How Much Longer Can They Sell Darwinism?

All across the country, archeologists, paleontologists and biologists are taking part in what is perhaps the greatest example of political correctness in history – their adherence to Darwinism and their attempts to ostracize any scientist who does not agree with them. In doing so, they are not only ignoring the vast buildup of recent scientific discoveries that seriously undermines the basics of Darwinism, but they are also participating, due to politically correctness, in a belief system that indirectly resulted in the deaths of millions of people – those slaughtered by the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Maos, the Pol Pots and others who took their cue from Darwinism’s tenets.

from 1,637 schaef21: "According to your view....it takes thousands/millions of years to lay down rock layers (you may want to revisit an earlier comment that I made about Mount St. Helens as to whether I believe this to be the case.)"

Pal, I'm pretty sure I remember you rightly complaining that I had wrongly put words in your mouth, and I remember apologizing for that.

So, would it be too much for me to ask you to apologize for misrepresenting my arguments?

What the science of geology says is that rock sediments can be laid down over almost any period of time, ranging from instantaneous deposits from volcanoes to the settling of sediments under waters over millions of years.

To determine the age of any particular rock strata, geologists look at everything in and around the layer, including any materials which can be dated by radioactive decay.

I should mention that geologists over many years have developed a grand scheme of things, involving every stratum in the geological columns, so no rock layer is ever dated in isolation from those around it.

schaef21:"In order to be fossilized, something has to be buried rapidly....how exactly would a 20’ long tree trunk going through multiple rock layers get buried quickly if it takes thousands/millions of years for the layers to form?"

Fossils of any kind (plants or animals) can only form when the body is quickly covered with sediments, before normal processes of decomposition have time to take effect. So, typically, we're talking about a flood along a river bank covering up a new corpse or recently fallen tree. That's why there are so few fossils, considering the millions of years of geological history.

Other original sources of fossils include volcanoes, land slides, tar pits, quick sand and shallow anaerobic seas.

The geologists' grand scheme I mentioned says that layers of rock mostly form under water, but then what was under water years ago can get pushed up into mountains, which slowly erode. If the erosion exposes a fossil (like those petrified trees), it may sit partially exposed on the surface until covered up again in a future flood.

Exactly which part of this do you not understand?

from 1,638 schaef21:"Predicting that a fish grew legs and walked on land is not a “verifiable observation”. It is wishful thinking at best and can be best described as I’ve done before....repeat, repeat, repeat.....an example of circular reasoning."

In this regard, there are many facts which are both verifiable and repeatable. Those include:

many living species of fish which obviously "grew legs and walked on land." Lung fish come to mind, but there are others.
every land animal goes through a "fish stage" in its embryonic development, where it seems to be literally a fish with legs.
the fossil record shows ancient fish with fins that look more like legs, and land animals with legs which look more like fins.
DNA analysis shows a close relationship between land animals which look like fish and fish which have some land animal characteristics.

So, it seems to me that physical evidence is pretty conclusive, with nothing "circular" about it. On the other hand, the ID-Creationist effort to deny physical evidence seems transparently religiously motivated.

from 1,638 schaef21: "I ain’t goin’ here again.....the geologic column exists only in the textbooks."

Sorry Pal, but it's statements like this that completely unmask you. You claim to represent some alternative interpretation of scientific data, but this statement reveals you as nothing more than anti-science.

Understand that geology is not evolution, geology is just rocks -- what they are made of, how and when they formed, is what geologists think about. Then biologists studying evolution use the results from geology to date fossils.

So, when you deny evolution, you are also denying geology, which means that basically, you're saying all of science is a Big Lie.

Obviously, I don't agree.

"How come you told me there was a precambrian explosion and then gave me a link to the Cambrian explosion?"

The "precambrian explosion" occurred before the Cambrian Explosion. My google on the term "precambrian explosion" produced the following links:

Precambrian Explosion

Avalon precambrian Explosion

And speaking of Wikipedia, here's what they say about life on earth before the "Cambrian Explosion":

Wikipedia on Cambrian Explosion

"However, evidence of Precambrian metazoa is gradually accumulating. If the Ediacaran Kimberella was a mollusc-like protostome (one of the two main groups of coelomates),[56][17] the protostome and deuterostome lineages must have split significantly before 550 million years ago (deuterostomes are the other main group of coelomates).[74] Even if it is not a protostome, it is widely accepted as a bilaterian.[74][60] Since fossils of rather modern-looking Cnidarians (jellyfish-like organisms) have been found in the Doushantuo lagerstätte, the Cnidarian and bilaterian lineages must have diverged well over 580 million years ago.[74]

"Trace fossils[54] and predatory borings in Cloudina shells provide further evidence of Ediacaran animals.[64] Some fossils from the Doushantuo formation have been interpreted as embryos and one (Vernanimalcula) as a bilaterian coelomate, although these interpretations are not universally accepted.[45][46][75] Earlier still, predatory pressure has acted on stromatolites and acritarchs since around 1,250 million years ago.[41]

"The presence of Precambrian animals somewhat dampens the "bang" of the explosion: not only was the appearance of animals gradual, but their evolutionary radiation ("diversification") may also not have been as rapid as once thought. Indeed, statistical analysis shows that the Cambrian explosion was no faster than any of the other radiations in animals' history.[4]

I take it you are hung up on the word "explosion," which is obviously a dramatic description. But it turns out the "explosion" during the Cambrian was neither greater, nor less, than during other periods, before or after.

More Wikipedia on Precambrian life

"It is not known when life originated, but carbon in 3.8 billion year old rocks from islands off western Greenland may be of organic origin. Well-preserved bacteria older than 3460 million years have been found in Western Australia. Probable fossils 100 million years older have been found in the same area. There is a fairly solid record of bacterial life throughout the remainder of the Precambrian. "Excepting a few contested reports of much older forms from USA and India, the first complex multicelled life forms seem to have appeared roughly 600 Ma. A quite diverse collection of soft-bodied forms is known from a variety of locations worldwide between 542 and 600 Ma. These are referred to as Ediacaran or Vendian biota. Hard-shelled creatures appeared toward the end of that timespan.

"A very diverse collection of forms appeared around 544 Ma, starting in the latest Precambrian with a poorly understood small shelly fauna and ending in the very early Cambrian with a very diverse, and quite modern Burgess fauna, the rapid radiation of forms called the Cambrian explosion of life."

from 1,640 schaef21: "Any Church that teaches “theistic evolution” or anything else that disagrees with those two passages is calling Jesus Christ a liar and should be considered as aberrant theologies within the “Christian” umbrella."

Of course, you are entitled to your religious beliefs, even if they are contrary to the teachings of the vast majority of Christian denominations, which they certainly are.

Indeed, I would hazard to guess that only a small minority -- maybe 5% of Christian churches -- would accept your formulation as you have here expressed it.

But, you are not entitled, for purposes of public discussion and law making, to pretend that your religious beliefs are in any sense scientific!

from 1,642 betty boop: "Thank you so much for the link to the New England Primer, dearest sister in Christ! That this text was used in the public schools must be something that the Michael Newdows of this world — that gentleman who is always suing the government to banish all acknowledgements of God and religion from the public square — would like us to forget.
We've come a long way, baby.... But whatever we've become, it is crystal clear to me that this nation's founding ethos was thoroughly Christian.

Your second point is true, of course.

But it's important to remember, on your first point, that in those days, there were no such things as "public schools," at least as we define them today. All schools then were private and/or religious.

Certainly there was no FEDERAL funding for schools then, and no concept that along with this funding, the feds could impose their own standards on education.

As I've said here over and over: what you teach your children in your own schools is only your business, not the government's. It was only when people began asking the government to pay for their education that we begin to get questions about just what is or is not acceptable for government schools to teach.

from 1,649 schaef21:"What the morphology of the bomardier beetle shows is that it takes a huge stretch of the imagination that all of those pieces would have evolved at the same time....and spare me the lecture, please. They would have all had to have been there together or he wouldn’t have survived."

First of all, I will sincerely apologize if I've put words in your mouth, and I hope you will also apologize whenever you misrepresent my arguments -- which is quite often, imho. ;-)

But, sorry to tell you this, your argument on these beetles, like the giraffes before them, is totally unimpressive. All you've really done is make certain claims, which cannot be confirmed or verified in any way, and for which there is not physical evidence.

I would point out that lots of species (think skunks, or spiders, or rattlesnakes) squirt lots of chemicals in self defense, or to kill lunch. So the evolutionary mechanisms by which these capabilities developed cannot even be so very difficult, if they are now so widespread & common.

Therefore, your claim that it's IMPOSSIBLE for some natural cause to work here is just nonsense, on the face of it. Nor would I buy for a second your insistence that ALL these processes must evolve SIMULTANEOUSLY. Surely any number of intermediate steps can easily be imagined -- more importantly, can be demonstrated scientifically.

from 1,649 schaef21:"If you believe that God Intelligently Designed it from the beginning and since you obviously think that you know the mind of God, perhaps you can tell me why you think a God powerful enough to create the universe would take billions of years to create it’s inhabitants. Instead of creating a cell, why didn’t He create everything else....was He not powerful enough? Not intelligent enough? What?

This has to be about the silliest argument in this whole long long thread -- you ought to be ashamed of yourself for it. Any high-school sophomore would know better.

And why do you keep saying I think I "know the mind of God"? Why aren't you ashamed of saying such things?

It's precisely because science does NOT know "the mind of God," that it can only go by what the physical material natural evidence tells us about the Universe. Every other revelation (i.e., the Bible) is not science -- it's that simple.

schaef21:"And by the way....I reject what you call “most church teaching”. I don’t know that it is and I really don’t care if they do. Even if it is “most church teaching” it carries no weight in this argument. Majority opinion does not define truth. Truth defines truth."

I think it's highly important to keep pointing out that you people, schaef21, do not speak for the majority of Americans, nor even for the religious beliefs of our Founding Fathers, but only for a small minority among today's Christians. Of course your religious beliefs are constitutionally protected, but so are everyone elses's.

from 1,649 schaef21:"Science tries to assign a natural cause for EVERY occurence, not just natural ones. If they don’t have an answer they make one up and hope it sticks.....kind of like pond-scum to people evolution."

A "natural cause for EVERY occurrence, not just natural ones"? That is a most curious statement you've just made. Do you want to define scientifically exactly what a "non-natural occurence" might be?

BTW, let me say something here which seems so obvious it wouldn't need to be spelled out: every group, almost without exception, includes some number of lunatic nut-cases who gain great notoriety and public attention by loudly yammering absolute nonsense. At least a few are found in most every field and ideology. Some even claim to be scientists.

But when it comes to science, I'll mention Eugenie Scott again as the antidote to such poisons. She writes clearly, simply and, may I say, humbly about just what science does or does not say regarding evolution.

from 1,650 schaef21: "I don’t think science is a big lie....I think they’ve created a construct that won’t allow them to seek the truth."

I don't agree for a minute, but let's just suppose, for sake of argument, that the science today regarding evolution is roughly equivalent to Newtonian physics around the year 1900.

By the year 1900, a lot of serious scientists were starting to see certain limitations to Newton's laws & theories. But they didn't know what to make of them -- they couldn't really understand what these anomalies meant.

Then along came a young man in Switzerland who was bored with his day job working for the government, and who started dreaming about physics. The results were his theories on relativity. These did not overturn Newton, they merely put Newton in his proper place.

Today, if there is some new Einstein of evolution out there, who can scientifically analyze the various ID-Creationist arguments, and possibly fold them into some larger scientific theory (of Design?), which passes all the scientific tests (just as Einstein did), then I think the world will eventually take proper notice.

But so far, I've seen nothing remotely resembling that.

from 1,651 schaef21 quoting: "“Our chosen group of “greater” scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers.”"

Sorry, but I can't see why this so troubles to you. Our Constitution forbids any religious test for public office, so why would you impose such a test on scientists??

Furthermore, I've cited other polls which show that around 2/3 of scientists do believe in God. The obvious discrepancy is in how you define the words "scientist," "belief" and "God." No doubt, if we asked most scientists how many sincerely believed in schaef21's specific definition of "God," the answer would be virtually zero!

The reason this is not particularly troubling to me (atheism in general is a concern to me, for the same reasons it was to our Founding Fathers), is because science is SUPPOSED to be the discipline of material & natural causes.

”. . . all you do is insult -- and then complain about being insulted!”

A demonstration of the classic propagandist technique of accusing the other fellow of the very practice in which you indulge. You’re wasting your time. We see it better illustrated every day by the Marxist/Socialists who infest our National Legislature.

I'll say again, the proper scientific answer to a question about God is, "I don't know, because that's not a scientific question."

Say again?! Where ever have you said that before? It seems to me that you had been saying exactly the opposite until I corrected you. Let me give you an instance. Quoting: Post #1607 (your post to me) – Your real problem is, you can't learn anything -- I've repeated the facts here over and over again, and yet nothing sinks into your thick skull, does it? Well, pay attention this time, I'll repeat it yet again: BY DEFINITION, "science" deals ONLY with the physical, material natural world, not with the supernatural or metaphysical. So, if you ask a scientist a scientific question about God, he must NECESSARILY say that scientifically, by definition, "my answer is no."(your emphasis)

Personally, I think you more on the right track now than in Post #1607. That’s up to you, but I do wish you would stop playing the Mugwump and settle on one side of the fence or the other. I would like to be assured I’m talking to the same end of the bird every time we speak.

”Of course, any scientist is entitled to his or her personal opinions [yada, yada, yada] . . . we may reasonably conclude the scientist is just trying to puff up his personal opinions.”

So it would appear that I was correct in surmising that you set yourself above some of the most accomplished scientists in the world (even though you are a self-confessed amateur at science), when you deny the appropriateness of their efforts at doing religion and philosophy under the color of science. Hence, then, may we expect to see you go galloping off shouting “Liar! Liar!” at every scientist who counts on his professional reputation to shield him from the consequences of his forays into religion, social values, and political pontification? Or, will you continue to reserve your scorn only for people you believe should practice “Theistic Evolutionism” and otherwise just shut-up?

I rather think the latter.

Your Theistic Evolutionist forbearance is slipping.

”Apparently this is what you consider an argument . . .”

No, it’s my mocking, non-argument response to your non-argument whining about how badly you’re being treated by such a big, bad old mean person as myself. You would like to change the subject to divert attention from your ignorance and silliness, by getting into an argument over whether or not you’ve been treated badly. Your tactic merited nothing better than mockery, so that’s what you got. Still you haven’t the sense to let it go, so now you’ve obliged me to describe the dishonest debate tactics in which you indulge. Of course, everyone knows and recognizes what you’re doing, but nonetheless you insist on embarrassing yourself. People are watching.

Now it’s again time for you to issue great billowing clouds of smoke, and deny, deny, deny.

from 1,672 YHAOS:"Personally, I think you more on the right track now than in Post #1607. That’s up to you, but I do wish you would stop playing the Mugwump and settle on one side of the fence or the other. I would like to be assured I’m talking to the same end of the bird every time we speak."

You seem to be splitting hairs here, and I don't understand why. You claim to see a big difference in my various iterations of the basic idea that science deals only in the natural material realm, and not with the supernatural, spiritual, metaphysical, etc. So the correct scientific answer to a question about metaphysics is, "science doesn't know."

In the example you cite, where a scientist says, "the answer is no," you have to go back and look at how he frames his question. Note carefully where he says, "I think this is a scientific question."

Well, "I think," in any language whatever means: "this is my personal opinion, possibly unrelated to any scientific considerations." So, if this scientists claims that "God is a scientific question," he is giving his personal opinion, to which he is entitled, and which we are totally encouraged to ignore. End of discussion, I would think, wouldn't you?

from 1,674 betty boop:"Legal religions???? Jeepers, BroJoeK, there's no such crittur as a "legal" (or even illegal) religion under the Constitution. For the First Amendment states that "Congress SHALL PASS NO LAW" respecting an "establishment" of religion. Period."

I put the word "legal" there, mindful of the fact that many ancient religions involving, for example, the blood sacrifice or canibalism of children, virgins, enemy warriors, etc. would be quickly classified "illegal" regardless of Constitutional protections.

And if you wished to point out that these hideous religions themselves would be perfectly legal, with only their gruesome practices outlawed -- well, point taken. But I might question, even in an age of multi-cultural relativism, how much of a fine point of distinction, between religion & practice, could there really be?

That's all I was thinking about with the word "legal," nothing else.

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