Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
4 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,817 Year: 3,074/9,624 Month: 919/1,588 Week: 102/223 Day: 13/17 Hour: 1/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Is talkorigins.org a propoganda site?
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 136 of 301 (287713)
02-17-2006 2:40 PM
Reply to: Message 131 by randman
02-17-2006 1:15 PM


Re: Wrong on both counts
It's amazing crash that you and some other evos can spend hours and hours debating this stuff and never bother to learn your critics' position.
What amazes me is that, despite being reminded time after time, my opponents always seem to forget that I used to be a creationist.
I know what creationists argue, Randman, because I used to argue on their side. I assure you I'm quite familiar with the arguments. Even if I wasn't it's sufficient for me to open a Bible and read for myself the creationist account of the origin of species - one nearly simultaneous creation event followed by the species stasis that creationists assert must be the case.
Creationism predicts evolution but only within a kind, and so universal, unending stasis is not predicted by creationism although a general stasis within a range is predicted as a general pattern and that is exactly what we see.
That is not what we see. We do not see "general stasis within a range." We see some species in stasis and some in not, with no relationship to the period of stasis and their "kind", however we would know what that is.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 131 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 1:15 PM randman has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 138 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:11 PM crashfrog has replied

randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 137 of 301 (287723)
02-17-2006 3:08 PM
Reply to: Message 133 by PurpleYouko
02-17-2006 1:53 PM


Re: Not sure of the facts, I fear
Well, you ought to talk with YECers directly, but YECism posits rapid evolution but within a kind. So, for example, they would say probably that all bears evolved from a single original bear pair. I think they posit 2 different cat kinds of which all current and extinct cats evolved from. The mechanisms of evolution within a kind are the same in some respects as with evos except they probably don't exclude God affecting the process, and would argue the natural processes are also guided by God to a certain extent (He controls everything but that gets into theology).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 133 by PurpleYouko, posted 02-17-2006 1:53 PM PurpleYouko has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 150 by PurpleYouko, posted 02-17-2006 3:59 PM randman has not replied

randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 138 of 301 (287724)
02-17-2006 3:11 PM
Reply to: Message 136 by crashfrog
02-17-2006 2:40 PM


Re: Wrong on both counts
one nearly simultaneous creation event followed by the species stasis that creationists assert must be the case.
Crash, regardless of whether you think you used to be a creationist. Creationist do not argue species stasis, at least not creationist scientists. They argue that species can change, but kinds have a limited range, and they have a science to try to determine what the original kinds were, baraminism or some such.
In terms of groups of creatures, whether species or otherwise, we do tend to see them change within a range, just as I stated. For example, with people, at one time we were larger (Cro-Magnon), and then smaller, and now getting larger again.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 136 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2006 2:40 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 140 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2006 3:22 PM randman has not replied

randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 139 of 301 (287726)
02-17-2006 3:15 PM
Reply to: Message 135 by PaulK
02-17-2006 2:03 PM


Re: Wrong on both counts
Firstly there is nothing in creationism itself that requires any degree of evolution. Many current creationists accept some degree of evolution, but that was certainly not the case back in Darwin's day.
Can you substantiate that? If evolution is defined as heritable change, then I think you are wholly wrong on that point. Now, perhaps some argued against speciation, and I do know some held to progressive creationism, but you need to substantiate your claims, prefarably with original sources from the creationists back during that time.
Also, if creationism has changed as you claim. So has Darwinism/ToE. We are discussing the current theories, and since the 80s, all the creationists I have ever read accept microevolution, and to my knowledge, microevolution has not been an issue with creationists for a very long time, if ever.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 135 by PaulK, posted 02-17-2006 2:03 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 142 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2006 3:25 PM randman has not replied
 Message 145 by PaulK, posted 02-17-2006 3:49 PM randman has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 140 of 301 (287728)
02-17-2006 3:22 PM
Reply to: Message 138 by randman
02-17-2006 3:11 PM


Re: Wrong on both counts
Crash, regardless of whether you think you used to be a creationist.
I'm sorry? "Think i used to be a creationist?" I used to advance the idea that Genesis was a literal history, and that God had created all the living things on the Earth as a limited set of original "kinds", which then experienced various forms of adaptation within those kinds to form the diversity of life we experience today.
Does that sound like I was a creationist to you? I'll thank you to leave the arrogant presumption that you're the authority on whether or not I was a creationist out of your posts to me in the future.
They argue that species can change, but kinds have a limited range
Right. Stasis. That's what we're talking about; species remaining mostly the same throughout time. Varying only within a limited range. Stasis.
If you didn't know what "stasis" meant, and it doesn't refer to organisms being exact clones of each other for all time, it would have been better for you to ask then to try to continue the debate from a basis of ignorance.
They argue that species can change, but kinds have a limited range, and they have a science to try to determine what the original kinds were, baraminism or some such.
Oh, I've heard much about this vaunted science of "baraminism." Can you name a single laboratory involved in baraminism? Can you name a single research finding of baraminism?
Baraminism doesn't exist. It's a dodge for creationists, so that when they're put on the spot about nobody knowing what a "kind" is, they can pass the buck and assert that these nonexistent "baraminologists" are "working on it." When actually no such work is occuring.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 138 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:11 PM randman has not replied

randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 141 of 301 (287730)
02-17-2006 3:24 PM


you guys act like you never heard creationist arguments
I know the arguments concerning rapid evolution have been posted here on this forum before. What gives?
Brisk biters
Fast changes in mosquitoes astonish evolutionists, delight creationists.
by Carl Wieland
About 100 years ago, bird-biting mosquitoes called Culex pipiens entered the tunnels then being dug for the London Underground (the ”Tube’). Cut off from their normal diet, they changed their habits to feed on rats and, when available, human beings. During WW2, they attacked Londoners seeking refuge from Hitler’s bombs. Their plaguing of maintenance workers may be the reason the underground variety has been dubbed molestus.
British scientists have now found that it is almost impossible to mate those in the Tube with the ones still living above ground, thus suggesting that they have become a new species1 (or almost so). This has ”astonished’ evolutionary scientists, who thought that such changes must take many times longer than this.2
Informed creationists have long pointed out that the biblical model of earth history would not only allow for the possibility of one species splitting into several3 (without the addition of new information, thus not ”evolution’ as commonly understood), but would actually require that it must have happened much faster than evolutionists would expect.
Missing Link | Answers in Genesis
I am not a YECer although I agree with some of their arguments, but at least I actually bothered to learn what they state and beleive before offering all these dogmatic opinions and arguments about what they believe, as you guys have done.
Note that creationist predictions are turning out to be true even as uninformed evos claim the same results, which change their models, disagree with creationist claims.
Actually, creationists have long suspected that organisms had ”built-in’ genetic mechanisms for rapid variation”even beyond the normal processes of adaptation where genes, reshuffled by sexual reproduction, are selected in various environments.6 Thus, recent discoveries of such mechanisms being still viable today are of very great interest.
For example, there are genes which can ”jump’ around the chromosome. These are normally kept in check, but Drs Jenny Graves and Rachel O’Neill of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, have found that in hybrids, these can undergo ”rampant’ changes.
This may even be ”the general mechanism for speciation in all multi-cellular creatures’ (by making it impossible to ”back-breed’ with a parent population). Graves says, ”We thought it took millions of years of long-term selection for a jumping gene to be activated. We’ve now shown that it can happen maybe in five minutes after fertilization.’7 These are exciting times to be a creationist.
We think that expanding genetic research will likely reveal even more examples of built-in, ”pre-fab’ mechanisms for rapid change in response to environmental pressures. Ironically, as more such created mechanisms (very far from normal Darwinian ideas) are discovered, they will probably be misconstrued as support for evolution, at the same time as biblical Christians are exulting in their true significance.
It would behoove you guys to actually take the time to learn what creationists believe before making false claims about them.
This message has been edited by randman, 02-17-2006 03:26 PM

Replies to this message:
 Message 143 by Modulous, posted 02-17-2006 3:31 PM randman has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 142 of 301 (287732)
02-17-2006 3:25 PM
Reply to: Message 139 by randman
02-17-2006 3:15 PM


Re: Wrong on both counts
If evolution is defined as heritable change, then I think you are wholly wrong on that point.
If God created the species, as it says in the Bible; and if the works of a perfect God must themselves be perfect, why would species need to change?
We are discussing the current theories, and since the 80s, all the creationists I have ever read accept microevolution, and to my knowledge, microevolution has not been an issue with creationists for a very long time, if ever.
Even on this very site you can see creationists who show up and deny the idea that mutations can cause adaptation, so you're clearly wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 139 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:15 PM randman has not replied

Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 143 of 301 (287736)
02-17-2006 3:31 PM
Reply to: Message 141 by randman
02-17-2006 3:24 PM


Is talkorigins.org a propoganda site?
In Message 21, randman wrote:
..., but there is often a level of illogic and distortion in the articles I have read that basically places it, imo, in the arena of propaganda.
This thread is intended as a place where randman and other critics of talkorigins.org can provide details of the flaws and propagandistic tendencies of the to site, and where others can answer these critiques.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 141 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:24 PM randman has not replied

randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 144 of 301 (287737)
02-17-2006 3:32 PM


here is another confirmed prediction by creationists
Creationists predicted that speciation (within a kind) could occur quite rapidly, much more rapidly than the millions of years proposed by evos, and more recent studies of "Darwin's finches" have proven the creationists right, and prior evo understandings wrong.
Creationists have long proposed such ”splitting under selection’ from the original kinds, explaining for example wolves, coyotes, dingoes and other wild dogs from one pair on the Ark. The question of time has, however, been seized upon by anti-creationists. They insist that it would take a much longer time than Scripture allows. Artificial selection is quick, they admit, but that is because breeders are deliberately acting on each generation. The usual ”guesstimate’ of how long it took for Darwin’s finches to radiate from their parent population ranges from one million to five million years.
However, Princeton zoology professor Peter Grant recently released some results of an intensive 18-year study of all the Galápagos finches during which natural selection was observed in action.1 For example, during drought years, as finches depleted the supply of small seeds, selection favoured those with larger, deeper beaks capable of getting at the remaining large seeds and thus surviving, which shifted the population in that direction.
While that is not very surprising, nor profound, the speed at which these changes took places was most interesting. At that observed rate, Grant estimates, it would take only 1,200 years to transform the medium ground finch into the cactus finch, for example. To convert it into the more similar large ground finch would take only some 200 years.
Notice that (although the article fails to mention it) such speedy changes can have nothing to do with the production of any new genes by mutation, but are based upon the process described, that is, choosing from what is already there. It therefore fails to qualify as evidence for real, uphill (macro) evolution ” though many starry-eyed students will doubtless be taught it as ”evolution in action’.
Instead, it is real, observed evidence that such (downhill) adaptive formation of several species from the one created kind can easily take place in a few centuries. It doesn't need millions of years.
Answers | Answers in Genesis
I think this is a powerful example of creationist predictions of rapid evolution have borne out. Note: This is based on direct observation of actual changes over time.

Replies to this message:
 Message 146 by Percy, posted 02-17-2006 3:49 PM randman has replied
 Message 147 by PaulK, posted 02-17-2006 3:53 PM randman has replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 145 of 301 (287750)
02-17-2006 3:49 PM
Reply to: Message 139 by randman
02-17-2006 3:15 PM


Re: Wrong on both counts
You've never heard of the concept of "fixity of species" ? It was a common view in Darwin's day.
Even Agassiz, one of the last creationists who could be called scientific beleived in it;
Agassiz staunchly supported the fixity of species and special creation of man, and thus became an outspoken critic of Darwin's theory
of evolution. He began to lose scientific credibility, especially after an expedition to Brazil, when he proclaimed that all Brazil had been covered by ice sheets. Late in life, Agassiz mellowed somewhat regarding Darwin's evolution, but he never really gave up his belief in the fixity of species.
http://academic.emporia.edu/.../histgeol/agassiz/agassiz.htm
And you miss my point when you say that creationism has changed. My point is not that creationists cannot accept any degree of evolution, only that creatinism can accept varying degrees of evolution - up to, perhaps, the creation of phyla and subsequent evolution of all lower taxonomic levels or down to the creation of individual species. Creationism as such makes no prediction on that front.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 139 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:15 PM randman has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 148 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:54 PM PaulK has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 146 of 301 (287752)
02-17-2006 3:49 PM
Reply to: Message 144 by randman
02-17-2006 3:32 PM


Re: here is another confirmed prediction by creationists
Is this advances your point about TO being a propaganda site then proceed, by all means. But otherwise this might belong in another thread.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 144 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:32 PM randman has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 151 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:59 PM Percy has not replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 147 of 301 (287754)
02-17-2006 3:53 PM
Reply to: Message 144 by randman
02-17-2006 3:32 PM


Re: here is another confirmed prediction by creationists
You mean another falsified prediction.
Evolutionists do not beleive that speciation events take millions of ears. Punctuated equilibria talks of times around 1,000 years. The 1200 year estimate is in line with that.
The rapid speciation predicted to follow the flood is far more radical, predicting whole families evolving in a few hundred years at most.e

This message is a reply to:
 Message 144 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:32 PM randman has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 149 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:58 PM PaulK has replied

randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 148 of 301 (287756)
02-17-2006 3:54 PM
Reply to: Message 145 by PaulK
02-17-2006 3:49 PM


Re: Wrong on both counts
Paulk, evos back then claimed the Biogenetic law was based on observed fact when it was based on nothing but doctored drawings, and even they didn't really support it. Some also held to Lamarckianism.
Are you claiming Darwinism is entirely correct or something?
Moreover, the term species may well have meant something different as well.
The simple fact is creationist in my lifetime have made specific predictions concerning rapid but limited evolution, and they have been proven correct and the evo predictions proven wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 145 by PaulK, posted 02-17-2006 3:49 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 152 by SuperNintendo Chalmers, posted 02-17-2006 4:07 PM randman has replied
 Message 155 by PaulK, posted 02-17-2006 4:14 PM randman has not replied

randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 149 of 301 (287760)
02-17-2006 3:58 PM
Reply to: Message 147 by PaulK
02-17-2006 3:53 PM


Re: here is another confirmed prediction by creationists
Evolutionists do not beleive that speciation events take millions of ears.
Can you substantiate that in reference specifically to Darwin's finches? The creationist references an article and evo estimates of millions of years. For all I know, you could be correct that there are some evo estimates of just a thousand years prior to that study.
Can you substantiate that?
Keep in mind it doesn't really matter to me either way on this point as I don't hold to YECism. I am just asking for substantiation. It could be YECers and PE advocates were both correct on this one point, and more gradualist Darwinists were wrong. Or it could be there are no PE references making predictions about Darwin's finches prior to this study.
Can you provide some evidence for your claim?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 147 by PaulK, posted 02-17-2006 3:53 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 153 by PaulK, posted 02-17-2006 4:10 PM randman has replied

PurpleYouko
Member
Posts: 714
From: Columbia Missouri
Joined: 11-11-2004


Message 150 of 301 (287762)
02-17-2006 3:59 PM
Reply to: Message 137 by randman
02-17-2006 3:08 PM


Re: Not sure of the facts, I fear
Thanks for the response.
Well, you ought to talk with YECers directly, but YECism posits rapid evolution but within a kind. So, for example, they would say probably that all bears evolved from a single original bear pair.
I've tried that. It got me nowhere.
What I would like to understand is precisely which tenet of creationism, whether is is YEC, Old Earth Creationism or ID, actually leads someone to conclude that evolution (micro-evolution that is) happened at all?
Would they conclude this if evolutionary theory had never existed?
The mechanisms of evolution within a kind are the same in some respects as with evos
OK I can accept that but what part of creationism makes them think this way? It sounds more like they just accept parts of evolutionary theory from regular science rather than actually proposing it themselves based on specific "creationary" evidence.
except they probably don't exclude God affecting the process, and would argue the natural processes are also guided by God to a certain extent (He controls everything but that gets into theology).
OK. God-Guided evolution is an acceptable compromise between science and theism. But it still appears more that the evolutionary part is not "creationism" based.
How did they deduce that evolution happened based solely on Creationism? If they used the regular "scientific method" then they must have followed the same path to their conclusions that non-creationists did. How does that work out as Creationary science?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 137 by randman, posted 02-17-2006 3:08 PM randman has not replied

Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024