Replies

Matchett, you are not being truthful again, because you left out the remainder of that page in which Hanegraaf cuts Tommy Huxley off so he can avoid further argumentation. Let's start with the last paragraph you quoted and go to the end, and I'll add emphasis by underlining the way things ended, to show Hanegraaf's intellectual cowardice:

". . . Hank: Well, that's right, it has been debunked in the 1920s, but it's still taught in textbooks in the State of California, my friend. And not only that, but, uh, like I say, there are prodigious intellects like Sagan and Donahue, who are touting it on, uh, television, or the, um, scientifically illiterate. Coming up to a station break. I'll be right back.

Music: Ta, da, da, da, DAAAAAAA!!!

Tommy: Hello? Am I still on the air? Hello? Hello?

Commercial for Hank's new book

Narrator: Conversations like this will be heard across the United States because of Hank Hanegraaff's new book.

Little Girl: Professor Haney, is it really true that evolution is not an established scientific fact?

Professor: (In a pinched hayseed voice) Way-yell, Charles Darwin predicted that the fos-sil record would reveal transitional forms between different kinds of an-i-mals. Like dino-sa-wers and birds, for instance. But no transitional fossils have ever been discovered in the fossil record. And evolution still cannot demonstrate how non-living material produces living organisms.

Little Girl: (Astonished) You mean that evolution is false?

Professor: Thaaaat's right! I just finished reading a new book written by Hank Hanegraaff called The FACE! It documents, in a memorable format, the reasons whyyyyy evolution is a fairytale theory and demonstrates how the Bi-bli-cal view best fits the facts of em-pir-i-cal science!

Narrator: You too, can read Hank's new book, The FACE, by calling 1-888-7000-CRI. Hank believes this may be the most important book he has ever written. Order your copy, now, by calling 1-888-7000-274.

Music: Ta, da, da, da, DAAAAAAA!!!

Tommy: Hello? Will anybody talk to me?

Apparently, I was cut off. Hank Hanegraaff returns on the air and promotes his new book in a long-winded sermon. He begins by quoting Stephen Jay Gould's 1977 book, and tries to imply that Gould himself still holds to the concept of recapitulation. Unfortunately, creationists can't distinguish between recapitulation and comparative embryology, maintaining that they're one and the same discipline. So of course, he butchers Gould's citation.

Next, he sings the same old song about nonexistent transitional fossils, breathlessly recounts 100-year-old paleo-anthropological hoaxes as if they happened yesterday (while conveniently ignoring creationism's more recent Piltdown frauds), resurrects obsolete complexity arguments, and maintains that evolution is a non-empirical science while creationism IS empirical, despite the fact creation science appeals to miracles instead of naturalistic processes.

The End "

Hanegraaf is a fraud who is using religion to make money for himself in the same way so many phony Bible thumpers get on the air and collect money.

The earlier link was posted to make the substantial argument clear and your attempt to cloud the debate by partial and misleading excerpts is most disingenous. You should be ashamed Matchett. There are others who have been participating on this thread with whom Patrick and I have disagreed on several points who have been most upright in their behavior and genuinely honest in addressing what is posted. I suggest you reread this thread to get a handle on how to approach logical argument. You are harming a gem of a thread -- on both sides of the argument -- by resorting to these tactics.

Thanks for citing that source Matchett. It helps to make clear two recurring creationist tactics; deliberately restating scientific arguments incorrectly so as to create a "straw man," i.e. "misquoting" per Patrick's earlier post, and silencing expert opinion when it reveals fraudulent creationist logic. That's exactly what we see.

And to others on this thread who have approached these topics with the best of intentions and full intellectual honesty, rest assured that I do not view you in the same light as Matchett. I am guessing Patrick feels the same way.

>>>>>StJacques: "Thanks for citing that source Matchett. It helps to make clear two recurring creationist tactics; deliberately restating scientific arguments incorrectly so as to create a "straw man," i.e. "misquoting" per Patrick's earlier post, and silencing expert opinion when it reveals fraudulent creationist logic. That's exactly what we see."<<<<<<

Thanks for citing a Huxley as your source StJacques. Your source seems to be carrying on in the great tradition of some of his ancesters and doesn't even appear to be embarrassed that several of his relatives / great-great-grandfathers said (tip of the iceberg) stuff like this:

"No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man... It is simply incredible [to think] that ... he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not bites." ~ Thomas Huxley Darwin's best student - and the man who coined the term "agnostic" and was the man most responsible for advancing macroevolution (Darwinianism)"

"In the evolutionary system of thought there is no longer any need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul, as well as brain and body. So did religion. Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness by creeping for shelter into the arms of a divinized father figure whom he himself has created." ~ Sir Julian Huxley, great-grandson of Thomas Huxley.

"...I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. ..For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. ..." ~ Aldous Huxley, brother of Sir Julian Huxley [Ends and Means]

And your source helps to make clear two recurring tactics of the Darwinian Religious Left; deliberately restating creationist arguments http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/showquestion.asp?faq=4&fldAuto=63 incorrectly so as to create a "strawman", ie: "quoting-out-of-context" as Patrick does here - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1310267/posts?page=196#196 - and silencing expert opinion when it reveals fraudulent macroevolutionist logic. That's exactly what we see.

>>>>>StJacques: "And to others on this thread who have approached these topics with the best of intentions and full intellectual honesty, rest assured that I do not view you in the same light as Matchett. I am guessing Patrick feels the same way." <<<<<

And to those on this thread who have approached these topics either full of ignorance and misinformation that comes from embracing the dogma of what mathematician Dr. David Berlinski called "the last of the great 19th century mystery religions", but with the best of intentions and full intellectual honesty --- or those with the worst of intentions, such as those espoused by the three Huxleys quoted above, I say: You know who you are, and you know into which catagory you fall.

Rest assured that how, or in what light anyone views you personally is immaterial to the issues under discussion. I don't have to guess that those who have the courage to face reality and truth will not care one whit how someone "feels" about it.

This axiom is true: "Ignorance is curable with education, but stupid is forever."

*

So leaving all the blind-faith dogma of Darwin's mystery religion aside, let's cut to the chase. You forgot to answer the question I asked you in post #399, to wit:

Since I can't scientifically prove it, is it rational for me to believe that others beside myself have minds and aren't just pre-programmed robots?

bttt

This corrects my link in #437 to Patrick's "out-of-context" quote. I should have linked you to #475 rather than #196 in that other thread. Here it is in its entirety [you will find the hot link beneath it] bttt:

Patrick Henry: "Ah, yes ... yet another out-of-context quote, a splendid example of creationoid "research."

M-PI: The Darwin quote I posted has everything to do with the subject I was addressing. Your red herring won't work.

And you embarrass yourself. The most outrageous "out-of-context" quote can be found on YOUR profile page where you attempt to prove that even "the pope" agrees with you and Darwin.

This is what you posted "out of context":

"The Pope's 1996 statement on evolution: Physical evolution is not in conflict with Christianity. Excerpts:"

"It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences."

"Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical, fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory."

*

Below are the quotes you left out that show the pope doesn't agree with yours and Darwin's atheistic ideas of natural selection and random chance.

Quoting the Pope: "....to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations. What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology.

5. ...man... was created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:27-29). ...

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. ..."

HERE: http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/8712_message_from_the_pope_1996_1_3_2001.asp

And here's even more you won't like from 1986:

"....... Pope John Paul II, in a General Audience on 24 January 1986, addressed the issue and said that "The theory of natural evolution, understood in a sense that does not exclude divine causality, is not in principle opposed to the truth about the creation of the visible world, as presented in the Book of Genesis."

Conflicts between the truths of science and the truths of faith, in other words, are only apparent, never real, for both science and faith, the natural world accessible to reason, and the "world" of revelation accessible to faith, have the same author: God.

It makes no difference to faith what precise mechanisms the Creator chose to carry out his divine plan of creation. Being all powerful, and having created everything out of nothing, God could have literally and directly created man out of the slime of the earth, as Genesis describes, or he could have used evolutionary mechanisms which he himself had set in motion.

It makes no difference to faith whether or not man is descended from some apelike creature, so long as we understand that there had to be what Pope John Paul II calls an "ontological leap" between that creature and the first human person.

In other words, God, in the Pope's and the Church's teaching, would have to have intervened directly in the creation of man because each rational soul is created out of nothing. The soul of man could not have arisen from nature as an accident of evolutionary processes." February 23, 2003 Science and Faith

196 posted on 12/29/2004 4:16:56 PM EST by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1310267/posts?page=196#196

475 posted on 01/01/2005 4:36:04 PM EST by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1310267/posts?page=475#475