Scientific American threatens AiG : Demands immediate removal of Web rebuttal

The prominent magazine Scientific American thought it had finally discredited its nemesis—creationism—with a feature article listing ‘15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense’ (July 2002). Supposedly these were the fifteen best arguments that evolutionists could use to discredit the Bible’s account of Creation. (National Geographic TV also devoted a lengthy report to the article.)

Within 72 hours, Dr Jonathan Sarfati—a resident scientist at Answers in Genesis–Australia—had written a comprehensive, point-by-point critique of the magazine article and posted it on this Web site.

So Scientific American thought it would try to silence AiG with the threat of a lawsuit.

In an e-mail to Dr Sarfati, Scientific American accused him and AiG of infringing their copyright by reproducing the text of their article and an illustration. They said they were prepared to ‘settle the matter amicably’ provided that AiG immediately remove Dr Sarfati’s article from its Web site.

AiG’s international copyright attorney, however, informed Scientific American that their accusations are groundless and that AiG would not be removing the article. Dr Sarfati’s article had used an illustration of a bacterial flagellum, but it was drawn by an AiG artist years ago. AiG had also used the text of SA’s article, but in a way that is permissible under ‘fair use’ of copyrighted materials for public commentary. (AiG presented the text of the SA article, with Dr Sarfati’s comments interspersed in a different color, to avoid any accusations of misquoting or misrepresenting the author.)

Why the heavy-handed tactics? If AiG’s responses were not valid, why would Scientific American even care whether they remained in the public arena? One can only presume that Scientific American (and National Geographic) had the ‘wind taken out of their sails.’ Dr Sarfati convincingly showed that they offered nothing new to the debate and they displayed a glaring ignorance of creationist arguments. Their legal maneuver appears to be an act of desperation. (AiG is still awaiting SA’s response to the decision not to pull the Web rebuttal.)

Which is exactly the type of thinking & insecurity that leads people who believe the Bible to be inerrant to think that woman being created from man's rib, the story of Adam & Eve, people living to be several hundred years old, etc should be taught in science classes.

According to the Gospels, JESUS believed that Adam and Eve were real, actual people who were created just the way they were portrayed in the Genesis account. Jesus believed that Jonah was in the big fish, etc etc etc. Jesus totally accepted the Old Testament accounts as being a literal intrepretation of the truthful, inerrant word of God. Was Jesus a liar? Was He stupid? Misinformed? Ignorant?

Who do YOU say Jesus was, gdani -- just a man?

My mistake. In linking to the words of John Paul, I implicitly assumed that those reading them would possess some level of comprehension. It was a speech by a sophisticated metaphysician to an audience of scientists. Do you really think you should be responding to it without being sure you understand it?

In the preceding text, the Pontiff referred to a multiplicity of theories of evolution. In the section you quote, he discusses that subset of such theories which "regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter".

Got it now, or would you prefer a translation into monosyllables?

Do you believe that species evolve to adapt to their environment every day?

If so, then you believe in evolution.

Period.

Now if you believe that evolution can't account for the diversity of species around us, because the Earth is too young -- then you have a disagreement with geologists.

But you *do* believe in evolution.

Interesting, eh?

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.
Again, a straw man, since informed creationists don’t teach this—even though some day-age advocates do, like Hugh Ross.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries.

But it need not. In fact, speciation can happen much faster than most evolutionists (and day-age advocates) realize. But creationists following the Biblical Creation-Fall-Flood-Migration model would expect such rapid non-evolutive speciation—see Speedy species surprise. One example is a new species of mosquitoes, i.e. one that can’t interbreed with the parent population, arising in the London Underground train system (the ‘Tube’) in only 100 years. The rapid change ‘astonished’ evolutionists, but should delight creationists—see Brisk Biters.

Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr’s Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations—sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms’ physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

We agree. It’s important to note this difficulty in defining ‘species’ whenever evolutionists claim that creationists don’t have a consistent definition of ‘kinds’ (which we do as discussed before).

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection—for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits—and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

None of this is news to informed creationists. Once again, there is no new information, but sorting and loss of already existing information.

one avant garde musician wrote a :60 track consisting of total silence. He was promptly sued by the attorneys for an avant garde composer who had previously written a piece that was four minutes of silence. Naturally, the musician said his silence was in no way related to the other silence.

LMFAO!!!

Okay that's one of the most futzed-up things I've read on FR all day...

Time to call it a day...

You wrote to f.Christian...

Got it now, or would you prefer a translation into monosyllables?

That's a pretty mean-spirited and arrogant statement from someone who ran away twice from MY simple question to you... So I'll restate it a third time:

You are a Catholic. And you disbelieve the Bible? If the Genesis account is a lie, then how do you know the Gospels are not also a lie? If Genesis is merely a vague allegory, then what makes you think Jesus Christ ever did or said the miracles and teachings He is credited with? If Genesis can be easily shrugged off, why not the Gospels, also?

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