Posted on 02/12/2006 10:32:27 AM PST by PatrickHenry
And its also utterly irrelevant to anything I posted to you. I note that you didn't address any of my points; you just responded with a non sequitur.
Don't add to your stupidity in posting the original claim. You are the one making an absurd claim, that purified gold is transparent. The burden of proof is on you. Do you realise how bad this inability you have to accept reality makes you look? (and by implication how bad it makes your religion look)
Fall about laughing. The "everyone laughed at Columbus except the devout scripturalists" lie is my favourite creationist canard, as longtime evo posters will have noticed. Having the idiotic claim that pure gold is transparent in the same post was gilding the lily rather.
This is your brain on creationism!
Yes you are. You are assuming there are only two possibilities:
a. Jesus rose from the dead
b. The disciples knowingly went to their deaths for a lie
There are many other possibilities that you are a priori discounting when you offer up that dichotomy. The dichotomy only exists for those who already believe the Bible to be inerrant. For the rest of us who think that it may be partially or entirely false your dichotomy is no evidence at all.
That's codswallop. Metals, no matter how pure, are not transparent below their plasma frequency which is generally in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum.
This is a post I made some time ago on the same topic so I'm going to quote it here:
Actually it's due to interband transitions. In copper for instance, electrons from the filled 3d bands can transition to unoccupied states in the 4s band above the Fermi level. Thus, above a threshold of ca. 2eV, the reflectivity decreases drastically. Gold has a slightly higher interband absorption edge which is the reason why it has a yellowish color as opposed to copper with its reddish tinge. Silver on the other hand has no color (i.e. reflectivity is pretty high and constant over the whole visible spectrum) because it's threshold is at about 4eV which is in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum.
In the days since you and I used to swat this around, I noticed there's a standard template these conversations take. I'm curious to know what you think of it.
Then we can see how you do. I tend to disagree that the transitionals Darwin predicted 147 years ago have not turned up. I'd say he should be credited as being either a seer or the most incredibly lucky charlatan to ever publish a bad theory.
- Tap-Dancing Science-Denier declares that the fossil record lacks instances of things changing in an orderly series from some Thing A to Thing Z. As this kind of evidence is to be expected, the lack of it must weigh against evolution having happened. By the very statement of this objection we are invited to believe the Tap-Dancing Science-Denier would accept such evidence IF ONLY IT EXISTED but the thing is it doesn't exist.
- Someone who disagrees demonstrates many instances well known in the literature of fossil series intermediate in form and time between some Thing A and some Thing Z.
- The Tap-Dancer then declares fossil series evidence to be irrelevant. How do we know ... various things? The dates of the fossils? Whether fossil A lies exactly on the ancestral line of fossil B?
But wasn't the evidence valid when it was supposedly missing?
But first I'd like to know if you'd accept fossil evidence for transitionals IF ONLY SUCH EVIDECE EXISTED.
Darwin’s theory, a staple in science curriculums, states that evolution in organisms occurs gradually over time. His theory also states that gaps in the fossil record, in which there are missing links between the different phases of evolution in organisms are temporary because the linking fossils haven’t been found yet.And from further down the page, where someone posted another article on the same person:[Jeffrey] Schwartz [a Pitt professor in the department of anthropology and the department of history and philosophy of science], through research of the fossil record and use of Maresca’s findings about cell structure, believes otherwise.
“If you look at the fossil record, organisms didn’t gain new items like teeth and jaws gradually,” Schwartz said. “It’s not like fish developed bony teeth one piece at a time. It happened suddenly.”
A recurring theme in that conversation is one that creation scientists often seize upon. If life evolves gradually, where are all the “missing links”? Although that term conjures images of “ape-men,” the challenge to the theory is much more serious than that. The fossil record is riddled with gaps.If the fossil record weren't problematic for Darwinian evolution, which predicts slow and gradual change, why are scientists like Schwartz and Stephen Jay Gould (whose expertise on the subject far outstrip yours, I would assume) trying to work out models of Punctuated Equillibrium?Life forms evolve, it seems, in a kind of punctuated equilibrium. Successful species change slowly and gradually over millions of years, then new species originate suddenly, arising in dramatically different forms with, in many cases, no intermediate examples.
There are two general theories to explain this absence of transitional creatures. One group has insisted that the intermediate examples will be found; the other has argued that geographic separation and environmental change drive rapid development of new species.
Schwartz sides with the latter group and tackles two important unanswered questions in his “New Evolution” as to the underlying cause of novel characteristics that lead quickly to new species: “How will novelty look when it does appear?” and “how does more than one individual come to have a novel structure?”
No tap-dancing required; even scientists who believe in evolution recognize that the fossil record does not evidence slow change over time, but millions of years of stasis combined with sudden shifts in morphology.
Really? I asked you if you would accept fossil evidence for transitional species IF ONLY SUCH EVIDENCE EXISTED. Somehow, you managed to miss the point of my post.
You ran out and got an irrelevant datum. That is, you waved Schwartz saying there isn't any such evidence. That is to say, you have instantly, before even being confronted with any data, appealed to an "authority," a rapidly self-marginalizing voice in the wilderness--most authorities don't see a need for a "hopeful monster" theory--one with whom I obviously do not agree. We had a thread on Schwartz. Let me charitably speculate that he may be unacquainted with the evidence that he is wrong.
But what about you? How hard is my question? Would you accept fossil evidence for transitional forms unknown in Darwin's day if such were presented to you?
Because you're trying to play the issue: You're going to pick some form that appears to be morphologically between two other forms and declare it to be a transitional fossil. That quite misses the point.
My point is that the fossil record does not support smooth, constant change over time as Darwin's theory predicts. Rather, it supports species continuing essentially unchanged for millions of years (we'll assume your dating is correct for the sake of discussion) with abrupt "evolution" which takes place too quickly to be captured in the record. Thus, we have Punk Eek, the world's first "scientific" theory built to explain a lack of evidence.
Your tactic is good, but its logic quickly falls apart as soon as someone refuses to accept your definition of the transitional fossil problem.
For now, I'm just going to point out that the fossil record most definitely does not support smooth and gradual transitions over time, but rather millions of years of stasis followed by sudden "leaps" in evolution--that's why Gould came up with Punctuated Equilibrium, to explain the lack of smooth transitions.
Because you know I've got you nailed. What Darwin said would show up has shown up in abundance and you know it.
You're going to pick some form that appears to be morphologically between two other forms and declare it to be a transitional fossil.
I've got bags of them by now, as you no doubt have anticipated.
That quite misses the point.
No, it's exactly my point. You're claiming something reasonably to be expected in the fossil record isn't there, but it is. We have basically the fossil record our models of geology and evolution tell us to expect. Finding a dingbat like Schwartz (or a surgically mangled George Gaylord Simpson quote from 1944, or any other of a hundred creationist quote mines) does not help with this.
My point is that the fossil record does not support smooth, constant change over time as Darwin's theory predicts.
Then your point is wrong. Darwin on the Imperfection of the Geologic Record. Any quote you can mine from there implying a smooth and continuous record of change will be one of his well-known rhetorical questions which he goes on to rebut fully. But you won't try it because you're better than that, right?
Now, here's my main point. It's wrong to constantly tell people that something reasonably to be expected is missing if [as most creationists have done] it turns out that you have defined away that thing to where nothing, nothing, nothing can be it. Or [in your particular case] you have misstated the requirement for the thing to such a level that once again it is "missing" even though the expected amount of it has been found.
The Bible may hint at a tiny amount of science but it certainly is NOT a source if scientific information. You can go backwards and retrofit modern knowledge to bible passages (I assume you are doing so in the original languages it was written in and not in the translations).
As written, the Bible says "streets of gold". Most would assume "streets of gold." Why would God obfuscate clear science?
Strawman arguments, just for the record, are not lies. They are obfuscations or bad analogies at worst. Lying would be stating what I know not to be true as true.
Obfuscation ON PURPOSE isn't lying? A half-truth is a lie. Logical fallacies, when knowingly employed for the purpose of falsification ARE LIES. You don't get to redefine lying then say "given my new definition of lying, I am not lying." This is begging the question, big time (another fallacy but that is you CRIDers standard stock in trade).
Haven't done that...
Yes you have. When you are busted on a particular logical fallacy and you use it again, then you are lying.
I just think the spirit behind EvoThink is not spiritually benign. But that is a theological discussion that weighs the bios and words and deeds and beliefs of EvoThink's proponents -- following how John tells us to "Test all the spirits, for not everything is of God"" and not for this thread.
You can "think" all you want. Put up proof. Make a direct casual correlation between Evolution Theory and Spiritual Malignancy.
As I said before, we all know what kind of people deal in "feelings" instead of facts. The words and deeds of proponents of Evolutionists is no more at issue than the words and deeds of bakers, doormen, waitresses, race car drivers, CEOs or anyone else.
I have shown you to have much in common with the streets of Heaven: Transparent.
Scanning back through this, I see your assertions about the Bible being some sort of scientific text have been crushed. I mean crushed. Then the parts were run through a crusher. Then the crushed parts were crushed. Then the remaining powder was scattered to the 4 winds.
You should say "thank you" to all these people who have provided you with facts that you can't pretend to ignore.
And you also learned not to lead with Biblical Urban Legends.
I'm dense, you'll have to explain it to me.
The question is, how much, how quickly, and by what mechanism? Darwinism, proposing slow, gradual changes over time is shot out of the water by the fossil record, leaving us to speculate either on some form of Punk Eek, or requiring us to look in a different avenue entirely.
There is no 'who' necessary, both DNA and RNA by their nature replicate as a simple function of their chemical composition. Whether the DNA 'code' is more or less complex than computer code is irrelevant, computer code is not, by its very nature, capable of replication. It does not take intelligence for a group of chemicals to combine, all it takes is an influx of energy.
Actually, Darwin didn't predict that. You might want to look at this post by Ichneumon, it's post #66, where he quotes what Darwin had to say on that subject.
This statement appears to have no basis in fact. If you read over our exchange on this thread, you should already know better than to be saying this.
Blown out of the water, you come back with a simple restatement--to somebody else yet.
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