Posted on 09/25/2009 8:34:35 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Sept 24, 2009 — The evolutionary story of human origins is often told like a cultural myth that is intuitively obvious. Humans emerged in Africa after their ancestors came down from the trees and walked upright. They began to hunt with stone tools and used fire. They migrated north out of Africa and populated Europe, overtaking the Neanderthals who lacked the brain power and culture of their more evolved cousins. How much of this story is based on actual evidence? How much is interpolation of what “must” have happened based on an evolutionary view of natural history?
As part of its celebration of the Darwin Bicentennial, PNAS invited a special series of papers on human evolution, called Out of Africa: Modern Human Origins. A careful reading of these papers reveals more gap than knowledge, more bluffing than evidence...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
I never said it was. I said that the Global Warming Fraud and the Second Hand Smoke Fraud are both widely supported by the same scientific quacks who claim that Intelligent design theories are not science.
I even know some in the scientific and academic community who support strict environmental policy because of the biblical mandates to be good stewards of the earth.
And Environmental policy should not be based on fraudulent scientific data which is twisted to support such silly notions as that the earth is presently cooling off dramatically over the last decade because of ongoing CO2 gases which are simultaneously causing Global Warming.
The Bible clearly states that it is GOD who controls the climate, not man. If you believe that man is controlling the climate or that he is even capable of doing it, then you must believe that Man is God and that God is impotent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_inheritance
Please note the "long tail" trait encoded in the recessive allele in the first generation, in ONE PARENT ONLY. This parent is thus bred with the other parent with a dominant "short tail" gene, thus the "long tail" trait does not appear in the second generation. But look at the third generation! Then imagine that the long tail is more useful for chasing mice. This leads to better fed cats, with more energy to breed than the short-tailed ones, and in subsequent generations the trait becomes more widespread in the population. The Mendelian laws explain a large part of the evolutionary machinery...
Let’s not forget about the AIDS fraud! See my profile for a layman’s introduction to the same. Indeed, it is very telling that the scientists who expose any one of the above frauds are regularly lumped in with all the others by the junk science alarmist crowd. The pattern is there for all to see, except, of course, by the willingly ignorant.
Politics mixed in with man-made global warming way back before it had much scientific support. It is only as big as it is now because the politicians and environmental organizations have been pushing it, and have been providing most of the paychecks for the scientists studying it to that end. The likes of Al Gore are anathema to science. All of this is why I distrust man-made global warming.
Evolution has quite a different history, as do most areas of science. Evolution started as the underdog by a disinterested scientist (Darwin was very religious at the time), and it was subject to claims of heresy. Despite this, after decades the evidence built and it became more and more accepted, eventually becoming the dominant scientific theory on its own merits.
Even with Piltdown man scientists were skeptical, and they eventually disproved it. Same for Nebraska Man as I mentioned. Archeoraptor didn't last long before evolutionary scientists shot it down, and the Cardiff Giant was flat-out dismissed. They have policed themselves well.
You have not defined nor established that a logical fallacy exists with respect to Theistic Evolution.
Aren't you a little embarrassed that in accusing other of logical fallacies you so quickly resort to the Argumentum ad Hominem type of logical fallacy?
Where does it say that?
Now are you going to claim that God is NOT in control of the climate or the weather?
What kind of God do you believe in?
Oh, and let’s not forget the “Homosexuals can’t be cured” fraud.
I recall Matt. 8:26,27 saying Jesus calmed the stormy waters, too.
Wow, so you finally came right out and said it. Good for you. One thing I've learned from reading your posts about logical fallacies and then researching them: the presence of a logical fallacy in an argument is not enough to prove either the premise or the conclusion wrong. So while I'm not convinced that all the alleged fallacies you cite really exist, I no longer care. In the face of the overwhelming evidence that the scientific process works, the objection "but it's based on a logical fallacy" seems puny indeed.
Of course God is omnipotent, but that is not to say that He doesn't use Milankovitch cycles, volcanic activity, and plate tectonics to manipulate the weather. But if only God can control weather, how do you explain cloud seeding?
But a single mutation is not enough to produce a new species. This would require a string of mutations, which would accumulate to the point at which, a member of the original species would give birth to offspring which was a “new” species. Each of the contributing mutations would have to originally occur in a reproductive cell, since a mutation in any other cell would never be passed on to offspring. These mutated reproductive cells would have to, by pure chance, be the cells that would contribute their information to a new offspring. This first stage, before the mutations accumulate to the point where speciation occurs, has a chain of improbabilities all its own to account for.
Once the offspring is produced which is a member of a “new” species, then the series of improbabilities which I talked about in my original post arises. So even if, a great number of mutations had accumulated in the general population, and only a single additional mutation was required to create the “new” species, in order for a male and female to acquire this same mutation, either two individual organisms, would have to have this exact mutation occur in one of their reproductive cells or one individual organism would have to have this mutation occur in two of their reproductive cells, and these cells would have to be the ones to produce viable offspring, at least one male, and one female. These offspring would have to be located in close geographic proximity, both would have to reach sexual maturity, and both would have to find and mate with each other, and their offspring would have to survive and breed, etc.
For each speciation event, all of these improbabilities, along with others I haven’t mentioned, would have to occur and this would have to be repeated many thousands of times, each time multiplying improbabilities upon improbabilities. At what point does an improbability reach a statistical impossibility?
Sure have. We still have the fallacy of the fallacy of affirming the consequent to 'support' evolution from observations. You have only replaced 'unknown processes' with a god.
Maybe you are confusing your refusal to admit the truth with some failure to present the truth to you. The truth has been presented to you. You simply refuse to admit it.
It's still the fallacy of affirming the consequent even though you try to put a god at the beginning of it. You are still saying that 'theistic evolution' (P) 'predicts' "change" (Q), "change" (Q) is observed; therefore (P) 'theistic evolution' is confirmed. Just because you put the word 'theistic' in front of evolution doesn't remove the fallacy.
"Aren't you a little embarrassed that in accusing other of logical fallacies you so quickly resort to the Argumentum ad Hominem type of logical fallacy?"
I made no criticism of you or the pope. I honestly asked if you can't admit that fallacy is the basis for evolution if the pope doesn't. That seemed to be your argument. You can't invoke the fallacy of argument from authority using the pope and then get offended if you are asked if you can't disagree w/ the pope. Well, you did but you should be embarrassed for doing so.
And aren't you a little embarrassed that you don't understand that the fallacy of affirming the consequent is invoked to 'support' evolution from observations?
That you don't understand that the information in biological systems is independent of the physics involved much like ink and paper and that you still believe that this information assembled itself from invisible laws of the very physics that you believe god created?
That this eliminates all objectivity and empiricism from the 'process' and that you are making an uninformed philosophical choice?
You aren't embarrassed by all of that?
Well, no. I think science studies the observable. If the supernatural is observable, science can comment on it. Obviously that's not the case here.
Cloud seeding is usually preceded by a lot of prayers. :-)
I can think of dozens of examples where the Bible states that the sun rose or the sun set or the moon and the planets rose or set. We all know, unless you are also heliocentric, that they didn't actually rise or set, they only appeared to based upon an incorrect understanding of the relationships between the bodies. This outwardly represents examples of logical fallacies. However, with scientific knowledge not available at the time, and in the context of understanding what was meant, not what was literally stated, we accept the scripture. How is Theistic Evolution any different?
Who is responsible for the clouds? :-)
Ah, out-of-context quoting.
What I really said was: "The 'scientific process' is a logical fallacy by definition. It assumes naturalism and then defines all observation in terms of naturalism, this is a logical fallacy."
Unfortunately, you can't come right out and admit it, so it's bad for you.
"One thing I've learned from reading your posts about logical fallacies and then researching them: the presence of a logical fallacy in an argument is not enough to prove either the premise or the conclusion wrong."
Unfortunately, you don't posses the critical-thinking skills to realize that this argument simply puts you on par with the creationists.
"So while I'm not convinced that all the alleged fallacies you cite really exist, I no longer care. In the face of the overwhelming evidence that the scientific process works, the objection "but it's based on a logical fallacy" seems puny indeed."
Again, this is simply your inability to understand the ramifications of the scientific process being based on a logical fallacy. You lack the critical-thinking skills to understand that all of your beliefs are therefore based in logical fallacy and though you think it allows you to 'no longer care', the fact of the matter is that you should care very much.
The Weather Channel and all the meteorologists on TV and in the newspapers always refer to "sun rise" and "sun set." Do they all have an incorrect understanding of the relationships between the bodies?
Dude, you should stop before you embarrass yourself even more. Your 'we all know' is heliocentrism or, more correctly, geokineticism. You aren't arguing *against* heliocentrism, you are arguing in favor of it. Never mind that geocentrism is equivalent to geokineticism under GR as attested by Einstein, Hoyle, Born and Ellis. You aren't even close to having a clue on this one.
"This outwardly represents examples of logical fallacies. However, with scientific knowledge not available at the time, and in the context of understanding what was meant, not what was literally stated, we accept the scripture."
Pardon me for pointing out that the scientific knowledge of today can't prove heliocentrism true and geocentrism false either. The Scripture is still geocentric and nothing proves reality otherwise.
"How is Theistic Evolution any different?"
It's not. You just choose to believe a fallacy proposed by men over the Scriptures. If you are comfortable with that, then go with it.
I'm just making sure that you understand that you have not chosen an empirical position wrt either evolution or heliocentrism. The word of man is still a lie and the Word of God is still true.
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