Evolution debate: State board should reject pseudoscience

Columbus Dispatch ^ | February 17, 2002 | Editorial

[Junior]

Living things cannot eat minerals.

Plants "eat" minerals all the time, as do certain microscopic critters. Hell, there are whole ecosystems based upon the hot chemical effluvium spewing from deep-ocean vents -- hot effluvium that is completely inorganic in origin. Methinks you are completely out of your depth here.

[Junior]

Maybe God made the Big Bang so perfect He hasn't needed to intervene since.

Hey! That's my hypothesis! Unfortunately, there is absolutely no way to prove it or even test for it. Oh well ...

[Sabertooth]

Maybe God made the Big Bang so perfect He hasn't needed to intervene since.

While I appreciate the glib, Panglossian irony, elements of this statement work just fine for me.

While not exactly clockwork, the natural Universe does appear to run in a ratherly orderly fashion. Splashes of complexity, uncertainty, imperfection, and chaos keep things interesting.

If the Universe is 16 billion years old, what's that to God?

I don't think God needs to intervene in the ongoing material affairs of the Universe to keep things going, so I'll go along with the Big Bang being "perfect enough."

The ongoing spiritual affairs of man are another matter, but that shouldn't intrude much on a properly agnostic science.

[Nebullis]

God did it.

God did what? Create micro-organisms some 3.5 billion years ago?

[VadeRetro]

In my capital-D Deistic moments--I'm a practicing agnostic most of the time--that's where I put God myself. He's clearly not running around violating the laws of His physics here, there, everywhere.

The bad news is that the more I argue with creationists, the more atheist I get. It's very disillusioning in that area, although there's enough to enjoy overall that I make a hobby of it.

[PatrickHenry]

The bad news is that the more I argue with creationists, the more atheist I get.

This is one of the really horrible side-effects of creationism. It gives all religion a bad name. It gives conservatism a bad name. It gives Republicans a bad name. The media loves to get hold of someone like ... well, we've got a dozen or so I could name, and put them up as a talking head as a "typical" respresentative of the conservative viewpoint. It's the very worst thing we've got, and it holds the conservative and Republican movements back. No sane person wants to join a movement that seems to be loaded with creationists, and that's the way the media like it. If only we could persuade the creationists to become democrats ...

[Junior]

I've doubled up on my Bible studying and church-going to counter my atheistic urges. Being Catholic, though, I'm already considered a heathen...

(I've given up meat and alcohol for Lent, and I'm fasting, so occasionally I get a little addle brained)

[Virginia-American]

If only we could persuade the creationists to become democrats ...

Remember the Scopes trial, the creationists were Dims then, fighting off atheistic yankee nonsense.

[scripter]

You asked gore3000 if he had avoided some mistakes listed at a creationist site (AIG). And you listed the following mistakes:

Hows about: ‘Natural selection as tautology’ ; ‘Evolution is just a theory.’ ; ‘Creationists believe in microevolution but not macroevolution.’

I couldn't not find the above at the AIG site you had prviously provided a link to, and was wondering if you could provide a specific URL to the above.

I've never heard the first mistake you mention, but I have heard creationists use the second mistake, and the third, creationists believe in micro but not macroevolution, I thought was true but here you're saying AIG is calling it a mistake...

As a fence sitter, I would greatly appreciate it.

[PatrickHenry]

Remember the Scopes trial, the creationists were Dims then ...

Yes. Southern democrats. Those days are mostly gone.

[VadeRetro]

Glad to help.

AIG's "Arguments We Think Creationists Should Not Use".

[JWinNC]

Great post!

Thanks!

I don't follow these evo vs creation threads and I have not read much of this one, but just let me say you are bang-on about the difficulties of "formulating a non-God created hypothesis for life."

Science will never grasp creation.

JWinNC

[VadeRetro]

It gives conservatism a bad name.

Totally. It's a blot on Christianity. It's a blot on everything that harbors it.

[longshadow]

About the only difference is you [G3K] don't automatically call those who disagree with you "slimers." So, maybe there is hope yet.

I offer this as further evidence for my hypothesis that more than one person is using the G3K screen name on FR. This particular incarnation of G3K lacks the accusatory inclinations of his predecessor, though in all other ways they are indistinguishable.

Either that, or his "Slime" subroutine has been temporarily disabled.

[AndrewC]

God did what? Create micro-organisms some 3.5 billion years ago?

Someone else assumed ---"I know that the pre-biotic soup, if it ever existed, is a problem for your belief system, " to which I answered "..It isn't. I just don't believe there is evidence of pre-biotic soup.". This infers some of what I believe--

Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

A pre-biotic soup fits right in with that, however I don't believe that there is evidence for that condition. However, God made the waters produce certain types of life. Is there any evidence that the waters did not produce life?

[AndrewC]

As a fence sitter, I would greatly appreciate it.

That implies an open mind, most of us apparently don't have such one way or another. The open mind also doesn't imply open mindedness to all topics. But if the question that you are open to is whether Darwinian evolution explains life please peruse the following and seek other verification of the opinions expressed in them---

B3: Extrapolating From Small Changes

Roland F. Hirsch

ID Friendly Evolution

TOWARDS A NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION

A 21st Century View of evolution

Read those and draw your own conclusions. The Darwinians may provide other input, by all means read them, but be sure to check the primacy of the link and the date on the information. The same goes for the links I have provided. Good luck.

[gore3000]

"Hows about: ‘Natural selection as tautology’ ; ‘Evolution is just a theory.’ ; ‘Creationists believe in microevolution but not macroevolution.’

I have not said any of the above. I have said that many of things you evolutionists do say are tautologies. A good example of which is your ridiculous statement about mammary glands and ears which are a tautology and prove nothing. Only facts are evidence, suppositions are not facts.

[gore3000]

"You are so determined to remain in the dark. Pasteur did not test what you creationists call "abiogenesis."

As usual, when shown to be wrong, you resort to semantics. Pasteur proved that life omly comes from other life. That is the only scientific proof relating to the matter of abiogenesis.

You said in#517:
"If you see a planet full of life, such as the Earth, you can -- quite reasonably, based on our knowledge from chemistry and biology -- suggest that it developed over a long time from a pre-biotic soup."

By your own terms therefore, abiogenesis is nonsense.

[gore3000]

"Plants "eat" minerals all the time,

And that's what I said a sentence after the one which you willfully took out of context. I said (in#635):

The only exception to this is plants which either through photosynthesis or chemosynthesis can create their own nourishment from sunlight and chemicals. .

You should be ashamed of yourself.

And the above is the reason why abiogenesis is impossible and none of you evolutionists can show any alternative to it.

[gore3000]

(as science has provided),

I asked in post #85 or so for proof of macro-evolution. Not one of you has yet done so almost 600 posts later. You have absolutely no right to call evolution science when you constantly avoid giving the scientific proof for it.