Introduction to "Creationism's Trojan Horse"

Butterflies and Wheels ^ | December 1, 2004 | Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross

[Dataman]

No, it's an argument from plausibility. How plausible is it to think that thousands and thousands of smart, professional scientists are engaged in an enterprise devoted to pulling the wool over the eyes of the public?

Plausibility? An evolutionist appeals to plausibility? How plausible is it that the first DNA assembled itself by chance? Answer 1 chance in 10 to the 40,000 power. That's more than the number of electrons in the entire universe.

What are the chances the simplest DNA would add two gene pairs per year (by random chance) to arrive at human DNA today? Answer: ZERO. Gould knew it-- which is why he invented his Punctuated Equilibrium to mask the problem.

What are the chances that our DNA would stop changing completely when we got the ability to decode it? ZERO.

The whole theory is nothing but a collection of impossible odds, naturalistic miracles, just-so stories and fabricated Peppered Moth pictures.

And you dare speak of plausibility?

[snarks_when_bored]

You're missing the point of my argument. I'm not arguing about the details of evolution theory, I'm arguing about science, scientists and human nature. Won't you address that argument before introducing another one?

Let me restate it in the form of a question:  Do you think it plausible to believe that thousands of smart, highly educated men and women from around the world (and over several generations) have engaged in an overt conspiracy to hide 'the truth' about the development of life on Earth from ordinary people?

If you'll answer that question, we can perhaps move forward.

[Dataman]

And let me add that this: do you think that evolutionists 'believe in' evolution in the way that religious believers 'believe in' God? If so, I'd say that you're mistaken. Scientists (those worthy of the name, anyway) entertain theories as 'current best explanations' of the facts in evidence, always subject to review and modification as new facts are discovered or old facts are re-interpreted. This is not the (common) attitude of religious believers with respect to belief in God.

Yes and Yes.

Yes, evolution is a belief system requiring faith. It is an interpretation of observations based on certain philosophical presuppositions, many of which are absurd.

The very fact that evolutionary theory is changing removes any sense of absoluteness about it. What is "true" today may not be "true" tomorrow. Therefore what is not true tomorrow is false today. Yet you'd have us believe it as fact regardless. Kleibold and Harris believed it as fact. I will not set aside my intellect in order to conform to the wishes of a few. If evolution is true, convince me and the other %54 of conservative, educated, successful Americans who are still waiting to be convinced.

If reasonable people are not convinced, why not? Are they all ignorant, as you imply, or is the case for evolution anemic at best?

As for the "attitude of religious believers with respect to belief in God," you should expect nothing less. God's existence is different than the evolutionary theory in many ways:

His existence is not theoretical. Evolution is.

Theists do not mindlessly rule out the existence of things unseen. Naturalists do.

The existence of God automatically requires absolutes. Evolutionists fear absolutes.

An omnipotent omniscient eternal God does not and cannot change. Evolution is a Mexican jumping bean.

[snarks_when_bored]

The very fact that evolutionary theory is changing removes any sense of absoluteness about it.

Are you reading what I'm writing? Your sentence which I've just quoted implies that I made some sort of claim for the absolute truth of evolution theory. I made no such claim; in fact, I made just the opposite claim.

Here's what I wrote in the message you were responding to (you quoted it yourself!):

Scientists (those worthy of the name, anyway) entertain theories as 'current best explanations' of the facts in evidence, always subject to review and modification as new facts are discovered or old facts are re-interpreted.

There's nothing unclear about that, I think. And, considering what you wrote in the remainder of your message, I believe you agree with me about the differences between the attitude of mind of a scientist and the attitude of mind of a religious believer.

[Fatalis]

earing their slab coats

"Slab coats?" Damn.

[balrog666]

Yes and Yes.

Wrong and wrong. Again.

[RightWingNilla]

But the odds are already less than statistical zero...

The odds of a bacterium springing up from nothing in a single instant.

Which is completely irrelevant since no one thinks this ever occurred (except creationists perhaps).

But you knew this already.

[narby]

You can run from the problem but you can't hide, because unless that first life happened naturally, naturalism collapses.

You're not so dense as to have missed the innumerable times people have pointed out that God could have zapped life into existence, and it then proceded to Evolve. So I must conclude that you are fundamentally dishonest in your posts, because "naturalism", I.E. Evolution most certianly does not collapse if God personally created the first DNA molecule.

Indeed, to believe the Creationist pap alongside the physical evidence collected over the last 200 years, you must believe that God deliberatly seeded the earth with evidence to lead us astray. I just don't buy into the idea that God plays games with our heads to get His jollies off.

I don't abide intellectually dishonest arguments. That's why I reject the tenents of Environmentalism and Creationism. The left and right sides of the same dishonest coin.

[narby]

His existence is not theoretical. Evolution is.

Well, now here we are at the prime directive of Creationists. To create a "scientific aura" around their claims that somehow they've proven God's existence.

This is the goal of Creationism.

It's just a carbon copy of the "scientific" methods of the Environmentalists, which are just as bogus. Wherein they take one small slice of scientific evidence, ignore the rest, and procede to install themselves in positions of power.

Maybe someday the Creationists will win and we'll have a Creationism Promotion Agency operating out of the old EPA dept.

What post are you angling for Dataman? Counting your government retirement checks yet?

[FederalistVet]

Haven't you heard? One of their recent discoveries discredits everything that biologists and paleontologists have taught over the last 100 years. Turns out their time-line is all mucked up and their "links" aren't links, but don't worry two days later they began their spin all over again.
Paleontologists play in the dirt. Biologists are afraid to lose their jobs. When Evolution became "fashionable" and the "religion of the day," many scientists went along out of fear. Also, most high school biology teachers are not adequately trained in the sciences; they were education majors and often have taken just the lowest level science classes everyone else takes.
Many scientists around the world have begun to reject evolution. Even the advocates of evolution are backing down because now they are saying that evolution just means "change." In order to defend their religious dogma, they are now redefining it to the point that it is meaningless.
You still have to deal with the problem that Darwin's observations can be better explained by Mendel's Law. I can account for all the evolutionists in high places in the Universities with two words. "Religious Discrimination."

[Dimensio]

You're not so dense as to have missed the innumerable times people have pointed out that God could have zapped life into existence, and it then proceded to Evolve.

No, he's just a liar. He insists that evolution means godless naturalism, when it does not. He has been told that it does not mean this, he cannot cite a single scientific reference that authoratitavely claims this, but he repeats this claim anyway.

Dataman isn't interested in presenting rational arguments. His only purpose is to lie about evolution in the hopes that some naieve lurkers will see it and develop doubts based upon the strawman that he has presented. Dataman is one of the lowest of the creationist liars. He knows that his statements are false, and he doesn't even try to support them with facts. He just repeats the same lie that "evolution" = "atheistic naturalism" and that evolution somehow requires a completely specific (and completely naturalistic) origin for life even though the theory of evolution works regardless of how the first life forms came into existence in the first place.

Basically, Dataman can't argue against evolution based on facts, so he has to deliberately lie about what evolution states in order to form an argument against it. Nothing that Dataman says can be trusted, because he's already made it clear that he is a shameless liar.

[Dimensio]

One of their recent discoveries discredits everything that biologists and paleontologists have taught over the last 100 years.

Citation?

[Dimensio]

It's just a carbon copy of the "scientific" methods of the Environmentalists, which are just as bogus.

At least some environmentalist claims are built upon truth. If you pour toxic substances into a lake, the life in the lake will probably die and the water will be unsafe for human consumption.

I can't find a similar truthful foundation in creaitonism -- at least not Dataman's variety.

[balrog666]

Welcome to FantasyLand. Population: you.

[narby]

At least some environmentalist claims are built upon truth. If you pour toxic substances into a lake, the life in the lake will probably die and the water will be unsafe for human consumption.

Certianly the Environmentalist dogma is built on some grain of truth. As is the Creationist dogma. That's what makes both so hard to oppose in the scientific layman universe.

Environmentalists demonstrate that their political issues are prioritized over science when they oppose nuclear power (which would single handedly cure many genuine environmental threats). Their incessant carping over nuclear waste and it's transport is a prime example. Nuclear waste is "scientifically" less harmful than any number of other carcinogens, pathogens and poisons. It's far less harmful on a national scale than things like basement radon and car exaust. But they block any and all attempts to rationally handle nuclear waste, and then use the fact that nothing can be done with it to rationalize opposing nuclear power itself.

They are shameless liars, as are many in the Creationist leadership.

The ID movement looks to me like a carbon copy of the Environmentalist movement. And formed for the same purpose. Political power.

[snarks_when_bored]

Here's a very slightly corrected version of a question that I posted on another thread yesterday:

How does the creationist deal with the transmutation of one chemical element into another? Such transmutations are taking place pretty much all of the time around the cosmos (and humans can produce them at will). Presumably, God made the elements, too. How does the creationist account for, say, the cascade of radioactive decay that turns uranium ultimately into lead? Weren't the chemical elements 'kinds' just as clearly marked out as were the living species 'kinds' (perhaps even more so)?

Does anybody know the creationist/ID position on this question?

[FederalistVet]

I believe it was a discovery in Madagascar that throws the whole works out of whack by a million or was it two million years. Look for the associated press reports within the last two to three weeks. (I think it was one and a half weeks ago. It means all the links taught in Biology classrooms across America are incorrect.

[FederalistVet]

Intelligent reply. I wonder if our friend who thinks he or she knows more about Aristotle and Plato than this Greek comprehends why I brought up these fathers of the Natural Sciences.
Could it be that they believed in an intelligent creator of the Universe based upon the Empirical evidence available to them? Is it because they believed the universe showed an intelligent design based upon the Empirical evidence?
I guess I'm in very good company.

[balrog666]

I guess I'm in very good company.

Only in your own mind.

[Dimensio]

I believe it was a discovery in Madagascar that throws the whole works out of whack by a million or was it two million years

That's not really a lot to go on. I can search for AP articles within the past two weeks that cover both Madagascar and evolution, but it sounds to me like you aren't remembering all of the details and perhaps only remembering what you think it said rather than what it did say.