Replies

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "I am in my 70’s, well-traveled, and a long-time WWII History buff; and yet I have never met a holocaust denier.
But I do know an arrogant, slanderous, know-nothing jackass when I read his posts."

Just as you never met me, yet we've debated now at some length.
From that I see that you're quite good at projecting your own nature onto others.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "It is too late.
Evolutionism is the established religion of the United States, thanks to the ACLU, the thugs at the NCSE, and a few tyrannical judges who thought nothing of usurping the power of free expression from the states and the people."

Naw, you call it "religion" because you disagree on religious grounds.
Strictly defined & taught, science is the opposite of any religion.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Science doesn’t reject anything."

Science absolutely rejects your anti-science ideas.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata on criticizing evolution: "Not in the classroom, if they want to obtain tenure; and not in their research, if they want to get published.
You need to get out more, Joe."

Sure they can, in classrooms on theology, philosophy, history of western civilization, etc.
As for research, what, exactly, was all that discussion of the 2012 ENCODE report?
Some people even claim ENCODE itself falsifies evolution, don't they?

As for who gets out more, it's why my time here is limited.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "If evolutionism was not the established religion of the United States, it could be challenged in the classroom by other theories.
But evolutionism has become the modern-day Church of England, which caused the colonists to flee England and come to America."

There is no other scientific theory.
By definition, Creationism and Intelligent Design are theology, not science.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "That is exactly how the orthodoxy promotes evolutionism — as theology."

I agree that atheists searching for some kind of spiritual meaning may glom onto anything, including science.
But I strongly disagree that evolution is necessarily contextualized as a "substitute for religion".

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "You never missed it.
Faith has been the prime mover of evolutionism from the beginning.
You believe on sheer faith that someone out there has scientific evidence for evolution, and you have faith that the highly creative artwork that adorns many of your posts are based on something other than
highly fragmentary fossils and vivid imaginations."

Billions of "highly fragmentary" fossils representing hundreds of thousands of identified species, together providing clear evidence of transitional forms, these, for example:

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Evolutionism doesn’t solve anything except for those who hate societal order and stability.
Well, it did provide myriads of tax-payer funded jobs over the years to those desperately trying to prove Charlie right."

Evolution answers many, but far from all, questions about natural history.
It supports and is supported by our understandings in biology, geology, cosmology, physics & medicine, among others.
As for Federal funding, you don't know what that is or was historically.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Darwinism is not natural."

Kalamata is not honest.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Paine was not a Christian when he wrote this book:"

Paine's father was a Quaker, his mother Anglican.
Paine wished to be buried in a Quaker cemetery.
Paine was decidedly deistic, but some of his criticisms of Christianity echoed those of other non-conformists Unitarians & Anabaptists.
Paine's contemporary, Edward Gibbon ("Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire") also wrote scathingly of the early Roman Catholic church, while maintaining his own Protestantism.

Bottom line: Paine was a man of his Enlightenment Era, who held far more in common with contemporaries like Jefferson or Adams than with 20th century atheists like Russell.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Nor does anyone, even today, except those of the faith of Newton, Faraday and Maxwell.
Those three were able to make informed decisions, since they were not around to be corrupted by the fake geology of the lawyer Lyell."

This site lists hundreds of historically famous geologists, none of whom would agree with denier Kalamata's description of their work as "fake".

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Are you going to spend the rest of your life with your head in the sand.
God’s Word is loaded with scientific gems.
For example, at the beginning of creation he created plant and animal “kinds”, or “types” (if you will,) which eliminates the possibility of common descent, which we are only now finding out, 6000-7000 years later."

There's nothing, zero, of natural-science in such "gems" as you call them.
They are the opposite of natural, they are creation by divine supernatural actions.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Says the arrogant Jackass who slandered me with his imaginary ability to read minds."

Says the denier whose entire argument is a slander on natural-science and even on the Bible he pretends to defend.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Your purposes here are theological, thinly disguised as science."

One cannot discuss Creationism without getting into theology.
My purpose is to defend both traditional theology and natural-science.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "He [Linnaeus] used the Latin Vulgate mis-translation of genera and species."

Neither of which translates to "family", and both of which mistranslate the Biblical work "kind".

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "The Word of God implies as much, when 2 of each kind went aboard the ark with Noah; and when later God said to multiply AFTER their respective kinds."

Which is nowhere defined in any scientific sense.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Real science disputes Darwin’s extrapolation.
There is not a shred of evidence for common descent — not in the fossil record, nor in the living record.
If you were a scientist, you would know that."

You don't speak for science or scientists.
You speak only for your own misunderstandings of the Bible.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Casting aspersions is your bread and butter."

You are here to cast aspersions on science and its defenders.
I am here to defend both science and the Bible, properly understood.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Joe, I know you are going to deny this, but I made a good living in science; and in all those years, I never saw or heard of anyone using evolution for anything."

Natural-science is a really big subject.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Intelligent design is the only possible solution to the mind-boggling complexity of the cell, the symbiotic nature of every living organism, both within and without, and the fine-tuning of the universe."

I think we agree that the Universe was designed intelligently.
The question on the table here is whether it was designed intelligently enough to, on its own, without further divine intervention, "grow" life from the "seeds" of organic matter?
The honest answer is: maybe, scientifically (as opposed to theologically) we don't know for sure.
But if the Universe was designed to create life on its own would that not be the ultimate in Intelligence and theological proof of God?

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Evolutionism cannot be falsified, because it is not science."

That's a total lie which, even if you repeat it endlessly, remains a lie.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Evolutionists have been brainwashed into believing that the absence of evidence is evidence, making it impossible to falsify."

There simply is no confirmed evidence falsifying evolution.
If there were, you'd present it here in a heartbeat.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "You yourself are guilty of claiming, in this very thread, that the lack of evidence is evidence."

You yourself have lied endlessly on this point, no matter how often you've been corrected.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Evolutionism and big-bangism are based on magic."

You just can't stop yourself from lying, can you?

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "I did very well in western civilization courses, and it is still one of my favorite subjects.
I have over 50 books in my libary on Western Civ, alone, not to mention all the books on U.S. History, WWII and World Civ."

And yet you are amazingly ignorant of some basic ideas in Western Thought, such as the origins and definitions of natural-science concepts.
My guess is that whatever you did learn at some time in the past has been destroyed by some overwhelming new false anti-western construct that both is itself, and renders everything else, unintelligible.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Western civilization was founded on, and blessed by Christianity.
The rejection of Christianity will destroy it."

But neither the Bible nor any Christian thinker ever claimed that God was merely "natural".
I can't even think of famous heretics who claimed that.
So to my knowledge, yours is a heresy in a class by itself.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Evolution has nothing to do with medicine, or DNA.
Evolutionists have attempted to hijack the prestige of them, but their folly will not continue much longer."

Again you sound like those Holocaust deniers I debated almost 20 years ago, they loudly proclaiming the debate was over, their side won, the Holocaust was disappearing from history, even while they themselves, like the Wicked Witch of the East from Dorothy's water were rapidly melting away.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "You are lying again, Joe.
I would never claim the Bible condemns science.
To the contrary.
The Bible promotes science."

And that is one of your biggest lies.
You can only pretend it's true by redefining such words to suit your own nefarious purposes.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Why the misdirection?
I showed you where Linnaeus grouped genera by “kind”.
Let’s try it again.
This time, I will capitalize those two words for clarity:"

Why the misdirection?
Nowhere did Linnaeus use or define the term "family".
Nowhere did Linnaeus equate "family" to "kind".
Nowhere did Linnaeus provide evidence as to where biological "barriers" might exist between different categories of life.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "No, just being a scientific observer.
I will say it again so everyone will know what were are talking about: evolutionary science is an oxymoron."

But you've observed nothing, zero.
Your "science" is theology, nothing else.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "I see you learned how to use Wikipedia.
Michael Behe is probably the most brilliant scientist on earth, except for perhaps the organic chemist James Tour.
It is a tossup."

So there are three (including you) who hate natural-science and wish to replace it with their own unique theology.
Wonderful.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "That’s it.
But his [Behe's] new book will propel him into history as the one who exposed the fraud called common descent."

Or, more likely, toss his already tarnished reputation onto the trash-heap of history.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "It is always good to know there are lawyers and judges available who can tell everyone what science is."

Or, more precisely, what science is not.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "You gotta stop lying, Joe.
Every geneticist worth his salt knows that speciation is the result of breaking genes, not gaining new ones."

You gotta stop lying, Danny.
Every geneticist worth his/her salt knows that speciation is the result of changes in DNA, not "gaining" or "breaking" genes.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "You are severely scientifically-challenged, Joe.
There is no evidence any of those handful of fragmented, fossilized land animal forms ever had babies, nor ever had any whale features.
Gingrich and Thewissen made it all up, and Carl Werner exposed their charlantry."

Your mind is severely corrupted if you suppose that pre-historical creatures didn't normally reproduce.
As for your alleged "handful of fragmented" fossils, there are far more than a handful, and the numbers grow every year.
As for whether those fossils were land or sea animals, which one is Ursus maritimus? --

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "Are you really that dense?
There is no blowhole.
He imagined it!"

The blow-hole is irrelevant because, for example, this animal has no defined blow-hole, but is also very much a sea creature:

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "It is a walrus, Joe, with two nostrils."

Regardless of whether you call them "nostrils" or "blow-holes", the walrus is still very much a sea-creature.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "No, they are two sleazy scientists who were trying to make a name for themselves by fudging the data.
There was no science involved."

Says our theologian in chief.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "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”.”"

Science, by its very nature is supposed to be self correcting.
Your theology, by contrast, cannot ever correct itself since it insists it's perfect to begin with.
That explains why theologians like Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata don't see.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "There you go again, pretending the absence of evidence is evidence."

And there you go again with bald-faced lies.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "That occurred in the Cambrian, Joe, when all the major phyla, including Chordata, showed up all at once, with no transitional forms."

I can't see a useful distinction between the terms "diversity" and "disparity".
For practical purposes they seem to be the same thing, both the result of evolution.

Danny I-don't-see-no-stinkin'-evidence Kalamata: "I am speechless."

Of course, because contrary to your claims, you have no real clue as to how science-discovery works.

===========================================
HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION
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>>Joe the Science Denier says, "This site lists hundreds of historically famous geologists, none of whom would agree with denier Kalamata's description of their work as "fake".

You cannot be serious. That page is not helpful. Study the history of geology if you want to know the truth. And make sure you pay attention to the shenigans of this weasel lawyer:

"I am sure you may get into Q. R. what will free the science from Moses, for if treated seriously, the party are quite prepared for it. A bishop, Buckland ascertained (we suppose Sumner), gave Ure a dressing in the'British Critic and Theological Review.' They see at last the mischief and scandal brought on them by Mosaic systems. Eerussac has done nothing but believe in the universal ocean up to the chalk period till lately. Prevost has done a little, but is a diluvialist, a rare thing in France." [Letter to Poulett Scrope, Esq., 9 Crown Office Row, Temple, June 14, 1830, in Charles Lyell, "Life, letters and journals of Sir Charles Lyell Vol I." John Murray, 1881, Chap. XI, p.268]

The general discussion, pre-Lyell, was along these lines:

"The use of the biblical deluge in the diluvial theory encountered opposition from two extremes. In England it came from the biblical literalists, Penn, Bugg, and others, who felt that the theory severely downgraded the significance of the deluge by restricting its geological effect to no more than superficial gravel deposits and other surface phenomena. In Scotland, however, opposition came from those who believed that the diluvial.theory was yet another scheme of Mosaical geology which, like its eighteenth-century predecessors, attributed far too great a geological significance to the biblical deluge. These Scottish writers argued that geology and the Bible ought to be kept apart; that physical inquiry came under the aegis of science, and that only the moral destiny of man was the proper subject of the Bible; that therefore the biblical deluge was a subject of inquiry, not for geology, but for theology and ancient history. This argument for the separation of science and the Bible was facilitated by the Edinburgh University system in which science had, for a considerable time, enjoyed an academic status independent of the humanities. The separation was not inspired by lack of faith, but was backed by serious, exegetical arguments, namely that the biblical account of the deluge excludes a mechanism of violent tidal waves; that the story of Noah's Ark implies that all species of land animals survived; and that the deluge drowned not just animals but man as well, so that human fossils ought to occur in diluvial deposits." [Nicolaas A. Rupke, "The Great Chain of History." Clarendon Press, 1983, pp.82-82]

Make note of the part that explains the foolish "Separation of Science and the Bible" sham was still in the developmental stage in the late 1700's and early 1800's. It is a Johnny-Come-Lately sham that has corrupted rather than advanced science.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "And yet you are amazingly ignorant of some basic ideas in Western Thought, such as the origins and definitions of natural-science concepts.

I am very familiar with how the atheists hijacked the definition of science from real scientists.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "My guess is that whatever you did learn at some time in the past has been destroyed by some overwhelming new false anti-western construct that both is itself, and renders everything else, unintelligible."

It is your atheistic religion of evolutionism that is destroying western civilization. In the meantime, it has led to the holocaust, eugenics, abortion, virulent racism, and 4 of the most blood-thirsty dictators in the history of the world.

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

>>Kalamata: "Western civilization was founded on, and blessed by Christianity. The rejection of Christianity will destroy it."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "But neither the Bible nor any Christian thinker ever claimed that God was merely "natural". I can't even think of famous heretics who claimed that. So to my knowledge, yours is a heresy in a class by itself.

There you go lying again. Perhaps you need a rest so you can keep up. This is my statement:

"There is nothing more natural than our creator, and his creation." [Mr. Kalamata]

Why did you say that I claimed God was "merely 'natural'"? What's the matter with you? Don't you know how to tell the truth?

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Bottom line: Paine was a man of his Enlightenment Era, who held far more in common with contemporaries like Jefferson or Adams than with 20th century atheists like Russell."

The so-called "Age of Enlightenment" turned out to be more of a darkening.

Mr. Kalamata

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GENETICS AND DNA
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>> Joe the Science Denier says, "As for research, what, exactly, was all that discussion of the 2012 ENCODE report? Some people even claim ENCODE itself falsifies evolution, don't they?"

ENCODE is the proverbial camel's nose under the tent, and no doubt the evolutionism high-priesthood will resist as long as they can. But, for all practical purposes, evolutionism is a dead religion. Good riddance.

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

>>Kalamata: "Evolution has nothing to do with medicine, or DNA. Evolutionists have attempted to hijack the prestige of them, but their folly will not continue much longer."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Again you sound like those Holocaust deniers I debated almost 20 years ago, they loudly proclaiming the debate was over, their side won, the Holocaust was disappearing from history, even while they themselves, like the Wicked Witch of the East from Dorothy's water were rapidly melting away.

Your lying is pathological, Alinsky Joe. You have never debated a holocaust denier, except perhaps in the mirror. Frankly, I think you are a projecting your holocaust denial onto me, like a good little Alinskite.

Why did you avoid my statement about medicine and DNA, Alinsky Joe? Everyone know why. Evolution is 100% useless. It does nothing except corrupt whatever it comes in contact with.

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

>>Kalamata: "You gotta stop lying, Joe. Every geneticist worth his salt knows that speciation is the result of breaking genes, not gaining new ones."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Every geneticist worth his/her salt knows that speciation is the result of changes in DNA, not "gaining" or "breaking" genes.

That is pretty ignorant of you, Alinsky Joe. See if this helps you get up to speed:

"This book, however, concentrates on completely unexpected, devastating new problems that could only have come to light after major recent advances in technical methods for probing the molecular level of life. With surpassing irony it turns out that, as with the polar bear, Darwinian evolution proceeds mainly by damaging or breaking genes, which, counterintuitively, sometimes helps survival. In other words, the mechanism is powerfully devolutionary. It promotes the rapid loss of genetic information. Laboratory experiments, field research, and theoretical studies all forcefully indicate that, as a result, random mutation and natural selection make evolution self-limiting. That is, the very same factors that promote diversity at the simplest levels of biology actively prevent it at more complex ones. Darwin's mechanism works chiefly by squandering genetic information for short-term gain." [Michael J. Behe, "Darwin Devolves." HarperOne, 2019, Chap.1]

"Its inexorable predilection to hastily squander genetic information for short-term gain—encapsulated by the First Rule of Adaptive Evolution—guarantees that Darwin's mechanism is powerfully devolutionary and explains why unguided evolution is self-limiting. Ironically, random mutation and natural selection do help form new species and new genera, but chiefly by promoting the loss of genetic abilities. Over time, dwindling degradatory options fence in an evolutionary lineage, halting organismal change before it crosses the family line" [Ibid. Chap.10

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>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Natural-science is a really big subject."

No doubt, and getting bigger every day. The complexity of the cell is becoming more and more mind-boggling with every new discovery. However, if we get rid of the unnecessary and very heavy baggage of evolutionism, science will be much more managable.

Mr. Kalamata

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SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY
============================

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "The honest answer is: maybe, scientifically (as opposed to theologically) we don't know for sure.

We know what God told us. He had his scribes write it down for us so we would have no excuse.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Evolution answers many, but far from all, questions about natural history. It supports and is supported by our understandings in biology, geology, cosmology, physics & medicine, among others.

That is little more than hearsay. I have been seeking those answers that you claim to be "out there" for 7 or 8 years, but all I get are generalities, like the one you just spewed. No one seems to know where to find the evidence for evolution, or any scientific use for evolution. But the fanatics are "certain" someone else knows.

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

>>Kalamata: "Science doesn’t reject anything."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Science absolutely rejects your anti-science ideas.

You are so brainwashed you don't even know what science is. Here, learn from a genius:

"Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says science teaches such and such, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn't teach it; experience teaches it. If they say to you science has shown such and such, you might ask,"How does science show it—how did the scientists find out-how, what, where?" Not science has shown, but this experiment, this effect, has shown. And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but we must listen to all the evidence), to judge whether a reusable conclusion has been arrived at." [Feynman, Richard P., "The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works Of Richard Feynman." Perseus Publishing, 1999, p.187]

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

>>Kalamata: "You are lying again, Joe. I would never claim the Bible condemns science. To the contrary. The Bible promotes science."
>>And that is one of your biggest lies. You can only pretend it's true by redefining such words to suit your own nefarious purposes.

Now that I look back, I think it might have been you who claimed the Bible rejected science, or marginalized it. Let's see, you wrote:

"Nothing in the Bible is natural-science as we understand the term. Nor is there any suggestion that the Bible even cares whether it matches to today’s science or not." [Alinsky Joe]

"It’s not a matter of “erasing the Bible from science,” because the Bible was never part of science." [Alinsky Joe]

"Maybe, but the Bible doesn't give a … hoot about science, science is not its purpose." [Alinsky Joe]

It seems you cannot keep track of your own lies, Alinsky Joe.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "But you've observed nothing, zero.Your "science" is theology, nothing else.

I am not an evolutionist, so quit accusing me of being one.

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>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Your theology, by contrast, cannot ever correct itself since it insists it's perfect to begin with. That explains why theologians like Kalamata don't see.

I am not a theologian, but thanks for the promotion, anyway. In a meantime I will continue to expose the faith-based religion disguised as science, called evolutionism.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "There's nothing, zero, of natural-science in such "gems" as you call them. They are the opposite of natural, they are creation by divine supernatural actions.

Of course they are. Jesus created everything, including ocean currents, which were discovered and mapped by this fellow after finding one of those scientific gems in the Bible:

https://creation.com/matthew-maury

The Bible also teaches that the life of the body is in the blood. Too bad for the many who lost their lives to the pseudo-science of blood-letting.

The Bible also teaches us to thoroughly wash with clean water if we become contaminated with blood from another person. Yet, foolish doctors a few centuries ago paraded their blood-stained hands around like a badge of honor, rather than wash them between patients, resulting in countless women dying of infection during childbirth.

Only a fool would ignore the science in the Bible.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Says the denier whose entire argument is a slander on natural-science and even on the Bible he pretends to defend."

Quit lying. I love natural science. That is why I despise the religions of evolutionism and uniformitarian "geology" which have corrupted natural science.

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>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Your purposes here are theological, thinly disguised as science."

That would be you, and all of your fellow evolutionist-faithful.

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>>Joe the Science Denier says, "One cannot discuss Creationism without getting into theology. My purpose is to defend both traditional theology and natural-science.

Your fanaticism is to slander those who believe the words of Moses, while parading the religion of evolutionism around as if it were real science.

This may come as a surprise to you, but Christians have no choice but to believe the words of Moses: from the creation narrative, to the flood narrative, and forward:

"If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." -- Luk 16:31 KJV

Of course, ignorance is an excuse, until you hear the truth. Then you have no cloak for it.

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>>Joe the Science Denier says, "You don't speak for science or scientists. You speak only for your own misunderstandings of the Bible.

I speak for real scientists, not evolutionists.

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>>Joe the Science Denier says, "You are here to cast aspersions on science and its defenders.

Not me. I am here to defend science from the corruption of the religion of evolutionism.

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>>Joe the Science Denier says, "I am here to defend both science and the Bible, properly understood."

How can you defend something you don't understand?

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>>Kalamata: "That is exactly how the orthodoxy promotes evolutionism — as theology."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "I agree that atheists searching for some kind of spiritual meaning may glom onto anything, including science. But I strongly disagree that evolution is necessarily contextualized as a "substitute for religion".

If there was any observable evidence for evolution -- any at all, I would agree. No more than seven or eight years ago I believed there was overwhelming evidence for evolution, because that is what was drummed in my head, Goebbels-style, for about 60 years.

Practically every science book I studied in college gave at least lip service to evolution; and even when problems with the theory were revealed to me later on (such as the lack of transitional fossils by Gould and Eldredge,) the authors never expressed any doubts about the validity of evolution. That is the way it is with a religious cult: they can bicker among themselves, but no one criticizes their god, in this case, the god of Charlie Darwin, the prophet.

But, within this decade, I was encouraged by a friend to take a close look at the strata. I soon realized there was no way there could be millions of years, or even years between those layers -- between any of them: a few months maybe, but not years. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it!

Now, without the baggage of "millions of years" and "common descent," the science of life and earth geology is crystal clear.

Mr. Kalamata

SCIENCE AND THE STATE

>>Joe the Science Denier says, “As for Federal funding, you don’t know what that is or was historically.”

People talk. From what I have heard, funding for science exploded in the middle of the 20th century, mostly because of Russia. U.C. Berkeley states that most scientific research is funded by government grants from agencies such as the NSF and NIH, and from some non-profit foundations for things like Breast Cancer Research.

The following paper, written by and for evolutionary biologists, indicates funding for evolutionary biology comes from the NSF and NIH:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.13497

Yale’s website for the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology states, “The National Science Foundation provides numerous opportunities for training and research for graduate students and undergraduates.”

During college my research was funded primarily by the DOE. I also know that SETI was/is federally funded, as is practically all space research projects.

Private companies tend to fund research that will help the bottom line of their companies, which would exclude almost all, if not all, evolution research.

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>>Kalamata: “It is too late. Evolutionism is the established religion of the United States, thanks to the ACLU, the thugs at the NCSE, and a few tyrannical judges who thought nothing of usurping the power of free expression from the states and the people.”
>>Joe the Science Denier says, “Naw, you call it “religion” because you disagree on religious grounds. Strictly defined & taught, science is the opposite of any religion.

I agree that science is the opposite of religion; and evolutionism is not science, but a faith-based religion. The only way a rational populace will accept it is by force — by the sword of the State.

*******************
>>Kalamata: “If evolutionism was not the established religion of the United States, it could be challenged in the classroom by other theories. But evolutionism has become the modern-day Church of England, which caused the colonists to flee England and come to America.”
>>Joe the Science Denier says, “There is no other scientific theory. By definition, Creationism and Intelligent Design are theology, not science.

Evolution is not a scientific theory, but a faith-based religion that has been established as the religion of the United States. The other two you mentioned are suppressed scientific theories that preceded evolutionism, but are finally making a comeback.

*******************
>>Kalamata on criticizing evolution: “[Scientists will not question evolution] in the classroom, if they want to obtain tenure; and not in their research, if they want to get published.
>>Joe the Science Denier says, “Sure they can, in classrooms on theology, philosophy, history of western civilization, etc.

You are being deceptive again, Alinsky Joe.

*******************
>>Kalamata: “It is always good to know there are lawyers and judges available who can tell everyone what science is.”
>>Joe the Science Denier says, “Or, more precisely, what science is not.

You have to be pretty desperate to recruit a corrupt judge and an even more corrupt legal team to suppress the opposition. Science should be able to stand on its own without the threat of a Galilean type of Inquisition to those simply questioning it.

Mr. Kalamata

============================
PALEONTOLOGY
============================

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Billions of "highly fragmentary" fossils representing hundreds of thousands of identified species, together providing clear evidence of transitional forms, these, for example: [Joey posted the same non-annotated chart of human and ape skulls he showed before]:

I was once fooled by those, like you are. But I now realize there is no way you can tie those together. In fact, you don't know if any of those had children. There may be a few apes mixed in to make it appear they are transitionals; but in reality it would take an enormous number of transitions to honestly identify a transitional line from an ape to a man. It has always been like that, according these anthropologists:

"At any rate, modern gorillas, orangs and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere, as it were. They are here today; they have no yesterday, unless one is able to find faint foreshadowings of it in the dryopithecids. Pilbeam assumes that the relationship exists, and has so indicated in a chart he has constructed—although he does leave a huge gap in it, and makes no attempt to link any specific dryopithecid with any living ape." [Johanson & Edey, "Lucy: the Beginnings of Humankind." 1981, p.363]

Lewin implies the highly-imaginative claims to be psychological in nature (and, thus, not scientific):

"[T]he real story of it all has been somewhat obscured: 'namely, what could have led so many eminent scientists to embrace such a forgery?' How is it that trained men, the greatest experts of their day, could look at a set of modern human bones—the cranial fragments—and 'see' a clear simian signature in them; and 'see' in an ape's jaw the unmistakable signs of humanity? The answers, inevitably, have to do with the scientists' expectations and their effects on the interpretation of data." [Roger Lewin, "Bones of Contention." University of Chicago Press, 2Ed, 1997, p.61]

In any case, there are simply too many changes required to go from one to the other, as Ann Gauger is quoted as saying in this article:

https://evolutionnews.org/2012/06/ann_gauger_in_s_1/

If you go to her book and bracket the paragraph that mentions Bramble and Lieberman, it reads:

"How many mutations would it take? Bramble and Lieberman count sixteen features of the human body that first appear in H. erectus or H. sapiens. These features are necessary to stabilize the head, permit counter- rotation of the torso with the head and hips, stabilize the trunk, absorb shock and transfer energy during running. Many of these changes must occur together to be of any benefit.

"Is there enough time to get sixteen anatomical changes by a neo- Darwinian process? Each of these new features probably required multiple mutations. Getting a feature that requires six neutral mutations is the limit of what bacteria can produce. For primates (e.g., monkeys, apes and humans) the limit is much more severe. Because of much smaller effective population sizes (an estimated ten thousand for humans instead of a billion for bacteria) and longer generation times (fifteen to twenty years per generation for humans vs. a thousand generations per year for bacteria), it would take a very long time for even a single beneficial mutation to appear and become fixed in a human population.

"You don't have to take my word for it. In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect."

[Gauger et al, "Science and Human Origins." Discovery Institute Press, 2012, pp.24-25]

The bottom line is, it doesn't really matter how you look at it, or in what field, there is no scientific support for evolution. It is all based in imaginitive story-telling.

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

>>Kalamata: "Evolutionism cannot be falsified, because it is not science."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "That's a total lie which, even if you repeat it endlessly, remains a lie."

You are lying again, but in this case out of ignorance.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "There simply is no confirmed evidence falsifying evolution. If there were, you'd present it here in a heartbeat.

I have, but you reject it by pretending the absence of evidence is evidence. The fossil record, according to Steven Stanley, is the ONLY DIRECT EVIDENCE for evolution:

"It is doubtful whether, in the absence of fossils, the idea of evolution would represent anything more than an outrageous hypothesis... Certainly it would still arouse skepticism. The fossil record, and only the fossil record, provides direct evidence of major sequential changes in the Earth's biota." [Steven M. Stanley, "The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species." Basic Books, 1981, Chap 5, p.72]

However, the fossil record reveals disparity before diversity, and abrupt appearance followed by stasis, both of which falsify evolution. Yet, you and other evolutionists reject those falsifications under the umbrella of "sooner or later something will come along," because "WE KNOW evolution is true!" That is not science, but religion.

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

>>Kalamata: "That occurred in the Cambrian, Joe, when all the major phyla, including Chordata, showed up all at once, with no transitional forms."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "I can't see a useful distinction between the terms "diversity" and "disparity". For practical purposes they seem to be the same thing, both the result of evolution.

You don't see the distinction because you are ignorant of paleontology. Gould and other paleontologists were troubled by the distinction:

"Several of my colleagues (Jaanusson, 1981; Runnegar, 1987) have suggested that we eliminate the confusion about diversity by restricting this vernacular term to the first sense-number of species. The second sense-difference in body plans-should then be called disparity. Using this terminology, we may acknowledge a central and surprising fact of life's history-marked decrease in disparity followed by an outstanding increase in diversity within the few surviving designs. . . Measured as number of species, Burgess [Shale] diversity is not high. This fact embodies a central paradox of early life: How could so much disparity in body plans evolve in the apparent absence of substantial diversity in number of species? of vertebrates? or of life on land? or simply of multicellular persistence for 600 million difficult years? " [The Meanings of Diversity and Disparity, in Gould, Stephen Jay, "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History." 1989, Chap. I, pp.48-49]

Observations of the fossil record reveal sudden appearance of particular kinds of animals, followed by speciation of those kinds to into genera; but no new kinds, as follows:

"The sweep of anatomical variety reached a maximum right after the initial diversification of multicellular animals. The later history of life proceeded by elimination, not expansion. The current earth may hold more species than ever before, but most are iterations upon a few basic anatomical designs." [Gould, Stephen Jay, "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History." 1989, Chap I, p.46]

Those observations led Gould and Eldredge (and Stanley) to propose a new theory -- a sort of "God of the Gaps" type -- that imagined the main theme of Darwin's theory, common descent, occurring in isolated pockets, of which there is absolutely no evidence.

"Before Niles Eldredge and I proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972, the stasis, or non-change, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting non-evidence for non-evolution. Evolution was defined as gradual transformation in extended fossil sequences, and the overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, non-evolution)." [Gould, Stephen Jay, "Cordelia's Dilemma." Stephen Jay Gould Archive]

They called the theory "Punctuated Equlibria", though it was only marginally different from the "hopeful monster" theory proposed much earlier by Goldschmidt.

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

>>Kalamata: "You yourself are guilty of claiming, in this very thread, that the lack of evidence is evidence."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "You yourself have lied endlessly on this point, no matter how often you've been corrected.

You made the claim, so you are the liar. Of course, you made such claims under the cloak of story-telling, as follows:

"But the “observable evidence” is highly skewed by the fact that 99%+ of it is missing.” [Joey]

"[Gould] 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." [Joey]

Pure story-telling.

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

>>Kalamata: "You are severely scientifically-challenged, Joe. There is no evidence any of those handful of fragmented, fossilized land animal forms ever had babies, nor ever had any whale features. Gingrich and Thewissen made it all up, and Carl Werner exposed their charlantry."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Your mind is severely corrupted if you suppose that pre-historical creatures didn't normally reproduce.

Quit lying. I didn't say that pre-historical creatures didn't normally reproduce. I said there is no evidence the handful of so-called "whale-transition" animals ever reproduced.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "As for your alleged "handful of fragmented" fossils, there are far more than a handful, and the numbers grow every year.

You are lying. The evidence for whale transitional animals is no more observable today than when Phil Gingrich imagined the scheme in the early 1980's with this unscientific paper:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gingeric/PDFfiles/PDG132_JGeolEdu.pdf

The darkened areas on the skull and jaw are the only fossils he found, and yet he was "able" to imagine the pictured seal-like creature. Evolutionists have vivid imaginations.

Later, one of this former students, Hans Thewissen, found a more complete skeleton, which is found on page 279 of this article:

http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/bio202/202-2002/Lectures%2020202/thesissen%20et%20al%202001.pdf

According to Thewissen, it is the skeleton of a a swift land animal, such as this artist rendition (the one on the right):

The one on the left was the original imaginary creature.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "As for whether those fossils were land or sea animals, which one is Ursus maritimus?

Why the misdirection, Alinsky Joe? Bears are members of the bear kind, nothing else.

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

>>Kalamata: "There is no blowhole. He imagined it!"
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "The blow-hole is irrelevant because, for example, this animal has no defined blow-hole, but is also very much a sea creature:

That is a seal, dummy, not a whale.

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

>>Kalamata: "It is a walrus, Joe, with two nostrils."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Regardless of whether you call them "nostrils" or "blow-holes", the walrus is still very much a sea-creature.

Yes, and it is called a Walrus, not a whale.

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

>>Kalamata: "No, they are two sleazy scientists who were trying to make a name for themselves by fudging the data. There was no science involved."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Says our theologian in chief.

Says Joe "I don't know no stinkin' evidence"

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

>>Kalamata: "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”.
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Science, by its very nature is supposed to be self correcting.

It is also loaded with dishonest religious fanatics, such as Darwin, Lyell, Haeckel, Gingrich, Thewissen, Dawkins and Shermer, whose theology trumps science.

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

>>Kalamata: "There you go again, pretending the absence of evidence is evidence."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "And there you go again with bald-faced lies.

You said it, and now you deny it? That is what I have come to expect from the evolutionism cult. These are your words:

"But the "observable evidence" is highly skewed by the fact that 99%+ of it is missing." [Alinsky Joe]

As everyone can see, Alinsky Joe disputed my previous statement by imagining there is missing evidence -- 99% missing, in fact -- with the implication that the proof would be found in the missing evidence.

You are a shameless liar, Alinsky Joe.

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

>>Kalamata: "I am speechless."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Of course, because contrary to your claims, you have no real clue as to how science-discovery works.

I am speechless about the extent to which you have been brainwashed.

Mr. Kalamata

============================
BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION
============================

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Nowhere did Linnaeus provide evidence as to where biological "barriers" might exist between different categories of life."

This is Linnaeus:

"The 5 classes of plants. The number of species is the number of different forms produced by the Infinite Being from the beginning; and these forms have produced more forms, according to the laws laid down, but always ones that are similar to themselves. Therefore the number of species is the number of different forms or structures that occur today." [Stephen Freer, “Linnaeus’ Philosophia Botanica.” Oxford University Press, 2005, p.113]

How do you interpret the underlined words?

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

>>Kalamata: "I see you learned how to use Wikipedia. Michael Behe is probably the most brilliant scientist on earth, except for perhaps the organic chemist James Tour. It is a tossup."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "So there are three (including you) who hate natural-science and wish to replace it with their own unique theology. Wonderful.

They, like me, want to chase the theology of evolutionism out of science.

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

>>Kalamata: "That’s it. But his [Behe's] new book will propel him into history as the one who exposed the fraud called common descent."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Or, more likely, toss his already tarnished reputation onto the trash-heap of history.

The only thing that would tarnish Michael Behe's stellar reputation would be to embrace the religious cult of evolutionism.

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

>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Neither of which translates to "family", and both of which mistranslate the Biblical work "kind".

That is correct. Linnaeus didn't use the word "family". He used the word "kind", and expressed it as multiple genera, which would place "kind" at what is now known as the family level.

"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." [Stephen Freer, "Linnaeus' Philosophia Botanica." Oxford University Press, 2005, p.19, 142]

It certainly appears that Linnaeus is grouping multiple genera within a single kind.

In discussing Linnaeus and classification, Michael Behe made this observation:

"Surely we should expect at least one crummy new phylum, class, or order to be conjured by Darwin's vaunted mechanism in the time the finches have been on the Galápagos. But no, nothing. A surprising but compelling conclusion is that Darwin's mechanism has been wildly overrated—it is incapable of producing much biological change at all." [Michael J. Behe, "Darwin Devolves." HarperOne, 2019, Chap.6]

Behe also reminded us that the classification system is a human invention. From his "tone" I assume he was cautioning us against getting too caught in human-devised schemes and processes.

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

>>Kalamata: "The Word of God implies as much, when 2 of each kind went aboard the ark with Noah; and when later God said to multiply AFTER their respective kinds."
>>Joe the Science Denier says, "Which is nowhere defined in any scientific sense.

The created kind is observable science. Even children can tell the difference between the dog kind, the cat kind, and the human kind.

Mr. Kalamata