Common Creationist Arguments - Pseudoscience

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Creationism/Arguments/Pseudoscience.shtml ^

[VadeRetro]

An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven, for example, but rather holds that one cannot know for certain if they exist or not.

Yes. I'm still there, but wondering why I hold open an increasingly odd-looking possibility.

Mostly because I get a bad impression of the effects of letting faith in things unseen guide your life, or at least your thinking. That impression comes from these crevo threads.

[kinsman redeemer]

letting faith in things unseen guide your life

I do not want to push you further away by responding with scripture, but I am compelled solely by your use of the phrase "things unseen":

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. { substance : or, ground, or, confidence}

God loves you and He satisifies those who seek Him diligently.

[medved]

More to the point though, how many intelligent responses has he gotten to this posting?

Real short and simple answer to that one: NONE.

The little 'God-hates idiots' post contains about a dozen major kinds of cogent arguments against evolutionism and I've never yet seen a rational response to any of them from the little evo clique on FR. I assume most of them aren't getting past the Eastwood quote and that's a universal characteristic of bullies all over the world, good at dishing it out, not terribly good at absorbing it. They like to characterize opponents as bible-thumpers, fundamentalists, and double-chromasomers but don't react well to having the basic idiocy of their own doctrine exhibited in public.

A very short list of points in the Eastwood-quote post includes the following:

• How does even one new kind of complex new creature ever arise via mutation/selection when the probabilistic odds of that happening can be seen to be a high-order infinitessimal?
• How does such a near-impossible to impossible thing happen countless billions of times, i.e. once for every kind of complex creature which ever walked, swam, flew, or slithered on the face of the Earth? Doesn't that stand everything we know about mathematics and probability on its head?
• How does natural selection select on the basis of hoped-for/future functionality requirements rather than just doing the random walk around starting points which we observe in nature?
• How do the various parts required for a new kind of animal evolve, when clearly the first would de-evolve and become vestigial while the second was evolving?
• How does punc-eek escape the claim that it is pure pseudoscience? Does it not amount to a claim that lack of evidence is support for the theory?
• Does punc-eek not amount to a claim that inbreeding is the only major factor in producing new kinds of animals? Does that not stand our common-sense observations on their head? Should the laws against cousins and brothers and sisters marrying eachother be repealed?
• Given the odds against any species spreading out from a small area and taking over (the well-known gambler's problem), does punc-eek not stand probability theory on its head by requiring an infinite sequence of such unlikely events?
• Parochially adapted animals rarely if ever prevail against globally adapted ones in real life; is this not a further killing argument against punc-eek?
• Gould, Eldredge et. al. speak of "speciation events" without ever mentioning a specific mechanism for these rapid changes from one kind of animal to another; what is the mechanism? Is the mechanism the same for all the myriads of animals which have ever punc-eeked themselves to power? Why does anybody let Gould and Eldredge get away with such obvious BS?

I mean, there are others points there but those will do for starters. Like Gore3000 notes, I've never yet seen anybody in the little FR evo clique even take a shot at answering any of these problems; all I've ever seen is carping and bitching and accusations of spamming against the most content-full item which ever gets posted on most of these threads, while 60% of the posts on them are nearly content-free. And, as far as I am concerned, the bitching and moaning amounts to an attempt to suppress the free flow of information and nothing else.

[PatrickHenry]

Another placemarker.

[beckett]

That was a really nice piece of writing. And on the point you raise, there is now a topic named Science in the General Interest forum. These threads should be moved there, so that those of us who feel a twinge of irritation when we come across them --- mainly for the reasons you so ably outlined in your post --- can be spared the sight of them unless we specifically choose to enter the General Interest forum.

[Virginia-American]

scientists have scaled the mountain of ignorance and as they pull themselves over the final rock, they are greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Examples, please. I'm not aware of a theologian ever comiong up with anything.

[Virginia-American]

I guess it's the psych. major in me that makes me wonder what the heck is going on with people

Not a psych major, but I know what you mean. I sometimes feel like Oliver Sacks on these threads.

[VadeRetro]

Never? What unmitigated gall!

Over year ago I posted this.

Your hand-wave-and-grumble response.

(Note in any event the difference between saying, "I never got answered on the content of my post." and "I think I dealt with the answers.") You have made the former and not the latter claim. It is false.

So here I am a few days ago giving you another shot at the same criticism, since you're still spamming the same posts over and over.

You did nothing but mischaracterize it, and to someone else at that.

No. You simply blast the same stuff over and over. And it is you ignoring others.

[Junior]

I would love to dispute his claims, but how can I come up wioth a rational argument for statements like "God hates idiots" too?

Well, number one, it ain't Biblical. God mentions many things He abhors, and idiots are not on the list. Secondly, God must truly love idiots as He has pretty much populated the world with them (at least judging from the drivers on North Alabama highways).

[kinsman redeemer]

"The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going."
Sir Francis Crick, Scientific American (February, 1991)

"What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe . . . It's like looking at God."
George Smoot, Principle Investigator of the COBE team, regarding observations made by his team that tend to confirm that the Big Bang cosmology is indeed correct.

"The scientific community is prepared to consider the idea God created the universe a more respectable hypothesis today than at any time in the last 100 years,"
Frederic B. Burnham, science historian and director of the Trinity Institute in New York City.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
God, in His most recent publication.

[medved]

Didn't we just see what your claims to having answered one of my posts typically amount to? Isn't getting shot down in flames once in a week enough?

[kinsman redeemer]

Oliver Sachs looks for the hidden order of things which discloses the forces that sustain and support the tangible world.

I don't know if you mean that you are looking for sensibility and purpose in this thread or in creation.

[f.Christian]

Examples, please. I'm not aware of a theologian ever comiong up with anything.

306 posted on 3/15/02 6:37 AM Hawaii-Aleutian by Virginia-American

"Were it not for the existence of sin in the world, says Calvin, human beings would believe in God to the same degree and with the same natural spontaneity displayed in our belief in the existence of other persons, or an external world, or the past. This is the... natural human condition; it is because of our presently unnatural sinful condition that many of us find belief in God difficult or absurd. The fact is, Calvin thinks, one who does not believe in God is in an epistemically defective position-rather like someone who does not believe that his wife exists, or thinks that she is a cleverly constructed robot that has no thoughts, feelings, or consciousness."

[VadeRetro]

Didn't we just see what your claims to having answered one of my posts typically amount to? Isn't getting shot down in flames once in a week enough?

What did you just say to gore3000?

I've never yet seen anybody in the little FR evo clique even take a shot at answering any of these problems . . .

Everyone has taken dozens and dozens of shots. I've merely documented one of my many, many that I've repeated a few times. Yes, we mostly ignore you. After all, you merely spam on.

[ThinkPlease]

You forgot:

As he has spammed on elsewhere for over 15 years. This behavior is no different than his behavior on Usenet. That much I do remember.

[VadeRetro]

No, longshadow's researches indicate that on Usenet he claimed that the big red spot on Jupiter came from the Velikovskian ejection of Mercury from said gas giant. His position has evolved to where he claims nobody believes that.

[VadeRetro]

One implication of the preceding is that once medved drops a belief, nobody believes it.

[jennyp]

One implication of the preceding is that once medved drops a belief, nobody believes it.

Well, once you think about that, you realize it's completely true!

[VadeRetro]

Meanwhile, we're all despised-of-God idiots for not believing the stuff he still does believe.

[jennyp]

Thank you for the concise summary of your IDIOTS essay. It puts your arguments' problems into higher relief.