathological liar and lowest form of Christian that I have ever had the displeasure of encountering -- he makes even Donald Trump look like a saint who never lies. He claims to have been an atheist (actually he was only pretending to be one in order to misbehave without guilt; he also admits to praying to God every night, therefore not an atheist) and describes his conversion in a local magazine article, Bill Morgan Is Captain Creationist: The activist is waging a war against evolution, one lecture at a time by Adam O'Neal (OC Weekly, 30 August 2012):
quote:
One day in 1987, his roommate showed him a short Christian comic that explained creationism. Morgan was "stunned" the comic's author, the late Dr. Bolton Davidheiser, had a Ph.D. in zoology from Johns Hopkins. He spent several months reading creationist literature, as well as textbooks about evolution, eventually concluding "how awful the fossil evidence was for ape-man to man evolution." Academics were betraying the truth, he felt, which partially inspired him to become more of an activist than a silent believer. On June 12, 1989, Bill Morgan decided he was a Christian and was going to start living like onealmost two years after becoming a creationist.
Bill Morgan's main method of proselytizing is through creationism, nor is he the only one. Creationist claims are a very frequent and common proselytizing tool. And once they have you convinced of creationism, then the next step is to trick you into accepting their god as the "unnamed Creator" of "creation science". Note the two-year gap of that step in their converting Bill Morgan.
We do not know how long Porky has been at university, not the religious climate there. In the USA, almost all college and university campuses have student clubs and they all have Christian clubs (ie, I know of no exceptions to that generalization). When I was attending full-time in the 1970's, they were everywhere, but I just considered them a nuisance (I had already received my fundamentalist training, during which I found very good reason to reject their theology). But I didn't realize how mercenary they were until later.
Todd, the son of my boss around 1990, was third-generation fundamentalist. He attended university out of state (like 2000 miles away from home). When he was working with us during the first break of his first year (Xmas here), he mentioned that the hardest part of his first semester was being alone, so, remembering how ubiquitous Christian campus clubs were, I suggested that he check them out for fellowship. He had tried that already and he was thoroughly disgusted with them. He reported that all those clubs did was plan how to convert the rest of the student body.
So then, the situation could be that campus Christians have marked Porky for conversion and have started working on him. And it could very well be his new friends who are working on him.
Fundamentalists will use just about any trick they can in order to convert you, including becoming your best friend (or lover) -- it works for spies to recruit assests. Many times on a forum or in an email exchange, a creationist would try to become friends with me, only to lose all interest when it finally became clear that I am immune to their efforts. I also know personally of a personal story. There were two girls, best friends, in my French class in my first semester at college, one of whom (Pat) was well known as "that Jesus-freaky chick" (1. that was in the midst of the Jesus Freak movement in nearby Costa Mesa and 2. she later married my wife's brother, who had converted to fundamentalism and nearly destroyed the family in the process). I came across the other girl, Lisa, 20 years later at an atheist group. Lisa told me how Pat was her best friend and kept trying to get her to go to church with her until finally one day Lisa let Pat know that she would never convert, after which Pat disappeared completely from Lisa's life. All that Pat was interested in was racking up more Brownie points for gaining a new convert.
A new girl friend basically using sex to lure a 19-year-old boy into the clutches of her cult is not out of the question. It's perhaps the oldest trick in the book and one that is well-known to all Departments of Dirty Tricks (eg, spy organizations -- see "The Same Sky" on NetFlix about Stasi seduction training and operations in West Berlin in 1974). Is she really into you or does she just want to steal your soul?
Of course, it's just speculation that that has anything to do with Porky's situation. But we do know how they work. And we can plainly see how much Porky has already been indoctrinated.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 76 by Phat, posted 09-18-2017 10:45 AM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 82 by Phat, posted 09-19-2017 3:45 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 83 of 88 (820380)
09-19-2017 8:46 PM
Reply to: Message 82 by Phat
09-19-2017 3:45 PM


Re: there is no culture of truth or honesty in Creationism.
In one of his first messages, he mentioned that he was from a Catholic family, but was now "agnostic" (even though he keeps railing against "atheists" using typical fundamentalist stereotypes, just like he claims to not be a creationist even though almost everything he posts is purely creationist).
Not sure why I kept to espionage examples -- for some reason my security training kicked in (military). The same kind of recruitment tactics and techniques are also used by cults to lure in new members. Be friendly, accepting assuring, loving, which can be especially effective on victims who feel lonely, unaccepted, or in any way alienated. That would have been a far better example, since we are effectively talking about a cult, fundamentalist Christianity, especially as it isolates its members in an alternate reality. Part of a cult's recruitment efforts involves separating their victims from family and former friends who themselves resist conversion; in the case of the fundamentalist cult, that would be justified by Matthew 10:34-35 (KJV):
quote:
10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
As with the example I gave of my brother-in-law's conversion, that nearly tore that close loving family apart. His mother finally had to forbid any discussion of religion at all. And she enforced that rule without exception.
And my description of the bad actors was perhaps harsh. Of course there are those who are coldly calculating mercenaries who only pretend to befriend you or fall in love with you in order to pull off their swindle -- I know that because I have encountered them. But I'm sure that most of them who befriend you actually want to become your friend and that their efforts to then convert you are usually because they actually think that it is for your own good. In those cases, a test of how true that friendship is will come when you don't convert. Will they still be your friend? In the case I gave before of Pat and Lisa, obviously Pat's friendship for Lisa was not true. And to add insult to injury, I ended up getting Pat as a sister-in-law.
While the fundamentalists do have some professional proselytizers who knowingly practice deception, most of their proselytizing is performed by amateurs who don't know any better and are acting with good intentions. Still, good intentions can cause considerable harm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 82 by Phat, posted 09-19-2017 3:45 PM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 84 by Phat, posted 09-19-2017 8:55 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
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