Is talkorigins.org a propoganda site?

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And also asserts it is a fact, and links to a whole article whose entire premise is to say that the event of universal common descent is a fact and that only the mechanism is the theory.

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The article itself does not state that universal common descent is a fact. And if one of the two articles linked to makes that claim (and you don't even say which one) that does not change what the talkorigins article does state.

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The fact they contradict themselves is all the more evidence of the indoctrination and propaganda they engage in.

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But they don't contradict themselves.The real fact is that you don't read the articles properly. You frequently misrepresent them. This is what proves that you have no basis for your claim talkorigins.org is a propaganda site - instead you are a propagandist trying to discredit scientific information by smearing the source.
c

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PaulK, I am going to make it real easy for you. Let's look at just one article, and that should suffice

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You've been making it easy all along by making some VERY bad mistakes.

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In the article titled "Evolution is a Fact and a Theory," what part of the Theory of Evolution do they say is a "fact" and what part do they say is a "theory"?

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What it says is a fact:
"the existence of biological evolution"Dobzhansky is quoted as saying the evolution as a process
"has always gone on in the history of the Earth"Lewontin states in his list of facts that "ll living forms come from previous living forms"Curtis and Baines agree with Lewontin "all living organisms present on earth today have arisen from earlier forms"Futuyma makes a similar statement: "organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors"So the only explicit statement on universal common ancestry in the entire article is the one that denies that it should be considered a fact. There are other statements about common ancestry but none makes the leap to universal common ancestry.Theory is used to refer to the mechanisms by which evolution is believed to occur.Thus in this article universal common descent is not described as either fact or theory. It could reasonably be described as a hypothesis (albeit one with a considerable degree of supporting evidence).Your argument therefore rests on a false dichotomy.s

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sorry, but you are wrong. By evolution here, they are referring to universal common descent.

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Your assertiosn are completely unsupported. And the reason you offer not support is because your assertions are false.I went through the article - which is more than you seme to have done. There are no statements equating evolution with universal common descent. There are not statements proclaiming universal common descent to be a fact. There is one explicit statement about universal common descent. And that states that it is NOT appropriate to call it a fact.Those are the facts. And those facts contradict your assertion..iThis message has been edited by PaulK, 02-20-2006 06:11 PM

I fully agree that the article talks of common descnet as a fact. And that it does not mean universal common descent when it does so. However that does not help Randman in the slightest, since it does not even claim that the examples of common descent that it gives are observed.Indeed, I believe that Randman has recognised the distinction since rather than choosing to use one of the references to common descent to support his assertion he chose to argue on the basis of a false "fact or theory" dichotomy.To be honest I see no hope for valid debate on the topic at this stage. We have had a large number of posts without Randman producing even one valid example that would justify his original assertion. I suppose if Randman were to admit that he had barely scanned the site and that he was unable to truly justify his accusation it would represent progress. However despite the fact that that is clearly what has happened I doubt that Randman would do so. He may not even be capable of admitting it.n

This is the SPECIFIC essay under discussion in the subthread.Evolution is a Fact and a TheoryYour quote is NOT there.This, on the other hand, is

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In other cases the available evidence is less strong. For example, the relationships of some of the major phyla are still being worked out. Also, the statement that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor is strongly supported by the available evidence, and there is no opposing evidence. However, it is not yet appropriate to call this a "fact" since there are reasonable alternatives.

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So, haing decided to restrict the discussion to a single essay in Message 222 you are npow attempting to refute comments on that essay by quoting a different piece altogether - while ignoring the explicit statements in the essay being discussed.It is not my integrity that should be called into question.y

It seems that you can't even be bothered to check your own messages.In Message 222 you state:

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PaulK, I am going to make it real easy for you. Let's look at just one article, and that should suffice.

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The article in question was:

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Evolution is a Fact and a Theory

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The material you quote is NOT from that essay. The material that I quoted is. Thus I am correct and the article does NOT equate evolution with universal common descent. You are wrong to claim otherwise, you are wrong to claim that your quote is even relevant and you are wrong to question my integrity.

THe question is not whether you cited the quote. The question is whether it appears in the specific article we are discussing (as per your Message 222. Here's the link again.Evolution is a Fact and a TheoryHere's the quote (copied from Message 243) Go and look. All you have to do is search for "biota".Does the quote appear in the article or not ?It's an easy question. Anyone can check it for themselves. Can you manage to answer it correctly ?

Unfortunately for you my Message 226 is referring to that one particular essay. Thus you cannot refute it by intorducing a quote form a different essay as you claimed to do. The fact that the other essay was disucssed earlier is simply irrelevant.As for your argument in Message 222 I refuted it in Message 224 by pointing out that it was a false dichotomy. Fact and theory in this context are not exhaustive and there is room for hypotheses which are neither considered part of the theory nor so well supported as to be considered fact.p

I have never denied that 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent
states the universal common descent is considered a fact.The question at hand was whether the other essay Evolution is a Fact and a Theory made the same claim. It does not, it explicitly denies it - as you know. Why can you not admit that ?Why do you try to argue otherwise by quoting another article ?Why do you think that any inferred claim should override a clear and explicit statement in the article itself ?And even if the inference were defensible, why would any honest reader believe the inferred statement over a clear and explicit staement to the contrary ?o

So basically you got angry because your attempts to smear t.o failed.Yes, you documented your "case" in sufficient detail to demonstrate that you don't really have one.Yet when it was clearly documented that you explicitly limited discussion to a single essay on the site you seemrd unwilling or unable to accept that, preferring to resort to misrepresentations and false accusations.

1) Your points were rebutted. Thus showing that you had no case. At the least you should acknowledge that the rebuttals exist.2) Secondly you DID limit a subtrhead of the discussion to a single article. You DID incorrectly declare a post in that subthread to be wrong without taking that fact into account and you did not acknowledge the error even after it was pointed out.These are the facts that can clearly be seen.

Your post is full of misrepresentations.First it is NOT true that we claim that nowhere the t.o website claims universal common descent to be a fact.Secondlly your "examples" are misrepresentatiosn because they fail to deal with the distinction made in the essay between comon descent (which might involve several independant lineages) and universal common descent which relates everything into one single lineage.There is an explicit and unambiguous statement on universal common descent in the essay. And it is this: This statement has been brought to your attention a number of times in this thread. I leave to the readers the question of why you should repeatedly ignore it and instead attempt to infer a contrary view from other statements.

The essay defines what it means by evolution and points to an actual observed example. An observation of something happening is certainly a reasonable argument that it does happen.On the other hand I do no tthink that this is a reasonable argument:

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I don't think it is because if we are talking about evolution in the sense of mere change, no one, not Young Earth Creationists, nor IDers, nor anyone in this debate at all, denies changes occur. The issue does the fact populations of species can change mean that the microbe to man story that evos tell is true.

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The argument here is that the essay cannot mean what it says, because what it says is unobjectionable to anti-evolution groups.However since the article is not arguing against the positions of anti-evolution groups - it's purpose is to provide an introduction to the science of evolution - it is hard to see how such a consideration could be taken as overriding the actual text of the essay.

One point to remember is that the essays are written by differnet people. Perfect agreement is not to be expected. One of the points of disagreement is that the author of the article dealing with evidence for common descent considers universal common descent to be so well established that it should be considered a fact while the author of the "evolution as fact and theory" article does not. (And of course either author might have changed their mind since wirtng their contributions).Another thing to remember is that the propaganda charge depends on the use of equivocation. So far every essay referred to has made clear the definition in use and stuck to it. The charge is therefore completely baseless.Since you quoted your Message 188 I'll comment now on an example of your argument

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Evolution is a Fact and a Theory

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Keep in mind that the fact of evolution is universal common descent so to say it is "observed today" is flat out false. It is not observed today, but once again, perhaps they are playing loose with terms in their effort to convince people because they seem to resort back to the definition of evolution as heritable change.

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Every significant point is false. The "fact of evolution" is NOT defined as universal common descent. There is no claim that universal common descent is observed today. There is no retreat to a different definition of evolution.As to your points about my Message 207, you have not demonstrated any significant distinction between the definitions used in the two articles referred to. It is absolutely necessary to read messages in context. Those are http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-definition.html and 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common DescentThe common descent article comes closest to a definition when it discusses microevolution which it describes as The article on the definition of evolution - which is about evolution as a natural phenomenon, not the theory of evolution, sums up the deifnition as " Which is in close agreement - yet allows for larger changes which are clearly macroevolutionary (e.g. "humans and chimps have evolved from a common ancestor").

If you look at the associated with the Flat Earth link, it states a vlaid reason for including it and cautions that creationists in gneeral do not beleive in a Flat Earth. If you're going to all a site "propaganda" it really is better not to leave out facts like that.Second l y you seem to have concentrated mainly on a single set of pages which is intended to give short answers to creationist claims so it seems a bit oddd for you to claim that the answers are short. It would be a huge effort to write long answers to so many points and there are many longer articles on the site dealing with specific issues. The more so since the pages state in the introduction: An Index to Creationist ClaimsIn short it seems that some of your ci ticisms do not hold up to a simple inspection of the pages in question. Quite frankly on the evidence I would judge your criticisms to more closely resemble propaganda on that ground alone..