Anti-Creationists Backed Into a Corner?

They're not made of compressed dehydrated coffee grounds?

Not the one sitting in my living room. That’s wood.

A modern example of clumping would be slime molds.

Has there been any scientific observations of slime mold evolving into a higher life form?

Thank you for the definitions…

So, is anyone who doubts the ‘theory of common descent’ a creationist?.

Not necessarily - but again, why can't you stick to the topic? The original post was about creationists and their lame and/or disingenuous attempts to refute evolution.

“…both creationist and evolutionary theories make historical claims about past causal events, both theories offer causal explanations that do not explain by natural law. The theory of common descent, a central thesis of Darwin's Origin of Species, does not explain by natural law. Common descent explains by postulating hypothetical historical events (and a pattern of events) which, if actual, would explain a variety of presently observed data. The theory of common descent makes claims about what happened in the past-namely, that unobserved transitional organisms existed forming a genealogical bridge between presently existing life forms. Thus, on the theory of common descent, a postulated pattern of events, not a law, does the main explanatory work.”

“Similarly, as Laudan notes, scientists often make existence claims about past events or present processes without knowing the natural laws on which they depend. As he notes, "Darwin took himself to have established the existence of [the mechanism of] natural selection almost a half century before geneticists were able to lay out the laws of heredity on which natural selection depended." –Dewolf

Transition from primitive jawless fish to sharks, skates, and rays.

Transition from from primitive jawless fish to bony fish

Transition from primitive bony fish to amphibians

Transitions among amphibians

Transition from amphibians to amniotes (first reptiles)

Some transitions among reptiles

Transition from synapsid reptiles to mammals

Transition from diapsid reptiles to birds

Condylarths, the first hoofed animals

Cetaceans (whales, dolphins)

Perissodactyls (horses, tapirs, rhinos)

Elephants

Sirenians (dugongs & manatees)

Artiodactyls (cloven-hoofed animals)

That wasn't your question. You asked if one-celled organisms could clump. Slime molds mostly live as one-celled organisms. Then they all join together and push up a stalk which then gives off spores.

[A good overview of falsifiable claims of evolution is here.]

What amazing depth of logic and reasoning.

Thanks for noticing.

[Based solely on the theory of common descent and the genetics of known organisms, we strongly predict that we will never find any modern species from known phyla on this Earth with a foreign, non-nucleic acid genetic material. We also make the strong prediction that all newly discovered species that belong to the known phyla will use the "standard genetic code" or a close derivative thereof.]

Quite a risky prediction wouldn't you say?

Yes indeed, since there's nothing in an "intelligent design" scenario which would guarantee such an outcome -- the "designer" could well have decided to make a batch of life using a different "material", "encoding", or "encoding language".

Not all the programs I write are in C++, for example. I use different languages, and sometimes different operating systems entirely, for different tasks.

But that's still one of the "safer" predictions, of course. Funny you focussed on only that one to be snide about instead of all the others...

Meanwhile, the "creationist theory" doesn't make *any* falsifiable predictions. And when faced with a "this makes no sense from a design standpoint" issue (like endogenous retrovirus fragments in DNA that seem to only be explainable by common ancestry), they just shrug and say, "God chose to do it that way". That, of course, can (and is) used to ignore *any* uncomfortable finding which seems inconsistent with "design". Or more to the point, it's used as an excuse to make *anything* one could *possibly* find "fit" a "design" belief (note I don't say "theory", because a "theory" has to be predictive).

[Try doing more research before you engage in your own "spin" next time.]

What is this, "friendly" fire? I suggest you do a bit of research yourself.

Perhaps I misunderstood your short comment. When you said "It must be depressing when spin is all you have left", I thought you were labeling the statement from 200 scientists affirming evolution as just "spin".

Dr. Hovind has a great creation curriculum.

Thanks, that's the funniest thing I've read all day.

In a field full of way-out-there creationists, Hovind is one of the most "out there".

Hovind is such a hoot he gets his own wing at the talk.origins archive. He's so way out there that even Answers in Genesis, a young-earth creationist website, lists a boatload of Hovind's howlers on their Arguments we think creationists should NOT use web resource. On their Maintaining Creationist Integrity page, which is devoted *entirely* to rebutting Kent Hovind, they write:

In the interests of maintaining Christian/creationist integrity, we believed we had to respond to Kent Hovind’s critique (albeit with a heavy heart), particularly because of the mistakes in facts and logic which do the creationist cause no good.

No, I was dismissing as spin the article's lone characterization of the statement as having been made by "more than 200 evolutionists" which is true but completely misleading - in the traditional creationist style.

You actually believe it is possible to find a creature from a KNOWN phylum that is not from a KNOWN phylum!!?

No, I was dismissing as spin the article's lone characterization of the statement as having been made by "more than 200 evolutionists" which is true but completely misleading - in the traditional creationist style.

Well, you might try telling us how "more than 200" is misleading.

Funny you focussed on only that one to be snide about instead of all the others...

I'm glad you're so easily amused.

Meanwhile, the "creationist theory" doesn't make *any* falsifiable predictions. And when faced with a "this makes no sense from a design standpoint" issue (like endogenous retrovirus fragments in DNA that seem to only be explainable by common ancestry), they just shrug and say, "God chose to do it that way". That, of course, can (and is) used to ignore *any* uncomfortable finding which seems inconsistent with "design". Or more to the point, it's used as an excuse to make *anything* one could *possibly* find "fit" a "design" belief (note I don't say "theory", because a "theory" has to be predictive).

And exactly how does all your blather here affirm the Darwininian theory?

Why do you support the lies they've been told for decades.

That's just it -- I *dont'* support the creationists' lies.

1) Drawings of man evolving from ape, made from whole cloth, with no fossile evidence to support it.

You're kidding, right? Read 'em and weep. Or do a web search for "hominid fossils". Man, you guys have *got* to start reading some material other than creationist screeds. Crack open a science book sometime. Hell, even "Discover" magazine would broaden your horizons immensely.

2) The lie of Lucy, where the supposed knee and hip bones determined upright walking, were found half a mile apart in soil depths that varied over 60 feet. They are NOT from the same creature! And the good doctor will not answer questions on this issue.

Speaking of creationist lies... Lucy's knee was not (let me repeat that, *NOT*) found "half a mile" from her hip. Creationists love to lie and claim that, though. Click here for the real story. Short form: A *different* knee joint was found in a separate site a few kilometers away. *Lucy's* knee was found where one would expect it -- *with* Lucy. Creationists have been confusing one with the other, perhaps on purpose. Excerpt:

To summarize: At least seventeen creationists have made this bogus claim. Three have never responded in any way to questions about it (Girouard, Menton, Willis). Another two have not responded to further inquiries (Brown, McAllister). Only five have shown a willingness to discuss the matter (Chittick, the Nuttings, Sharp, Taylor), but one (Chittick) cut off correspondence. Four have agreed that the claim was in error and agreed to stop making it (Hovind, McAllister, Sharp, Taylor), and two agreed to stop making it if further investigation showed that the claim was bogus (the Nuttings) but have continued to repeat it. One (Arndts) has indicated a willingness to believe that the claim is in error but no interest in researching further or offering a correction because the article in which he made the claim just used it as an example of a type of error in reasoning. One (LaHaye) has insisted that the claim is not in error, but agreed to stop making it at the request of the Institute for Creation Research. Three (Baugh, Huse, Mehlert) have not yet been contacted for comment. One (Brown) now denies having made the claim at all. Only three (Menton, Morris, Sharp) have issued public corrections or clarifications.

3) The difference between adaptation within a species and transition from one species to another are ignored. And the former is extrapolated to predict the later, with no evidence.

What "difference" would that be, please? Be precise and specific. There *is* no "difference". In fact, some changes within a species are larger than the changes that have caused one species to spring from another.

As for "no evidence", I again invite you to eventually get around to reading one of those "science book" things you must have heard about in passing.

For a brief overview, however, check out the Macroevolution FAQ, Barriers to Evolution, Introduction to Evolutionary Biology, and especially Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ

4) The definition of species being blatently and unscientifically revised to respond to this shortcoming. etc.......

Oh look, another creationist lie...

The definition isn't "unscientifically revised"; on the contrary it's revised to *fit* what science discovers. The major part of the problem is that contrary to the creationists' simplistic notion that nature "knows" what a species is and "keeps" things from evolving out of those boundaries, in truth "species" is just a man-made concept, and when you start examining nature in all its forms and messiness, no one firm definition of "species" manages to include all the things that people would generally agree *are* species while excluding those things which people would agree *aren't* species. Nature isn't as simple as we try to pigeonhole it.

Here's a brief overview of the issue from the talk.origins archive:

There is a long answer. You can find it discussed in the listed books and references, but if you want a shorter answer, here it is:
Because species evolve many different ways of being isolated from each other, and because species are sometimes only partially isolated from each other, there is no simple definition that covers all cases of being species without at the same time also covering things that are not species. Likewise, if we give some criterion like reproductive separation, which is what most of the biology textbooks give, then there are plenty of cases where species are not perfectly isolated or where they can, but do not usually, interbreed. Even then, some organisms - as you note, plants, but also corals, bacteria, and some animals, especially birds and lizards - don't meet the criteria and will happily interbreed across species boundaries.
So, we have either got the problem of many different definitions of species (called, for obvious reasons, "pluralism") or we say that only one kind of definition is truly species (like the one in the textbooks) and that all other organisms are not actually organised into species (a view called "monism"). I personally find it odd to say that only a small part of the living world forms species, and so I push for a pluralism; on the grounds that evolution generates diversity and one form of diversity is ways of being species.
Anyway, here are the links and the books. The best introduction for the general reader is the one by Schilthuizen - it gives the history and biology in simple terms. Mayden's article is the most comprehensive list of all species concepts in the literature to date:

Links

Observed Instances of Speciation FAQ
Tulane course notes
Biosis links
American Museum of Natural History notes
Ruedas' notes
UC Davis Notes

References
Ereshefsky, Marc, ed. 1992. The units of evolution: Essays on the nature of species. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hey, Jody. 2001. Genes, concepts and species: the evolutionary and cognitive causes of the species problem. New York: Oxford University Press.
Howard, Daniel J., and Stewart H. Berlocher. 1998. Endless forms: species and speciation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mallet, James. 2001. Species, concepts of. In Encyclopedia of biodiversity, edited by S. A. Levin. New York: Academic Press.
Mayden, R. L. 1997. A hierarchy of species concepts: the denoument in the saga of the species problem. In Species: The units of diversity, edited by M. F. Claridge, H. A. Dawah and M. R. Wilson. London: Chapman and Hall.
Schilthuizen, Menno. 2001. Frogs, flies, and dandelions: the making of species. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wilson, Robert A. 1999. Species: new interdisciplinary essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Nature is complex. Science properly catalogs that complexity, then when creationists can't keep up they whine that scientists "keep changing the answer" and must be up to something nefarious...

That wasn't your question. You asked if one-celled organisms could clump.

Yes, and then you answered that question, so I then asked another one.

Then they all join together and push up a stalk which then gives off spores.

So this is a complex, multi-celled organism?

[Science is extremely tolerant of criticism -- IN THE RIGHT FORUM.]

Nobody believes except (maybe) some of you unteachable darwinists.

"Nobody", eh? Care to document that sweeping overgeneralization? I thought not...

An equivalent statemen would be "Creationism is extremely tolerant of criticism -- IN THE RIGHT FORUM."

Sure -- now we just have to search long and hard to figure out where that forum might be. So far, I haven't found one where I haven't been called a blasphemer for questioning The Word.

I'm sure the kissers of Charlie's feet would accept that.

If there's a point in your rant, you might want to try presenting it next time instead of your childish taunts.

[Horse manure -- this only shows that you haven't a clue how the process even works. It's not like there's a sign-up sheet or membership card which can be denied.]

Sometimes, yes.

So there *are* venues open to dissenters. Thanks for confirming my point.

My reputation needs defending with you like Bush's reputation needs defending with the democrats.

I'll take that as a refusal to retract your errors. You made your choice.

It's hard to tell with you evos-- whether you are just plain ignorant of the information out there or whether you want to see if creationist can find it. I suspect the former because when we present it your view loses.

ROFL!!!! Really? Where?!?

Truly, you guys are legends in your own minds.

The funny thing is one the one hand you whine that you're being "excluded" from presenting criticism by The Conspiracy, then you turn right around and prematurely declare that you've already won the war. You'd have more credibility if you picked one story and stuck with it.

Read it and weep:

When US President Benjamin Franklin wrote "nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes", he should have checked with a scientist.

And your source should have "checked with a historian". If they can't get the easy stuff right -- IN THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE, how can we trust them with the tougher material?

I'm weeping all right, but with laughter.

For first, researchers must bare their methods and results to the scrutiny of their peers. In this way, the prestigious scientific journals decide what gets published and, hence, what breakthroughs we hear about.

So publish in the less prestigious journals or start your own, if your stuff can't pass muster in the more respected ones...

But a report out this month from a well-respected international collaboration of scientists will reveal that this time-honoured system of peer review, which has existed in some form for at least 200 years, is possibly bunk.

Get back to us if they ever move past "possibly".

Actually, as the "President Ben Franklin" boner reveals so well, you creationists would really be better served by going to original sources rather than relying on Nth-hand popularizations of actual research, by folks with their own axes to grind and biases to color their "repackaging".

So looking at the summary of the study written by its *authors* (instead of someone who thinks Franklin was President), we find something far less shocking than denouncing peer-review as "bunk":

Conclusions: Editorial peer review, although widely used, is largely untested and its effects are uncertain.

Well now, that's pretty wishy-washy, isn't it?

Reading their intro and methodology, it's clear that their point is just that peer-review has not itself been rigorously studied much. Fine, but it has certainly produced great results for over a century, and *that* can't be hand-waved away with mealy-mouthed comments like "its effects are uncertain". The same group did a "survey of studies" on the topic and found:

Two studies of how journals communicate with reviewers did not demonstrate any effect on review quality. One study failed to show reviewer bias, but the findings may not be generalizable. One nonrandomized study compared the quality of articles published in peer-reviewed vs other journals. Two studies showed that editorial processes make articles more readable and improve the quality of reporting, but the findings may have limited generalizability to other journals.

Etc. etc., blah blah blah.

He said: "We had great difficulty in finding any real hard evidence of the system's effectiveness, which is disappointing, as peer-review is the cornerstone of editorial policies worldwide."

Note that he doesn't mention finding "any real hard evidence" that it's *not* effective, either... He's just bitching about the lack of findings either way. In short, it's a call for more studies (and maybe more funding...)

Get back to us when you find something that's actually noteworthy, and which ACTUALLY SUPPORTS YOUR POINT.

Then, as a separate cite, you offerred:

Much of the material shown posted as "responses to critics" on this website was originally submitted to several science journals for consideration for publication. In every case it was turned down. Below I have included the correspondence between the journals and myself. Names of journals and individuals have been omitted. The take-home lesson I have learned is that, while some science journal editors are individually tolerant and will entertain thoughts of publishing challenges to current views, when a group (such as the editorial board) gets together, orthodoxy prevails.

ROFL!!!

Thanks for proving *my* point.

That's a listing of rejections given to MICHAEL BEHE (discussed earlier). And contrary to proving *your* point, it proves *mine*. The reasons given for the various rejections do *not* support your assertion that creationists are being "blackballed". On the contrary, the rejections show that the reasons are 1) improper type of submission for journal, 2) too many errors in the submission, 3) Behe wasn't sticking to scientific methods, etc. etc.

In short, he was rejected for being unable to meet their standards. And just as I've said already, it's no damned wonder given the shoddy work of Behe in particular and creationists in general.

See? You guys just can't take criticism and your theory doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

I "see" that your conclusion does not follow from your off-base "evidence".

Try again. Or better yet, give it a rest.

Someone's saved you the bother: 300 Creationist Lies.

...and that's just from a *single* creationist! They sure are prolific...

You know what is flat-out amazing? An ordinary intelligent being would acknowledge that Hitler was mistaken in his use of evolutionary theory to justify the ovens. But most of the evos either end up defending him or they try to make him into a creationist/christian.

When has any evolutionist on these threads ever tried to defend Hitler???

[As a reminder, I asked earlier how you would define a "kind", a term apparently critical to the Creation Science curriculum suggested by Remedy (as in plants and animals only reproduce after their own 'kind'). Any answer?]

Look, atlaw, there is no definition of "kind" that the evos will accept

That's a nice way of admitting that the creationists have yet to come up with a real definition of "kind" -- a definition which isn't self-contradictory or unusably vague. But that doesn't stop them from using it, I note.

Therefore are you are asking me for a definition which you have rejected before it is given?

No, he's asking you -- or anyone -- to rigorously define a term that creationists keep using. Does it have any real meaning or not? And when they claim that things can only evolve within their own "kind", what exactly do they mean? Do they mean *anything*?

However, evolutionists admit the problem and accept the concept of "kind" inasmuch as they admit the lack of transitional fossils.

Whatever you're smoking, you might want to lay off.

Transitions between what?

Transitions between different species, of course. And many of those transitions are quite large in degree, to the point that the transitions span taxa.

You see before you, unveiled, the New Way of handling lack of transitionals. Denial!

Oh really? Where, exactly, is such alleged behavior "before" us? Quote the post, if you think you can.

And if you think there is a "lack of transitionals", you've definitely been reading too many creationist tracts and too few science journals.