Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy

So are you usually in the habit of quoting a lot of BS in order to "move the discussion along"? Because by whatever means you chose it -- at random, or because you thought it was an above-average example -- it's significant that the one you grabbed turned out to be total horse manure from start to finish.Doesn't that give you pause? It should. If the very first orange I pulled off the display at the grocery store stank to high heaven and was full of maggots, wouldn't that be a strong sign that the people running the produce department are at best incompetent, and at worst willing to knowingly sell their customers tainted food, and that I should probably shop elsewhere?And what would it mean if I spent the time to examine *all* their inventory, on many, many, many different days, over many years, and found a consistent pattern of 100% spoiled food, so bad that the people running the store couldn't possibly have remained unaware of its condition, especially since I and countless others have repeatedly pointed it out to them? That, my friend, is the state of the anti-evolution propaganda served up daily by the creationists. I'll bet he has, because he has obviously arrived at the same conclusions as the rest of us who have spent years looking over the creationists' wares.I myself have followed this "controversy" for over thirty years, and intensively studied both science and creationism at length. I'm the kind of guy who reads textbooks for fun. Right now I'm working my way through "Molecular Biology of the Cell".I have looked into this issue at great length, and debated creationists for literally tens of thousands of posts on various forums, from way back before the internet even existed, and it is my considered opinion that yes, Virginia, the creationists are consistently wrong on almost everything any time they attempt to critique science. They issue long screeds full of gross falsehoods, gross fallacies, gross ignorance masquerading as knowledge, and heaping helpings of spin, propaganda, and attempts to mislead.Through the years creationists have flung literally thousands of "lists" at me containing what they purported to be grounds for doubting evolution or some other aspect of science they feared might clash with their religious beliefs.Every time -- let me repeat that, every time -- I have fact-checked a creationist critique of science, I have found it to be without exception shockingly devoid of honesty or accuracy, and never once -- again, let me repeat, never once -- did their broadsides contain something that actually rose to the level of scuffing the wall of the science they were attempting to lay siege to.Does that answer your question? If he's like the rest of us who have become thoroughly disgusted at the chicanery of the anti-evolution kooks (and I use that word after careful consideration and will be more than happy enough to justify its use), it's because we've watched their antics for a very long time. I believe you are wrong in concluding that he bases his opinion on only the BS-filled list you chose to provide here, and I assure you, it very much is representative of the kind of stinking manure that passes for "information" on creationist sites. They don't like lies and propaganda being presented as actual "weaknesses" of science when those lies are actually false slanders, no. Are you surprised? Really? What is the "merit" to lying about science and trying to get those lies into classrooms where they will misinform and poison the brains of countless students? Bingo! We don't say that the creationist attacks on science are insidious and destructive just because "someone" has misrepresented the facts, we say it because they ALL do. Yes, I'm aware that "all" is a very strong claim. I suppose somewhere out there, there may be an honest anti-evolutionist or two. Frankly, though, I have yet to meet him/her. Every single one I met to date has been a scurrilous liar, and often the person he's lying to most desperately is himself, but he has no compunction about telling lies to others. I've been lied to and lied about by anti-evolutionists literally more times than I can possibly count. Yes, but not of the kind the anti-evolutionists dishonestly present it as. The actual kind of dispute? Sure. And for the most part it is presented to students as an open question, which is still being researched. Should the dispute as it is commonly grossly distorted by the anti-evolutionists be presented to the students? Hell no. Your first question is vague in the extreme. You'd need to clarify it before I could give something like an actual answer. However, students are already informed of the methods used to determine things about fossils and the geologic column, and the limitations of those methods. Again, however, it would do a great disservice to students to pass on to them the enormous whoppers that the anti-evolutionists like to tell about these topics. You're being vague again -- such as?In any case, science students -- unlike the creationists who keep misunderstanding these things -- are properly informed about how science tests and validates theories about things that can't be "observed taking place in the present". The creationists like to claim that anything concluded about anything at all is just a wild guess unless "you were there to see it", but this is complete nonsense, and shows a gross ignorance about how science works, how it validates things, and how it accurately gains knowledge about things that are too small, too large, too fast, too slow, too energetic, too long ago, etc. to sit and watch happen with the naked eye. What problems would those be? I've seen hundreds of creationist claims of "problems with radiometric dating". Every single one -- repeat, every single one -- has turned out to be lies and/or idiocy when I've checked into their claims.So which of these lies are you advocating be taught to students? Which "controversy" do you want to teach the students -- that this area of science is very well validated, but there are some ignorant kooks who want to keep tilting at windmills about it because they're religiously motivated to spout nonsense? Okay, fine, I have no problem with informing students of the fact that there are nuts who think dating methods are "controversial", just as there are nuts who still think the Earth is flat or is the center of the Solar System. Don't be surprised when some parents object, though. Not at all. That's likely not what he's objecting to. He's objecting to the *lies* about evolution getting forced into the classroom. As am I. And they are taught to students. They certainly were when I went to school.What isn't taught, however -- what shouldn't be taught -- are the great loads of deceptive and misleading and error-filled propaganda that the creationists want to sneak into schools all dressed up in big Trojan Horse with "teach the controversy" scrawled on the side, packed full with lies purposely calculated to try to turn students away from science and towards the religion of the creationist.

Okay, remember you asked for it. None of them are legitimate weaknesses in evolutionary biology, all of them are dead wrong or grossly dishonest/misleading, none of them should be "taught" in high school biology classes, except as examples of the kind of fallacies and errors the creationists are in the habit of making. Blatant lie #1 Grossly misleading, it says that the fossil record will have *some* gaps, not that there are "systematic gaps", because there aren't. This is a repeat of Blatant Lie #1. Blatant lie #2 Blatant lie #3 -- no, Neo-Darwinists don't say that.
Blatant lie #4 -- no, PE doesn't require "sudden leaps" as big as is being claimed here. Grossly misleading -- they often disagree on the details, down at the level where one would expect the data to be not necessarily sufficient for resolving differences. In other words, down in the expected "margin of error". There have been no unresolvable contradictions on the larger scale, or of the kind that require overturning the basic methods of using anatomy and/or biochemistry in determining phylogenies, nor of the kind that would call into question the overall results of either method. This is just silly. Blatant lie #5 -- no, it doesn't say that. Blatant lie #6 -- that's not what it says either. Blatant lie #7 -- no one in science is claiming that a lack of evidence proves anything.
Blatant lie #8 -- even if they did, that wouldn't actually be an example of circular reasoning. Blatant lie #9. Silly, and not really accurate. It's not just "evolutionists", as the study and use of index fossils was in use before Darwin, and whether or not they "lived only briefly in geologic time", the point is that certain fossils consistently appear only in certain strata, and thus can be used to help identify those strata when found elsewhere. Blatant lie #10 -- no they don't. Again, index fossils were used well before Darwin, before anyone had any notion of *why* there might be changing fossil appearances across strata. Silly -- no one claims them as singular "proof" of "evolutionary assumptions". And again, index fossils were found to be in certain strata -- this was an observed fact long before anyone had any notion of how to explain why they would. Blatant lie #11 -- there are many locations where the entire geologic column can be found. Unsupported claim. Every time I've seen some creationist attempt to give a specific example supporting this claim, it's been something stupid like human remains buried in ancient strata (i.e., someone actually dug a hole in an old layer and used it as a burial hole), thus producing "older strata containing younger fossils", or like an old fossil bed crumbling down from a cliff face, then getting buried by younger sediment. I have yet to see any solid example of a fossil clearly showing up in the "wrong" strata, like a rabbit skeleton found in its original location in Cambrian rock. On the contrary, the creationists really need to explain how the millions of fossils found to date always end up neatly sorted into an evolutionary pattern. Blatant lie #12. This one's really a huge whopper. Thousands of transitional forms have been found in the fossil record.
I suppose the weasel-word here is "undispusted" -- nothing in science is incapable of being "disputed" by some kook somewhere. Even Archaeopteryx, for which many very good specimens exist, and has over a dozen features which exist only in birds today but not reptiles, and over a dozen other features which exist only in reptiles but not birds -- the very model of a transitional species, caught partway through the evolutionary changeover -- is handwaved away by stubborn creationists as, "that's not really a transitional, it's just a plain ol' bird!" Idiots. Wow, a repeat... Trying to pad the list? Straw man -- no one claimed it was. Variation plus selection plus replication, however... Misleading -- while it's true that there was an increase in genetic complexity between the first cell and man, it's still false to say that "evolution requires increased net genetic complexity. No, it doesn't. It often produces that, yes, but its' not "required", and it's also evolution when a genome is simplified for greater efficiency. Misleading -- that's not all it does. It can also result in many kinds of alterations of the genome beyond mere shuffling, including gene duplication, which the author conveniently "forgets" to tell his readers about. Again, that's not all they do. Gene duplication is itself a mutation. Gene duplication (as well as other kinds of genetic insertions) followed by the alteration of one of the copies is indeed a net increase in genetic complexity. The author is either grossly ignorant of genetics, or purposely misleading his readers. Grossly misleading. These particular examples have been cherry-picked, carefully avoiding examples in which novel genetic complexity *has* been identified.
It's also grossly misleading to imply that the cherry-picked examples must be "non-evolutionary" just because there was "no increased net genetic complexity" -- that's quite false. Grossly misleading -- in the examples the creationists keep flinging around, the reasons for the conflicting dates are well known, such as improper sample preparation, inappropriate use, known contaminants, etc. It's no surprise that if you use a yardstick poorly, you'll get incorrect measurements. But it's shockingly dishonest to use a few such examples to try to claim that yardsticks as a measuring device, or the concept of "length" in general, are too unreliable for use and that their results should be ignored, especially when vast numbers of reliable, consistent, validated, cross-checked results have been obtained with yardsticks, and cross-checked with results arrived at using many independent methods of measurement.Yet again, we see that creationist "problems" for evolution are actually gross misrepresentations and blatant lies. I'm not impressed, but I'm hardly surprised.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... That's the common mantra, but I note that you "forgot" include any actual examples. So here's your chance.Present, in your own words (it wastes everyone's time if you just post a link to a gigantic list-o'-crap) what you personally consider to be the three (repeat, three) VERY BEST examples of "genuine problems with evo theory [that] have never been refuted".We will then examine your three BEST examples. If they turn out to be not "genuine problems with evo theory" after all, and/or have already been refuted countless times even though you claim they haven't, then we'll be able to judge your credibility -- and that of the "very best" anti-evolution material -- accordingly. If your BEST material falls flat, then there's no point wasting time on the second-string material, no matter how much of it you might have, because if it's worse than your very best, and your very best is fluff, then you'll have revealed your entire arsenal to be just big pile of fluff.If on the other hand your material stands up to scrutiny, I'll gladly eat crow and concede that you've got a point.Go for it.Note: Over the years I've issued this "show us your best" challenge countless times. To date, not a single anti-evolutionist has actually taken me up on it. Instead, I've inevitably gotten some variation on a) no response, b) bluster and chest-beating and/or insults, followed by a hasty exit, c) a link to a big list-o'-crap.Feel free to be the first to actually step up to the plate. Horse manure. We love critical thinking. We love actual thought-provoking challenges. Read the science journals, that's what they're all about.Unfortunately, the anti-evolutionists provide very little of either. Instead, they keep attempting to shoehorn propaganda and obfuscation into classrooms in order to dishonestly sow doubt about science with the goal of leaving people open to the anti-evolutionists' religious dogma. Come up with something *good* for a change and we'll stop laughing it out of the curriculum. But the same old nonsense just isn't going to improve with age, and still has no place in a school classroom. You'll have to do better than that.

This appears to be using the term "Evolution Theories" quite loosely, as it contains a lengthy session on "origin of life", which is not actually a part of evolutionary biology, nor does any alleged problem/flaw/weakness in any origin of life hypothesis have any impact on evolutionary biology, for reasons which others have given. By the same token, the science of meteorology is not impacted at all even if the hypotheses concerning the origin of the atmosphere shift. This is quite an overstatement. I have examined literally hundreds of "probability" arguments from anti-evolutionists. Not one stands up to even a brief examination. They fail for many different reasons, but the failure inherent in every origin-of-life calculation is that their models (upon which their attempts at math are built) are ludicrously simplistic, and at most calculate the odds of something happening in the *one* simple way the anti-evolutionist has managed to conceive of, instead of examining the myriad ways something could conceivably happen.For example, most "probability of a protein forming" calculations by anti-evolutionists only examine the odds of ONE specified protein sequence arising COMPLETELY AT RANDOM in ONE trial of a randomly-assembled sequence of amino acids. All well and good, but no biologist has ever proposed that this is how proteins formed during abiogenesis. The anti-evolutionists are modeling the wrong process.Also, by saying "any specific amino acid sequence", this item makes clear that it's making another common mistake of anti-evolution probability calculations -- the (grossly false) assumption that only ONE specific amino acid sequence would do, and that all other sequences would be a "failure". Utterly false. For a very long time it has been known that protein sequences are extremely forgiving of variations in their sequences, even for a specific function. Add to that the fact that there's no reason to presume that even the biochemical functions need be exactly what life as we currently known it has settled for (i.e., it's vastly likely that threre's more than one way to make "life" if you start with a clean slate), and you begin to realize that the "well any one *exact* protein is unlikely" argument is just goofy and incorrect, even leaving aside the issue that the molecules of life more likely started simple and then got more complex, rather than having to "poof" into their current forms directly from nothing, something *else* the anti-evolutionists entirely leave out of their attempts at probability calculations. Under what conditions, pray tell? Yet again, the anti-evolutionists presume to be able to model the totality of every conceivable (and inconceivable) scenario. Good luck with that one! As others have pointed out, there's actually more progress on this point than the author of this list lets on.But even if there wasn't, the appropriate response is, "so what?" As long as no one claims that this question has been resolved -- and they don't -- the fact that it's an open question is hardly an "origin of life weakness". So further work is needed (and is being done). So? No one claimed that abiogenesis was a solved issue. "We don't know" is an acceptable statement.What *is* known, however, is that there is abundant evidence that life bootstrapped from humbler molecular beginnings, even if we're not yet clear on how every step along the way occurred. There's nothing wrong with presenting students with the (somewhat sketchy) picture of what we *do* know about life's beginnings, as long as they're also told of what fuzzy parts still need to be filled in -- and from all the textbooks I've seen, this is done. Incorrect. There are a number of processes that bias the mixture in one direction or another. Also, even with a 50/50 mix being "produced naturally", this leaves out the possibility of scenarios where one chirality is preferentially selected, or the biogenesis of a chiral product is generated from an initially non-chiral beginning. No, actually, no there isn't. Quite the contrary, in fact. But since early life began in anaerobic conditions, this is no problem at all, much less one that requires! an! exclamation! point! My degree is in information science. This claim is just flat wrong. Absolutely nothing in information science in particular, or science as a whole in general, supports this poppycock. It's just an article of faith among the creationists. There's no support for it, and in fact there are numerous counterexamples. ...for a sufficiently loose definition of "basic body structures". As another person correctly points out, this is the case only if you consider "a worm with a stiffened nerve cord running along its body" to be the same "basic body structure" as, say, an eagle, and "a worm with an unstiffened nerve cord" to be the same "basic body plan" as, say, a butterfly.Creationists tend to vastly overstate the "basic body plan" issue. Birds arose hundreds of millions of years after the Cambrian, and have a "body plan" that bears about as much resemblance to the Cambrian ancestral chordates as the Space Shuttle does to the Wright flyer, yet the creationists try to imply that there's been little to no "body plan" innovation since the Cambrian and that all "body plan" structure arose "from nowhere" in the Cambrian "suddenly", but this is quite simply false.The "basic" body plans which are found in the Cambrian are incredibly primitive forms of the vast variety of life which has evolved since, and the fact that they are found in the Cambrian is pretty much just a matter of definition. If for example the notocord/vertebrate split had happened within the Cambrian instead of after, for convenience we'd call them two different phyla, two different basal "body plans". Instead, that split occurred later, and thus we lump those two distinct groups into a single "basic body plan" found in the Cambrian, the chordates (phylum chordata).In short, we call them basic body plans because they were already distinct during the Cambrian, while the creationists are looking at it backwards -- they're trying to say that because they're considered different basic body plans, there's something magical about them all being present in the Cambrian... Excuse me while I roll my eyes. Yeah, so? First, no it doesn't, second, the Cambrian so-called explosion was still pretty "slow and gradual" (the creationists like to pretend that it happened overnight, *poof*, but it didn't), and third, there *has* still been a "slow and gradual increase" in body structures:
Over hundreds of millions of subequent years, the chordate worms of the Cambrian gave rise to the vertebrate worms (among others), which gave rise to the early jawless fish (among others -- I'm going to stop saying "among others", but it applies at every stage), the jawless fish gave rise to the cartilagenous fish, which gave rise to the bony fish, which gave rise to the lungfish, which gave rise to the early amphibians, which gave rise to the reptiles, which gave rise to the dinosaurs, which gave rise to the birds, etc. The bird body plan (to use just one example) is a hell of a lot more "increased" in complexity than the Cambrian ancestor, and this occurred through thousands of individual steps, over hundreds of millions of years, while each of the many steps branched and gave rise to other lineages as well (such as the mammals in all their own diversity, etc.)The tree of life is still entirely valid, no matter how much creationists try to divert attention by saying, "lookee over there, one of the worms in the Cambrian had kind of a spinal cord!" Not a problem. First, most of the so-called "living fossils" have indeed changed from their ancestral forms, something this item admits when it says "essentially" no change instead of "no changes at all". Second, most so-called "living fossils" are hardly in what one would call "continually changing environments". Third, if an organism is optimized for its niche, there will be little selective pressure to change. Indeed, selection will enforce *not* changing, despite the tendency of mutations and genetic drift to do so lacking selection.Before the creationists can critique any "scientific weaknesses" in evolution, they need to actually understand it. In a word, bullshit. Again, BS. Others have dealt with this adequately. The creationists are falling for an accident of terminology (i.e., are making a pointless semantic argument) instead of actually comparing the phsyical structures. Define "new structure", and "change which is larger than a creationist will dismiss as limited"...In any case, there are several issues here:1. The amount of selective breeding done by mankind is no more than a spit in the ocean compared to the scope of the time, generations, and population sizes which have been subjected to natural evolutionary processes over the last 3.5 billion years.2. The amount of change we've seen through our limited selective breeding programs is not smaller than one would expected compared to "evolution of life" scenarios, as the creationist here is implying, it's actually FAR LARGER. For a given number of generations and population size, man's selective breeding produces VASTLY larger amounts of morphological change than is on average necessary to produce all modern species from unicellular beginnings (the creationists' proverbial "molecules to man") in a few billion years. In other words, observations of the results of man's selective breeding experiments is easily consistent with the amount of change we'd *expect* to see in a few thousand years if evolutionary scenarios were true. This confirms evolution, it's not a "weakness" in it.3. Truly "new structures" are incredibly rare even in the evolutionary history of all life on Earth. Bird wings for example are just modified arms, made up of all the same bones and muscles, just reshaped to a strong degree. Bird feathers could reasonably be termed a "new structure", but they arose exactly once among all the countless species over the billions of years of life on Earth. Truly "new stuctures" probably arise once every several million years. Not once per species lineage, I mean once in several million years among all the millions of species alive on the whole planet. Expecting something totally novel to pop up in the small handful of species we've been breeding in small numbers for a few thousand years is a highly unrealistic expectation. "New structures" are a rare thing -- far more often evolution endlessly tinkers with existing structures. Dogs and bears are separated by tens of millions of years from their common ancestor, and are quite different from each otehr and recognizeably distinct, yet have no "new structure" between them.Nonetheless, if you get away from the fixation on "structures", we have directly observed the rise of evolutionary novelty, such as the "nylon-eating bacteria", and more recently this: Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab | New Scientist4. Finally, despite not being-there-to-see-it-happen (something the creationists are unduly fixated on because they don't understand how science validates things), there is abundant evidence that "new structures" have indeed arisen in an evolutionary manner during the history of life on Earth, because their proto-versions are identifiable in the fossil record occurring before their not-so-proto-versions, followed by their almost-there versions, followed by their "fully formed" versions, etc., not to mention the clear signs of evolutionary origin in the genes which build and operate them, etc.This creationist talking point is as goofy as trying to claim that mountains must not form naturally, because even though one can measure the slow rise of a young mountain range (the Himalayas grow by about an inch a year), and show that the movement of the tectonic plates is of appropriate speed and force and direction to push up a mountain range, and that all the geology around young and old mountain ranges is consistent with their growth, and the occasional earthquake is observed shifting the surface of the Earth by relatively large amounts, by gosh the whole idea of mountains heaving themselves slowly up from level ground is poppycock and unscientific if no one has seen a whole new mountain range spring up within the few thousand years of recorded human history, or unless man's digging and piling operations have already resulted in a whole new mountain! Uh huh... Sure...The creationists can grasp at whatever straws they wish, but personally I'll follow the evidence -- all of it, not just bits and pieces I can spin to argue a pre-existing belief, while conveniently failing to take into account all the other multiply cross-confirming independent lines of evidence... That's the creationist method, and it has no place in a science classroom. This clearly demonstrates that the creationists don't know what in the hell they're talking about. ...only for sufficiently nitpicky definitions of the words "beneficial" and "structural" and "changes"... False -- most mutations are neutral. A surprisingly high number are beneficial. And even if the claim had been true, so what? Evolution weeds out the bad and accumulates the good. So how is this a "weakness"? Horse crap. Look at a dachshund. It has numerous structural changes compared to a wolf. Again, horse crap. This is yet again based on a creationist article of faith, and nothing in the science literature. On the contrary, the science literature is full of countless counterexamples and refutations. Quite often they do. Why? Of what? This is generally done. Oh, puh-lease...This is like insisting that in physics class, when students roll balls down inclines in order to study gravity and momentum, the professor should make a big point of loudly announcing that since the students are lifting the balls to the tops of the inclines, this probably means that nothing can roll down hills naturally, there must be an Intelligent Designer pushing things around with is big invisible fingers.And yes, I've seen arguments almost as stupid as that seriously proposed by creationists in order to try to handwave away the results of carefully controlled experiments in evolution. If there was a human within twenty miles of the experiment -- or even setting it up and then withdrawing beyond a twenty mile radius to let things unfold naturally by themselves thereafter -- the ID/IOT (Intelligent Design/Intelligent Origin Theorist) will jump up and screech, "see! see! you had to intelligently design that setup, this proves nothing about what can happen naturally and proves intelligent design!"Yes, they're that clueless.

The reason I asked for your top 3 was to avoid the possibility of subequent waffling. I'm new here and am not familiar with your posts, so this is not a personal slur, it's just something I have found necessary when dealing with anti-evolutionists. Almost without exception they seem unable to learn that there might be any problem whatsoever with the quality of anti-evolution propaganda. No matter how many times dozens of their "proofs" against evolution are decisively shot down, they are completely unphased as they presume that surely a few of the other 3000 things they've been told against evolution by their creationist propganda pamphlets *must* be good enough to demolish that "evilution" thing, so they maintain their cocksure attitude despite never once managing to present a single solid bit of ammo against evolutionary biology, that doesn't immediately crumble when examined.This is why I ask for your three BEST. The three you consider so solid, so sure, so well grounded, so carefully verified by the best minds that the anti-evolution movement has to offer. That way, if I can show you that the BEST is rotten to the core, then there will actually be a chance that for once you'll sit down and really think about what this means for the likelihood that the *rest* of the stuff cranked out by the creationist propaganda mills might also be full of manure as well.Otherwise, we could be here until we're old and gray, and you'll never bother to consider that, as the saying goes, "if everything seems to be coming your way, consider that you might be in the wrong lane."I want to cut to the chase -- I want you to put up your three VERY BEST examples of creationist slam-dunk refutation of evolutionary biology. So we can settle once and for all how solid/shoddy your anti-evolution position really is. If I asked Ford to give me their three finest automobiles from a day's worth of production, and I found that not one of the three would even start when I turned the key, that would tell everyone a great deal about the quality of Ford products in general even without examining the other 5000 cars made that day, wouldn't it?But if instead I asked them to give me their three best, and they instead said, "well ya know, here's three, we don't know if they're the best, actually I can't even remember whether I pulled them from the 'factory rejects' room, dunno, but you're welcome to look them over", then if I found major flaws in all three, they'd be able to waffle and say, "hey, look, that's just 3 cars out of 5000, they might have been the only 3 that were bad, I told you they might have been the rejects in the first place, I'm sure the other 4997 are just fine, you can't prove nothin'!", then not only would the whole exercise have been a waste of time, it would raise serious questions about the willingness of Ford to actually put their products up for a test, wouldn't it? And wouldn't *that* by itself say something?Now here you are, avoiding my request for your three BEST so that we can see what you've really got and how good it is. What does that say?I strongly advise you to come back and try again with three you are willing to stand behind, willing to say that if even those three aren't capable of standing up to scrutiny, then by gosh maybe nothing is...Nonetheless, let's have a look at the three you're pre-emptively disclaiming, shall we? You sort of "forgot" to actually provide any example whatsoever. You've just made an empty unsupported claim. It's like saying, "heavier than air flight is impossible, so there!"As the old saying goes, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."Nonetheless, contrary to your vague and unspecific claim, the evidence actually overwhelmingly supports evolution: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common DescentTry again when you can actually support your claim, or hell, even be specific about what you're talking about. *Which* evidence, *how* does it conflict, with what *part* of evolutionary theory, for starters? You're just handwaving and naysaying at this point.Strike one. This is false, as any reading of the biological literature would have informed you, likewise for any of the information science journals which explore topics of genetic algorithms.And yes, this creationist claim has been refuted endlessly by those who know something about evolution, contrary to your claim that you'd be presenting things that we've allegedly never refuted. For example: Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online.Strike two. You have a gross misunderstanding of what is and isn't evolution.Furthermore, you have failed to identify what, exactly, you feel is either "fallacious" or "deceptive" or "circular" about it, nor how "the exact opposite" (the exact opposite of *what*?) is the case.Finally, the "ToE", like any scientific theory, encompasses a number of things, so you're way off base when you rail against discussions of one aspect of it, and also when you falsely assert that people use that alone to provide evidence for other parts of it. Nor have you established that the parts you're vaguely referring to (*please* attempt to be more specific -- unclear presentation is usually the result of unclear thinking) actually aren't properly linked anyway. Not that I've seen. Yet again, you're making a vague, unspecified, extremely broad (and overambitious) claim without a shred of specifics, support, or any attempt at making an actual case.
For a refutation (you keep claiming that these creationist claims have never been refuted), see this for example: http://www.gcssepm.org/special/
And: CC200: Transitional fossils
Among many others.Strike three.You could have saved yourself a lot of typing by just saying, "here's my three: evolution is wrong, wrong, wrong!"Next time, attempt to actually make a case, if you think you have one. For starters, fill in the blanks where someone might reasonably ask, "such as?" Yeah, and Ford isn't standing behind those three cars they gave me to inspect, either.Next time, give me something you're actually willing to stand behind, to actually hold forth as test cases of how good your position is.If you just give me another vague scattershot without specifics, and start/end them with more disclaimers, I'll have to write you off as being the same as the other creationists I've had discussions with over thirty years -- all sound, no substance.Come on, show us what you've got. Here's your chance. Do you get such suggestions often enough that you feel the need for a pre-emptive volley? Why do you suppose that might be?

I suggest you read what I've written in direct response to what you posted. If I take the time to write it for you, you can take the time to read it. And if you find those few posts "too long" to read, you might want to stop attempting to discuss a complex field like evolutionary biology, and stick to something more light and uncomplicated. There was no fluff in my posts to you. Every bit was in direct response to what you wrote, and to the point. Don't worry, other people don't have that limitation, and will be able to read the material I've written that refutes your claims, even if you don't. I didn't. Perhaps you could point out where you imagine I did. You've just indicated that you can't even be bothered to read a couple of posts from me, I'm sure as heck not going to waste my time starting multiple new threads on several topics covered in more detail for you to not read. Gosh, from the way you started that sentence, I was expecting you to actually deal with something I wrote, instead of ending by just reiterating your original claim without supporting it. "Is so!", he says... You keep forgetting the "such as?" part, even after I specifically suggested that you keep that question in mind, and address it, as you attempt to assemble your beliefs into coherent arguments with actual specifics and support, instead of just posting them over and over again as if sheer force of will is going to make them convincing to anyone. You forgot the "because why" part.Have you forgotten that I gave you these links in specific response to your claim that you had claims which had not been refuted? Please explain how, exactly, it "does not exactly show I've considered these issues" when I provide you with links that show you that indeed, "evos" HAVE REBUTTED THESE CLAIMS, contrary to your claim that they haven't?Whether you hate Talk.Origins with a burning white passion or not, the fact remains that you claim that "evos" have not refuted your claims, and by pointing to existing online refutations of those same claims, I HAVE SHOWN THIS ASSERTION TO BE FALSE.Are we clear now? Of course it does. From your perspective. I would have been surprised if you hadn't. Morton's Demon would allow you no other reaction. Then that's probably why I did a lot more than that. It was apparently in the part of my post that was too long for you to bother reading. Is anyone else here getting a hint of PeeWee Herman's "I know you are but what am I?!?" taunt?Look, I already explained to YOU, again apparently in the part of my post you didn't bother reading, that YOU hadn't sufficiently supported (or hell, even stated) your claim yet, nor given sufficient information to figure out what, exactly, you claim to have that supports your specific assertion, whatever the hell it might be.What part of the following, which I already spelled out for you, are you having trouble understanding: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."Does a twelve word sentence rise to the level of your "that's too long for me to read!" complaint?I pointed out the many ways you failed to support, failed to explain, failed to argue, failed to even specifically state, your claims.So what, exactly, is there for me to rebut?Here, let's try your own taunt on for size and see how the shoe fits: Merely saying "I am right" does not cut it and shows you have no factual support and possibly no understanding of your own position.Now, do you want to actually make a CASE for your claims, or do you just want to repeat them while stamping your feet on the ground?Now, here are the points from my post that you have completely dodged. I'll number them so that we can keep better score on how many you'll keep ignoring, and how many you'll get around to actually addressing:1. Do you understand the reasons I gave for why I asked you for your BEST three exmaples of anti-evolution material?2. Do you understand the reasons I gave about why NOT giving me your three BEST looks bad?3. Are you willing to provide what you consider your three BEST hits against evolutionary biology?4. Your first claim was, "The NeoDarwinian hypothesis of genetic evolution roughly coorrelating morphological evolution by natural selection selecting for the beneficial traits arsing from random mutation conflicts with the evidence in an overwhelming manner." I asked you to support this claim. Will you?5. I pointed out how vague and nonspecific your first claim is. I asked you *which* evidence you're alluding to.6. I asked you to explain *how* the evidence allegedly conflicts.7. I ask you to explain what *part* of evolutionary biology you believe it conflicts with.8. You asserted that your claims had never been refuted by "evos". I provided you with a link which refutes your (vague) claim, which makes the case that the evidence in fact overwhelmingly supports evolution. Are you going to admit that you were wrong when you asserted that evos had never refuted your claim?9. Your second claim was, "Microevolution or NeoDarwinian processes of natural selection work against originating higher taxa by limiting genetic diversity within populations, not expanding it, in general and so is actually evidence against ToE, not evidence for it, as what we have are dead-ends, not examples of "evolution" in action." I told you this was wrong. It is. I gave you a link which explains to you why it's wrong. Hint: Your assertion is about what natural selection can or can't do. Hint#2: Natural selection is not the only process at work producing evolutionary change. Hint#3: Those other processes *increase* diversity, even if natural selection doesn't. Hint#4: Your fallacy is based on your false presumption that if natural selection doesn't produce diversity, then evolution as a whole can't increase diversity. Are you going to deal with the material at that link, which just so happens to deal very specifically with the ways in which your claim IS WRONG?10. You claimed that "evos" never refuted the points you had against evolution. I pointed out that you were wrong, by linking to the aforementioned refutation by an evo. Are you going to admit that you were wrong when you say that this claim was never refuted?11. The second non sequitur part of your second claim was, "This error is compounded by the fallacious and deceptive circular logic of evos of defining evolution as heritable change and as ToE and so claim since heritable change has been observed, ToE has been observed when the exact opposite is the case." I pointed out that you had failed to explain what you found fallacious. Care to do that now?12. I pointed out that you had failed to explain what you found deceptive. Care to do that now?13. I pointed out that you had failed to explain what you found to be circular logic. Care to do that now?14. I pointed out that you had failed to explain what was "the exact opposite". Care to do that now?15. I pointed out that you had failed to support your overall claim, whatever it was. Care to do that now?16. I pointed out that you were unfairly faulting people for discussing one or another part of a multi-part body of theory. Care to address that point?17. I pointed out that you had failed to establish that the different parts of ToE which you are complaining are being incorrectly conflated aren't properly linked. Care to do that now?18. I pointed out that you had failed to even specify which different parts of ToE you were talking about. Care to do that now?19. Your third claim was, "The fossil record conclusively demonstrates gradualistic evo theories including PE are wrong." I pointed out that you had totally failed to support this bald assertion, *and* that it was contrary to my own knowledge of the fossil record. Care to do that now?20. You had asserted that your claims had not been refuted by evos. I gave you two links to refutations of this particular assertion. Are you going to admit that you were wrong when you asserted that such a claim had never been refuted?21. I wrote, "Next time, attempt to actually make a case, if you think you have one. For starters, fill in the blanks where someone might reasonably ask, 'such as?'" Do you intend to try again and make more sense?22. Are you going to take to heart my suggestion that you could improve your presentations by making sure you provide answers to potential "such as?" questions?23. I wrote, "Next time, give me something you're actually willing to stand behind, to actually hold forth as test cases of how good your position is." Are you willing to do this? Or are you going to disclaim anything you post like you did with the last batch?24. I wrote, "If you just give me another vague scattershot without specifics, and start/end them with more disclaimers, I'll have to write you off as being the same as the other creationists I've had discussions with over thirty years -- all sound, no substance." -- any response?You finished with an attempt to head off accusations of ignorance and/or cowardice.25. I wrote, "Do you get such suggestions often enough that you feel the need for a pre-emptive volley?" Care to respond?26. I wrote, "Why do you suppose that might be?" Why *do* you suppose that might be? Trust me, you really don't want me to do that.

...says the guy who just admitted he didn't even read all of the responses I made to him...Coyote is under the impression that I have rebutted your material because he bothered to read them, and found the rebuttals. Why is it sad that Coyote actually reads what people write before he comments on what is or isn't in their posts?Anyway, thanks, I now have the answer concerning the question I had about you.

I didn't say that they did. My point was that the science of meteorology remains valid no matter how the atmosphere may have gotten here in the first place, just as evolutionary biology remains valid no matter how living things got here originally. If an abiotic natural origin of life is disproved tomorrow and it is instead proven that space aliens designed the first cells and seeded them here, its impact on the science of evolutionary biology would be pretty much zero. Everything we knew yesterday about evolutionary biology would remain valid tomorrow after the "aliens started it" discovery. Likewise, our understanding of meteorology remains unchanged if we discover tomorrow that the Earth's atmosphere was formed originally by [pick any possibility]. If you mean that I agree that it's improbable that life arose in any of the cartoonishly simplistic ways that the anti-evolutionists envision when they carry out their childishly naive probability calculations, yes, I do agree.If you mean that you think I would agree that every conceivable abiogenesis scenario is highly improbable, no, I do not agree. I don't see anything in your msg 95 which contradicts what I've written here. I'm not really sure. My point, however, is that the anti-evolutionists make their own presumptions about conditions when they simplistically try to rule out (or calculate wild improbabilities for) abiogenesis. For example, my reply here was to a claim of "the high probability of breakdown by hydrolysis of amino acid chains". Under some conditions amino acid claims are stable, and some they aren't. What conditions is this source presuming? Why are they presuming those particular conditions? Why not conditions known to be more favorable to the stability of amino acid chains?One thing creationists continually overlook when they're trying to think about these things is that the early Earth, just like the Earth today, had a *vast* number of *different* conditions available in varying locations. It wasn't just a giant uniform homogenous blob. One creationist source (Hugh Ross, IIRC) likes to sarcastically claim that, "In order for all of them [RNA biochemicals] to synthesize at once requires the primordial soup to freeze and boil at the same time". I spent a good amount of time researching the citations given for this claim, and found that the claims in the quote are wildly overstated compared to what the citations actually said. Nonetheless, even if it was true that some biochemicals spontaneously synthesize only near freezing conditions while others spontaneously synthesize only at near boiling temperatures, this still wouldn't be a major hurdle. The snide quote expects readers to think that it's impossible for a "primordial soup" to "freeze and boil at the same time", because those are contradictory conditions. But this makes the fatal assumption I describe above -- assuming that the primordial Earth was homogenous. Of course it wasn't. It would have hot spots *and* cold spots, just as today. They could even be found close to each other, as in the case of a volcano or geothermal vent on the ocean floor under a glacier or polar ice cap. Production of heat-needing biochemicals could take place near the heat source, production of cold-needing biochemicals could take place near the ice, and both kinds of products would diffuse to mix in between, or wash away and be available elsewhere if even more special conditions were necessary for them to further react together.Again, before an anti-creationist can rule out the probability of something occurring, they're going to have to make a case for why the particular scenario they're modeling is necessarily the right one, and why no other scenarios or combination of scenarios could possibly have existed. Scientists are wise enough to know that they're a long way away from being able to calculate reliable probabilities for what might or might not have been likely in the earliest stages of life on Earth. The creationists, however, are arrogant enough to think that *they* can, to the point of being able to rule out abiogenesis entirely with mathematical certainty. In this they are dead wrong. Yes, but the creationists endlessly harp on the "unanswered questions" (and the "gaps", etc.) while refusing to acknowledge the strengths of the "case" (all the evidence we *do* have in hand, all the questions we *do* have answers for). They're like the sleazy defense lawyer who keeps hammering on the unanswered question of where the missing murder weapon is, in a dishonest attempt to distract the jury's attention from the eyewitness testimony, the physical evidence tying his client to the crime, the death threats his client left on the victim's answering machine, the videotape of his client entering the scene of the crime, and his confession after he was arrested.In the above scenario, the lawyer is harping on what is at most a side issue to the question of whether his client committed the murder. When there is overwhelming evidence indicating that he *did* commit the murder, why make a lot of noise over an unanswered question about a detail of *how* he did it or attempted to cover his tracks afterwards? Just as a diversion, obviously. "Pay no attention to that other evidence, spend all your time thinking about this unanswered question, to maybe make you have doubts about the case." This is the game that creationists play when they try to focus attention on unanswered questions in science or transitional fossil "gaps", etc. They want people to forget about all the evidence and answers that *have* been acquired, and the picture that they overwhelmingly paint. "Just look away from the data, look at blank spots, maybe you'll forget about the data if we keep harping on the few holes that remain." That *is* pretty much what is taught to students in high school biology textbooks. All the ones I've seen, anyway, and I've see a lot.But the creationists aren't happy with even that. What they really want taught -- what they've asserted themselves hundreds of times over when discussing these subjects -- is that science doesn't know *anything* with regards to the origins of life. And that's as flat wrong as claiming that it knows everything. One thing that keeps popping up again and again in discussions with creationists on these topics is their belief that if science can't prove something true with the kind of certainty seen in mathematical proofs, then the topic is still totally wide open, science can't lay a claim to any kind of knowledge whatsoever, and therefore anyone's opinion is as valid as anyone else's on the topic. It boils down to a position of, "if you can't absolutely prove you're right, then I'm justified in keeping on believing whatever I want to believe" (never mind that it might be blatantly fly in the face of a mountain of evidence).But this is a child's epistemology. A personal whim is not as good as a very strong case based on decades of solid evidence and rigorous testing and repeated validation.The field of abiogenesis is nowhere near as solid as evolutionary biology or a lot of other fields, but it's not just a bunch of wild ideas either. To say in regards to it that "we don't know", as in not knowing anything, would be a gross disservice to students as well. It's not that "some think this is not happening. Quite honestly, the reason for all the fuss is that too many religiously-motivated people (not all, or even most, certainly, but a large number of very motivated people) are incensed by the fact that it *is* happening. They don't *want* students being presented with "the entire picture" when the entire picture presents students with a picture that these people feel could undermine the students' willingness to consider these people's religious tenets.Several times in this thread you have expressed skepticism that this is what it's really about -- you want to give the "teach the weaknesses" movement the benefit of the doubt. But ask anyone who has spent many years watching this issue, and they've arrived at the same conclusion that I and many of the folks on this thread have -- it's all about religion. Most of the time they're not even trying to hide their motivations. Read for example transcripts of the school board meetings or state/federal congressional debates where people are attempting to get a "teach the weakenesses" agenda into the schools. Sooner or later they come right out and say, frankly and proudly, that they're trying to get God back in the schools, and undermine those rascally atheist/humanist/materialist eggheads who think they're so darned smart or whatever. Nor do you ever hear them say how solid they think the science of evolutionary biology is, but they sure wish it would be taught more effectively -- instead you'll hear them rant against the "false atheistic religion of Darwinism", etc.It's not about their deep and abiding desire for a first-rate science education.It's about trying to get equal time for their God in the public schools, or at the very least sabotaging the teaching of the kinds of science that they feel clashes with their religion. Look at the particulars of any specific "teach the weakenesses/controvery" attempt, and you'll see what I mean. In the Dover/Kitzmiller case, for example, the schoolboard members publicly swore they were just trying to "balance" the teaching of evolution for educational reasons, but they sang a different tune when they were appealing in their local churches for monetary donations to buy anti-evolution textbooks to hand out in order to bring God back into the Dover classrooms... As to exactly its composition, and to exactly how/when it changed over time, sure. There's a lot less dispute over the early lack of significant amounts of oxygen, until plants began to produce it in abundance. Of course. But that's not in the atmosphere. There's always speculation, on almost everything. That doesn't amount to serious dispute.
Could you provide a few examples? Because it's not an unknown. We know quite a lot about it. Again, it's as much a mistake to falsely say "we don't know [anything]" as it is to say "we do know [everything]". Neither. Again with the false dichotomy? There is a vast range of knowledge between "unanswered" and "known fact". The creationists are wrong in their popular notion that "if you can't be 100% certain, then you don't know nothin'!"I have given you the answer that is supported by a very large amount of multiple reliable independent lines of evidence, and possibly contradicted by a few tentative observations that could be argued either way. That's neither "unanswered" nor "fact", but it's somewhere in the realm of having a confidence rating of 98+%. It'll do unless/until something better comes along.