CREATIONISM----F.Y.I

by nakedmvistar 72 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Xander

  No.

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/degrees.html

  Quotes:

  Thus, it appears that Baugh essentially granted himself a science degree from a branch of his own unaccredited Bible school.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, Baugh's doctoral "dissertation" is largely a compilation of anti-evolutionary arguments on the origin of man, and includes an extensive section on missions that consists of literature by others which was photocopied and inserted.[25]

  and

  Last, there is no evidence that Baugh has even a undergraduate degree in any field of science.

  Edited by - Xander on 26 September 2002 17:25:56
• 

  tkmmorgan

  Oh so if you quote it and it supports what you believe then it's all good, but if it comes from someone who you don't agree with it's worthless. By your standard whatever I post is worthless simply because it doesn't agree with your theory of evolution. You attack the messenger with someone else's biased words but can't accept anything else as even remotely viable. Sorry that sort of debating holds no water with me. Maybe works for the lurkers whom I guess you guys are posting too. I'm expected to put up peer reviewed material but the website you get all your info from is basically a newsgroup. Whatever you think of his qualifications the paper was

  Submitted to Pacific College of Graduate Studies, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and Poplar Bluff, Missouri, U.S.A.

  which makes it peer reviewed.
• 

  rem

  tkmmorgan,

  Sorry if our standards are too high for ya. And no... submitting a doctoral dissertation to a couple of fundy bible colleges does not count as peer review in the scientific community. Even if they were respectable institutions, merely "submitting" a paper is not peer review. Peer review is an exhaustive process. It's not an easy thing to get your paper published in a respected peer reviewed scientific journal.

  Our 'belief' has nothing to do with whether the information comes from someone we agree with... it depends upon whether the source is credible and the information presented is based on verifiable evidence. In all of the cases you have brought forward, none of the sources are in the least bit credible and the evidence has been shown to be lacking - even deceptive. If you can't understand that, then you have no business being in a serious debate.

  Yes, you certainly have helped make our point to the lurkers. Thanks.

  rem

  Edited by - rem on 26 September 2002 19:19:8
• 

  crownboy

  tkmmorgan, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe there isn't even a 4 year college in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. The best I could come up with was a 2 year school called Three Rivers Community College (see : http://www.trcc.edu/ ), and that certainly does not qualify as "graduate level". Again, if I'm wrong, please point me out to the correct college.

  As for that university in Australia, perhaps you should read xander's link, or the link to the page about the credentials about "Dr. Dino's" creditionals in my last post, or maybe this one : http://members.aol.com/Paluxy2/degrees.htm .

  Basically, the Australian university is an unaccredited school run by a YEC friend of Baugh, hence his dissertation was not "peer reviewed", and like "Dr. Dino", Baugh has no scientific credentals.

  As for the last quote by Gould, it specifically reinforces what rem told you. the (...) part of the quote no doubt leaves out some vital information, as Gould has said, in context:

  Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists--whether through design or stupidity, I do not know--as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled 'Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax' states: 'The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge...are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible.'"

  - Stephen Jay Gould,
  "Evolution as Fact and Theory"

  For some examples of speciation in recent times see: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

  So not only have you not presented articles that have actually been peer reviewed, you refer to talkorigins as mearly a newsgroup. Well, in case you haven't noticed, all references from the talkorigins site comes from peer reviewed work, which is accesible to anyone. The purpose of talkorigins is to make the scientific information easy to read for people who are not particularly learned in the field, but you may look up their peer reviewed references if you care to. We point you to talkorigins, not only because of the wealth of information presented there, but also because it is fairly popular and reputable.

  Also we are not simply "quoting to support our belief". To point a flat earther to literature supporting and oblique-spherical earth is not simply "quoting to support our belief". To point a Muslim to information showing that many aspects of their religious hajj mirrors practices of their pagan predecessors and was most probably taken from them is not "quoting to support a belief". It is simply stating fact. Pointing out that Carl Baugh and Kent Hovind have no scientific credentials, whether done by friend or foe, makes no difference, the truthfulness is what counts. All you have to do is provide evidence that your guys have real science credentials, and nothing we can say can change it. The fact that you cannot do so speaks volumes.

  (Edited to add: the "evidence" provided on the website you gave me has already been addressed in the links I provided to you in the last post. I guess you didn't read most of it, or skipped over large parts. Ditto on what rem said about the rigours of peer review.)

  Edited by - crownboy on 26 September 2002 19:50:54
• 

  funkyderek

  You'll notice the my there. I'm looking for an ape that has enough human characteristics to no longer be ape but not enough human to be human. A transitional species proving a clear progression from ape to man.

  But if you found one, you wouldn't consider it a transitional species. You'd consider it just another ape. Do you consider bonobo chimps to be a transitional species? Their similarities to humans are astounding. What about extinct species such as A. afarensis, H.neanderthalis or H. erectus? Transitional, or just some of the countless millions of species directly created by Yahweh 6000 years ago? What characteristics would an organism have to have, before you'd consider it "transitional"?
• 

  Liberty

  I just wanted to provide some food for thought to the Creationists as regards "transitional species". The change, or evolution, of life forms is clearly demonstrated by numerous examples from the real world which do not fit neatly into an intelligent design model. Why would God design frogs and toads to begin life in exactly the same way fish do, requiring water for their fertilization and early development as soft shelless jelly-like eggs, which would dry out and die without the surrounding water? Why are the young larval frogs and toads like fish in every way including fins and gills having no limbs and requiring a liquid water environment to survive in until they develope legs and lungs for living on land? If this isn't a window into an evolutionary process and a perfect example of radical change in a "transitional species" then what is it then? Creationists go on and on about God's set "kinds" yet in a few short months we see one "kind" change into a completely different "kind" in the same animal for no "intelligent" reason I can see. Billions of amphibians die off every year because there is not enough liquid water in their environments to sustain them since they live in an unreliable water supply on dry land thousands of miles from the safety of the constantly wet oceans. I see no sign of intelligence in such a wasteful silly design based upon the accidents of weather.

  At the other extreme are whales which live exclusively in the deep oceans yet are required to breathe air and maintain a constant body temperature at great cost to them because they are mammals. Why would an intelligent creator put an animal in water for its entire life yet require it to breathe air and keep its body at a higher temp. than the surrounding water? Why did God create monotremes, animals with fur that do not maintain a constant body temp. which lay eggs and nurish their young with milk from skin glands but not provide nipples like the platapus and echidnea. Why did God make them half like a reptile and half like a mammal? Why don't bats and birds have three sets of limbs so that their wings are seperate from their front limbs allowing them to both fly and have usuable limbs like every other animal? It is clear that bird and bat wings evolved from their front limbs as all bats and some birds still have their clear fingers and claws as part of the wing which makes using them awkward or even useless.

  This is intelligent? These and many other animals look more like a hodge podge of accidents and chance than a carefully thought out design by a super being. Even we humans start as aquatic beings in our larval-embyonic stage looking like and living like fish in a liquid and not in the air like a human being. Was God a fish? He must be since we were made in his image.Why go through all these silly changes? Why not just look like a little tiny human right from the start. Why do we have tails and gills which wastefully grow and then disappear? Seems silly to me. Just something to think about.

  Edited by - Liberty on 27 September 2002 10:28:39

  Edited by - Liberty on 27 September 2002 10:30:0

  Edited by - Liberty on 27 September 2002 11:29:0
• 

  tkmmorgan

  I must apoligize for my last post. It was out of line and didn't contribute anything. I respect the intelligence of everyone who has posted here. You have given me lots of reading to do (whether you believe I will read it or not) and cleared a couple of misconceptions I had about TOE. I haven't yet read anything that proves macro-evolution for me. I will state again that I don't believe creation has been proven either.

  The fact that a new strain of flu comes out every year completely destroys his pathetic arguemnt. Obviously random mutations are causing the virus to change since viruses don't reproduce sexually. The same is true with bacteria. If his argument were true, then we wouldn't need to worry about getting new flu shots every year. Biological systems are not directly analogous to the english language, so his little example is ridiculous

  I personally don't think that destroys the arguement at all. The virus changes but is still a virus, in fact is still a flu virus.It didn't turn into an aids virus or a cancer. I.M.O. just like there are many kinds of cats or dogs, but a black lab's pups are still dogs even if the sire is a bulldog. I have said before that I agree evolution happens on that level. You are correct about his english language example and I also think that it is too simple put that way, but I think it was there just to show the concept not actually prove anything. The fact that we are medically contemplating genetic screening for birth defects or diseases says to me that the medical community knows that small genetic mutations cause huge problems and even death. The small genetic difference between us and apes stops reproduction between us(good thing considering some peoples depravity) and hybrid animals like the mule are almost 100% sterile which means they can't pass on the changes they have even though they aren't even mutations. Even though horses and donkeys are close enough genetically to breed they obviously aren't close enough to create a complete genome.

  As we unlock the secrets of the human genome, we're learning that nearly all diseases have a genetic component. Some, including many cancers, are caused by a mutation in a gene or group of genes in the cells of an individual. Such mutations can occur randomly or due to exposure to some environmental insult. Other genetic disorders are hereditary - such as Huntington's disease or Tay-Sachs disease - where a mutated gene is passed down through a family and each generation of children can inherit the gene that causes the disease. But most genetic disorders are "multifactorial inheritance disorders," meaning they are caused by a combination of small variations in genes, often in concert with environmental factors. Through research on the human genome, we now know that many common diseases usually caused by genetic alterations in the genes of an individual's cells - such as breast cancer and colon cancer - also have rare hereditary forms. In these cases, gene variants that cause or strongly predispose a person to these cancers run in a family and significantly increase each member's risk of developing the disease. http://www.genome.gov/page.cfm?pageID=10001204 for reference

  The 46 human chromosomes (22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes and 2 sex chromosomes) between them house almost 3 billion base pairs of DNA that contains about 30,000 - 40,000 protein-coding genes. This is a much smaller number than predicted - only twice as many as in the worm or fly model organisms. The coding regions make up less than 5% of the genome (the function of the remaining DNA is not clear) and some chromosomes have a higher density of genes than others. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/disease/

  AD tends to run in families: currently, mutations in four genes, situated on chromosomes 1, 14, 19 and 21, are believed to play a role in the disease. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/disease/Alzheimer.html

  In some illnesses, such as Huntington's disease, a single defective gene causes the disease in everyone who inherits it. http://www.genome.gov/page.cfm?pageID=10001217There is no cure for this fatal disease. http://www.genome.gov/page.cfm?pageID=10001215

  A single mutated gene out of 30k-40k can cause a fatal disease. I have read much that tells me that high level evolutionary scientists know there are holes in the theory and so the theory itself is constantly evolving. This debate will continue to go round and round in a lot higher levels of education than mine and until some of the questions I have are answered to my satisfaction I cannot believe it. So until then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.I don't have all the answers to the questions and that is why I'm even here talking to you. So once again thanks for taking the time to respond, I don't think any of you are idiots, I simply disagree.

  My wife is pissed because I've spent the last 4 days or so doing nothing but reading your posts and info and searching for the opposing viewpoint. I do appreciate the fact that some of the evolution pages do present links to what they believe to be science minded opposers to their theory, but that makes the amount of info to consider vast. I have to put a new roof on my house because winter is coming fast here and some other things I've been neglecting, but I hope I get the chance to converse with you in the future even though you probably think I'm an idiot.

  Thanks for an enlightening discussion.

  I'm out.

  Todd

  edited to add the references to quotes

  Edited by - tkmmorgan on 27 September 2002 15:25:55

  Edited by - tkmmorgan on 27 September 2002 15:51:9
• 

  rem

  tkmmorgan,

  It is true that genetic mutations can be fatal or harmful, and this is the case in the majority of genetic mutations. But there are beneficial mutations. The point about the flu virus, or antibiotic-resistant bacteria is that they have definitely mutated and the genetic mutation has been beneficial for their survival (not so beneficial for us). Since bacteria and viruses reproduce so quickly, they go through a lot of mutations. Most of the mutations are either harmful or have no affect... but some help the organism to be better adapted to it's environment.

  In fact, scientists CAUSE mutations in organisms in the lab. A simple expiriment is done in which bacteria is cultured on two separate dishes. One dish is exposed to radiation as the bacteria reproduce, causing a greater frequency of genetic mutations and the other dish is left alone. After several (hundreds, thousands?) generations both dishes are exposed to an antibacterial agent. Guess which dish has some living bacteria at the end of the trial?

  Think about that and how that relates to beneficial genetic mutations.

  No... small mutations like that don't make a new species, but with natural selection, they can cause a certain individuals within a population to be more successful. Those more successful individuals reproduce more and cause their genes to be more abundant within the population. If this population is split geographically, then the genetic information within both populations can diverge... and over time they can diverge to the point in which the populations no longer sexually reproduce with each other. This is an example of speciation and it takes time. This has been specifically observed.

  The only thing that has not been specifically observed, but there is overwhelming evidence for it, is 'macroevolution'. The argument that it cannot be directly observed, thus it cannot be proven is not valid because we have plenty of indirect evidence of it. (Not everything in science is based on direct observations... but when you have several independent pieces of indirect evidence suggesting the same thing, then the theory becomes solid). A case in point is that no one has ever witnessed a mountain range forming, but we know exactly how it happened... due to continental drift and plate techtonics. Building mountain ranges is an extremely slow process, as is 'macroevolution'. We don't disbelieve continental drift because it's too slow to notice. Many many tiny, almost immeasurable 'micro-events' build up over time to one 'macro-event' - the building of a mountain.

  Continuing on with the analogy with continental drift... you may say, "well we know continental drift is true because we can actually measure how fast the continents are moving in relationship to one another with sophisticated satellite technology." This is true... and it is the same as saying, "we know that macroevolution is true because we can actually measure how fast genes change within populations and calculate back the time when species and higher level groups diverged... and this is independently verified by fossil evidence which shows the bush-like evolution of life in the rocks. So we can infer that the tiny genetic changes that happen in populations today (microevolution) ammount to large changes over great stretches of time (macroevolution) - just like continental drift."

  There is no reason to believe that genetic change was any different in organisms thousands and millions of years ago than it is today... so there is plenty of time for the genes to branch and split into the type of life we see today. Otherwise you have to explain some type of stasis that keeps genes from mutating over millions of years, and so far there hasn't been any mechanism found to explain such a thing. Mutations are a normal and common part of reproduction.

  For me, it's simple: if you dig into the dirt, you see fossils of ancient animals. These animals are a lot different than life today. So you have a couple of options (maybe more). 1) God created all this life and then decided he didn't like it and destroyed it all and created new modern life forms (and he did this many times as shown in the fossil record). Or 2) Life evolved over time and survived through several extinction events which gave certain organisms advantages over others (mammals over dinosaurs) and that is why modern life-forms are different from ancient ones.

  You have to explain it somehow because there haven't been any Trilobites in a long long time . To me, the expirimenting god explanation is just silly, and the evolutionary explanation, in addition to fitting all of the observed facts, just makes sense.

  rem

  Edited by - rem on 27 September 2002 17:50:41
• 

  crownboy

  tkmmorgan, i'm glad who have/ will review the info we have provided you. Ignoring the fact I have seen much of the creationist arguments you presented here before, I did read much of your material. Hopefully, the fact that I was readily able to point to many errors and provide you with documentation will help you think about the evolution debate in a different light.

  Nice post, rem.

  To address the point about "fatal mutations", basically, the "model" you have of mutations in your head in relation to evolution is wrong, as it disregards the role of natural selection in the mix. Indeed most mutations aren't benefical, but most are neutral, not deletrious, though indeed there tends to be more deleterious ones than benefical ones. The model you have in mind would best be illustrated by imagining a construction worker who makes 99 mistakes for every 100 things he does, and therefore causes more damage on a construction site than positive work. However, in the evolutionary model, the construction worker would have a method called natural selection that automatically disposes of the 99 errors he makes and only implements the one positive move, so, overtime, the worker can build a palace.

  The reason my illustration works is because in evolution (as you pointed out), a deleterious mutation causes death, or at the very least very adverse consequences on the mutation carrier. This causes the person with the malady to die off and not have any offspring (or very few), WHICH MEANS THE DELETERIOUS MUTATION IS LIMITED TO ONE PERSON in most cases (before the advent of mordern medicine, at least). But a person/animal with a positive mutation will leave more offspring and will allow it to proliferate in the gene pool. Natural selection therefore weeds out the bad mutations and keeps the good ones, and over billions of years, genetic palaces are built on the positive mutations that proliferate.

  The AIDS/ cold virus situation you presented is once again a good case of evolution. Indeed, it would be very odd if a cold virus were to randomly mutate into an AIDS virus, but how do you think the AIDS virus got here to begin with? Unless you believe god created it by divine fiat, then you would have to conclude that the AIDS virus evolved from some other, older virus, as did the cold virus(es). If you trace back the lineage of both viruses (supposing that can be done), you would probably find out that they came from an original virus strain an absurdly long time ago, after which they branched out, and through modifications that take place with a vaste amount of time, they are the two viruses we see (at least microscopically ) today, much like what happened when man and ape branched away from each other 6 million years ago.

  Once again, happy reading and see you around.
• 

  Xander

  You have to explain it somehow because there haven't been any Trilobites in a long long time . To me, the expirimenting god explanation is just silly, and the evolutionary explanation, in addition to fitting all of the observed facts, just makes sense.

  Hey, I like this.

  I think this is perhaps the most succint and SIMPLE (very important to certain crowds) argument I've seen.

  Me likes.