A Guide to the tactics of Evolutionists

And yet some animals reproduce, and some animals die without reproducing. And yet pleasure and pain have a physical basis. This is just rubbish. First of all, you must surely be aware that Darwinians are not of one mind on morality, nor on the question of whether there is a spiritual realm.Secondly, if I say that by 'giraffe' I do not mean 'pink elephant', and if I say that there are no pink elephants, this does not mean that this "leaves giraffes as de facto pink elephants".---The OP was entitled "A Guide To The Bait & Switch Tactics Of Evolutionists", not "A Guide To The Strawman Tactics Of Creationists". Otherwise, your post would have been pertinent.

You will notice that "evolution" and "macroevolution" are two different words, not the same word given two different meanings. Hello?It is true that observing evolution in the small scale tends to confirm the possibility of it happening on a larger scale, in that the opposite observation would deconfirm that possibility.However, the proof of macroevolution lies mainly in genetics, the fossil record, bigeography, morphology, et cetera. No evolutionist claims that the existence of heritable change alone proves macroevolution, and I should think that every member of this forum knows this. What is your objective in pretending otherwise? Recapitulation is a myth and you should know perfectly well that real scientists say so. I know of no living scientist who claims that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: if you maintain that they do, perhaps you could name just one. Neanderthals have always been classed as Homo. Scientists agree that Haeckel's drawings are fraudulent, and you know it. It was scientists, not creationists, who exposed the fraud. There was no fraud whatsoever in the peppered moth experiments and to pretend there was is dishonest and libellous. I have no idea what you're talking about. Scientists don't make Neanderthal skulls, they excavate them. You should find out what the theory of evolution is before criticizing it. Natural selection does indeed reduce the diversity of the gene pool. No-one has ever claimed otherwise. This is a flat falsehood, which is why you can produce no evidence for it. The fossil record contains many intermediate forms.---Again, could I point out that the thread is meant to be about "bait and switch tactics of evolutionists" not "creationist falsehoods and straw men".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Saying that something is "logical" doesn't magically make it so: it is also necessary to produce a chain of logical reasoning from premises known to be true. I notice that you've omitted this step.BTW, do you know what happens when you mix Q replicase with amino acids without an RNA template? Here.This is not, I will wager, how life on Earth began, but it seems to me that it is abiogenesis: you mix together chemicals which aren't alive, and get RNA strands which reproduce and evolve.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yeah? Who "designs" the RNA strands?Oh look, no-one. They form spontaneously from the chemicals and then evolve by themselves.You'd get the same result from an accident in a laboratory.In fact, IIRC, the first time this happened, Eigen and his team were running it as a control experiment to prove that it wouldn't happen. Where's the "Intelligent Design"?---And, of course, you don't need intelligence to mix chemicals together, this happens in nature all the time.If you keep on heading down that route, you'll reach the reductio ad absurdum of claiming that no experiment can ever prove anything about abiogenesis.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Er, no, in practice, it doesn't.This is your bait and switch --- you start off talking about the theory of evolution, and end up proclaiming that it means the exact opposite of what every evolutionist says it does. "Propose the giraffe, then deny that it is a pink elephant, then procede to violently destroy any knowledge of pink elephants, leaving the giraffe as the de facto pink elephant by elimination of all other pink elephants."This is rubbish. It's not merely untrue, it's complete blithering nonsense.

Read what I wrote again, then apologise. Oh, yes, speciation isn't macroevolution any more ... according to 50% of creationists ... the 50% who admit that it happens ... Saying this won't make it so. This is because we make no such claim. Your link points out that Haeckel was wrong, did you notice? Scientists. It didn't. So, same old allegations, no proof of fraud. No. The second sentence was false. Hello?I did not say "lie"; because I am doing you the credit of supposing that you're merely ignorant. But not all of the are intermediate forms between classes, et cetera. The evidence in the fossil record is entirely consistent with that hypothesis. The fossil record confirms the theory of evolution because it is replete with intermediate forms between groups of organisms.

I can make nothing of this. What do you mean?

I think they do."The reader is probably confusing a biology textbook's mention of embryological homology (which is indeed strong evidence for evolution) with advocacy of recapitulation. Recapitulation is an old, discarded concept, and I seriously doubt any current biology textbook discusses it except to expose its flaws." *"He ends the section by explicitly correcting Haeckel's ideas, saying that "The theory of recapitulation is an overstatement. Although vertebrates share many features of embryonic development, it is not as though a mammal first goes through a 'fish stage', then an 'amphibian stage', and so on. Ontogeny can provide clues to phylogeny, but it is important to remember that all stages of development may become modified over the course of evolution." This is entirely correct." *"Finally, a mention of the influence of recapitulation theory is in order ... Haeckel's dream that we could reconstruct the primordial ancestor of a group of related organisms from the early embryos of those organisms is now entirely discredited." *Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

To be precise, failure to understand it. Temper tantrum noted.When I don't unterstand something, I try to find out more about it. In this case, this involves asking you to expand on your rather gnomic pronouncements.I'll ask again: what do you mean?

Let me explain the basics of evolution to you, then you'll have no excuse for getting it wrong.Mutations increase genetic diversity.Natural selection tends to preserve those genes which are adaptive, and remove those genes which are maladaptive.Natural selection therefore permits increased diversity so long as it is adaptive (or neutral).The reason for the diversity of life is mutation. The reason that these diverse forms are suited to their diverse niches in nature is natural selection.It's no good you complaining that natural selection doesn't increase genetic diversity. Of course it doesn't; no-one has claimed that it does.Is there anything there you didn't understand?---Here's a hint for you, as you wend your way through life. When your understanding of some scientific issue conflicts with that of scientists, the chances are that they've got it right and you've got it wrong.

No-one claims that natural selection increases genetic diversity.This is because (a) it doesn't (b) scientists aren't stupid.Please bear in mind that any scientific fact that you know is also known to scientists. How are you measuring these quantities, and why does it seem to you to be important that one should be greater than the other?NB: please ensure that your inequallity is dimensionally correct. And yet I know that the theory of evolution does not involve claiming that natural selection increases genetic diversity; and you, it seems, do not.

Could you try to be truthful? If you mean: why should natural selection ("processes that decrease genetic diversity") be considered part of evolution ("a process increasing genetic diversity") then the answer is that it affects the composition of gene pools. Without it, every mutation would be neutral and evolution would take quite a different path.If you mean something else, please don't hesitate to say so.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You appear to be trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Badly. I know this to be untrue. Perhaps we had six fingers before the Fall, eh? After all, God wouldn't make us badly, would he? Er, no. By definition, the process of variation increases diversity. Natural selection prevents this diversity from going entirely unchecked.

Variation, by definition increases variety. That's what variation means. Vari-ation? Vari-ety? You see how this works? When a new mutation occurs, this adds variety to the gene pool.If the mutation is detrimental, natural selection will tend to flush it out again. If not, not.

Not necessarily. They can just hang around, like the various human blood types, or, if beneficial, they can be driven through the gene pool. Of course, if you have one big connected gene pool, this will displace inferior alleles. However, as you point out... ... evolution may be allopatric and cladogenetic. And of course, if a species barrier has already arisen, then a beneficial mutation in one species but not another increases the divergence between the two species.