Posted on 12/25/2009 11:36:48 PM PST by Ethan Clive Osgoode
referring to U.S.-based evangelist Ray Comfort, who argues that the universe and life is the result of an intelligent creator, Dawkins said: "There is no refutation of Darwinian evolution in existence. If a refutation ever were to come about, it would come from a scientist, and not an idiot.
"You can't prove there's no God, no fairies, no leprechauns, or that Thor or Apollo don't exist. There's got to be a positive reason to think that fairies exist. Until somebody does, we can say technically we are agnostic about fairies. We can't disprove them, but we think it's a bit of a waste of time trying. And the same goes for God."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
And in fact, I only think the better of you for so doing. :-)
Seriesly, however, the following would seem to be a direct and exceedingly emphatic refutation of your claim. I haven't run down the sources on it, and you can argue about them if you like, but all indications are that your pronouncement of the demise of evolution are... a bit premature, to say the very least:
Of the scientists and engineers in the United States, only about 5% are creationists, according to a 1991 Gallup poll (Robinson 1995, Witham 1997). However, this number includes those working in fields not related to life origins (such as computer scientists, mechanical engineers, etc.). Taking into account only those working in the relevant fields of earth and life sciences, there are about 480,000 scientists, but only about 700 believe in "creation-science" or consider it a valid theory (Robinson 1995). This means that less than 0.15 percent of relevant scientists believe in creationism. And that is just in the United States, which has more creationists than any other industrialized country. In other countries, the number of relevant scientists who accept creationism drops to less than one tenth of 1 percent.
0.15% of relevant scientists in agreement with your point of view hardly constitutes a compelling majority. Especially when there are the other 99.85% who disagree.
So how many times have you been banned?
Asked and answered here. Try remembering what you're told for more than a month. You know, just for novelty's sake.
And you evos are still here. Imagine that.
Freedom for others is just hell, isn't it?
Kind of hard to complain about someone violating the forum rules and demanding that they get banned when you’re violating them as well.?
Perhaps. I'm not doing it, though, so it's not terribly hard on me.
Shouldn’t you also be banned in that case?
Just askin’.....
Just answerin' ...
Darwin saw the most major support for his theory being Haeckel's claim of embryos for dissimilar animals starting off being similar; that has since been shown to be a total fraud.
Darwin knew the lack of intermediate fossils was a major problem for him. He assumed that advances in earth-moving equipment would resolve the problem in his favor; they haven't.
The fruit fly experiments in the early decades of the last century should have shown something resembling macroevolution if that was possible; it isn't and they didn't. Fruit flies breed new generations every day or so so that running an experiment with them for decades will involve more generations of fruit flies than there have ever been of anything resembling humans in any way on this planet. They subjected the flies to everything in the world known to cause mutations and recombined the mutants every way possible. All they ever got was fruit flies and sterile freaks.
That's because the whole thing is driven by information and the only information they ever had was that for fruit flies. When DNA and RNA were discovered in the 1960s, the reason for the failure of those experiments became known.
Evolution should have been abandoned at that point as Cohen noted:
"At that moment, when the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching halt
I.L. Cohen, Researcher and Mathematician
Member NY Academy of Sciences
Officer of the Archaeological Inst. of America
Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities
New Research Publications, 1984, p. 4
Great Post!
Most people are not aware of the extent to which evolution has been disproven over the last century or thereabouts. It has in fact been thoroughly debunked by a number of entirely unrelated lines of argument and yet they go on with it. That’s the problem.
Well I am aware, and I hear you on both points.
So let me see if I understand your argument.
The opinion of 99.85% of the people who are best trained in the field is completely irrelevant. Although you have not claimed to hold a PhD in biology, you're "smarter" than the 479,300 out of 480,000 scientists who are actually credentialed and work in the field.
Okaayyyyy....
And you justify your opinion by pointing out that "99% of scientists thought the world was flat in 1490."
Even that assertion is frankly flat wrong... for the very simple and straightforward reason that there were no scientists, in any modern sense, in the year 1490!
The BIRTH of modern science is considered to have begun with the publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.
A few decades to 1490, the Gutenberg printing press hadn't even been invented! The first telescope was invented more than a century after 1490. And Galileo wouldn't even be BORN for another 74 years.
No, I think we know a bit more about science than people did in 1490, having gone from 0 modern biologists to nearly half a million in the United States alone.
As for I. L. Cohen, I'm not impressed by a lone "researcher and mathematician." YOU openly scorn the educated opinion of 479,300 out of 480,000 PhD biologists. Why should the rest of us take the word of one lone I. L. Cohen (whoever the heck he is)?
In fact, Cohen reminds me of Robert Faid, the "nuclear scientist" who claimed in 1993:
"The odds that Gorbachev is actually the antichrist have also been calculated. This number, like the probability, is enormous. The calculations indicating the odds that Gorbachev is the actual and true antichrist are: 710,609,175,188,282,100 to 1.
This means that if you want to bet that Gorbachev is not the true antichrist, you will be betting against odds of seven hundred and ten quadrillion, six hundred and nine trillion, one hundred and seventy-five billion, one hundred and eighty-eight million, two hundred and eighty-two thousand, one hundred...
I didn't say I agreed with the 99.85 number but suppose for the moment that the number is valid. Therer is a further question of how such a number becomes and remains valid. It could be because the truth of Darwinism is so manifestly obvious and has been so thoroughly proven and established that none but the basest blackguards in sockety could doubt it. Then again, it could be because for the last 100 years, everybody who has ever claimed to doubt it has been blackballed, ****-canned, denied tenure, fired, evicted, flunked out, expelled, and/or otherwise forced out of academic life.
Ben Stein made a movie about that sort of thing two years ago and that movie ( "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed") has been being shown on cable channels recently and is available on DVD. A much fuller discussion of this problem is available in the form of a book titled Slaughter of the Dissidents", by a Dr. Jerry Bergman.
Like I say, the argument from numbers doesn't do much for me one way or another, but since you brought it up...
I mean, basically, when you're talking about FACTS, then numbers don't matter. Facts are what they are and the numbers be damned. If you're talking about how different people view something which really is highly subjective, then numbers could easily matter.
To point out more of the obvious:
About 90% of Americans believe in a God. 70% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians.
There is nothing barring Christians from becoming biologists.
If there were any real support for your beliefs, then one would expect that somewhere around 70% of biologists in America - or around 336,000 of them - would disbelieve in evolution. Given a VIABLE choice between creationism and evolution, one would expect a Christian who is a scientist to choose creationism 100% of the time.
Yet we can't even turn up 1,000 out of nearly half a million who disbelieve in evolution.
So either Christians have almost universally rejected careers in the sciences, or Christians who've become biologist have almost universally lost their faith, or Christians who've gone into biology have almost universally become convinced (AGAINST THEIR WILL) of the truth of evolution, and embraced a belief in evolution along with their belief in God.
Or some combination of the above.
A 1998 poll said that 5.5% of biologists believed in God.
Even 5.5% of 480,000 would be 26,400 scientists.
Even if we were to assume that absolutely NONE of the remaining 453,600 started out as Christians (a completely invalid assumption), this gives us the figure that more than 97% of Christians who go into biology become convinced against their will that evolution is true.
And yet you claim that it's been "disproved."
Sorry, the facts simply are not remotely in favor of your claim.
So instead of believing the 99.85% of PhD biologists who are actually trained in the field - 479,300 of them - who disagree with you, we should believe... you. And a few hundred biologists (0.15%) who agree with you.
And instead of believing the 25,700 CHRISTIAN PhD biologists - 97.3% of the CHRISTIANS who have been highly trained and are experts in biology - we should believe... you. And the 2.7% of Christian biologists who agree with you.
Sorry, doesn’t wash.
Tell me something else.
Who should I believe... 97.3% of physicists, who believe in relativity... or you, who disagree?
Who should I believe... 97.3% of doctors, who tell me smoking is bad for my health... or you, who disagree?
Who should I believe... 97.3% of auto mechanics, who tell me I ought to change the oil in my car... or you, who disagree?
“Not content to let us “ignorant superstitious peasants” worship as we please, Dawkins rails, curses, and condemns.”
An ode to Richard Dawkins:
“As I was walking down the stair,
I saw a man who wasn’t there.
I saw him there again today.
Oh! How I wish he’d go away!”
“0.15% of relevant scientists in agreement with your point of view hardly constitutes a compelling majority. Especially when there are the other 99.85% who disagree.”
Hmmm...where have we heard THIS argument before???
“Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.”
AL GORE, speech at National Sierra Club Convention, Sept. 9, 2005
When evolutionists or AGW “scaremongers” can’t refute facts, they trot out the ever popular logical fallacy known as “an appeal to the authority of the majority”, as though science were a beauty or popularity contest, with the highest number of votes determining the winner.
Truth is not beholden to how many people believe or accept it. Science does not operate on consensus, yet the fact that evolutionary and AGW cultists continue to make this logically invalid appeal merely shows that their respective world-views are neither scientific nor true, but purely political.
Marxist Professors Are Gift to Climate Skeptics: Kevin HassettThe public’s skepticism toward the scientists is part of a bigger problem, one that threatens the fabric of our culture. Academe has been so politicized, and so radically disconnected from the population, that ordinary citizens no longer trust anything that it produces -- even science.
The sad fact is that explicit or implicit political litmus tests are far more important than science at universities and so-called peer-reviewed journals. Universities may pay lip service to “diversity,” but diversity of thought is taboo.
Damning Survey
A 2007 survey of more than 1,400 professors by sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard University and Solon Simmons of George Mason University is as damning an indictment of an organization as you are ever likely to see.
The authors compiled the political affiliation and beliefs of the professors, who were asked to identify themselves along a spectrum from very liberal to very conservative. Across all fields, 44 percent identified themselves as liberal or very liberal, while 9.2 percent identified themselves as conservative or very conservative.
Strikingly, the data were even more tilted in the physical and biological sciences. There, 45.2 percent of professors identified themselves as liberal, while only 8 percent said they were conservative.
The authors dug deeper than many previous studies and established some startling findings.
In the social sciences, 24 percent of professors identified themselves as liberal “radicals” and 18 percent as Marxists. Only 4.9 percent of social scientists identified themselves as “conservative.”
Full article here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=amjn_0feDpcM
It stands to reason that all materialists, radicals and Marxists would agree on evolution: they don't believe in God. Yet these same people control the peer-reviewed journals, sit on committees that determine tenure, research funding, etc. In short, they hold a virtual monopoly on thought, not because what they believe is true (except to them) but because nothing else can be lest it become a threat to their insidious world view (Marxism).
Appealing to a consensus among such thinkers is like saying every member of the Soviet Politburo was in one accord regarding state-controlled markets: true but ultimately destructive to the Soviet Union. And so goes science.
It’s true that truth is not a matter of consensus but of truth. However, when 99.85% of the people who are educated in a particular field hold a particular view or understanding of reality, we would do well to listen to the viewpoint.
The comparison to AGW, while clever, is only partially valid. And not a terribly big partially, at that. The fact is, there never was anything approaching a real “consensus” regarding anthropogenic global warming. And it’s possible to come up with 2000 people in a particular field who share a common point of view. (Or 700, for that matter.)
It’s a heck of a lot harder to come up with 479,300 out of 480,000.
In any event, my main point wasn’t even to argue for evolution. It was to argue against the arrogance of someone maintaining that evolution has been “disproven.” If it had been “disproven,” more than 700 (2.7%) out of 26,400 CHRISTIAN PhD biologists would surely attest to the fact.
“It’s true that truth is not a matter of consensus but of truth. However, when 99.85% of the people who are educated in a particular field hold a particular view or understanding of reality, we would do well to listen to the viewpoint.”
It’s been heard over and over again ad nauseum. It’s the ONLY viewpoint ever mentioned favorably in the popular media and the ONLY one taught in school textbooks. It simply isn’t true.
But let’s play your numbers game for a second: you’d have to assume that, given the institutional saturation the message of evolution has received, it would be a widely-held belief. It is not. In the latest Gallup Poll (again, we’re playing your numbers game here) 39% say they believe in evolution, 61% either do not or have no opinion one way or the other.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-evolution.aspx
If this were an election, evolution would have lost in a landslide, despite hundreds of billions of research money being poured into it for so many years!
“The comparison to AGW, while clever, is only partially valid. And not a terribly big partially, at that. The fact is, there never was anything approaching a real “consensus” regarding anthropogenic global warming.”
And yet you keep using the word “consensus” as though a consensus, or lack thereof, proves anything. Why?
AGW is wrong on its face, consensus or not. Materialistic evolution (as is materialism, in general) is wrong on its face, consensus or not. Repeated appeals to consensus are not an argument for evolution or creationism: they are simply a measure of how many people believe something and - ultimately - that is not the basis for science. It is, however, the basis for politics and religion.
Finally, with regards to your assertion that evolution is not like AGW, here’s my take on it:
Climate scientists and evolutionary scientists are two sides of the same corrupt coin, both being influenced by money in not-so-good ways.
Both rely on fraudulent data and evidence, both hold monopolies on their respective peer-review processes and journals, both are world views masquerading as “science” to dupe the public out of research funding, and both have a$$clowns like Gore and Dawkins saying their respective “sciences” are “settled” by a “vast majority of scientists” and calling people on the other side “flat-earthers” and “idiots” for not buying the junk they’re pushing.
Dawkins, like Gore, is nothing more than a money-grubbing politician, who makes his living peddling this junk, and their cult-like followers and “true believers” are nothing more than fools for buying it.
Hope that makes my position more clear.
“In any event, my main point wasn’t even to argue for evolution. It was to argue against the arrogance of someone maintaining that evolution has been “disproven.” If it had been “disproven,” more than 700 (2.7%) out of 26,400 CHRISTIAN PhD biologists would surely attest to the fact.”
And precisely what you fail to miss is that - in real science - all it takes is one: one experiment, one observation, one real scientist - to disprove something. Just ask Galileo, Kopernicus, Kepler, Newton, or Pasteur.
Unfortunately, modern science has replaced the medieval church as the real instrument of obfuscation in the search for truth, because Marxists are in control of the institutions that should be seeking it.
Substitute “fail to realize” for “fail to miss” in my last post.
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