Coulter vs Darwin

Godless | 06/06 | Ann Coulter

[tomzz]

You can't help but notice that there is a very vocal sort of a little clique of evolutionists on FreeRepublic, and there has always been a question in a lot of people's minds as to whether or not the theory of evolution is in any way compatible with conservatism.

This new book ("Godless") of Ann Coulter's should pretty much settle the issue.

Ann does not mince words, and she has quite a lot to say about evolution:

"Liberals' creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory which is a tautology, with no proof in the scientists laboratory or the fossil record, and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God....

It gets better from there, in fact a lot better. Ann provides a context for viewing the liberal efforts to shut down everything resembling debate on the subject in courtrooms and makes a general case that it is the left and not the right, which is antithetical to science in general. Anybody interested in this question of American society and the so-called theory of evolution should have a copy of this book

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Observe that I never asserted that you made a tautological statement, I challenged you to replace your erstwhile debating opponent's tautological version of natural selection with a manifestly non-tautological one."

I did.

"Your debating tactics are on the order of a school-yard "am not" "are too" exchange."

Yours are on the order of "I'm not listening!! I'm not listening!!"

"For the good of the defense of neo-Darwinism, or any other cause you believe in, either learn to answer challenges with something more substantive than "is not", "you're wrong" or stop trying to defend your beliefs publicly."

Or what?

[The_Reader_David]

I plainly recall that it was in response to a request for a post number in which you had made the reformulation that you started your "I didn't make a tautological statement" nonsense. That was a textual equivalent of "Sorry, I didn't get that, could you repeat it?" not of a repeated "I'm not listening."

. . .Or what? A very odd response to a bit of advice beginning "For the good of. . ." obviously, or you'll harm your cause by making its defenders look boorish and arrogant.

Climb off your high horse, and give me a post number, or you're doing just that.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"I plainly recall that it was in response to a request for a post number in which you had made the reformulation that you started your "I didn't make a tautological statement" nonsense."

I didn't make a tautological statement, though I did make a statement about natural selection.


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1646185/posts?page=780#759

"That was a textual equivalent of "Sorry, I didn't get that, could you repeat it?" not of a repeated "I'm not listening." "

Since I already answered the question, it is the later, not the former.

"A very odd response to a bit of advice beginning "For the good of. ."

You made an odd statement, what do you expect?

"Climb off your high horse, and give me a post number, or you're doing just that."

I already answered you.

[Polybius]

..........there has always been a question in a lot of people's minds as to whether or not the theory of evolution is in any way compatible with conservatism.

The Catholic Church finds no conflict between the Bible and evolution. The Bible, the Catholic Church teaches, uses allegories, just as Jesus used allegories, and a "day" in Genesis may be more than merely a 24 hour day.

"With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

What you are saying is that a conservative can only be someone who interprets the Bible in the same way that you do.

Once you set up such a standard for membership in the Conservative Club, you are guaranteeing yourself perpetual membership in the Minority Club.

The bottom line is the Coulter does not need to mix conflicts of political beliefs with conflicts of religious beliefs. One has nothing to do with the other.

"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

[The_Reader_David]

Thank you. You supplied the relevant post number (and a link, what's more). That's the sort of courtesy I would have expected from the first.

I see you really do believe that inserting a probability into a statement makes it non-tautological, and rather than saying something like, "what in the world do you mean? the post you replied to contained a non-tautological statement", gave me brag and bluster instead.

It is an odd fact that there are many theorems about probabilities, all of which are tautologies.

As a simple example: Whenever a statement of the form "A if and only if B" is a tautology, then the statement "[A occurs with probability >=p] if and only if [B occurs with probability >=p]" is also a tautology.

The schema above seems to me to apply perfectly to your reformulation (in post 759) of FC's tautology in an attempt to make a non-tautological statement of natural selection. If it doesn't kindly give some reasoned argumentation to explain how I've gone wrong, rather than the guff you've been giving me.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Thank you. You supplied the relevant post number (and a link, what's more). That's the sort of courtesy I would have expected from the first."

I had told you that from the beginning.

"I see you really do believe that inserting a probability into a statement makes it non-tautological,..."

You have not shown where it is tautological.

"It is an odd fact that there are many theorems about probabilities, all of which are tautologies."

Good for them.

"If it doesn't kindly give some reasoned argumentation to explain how I've gone wrong, rather than the guff you've been giving me."

It would be tautological if I said that those who are fittest always reproduce. I didn't say that. I said that those who are fittest have a better chance to reproduce than those less fit. Sometimes the fitter die young.

Here's a decent account:

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/11/is-natural-selection-tautology.php

[tomzz]

The Catholic Church finds no conflict between the Bible and evolution.

What about the conflict between evolution and modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic? Does any of that bother the people running the Catholic church these days?

[grey_whiskers]

If you ask the questions to the extremists just the right way, you will notice is what they really want is an Islamic type of government for their Christian beliefs. Forced prayer in school. Verbal abuse such as I heard in another thread, "your mother is a prostitute" because the person liked the DaVinci Code. Strict adherence to the letter of the bible. Defining the bible as "law". Yep, sounds like Islam to me. And what you will see in coming years is more of a movement away from school prayer, away from government sponsored religion, etc, because extremists have no limits. Once they get their way once, they are plowing over people's rights to get the next thing on their agenda accomplished.

I think you're over-reaching. Many of the Christians remember when Christianity ("cultural" or "nominal") was the accepted norm or majority; they could gain widespread adoption of outward Christian forms because they had the consensus of a majority of the population.

With the Gramsci-ing of the United States, and the devoted lifelong efforts of a few, the philosophical Balkanization of the US took this away...as a start.

They are just longing for the days of an easy, comfortable consensus centered more or less on their views.

Cheers!

[Coyoteman]

What about the conflict between evolution and modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic?

Its right up there with global warming.

You can "prove" anything with math or statistics. Don't ping me until you have some actual evidence.

[Polybius]

What about the conflict between evolution and modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic? Does any of that bother the people running the Catholic church these days?

And what conflicts might those be?

Has it ever occurred to you that Intelligent Design over millions of years by the Hand of God might be an answer?

Has it ever occurred to you that in all the galaxies with billions of stars and tens of billions of planets, God might have given the odds to probability?

I have yet to hear a plausible answer from Protestant denominations that teach that life on the Planet Earth is less than 10,000 years old that explains:

All the religious bickering, however, is irrelevant.

The bottom line, that your religious beliefs have no place in determining the legitimacy of anybody else's political beliefs.

They are totally separate issues and Coulter should not be mixing the two as a litmus test to distinguish between conservatives and liberals.

"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

[grey_whiskers]

I have yet to hear a plausible answer from Protestant denominations that teach that life on the Planet Earth is less than 10,000 years old that explains:

Say, is that Dan Rather, or is it Sen. Robert Byrd (KKK-WV)?

Cheers!

[SaveUS]

"They are just longing for the days of an easy, comfortable consensus centered more or less on their views."

The problem is, they let too many of their true views sneak out in the process. They say they want a peaceful Christian nation, but when challenged on a point some go off the deep end.

[tomzz]

And what conflicts might those be?

Consider what is required for flying birds to evolve; actually any complex kind of creature presents the same dilemma, but flying birds are probably the easiest case to visualize.

You need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems which are radically different from anything found on non-flying creatures: flight feathers, the system for turning flight feathers so that they open on upstrokes, wings, beaks (since you won't have hands to feed yourself with after you develop wings, specialized light bone structures, specialized high capacity hearts and flow-through lungs, a specialized tail and specialized balance parameters...

All of these things would be anti-condusive to survival prior to the whole picture being in place; the chance of evolving any of these features via mutation and surviving for more than an hour or two would be an infinitessimal.

Moreover, in probability theory, to compute the combined probability of two or more things happening at the same time, you multiply the individual probabilities together. The odds of all the things needed to be a flying bird coming together by chance are thus some tenth or twelth order infinitessimal, which basically renders the entire idea impossible.

Moreover, assuming these things "evolve" separately and even assuming the first has evolved, by the time another ten thousand generations rolls around and the second evolves, the first, having been antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and/or become vestigial.

The mathematical case against evolution in general terms can be viewed here, and not a single word about religion is involved.

Has it ever occurred to you that Intelligent Design over millions of years by the Hand of God might be an answer?

No. I don't picture God using unworkable methods.

[tomzz]

Oh, yeah, you seem to like tyranosaur pictures. Try this one:

That's what tyranosaur meat looks like. Scientists broke a tyranosaur leg bone apart last summer to get it into a small helicopter and that's what they found. Similar soft tissue has since been found in several other dinosaur bones.

MSNBC/Reuters version of the story.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"All of these things would be anti-condusive to survival prior to the whole picture being in place..."

Nonsense. There are intermediaries that have one or more of these traits but not all that do/did fine.

"the chance of evolving any of these features via mutation and surviving for more than an hour or two would be an infinitessimal."

And I am sure you can provide the relevant calculations to back this up.

"Moreover, in probability theory, to compute the combined probability of two or more things happening at the same time, you multiply the individual probabilities together. The odds of all the things needed to be a flying bird coming together by chance are thus some tenth or twelth order infinitessimal, which basically renders the entire idea impossible."

Of course, if you knew anything about probability theory you would know just how silly that example was. There is absolutely no reason to expect or demand that every trait would come together at exactly the same time. That's the problem with creationists and probability calculations... the calculations may be figured correctly, but they have no relationship to any process in nature.

"the first, having been antifunctional all the while,"

There is no reason at all to assume this. None.

"No. I don't picture God using unworkable methods."

But *poofing* creatures out of thin air is workable? lol

[js1138]

When you refer to "meat," what exactly are you implying?

I'm just curious how far you wish to go on this limb before it is sawed off.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"That's what tyranosaur meat looks like."

Not that lie again. How dishonest can one person be? Please tell us what hidden info you have that the researchers who investigated this find don't have that would make you exchange *meat* for *remnants of blood (possibly)*? You DO know that *meat* means muscle right? Who has said ANY muscle was found, at all?

And, for the lurkers, the relevant area of the bone that became soft after a chemical treatment is 3mm in diameter. Only someone with a very creative sense of integrity could call it *meat*.

[SaveUS]

Goob, that ain't "Tyranosaur meat". I don't know whether to laugh uncontrollably or say STHU. 65 MILLION years. No meat. They are all rock now. Since I am new to the "Tyranosuar meat" theory, I take it this is an attempt by an absolute baffoon to put dinosaurs here a few thousand years ago?
And besides, I think the pic a actually a Buffalo Wing the guy was eating when he was looking through the microscope.

[tomzz]

"All of these things would be anti-condusive to survival prior to the whole picture being in place..."

Nonsense. There are intermediaries that have one or more of these traits but not all that do/did fine.

Those "intermediaries", i.e. ostriches, kiwis, penguins and the like which one assumes is what you are talking about, are on their way down, and not on their way up. All are descended from birds which used to fly.

What you're talking about is equivalent to looking at wrecked cars in a junkyard and claiming that they are metal and rubber evolving their way to being fully functional cars in the showroom a few years hence, and that they are about halfway there.

[tomzz]

Like I say, all of the news wires had versions of that story a year or so ago when it surfaced, and what I have posted is the url for the Reuters version of it on MSNBC. If you think Bill Gates and MSNBC and Reuters are perpetrating a fraud on the public, you need to call them up and inform them of it.

The material in the picture is what it is. There's no way in hell you can apply any sort of chemical treatment to 65 million year old materials and derive anything which looks like that.