Your EvC Debate Dream Team - Fantasy Debating

This example really doesn't support your premise. The number of people on the side of the Orang form an astonishingly small minority of professional biologists. And most biologists agree that the method he used to come to his conclusion is fundamentally wrong.

There is most certainly "broad scientific consensus" on this.

It's true that you stood alone in that thread. Even the people who agree with you ideologically didn't support you.
You certainly make my point about creationists not being team players.

My point really is what I said it was, that creationists don't support each other.
Whatever reasons you might have for not supporting each other is not the topic here.

Well... did you perhaps say something so stupid it was as if you had an IQ of 50?

There are no reasonable creationists. There are only stupid, ignorant, or mendacious ones, because the only way to advocate positions that are objectively in error is out of stupidity, ignorance, or mendacity.

Hi sleve.The point is deeper than that. We have observed for years, not just here, that creationists don't support each other's arguments and tend not to criticize each other the way us evolutionists do. On our side, whenever one of us say something wacky, there'd be 100 or 1000 other evolutionists lined up ready to tell that person to go away.

but take Kent Hovind, for example. There was a lecture I saw where he described the human reproductive process to the audience. Specifically, he was describing how the dna of mommy and daddy combined. According to him, the dna is like a ladder. When mommy and daddy love each other, the ladder seperates and one of mommy's strand combines with one of daddy's strand to create junior.This is, of course, complete bullshit. I have the videos lying around somewhere. I will try to find it and post it.Nevermind, I found the videos. Sad to say, but I actually have his entire creationism lecture series. I will try to find the lecture portion I mentioned above and post it on youtube. Heck, I will start posting every one of them on youtube.The point is Hovind has said many nonsensical things over the years, and not once have I seen other creationists criticizing him for it. Over the years, he's said that the sun's main source of power comes from combustion. He's said that there was a water canopy above the atmosphere before the flood. This would have crushed every living thing on Earth! If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to go back to school and learn about fluid mechanics.

If anything, Buz's debate in that thread is a perfect demonstration of how creationists aren't team players and that they don't criticize their own. Not ever.

Actually, I'm going to perform an experiment on here to demonstrate my point. Stay tuned!

Hi Slevesque,
You seem to be confusing two different things. On the one hand there's the theory itself, and on the other there's the interpretation of evidence within the framework of that theory. You said you were in math and physics, I think, so try on this example.Take Haley's Comet. The laws of physics, specifically of gravitational attraction and the pressure of gases sublimating into space due to increasing proximity to the sun and probably other lesser effects, tell us where Haley's Comet is going and where it's been. If someone discovers evidence that changes what we think are the past or future paths of Haley's Comet (maybe they discover more mass is lost on near approaches than previously thought) it wouldn't have any effect whatsoever on the laws of physics.So now let's look at your chimp/bonobo/chimpanzee example.Descent with modification filtered by natural selection is the theory of evolution.Descent of man from a common ancestor of chimps, bonobos or orangutans is interpretation of evidence within the framework of the theory of evolution.If in the end it turns out that the evidence tells us that man is actually most closely related to orangutans than to chimps and bonobos then it would have no impact whatsoever on the theory of evolution, just as discovering that the path of Haley's Comet wasn't what we originally thought wouldn't change the laws of physics.As someone else already pointed out, chimps and bonobos are very closely related species, sister species I think they called them. Just as you are equally related to all your sisters, so are humans equally related to chimps and bonobos. There is no disagreement within science about our degree of relatedness to them, because it is clear it is the same.Concerning whether we're more closely related to orangutans than to chimps and bonobos, this is a distinctly minority view within anthropology. You're talking, of course, of Jeffrey H. Schwartz, professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, and when he was here he lasted all of two posts, you can start reading at Message 38 in the Dr. Schwartz' "MIssing Links" thread.And of course let me repeat once again, nothing in any of this has any bearing on the theory of evolution. If you want to say there is a lot of debate about the specifics of human descent then I don't think anyone would argue with you, but unless we discover humans are actually descended from canaries it isn't going to affect evolution.

Ask yourself, and then tell us your answer, what would be the impact on the theory of evolution if we discover precisely who the last common ancestor was, and how the Neandertals went extinct?Don't confuse theory with interpretation of evidence within a theoretical framework.

Speaking as someone who TAed for college physics once upon a time in the past, trust me when I say it's amazing how far people can go in life while still living in a delusional state. Just studying something in college doesn't necessarily qualify you as not stupid or not ignorant. I'm not saying you are, but just be aware that you wouldn't want the standards to be so low.

Others have pointed out, even in this thread, that you seem to have some ill-informed preconceived notions of science is and how scientific theories work. Percy did a wonderful job at explaining your misconceptions just a few posts ago.

Now, the test for us to see is whether you will absorb what he said and try to better understand the nature and differences between theory and specific examples within the framwork of the theory or will you behave like so many creationists we have had in the past. Your choice.

but nobody's going to mistake Rain Man for a genius.

Look, where you advance objectively wrong positions - I don't follow your posts, so I don't know which objectively wrong positions you promote - I'm prepared to grant you the most charitable interpretation, which is that you are ignorant.

(For instance, someone who was not ignorant would know that the word was spelled "motive.")

But, you seem to be admitting here to advancing arguments that you know aren't true. Which would be "mendacity."So, I don't know, maybe you are actually pretty dumb? Usually smart people are better liars.

It isn't my issue with creationism, it's yours, or rather, it's the most significant problem faced by creationism: there's no theoretical framework. That you have a cacophony of opinion preventing creationist cooperation in threads is just a side effect. The real issue is that if you want to replace evolution then you have to interpret the available evidence within some theoretical framework. Unfortunately there's no discernible scientific framework that is shared by creationists.

Not only do creationists have no scientific framework, there's not even a creationist consensus around any kind of framework. Is the Bible absolutely literally inerrant? Mostly literally inerrant? Somewhat literally inerrant? Not literally inerrant, but God created species, not evolution? Is God Christian? Moslem? Hindu? Semitic? Buddhist?

Creationists have one unifying principle: evolution is wrong. They disagree about everything else. They disagree about how it is wrong (they rarely understand how evolution even works), and they disagree about where the rest of science is wrong, and when they agree about that they disagree about how it is wrong.

So what you are saying is that if you do a "fair" comparison, ignoring the unity among evolutionists and the disunity of creationists, creationists agree as much as evolutionists.

That makes about as much sense as your old objection to treating the Bible as a historical document on the grounds that it should be treated as a historical document !

No, no that isn't what you said. You clearly said that "Evolutionists" never correct each other.

And isn't it cute how you accuse "evolutionists" of using logical fallacies, without actually saying it. Very dishonest debating.