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Fact, Fable, and Darwin (If you haven't read this already, you should!!!)
American Enterprise Magazine ^ | 8/04 | Rodney Stark

Posted on 08/02/2004 3:58:04 PM PDT by Renfield

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To: betty boop; VadeRetro; Tribune7; Alamo-Girl; cornelis; marron; PatrickHenry; bondserv
A thoughtful Christian is unlikely to see evolution as a threat to Genesis. Certainly I don't.

Right; yet it's when the "e" is capitalized that the trouble begins, so to speak....

281 posted on 08/03/2004 3:28:49 PM PDT by unspun (RU working your precinct, churchmembers, etc. 4 good votes? | Not "Unspun w/ AnnaZ" but I appreciate)
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To: jennyp; RobRoy
Sorry, but after all these years on these crevo threads, it's not often that a creationist earnestly makes a totally silly argument that I haven't heard before. This one is just so funny... :-)

jennyp, please let me know when you get your appointment at the Great White Throne to explain to God that He can't be what He want's to be.

282 posted on 08/03/2004 3:31:40 PM PDT by unspun (RU working your precinct, churchmembers, etc. 4 good votes? | Not "Unspun w/ AnnaZ" but I appreciate)
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To: Havoc
No, a rational person might actually just appreciat the fact that they can glide. They might actually also look at how they do it. But to postulate that they are transitional species wouldn't even come to my mind.

Obviously.

Especially without any evidence that they'd ever existed in any other form but what they are now.

You mean besides the DNA evidence (i.e. the patterns of protein functional redundancy, DNA functional redundancy, transposons, redundant pseudogenes, and endogenous retroviruses), the morphological evidence, the anatomical parahomology evidence, the molecular parahomology evidence, the cladistic evidence, the evidence of the chronology of common ancestors, the molecular vestige evidence, the evidence of past biogeography, and so on?

Well, yeah, other than that, there's not much...

You know, giving ground for a postulation that they were changing.

See above.

I would generally posit that absent any evidence of change, assuming change bears the responsibility of proving it rather than saying it's possible and then saying "every living thing today is in transition".

So what would you "generally posit" given evidence such as I mention above?

I can say equally as absurd things just as easily.

Clearly.

It doesn't mean I'm any more or less right than you.

No, what makes you less right than us is your almost complete unfamiliarity with the subject.

283 posted on 08/03/2004 3:31:50 PM PDT by Ichneumon ("...she might as well have been a space alien." - Bill Clinton, on Hillary, "My Life", p. 182)
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To: unspun
Right; yet it's when the "e" is capitalized that the trouble begins, so to speak....

Exactly right, unspun, IMHO. The capital "e" is a reliable indicator that you are probably dealing with a sectarian thinker, not a scientist. Great catch!

284 posted on 08/03/2004 3:37:24 PM PDT by betty boop
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To: Junior

You're saying that the velociraptor is Bigger than a man, weighs less and therefore should be above the man by weight.
Your assumption is based on what - as weight goes. If you're right about the weight, then your conclusion is well founded. If you are not, lets just say, at .2 meters bigger than the average man and given the weight of gators, I don't find it credible that a Raptor would weigh less than a man. Nor would I base my conclusions on single instances with regard to the fossil record. By and large, the sorting of fossils is far more indicative of bouyancy sorting. The sorting of the strata can also be accounted for in this manner along with the difference in the strata world wide.


285 posted on 08/03/2004 3:46:30 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: Modernman
Talk.Origins has already shredded AiG's argument that this clearly beneficial mutation represents a loss of information (whatever the heck that is supposed to mean in this context).

It's not that creationists lie like leftists, in the way we usually think of the term "lie". It's that they are forced to swallow whole classes of FUD-generation techniques whole. They end up totally convinced that they are using the best arguments & logic possible, even as they get more & more divorced from reality & logical self-consistency. You'd think it should destroy their ability to think in general - and yet they tend to be good conservatives. Go figure.

286 posted on 08/03/2004 3:54:42 PM PDT by jennyp (Tremble and cower, Osama! John Edwards is comin' to getcha!)
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To: Modernman
You need to give one rational reason other than "God felt like it."

Why. When I draw a picture or sculpt someone, I don't need a rhyme or reason. I do what the heck takes my fancy to do. I don't sit back and worry myself about being subjected to an inquisition by you. Why should God have done so. Did he have something to fear from your disapproval of how he did things. Again, awful presumptuous. Has it ocurred to you that the way Bats hang upside down in wet caves and hold their young might present problems if Bats had feathered wings. Bats don't act or function like birds. And if efficiency of design is such a no brainer and Lamborghinis are the best car on the road.. why aren't semi trucks shaped like Lamborghinis. Oh, that isn't fair is it. screwing with the design of something obviously meant to serve a different purpose and operate differently. The design makes sense for the purpose of the critter. But who knows - if I can see that - perhaps a mighty being capable of speaking the sun into existance can also design a bat to function properly.. Might be assuming too much for someone whos ways are much higher and more complex than ours.

287 posted on 08/03/2004 3:55:40 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: My2Cents

That was a good one.. LOL.


288 posted on 08/03/2004 3:56:23 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: Dimensio
If you are referring to the ultimate origins of the first life forms,

Yes, that is what I am referring to.

If that is outside the theory of evolution, which I would agree is correct but still a necessary point to consider, then a lot of people for a lot of years have misused the theory as 'proof' that life came into existence in a manner that can be explained as a fairly linear process from the prebiotic soup to the present.

289 posted on 08/03/2004 3:58:08 PM PDT by siunevada
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To: Havoc

Actually, the sun was created first, then the plants.


290 posted on 08/03/2004 4:04:38 PM PDT by ConservativeBamaFan (We know too much, and are convinced of too little. --T.S. Elliot)
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To: betty boop
An argument from motive is a fallacy. While noting even the most transparently obvious motive may hint that the text is false, it does not guarantee such falsehood. The DNC may issue a press release tomorrow that pictures of Bush have surfaced dancing drunk and naked on a bar in 1976. Their motives would be obvious. The picture might nevertheless be real. You can't use the motive to "prove" that the picture is faked.

In the case of an argument from motive against a theory that has worked for 145 years and still works ... The motives of the maker of the argument are the real issue. If any thought processes are likely corrupt, THERE's where the cloud of suspicion must hover. Sorry, BB!

Darwin got the science right. It doesn't matter what Huxley or even Darwin thought of "Rome." That should be obvious by now. One has to studiously ignore or be genuinely ignorant of a whole lot of science to pretend otherwise.

291 posted on 08/03/2004 4:06:25 PM PDT by VadeRetro
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To: whattajoke
Um, because they wouldn't be bats, by definition.

Really. who named them? And why wouldn't they be bats if they didn't have wings just based on the wings alone. A bat that evolves wings or loses them is still a bat. Your logic doesn't follow. If I knock the doors off a car, it's still a car. For that matter, if I knock them off a trans am, it's still a car and a transam. It just doesn't have doors. So are you saying that a Human being that has no limbs is not a human being... Sorry, but you stepped into that trap yourself and went laughingly in as though you thought you were catching me. Would you like the dunce cap now or later?

Of course, bats are a creationist favorite

I don't particularly find it a favorite anything. And I'm not quite sure what it matters to the argument whether creationists like bats or not. My name here is havoc. Deal with me.

Well, I think I know why you wouldn't care. Because you have no thirst for knowledge about the natural world around you.

Take a hint. Don't give up your day job. Gliding would be an advantage for humans, being able to breathe under water would be as well. Being able to withstand pressure without concern for the benze would also be a plus. Humans have not developed such capacities. So advantage would seem to have little to do with evelution if the theory had any factual basis at all - and it doesn't. However, an animal designed a specific way will always appear that way in nature - even fossilized (which, btw, doesn't happen in nature other than in wet places and even then only where something can be quickly buried. Another tick on the board for the good old flood fact.

292 posted on 08/03/2004 4:07:37 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: whattajoke
[To Havoc:] You're the best! you are my favorite creationist. You have a knack for stumbling and bumbling over and through pretty much every goofy creationist idea, with no regard for what you are actually typing. Awesome.

He and Southhack are pretty much the same poster. Impenetrable density, wielded as a bludgeon.

293 posted on 08/03/2004 4:09:38 PM PDT by VadeRetro
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To: Right Wing Professor
Yes, it is quite clear. You said in 112 that there are no transitional fossils. I gave one. You haven't made any serious attempt to dispute that Archaeopteryx is transitional.

Does it show a partial change from a reptile toward being a bird or is it a bird with what you think are reptile characteristics. A fully developed critter ain't a transition. Sorry. I know you want to confuse the two things and point to this as transitional; but, it ain't transitional. I believe this is a repetition at this point.

294 posted on 08/03/2004 4:11:29 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: balrog666

What, is that where you learned science?


295 posted on 08/03/2004 4:12:55 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: Ichneumon
On the other hand, life produced by evolutionary means would result in life with a number of specific characteristic features

Really. You mean Chaos produces order and is therefore predictable in the order it produces. Good. Perhaps you can predict the next 50,000 frames of static on my tv set? Oh, forgot, you were speaking in rhetorical terms - not actual science..

296 posted on 08/03/2004 4:15:22 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: Havoc

SInce you did not bother to reply, I take it the links in post 79 were good enough to refute your tin foil comment to me.


297 posted on 08/03/2004 4:20:01 PM PDT by RadioAstronomer
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To: Ichneumon
You mean besides the DNA evidence

Sorry, I'd have to say produce a pre-gliding squirrel and then prove it. You can't, so I think the rest of your ramble and it's built in assumptions are worth precisley squat.

So what would you "generally posit" given evidence such as I mention above?

Evidence? Evidence of what? I think I've deliniated clearly the difference between theory and fact, the difference between having something verses having evidence of it, having evidence vs. having evidence that clearly supports a position. Produce a pre-flying squirrel and prove that flying squirrels developed from it. And prove it isn't a genetic trait for squirrels to be able to produce flying squirrels as a trait. Ah, we haven't quite got there yet have we. Yes, I understand how you slant things to an appearance. I've dealt with it in archeology in trying to pick through all the opinion to get to facts. One of my favorites now days is the obfuscation that slaves couldn't have built the pyramids because some of the lead workers were buried onsite and a Pharaoh never would have allowed a slave to be buried near him.. That assumes a lot. So do you. You just don't point out in your speil what the assumptions are. Sorry.

No, what makes you less right than us is your almost complete unfamiliarity with the subject.

I see. One has to be an evolutionist to buy evolutionist arguments cause nowhere else can one find support. Which is why so many are begging to differ nowdays. People have had it with the quackery.

298 posted on 08/03/2004 4:28:55 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: RadioAstronomer

one word, assumption. Nuff said.


299 posted on 08/03/2004 4:30:56 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: Right Wing Professor
Tr_ns__onal _lace_ark__

And you call yourself a scientist! Obviously that's just a mosaic. A real transitional placemarker would look like this:

Transitional placemarker

300 posted on 08/03/2004 4:31:30 PM PDT by jennyp (Tremble and cower, Osama! John Edwards is comin' to getcha!)
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