Replies

Those in the Darwinian cult who embrace his blind-faith macro-evolution mystery religion are entitled to their opinions, but they can't expect to be taken seriously by those capable of critical thought and intellectual honesty.

Intellectual honesty includes being able to admit when a quotation you've cited is misattributed or taken out of context.

All one has to do is say "I stand corrected" and move on, not using the same quote again. Instead, you seem determined to stand behind these falsified and misused quotations as if they are valid and no one has refuted them.

"Gould has written that if we could rewind the "tape" of evolution and replay it, the result would not be the same (Gould 1989). Among other things, humans are almost certain not to re-evolve. This is because the number of contingent causes (asteroids hitting the earth, continental drift, cosmic radiation, the likelihood of significant individuals mating and producing progeny, etc) are so high that it is unlikely they would occur again in the same sequence, or even occur at all. If an asteroid hadn't hit the Yucátan Peninsula 65 million years ago, for example, mammals probably would never have diversified, as they didn't in the 100 million years before that." ~ John Wilkins

For example, for this quotation you do not provide a source for the quotation. Having done a search, I see this is citation is from an essay from the Talk.Origins archive called Evolution and Chance. At the top of the page, the author states that this essay is meant to be read in conjunction with an essay called Chance from a Theistic Perspective written by Loren Haarsma.

This is important contextual information to have. Omitting this, and the source of the article serve to isolate the authors word from their intended meaning. What follows is a longer citation which more fully demonstrates the author's purpose. To get a full understanding of this quote, I suggest that readers go and read the other essay by Haarsma as well.

Gould has written that if we could rewind the "tape" of evolution and replay it, the result would not be the same (Gould 1989). Among other things, humans are almost certain not to re-evolve. This is because the number of contingent causes (asteroids hitting the earth, continental drift, cosmic radiation, the likelihood of significant individuals mating and producing progeny, etc) are so high that it is unlikely they would occur again in the same sequence, or even occur at all. If an asteroid hadn't hit the Yucátan Peninsula 65 million years ago, for example, mammals probably would never have diversified, as they didn't in the 100 million years before that.

Processes explained by science are affected by their intrinsic properties, the initial conditions and the boundary conditions. The cup fell from 1 meter. That's an initial condition. There was no real wind, but there was air friction. Those are boundary conditions. The cup had a certain mass and fell in a gravitational field of 1g. Those are the intrinsic properties. These last are not explained by Newtonian physics, but by Einstein's physics of time and space.

Contingent events are sometimes exceedingly sensitive to the initial conditions. A single slight difference can lead to a radically different outcome. If the cup fell from one meter but into the folds of a rigid tablecloth (a boundary condition), then a millimeter of difference in the way it fell (in its initial conditions) could leave it in pieces on kitchen floor, or in the dog's sleeping basket and safe, though in need of a wash.

Evolutionary theory explains why objects with certain properties move and change the way they do: how organisms change over time. In evolution, the initial and boundary conditions are contingent. That is the extent, the whole of it, of randomness and chance in the history of life.

Fear of the ordinary sense of chance and random which Gould describes above arises largely from a desire to find meaning in the events of the world around us. Science is not the appropriate place to find this meaning.

The emphasis in the last paragraph is mine.

The point I'm trying to make is that in this article, Wilkins is trying to explain that the end condition of physical processes has a great deal of dependency on the starting conditions and the boundry conditions. Wilkins does not claim that there is no meaning to life and existence. He is not worshipping chance, as you suggest. At the end of the article, conveniently omitted by you, the author Wilkins expressly states that science is not the appropriate place to find meaning -- not that no such meaning exists!

Science is about describing the physical world in concrete terms. The search for the meaning of existence comes from the study of philosophy and metaphysics, not biology and chemistry.

Though posters to these threads have repeated pointed out that you are misusing these quotes, you continue to cite them as they are valid. Furthermore, you frequently refer to evolution as a cult and scientists as cultists and idolaters. Is it any wonder people question your integrity?

"Intellectual honesty includes being able to admit when a quotation you've cited is misattributed or taken out of context."All one has to do is say "I stand corrected" and move on, not using the same quote again. Instead, you seem determined to stand behind these falsified and misused quotations as if they are valid and no one has refuted them."

BULL. Here we go again. Read it and weep:

Dimensio: ""So this justifies him lying about a quote from Charles Darwin?" , to wit:

Matchett-PI: " '... With me... the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?' " ~ Charles Darwin

Dimensio: "Ah, yes ... yet another out-of-context quote,...In the actual letter, Darwin isn't discussing evolution at all. Not even close. He's discussing the role of chance and purpose in the universe, and the blue part expresses his doubts about his conclusions. This is irrelevant to evolution. ..."

As you know - and are trying to get the easily led clueless to overlook - ALL quotes are "taken out of context". The bottom-line question is whether the "out-of-context quote" is an accurate portrayal of what the quoted person believes about the subject under discussion. So when noted evolutionist J. W. Burrow wrote in his introduction to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species: "Nature, according to Darwin, was the product of blind chance and a blind struggle, and man a lonely, intelligent mutation, scrambling with the brutes for his sustenance", he was accurately protraying Darwin's evolutionary view.

HERE. Stomping around pointing your finger at everyone yelling "out-of-context quote" or "liar", "liar" when Darwin's "beliefs" are being accurately portrayed only makes you look foolish

Dimensio: "This justifies him fabricating a quote from Wayne Carley?"

[1] I couldn't have "fabricated" anything --- I wasn't even ON the thread, ace. Hahahaha

[2] But YOU WERE on the thread, ace --- BIG TIME -- And so were most of your other blind-faith religion friends.

[3] None of you who were on the thread at the time challenged the quote. It must have sounded right to you since it comports with the tacit admission Carley had made (as referenced here):

"The diversity of life on Earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process." So read the platform of the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), the influential professional society of high school and college science instructors. But in a surprising move that has scandalized evolutionists and secularists in the education establishment, the NABT has excised the key words "unsupervised" and "impersonal" from its creed... language that was too explicit in stating their naturalistic philosophy. Indeed, Wayne Carley, executive director of the NABT acknowledged as much, saying the change was made because they wanted "to avoid taking a religious position." That is an admission that demonstrates the truth of what Christian critics have been claiming all along: The association's - original - platform - like Darwinism itself - exceeds purely scientific conclusions, and embraces distinctly religious ideas. ...The NATB retreat is essentially an acknowledgement that the naturalistic philosophy underlying their original statement cannot be defended as "science" itself..."

AND because of these admissions - which also comport with what Carley said - which were made by leading Darwinist philosopher Michael "I allow - I insist - that, from its very birth, evolutionism has been used for more than mere science." Ruse, and NCSE'S Executive Director, and award-winning humanist who says she subscribes to the philosophy of materialism, Eugenie C. "NABT was making a philosophical statement outside of what science can tell us" Scott, both of whom are referenced here.

Two recurring tactics of the Darwinian Religious Left is to [1] deliberately restate creationist arguments incorrectly so as to create a "strawman", ie: "quoting-out-of-context" - as Patrick does here - and [2] silencing expert opinion when it reveals fraudulent macroevolutionist logic.

In fact, the most outrageous "out-of-context" quote was to be found on PatrickHenry's profile page where he attempts to prove that even "the pope" agreed with him and Darwin.

Riding in the boats of one-armed Darwinist boat-rowers ---who think that by screaming "out of context quote" or "liar, liar" at everyone who points out that so-called "science" has been busily teaching little school children the "philosophical beliefs" of Darwin as if they are the foundation of true science/biology --- gets REAL old after a while.

So if you insist on defending your Darwinian philosophy by parroting the same misleading rhetoric which merely takes people in circles, or down a rabbit trail you want to divert them to, then from now on, I'll just re-post what I posted above, or a variation of it.