Talking some sense into randman

But he dosn't have a lifeboat.No matter how many holes we see, he sees only brilliant refutations.If there's one hole, no matter how small his whole boat will collapse.

please point out where she is misrepresenting you?, I really would like to know, as for driving it off topic.. thats all you seem to do anymore, if anyone confronts you about anything you say Go randman play that martyr card!
nah you never cleared anything you just evade like theres no tommorow and clutter threads up with the same same recycled junk you always do

Let's try to keep this on randman's argument's against evolution. Avoid personal comments.

sorry got a bit annoyed there try to keep it more OT

Please answer the question I ask, not the one you want to answer.

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Who do you think writes/edits/approves your hated public school science textbooks?

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Who do you think has the power to change/improve them?

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Specifically, I am asking you to tell me the background of most of the people who write the science textbooks. Like, are they professional scientists, or are they people with degrees in education and not experts in Evolutionary Biologists at all?I know the answer. Do you?

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You are wasting your time. RM is able to write but he has a severe problem with reading.

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...which is the ideal quality we are looking for in a moderator, isn't it?

lol

I first want to thank Randman for sticking it out in a thread that was started solely to criticize him.But next I'd like to ask Randman to consider that where so many echo the same sentiments (and I share them myself) that there might be some truth to them. Evolutionists from mild to rabid seem to find his method very repetitive and inherently evasive. His most common aproach seems to be "restate initial premise at every opportunity as if it had never been challenged." We see this again in this thread where at one point Randman defends his approach by citing Haeckel and Neanderthals as if they had emerged from discussion as successful arguments.Another common approach is "refuse to understand," almost always followed by "restate initial premise." I can't find a good illustration in this thread, but any of the discussions with Randman about interpreting the fossil record provide good examples. And a side note: by my unofficial count, Randman has recently abandoned two threads on that topic and declined to participate in a third.In order for discussion to reach a constructive conclusion, both sides have to sincerely want it and work to make it happen. One hand clapping doesn't work. Many differences can be successfully argued to a conclusion (even if it's only to agree to disagree) when participants sincerely want it.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Hey randman, feel free to take the most recent OT stuff from the "chain thread" here. I am not being rude, just saying that the issues are more relvant to this thread.I particularly want to know why you think the whole Haeckle thing is so important. It's such a minor footnote to all of this that it is almost comical watching you cling to it as if it were the "smokeing gun" of the evolution fraud.Anyway, just letting you know this thread is still alive and waiting for your reply.

moved from there. i think this is a bit ironic, actually. that's pretty much exactly how i feel. you see, most of the people you've taken particular offense at are people who fully understand what you believe, and reject it on factual grounds. some of us, for instance, are quite versed in scripture and theology -- probably more than you. and many of the people you take on in science threads ARE scientists. frankly, taking on factual evidence and accepted science with hokum, crackpottery, pseudoscience doesn't really demonstrate much of an education. and tirelessly repeating the same debunked and fallacious arguments again and again without the slightest backing doesn't help either.most of the time, we're just asking for a source that can be examined, not even and educated defense. and you duck and run at that. i think i demonstrated in the chat yesterday that *I* can back up your arguments better than you can. is posting a link that hard? i'm not confident that you can articulate and understand a CREATIONIST position. you've failed to demonstrate that facility. have you seen the standards of creationist poster here, randman? you're one of the better ones. most are hit-and-run posters. length copy-pasters. same old idiotic arguments (i mean, idiotic, not just annoying like yours). lots of them like to preach, spam, and troll. i think the fact that the admin has had to make exceptions to the rules for creationists in order for the debate to happen AT ALL speaks to the quality of their debating skills. for instance, faith should have been banned if the rules had been followed -- but even i thought she was interesting to debate with. i've even spoken in her defense at least once. this may come as a shock, but i'm sure there are a few ex-creationists here. education or disenchantment with the church seems to make the difference. and if YOU can't accept that there are people who are far more educated than you in terms of science, and reject creationism based on that knowledge, than you really shouldn't be here either. i don't think anyone has accused you of being stupid. ignorant, maybe -- but mostly we're accusing you of intellectual dishonesty. when evidence contrary to your argument comes up, you duck and run. when someone asks you to justify an obviously lunatic source, you pretend it never happened. when asked to support your baseless assertions, you say you already have and repeat them. you're NOT stupid -- but you are quite disengenuous. you seem to have no interest in participating here honestly.and i do hope that will change. you can talk about your education all you want, but until you try to participate in an educated manner, it's just another baseless assertion in a list of many. please, randman, back it up. start debating honestly. start answering questions instead of dodging them. start providing sources, and be ready to defend them when we think they sound a little looney. and stop the duck-and-run and martyrdom routines. if you do, this place will be better for it.from a lower post: because clearly you're never guilty of the red herring. isn't this whole sub-thread one? {edit} well, i guess it's on topic now.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 11-18-2005 09:54 PM

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אָרַח

in regards to this post. (i'm moving all the off-topic repetitive randman debates and red herrings here.) there is a stage at which embryos appear very much like other phyla's embryos, and share many common developmental features. haeckel's deceit was in making them look exactly the same. they do not -- one can easily tell them apart. but that does not mean the parts are not STRONGLY analogous. i showed you a picture of them last night in the chat. not a drawing, a photo. here it is again:you can read a bit about them and how they relate to fish at the page i blatantly stole that image from.the fact is that at this point they are neither gills nor slits. in humans, they become just part of the jaw structure. but the strongly analogous structure in fish embryos becomes the cartilage that supports the gills.so it is technically error to say human embryos have "gill slits." but the argument is essentially correct. human embryos do have the structure that would become gill slits in fish. mark's statement was that your argument that haeckel was a fraud was a red herring: beside the point, and designed to distract from the essential truth of the point. saying so was not a red herring. in fact, i'm not sure "that's a red herring!" can be a red herring. the 1850's? it's been known for a long time that neanderthals lived alongside modern humans. it was originally thought they were precursors, yes. but paleontology wasn't exactly well founded then. that's kind of like holding a child to their promises when they're adults. who? were? as i said, it's pretty common knowledge that neanderthals lived contemporary to modern humans. i'm not sure where you've been looking. most depictions i've seen were very human, but with prominent brow-ridges. although i will say that most depictions you see on tv do tend to have too short of a facial structure -- mostly because they're played by us. a distinct species of people. one needs only look at the shapes and relations of the rib cage and pelvic girdle to realize they're way too portly and stout to be us, rickets or not. was exposed as a faurd 50 years ago. get with it. and no evidence against it, either. the things that make it transitional are the BONES, not the stuff some artist chooses to draw in a magazine. you'd almost think that all paleontologists do is sit around and forge drawings from reading the creationist lit.if we're really talking about artistic interpretations, i can show you thousands of outdated dinosaurs pictures in books i have. some whoppers, too -- stegosaurus with horizontal plates, standing on its hind legs comes to mind. doesn't change the fact that scientific study today based on the actual bones yields a different conclusion. image if we only looked at someone's drawings?sure, we can tell where muscled attached to bones and such, but a lot of it really is imagination. 1+1=2.
2+2=4.
1+1+1+1≠4?i don't understand. how do small changes not add up? variation of frequency of heritable features in a population is the definition of evolution, btw. (i'm suprised you didn't go for the time-honored "he pinned the moths to the trees himself!" argument) alot of us have done "macro-study." i think the argument is damned convincing when you pick up a paleontology book. when you start flipping through the pages of a book like the one i recommended christian, it becomes increasingly clear that every species is a transition. i'm sorry, i actually don't even know what you're talking about. i can't find a single shred of reputable evidence anywhere -- just creationist mumbo-jumbo supposedly refuting it. all the same mumbo-jumbo, mind you, word for word. so maybe they're spelling it wrong, and it just got copied ad naseum.{edit} ok, i sorted it out. they're talking about ardipithecus ramidus. you realize that a. ramidus was bipedal, right? its teeth are also somewhere between hominid and ape teeth. i think "just an ape" is a little disengenuous when it has partial versions of features that define homindae.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 11-18-2005 11:50 PM

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אָרַח

Thanks,Arach, always a joy to come to EvC and fill in my missing knowledge.

i think Randman is referring to Ramapithecus, which was, in the past, regarded as an ancestor of humanity. however, approx. 30 yrs ago, a whole jaw-bone was found, which disproved this. So for the past thirty yrs, Ramapithecus was, and is, thought to be a member of Sivapithecus, which is considered as an ancestor genus to Jar...err...that is, his avatar, the Orangutan.

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So intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
- Pablo Neruda

With regard to this specific point: 1) The evolutionist position is that the peppered moth is an example of natural selection in action. Thus it does illustrate an important part of ToE but not the whole thing. Thus Randman misrepresents the evolutionist position.2) The actual truth of the matter is that the evidence supports the evolutionist view. Thus Randman misrepresents the facts.Thus this point is evidence that we should be skeptical of Randman's claims - not those of evolutionists.

um ... Ardipithecus ramidus is not the same as Sivapithecus ramapithecuscookie has it right. BOTH are listed here (click)Of course we can also talk about how Oreopithecus bambolii"a 9-million- to 7-million-year-old apelike animal also spent much of its time standing upright, methodically shuffling short distances to collect fruit and other edible goodies on what was once a Mediterranean island."http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/10_18_97/fob1.htmEnjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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