Evolution of Creationism

"Nope" is not much of an answer. May I consider that it means that you consider the lying found by the court to be an example of the dishonesty I referred to ?

Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Special creation for humans, obviously. What else? Anything?

Yes that in terms of sentience, consciousness etc in particular. I think the whole area of artificial intelligence may force the same sort of debate that the ToE has already been through in the longer term.
Dualism and the whole mind/body/soul concept could be an area of intense debate. Almost every faith has a belief in an afterlife of some sort which necessitates some form of self seperate from the physical which does not sit well with science.

Cosmology is another obvious area. BB theory is adequate up to a point but there are major questions regarding how this could come about that remain and which are therefore ripe for creationist interpretation.

Abiogenesis and the formation of life is another area that creationists will cling onto to the bitter end. Debates about the exact environment in which this could occur and how valid any laboratory experiment designed with the purpose of creating life can be, will rightly be asked. Demonstrating that this can occur without intelligent intervention of some sort could be very difficult indeed.

Any area in which faith based beliefs have anything to say regards the physical world or our interaction with it are potential areas of debate but I think the above are the main areas that creationists in their various forms will be most desperate to hold onto and most difficult to prise from their grasp.

Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

If I remember correctly, while reading a book on latin american history (an introduction book, mind you), there was a specific comment made by the Inquisition in there. As I recall, the spanish inquisition said that only a fool would think that noone in spanish america believed that the solar system was heliocentric--in the late 1700s. They were saying this as a sort of self-congratulatory remark for having kept heretical thought outside of spanish america.

Now then, seeing as how they did actually manage to do this (very little in the ways of outside literature made it into thier colonies), and this veiwpoint was still being defended in the 1700s, and the heliocentricness was discovered in the 1500s, that gives us about 200 years of resistance to the heliocentric model. And that's a relatively minor point compared to the evolution issue for creationists (especially for the literalist--in this case, there is biblical evidence. in the geocentric, that is not directly mentioned in the bible, IIRC). Were only a little over a hundred years into this debate.

(keep in mind, this holds true so long as I remember that date of 1700s right--I don't have the book anymore to check up on that)

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Blimey! Gonna be a long hard task then.

Having said that the rate of scientific progress has increased somewhat in the last few hundred years so we might at least keep the creationists on their toes.

Edited by Admin, : Spam hidden. It's harmless, but Helena's been spamming the site. I deleted her two proposed topics that consisted solely of links.

First, we don't allow bare links. If you have something to say, then say it. You may present a link to the source of what you say, but that does not release you from the obligation to make your statement and then to support it.

Second, you posted this a few minutes after proposing it as a new topic, thus attempting to bypass the system. I'm sure that a moderator will have a heart-to-heart discussion with you about such unethical behavior.

Third, the claim is not only pure bullshit, but it's also a PRATT ("point refuted a thousand times" -- though I keep forgetting exactly what the "P" stands for, could be "previously"). Creationist claims consist almost completely of PRATTs. Most new creationists here start out immediately by posting PRATTs and usually leave very soon afterwards after being informed by most other members here that their claims are wrong, they were shown to be wrong decades ago, and OBTW here is precisely what's wrong with those claims.

Basically, yes, Piltdown Man was a hoax, though we don't know exactly who had perpetrated. It was finally revealed by scientists to be a hoax, whereupon it was immediately dropped and used no more. Compare that with the conduct creationists whose main-stay are PRATTs -- ie, their claims are demonstrated to be false and yet they keep on using those same false claims, even in those cases where they acknowledged that their claims were false.

Nebraska Man was not a hoax, but rather a mistake. The tooth had unusual wear patterns from having been rotated in its socket, so that make it looked like it could be an anthropoid tooth. Not everybody was convinced, so it was not accepted by all. Within a few years, the original researchers discovered that was a peccary tooth and published a notice to that effect and that was that. The drawing reconstructing Nebraska Man was made by an artist in London now connected to the research and the only ones still circulating it are creationists.

The Talk.Origins Archive (http://www.talkorigins.org/) is an excellent source of information and it discusses almost all known creationist PRATTs. A couple pages dicussing the true story of Piltdown Man are http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_piltdown.html and http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html. And for Nebraska Man there's http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html and http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC002.html (from the creationist-claim index project, with which you should make yourself familiar). For that matter, go to the home page (first link given) and select "Search the archive" enter a keyword and it will Google through the site for you.

Bottom line is that both Piltdown and Nebraska are examples of science's success at detecting and correcting hoaxes and mistakes. OTOH, creationism's record in that regard is abysmal failure.

As a molecular biologist I find it rather comical how the so called evolutionists here accuse creationists of "PRATTS", when you yourselves repeatedly do the exact same thing; only you refuse to recognize that scientific literature consistently refutes 99% of your arguments.

Then you won't have any problem providing a link or a citation to some of this scientific literature, will you?

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For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack Obama

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Von Cullen writes: s a molecular biologist I find it rather comical how the so called evolutionists...

A molecular biologist who isn't an evolutionist? Wow, that leaves out even Michael Behe!

Only you refuse to recognize that scientific literature consistently refutes 99% of your arguments.

Interesting claim, but off-topic here. You could propose it as a new thread over at Proposed New Topics.

--Percy

As a molecular biologist I find it rather comical how the so called evolutionists here accuse creationists of "PRATTS", when you yourselves repeatedly do the exact same thing; only you refuse to recognize that scientific literature consistently refutes 99% of your arguments.

You must also presumably find it "comical" how the scientists who produce all this scientific literature also "refuse to recognize" exactly the same thing.

Since its first appearance on Earth, life has taken many forms, all of which continue to evolve, in ways which palaeontology and the modern biological and biochemical sciences are describing and independently confirming with increasing precision. Commonalities in the structure of the genetic code of all organisms living today, including humans, clearly indicate their common primordial origin.

--- Albanian Academy of Sciences; National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, Argentina; Australian Academy of Science; Austrian Academy of Sciences; Bangladesh Academy of Sciences; The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium; Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina; Brazilian Academy of Sciences; Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada; Academia Chilena de Ciencias; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Academia Sinica, China, Taiwan; Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences; Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences; Cuban Academy of Sciences; Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters; Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt; Académie des Sciences, France; Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities; The Academy of Athens, Greece; Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Indian National Science Academy; Indonesian Academy of Sciences; Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Royal Irish Academy; Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities; Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy; Science Council of Japan; Kenya National Academy of Sciences; National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic; Latvian Academy of Sciences; Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts; Academia Mexicana de Ciencias; Mongolian Academy of Sciences; Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco; The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand; Nigerian Academy of Sciences; Pakistan Academy of Sciences; Palestine Academy for Science and Technology; Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Peru; National Academy of Science and Technology, The Philippines; Polish Academy of Sciences; Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal; Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts; Singapore National Academy of Sciences; Slovak Academy of Sciences; Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts; Academy of Science of South Africa; Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain; National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka; Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; Council of the Swiss Scientific Academies; Academy of Sciences, Republic of Tajikistan; Turkish Academy of Sciences; The Uganda National Academy of Sciences; The Royal Society, UK; US National Academy of Sciences; Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences; Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales de Venezuela; Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences; The Caribbean Academy of Sciences; African Academy of Sciences; The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS); The Executive Board of the International Council for Science (ICSU).

You'd think that they'd know what was in the scientific literature, but presumably in your crazy fantasy world, they don't.

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To return to the topic, this, at least, is one aspect of creationism that hasn't changed --- they have been claiming victory for the last 200 years or so. Ex-creationist Glenn Morton has called it The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism.

Their arguments may have been abandoned one by one ... but their nutty and dishonest claim that victory is in just within their grasp has been passed down from generation to generation.

I'm extremely dubious of the ability of memetics to produce any particularly valid analysis of real-world ideas; the sad fact is that ideas don't break neatly into memes comparable to genes, nor do these memes transfer in a way comparable to heredity. Evolutionary ideas are useful in understanding the development of ideas; but memetics is not the way to do it.

See Bruce, E., "The revealed poverty of the gene-meme analogy - why memetics per se has failed to produce substantive results", Journal of Memetics, 2005, Vol 9, Issue 1, p1-4 (which is, in fact, the last issue of that journal ever published)

I didn't say I wasn't an evolutionist, but evolutionary science falls under a very broad spectrum; yet too many people try to bottle it up into one very narrow argument. Evolution is factual science but it is not the end all be all explanation for life on earth, yet many attempt to present it as such; all the while making a mockery of those who don't accept it.

One interesting way that creationism evolves is simplification.

A creationist argument usually starts off with a creationist reading something about science and misunderstanding it --- the original "mutation" that converts it into a creationist argument. So, when the creationist argument is first produced, it will have a certain amount of complexity and subtlety inherited from the ancestral scientific idea from which it evolved.

As it passes from one creationist to another, anything that makes it simpler makes it easier to infect a creationist brain, and therefore is a selective advantage.

Unlike a genuine scientific idea, it doesn't have to be able to do anything but propagate itself --- no-one ever uses it for anything. And because it only has to pass between creationist brains, it doesn't have to be sophisticated enough to deceive anyone who knows anything about science.

So, like all parasitic organisms, it becomes simpler and simpler in form.

One interesting aspect of this --- I don't know if it has an analogue in biology --- is that this progressive simplification helps prevent the mounting of an immune response. When, for example, creationists are wrong about the neck of the giraffe, it would be much easier to debunk their nonsense if the called the rete mirabile the rete mirabile. If they call it a "special sponge", it becomes much harder for anyone to find out that they're wrong, because it would first be necessary to find out what the heck they're being wrong about.

I didn't say I wasn't an evolutionist ...

And yet you believe that the scientific literature consistently refutes 99% of evolutionary arguments?

I guess you must think that the remaining 1% are really, really good, then?

Evolution is factual science but it is not the end all be all explanation for life on earth, yet many attempt to present it as such; all the while making a mockery of those who don't accept it.

Does the theory of evolution by means of natural selection explain the diversity of life as observed to exist?

Who does not accept evolution on the basis of a valid alternative in your opinion?