The Light Time Problem

I have been making one or two points per message. Unfortunately, you are forcing those single points to be the same one: Answer the damned question! I have to post the same question over and over again. Your stated goal ([mid=893610)]) is to dismiss and ignore the questions. That is 100% unsat!Just answer the damned questions directly and honestly (while that is out of character for you, your finally coming out as possibly human is a good start) and I will not have to repeat them so much.But you need to realize that you are causing those long responses from everybody, not just me. If you do not want long replies, then stop posting Gish Gallops. It's really that simple.The response to a single-sentence creationist claim requires at least a paragraph. You post claim and we need to reply with a paragraph. All you do is regurgitate a false claim and we have to point out that it is false and explain why it is false, though sometimes we have to try to figure out what the hell you are talking about (which is made so much more difficult by your refusal to answer our questions).Of course, not knowing how much you understand requires us to explain everything to you. If we knew that you do understand something, then we won't need to explain it to you, right? But if you instead repeatedly that you still don't understand something, then we have to keep explaining it to you, right?And your persistent posting of the same old false claims announce very loudly to us that you have learned nothing, so we are required you explain everything to you yet again! If you want to stop our responses to your stupid crap, simply stop with the stupid crap.Or do I need to explain the whole thing to you again? And again? And again?Is it starting to make sense to you?Now, the Gish Gallop was Dr. Duane Gish's signature move. Since a few seconds of false creationist lie requires a response of several minutes, Gish would gallop through about a dozen false claims in a minute or so, to which his opponent needed an hour or two to respond to. But that happened in a creationist debate with very strict time limits, so Gish's opponent had only five minutes at most to respond. Then Gish would go out and boast "That evolutionist didn't have any answers to my long list of questions!", that dishonest sack of shit.This is the first time that I am addressing your posts as a Gish Gallop, but others here have already done so. Almost every single one of your posts includes a Gish Gallop of false claims, so that you then have the gall to complain about our "long" replies is particularly galling. And hypocritical.If you want us to restrict ourselves to single points, then restrict yourself to a single point per message! It's that simple.And when we ask you a question, answer it! That's a difference between us. Creationists ask questions as a form of attack, usually marked by throwing "unanswerable questions" at us (ie, ones that are difficult, require much expertise, are intended to chase away the opposition, etc). Normals ask questions in order to gather information or to further discussion, whereas creationists ask questions in order to kill discussion.You are among normals, so please try to conduct yourself as a normal. When a question is asked, answer it. But if you continue to conduct yourself as mindless beast, then you will be treated accordingly. Your choice.

You just told us that you're an old guy, but that still doesn't tell us how long you have been involved with "creation science".Back in 1981, Arkansas passed a new law, Arkansas Act 590 of 1981, entitled the "Balanced Treatment for Creation Science and Evolution Science Act," which mandated that "creation science" be given equal time in public schools with evolution. That led to the well known trial, McLean v. Arkansas, which found that "creation science" was religious in nature. That decision was based on text in the law which defined "creation science", so the Louisiana law removed that part from respiratory therapist Paul Ellwanger's model bill that both laws were based on. The lawsuit against the Louisiana law became a US Supreme Court decision, Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), that exposed the "creation science" deception on a national level and led to creationists adopting "intelligent design" in order to hide the creationism. Did you live through those developments?When you read the text of Arkansas Act 590 (1981) as I have done, you will see that its purpose is not to have creationism taught, but rather to force the schools to stop teaching evolution by requiring equal time for creationism whenever evolution is taught. So they were relying on the threat of creationism being taught, which demonstrates that creationists themselves know how horrible creationism is. Interesting.And one of the many smoking guns in the Arkansas trial was a letter submitted as evidence (and cited in Overton's decision, which I've also read) from journalist Tom Bethell and Paul Ellwanger (author of the model bill):

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"... -- the idea of killing evolution instead of playing these debating games that we've been playing for nigh over a decade already."

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So the purpose of it all is to kill evolution. The question is "Why?" Why do you hate evolution so much? Not as if we ever see creationists actually talking about evolution, but instead all kinds of nonsense that have nothing to do with evolution.

It shouldn't be, because the theory of evolution is different from the fact of evolution. Which one can clearly see when one knows what facts and theories are -- something which seems to always escape creationists causing them to make such stupid statements.Most basically, facts are what happens; theories explain how they happen. The fact(s) of evolution are descent with modification and the formation of new species. The theor(y/ies) of evolution explain how evolution works.One creationist strategy to disprove the fact of evolution is by attacking aspects of the theory of evolution. That strategy is invalid and doomed to failure, since just because our explanations of something are wrong doesn't keep that something from still existing and still working -- "Reality doesn't care what we think or believe." When we thought that there were two different kinds of electricity, that didn't stop lightening from striking ... any more than finally realizing that neither Zeus nor Thor nor a petulant יהוה (as in "The Finger of God") was the cause of lightening ever caused it to stop striking. The only goal of such an approach would be to deceive the public.The purpose of science education is to teach students the current ideas in science in order for them to understand those ideas. Evolution is one of those current ideas in science (indeed, it's considered the cornerstone of biology) and therefore should be taught.Unlike religious indoctrination, education does not require the student to believe in the subject matter (eg, the USAF would teach its NCOs about socialism and communism ("know your enemy") but obviously the intention of that education was never to turn us into Commies). Should creationist kids be taught evolution? Yes, most definitely and parents who want their children to grow up fighting against evolution should demand that they be taught evolution! Only be learning what evolution actually is can those children ever stand a chance of succeeding against evolution (yet again, "know your enemy and know yourself"). If instead all they ever learn is creationist disinformation, then it would be like sending your army into battle with blanks; as a former creationist wrote:

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"I still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed."

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Is that kind of devastating failure and defeat what you would want for your kids? That's what you're setting them up for when you keep them from learning what evolution actually is.  It takes no more faith to accept and understand evolution than to accept and understand gravity, aerodynamics, osmosis, electricity, computer logic, or the four-cycle internal combustion engine. These are all natural phenomena which are observable or are based on phenomena which are observable, measurable, testable, etc. With an abundance of evicence, faith is not necessary. Creation, OTOH, is based on the supernatural, which is not in the least bit observable, measurable, testable, nor can its very existence ever be determined. With a total lack of evidence, faith is all you have to go on.Therefore, faith is not in the least necessary to accept evolution, but it is completely and utterly crucial for accepting creation.Your problem is that you have no clue what evolution is, let alone how it works. That is because creationist lies have grossly misinformed and even malinformed you about evolution. Those creationist lies have you believing bizarre things about evolution that defy all logic and reality itself. Those creationist lies create strawman caricatures labeled as "evolution" but which bear no resemblance to actual evolution and which creationists can make a big show of destroying (which is exactly why strawmen were created in the first place).So the current question for you is: What do you think evolution is? And why do you hate it so much?Clearly, there is no inherent conflict between evolution and Divine Creation, yet you seem to believe that there is. Why would you believe such a thing?Edited by dwise1, : "you're setting up your kids for failure" & "why do you hate evolution so much?"

OK, I'm a retired Navy Chief and I worked for my father, a general contractor, for 8 years in high school and college, plus I studied the Seabee 1&C course. That means that I am familiar with planning (which factors in lead time and down time).Your two surgeries should put you out of action for about four weeks. Tied into that will be getting fitted for reading glasses, which probably shouldn't start until your left eye has recovered sufficiently. That should make it under two months before you can rejoin us, starting a week from now.I would hope that you would at least extend us the common courtesy of keeping us informed of your progress.

You utterly stupid fucking idiot! We have explained it to you over and over and over again and you have deliberately refused to learn the truth. We know that you are aware of our need to repeatedly try to get through to you because you have complained about it. Well, asshole, I'm posting that yet again at the end of this message. But first I'll present the basic facts of what evolution does actually say.Instead of the stupid creationist bullshit lies about evolution that you keep regurgitating mindlessly (your only operating mode, apparently), THIS IS WHAT EVOLUTION ACTUALLY SAYS:

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• EVOLUTION says that humans always give birth to humans according to their ethnic heritage.
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• EVOLUTION says that chimps always give birth to chimps.
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• EVOLUTION says that pigs always give birth to pigs.
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• EVOLUTION says that dogs always give birth to dogs according to their species and breed.
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• EVOLUTION says that cats always give birth to cats according to their species and breed.
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• EVOLUTION says that alligators always hatch alligators according to their species.
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• EVOLUTION says that birds always hatch birds according to their species.
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• And so on and so on and so on, without fail.

What is wrong with you that you refuse to understand those simple facts? Is it because your head is so firmly wedged so deeply up your ass?Please pull your head out and at least try to learn something. So here it is yet again, this time from Message 1, the last time I had to repeat the same thing yet again. This time pull your head out of your ass and read it, you utterly stupid fucking idiot.

He ignores everything we try to explain to him, so I gave him something that he cannot ignore.But we both know that he'll ignore it anyway. Because his brain is almost completely rotted out by all the lies that his faith depends on. Which means that his religion, being wicked (because it produces wicked fruit) needs to be cut down and thrown into the fire as per the Matthew 7:20 Test ("by their fruits you will know them!").He demands that we show him all the empirical evidence for evolution, but we know full well that he will refuse to even look at it. He will instead dismiss and ignore it and will even complain mightily that our listing of all the evidence for evolution is too long and whine that he cannot read it on his tiny unreadable phone. The hypocrite! 
A few years ago I started to work out a psychological profile for creationists. Basically, all their claims are based on lies, but as mindless sheeple followers couched away in their covens bubble of circle jerks within circle jerks they never get exposed to reality and the truth -- that seems to be about the mental level that wickless candle is stuck at.But then they start to sally forth to do battle with their fake bogeyman that they grossly misname, "Evolution" (AKA "Evilution", which has nothing whatsoever to do with actual evolution). Like the mob members in the Boxer Rebellion ("55 Days in Peking") who were given magical shirts that would protect them from the "foreign devils'" bullets, they learn the hard way the bitter truth about their creationist lies, mainly that they're not as bullet-proof as they had been brainwashed to think.Most of them return to the comfort of their circle jerks within circle jerks, but some keep trying to fight back. And they have to deal with the simple fact that anyone who is the least bit knowledgeable will shoot them down in flames. So they have to be dishonest and they became more and more dishonest the more that they butt their heads against the truth of reality.One interesting observation I've made is that young-earth creationist activists will twist themselves into 3-D projections of 4-D pretzels (like hypercubes) in order to avoid discussing any YEC claims. I was engaged in a 20-year correspondence with one YEC who proclaims himself to be a YEC, but in all that time he not only never once made any YEC claim but refused to do so despite my repeated requests that we discuss some. They know full well that their claims are nothing but crap.So the higher creationists progress, the more dishonest they become because gross dishonesty is the only thing they have going for them.It would be nice and constructive to be able to discuss these things with creationists, but they absolutely refuse to. We cannot even get a creationist to tell us what he thinks evolution is, how he thinks that it works, and why he thinks that he has to fight against evolution. So all we are left with is constructing models of creationist psychology based entirely on observation.

To put it simply, they're been "trained" with stupid lies that professional creationists have created out of sheer ignorance.In the foreword to his book on dating methods, The Age of the Earth, G. Brent Dalrymple, research geologist at the United States Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, tells the story of when leading ICR creationists Drs. Henry Morris (PhD Hydraulic Engineering) and Duane Gish (PhD Biochemistry) came to USGS Menlo Park in 1975 to give an evening seminar on their case for creationism to several hundred USGS scientists.Their presentation sparked a lot of discussion, most of which consisted of scientists who did understand the science trying to explain to Morris & Gish what thermodynamics really is and to help correct Morris & Gish's gross misunderstanding of the subject. Morris & Gish did learn from that encounter, but it was the wrong lesson: after that ICR creationists knew better than to ever discuss anything with actual scientists. Obviously, since actual scientists understand the science then they can see through creationist bullshit lies immediately.wickless_candle presents himself as a mindless creationist drone, little more than a bot. Or a troll. All he "knows" about thermodynamics is the gross misunderstanding and misrepresentation that he has been spoon fed by his creationist masters who themselves have been exposed as not understanding thermodynamics. 
Interestingly, if wickless wants to try to "disprove" evolution with the standard BS creationist claim that evolution somehow violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then life itself would also violate that same law and hence be impossible. And yet, as George Takei/Sulu told Howard Wolowitz: "And yet, here I am!" Everything that evolution does derives directly from life doing what life does, so if evolution were to violate thermodynamics then so would life itself and hence life could not exist. And yet it does. Hmm.Similarly, if the creationist misunderstanding of thermodynamics were true, then nothing work, including any physical, chemical, or mechanical process. Nothing. And yet all those things do work in spite of creationist mandates.What can we conclude from that state of affairs? Only that creationism is a huge crock of rancid BS.

It seems like more than a decade ago that one of our regular members (still extant, I believe) described the problems that had been created for fundamentalist Christianity by its sudden massive growth with the Jesus Freak Movement (circa 1970), hippies burned out from drugs suddenly getting "hooked on Jesus" (an iconic bumper sticker of that time was of an ΙΧΘΥΣ fish with a fish hook on a fish line in its mouth).As our member described it, fundamentalists tended to form their own enclosed communities, keep to their own and having as little as possible to do with normals. Their own churches, their own small towns (when they could), their own neighborhoods (when they could), their own schools and colleges, etc. And, as I understand it, very little proselytizing (since that would require them to deal with outsiders). But the main thing was their approach to the Bible. They studied it all their lives, as thoroughly as they could.Now suddenly all these burned out hippies and others started streaming into their churches, none of whom had received the level of Bible education as the established members had. That presented a huge problem for those churches, especially since they required belief in what the Bible said. How can you hold people to that who didn't know what the Bible said?So they had to resort to stop-gap measures, basically giving these newcomers a crash course in the Bible. Pick a few key Bible passages and tell them how they must interpret those passages. In doing so, those churches took the entire Bible and condensed it down, boiling it down to a barely recognizable sludge to be choked down like Marmite. Most of the newcomers received that initial indoctrination, decided that they had learned it all, and continued on fat, dumb, and happy. Those who did go on regular Bible study did so under the close supervision of the church restricting them to only certain passages and requiring only certain interpretations.So then cluelessness of the Bible and of Christianity (outside of their own very narrow sect) is baked into the religion.At least that's how I remember it.

Rather, what the hippies did -- or at least contribute to greatly -- was the rapid growth of those churches and the proliferation (I think) of megachurches.And their mindset was certainly aligned to any anti-science/anti-reality sentiments that were already present in those churches.Regarding young-earth creationist claims, those come from a very long history of creationism in the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church, though I doubt that many creationists would want to admit that. For example, Henry Morris' flood geology was lifted almost completely from the early 20th century writings of SDA creationist George McCready Price. When "creation science" was created in the late 70's, almost instantaneously books appeared full of YEC claims which many of us consider "classic" claims that have always been around. I believe that most, if not almost all, of those claims were adopted from SDAist creationists. The effect hippies flooding into those fundie churches was similar to what I've heard of the effects of air conditioning on national politics.Within the past decade there was science series from an Oregon PBS station which examined common everyday things (eg, timekeepng, GPS, air conditioning). It was the episode on time keeping where the scientists at NIST and USNO in charge of the atomic clocks for UTC were referred to as "The Time Lords."In the show on A/C, the host stated that by making living in the South more tolerable and less of a "no way!" impediment to moving there for work, A/C allowed those states to increase greatly in population thus giving them more power through more representation in Congress. And as a result, the Red politics of those states got more power regardless of how blue those newcomers may be (they're all concentrated in major cities so they tend to be outvoted by the countryside).At least that's what that show said, even though it makes sense. And that seems to describe how the hippies made fundamentalism more powerful.Edited by dwise1, : ABE

Under lab conditions that don't exist in nature, but under natural conditions it still takes time.So what really is your point? Uh, excuse but you creationists not only believe in "macro-evolution, but you also believe in insanely fast macro-evolution that would have resulted in those 20,000,000 or more species of insect coming into existence within a few hundred years. And that's not to mention the thousands of species of other animals and plants and how you creationists adamantly insist they had evolved almost instantaneously after your "basic created kinds" departed the Ark.Ah yes! The Bullfrog Affair! That time that Dr. Duane Gish of the ICR, one of the Founding Fathers of the "Creation Science" deliberate deception, deliberately lied on national TV and then tried to cover it up.Hmm. Creationists constantly lying out their asses. Anybody else notice a pattern there?That page also covers creationist lies about inter-species protein comparisons. That was popular around 1980, but those creationist claims very quickly proved so disastrously bad that even Kent Hovind, arguably the worst creationist ever, no longer uses it. But Walter Brown did continue to use his deliberate lie of cytochrome c comparisons showing the rattlesnake's closest relative to be humans (but not that humans' closest relative are rattlesnakes -- the need to state that claim with such precision proves that it's a deliberate lie).Since wickless will refuse to learn something, this is for us normals. Excerpts from The Bullfrog Affair which tells the story:

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The Bullfrog Affair itself starts with the KPBS production, "Creation vs Evolution: Battle in the Classroom", which aired 7 July 1982. After Dr. Doolittle related his story of the chimpanzee blood proteins (see above), Dr. Duane Gish responded:

"If we look at certain proteins, yes man then, it can be assumed that man is more closely related to a chimpanzee than other things. But, on the other hand, if you look at certain proteins, you will find that man is more closely related to a bullfrog than he is to a chimpanzee. If you focus your attention on other proteins, you'll find that man is more closely related to a chicken than he is to a chimpanzee."

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This was immediately followed by Dr. Doolittle's response, "Oh bullfrog! I've heard that gibberish before, I have to tell you." This was the first recorded use of "Bullfrog" that I am aware of. Then Doolittle indicated a book full of amino acid sequences from thousands of proteins taken from many hundreds of species and offered Gish all his worldly belongings, a '63 VW and half a house, if Gish could find just one protein in chickens or bullfrogs that is more closely related to human proteins than chimpanzee proteins.

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Robert Schadewald, then Minnesota Committee of Correspondence liaison and presently editor of _NCSE Reports_ (formerly _Creation/Evolution Newsletter_) watched that show. Since Gish's claim sounded like nonsense, he checked it out with a few biochemists, who had never heard of such proteins. So Schadewald started a three-year-long quest for Gish's source.

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Doolittle responded to Schadewald's letter with extensive documentation for his statements about human and chimpanzee proteins. Requests for Gish to do likewise were met with evasion, obfuscation, and silence.

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Gish ignored Schadewald's first letter and answered the second letter with a reference for his claim: a JOKE he had overheard! At a conference in Austria, Berkeley geochronologist Garniss Curtis told of having heard an unconfirmed report of someone finding bullfrog blood proteins very similar to human blood proteins. Curtis predicted that those findings would never be confirmed (he was right) since the bullfrog sample had been taken from a rare enchanted prince (see text of Curtis' letter at the end of this file). Since a joke based on a secondhand report of unconfirmed research seemed rather weak, Schadewald wrote back asking for something more substantial. Gish did not reply.

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At the 1983 National Creation Conference, Schadewald confronted Gish in person and asked for his references. Gish insisted that the bullfrog and chicken proteins were real and promised to send documentation. He never delivered on that promise.

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In the Spring/Summer 1984 issue of _Origins Research_, a publication of the creationist organization, Students for Origins Research, Robert Schadewald and John Patterson wrote a joint letter relating the incident and suggesting that Gish had lied on national TV and that other creationists are well aware of Gish's many transgressions but are unwilling to expose him, engaging instead in a cover-up. They had sent Gish a copy of that letter six months prior so that he could prepare a response that would be published with the letter; he never responded.

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Instead, the letter was followed by a response from Dr. Jerry Bergman in which he denied that creationists engage in cover-ups and claimed that evolutionists are just as guilty and even more so of the transgressions that creationists are accused of. Schadewald and Patterson described Bergman's response as "a rambling, dissembling piece of obfuscation from the inevitable Jerry Bergman, whose 'reply' to us resolutely ignored our major point."

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Shortly afterwards, at the 1984 National Bible-Science Conference, Schadewald again confronted Gish. This time Gish responded by saying that because of that _Origins Research_ letter he was not responsible to provide any documentation (Schadewald had used "ungentlemanly language in print," i.e. the words "lie" and "charlatan"). When asked who is responsible for documenting those proteins, Gish said that it was up to Schadewald and Curtis (i.e. "You want to know the sources for my claims? YOU go look it up!").

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Within the week, Schadewald and Patterson sent a letter to Gish's boss, Dr. Henry Morris, President of the ICR. In it, they brought Morris up-to-date on the affair, quoted Gish's statement on national television concerning the chicken and bullfrog proteins, told of Gish's repeated failure to produce his repeatedly promised documentation for them, and finally related his reversal and subsequent refusal to produce that documentation or to accept any responsibility for producing it. They concluded the letter:

"We have long been conscious of the numerous substantial differences between creationism and science, but this is new to us. Scientists (and science writers) take full responsibility for their public statements. Gish apparently rejects this responsibility. Was he speaking for himself in this matter, or is this doctrine of nonresponsibility an official ICR policy? If so, we suggest that ICR speakers should level with the public and preface their presentations with the following disclaimer: 'I am not responsible for the truth or accuracy of any statements I make.'"

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As of press time, there had been no reply to this letter.

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So Gish's lie was based on a JOKE about that bullfrog sample having been taken from a rare enchanted prince?The Bullfrog Affair was the first big case of creationist dishonesty and deliberate lying that I encountered, having just then started studying "creation science". And the pattern of creationist lies that it revealed just continues to build over the subsequent decades.I tried to watch that PBS program when it aired, but cable TV service on base was poor, such that the channel carrying PBS would routinely go down in the evening. Fortunately it came back on at the end of the program so I was able to order a transcript.That show also included what had just happened in a Livermore, Calif, elementary school when one of the teachers started a "two-model approach" class. For one thing, instead of adhering to the actual goal of science education (ie, that the students be familiar with the current ideas of science with no requirement to believe in those ideas, each lesson in the creationist materials would end exhorting the students to decide between their "unnamed Creator (nudge nudge wink wink)" and "the atheistic evolution model" (which Dr. Henry Morris himself admitted is extremely theistic since it "includes most of the world's religions, ancient and modern."). As a result of this class, some of the students, pushed to make a decision that should have never been forced onto them, decided to become atheists.

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JP Hunt, student in Ray Baird's 1980 "balanced treatment" class at Emma C. Smith Elementary School, Livermore, CA, in "Creation vs Evolution: Battle in the Classroom", KPBS-TV, aired 7 July 1982:

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"Someone that I know has become an atheist because of this class, because the creationist theory was so stupid, he thought. Well, if religion requires me to believe this, then I don't want to have any part of it."

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Forcing elementary grade students to become atheists! Way to go, creationists!Edited by dwise1, : Hanging a lantern on the Enchanted Prince part of Gish's lie

Since your pseudo-science lies have failed so miserably, now you have fled to the last resort of pseudo-religion. Typical creationist reaction. Yes, which is called "creation science." Ironic ... oh, yeah, you so-called "true Christians" also don't understand irony.If you knew anything at all about Christian doctrine, you should know that "God" is not to be served through lies and deception. So then which Christian deity do you serve through your creationist lies and deception?You just brought up his name. The Lord of Lies, the Prince of Darkness, the Deceiver, Diabolos (διάβολος), Satan. That is the god you serve through your creationist lies.You are such a fucking idiot!

Well, I would hope to cause dis-ease in creationists in order to motivate them to try something they had never tried before, to think!Autocorrupt is a bane on phone users. I have had to give up on sending a text and send an email from my computer instead because autocorrupt absolutely refused to let me type the correct word. I've had to install otherwise unnecessary keyboards on my phone just to keep autocorrupt from screwing up every single word in a foreign language text. With just the standard English keyboard you can type in any language the uses the Latin alphabet, including all accented and special characters, but autocorrupt still uses English. So for example when typing a German message I would have to use the German keyboard to place autocorrupt into German mode, otherwise it would have all been ganz ausgefickt.On top of all then, when autocorrupt is acting normally it will almost randomly insert "corrections" after only a few letters thus forcing me to delete that and try again; it's a total pain having to basically type a single message three times or more. I can never understand how anyone could ever choose to use nothing but a phone for everything. Is such a massive case of masochism even possible?

Wickless, why are you dumping all this religion stuff into a science forum, especially when it has absolutely nothing to do with any discussion of science and especially with any discussion of evolution?You keep forgetting that there is no inherent conflict between science and religion, and there is no inherent conflict between evolution and Divine Creation! The only way that any conflict between science and religion can arise is if one side deliberately creates a conflict; eg, as religionists do when they attack science with a flimsy Putin-esque "justification" of "wanting to defend themselves from us poses a danger to us" (also used by GQP culture-war weenies). And the only way that evolution can be claimed to conflict with Divine Creation is if "creationists" hold very silly ideas about creation (eg, "no physical processes allowed!") and contrary-to-reality ideas about science (including lies about what evolution is and how it works). Evolution has nothing to do with religion. So why do you keep dragging religion in where it clearly does not belong? ABE:
If you truly and honestly think that there is a conflict between evolution and Divine Creation (AKA "between evolution and God"), then explain yourself! Make an actual case for that and present it! And support it and defend it! 
NOTE: Enlarged font not being used in anger, but rather just to get past your own selective blindness.Edited by dwise1, : ABE

You also said the same about radiocarbon dating (Message 482), but it turned out that you don't even know jack-shit about radiocarbon dating.It is obvious that you also don't even know jack-shit about punctuated equilibrium. For that matter, in every single subject that has been discussed here, your knowledge in each of the subjects has proven to be less that jack-shit deep.Far worse than you knowing nothing is your sad condition of having been grossly disinformed by your creationist handlers. You are like the victims of FOX News who have been found to know far less about current events than jpeople who ignore the news altogether. When you end up knowing far less than the people who literally know nothing, then you've got yourself a very serious problem!

One of the distinguishing characteristics of creationists is their intense dishonesty. However, I did once meet one honest creationist. That was on CompuServe, maybe in the early 90's.Unlike all the other creationists, Merle actually tried to engage in discussion. When someone asked him a question, he would answer it (instead of the dishonest crap that all other creationists, and most definitely wickless_candle here, will pull in order to avoid any discussion). If he didn't know the answer, he would research it and return to post the results of his research.He suffered the fate of all honest creationists: the scales fell from his eyes, he could see what a crock creationism is, and he left creationism behind. That process took him only one year.Here is what he wrote about that experience of the scales falling from his eyes when he found the university library stacks of paleontology journals detailing the vast wealth of transitional fossils that we have:

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Years ago I was fighting the good fight of creation on the Internet. I argued that evolution was impossible, for it required that the genetic code had to be changed to make new kinds of animals. It did not seem feasible to me that evolution could do this. I argued in the CompuServe debate forum, basing my arguments on Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crises. My favorite illustration was the difference between mammals and reptiles. The differences between living mammals and reptiles are substantial. Mammals all have hair, mammary glands, a four-chambered heart, and the distinct mammalian ear, with three little bones inside. These features are found in no living reptiles. I argued that this is because there is no viable intermediate between the two, that an animal could have either the reptile genetic code or the mammal code but could not be in the middle.

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An evolutionist disagreed with me. He told me that in the past there had been many intermediates. He said that there were animals that, for instance, had jaw and ear bones that were intermediate between reptiles and mammals. How did he know this? He gave a reference to an essay in Stephen Gould's Ten Little Piggies . I wrote back that since the local library had a large collection of children's book, I should be able to find that book. (I thought I was so funny). I borrowed the book, and found an interesting account of how bones in the reptile jaw evolved and changed through millions of years to become the mammals' ear. That sounded like such a clever tale. How could Gould believe it? Perhaps he made it up. But there was one little footnote, a footnote that would change my life. It said simply, "Allin, E. F. 1975. Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear. Journal of Morphology 147:403-38." That's it. That's all it said. But it was soon to have a huge impact on me. You see, I had developed this habit of looking things up, and had been making regular trips to the University of Pennsylvania library. I was getting involved in some serious discussions on the Internet, and was finding the scientific journals to be a reliable source of information. Well, I couldn't believe that a real scientific journal would take such a tale seriously, but, before I would declare victory, I needed to check it out.

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On my next trip to the university, I found my way to the biomedical library and located the journal archives. I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligently sorting out the evolutionist lies while learning medical knowledge? How could so much error have entered this room? It made no sense.

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The impact of that day in the library was truly stunning. I didn't know what to say. I could not argue against the overwhelming evidence for mammal evolution. But neither could I imagine believing it. Something had happened to me. My mind had begun to think. And it was not about to be stopped. Oh no. There is no stopping the mind set free. I went to the library and borrowed a few books on evolution and creation--diligently studying both sides of the argument. I started to read the evolutionist books with amazement. I had thought that evolutionists taught that floating cows had somehow turned into whales; that hopeful monsters had suddenly evolved without transitions; that one must have blind faith since transitional fossils did not exist; that one must simply guess at the dates for the fossils; and that one must ignore all of the evidence for young-earth creation. I was surprised to learn what these scientist actually knew about the Creationist teachings of flood geology, of the proposed young-earth proofs, and of the reported problems of evolution. And I was surprised at the answers that they had for these Creationist arguments. And I was surprised to see all the clear, logical arguments for evolution. I read with enthusiasm. I learned about isochrons, intermediate fossils, the geologic column, and much more.

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I would never see the world in the same light. Several weeks later I found myself staring at the fossil of a large dinosaur in a museum. I stared with amazement. I looked at the details of every bone in the back. And I wondered if a design so marvelous could really have evolved. But I knew that someone could show me another animal that had lived earlier and was a likely predecessor of this dinosaur that I was observing. And I knew that one could trace bones back through the fossil record to illustrate the path through which this creature had evolved. I stared and I pondered. And then I pondered some more.

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Within days, I had lost interest in fighting evolution. I began to read more and speak less. When I did debate, I confined my arguments to the origin of life issue. But I could no longer ignore what I had learned. Several months later I first sent out an email with probing questions to a Creationist who had arrived on the scene. He never responded. I have not stopped questioning.

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That page of Merle's site is archived at https://www.oocities.org/questioningpage/Evolve2.html where you can read the rest of that part of his story.The only way that wickless and his fellow benighted creationists can claim that there is no evidence is by deliberately refusing to look at it. 
BTW, here is the part from that page that I had edited out before (ie, this fills in the ellipses in the quote above):

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How can you explain those mysterious mammal-like reptiles? Reptiles and mammals today are quite distinct from each other. Mammalian features include differentiated teeth (incisors, canines, premolars, molars), double rooted teeth, a distinct jaw joint, three bones in the ear (stapes, incus, malleus), the diaphragm, limbs under the body, a different arrangement of toe bones, and a braincase that is firmly attached to the skull. No reptile has these features. But when we look at fossils, we find a strange series of animals with features in the middle. They begin 300 Ma (million years ago) in the Pennsylvanian. It was a different world. There were no mammals, flowering plants, or even dinosaurs. According to the fossil record, these would all come later. The world belonged to amphibians and reptiles. Early Synapsids such as Haptodus appeared. Their dentary jaw bones rose in the place where later animals would have a new jaw joint--the mammalian joint. Then advanced pelycosaurs (270 Ma) like the Dimetrodon--those familiar sail-winged animals from your childhood dinosaur set--had signs of a bony prong for the eardrum. Later, cynodonts like the Procynosuchus (236 Ma) had jawbones more similar to mammals, but they still had the reptile's jaw hinge. The Probainognathus (238 Ma) and the Thrinaxodons (227 Ma) have signs of two distinct jaw joints, the reptilian and the mammalian. This allowed some of the bones that had been part of the reptile's jaw to transmit vibrations to the ear. This was the beginning of the special mammalian ear bones. By the time the Sinoconodon appears (208 Ma) the mammalian jaw joint predominates, and the reptilian jaw joint is small. The Morganucodon (205 Ma) has teeth like a mammal, a distinct mammalian jaw joint, and only a tiny remnant of the reptile's jaw. It's malleus and incus ear bones remain attached to the jaw. By the late Cretaceous period (80 Ma) early placental mammals like the Asioryctes had jaws and ears that were transformed to the mammalian type. Two of the reptile's jaw bones, the quadrate and the articular were no longer part of the jaw. Instead they had become the malleus and incus, and are functioning as parts of the mammal's ear.

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This is only the briefest of overviews of these strange creatures. In reality, there are thousands of species that span many millions of years, with many intermediate stages of many different features.

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Now what on earth was God doing? Why was he slowly introducing mammalian features into the fossil record? Why did he progressively change the design of the jaw, ear, teeth, and limbs until the animals look more and more like mammals? Should I just shrug my shoulders and say that God moves in mysterious ways? No, I shall ask why. Did God learn from past experience and introduce new creatures with improvement every several thousand years or so? Creationists would cringe at that suggestion. Then why do we find this progression? It is difficult to escape the all-too-obvious conclusion: God allowed the first mammal to evolve from reptiles through a process involving many millions of years. As a Creationist, I finally came to the point where I considered that possibility. It instantly become apparent that this would be a huge change in worldview. For if the first mammal evolved from reptiles, then where did the second mammal come from? If God used thousands of transitions to evolve the first mammal, did he then just copy that design to create the second and third mammals? That makes no sense. These mammals must have evolved also. In fact, we would need to conclude that all mammals have evolved from these mammal-like reptiles. Think for a minute of all of the varieties of mammals that you know--elephants, tigers, mice, dogs, and whales, to name a few. Did all of these descend from a sequence of mammal-like reptiles? Is there any other way to explain all of these intermediates?

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Part of the links page of my web site (http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/links.html) is linking to other sites, usually of ex-creationists. One such was D. Jon Scott, a student activist for "creation science"; as I summarize on my page:

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Genesis Panthesis by D. Jon Scott

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At this framed site, click on the link to "What is the Inspiration for the Genesis Panthesis Website?".

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Scott had been a very active creation science follower and propagator who used to run his own discussion board on the issue. Then one day he was finally confronted with the evidence that he had been taught could not possibly exist, a transitional form. Unable to explain it away and equally unable to ignore it, his faith completely unraveled, just as creation science had taught him must happen. Now he is strongly anti-Christian.

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Ironically, that "transitional form", Archaeoraptor turned out to be a hoax. Yet it did the trick just as well as the real thing, triggering the booby trap installed by "creation science" to destroy his faith. The point is that creation science had wired his faith to self-destruct in the face of contradictory evidence, whether real, faked, or imagined.

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In his "What is the Inspiration for the Genesis Panthesis Website?" he describes the experience of his deconversion process which describes as "being born again, again". The following is the entire text from that page just copy-and-pasted; for the original formatting and links you will have to visit that page yourself through the link I provided: [quote]The first roots of Genesis Panthesis lie in late 1997 with a web site entitled the Talk.Science Archive. Talk.Science was originally created in order to present rebuttals to mainstream scientific thinking from a young-Earth creationist perspective, and mainly targeted the Talk.Origins Archive.
Talk.Science was my own creation, and was graciously hosted by MyTownNet.Com (the company has since been bought out and no longer exists) at the URL [http://www.talkscience.mytownnet.com]. It received a healthy portion of both creationist and evolutionist readers, who avidly submitted feedback which I was happy to respond to on the web.For a very long time I was content to explain away the mounds of evidence supporting evolutionary biology as well as mainstream geology and cosmology. Particularly the fossil record - which I feel I can safely say that I was much more well-versed in than the majority of prominent creationists (Gish et. al.), was rather easy for me to dispute in my deluded creationist mind.After a while, I became very aware of the dishonest tactics used by creationists such as Gish and Morris, and developed a growing contempt for the majority of my fellow creationists/Christians. Though I was determined to help give creationism scientific respectability and aid in restoring the good name of the Christian religion.I kept updating the archive and working on it straight through 1998, the year in which Caudipteryx zouii and Protarchaeopteryx robusta - two creatures which scientists described as obviously non-avian dinosaurs (which means they weren't birds), but which had feathers! I simply emphasized their avian qualities and either explained away or dismissed as unimportant their reptilian characteristics, and went on happily spreading the myth of creationism.Yes - I had the evidence, the information, and the knowledge of how evolutionary biology works - yet I did not have the intellectual integrity to admit to the truthfulness of evolutionary theory and kept denying that this incredibly intricate law and set of 'trends' in nature could possibly have any validity.Then, in september of 1999, the bomb dropped. I picked up my issue of the National Geographic and saw what else on a page advertising an upcoming issue; but Sinornithosaurus millenii! It had long steak-knife-shaped teeth like a T. rex, a long, muscular tail, hyper-extendable "switchblade" claws on the hind legs like Velociraptor mongoliensis, a narrow snout that looked almost like a bill, a bird-like pubic structure, and worst of all - feathers!I simply stared at the page for a few moments, muttered "oh shit!" to myself a few times, and got up to check the N.G.News web site. This wasn't just some artistic depiction of what a reptile/bird might look like - and it was no hoax. It was a small dromaeosaurid ("raptor") with killing claws, razor-sharp teeth, and a pair of wing-like arms complete with plumage. My heart sank, and my gut churned. This was it - the one proof of evolution I had always asked for but never thought would come to light. In my mind, I was betting that even if evolution were true, the chances of finding such a beautiful example of transition would be slim enough to be dismissed as impossible. And yet here it was - proof.I stepped outside to compose myself, and stood there looking at the world around me.Weeks later, I began making plans to dismantle to the Talk.Science Archive, all the while researching the Christian religion. I soon came to the conclusion that since much of the first ten or twelve chapters of genesis had been plagiarized from Chaldean fairy tales and mythos, the truthfulness of the Bible must be strictly spiritual rather than spiritual and historical.It wasn't very long before I began to realize that since the 'historical' sections of the Bible, particularly those stolen from Chaldean mythos, were intended to influence spiritual truth - that the early Israelites must have simply been making up their own "spiritual truths", trying to make the fairy tales of their Hebrew (Chaldean) ancestors match up. I was faced with the realization that the Bible could not even be taken as spiritually true...it was/is nothing more than a book of myths and fables from a time and place in which people had no scientific knowledge, and made up these stories to explain what was going on around them (though the people making up these fables probably thought that they were coming to revelations given by their God[s]).Then that day in 1999 came back to me. I remembered standing outside on my porch, looking at the natural world of which I had always known myself to be an integral part - albeit created as such. On that day, however, I began to look at the world in a new light.I looked at the trees, thinking about how they worked. Photosynthesis, receiving energy from the sun, these creatures had limbs which branched out in every direction, tipped with leaves made green with chlorophyl, drawing energy from the sunlight which they captured. As they fed on the radiant light, blocking the light from the ground below, I began to think of how they might exist without God. A tiny bacterium absorbs energy from both heat and chemicals. Plants are exposed to heat, feed on chemicals, and have chemicals that allow them to feed on heat more efficiently - on a much larger scale than primitive bacterial cell strands. I thought, perhaps, that since some algae is bacterial and other is plant-life, that some bacteria might have used chlorophyl to extract nutrients from the sun. Also, perhaps from this algae, primitive coats of slime would evolve and dwell on rocks near river beds. In a few million years, you'd have moss growing on moist soil. Millions of years could come and go, and plants which harness the power of the sun and extract more nutrients from the matter around them (whether it be water or dirt) would spread more abundantly and prosper over their contemporaries.I looked at the trees again. They were large, tightly-packed groups of cells, which over millions of years grew larger and larger, growing green leaves which act as solar panels. They were cell-colonies trying to survive in an environment where new oportunities are as ample as the number of possible combinations of DNA. So here they were, beautiful, and majestic, and sitting there because of the opportunistic nature of living cells - not because God put them there. They were green because they had Chlorophyl to absorb sunlight - not because God thought that humans would think it an attractive color.I looked down at my own hands, studying my finger prints. I pondered the reason God might have given them to me. I recalled to myself that only primates have finger prints, and that they used the blunt part of their fingers - rather than claws, to grip limbs and branches. They have traction-treds on their fingers and toes. This is probably why all primates also have flat nails.But then why do humans have finger prints? For indentification? We've only had finger print identification for the past hundred years or so. Even if the world were only six thousand years old, that's less than a thirtieth of a percent of the time since humans were first created. Why give us this feature, why design such intricate patterns, if God knew it would be an absurdly short amount of time between the first use of finger print identification and the creation of DNA fingerprinting, which is much more accurate? And what how would this be any different from believing that the bridge of the nose were created for sunglasses, or the opposable thumb designed so that our hand could fit into gloves?The only way these hands of mine made sense, with the gripping fingers, the traction-tredded finger tips, the flat nails, was if my distant ancestors - and the ancestors of all humans - were creatures who used their front limbs for climbing.And why such low body hair? Wouldn't it be more effecient to not have body hair at all? We use resources to grow this hair which appearently serves no purpose. If we evolved from hairy creatures, it would make sense that we evolved to use our resources more effeciently and wasted less of our reserves on this useless feature. That way, the hair wouldn't have to be completely absent, since the industrial age - when we could produce many of our own resources from previousely unavailable sources - occured at a time which vary well might have been before we had the chance to evolve a completely bald body. Of course it must have been a bit more complex than that, but I had a feeling I was pretty much on-track with this line of reasoning.I looked down at my hands again, and studied them for a few moments longer..."This is it..." I spoke to myself softly, "Welcome to the real world."[/quote] 
I'll close with the story of Charles, a co-worker decades ago and the first creationist I could discuss any of this with. I've mentioned him before and that we attended a debate together between Drs. H. Morris & Gish versus Awbrey & Thwaites. That was where Charles, who had already learned of Gish's lies about the bombadier beetle, was dismayed to see every vendor table there selling books for children about "Bomby" (ie, books based on lies -- oddly, there was no vendor table selling millstones for those buying those books for their children).As we were leaving at the end of the debate, Charles was in shock. He kept muttering: "We have mountains of evidence for creation that would have blown those evolutionists away. Why didn't [Gish & Morris] use it? We have mountains of evidence for creation that would have blown those evolutionists away. Why didn't they use it?"Science has the evidence, whereas creationism has none. Therefore the creationist lie becomes, "We have mountains of evidence for creation!", while lying that science has none. A complete reversal of reality.