Being attacked by Militant Atheist Group - Advise?

Yomin Postelnik

[tacticalogic]

Ask the mod, mate. I don’t run this show.

I think I just bought a ticket on the merry-go-round.

[js1138]

Once again, if you claim I have been offensive, then I want to see which posts specifically offend you.

Dave, you have nothing to contribute to science threads. When you had your debate you couldn't even come up with arguments in your own words in a reasonable time. You know nothing about the history of science, can't even understand the definition of evolution after arguing about it for several years.

This is offensive. You start arguments about topics you don't understand, fail to learn the simplest concepts.

Now, as for interpretations, interpret this: Supernova SN1987A allows us, through trigonometry, to set an absolute minimum age for the universe of 168,000 years, regardless of the speed of light and regardless of any changes in the speed of light. Discuss. Try to do so in less than a week.

[js1138]

The processes themselves may exist, but have never demonstrably caused the change required to prove evolution.

Give me an example of a change mechanism required by evolution that cannot be observed today, or which has not been observed and studied in the laboratory.

Give me an example of a rate of change from the fossil record that exceeds rates of change that can be observed today.

[js1138]

Furthermore, it's not that you don't know how life started, it's that NO MATTER WHAT, you'll eventually have to contrive a mechanism that defies naturalism, because life from non-life is inherently unscientific.

This is a very risky prediction, one that you are likely to regret. The study of biogenesis is thriving. We will never know the exact history of the beginning of life, but we will have many candidates. There is no vertical cliff separating mere matter from living things. We have molecules that replicate and evolve without cell membranes or cellular machinery, we have mechanisms by which membranes can form naturally, we have many pieces, and are acquiring more.

In case you haven't noticed, this is chemistry, not evolution.

[js1138]

You accuse me of plagiarism, then! You are hereby required to retract that claim or prove it.

Calm down and read my sentence. Words mean things, as Rush says, but you have to read to the end on sentences before flying off the handle.

What I said was you cannot compose an argument or counterargument to a technical question in a reasonable amount of time. In the case of a formal debate, a reasonable amount of time is usually a few minutes. On the Internet it is reasonable to allow potty breaks and sleep, but a week exceeds reasonable, particularly if the person taking a week is the person who set up the debate and invited observers.

You simply don't have the background to challenge tens of thousands of working scientists. You insult them every time you post stuff that is obvious nonsense.

You don't even understand the creationist argument. You talk about the failure to observe events like speciation, but you depend on AIG for your technical arguments, and AIG asserts that not only has speciation occurred in historical times, but also that branching of fauna to the level of Family has occurred in historical times.

If you are going to use a source of "interpretation" that contradicts mainstream science, you should at least be aware of what they say.

[TigersEye]

So non-living matter to living matter isn’t change?

That question is a non-sequitur. An intentional misdirection and a perfect example of your enormous pomposity. It isn't possible that you aren't intelligent enough to draw the appropriate distinctions especially since you have had them laid out to you in great detail over and over again. Straw man arguments in general aren't worthy of answering but when you invent you own definition for someone else's thought processes and substitute your own, as you do when you argue with the evolutionists, you not only create a false premise to argue from you set yourself up on a pedestal as an omniscient being who not only knows other's thoughts you actually create them for them. The height of your arrogance is beyond Pharaoh's it is Caesarian in nature. You have classed your own mind beyond the meaning of words or the need to respect anything or anyone other than yourself.

Haven't you heard this all before in one form or another? Answering your question will only lead to further misdirection and presumptuous posturing. You can't accept any reply that contradicts the positions you have already taken even if it means twisting yourself into a pretzel of logic to define their motivation and intent. Even if it means accusing them of the very tactics you are employing. No matter how far out on a logical and intellectual limb you have to go.

There is no point in answering your question. Even without your extreme narcissism behind it the premise of your question is flawed. It might make sense if you were honestly asking it of an evolution theory proponent but as I stated before I am not. One has to have a materialist POV to ask the question much less answer it.

[valkyry1]

Please give citations of your self-replicating molecules.

IIRC, what I found was that one of the researcher’s concluded that the reaction only mimicked a self-replication. I think it was described as auto-catalytic. What happens in the cell is hardly auto-catalytic.

In any proposition, there are environments, events and processes that initiate and sustain the generation or recombination of molecules.

[TigersEye]

Planetary trajectories species origins no more require addressing the origin of the planets life than the bullet wound requires an explanation of its origin.

Same logic. Same refusal to acknowledge it.

[js1138]

Respond to my previous posts to you and I will continue the discussion.

I worded my post on molecules that replicate without cell membranes or machinery exactly as I intended it to be worded. I haven’t claimed that anyone has created life de novo, just that progress is being made on understanding what is needed for mimimal life.

[js1138]

I missed that one. How does a bullet wound not cry out for an explanation? At any rate, I will resubmit my fundamental questions to Dave:

Name a process of genetic change or a type of event required by evolution that is not routinely observed and studied by molecular biologists.

Cite an example in the fossil record of a rate of change that is beyond rates observed today.

[js1138]

I’m thinking that anyone claiming to be wiser and smarter than all the tens of thousands of working scientists who have contributed to Biology and Biochemistry over the past 150 years should be able to answer my two questions off the top of their head. After all, they claim these are key problems.

[TigersEye]

It was a reference to my analogy in this post.

[js1138]

OK, and here's the meat of Dave's response:

Yet the whole of evolution is predicated on an alleged moment billions of years ago when living matter first existed. The assumptions narrow the actual event down, and make a very detailed and specific assumption about what happened.

The bolded part is simply a lie. What Dave is looking for is some handle by which to accuse evilutionists of being atheists. Or more to the point, some feature of the theory of evolution that requires atheism.

This is simple dishonesty. I will openly admit that many facts from physics and geology contradict the most literal possible interpretation of Genesis, but then so do widely accepted notions such as the motion of the earth.

It is a disservice to religion to force everyone into warring camps based on whether they believe the earth moves or doesn't move, or whether the earth is 6000 or 4.5 billion years old, or whether evolution explains biological diversity, or whether all feline species descended from a pair of ur-cats that Noah took on the Ark (as per Ken Ham).

[TigersEye]

The bolded part is simply a lie.

I know. He has set himself up as the final authority on every point even what others mean and how words are defined.

It is a disservice to religion to force everyone into warring camps based on whether they believe the earth moves or doesn't move, or whether the earth is 6000 or 4.5 billion years old, or whether evolution explains biological diversity, or whether all feline species descended from a pair of ur-cats that Noah took on the Ark (as per Ken Ham).

It serves ego pretty well though. Ego will use anything to preserve itself from a perceived threat even the subversion of religion. Actually that is a rather common one. Usurping science on its behalf is a little newer. Trying to wrap oneself in both of them is another wrinkle. Assuming the authority to speak for everyone is nothing new but it's a bit more audacious. Especially when you haven't successfully convinced anyone else of your perfection.

[Coyoteman]

The problem comes from religious belief as espoused by, for example, Answers in Genesis.

They have a Statement of Faith on their website, to which all members must adhere.

Some of the tenets (under "General") are:

1. Scripture teaches a recent origin for man and the whole creation.

2. The days in Genesis do not correspond to geologic ages, but are six [6] consecutive twenty-four [24] hour days of Creation.

3. The Noachian Flood was a significant geological event and much (but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time.

4. The "gap" theory has no basis in Scripture.

5. The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of Biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into "secular" and "religious," is rejected.
6. No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.

When someone believes all of these points they cannot take science literally, because science flatly contradicts these points.

They have to either ignore science, or somehow twist science all out of whack to make it coincide with their beliefs. If tens of thousands of scientists, the folks who actually know the field, have discovered a particular thing but that thing is contradicted by these points, the scientists have to be wrong. It doesn't matter if the believers don't know how or why they are wrong, it must must be so.

But the most glaring examples of this are the Answers in Genesis types who go forth to tell the world in general, and scientists in particular, both that they are wrong and how they are wrong.

This is where we get the "second law of thermal documents" and the points covered in the Index to Creationist Claims.

And it doesn't do any good to argue with these folks. They have wrapped themselves in their beliefs and will not hear a word you write.

[TigersEye]

Your last point is probably your most relevant point to the situation here.

They have wrapped themselves in their beliefs and will not hear a word you write.

When taken out of the heart and stuffed in the ear canal beliefs make excellent ear plugs.

The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of Biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into "secular" and "religious," is rejected.

That is a real problem right there I think. Religious people who don't have the discriminating wisdom to see the difference between religion, which is a worldly and materialistic thing, and spirituality won't be able to appreciate that religion is about spiritual exploration and science is about material exploration.

Obviously there is an inherent conceptual dichotomy between spiritual and material. But confusion arises in the 'religious' person who thinks that he is standing on spiritual ground when he looks at materiality and separates the religious from it. The distinction is made that the religious person views things from a spiritual POV and everyone else, especially scientists, view things from a material POV.

We live in a material plane and all things, spiritual or material, are viewed and understood from that POV first. That is not a problem for scientists because they're not attempting to find anything outside the material box we all find ourselves in. They know where they are and they're not trying to be anywhere else. They're just looking more closely at the box.

But the religious supplicant is trying to see outside that box and ultimately be outside that box and if they begin to think that trying to see outside it is seeing or being outside it then they have made a grave error in judgment and have lost sight of where they actually stand. They have created a false premise as to where their own thought processes come from.

The result of that is making a false distinction between religious and secular people. There are differences but where we are and what we all have to work with are the same. We are all in this world and we all have a mind. When they decide that they are beyond all that nasty materiality of world and mind arrogance and false pride start to grow like mushrooms after a rain storm.

Ego just loves to tell a person "You're special in every way! (wink wink nudge nudge)"

[Soliton]

If not, what specific evidences were discussed during the recent meetings that you feel is most strongly in favor of evolution, or against creationism? Please briefly list three or four, and let's look at them.

I have offered specific scientific evidence many many times on FR in response to specific questions. I have decided not to do so any longer.

Creationist/IDers do not BELIEVE in evidence. Before you help them accept evolution, you have to teach them what evidence is. The fact that they firmly believe in an alternative theory based on zero evidence is my proof.

Had you gone to the link I provided, you would have found symposia on specific research done by PhDs Like "Species Trees and Gene Tree Heterogeneity: Concepts, Estimation and Empirical Applications"; "Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Life History Evolution"; "The Evolution of Recombination Rates: From Hotspots to Whole Genomes".

These are serious people doing serious research. They believe in science, you believe in magic. I don't even mind that you believe in magic. I mind that you insult these scientist by trying to place your magic on the same level as their life-long pursuit of truth.

I will provide you with whatever evidence supporting my viewpoint if you will provide me with scientific ecidence FOR creation, not just nitpicking evolution.