Some Professionally-Safe Darwin Doubters Are Now Speaking Out

>>There’s tons, mountains, of evidence all of which your lying mind refuses to see.

Show us some of that evidence. Make certain it is observable scientific evidence. No story-telling, please. If one must believe evolution to be true to see the evidence, then it is not evidence, but conjecture based on faith.

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>>Regardless, even if, as you claim, we begin at 3,000 BC, your overall calculation is still bogus to the max because, from 3,000 BC to roughly 1700 AD human populations, overall, changed very little.
Then, beginning with the Age of Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution around 1700, populations “exploded” at a much higher rate.

You don’t understand the math. It doesn’t matter what happened in between. The calculation is from time1 to time2.

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>>Evidence is “splattered” all over this thread, but your lying mind refuses to see it. You’ve chosen to blind yourself to evidence, to facts, to reason, to truth itself if it doesn’t fit in your religious doctrines.

You obviously don’t understand the meaning of the words “scientific evidence”. I’ll make it easy on you. Show us evidence for the cornerstone of Darwinism, which is “common descent.” The evidence must be observable whether we believe evolution to be true, or not. Fair enough?

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>>You’ve also chosen to lie without shame, suggesting whatever religious views you have never sank very deep into you, FRiend.

You may think I am lying, but it is only because you are scientifically-challenged.

Mr. Kalamata

>>>LOL!! Your mommy wants her basement back.

My mother died of very old age many years ago. She never had a basement. You are not pulling an old Saul Alinsky trick, are you? Are you living in your mama’s basement, and hoping no one will find out? LOL!

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>>The fact you list “creationism” and “ID” says all we need know about your science ignorance.

I grew out of the childish game of evolutionism 7 or 8 years ago.

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>>I will not waste any more time with you, sonny boy. Your childish posts tell everyone your deep level of ignorance. Your ad hominem tell all about your childish nature.

Why did you waste my time in the first place? Are you that starved for attention?

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>>Your words indict you more than I could possibly can.

I am unconvinced of your ability to read.

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>>Good day, sonny boy.

Good riddance.

Mr. Kalamata

>>By the way, no scientist I know of recognizes your term “Darwinism” — there’s no such thing. Sure, there is a theory of evolution, originated by Darwin, but scientific understandings today are light-years beyond anything Darwin could imagine.

This is Dobzhansky on Darwinism:

“As Fisher rightly said, natural selection is a mechanism which brings to realization what would otherwise be in the highest degree improbable. Man’s genetic endowment, or that of any other living species, would be infinitely unlikely to arise by a chance concatenation of mutations. There is a kernel of truth in the old objection to Darwinism that it is too much to ask mere chance to create a complex organ, such as human eye, or brain, or hormonal system. But the objection is invalid. It overlooks the fact that evolution is history; evolution is a long succession of threatened losses and recaptures of the adaptedness of the organism to the environment. The elementary events of this history are mutations. Mutations are adaptively fortuitous; however, mutations are determined by the structure of the gene which mutates, and this structure is in turn determined by the evolutionary history of the gene. The gene, the individual, and the species, are time-binding machines.” [Theodosius Dobzhansky, “On Methods Of Evolutionary Biology And Anthropology.” American Scientist, Vol.45, No.5, December, 1957, p.391]

Michael Ruse on Darwinism:

“Generally, however, the misunderstandings and hostilities among evolutionists are frightening. Many if not most Christian evolutionists, following in the tradition of Teilhard de Chardin, reject twentieth- century biology or strive desperately to supplement or replace Darwinism. Few are quite as candid as Keith Ward, but one finds it hard not to suspect similar motives at work among people like Rolston. In part, this stems from an understandable dislike of the strident and intentionally hurtful atheism of Dawkins and his kind. Who would want to agree with such a person, even about science? In part, discomfort with modern science comes because Christians find Darwinism itself too challenging. But at least the Christian evolutionists strike a civil tone in their critiques.” [Michael Ruse, “The Evolution–Creation Struggle.” Harvard University Press, 2005, Conclusion, pp.273-74]

Paul Davies on Darwinism:

“So life may have begun with something comparatively simple – a population of small replicating molecules, say. Perhaps these molecules are simple enough to form spontaneously in many environments; they may even be forming on Earth today. Once the initial molecular replicators get going then Darwinian evolution can kick in, driving the complexity higher and higher, until something approaching the familiar living cell eventually emerges. The important point is that Darwinism doesn’t have to wait for cellular life to arise before it can work its spell; it could be equally effective at the molecular level.” [Paul Davies, “The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe?”. Penguin Books Limited, 2011, Chap.2]

Ernst Mayr on Darwinism:

“Charles Darwin was the most talked about person of the 1860S. T. H. Huxley, always a coiner of felicitous phrases, soon referred to Darwin’s ideas as ‘Darwinism’ (1864), and in 1889 Alfred Russel Wallace published a whole volume entitled Darwinism. However, since the 1860s no two authors have used the word ‘Darwinism’ in exactly the same way. As in the old story of the three blind men and the elephant, every writer on Darwinism seemed to touch upon only one of the many aspects of Darwinism, all the while thinking that he had the real essence of what this term signifies. Thus, everybody who read the Origin responded only to those parts of it that either supported his own preconceived ideas or were in conflict with them. What these writers failed to grasp is that Darwinism is not a monolithic theory that rises or falls depending on the validity or invalidity of a single idea.” [Ernst Mayr, “One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought.” Harvard University Press, 1991, Chap.7,p.90]

Stephen Jay Gould on Darwinism:

“Yet Blyth and Darwin could not have been more different in their general vision of nature—and Blyth represented the old as firmly as Darwin pioneered the new. Their variant readings of natural selection represent the most striking expression of two incompatible views. To Darwin, selection is the creative force in evolution. If I had to summarize the essence of Darwinism in a single concept, I would emphasize the directing power of selection. Genetic variation is raw material; it is”random” in the sense that mutations do not arise preferentially directed toward the production of advantageous traits. Adaptation is the result of natural selection, acting relendessly across generations to accumulate favored variation through the differential success of fitter individuals in producing more surviving offspring. Evolutionists have waxed poetic in their metaphorical depictions of selection—Ernst Mayr compared it to the work of a sculptor, George G. Simpson to a poet, Theodosius Dobzhansky to a composer, Julian Huxley to Shakespeare himself. The comparisons may be stretched, or even silly, but they do reflect the essence of Darwinism—the creative power of natural selection.” [Stephen Jay Gould, “An Urchin in the Storm - Essays About Books and Ideas.” W. W. Norton & Company, 1988, Chap.I, p.60]

Jerry Coyne on Darwinism:

“So what is ‘Darwinism’? This simple and profoundly beautiful theory, the theory of evolution by natural selection, has been so often misunderstood, and even on occasion maliciously misstated, that it is worth pausing for a moment to set out its essential points and claims. We’ll be coming back to these repeatedly as we consider the evidence for each.” [Jerry A. Coyne, “Why Evolution is True.” Oxford University Press, 2009, Chap.1, p.3]

Campbell, Reece & Mitchell on Darwinism:

“Darwinism has a dual meaning. One facet is recognition of evolution as the explanation for life’s unity and diversity. The second facet is the Darwinian concept of natural selection as the cause of adaptive evolution... Darwin’s two claims: that modern species evolved from ancestral forms, and that natural selection is the main mechanism for this evolution. The conclusion that life has evolved is based on historical evidence—the signs of evolution discussed in the previous section. What, then, is theoretical about evolution? Theories are our attempts to explain tacts and integrate them with overarching concepts. To biologists,”Darwin’s theory of evolution” is natural selection—the mechanism Darwin proposed to explain the historical facts of evolution documented by fossils, biogeographv, and other types of evidence.” [Campbell et al, “Biology.” Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 5th Ed, 1999, Unit 4, pp.419, 425-426]

Eugene V. Koonin on Darwinism:

“The foundations for the critically important synthesis of Darwinism and genetics were set in the late 1920s and early 1930s by the trio of outstanding theoretical geneticists: Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, and J. B. S. Haldane. They applied rigorous mathematics and statistics to develop an idealized description of the evolution of biological populations. The great statistician Fisher apparently was the first to see that, far from damning Darwinism, genetics provided a natural, solid foundation for Darwinian evolution. Fisher summarized his conclusions in the seminal 1930 book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (Fisher, 1930), a tome second perhaps only to Darwin’s Origin in its importance for evolutionary biology.5 This was the beginning of a spectacular revival of Darwinism that later became known as Modern Synthesis” [Eugene V. Koonin, “The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution.” Pearson Education, 2012, p.7]

I am certain there are others.

Mr. Kalamata

“So, for scientific purposes, is there any reason to reach beyond science’s natural boundaries to find supernatural explanations for observed speciation?”

When the only natural process that scientists can propose to account for speciation is statistically impossible, then yes, I think we have a good reason.

>>>When the only natural process that scientists can propose to account for speciation is statistically impossible, then yes, I think we have a good reason.

Boogieman, I suspect you are referring to “descent with modification”, or “common descent”, which requires a gain in genetic information. From the literature I have read, that process is statistically impossible.

Speciation, on the other hand, is fairly common. It is understood as the loss of genetic information, or “devolution”:

“Definition of devolution: retrogression from a derived to a primitive or less differentiated state; the reverse of evolution.” [Mai et al, “The Cambridge Dictionary of Human Biology and Evolution.” 2005, p.142]

Mr. Kalamata

“Speciation, on the other hand, is fairly common.”

It really all depends on the degree of speciation we are talking about. In Darwin’s model, there is no different mechanism to account for a fish becoming a reptile than there is to account for a wolf becoming a dog. It’s the same process, happening over and over for as many billions of years as it would take to explain all the changes in between.

Obviously the second type of “speciation” does seem common as we can see good evidence for common ancestry among a lot of creatures of very similar types, because many can still interbreed to some degree. The other type of speciation, where the process continues until one creature transforms into a radically different type of creature, with what we now know of the probabilities involved, I think we can say only exists in the fertile imagination of Darwinists.

Kalamata: "The loony Michael Shermer even has a name for your high priests [”shamans”]:"

I admire & respect Shermer for his work on this: Denying History, Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why do They Say It

Shermer's nature is skepticism, so I suspect the full context of your quote would show his words are intended somewhat ironically.
Calling science-popularizers "shamans" is Shermer's way of saying "be suspicious of them".

Kalamata quoting Michael Ruse: "...the literalists are absolutely right.
Evolution is a religion.
This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”
[Ruse, Michael, “How Evolution Became A Religion.” National Post, May 13, 2000]"

I know nothing of Michael Ruse, but calling evolution "a religion" seems to me just a provocative way to sell books.
The fact is, strictly defined there is nothing "religious" about natural-science in general or evolution theory specifically.
They are the opposite of any religion because they specifically and emphatically refuse to consider any non-natural (i.e., supernatural, spiritual) processes or explanations.

Sadly, it may be true that some people, lacking any other religious inspiration, glom onto science or evolution as a substitute -- similar to the way some fans hold up an Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson as some sort of deity.
Sure, it may happen, but nobody claims that's ideal or even "normal".

Kalamata on Thomas Paine: "I’ll bet he and Bertrand Russell would have gotten along very well."

Russell was a modern atheist, Paine was an Enlightenment Era deist who actually thought of himself as a Quaker.
So, remember my point here: none of our Founding Fathers were atheist, not one, even Thomas Paine, meaning: our Founders' understanding of natural-philosophy, aka natural-science, was purely methodological, not philosophical or ontological.

Kalamata: "You forgot to mention they were all were genius scientists and creationists, even Steno, who based his work on the evidence of a global flood and a 6,000 year earth:"

Neither Steno in 1660, nor any of the others you mentioned, knew of data which would allow them to accept or reject theories about the earth's age & evolution.

Kalamata quoting Newton: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” "

My belief is that nothing in the Universe is outside the scope, plan or intentions of our Creator, so I agree with Newton.

Kalamata: "You commented on Paley. Did you forget?"

Why not just answer the question?

Kalamata: "Again, the Bible is loaded with scientific gems, for anyone who bothers to look."

Maybe, but the Bible doesn't give a … hoot about science, science is not its purpose.
Instead, what the Bible intends to show us is that God created and rules over the natural realm -- and indeed that He can over-rule nature whenever that suits His purposes.
The Bible doesn't care about giving us an accurate picture of nature, instead it cares about demonstrating how God rules nature.

So, the fact that we can find some pretty amazing "gems" as you call them is interesting, but they are not the Bible's purpose.

Kalamata: "Linnaeus was a creationist who wrote of the created kind:"

Sure, we all speak informally of "this kind" or "that kind", but neither Linnaeus nor any other scientist ever defined "kind" as a taxonomic category.

Kalamata: "He also believed in the immutability of the species, but with an inherent potential for variation:

'...these forms have produced more forms, according to the laws laid down, but always ones that are similar to themselves. ' "

Right, and what Linnaeus could not appreciate was that if you repeat the process, say, a million times, then the final "forms" produced are not necessarily so "similar to" the very first forms.

Kalamata: "The Latin Vulgate erroneously translated the created kind as either species or genus.
When Linnaeus adopted his classification scheme, he included both words, with the genus rank just above the species:"

Every English translation uses "kind" or occasionally "type", neither of which is defined scientifically.
If the Vulgate is a mistranslation, then "genus" and "species" are simply Latin words used in error and Linnaeus' adopting them bring us no closer to a scientific definition of the biblical "kind" -- i.o.w., "genus" and "species" are simply words borrowed from a Bible for use elsewhere.
They tell us nothing specific about the Bible.

Kalamata: "And Darwin was, naturally, a failed theologian."

William Paley's field is listed as "natural theologian".
Charles Darwin's fields are listed as "natural history, geology".
Those were recognized then and now as vastly different schools of study.

Kalamata: "If you were a scientist, like William Paley, and some ideologue claimed you were not, that would be ad hominem. "

Paley was no scientist, he was a theologian -- look it up!

Darwin studied theology, but his field work and publications were in "natural philosophy", aka science.
Your insistence otherwise are simply shameless lies, FRiend.

Kalamata: "Are you conceding my point that evolutionary biologists are not scientists?"

No, why would you suggest it?

Kalamata: "Who invented that stupid rule?
There is nothing more natural than the creator of all nature."

First, by definition & experience, God is not "natural", He's supernatural, spiritual.
Yes, He can take human form, but even then was well beyond "natural" powers.

As for your question, well... sorry, FRiend, but did you ever get an, ah... edumacation?
You know, you need some of that for these sorts of discussions.
Basic history of Western Thought begins with Greeks like Plato & Aristotle and was taught in medieval Universities as various branches of philosophy -- theology, metaphysics and, yes, "natural philosophy" which looked for natural explanations of natural processes.

Natural philosophy is today's natural-science and it all begins with the assumptions that it's not theology, it's not metaphysics, it's not anything except the search for natural explanations of natural processes.
But that was/is strictly a methodological assumption, the philosopher-theologians who invented "natural philosophy" had no intention to deny God's existence, merely to set aside for others to contemplate any considerations of God's influence on nature.

That assumption was, is and will remain part of the core definition of our word "science", whether you like it or not.

Kalamata on science in the Bible: "It doesn’t have to.
It has a perfect record."

Your claims regarding the Bible's intentions toward science are simply false.
You've gone way beyond what the Bible itself says.

Kalamata: "Scientists have always recognized “kinds”, or the modern equivalent, family.
You must be thinking about evolutionists, not scientists."

Even your own man, Linnaeus in 1750, understood that "kind" was not "family" -- indeed, according to your own quote, Linnaeus didn't use the term "family" in his classifications.
He did use "genus" and "species", but there's no suggestion anywhere they define the Biblical word "kind".

Kalamata: "The barrier is the “family”, or “kind”, which is exactly what biblical science predicts, and exactly what real scientists have been claiming all along. "

Your term "biblical scientist" is an oxymoron.
The rest is just more nonsense because, words like "species", "genus" or "family" cannot by themselves be a barrier to anything, and definitions of those terms are not strictly based on the ability (or lack of) of various sub-groups to interbreed.
Yes, the most frequent dividing line is genus, but it is not always a hard rule.

Kalamata: "Biochemist Michael Behe explains it this way:"

The words you quoted are gibberish, meaningless word-salad, unconnected to anything real.

Kalamata: "Speciation is the result of devolution, not evolution.
The “kind” doesn’t change."

And still more gibberish.

Kalamata: "LOL!
You really should get up to speed.
That highly imaginative “whale evolution” chart you presented was debunked years ago. "

It was denied, like Holocaust denial, never "debunked".

Kalamata: "This is Dr. Hans Thewissen on the Ambulocetus:"

Other reconstructions don't include the blow-hole, so it seems some scholarly disagreement there.

Kalamata: "This is Dr. Phil Gingerich on the Rodhocetus:"

Other reconstructions don't include a tail fluke on Rodhocetus:

Kalamata: "This is Thewissen on the ear of the Ambulocetus and Pakicetus:"

Your video shows us one Ambulocetus ear bone, said to be "questionable".
It does not show us what other similar fossils have been found.
It does not tell us what judgments were used to name that a pre-whale ear bone, or indeed, what criticisms have been raised of it.

Kalamata: "Like all other evolution frauds (Piltdown Man, Haeckels Embryos, Junk DNA, Vestigial Organs, etc.), it will be years before they are removed from museums and our children’s textbooks."

Beyond Piltdown & Haeckels, there's no evidence of "fraud" here, only of the usual scholarly debates.
It's how science is supposed to work.

Kalamata: "The dirty little secret of the “whale evolution” fraud is that even if all the animals turned out to be exactly as claimed, there would still be no proof of whale evolution.
Each species in that chart is not only distinct and specialized, but there is no evidence that any of them had offspring, nor is there evidence of the minute transitions that would be required to support species transitions."

Sure, despite 150+ years accumulating billions of fossils representing hundreds of thousands of extinct species dated over hundreds of millions of years, it is still estimated that fewer than 1% of all species who ever lived have been found as fossils.
So there are huge gaps in the fossil record, likely always will be.
That's one reason evolution remains a theory, regardless of how many facts confirm it.

to all: sorry for this over-long post. Next time I'll split it up into smaller segments.

That is a MASTERFUL response. The length is proportionate to the content.

I, for one, will bookmark it as a science-based reposte to the emotion-based CRidder nonsense.

I have been a warrior in the CRevo wars for 10+ years. I was even banned for my science-based responses (OK, a little heated sometimes). JR let me back in with a proviso I be a little kinder to our FR brethren who do not understand science.

Until you, BroJoeK, and bwest entered the discussion I honestly felt I was alone. Many science-based FReepers were banned forever. For fun you might want to visit Darwincentral.org where the banned went to continue the discussion (I think I get a toaster oven for each recruit).

My agenda is clear: Liberals think that Conservatives do not understand science. These liberals quote threads like this to make their point. We few who understand science need to make it clear to lurkers that we do understand science.

And the conflation between TToE and AGW is of course nonsense. To be a Scientific Theory it should have a single predictive model — TToE meets this and AGW does not.

Kalamata: "You were smug.
I believe you characterized his lecture as a “rabbit hole”."

I don't do "smug", that's your bailiwick.
Your video was a 58 minute rabbit hole which provided no useful information except what amounted to an advertisement for job openings in the research field of abiogenesis.
But, in the end Tour tried to shut down such research by claiming "some people" hyped up their results beyond what is justified.
Since, Tour tells us, those people need to be punished, he would shut down further research until they are!

That's not just a rabbit hole, it's a Black Hole (& black eye) for science.

Kalamata: "You are guessing."

You're guessing to claim that Federal dollars directly support abiogenesis research.

Kalamata: "When are you going to throw out a single pebble of evidence from that mountain you claim to exist?
Admit it.
You don’t know of any scientific evidence for evolutionism, and you are merely parrotting propaganda from the party line."

Here's what I know for certain: deniers, like Holocaust deniers, simply deny anything which contradicts their own claims.
You yourself can go & see tons of physical evidence of evolution at any natural history museum, but you won't go, and if you did go you won't see, and if you did see you'd just deny, deny, deny.
Denial is who you are, denial is what you do, facts don't matter, nothing matters to you beyond your own claims.

Kalamata: "I believe Tour was being much too lenient.
We should shut down ALL research that has been over-hyped.
That would release the taxpayer from any obligation to fund the religion of evolutionism and the big-bang."

With "over-hyped" and "religion" to be defined exclusively by Grand Inquisitor Kalamata, and the length of punishment will be set by Pope James Tour, right?

Kalamata: "Start at 54:48 for Tour’s statements on the moratorium.
No real scientist would object. He finished at 56:00."

So you skip right over the part where Tour makes his "moratorium" a punishment for the irredeemable sin of "over-hyping" science?

Kalamata: "You mischaracterized his statement.
Immediately after the 56:00 mark, he paused while awaing the commpletion of the applause, and then said, “I’m just going to finish up.” "

I accurately reported what Tour said, and more important, the impression it left.
Indeed, you yourself say Tour's punishment of science is not near strong enough, so their's no point in you denying he said it.

Kalamata: "I would have preferred John 8:44, but Deut 13:3-4 was more than appropriate."

Neither text, nor any other similar, has anything remotely to do with natural-science.
The "father of lies" are those who pretend they do, FRiend.

Kalamata: "A pebble of evidence from that mountain of evidence will do.
Can you not spare us a single pebble?"

You'll find tons of evidence at any natural history museum.
See it, touch it, read a book or two.
You'll find as much as you're willing to see.

Kalamata: "I have been to museums of natural history, and there is no evidence for evolution in any of them. "

Just as I predicted!
A denier will look the evidence straight in the face and deny, deny, deny it.

Kalamata: "You foolishly tried to pass off “Whale Evolution” as evidence, which proves you are clueless."

No, you've foolishly denied, denied whale evolution based on very incomplete knowledge of a few scholarly debates.

Kalamata: "Gibberish.
Evolution has never been observed, in any way.
Devolution has, but not evolution."

Short term evolution has not only been observed, it's been directed by humans for tens of thousands of years, beginning with wolves to dogs and aurochs to cattle.
This man-directed evolution has created new breeds, sub-species and even a species.
These observed facts make longer term extrapolations entirely reasonable.

Kalamata: "That proves nothing except there is plenty of evidence of hydrologic sorting and possible liquefaction.
The fossil record shows evidence of a catastrophic, world-wide flood, with increasing terrestriality in the fossil record, from sea to land.
The evidence of marine fossils in the highest layers, world-wide, is enough to cause any real scientist to pause, if not to reject uniformitarianism and Darwinism."

Complete nonsense.

Kalamata: "Okay, you pick any item from that list and explain how it provides evidence for common descent.
Any item."

They all do.

Kalamata: "BTW, is it true that Charlie was a big fan of William Paley?"

It does seem that Darwin the naturalist admired Paley the theologian.

Kalamata quoting Gould: "It is a feature of the known fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly.
They are not, as a rule, led up to by a sequence of almost imperceptibly changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution... "

I'll take this quote as representative of the others.

If not Gould himself, then certainly others, especially anti-evolutionists, have taken Gould's words to be commentary on the nature of evolution, or lack of evolution.
In fact, he simply states the obvious: if an environment remains constant for, say, millions of years, then life itself will also remain relatively unchanged.
But when environments change, then life must also change/adapt or die -- sometimes slowly, often abruptly.

So "punctuated equilibrium" refers to such "punctuation" as that asteroid at Chicxulub, Mexico, which wiped out the Dinosaurs, not to some special feature of evolution which randomly speeds it up or slows it down.

Kalamata: "Are you claiming the absence of evidence IS evidence?
Now I have heard everything! LOL"

No, just the opposite, I'm saying absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.

Kalamata quoting Gould: "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology."

Gould was certainly smart enough to understand that both "extreme rarity" and "transitional forms" are matters of definition and interpretation.
Looking at the same data I'd say there are huge numbers of transitional forms and, indeed, that any fossil which can be reliably identified & classified is "transitional" between its ancestors and descendants, if any.

All of life, without exception, is "transitional".

Kalamata quoting Gould: "I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots).
I wish only to point out that it was never “seen” in the rocks."

It's hard to imagine what Gould is talking about when you've seen these transitional fossils, fresh from the rocks:

Kalamata: "Thank you, Charlie.
I rightely reject your entire theory."

But your reasons are 100% theological, not scientific.

Kalamata: "The notion that the earth has been around millions of years is an imaginary construct with no supporting evidence."

And that is a flat-out lie based on your religious beliefs, not science.

Kalamata: "There is no evidence for your conclusion, or that the strata is millions of years old."

More religiously motivated lies.

Kalamata quoting: "When he asked paleontologists if they had any personal knowledge of modern birds found with dinosaurs, he was in for quite a surprise."

In other words, these claims are total hearsay, not confirmed science.
Even one such confirmed observation would be big news.

Kalamata quoting: "The strata shows evidence of rapid deposition of all layers, as would be expected by hydrodynamic sorting and liquifaction.
That explains the virtually flat sedimentary layers, including coal, with little or no erosion and bioturbation in and between layers."

Totally out of context and without provenance.
Perhaps refers to some local conditions, but certainly cannot be extrapolated to mean everything on earth.

Kalamata: "You made that up.
That is called a “just-so” story.
Absent story-telling like that, evolutionism would collapse like cheap construction in an earthquake."

Nonsense, my words are a totally reasonable conclusions based on the fact that no dinosaurs are found above what's called the K-T boundary.

Kalamata: "Don’t be silly."

What's silly (or worse) is to claim the Bible condemns natural-science.
It absolutely does not.

Kalamata: "The phrases you posted are typical of those found in evolutionary “research” papers and text books; so where does the “evolution is a fact” hype come from?"

Many elements of evolution theory are indeed facts.
Descent with modifications has been observed, that's a fact.
Natural selection has been observed, so it's also fact.
Fossils are facts.
DNA is a fact, etc.

But as much as evolution refers to events in the past which can never be observed, evolution will always remain a theory.

Kalamata on Tour discussing Miller-Urey: "In my world, the last sentence is characterized as mockery."

Sure, but Tour also said nothing important has been achieved since Miller-Urey, and that makes Miller-Urey a big deal, Tour's mockery notwithstanding.

Kalamata: "No, God’s Word accurately portrays history, science, nature, and the future."

Properly understood, which Kalamata is incapable of.

Kalamata: "Are you claiming these are idle words?

“But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” — Mar 10:6 KJV"

No, I'm saying you misunderstand them.

Kalamata: "Or, are are you saying we should throw the Bible in the trash and rely on our “reason”, like the Pharisees in the time of Christ? Just curious . . ."

But "reason" is not what Pharisees relied on nor does the Bible ever condemn "reason".
Like Kalamata, Pharisees relied on their own misunderstandings of the Bible.
So, I'm saying "we" should try harder to understand the Bible.

Kalamata lying by misquoting BJK: "In fact they have several different methodologies (to predict the age of the earth,) all of which roughly agree.
The current estimate of 13.8 billion years is simply considered the best of the group."

My words which you misquote referred to estimates of the age of the Universe, not the Earth.

Kalamata: "None agree.
For that reason, the results from radiometric dating must be cherry-picked to keep the myth alive."

No radiometric dating is involved in estimating the age of the Universe.

As for the ages of Earth materials, that can indeed involve radiometric dating, of which there are dozens of different types, as well as several other non-radiometric methods.
Yes, every method has strict procedures and pitfalls such that even small mistakes can lead to bogus results.
But around the world are dozens of radiometric labs dating materials daily (doubtless for fees) and their results relied on people from many walks of life.

The Earth's age is estimated around 4.5 billion years.

Kalamata: "Generally, radiometric-dating labs require an estimated age of the rocks before they will proceeed (they need to know the answers before they will take the test.)
Some ~~scientists~~ practical jokesters decided to test the accuracy of radiometric dating, but without telling the labs how old the rocks were.
These are the results in million-years, using the K-Ar method (real dates are in parentheses):"

A total fraud, since Potassium-Argon has a half life of 1.3 billion years and is totally inappropriate for material less than 100,000 years old.
Your alleged "scientists" here were just tricksters, who had to lie on their paperwork to get those labs to even accept the materials for dating.

Kalamata: "The “millions of years” nonsense came along decades before radiometric dating arrived on the scene.
Now that radiometric dating has been invented, it is manipulated and hyped to make rock dating appear to be scientific."

Nonsense, there were other methods used before radiometric dating and other methods developed since radiometric dating -- dozens of methods in total.
Some are as basic as counting ancient tree rings or ice-core levels.
Some cover a few thousand years (i.e., carbon-14) others billions of years (ie., Potassium-Argon).
Taken together they provide convincing evidence for the ages of materials studied, including meteors from outer space.

Kalamata: "Try telling the truth.
It only hurts for a minute."

Sure, here's the truth about Kalamata: to defend your own misinterpretations of the Bible you've swallowed -- hook, line & sinker -- a huge pack of lies about natural-science.
The results have blinded you to evidence, to facts and even truth itself.

Kalamata: "You claim there are mountains of evidence for evolution, and yet you cannot present a single pebble of evidence.
Are you lying, or brainwashed?"

Complete nonsense -- there's evidence all around you, but you've blinded yourself to it and now claim there's no sucha thang as "sight".

Kalamata: "I have visited plenty of museums."

And yet you saw nothing because you'd already blinded yourself to it.

Kalamata: Wanna hear a related story?"

So apparently your acquaintance blinded himself while there?!

Kalamata: "You have presented no scientific evidence: only just-so stories and highly imaginative artwork."

You sound just like the Holocaust deniers I debated many years ago -- you close your eyes, you say you don't see it and then claim it's not even there.

Kalamata quoting: "“[O]nce the theory is in hand, Popper tells us, it is the duty of the scientist to extract from it logical but unexpected predictions that, if they are shown by experiment not to be correct, will serve to render the theory invalid. "

Exactly right, and the fact is that Darwin's little seed of an idea has grown & modified with accumulating evidence, now 150+ years later into a large tree, but his basic little idea has never been falsified.

Kalamata: "Evolutionists tend to spend their time trying to prove evolution and uniformitarianism to be true, except maybe when they are in the “cover up” mode.
That is not science."

Here's an example: the work of finding, recovering & identifying fossils has occupied many thousands of researchers over many, many decades.
Each researcher hopes to find a fossil which will upset, overturn & rewrite existing understandings of our past, and some actually do.
Those become famous and often enjoy a long rewarding career.

That's how science is supposed to work.

Kalamata to freedumb2003: "The evolutionism establishment will loudly disagree.
They spend countless hours suppressing opposing theories, such as creationism and intelligent design."

Neither creationism nor intelligent design are scientific theories, which is why most self-respecting scientists refuse to debate them.

Citizens like yours truly and freedumb2003 know the subject is important to our fellow-citizens and are willing to, so to speak, roll in the mud with deniers like Kalamata.

Boogieman: "When the only natural process that scientists can propose to account for speciation is statistically impossible, then yes, I think we have a good reason."

I am totally unimpressed with the alleged mathematical "proofs" claiming basic evolution is impossible.

On the Origin of Life, that jury is still out and may remain out for a very long time to come.
So far there's nothing to confirm various hypotheses about how it may have happened.

But regardless, I have no doubt that God is responsible and His plan is being executed as He intended, whether by evolution or some other process.

You are most kind. Keep reminding people of real science (AGW is not science so there goes that meme) — and why it matters to Conservatives.

FRegards amigo

>>I admire & respect Shermer for his work on this: Denying History, Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why do They Say It

What, in particular, did you like about that book?

*********************

>>Shermer's nature is skepticism, so I suspect the full context of your quote would show his words are intended somewhat ironically. Calling science-popularizers "shamans" is Shermer's way of saying "be suspicious of them".

Shermer is not a skeptic of "science" so-called, and certainly not of its popularizers, of which he is one.

https://michaelshermer.com/2002/06/shamans-of-scientism/

*********************

>>I know nothing of Michael Ruse, but calling evolution "a religion" seems to me just a provocative way to sell books. The fact is, strictly defined there is nothing "religious" about natural-science in general or evolution theory specifically. They are the opposite of any religion because they specifically and emphatically refuse to consider any non-natural (i.e., supernatural, spiritual) processes or explanations.

You really should try to keep up. Evolution is the established religion of the United States, and everyone who is anyone knows it. as the visiting Chinese scientist explained:

"In China you can question Darwin, but not the government. In the United States, you can question the government, but not Darwin."

LOL! This is from a speech by Michael Ruse at the 1993 American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, hosted by Eugenie Scott:

"... what [Phillip E.] Johnson was arguing was that, at a certain level, the kind of position of a person like myself, an evolutionist, is metaphysically based at some level, just as much as the kind of position of let us say somebody, some creationist, someone like Gish or somebody like that. And to a certain extent, I must confess, in the ten years since I performed, or I appeared, in the creationism trial in Arkansas, I must say that I've been coming to this kind of position myself... I think that we should recognize, both historically and perhaps philosophically, certainly that the science side has certain metaphysical assumptions built into doing science, which -- it may not be a good thing to admit in a court of law -- but I think that in honesty that we should recognize, and that we should be thinking about some of these sorts of things... it seems to me very clear that at some very basic level, evolution as a scientific theory makes a commitment to a kind of naturalism, namely, that at some level one is going to exclude miracles and these sorts of things, come what may... evolution, akin to religion, involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be proven empirically. I guess we all knew that, but I think that we're all much more sensitive to these facts now. And I think that the way to deal with creationism, but the way to deal with evolution also, is not to deny these facts, but to recognize them, and to see where we can go, as we move on from there." [Ruse, Michael, "Speech by Professor Michael Ruse, AAAS Annual Meeting." Access Research Network, 1993]

"Certainly, historically, that if you look at, say, evolutionary theory, and of course this was brought out I think rather nicely by the talk just before me, it's certainly been the case that evolution has functioned, if not as a religion as such, certainly with elements akin to a secular religion. Those of us who teach philosophy of religion always say there's no way of defining religion by a neat, necessary and sufficient condition. The best that you can do is list a number of characteristics, some of which all religions have, and none of which any religion, whatever or however you sort of put it. And certainly, there's no doubt about it, that in the past, and I think also in the present, for many evolutionists, evolution has functioned as something with elements which are, let us say, akin to being a secular religion." [Ibid.]

http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or151/mr93tran.htm

This is Julian Huxley on evolution as religion:

"I find myself inevitably driven to use the language of religion. For the fact is that all this does add up to something in the nature of a religion: perhaps one might call it Evolutionary Humanism. The word 'religion' is often used restrictively to mean belief in gods; but I am not using it in this sense—I certainly do not want to see man erected into the position of a god, as happened with many individual human beings in the past and is happening still today. I am using it in a broader sense, to denote an overall relation between man and his destiny, and one involving his deepest feelings, including his sense of what is sacred. In this broad sense, evolutionary humanism, it seems to me, is capable of becoming the germ of a new religion, not necessarily supplanting existing religions but supplementing them. " [The Human Phase, in, Huxley, Julian, "Evolution In Action." Harper & Brothers, 1st Ed, 1953, Chap 6, pp.171-172]

Colin Patterson describes evolution not necessarily as a religion, but as faith-based:

"I think many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge, to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me and I think it's true of good many of you in here." [Patterson, Colin, "Speech at the American Museum of Natural History New York." American Museum of Natural History, 1981]

This scientist implies a sort of religious fanaticism among some evolutionists:

"Religious people disliked [evolution] because it appeared to dispense with God; scientists liked it because it seemed to solve the most important problem in the universe- the existence of living matter. In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it, and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit with it." [Lipson, Henry S., "A Physicist Looks At Evolution, A Physicist Looks At Evolution." Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 4, May, 1980, p.138]

*********************

>>Russell was a modern atheist, Paine was an Enlightenment Era deist who actually thought of himself as a Quaker. So, remember my point here: none of our Founding Fathers were atheist, not one, even Thomas Paine, meaning: our Founders' understanding of natural-philosophy, aka natural-science, was purely methodological, not philosophical or ontological.

Are you claiming that Russell and Paine were not ideologically in the same ball-park? Both were anti-Christian.

*********************

>>Neither Steno in 1660, nor any of the others you mentioned, knew of data which would allow them to accept or reject theories about the earth's age & evolution.

You mean, they were not given the chance to be brainwashed, don't you?

*********************

>>My belief is that nothing in the Universe is outside the scope, plan or intentions of our Creator, so I agree with Newton.

Newton never allowed the "science of the day" to trump the Word of God.

*********************

>>Why not just answer the question?

What was the question?

*********************

>>Maybe, but the Bible doesn't give a … hoot about science, science is not its purpose.

Why all the science in God's Word, if God doesn't give a "hoot about science"?

*********************

>>Instead, what the Bible intends to show us is that God created and rules over the natural realm -- and indeed that He can over-rule nature whenever that suits His purposes. The Bible doesn't care about giving us an accurate picture of nature, instead it cares about demonstrating how God rules nature.

I call that sophistry . . . major league!

*********************

>>So, the fact that we can find some pretty amazing "gems" as you call them is interesting, but they are not the Bible's purpose.

What you pretend are idle words, are the inspired words of God:

"man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live." -- Deu 8:3 KJV

"Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him." -- Pro 30:5 KJV

"But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." -- Mat 4:4 KJV

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:" -- 2Tim 3:16 KJV

There is a cloud of witnesses disputing you.

*********************

>>Sure, we all speak informally of "this kind" or "that kind", but neither Linnaeus nor any other scientist ever defined "kind" as a taxonomic category.

Of course they do, but many are too pig-headed to use the name "kind", choosing rather to use the name "family" to distance themselves from the Word of God, as you do.

The Hebrew word "miyn" is used ONLY to classify plants and animals (Gen 1:11-12, 1:21, 1:24, 6:20, 7:14; Lev 11:14, 11:19, 11:22, 11:29; Deu 14:13, 14:18; Eze 47:10), and for nothing else. The word was translated to "kind" in the English versions. Linnaeus used the Latin Vulgate translation of genus and species, the meaning of which has been corrupted.

But, no matter what you call it, the "kind" denotes the genetic boundary which no plant or animal can cross.

*********************

>>Right, and what Linnaeus could not appreciate was that if you repeat the process, say, a million times, then the final "forms" produced are not necessarily so "similar to" the very first forms.

No, Linnaeus understood very well that there is an inherent boundary, which Charlie's vivid imagination wildly extrapolated into the pseudo-science (or, rather, the fairy tale) of common descent.

*********************

>>Every English translation uses "kind" or occasionally "type", neither of which is defined scientifically. If the Vulgate is a mistranslation, then "genus" and "species" are simply Latin words used in error and Linnaeus' adopting them bring us no closer to a scientific definition of the biblical "kind" -- i.o.w., "genus" and "species" are simply words borrowed from a Bible for use elsewhere. They tell us nothing specific about the Bible.

Wrong. The Bible states that plants and animals multiply after their kinds: not after a single-cell microorganism; but after their OWN kinds. Prior to the flood, God specifically chose two of each kind (or seven, in some instances) to board the ark so they could repopulate the earth, after the flood. Darwin corrupted that solid, scientific fact with his wild imagination. We are only learning today of the fallacy of Darwin's extrapolation.

*********************

>> William Paley's field is listed as "natural theologian". Charles Darwin's fields are listed as "natural history, geology". Those were recognized then and now as vastly different schools of study.

You missed my point. Charlie's "science" was his wild imagination, which interprets to, he wasn't a scientist.

*********************

>>Paley was no scientist, he was a theologian -- look it up!

I have his book, Natural Theology, and it promotes intelligent design and fine-tuning, unlike the pseudo-science Darwin imagined.

*********************

>>Darwin studied theology, but his field work and publications were in "natural philosophy", aka science. Your insistence otherwise are simply shameless lies, FRiend.

Scientists do not resort to wild extrapolations of observable data, like Charlie did.

*********************

>>First, by definition & experience, God is not "natural", He's supernatural, spiritual. Yes, He can take human form, but even then was well beyond "natural" powers.

Neither is magic "natural" according to your own definition, but you seem to have no problem believing it.

*********************

>>As for your question, well... sorry, FRiend, but did you ever get an, ah... edumacation? You know, you need some of that for these sorts of discussions.

I was indoctrinated for most of my life, like you. Only late in life did I get an education.

*********************

>>Basic history of Western Thought begins with Greeks like Plato & Aristotle and was taught in medieval Universities as various branches of philosophy -- theology, metaphysics and, yes, "natural philosophy" which looked for natural explanations of natural processes.

There is nothing more natural than our creator, and his creation.

*********************

>>Natural philosophy is today's natural-science and it all begins with the assumptions that it's not theology, it's not metaphysics, it's not anything except the search for natural explanations of natural processes. But that was/is strictly a methodological assumption, the philosopher-theologians who invented "natural philosophy" had no intention to deny God's existence, merely to set aside for others to contemplate any considerations of God's influence on nature. That assumption was, is and will remain part of the core definition of our word "science", whether you like it or not.

Denying the creator, his marvelous works, and his instruction book, hinders the advancement of science. Imagine how much science would have advanced if, over the past century and a half, there were not armies of "scientists" trying to prove Darwin right, rather than trying to prove him wrong so we could move on?

Evolution is completely useless to science, and every real scientist knows it.

*********************

>>Your claims regarding the Bible's intentions toward science are simply false. You've gone way beyond what the Bible itself says.

Your platitudes are getting tiresome. Take your Bible out of the trash can and show us why my claims are false.

*********************

>>Even your own man, Linnaeus in 1750, understood that "kind" was not "family" -- indeed, according to your own quote, Linnaeus didn't use the term "family" in his classifications. He did use "genus" and "species", but there's no suggestion anywhere they define the Biblical word "kind".

In this statement, Linnaeus seems to be saying there can be multiple genera within a single kind, distinguishable by their "essential character".

"The succulent plants are worthy of distinction; so are the largest genera, e.g. Euphorbia. The chief of this kind are: Haller's Allium Our Musa, etc. . . . By its unique pattern, the ESSENTIAL character distinguishes a genus from those of the same kind included in the same natural order." [Freer, Stephen, Translator, "Linnaeus' Philosophia Botanica." Oxford University Press, 2005, p.19, 142]

How do you interpret that statement?

*********************

>>Your term "biblical scientist" is an oxymoron.

The term "evolutionary science" is an oxymoron.

*********************

>>The rest is just more nonsense because, words like "species", "genus" or "family" cannot by themselves be a barrier to anything, and definitions of those terms are not strictly based on the ability (or lack of) of various sub-groups to interbreed.

Long-term scientific observation of both living organisms, and the fossil record, has shown my statement to be true, and yours to be hogwash.

*********************

>>Yes, the most frequent dividing line is genus, but it is not always a hard rule.

More than a few classifications seem to be arbitrary, perhaps corrupted by evolutionary dogma.

*********************

>>The words you quoted [of Michael Behe] are gibberish, meaningless word-salad, unconnected to anything real.

Only the scientifically-challenged, and/or those protecting their turf like street thugs, would say such foolishness. Michael Behe's books are masterpieces of scientific rigor, unlike the junk science you are accustomed to.

*********************

[Kalamata wrote] "Speciation is the result of devolution, not evolution. The “kind” doesn’t change."

>>And still more gibberish.

You are even more scientifically-challenged than I imagined. Speciation is the result of a loss of genetic information, period. There are no exceptions.

*********************

>>It was denied, like Holocaust denial, never "debunked".

That is insanity. The myth of whale evolution is the stuff fairy tales are made of, like the unicorn.

*********************

>>Other reconstructions [of Hans Thewissen on the Ambulocetus] don't include the blow-hole, so it seems some scholarly disagreement there.

There is no disagreement. The Ambulocetus is Thewissen's "baby", so his sensational admission may have caused some to change their mock-ups, or if creating new ones, to leave out the imaginary blow hole.

But Evolution Icons DIE HARD, and we are stuck with Ambulocetus for years to come, despite the fact that all eight characteristics Thewissen reported as whale features are questionable, or absent altogether.

*********************

>>Other reconstructions [of Phil Gingerich's Rodhocetus] don't include a tail fluke.

Get a clue, fellow! The revelations by Gingrich and Thewissen were from many years back, perhaps as early as 2012. Naturally some of the more (tongue-in-cheek) "honest" artists would want to exclude something so obviously fraudulent.

*********************

>>>Your video shows us one Ambulocetus ear bone, said to be "questionable". It does not show us what other similar fossils have been found. It does not tell us what judgments were used to name that a pre-whale ear bone, or indeed, what criticisms have been raised of it.

You just cannot let it go, can you. That kind of attitude gave our children a half-century of the fraudulent Piltdown Man, and more than a century (and counting) of the fraudulent Haeckel's Embryos; and, now, fraudulent "whale evolution".

*********************

>>Beyond Piltdown & Haeckels, there's no evidence of "fraud" here, only of the usual scholarly debates. It's how science is supposed to work.

Nonsense. Real scientists don't imagine things based on a world view, and pretend it is science. Evolutionists do, but not scientists.

*********************

>>Sure, despite 150+ years accumulating billions of fossils representing hundreds of thousands of extinct species dated over hundreds of millions of years, it is still estimated that fewer than 1% of all species who ever lived have been found as fossils. So there are huge gaps in the fossil record, likely always will be. That's one reason evolution remains a theory, regardless of how many facts confirm it.

That is meaningless. The observable evidence in the fossil record shows disparity before diversity, and abrupt appearance followed by statis. That matches the observable evidence of living organisms. Real science is based on observable evidence.

For the rest of you, this photo is of the original seal-like creature imagined by Gingerich (on the left, with the few skull and jaw fragments on which it was based drawn below,) side-by-side with the a drawing of the same creature based on later fossils

The paleontologists at the University of Michigan have unusually vivid imaginations.

Mr. Kalamata

>>Here’s an example: the work of finding, recovering & identifying fossils has occupied many thousands of researchers over many, many decades.
Each researcher hopes to find a fossil which will upset, overturn & rewrite existing understandings of our past, and some actually do.
Those become famous and often enjoy a long rewarding career.

That’s how science is supposed to work. <<
“Piltdown Man” was a (the?) triumph of the Scientific Method. It failed under proper scrutiny.

Proper scientific procedure eventually caught and exposed the Piltdown man. Very poor example!

>>Nonsense. Real scientists don’t imagine things based on a world view, and pretend it is science. Evolutionists do, but not scientists.<<

You keep using that term “scientists.” I do not think it means what you think it means.

>>Proper scientific procedure eventually caught and exposed the Piltdown man. Very poor example!<<

I don’t think you understand how the Scientific Method works. The expose of Piltdown Man was a triumph of the method over the fiction.

Sadly, there are few who will expose AGW despite it being 21st century Piltdown Man.