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Junior Member (Idle past 5662 days) Posts: 5 From: NC, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Need Help! Creationist/Evolution debate | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SunAlsoRises Junior Member (Idle past 5662 days) Posts: 5 From: NC, USA Joined: |
First of all, I apologize for this being my first post. I'm a LONG-time reader of the forums, and only just registered because I'm in need of assistance.
I recently (foolishly) decided to answer a devout creationist's question on a local forum, and it's started to get out of hand. I am in no way a skilled debater, and I only have a rudimentary grasp on many of the points I'm trying to make. This creationist insists that every scientist, geologist..etc are all LYING to save face. here is an excerpt from on of his replies:
quote: See? Frustrating, is it not? You can view the entire thread here:http://rorap.net/...Evolution_Debate_Discuss__about2994.html I would GREATLY appreciate anyone willing to register and join the discussion. I feel overwhelmed by stupidity. Edited by SunAlsoRises, : No reason given.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hello SunAlsoRises, and welcome to the fray.
I recently (foolishly) decided to answer a devout creationist's question on a local forum, and it's started to get out of hand. I am in no way a skilled debater, and I only have a rudimentary grasp on many of the points I'm trying to make. Indeed it can be frustrating. The main issue is to start small and define what you mean. For instance: Evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. This is based on evidence: it is an observed process in the existing world, and this includes observed mechanisms such as natural selection, genetic drift and population isolation causing speciation. This is similar to the original formulation by Darwin: descent with modification through the mechanism of natural selection. Since Darwin's time we have added a lot to our understanding of existing biological processes, including how genetics works. The theory of evolution (Darwin's original insight) is that this is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it today, in the historical record and in the fossil record, and it explains the evidence of common ancestry found in the genetic record. The fossil record is the record of what actually happened: the fossils are objective evidence of the reality of the past. It is not a part of the theory of evolution, but it can be used as a test of the theory: can evolution explain the fossil record.
quote: This is confusing the theory - that the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation can explain the diversity of life - with the evidence of what actually occurred in the past. We don't need to "test" that the organisms that the fossils came from are real. What you can do is test whether or not the theory explains their existence by common ancestry and inherited traits, combined with changes in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. To do that you don't need to repeat the "experiment" you just need to reconstruct the actual events, much the same as forensic scientists reconstruct how crimes were done, even though they can't "repeat" the murder or mayhem.
quote: This is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy, and memorizing "doctrines" does not mean understanding them. Nor does being an "A" (high school?) student in america today mean you learned enough about biology to be half an expert, it just means you learned what the teacher (likely NOT a biologist) wanted as answers on their tests. True learning goes beyond that. Most creationists that claim to know all about evolution actually don't. They usually can't even give a proper definition of evolution OR the theory of evolution (and often confuse the two). Here are some resources to how evolution (the science of evolutionary biology) is taught at the university level to biology students: Evolution 101 - Understanding EvolutionA series of linked and cross-linked pages that deals with many levels of evolution. Evolution and Natural Selection On Darwinist Evolution and Natural Selection The Process of Speciation On Biological Evolution and Speciation Also see:Department of Geosciences | Baylor University On geology, including Does the fossil record support the idea of biological change over time (biological evolution)? Finally, feel free to use information from Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III), Evolutionary Theory Explains Diversity, and Evolution and Increased Diversity, and other threads on this forum. People here will likely be happy to help.
quote: More like yester-year cons (Hovind comes to mind ...) being replaced by this-years-cons, and yes, the original intent of ID was to con people into thinking same old same old creationism was some new kind of science. See the Wedge Document, created by young earth creationists as a trojan horse to get god into science class:
quote: Curiously it contains no reference to actually DOING science. So why does so much of the IDology just repeat the same old same old already falsified YEC arguments? Why is evolution a problem for IDology?Why is an old earth a problem for IDology? Why does IDology become only christian idology? Why was ID rejected in Pennsylvania as just regurgitated YEC creationism? How can ID theory be falsified? (IS there a theory?) I would GREATLY appreciate anyone willing to register and join the discussion. I feel overwhelmed by stupidity. Or invite him here. Yes, beating your head against the wall feels good when you stop ... by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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Adminnemooseus Administrator Posts: 3976 Joined: |
Thread moved here from the Coffee House forum.
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Coragyps Member (Idle past 763 days) Posts: 5553 From: Snyder, Texas, USA Joined: |
Don't apologize! We're happy to have you here,and I say welcome!
Only that a fossil is, well, only a fossil. It proves nothing beyond the fact that it existed at a point in time. How long ago, under what conditions it fossilized, how it relates to other fossils is not evident. Your correspondent obviously hasn't read much about fossils. Yeah, it might not be evident to a layman with no real interest in some fossil how it got there or how old it was, but these items are of very great interest indeed to the palaeontologists who carefully dig fossils up. Any paper on fossils that you see in Nature or Science or PNAS will spend quite a bit of ink (or pixels, maybe) on exactly all of those issues. Tiktaalik is a wonderful example a fossil for which all three of the items your creationist mentions are addressed in detail in the paper announcing the discovery.Nature 440, 764 - 771 (06 Apr 2006) - and I can email you the pdf if you want. See my profile for my address.
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Deftil Member (Idle past 4484 days) Posts: 128 From: Virginia, USA Joined: |
Hello and welcome SunAlsoRises.
SunAlsoRises writes:
The best way to become a better debater and to sure up your understanding of these points, is to get involved in debate about them. So as frustrating as it can be to engage someone like this, I'd say it's healthy to do it every once in a while. The person you are debating here clearly doesn't know much about biology, paleontology, and science in general, and seems to buy into large scale conspiracy theories to explain away what little they do know about science.
I recently (foolishly) decided to answer a devout creationist's question on a local forum, and it's started to get out of hand. I am in no way a skilled debater, and I only have a rudimentary grasp on many of the points I'm trying to make. quote:Scientific hypotheses and theories aren't dogma/ faith because they are based on empirical evidence and are amenable to future findings of empirical evidence. This is quite different from the standard in religious dogma/ faith. If a scientific theory were to come along that could better explain the diversity of life on our planet than evolution, it would be recognized as such by the scientific community. It would be judged, like virtually all scientific theories, on it's ability to explain existing evidence, to make unique predictions about future experiments/ discoveries, and it would have to be falsifiable, in that some observations could theoretically be made that would be inconsistent with it. As far as the connection between dinosaurs and birds go, it goes deeper than breast bone similarity. The most recent evidence I've seen for the theory is this:
quote:'Air bone' dinosaur is missing link with birds It shows that a dinosaur was found to breath in the unique way that birds do. Birds have hollow bones, a unique trait that happens to be shared by the dinosaurs that birds are thought to have evolved from. quote:Dinosaur fossils may provide evolutionary link to modern birds Feathers are also unique to birds amongst modern animals, and paleontologists have indeed found fossils or feathered dinosaurs.
quote:Scientists: Fossils prove that birds evolved from dinosaurs (1998) BTW the above article shows an example of scientific skepticism amongst scientists, showing that all scientists don't just dogmatically accept the same explanations on faith.
quote:Scientists: Fossils prove that birds evolved from dinosaurs The most convincing evidence I've personally seen, however, in regards to the dinosaur bird link came earlier this year.
quote:T. Rex Protein "Confirms" Bird-Dinosaur Link Again, despite how definitive these findings seem, there is still some (limited) skepticism amongst scientists over how conclusive they are.
quote:T. Rex Protein "Confirms" Bird-Dinosaur Link So time and more research will help confirm these findings and allow us to better understand the evolutionary scenario. Doesn't sound anything like dogmatic religious faith to me. Similarities between dinosaurs and birds have been found in comparing their overall skeletal anatomy, the specific makeup of their bones, the way they breathed, the fact that they both could have feathers, and the molecular sequencing of their proteins. The line of evidence is quite impressive, and once again, no dogmatic faith is needed. My post has already gotten a bit long so I will stop here in responding to your post, but I may return to address the rest and help you more if I can. Don't get frustrated. Just state the facts and use logic (and google!) the best you can. Once you've done that, it's up to others to recognize the strength of your argument, or to continue going on believing what they want to.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Only that a fossil is, well, only a fossil. It proves nothing beyond the fact that it existed at a point in time. Wrong. The fact that the fossil record is invariably consistent with the theory of evolution does in fact prove the correctness of the theory of evolution (along with the accurate predictions the theory makes concerning morphology, molecular phylogeny, biogeography, behavioral ecology, et cetera.
Bull-chips. How can you test something that supposedly takes eons to occur. By comparing the predictions of the theory with the evidence, the same way every other scientific theory is tested.
Yes, to the first question. Then why don't creationists reveal this evidence to the world? What is their motivation for concealing it? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2135 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
This website...
Index of Creationist Claims ...should be of considerable help. It indexes many dozens of the commonest, and most often refuted, creationist claims. Each separate refutation usually has additional references. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge. |
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Straggler Member (Idle past 95 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
The short answer to your question is prediction, verification and discovery.
Consider Tiktaalik for example. Palaeontologists predicted the transitional between fish and amphibious land dweller based on evolutionary theory. They predicted the geological period in which such a transitional should exist if current evolutionary theory and geological principles are indeed correct. They then identified the type of rock and location in which to search for the transitional. Lo and behold they discovered one of the finest examples of transitional fossils ever found. The chances of just stumbling upon such a find are miniscule.The discovery was made as a direct result of prediction based on theory. Without the theory the prediction could not have been made. Without the theory being true the chances of the discovery being made are all but impossible. Real science tests theories via means of prediction and verification. Where theories are verified this leads to new discoveries and new evidence. All creationism ever does is re-interpret the evidence found as a result of real science undertaken by real scientists. They then insist that all interpretations are equal and that science is as dogmatic as they themselves are. This is nonsense. Just ask your friend what new physical phenomenon the creationist world has discovered lately. Read up on Tiktaalik and use this as an example and refuse to accept mere re-interpretations of evidence arguments. Ask him why creationists do not test their theories. Ask him why creationists do not make predictions based on their theories. Ask him why creationists do not make discoveries such as Tiktaalik. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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SunAlsoRises Junior Member (Idle past 5662 days) Posts: 5 From: NC, USA Joined: |
Thank you everyone for your well though-out replies!They will all be very helpful. And @ coyote: Thanks for the link, I actually already have a hard copy of the "Counter-Creationist Handbook" and have Talk Origins bookmarked. But great suggestion!
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Jazzns Member (Idle past 3940 days) Posts: 2657 From: A Better America Joined: |
You really are just playing on an uneven field with a bad medium. You can't just keep tossing out one liners to these guys because they have one liners back.
You need to get specific and you need to show the evidence. Just pick one thing and dont stray from that. Pick one of the silver bullet points that show evolution like HERVs and just talk about that. You will corner a person with facts that they can't shift to their generalized and abstract all-evos-are-liars. Whatever you do, don't take on multiple topics at a time. It will just turn into a quagmire. Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)
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SunAlsoRises Junior Member (Idle past 5662 days) Posts: 5 From: NC, USA Joined: |
I just had to update with where this conversation has been going... I've tried and tried to get him to present some sort of argument, but he keeps throwing quotes from "respected PhDs" who disagree with evolution. Then he attempts to make it look like I'm the one who won't debate!
Damned if I do, damned if a don't with this guy. He's a loon. Read on:______________________________________________________ Creationist Guy:
quote:see? He's saying there's no point in even debating unless I admit he's right before we even begin! ______________________________________________________ SunAlsoRises:
quote: ______________________________________________________
quote: ______________________________________________________ SunAlsoRises:
quote: ______________________________________________________ Creationist Guy
quote: Are creationists always this impossible!? Seriously! How can he not hear his own arguments?
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
Are creationists always this impossible!? Seriously! How can he not hear his own arguments? lol. They go from this bad to far worse. I've generally stopped spending a long time arguing but do try to help someone who appears to want to learn. Those are really very far apart though.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Damned if I do, damned if a don't with this guy. He's a loon. Welcome to creationism.... Some people would rather stick to their beliefs than actually learn something. Its sad to say, but your best bet is to leave them in the dust.
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2324 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined: |
Hello again Sun, I'll see if I can answer this guy as if I were debating him, see if that helps
Creo:
Sun before we pursue he said, she said, they said we need to establish a foundation from which agreeable thought proceeds. There is no need for branches when there is no trunk. So, I'll ask you again, will you bring yourself to agree that the theory of evolution is as much, or maybe even moreso founded upon faith in as of yet unproven conjection as it is upon emperical scientific evidences.
No I won't, and this is exactly what this debate is about, so if I were to admit it does, it would be over. However since there's literally NOTHING that points to this being true, I'm going to have to say "no" to this.
I am not stating anything that Darwinists of the highest order don't already freely admit, and I can site many more references to the effect.
Yes you are, and no you can't. By the way, quote mining is NOT evidence. One more point, what are "Darwinists"?
If you don't agree with that statement then there won't be much if any intellectual integrity to build a fruitful discussion upon.
The statement is WHY we are having this debate, me saying you are right on it would END the debate, but I DON'T agree with you, so, you'll have to try harder to convince me.
I don't wish to argue for the sake of arguing.
Neither do I, I want to discuss the points you bring up for your statements to show you where you are wrong, so you can learn from it.
Also we will need to set some ground rules such as producing not just long held passionate beliefs but their notated research and sources. Precedence may work in jurisprudence it has no recourse in science.
I agree, we should bring up only peer reviewed scientific evidence as back up for our arguments. (this one will require some work on your part) Sun:
see? He's saying there's no point in even debating unless I admit he's right before we even begin!
Yes, just say that to him, see how he wiggles out of that one. I think you did rather well in your replies to him. creo:
That's funny in the introduction to a 1971 edition of The Origin of the Species by noted Brittish biologist L. Harrison Matthews: He wrote:
Like I said before, quote mining is NOT evidence.
quote: How do you reconcile your lack of scientific credentials to rival such a statement from your own 'camp' with credentials?
By stating that quote mining is not evidence. And pointing out that the very first sentence is : "The FACT of evolution is the backbone of biology"
No? this is just one obscure organization's scientific 'Dissent from Darwinism's' list. The signers are from around the world. And it grows daily. It does mean something.
point to projext steve: http://www.ncseweb.org/article.asp?category=18http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php In case you don't know what it is here's the wiki for it:Project Steve - Wikipedia
What planet do you live on? I never said that.
No, you are saying MOST are liars, the one's that actually agree with evolution.
Malarky - produce it.
This will require some work from you, but it's not hard. Also, point out that he has NOT produced ANY evidence.
Do not produce reams of extrapolated 'theory'. There is fantastic stories aplenty of what they believe happened but empirical evidences are thin if non-existent. You stated " In science, the ultimate authority is the evidence itself. " I would add to that the lack there of also. This is the crisis of evolution's theory.
He's lying, there's mountains of evidence.
Francis Collins, Junk DNA, God, and Evolution | Discovery Institute They are totally different in their methodology.
They don't, they say they do, but they don't. As a challenge, name ONE peer reviewed scientific article that came from and ID proponent that deals with ID.
Finally, I agree. Let's start again with your disingenuous proclamation "the theory of evolution is not founded upon faith by any means. " You will, first and foremost, have to be intellectually honest in conferring the admitions of your own Darwinist apologists no matter how unsettling it may be.
That proclamation is NOT disingenuous, please show how it is.
That's it, run and take refuge from the facts.
Since you have provided NO facts, I've got nothing to run from.
And for the record, the quotes were not from "discovery" if that has any bearing.
No, quote mining's still not science.
The facts are the facts no matter who publishes them.
Correct, too bad NO ID proponent has EVER produced even ONE scientific peer reviewed article.
That should be a simple enough concept even for . . . a "descendent of an ape".
Man did not evolve from apes.
I guess if "unapproved" sources published 2+2=4 then in your twisted logic it would be a totally erroneous unacceptable mathematical statement.
No, not if they were shown correct by other independent sources. By the way, biology does not work like math, where we agree on something beforehand, and then proceed to use that to find out other things. In other sciences, we look at what the evidence shows, and then draw our conclusions based on that evidence.
I think those who have tuned in have heard enough to know your defense that evolution is in no way in doubt among the scientific community, and that it doesn't involve a leap and committment of faith, is dissingenous at best and at its worst, deliberate obfuscation.
No it ISN'T. Stop asserting it is, and show some evidence for it.
Maybe we will live to discuss the facts another time.
I'm always ready to debate FACTS, not bare assertions.
Although, it won't be much longer before this discussion will be moot as ID enters the class rooms and stimulates vibrant scientific discussions as to the exquisite mind behind the design theory of creation and how we can study, in part, the mind of the grand "Designer".
I hope that day never comes, further, could you please point me to where i can find this "design theory"? Sun:
Are creationists always this impossible!? Seriously! How can he not hear his own arguments?
No, not always, but often they are. Good luck with this guy. Just keep pointing out his mistakes, and maybe, just maybe, he'll learn something, but I doubt it. I hunt for the truth
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cavediver Member (Idle past 3672 days) Posts: 4129 From: UK Joined: |
The problem is quite obvious
So would you enlighten me and the rest of the scientific public on a single transitional fossil. You know, it isn't so because you wish it to be. Let me help you - of all the millions of fossils on record, there isn't one. The fossil record therefore disproves evolution. To which you reply with a huge list. He then complains about your comments regarding the lack of fossils, and you follow his trail directly away from his claim above. Where was your "you said that there isn't single transitional fossil, and I have just listed x amount - please retract your claim as it has been soundly refuted" You mention it later, buried in a huge post, when it was far too late. Simply reply with the above quote to every post he makes until he concedes the point - which he won't, but just keep repeating it anyway. Asking how you know that they are related is moving the goalposts - state this - he wanted transitional fossils, and that is what you have given him. And embellish it with the story of how Tiktaalik's location was predicted. Claim victory, and ask what his next point is - possibly suggest moving on to the evidence showing relatedness. If he still refuses to admit defeat, keep repeating his claim and your list - don't change subject no matter how absurd it looks.
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