It's probably the perception of every Nobel laureate in chemistry, medicine, or physics. How do your qualifications compare to theirs?
Not every believer in evolution is smart.
When did you do that?
Creationists who reject evolution are always uncritical of creationism.
That applies more to anti-evolution creationists.
CFCs haven't made it smaller.
Of course, because without global warming we'd average almost 100F lower temperature.
That's not controversial at all among scientists who study this.
Well, according to your wife... ;)
You've relied on rhetorical crutches, you know -- it's obvious, it's apparent, clearly, it's unlikely, it just makes sense/doesn't make sense -- without showing any proof or even correlations. I doubt that you'd accept an engineering study full of the same.
References, please, and some indication of why they believe it - are they just parroting the line, or have they engaged in the research themselves?. You say "nearly every", so you must be ready to share with us a census with the stated opinions of the great majority of the "Nobel laureate[s] in chemistry, medicine, or physics". Otherwise, you are just parading your superstition.
What is the basis for your assertion for my stupidity? That is what you claim if you are firm in your stereotyping of creationists as stupid, you know.
*Always?* You have spoken to each one of them? How many is that, anyway, and how long did it take you?
Creationism isn't the only explanation for humanity as we know it; it only beats whatever is in second place. The debate comes down to the same sort of bottom line as the quest for a Grand Unified theory of physics: reconciling the known facts of the situation only produces unlikely looking explanations, while the simplest and most likely explanation is that the universe (or man) can't possibly exist. But here we are.
To some, certainly. Ditto for Evolutionists.
That's not an answer. You have undoubtedly swallowed the line about CFCs and ozone depletion, just as you have swallowed everything else. But in 1997 NASA/NOAA launched a joint mission called POLARIS (Photochemistry of Ozone Loss in the Arctic Region in Summer) to determine what was actually happening. Making in situ measurements to avoid the contamination that started the whole controversy in the first place, they reached the conclusion the ozone thinning was being caused by "an increased role of NOx catalytic cycles for ozone destruction during periods of prolonged solar illumination such as occur at high latitudes during summer." (see the End of Mission statement on NASA's archive site:
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100F???? And you believe this because...? (Check out
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for at least some more credible numbers; the argument is that by burning fossil fuels we are approaching ancient conditions before the carbon was sequestered.) Arctic thawing is a well-known regional weather phenomenon called the Arctic Oscillation (see
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not some global effect. But belief that it is due to "global warming" is as prevalent as the belief that evolution has produced mankind, and is as poorly questioned.
Do you always rely on such lousy scientists? The two things we know with great certainty are that (1) atmospheric CO2 levels have risen 36% in recent times and 20% in the last half century, an average of over 0.4% per year for the last 50 years
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and (2) that fossil carbon introduced since 1890 comprises only 2% of the atmospheric carbon today
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If we were to remove every molecule of fossil carbon from the atmosphere, we could turn back the clock on CO2 increases about five years. The data is there, but few people seek it out. They blindly believe as you do: "most experts...." and feed their ignorance instead of their knowledge.
Seriously - what are the logical flaws in my argument? That's what this is all about; whether creation theory is untenable. So far you have not addressed that issue except to say "Creationists who reject evolution are always uncritical of creationism." How about something we can work with - any original thought.
Well, at least we know digesting reports isn't your strong suit. If you have some specific arguments or data, please come out with them. Your cavalier reliance on hordes of unspecified "experts" who are supposed to do your thinking for you is unconvincing. As the saying goes, "62.87% of statistics are made up." So far, it appears 100% of yours are made up.
That assertion could certainly be made about proponents of creationism or its new twin, intelligent design, but its validity with regard to evolutionary theory is questionable at best.
Every scientific theory presented as orthodoxy in science classes began in exactly the position that ID/Creationism occupies today - a heresy believed by a handful of people who don't buy the orthodox view. But the heretics have always been required to earn their place in the curriculum by producing peer-reviewed evidence, not by appealing directly to school boards and state legislatures.
ID advocates provide no evidence in favor of their beliefs, only criticisms of evolutionary theory. While there are obviously gaps in evolutionary science, the positive evidence for evolution is massive. There are thousands of mutually corroborating observations from many different fields, including geology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, ethology, biogeography, embryology, and molecular genetics.
When asked what might disprove evolution, the biologist JBS Haldane replied, "fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian." Not a single authentic fossil has ever been found in the wrong place in the evolutionary sequence. Evolution, like all good theories (and unlike ID), makes itself vulnerable to disproof.
A theory isn't just a bunch of criticisms, even if they're valid. A theory ties things together. It explains and predicts. Intelligent design does neither. And it makes no attempt to explain obvious design failures.
They're not confusing their religions with their sciences.
I won't make a 100% blanket statement, although in this case I should have.
It's absolutely ridiculous of you to accuse me of parading my superstition when you're the one who's pushing his religion as science.
I had none, but I do now -- a question isn't an assertion.
Don't be silly.
It's not an explanation, period, just as the flat earth theory doesn't explain the shape of our planet.
That makes no sense. You've cut something into 2 pieces and gotten >
100%.
It's not a question.
Most of my information about this came from our company chemists, although they specialize in water and the lower atmosphere, not the upper.
The science advisor of that leftist enviro-Nazi, Ronald Reagan, must have swallowed the CFC/ozone depletion propaganda as well because he believe the connection was strongly supported.
Look, I know ozone depletion can't be correlated perfectly with CFC releases, and photochemists and atmospheric scientists look at many factors, including particulates, mists, solar output, and wind patterns as well. But since the mid-late 1980s the vast majority of scientists qualified to understand all this have concluded that CFCs are strongly responsible for ozone depletion.
That's approximately the amount of natural global warming. Were you assuming that global warming was only bad and couldn't be good?
Notice I didn't say anything about a connection between manmade CO2 and global warming.
A conclusion unsupported by any evidence you've seen. Frankly you're giving a "salesman's argument," touting the skimpiest evidence as absolute proof, a common tactic among charlatans and kooks.
There must be a God or a Force that was so intelligent s/he did x, y, z yada?
Why couldn't something beyond our understanding, at the moment, ultimately explain our existence?
Centuries ago much less could be explained than it can be today. Suppose centuries ago people just stopped asking questions, and said it's all due to a God. Where would we be today?
Your way, when cast as "science," is stereotyped as stupid because it rejects deductive reasoning and shuts off further investigation and discovery.
When cast as "faith," your way is perfectly acceptable and even deductive.
I think you've got it! You have made it past the mental block that is driving so many other posts. My argument has *nothing* to do with religion, or faith, or any putative god. I do not say anything specific or knowable is the source of design (or in my philosophy, constant creation). My personal hunch - and it is only a hunch - is that the nature of the source of creation is beyond our knowledge. That is also the hardest conjecture to prove, but not impossible. All we can say with any certainty is that evolution has not brought us here, with the capacity for this very discussion. I am still waiting for a rebuttal on that point. Creationist theory leaves the field wide open to investigation - unlike the evolutionist view, which insists the case is closed.
My religion - my faith - has *absolutely* nothing to do with the question of "how we got here" - not a bit more than my choice of pajamas has anything to do with it. It is all about the science. You can toss all my philosophy into the street, and the argument against evolution of Man holds. After all, science was my philosophy and my religion when I developed the argument.
BTW - deductive reasoning won't get you far, especially in things like this. Inductive reasoning is the preferred approach, because it is more powerful and flexible.
Dang - you don't have it. Creationism isn't a religious theory. If a sect called The Divine Temple of the Mystical Monkey decided Planet of the Apes was a documentary and adopted evolutionism as a central tenet, that does not make evolution a religious theory. The very same applies to creation theory. No god need exist, but it allows for the existence of one... exactly as evolution theory does.
Welcome to the world of science! Mathematics and philosophy are riddled with such teasers, with the search for some famous mathematical proofs dating back many centuries.
I am asking you and all the others to refute my thesis: that there is no known or hypothesized mechanism in evolutionary theory to explain the sudden development of advanced abstract thought over a span of fewer than 10,000 generations. If you can prove that, I'll stop saying it.
No, it doesn't. We are talking about creation theory, not about specific sects. Creationism allows for any intelligent design (including my own Solipsist philosophy) while evolutionism allows no variation.
How many options can you offer under evolution theory?
Exactly so.
It is a mistake to speak for others, and I hope you don't think I represent anybody else in my beliefs or arguments. Buddhists, for example, take great excepton to the assertion that their religion spells out origin beliefs.
Very true. I don't expect anybody to agree with me. But my challenge to evolution as the origin of you and me is 100% secular, and I am waiting for anybody to address it.
No - deductive reasoning, by nature, results in a constantly shrinking working field. Theories are not allowed under the rules of deduction, because the results have to be known before the question can be expressed... theories are inductive tools.
My problem is not with the biological side - that works pretty well, as you say. (There are unresolved debates within evolutionary theory of course, particularly whether life began as a single instance or if there were multiple beginnings throughout the eons.) It is the practice of trying to extend it to beings capable of the deep abstract thought such as we are that evolution falls critically short. By way of analogy, theoretical physics does a good job of explaining how metals came into existence, but extending that to explain the existence of automobiles is unwarranted.
Intelligent design (which I feel is a more accurate description of the theory than "creationism" because of the religious overtones) gains much of its currency from the famous Sherlock Holmes observation, "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Failing any alternatives to evolution to explain our existence, and the failure of evolution to bridge the gap to sentient being, intelligent design - in all its breadth - is the best fit.
My rejection of evolution as the source of mankind dates from right around
1970, when I was a confirmed atheist. My religion, adopted when I was 10 (yes, there was a specific moment) was Scientist, and in practice I remain an old school scientist in the mold of Sir Francis Bacon and Anton Von Leuwenhoek (talk about geeky childhood heroes!) today. Science was what convinced me of the inadequacy of evolution to produce people. Ironically, Leuwenhoek made my list ahead of Benjamin Franklin mostly for his excellent methodology in demonstrating that the then-popular theory of spontaneous generation was untenable. (Well, that and his pioneering work in microscopy, which was my big passion before electronics.) I adopted the Material Agnostic philosophy a few years later as a result of science, while my religion and practice were still Scientist. I changed my faith to Christian in 1978 as a result of personal experiences, remaining a scientist in practice and a material agnostic in philosophy.
I think you can see why I think it is a mistake to assume creationists are driven by religious doctrine. Personally, I feel all creation myths are only interesting as literature.
A final note: as I pointed out and nobody has tried to refute in any of the posts so far - not a single idea in this post (your excellent post or my reply) can be attributed to the products of evolutionary processes.
Somebody who's put so much thought into this shouldn't have ignored the possibility a creator intelligently designing only the basics of the the universe and then letting evolution runs its course.
OK, to side with our fearless warrior Mike, you have to admit that he stands his ground in a very respectable, even though obviously not popular, way.
People "believe in" either Creationism or Evolutionism and that's just that, a belief, and unfounded except for personal conviction. You believe in something you can't prove. In this case , you can't prove one or the other.
(full disclosure - I'm far away from being a religious nut, actually, not religious at all, and the whole Creationism debate seems far-fetched - but that doesn't imply that the "other" theory is true).
As long as these things are not proven but remain theories, there's no point in beating each other up about them. The idea is to remain critical and only accept as fact (or theory, in this case) what jives with your own point of view, and remain open to the possibility of "the other side" (or a third!) being right.
Another good discussion topic (not that I want to hijack a Honda or consumer newsgroup!) is the whole "Big Bang" theory. Here's a writeup by a well-known and respected scientist (PhD in chemistry and critical thinker), Alexander Shulgin, on the "Theory of the Big Bang":
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At one point it was well respected "scientific fact" that the earth is flat.
On 9/26/2005 10:24 PM Michael Pardee spake these words of knowledge:
Michael, Doyle was wrong. A correct statement would be, "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be possible." Not at all the same, but accurate, unlike the statement of Holmes, which supposes that all evidence is known *and* incontrovertible, or impossible.
Here is the crux of the problem with your stance. You surely recognize that it is disingenuous to refute those who don't accept teaching creationism with the canard, 'you haven't proved me wrong,' particularly in this discussion.
The difference between the two theories boils down to this: evolution fits the science that we now have and understand, so far. In the future, we may find that our comprehensive abilities grow, and the theory of evolution needs changing. Conversely, we may find something within our existing scientific purview that doesn't fit with the theory of evolution, again necessitating an adjustment.
Creationism - intelligent design is simply that, unless you posit an intelligence which didn't do the designing - can, without adjustment, encompass any and all data. One may choose to say that the intelligent designer chose to create the world from a drop of sweat from the brow of Ganesha, or incorporate it on the back of a giant turtle, supported by four elephants. This cannot be verified, but it cannot be disproven. Simply put, intelligent design is not testable. It falls outside the realm of science and cam not be taught as science.
To claim that intelligent design is not religion simply points out that you don't know what religion means. Religions have been proposed since time immemorial for two reasons: to explain things otherwise not explained, such as where we came from and what happens when we die, and for control of other humans. In supposing intelligent design, ipso facto you suppose an intelligent designer. That's religion, no different in substance from many other religions throughout the history of mankind, promulgated to explain the origin of man (ironic overtones mine) and universe. It's religion because it's not testable! Your particular, lucid view of the situation highlights the primary weakness of the entire idea: lack of data never justifies a conclusion.
*sigh* My son's tenth-grade English teacher informed his class last week that "Americans spell 'cat' with a 'k', and spell 'night', 'n-i-t-e'."
Being American herself, my wife is quite perturbed... she wants the kid to ask his teacher how many states there are, and if he gives any answer other than 50, she swears to lay beaters on him.
The ever-growing abuse of the apostrophe-S (and plurals in general) is the one that really grates on me. It's spreading from the little community newsletters now to the big dailies and major advertisements. One of the latest to catch my eye was a recent flyer for A&B Sound, a major Canadian electronics retailer: a spot for a Clifford car alarm touts "Starter Kill To Prevent Thief's From Driving Away..."
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