Annoying long-winded anti-science morons

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-10 09:35pm

Zero132132 wrote:He actually fucking claimed that the renaissance was bad for morality? Does he believe that it's better that the common man was unlearned, unknowing, and had no power? What the fuck is this stupid fuckwad thinking? His notion of morality seems to be that things are enjoyable here in the real world.

Any scientific investigation in his mind is evil since science leads to materialism which leads to atheism which leads to all kinds of immorality which he has YET to provide any real evidence for. Blind faith is the way to go in this tard's mind.

For the love of God, I'd thought that when people said fundamentalists wanted a return to the dark ages, they were kidding... this is depressing..

Yep, he has REPEATEDLY appealed to the authority of Mideval PEASANTS in his arguments.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-10-10 09:38pm

Materialism is his enemy in his mind... so reality is his enemy. How sad... it's quite pathetic that he appeals to the authority of the ignorant masses while denying essentially that reality is important. What a poor son of a bitch...

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-10-11 02:34am

Man, the guy sure can spout repetitive bullshit. He barely says anything in all that. It could all be condensed into a single paragraph.

My e-mail wrote:I happened upon your discussion online, and I must say I was disappointed by your almost repetitious tactic of claiming that materialism leads to immorality. What about it leads to immorality? The love of life, and the treasuring of every brief moment? The belief that this world is all that there is?

My faith is based fundamentally on reason and facts and a pretty thorough understanding of the history of Western intellectual thought and a growing understanding of non-Western thought.
Faith based on reason? That's a new one. Faith by definition rejects reason. One of the definitions of faith from Webster's online dictionary is "a firm belief in something for which there is no proof."

Christianity teaches that Jesus' message will improve all the nations of the world and through the Enlightenment this is exactly what has happened. The mechanism of this has not always been moral and has often relied on force, but it has helped eliminate or at least reduce things like slavery, racism, human sacrifice and the other things that I cited. While you would give the credit of this to opposition to religion, most of this was done by Christians. John Locke saw the spread of monotheism in the world as providence. "For even to the light that the Messiah brought into the world with him, we must ascribe the owning and profession of one God, which the Mahometan (Islamic) religion hath derived and borrowed from it."(Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity, 59)
Christianity has improved all the nations of the world? If by "improve" you mean "convert" then yes, it has tried its damndest. It was not Christianity that eliminated slavery in America (as an example). Christianity was completely ambivalent, in both its teachings and its followers. Christians have both supported and campaigned against slavery, and the Old Testament itself allows slavery. Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. Leviticus 25:44. It was the peoples' own realization that humans deserve rights that defeated slavery. Christianity had nothing to do with it. Furthermore, racism was also in the Bible: as you my earlier quote showed, the Israelites were uplifted (ironic then, that anti-Semitism was rampant among Christians in Medieval Europe).
Human sacrifice was rare in the world, and Christianity's method of eliminating it was killing or converting all its practitioners. The Aztecs were hung by Spanish conquistadors sadistically in groups of 13, representing Jesus and the 12 apostles. Yes, it is clear that Christianity's only contribution to the world was its immense influence and power: this brought a modicum of order to Europe, which would outlast the Catholic Church's power. After the Catholic influence was broken, there was little redeeming about Christianity: that it condemned murder is nothing appreciable: all societies did.
You attribute what was done by Christians to Christianity itself: this is fallacious, as Christians often battled over issues, despite their sharing of religion.

The problem is that most societies have always believed in providence, that things happen due to the divine will. That is what I believe.

So you believe that Hurricane Katrina was God's will? What a great and awesome mass-murderer you worship!

So because I believe that the Bible came from God I see it as the owner's manual for life. Because God loves us, his rules are not to harm but to help us.
So his rules against victimless crimes such as prostitution and homosexuality help us? How?

But materialists reject this. They don't try to understand why people in the past believed what they believed but just criticize it. You can't understand anything if you just criticize it.
And this makes them immoral? You've got to be joking. At the very worst, this makes them unsuitable for professions in history. Of course, that entire statement is false anyways: I am willing to understand what people in the past believed. That doesn't mean I must entertain the notion that it has any basis in fact, though.

In fact, the science of anatomy requires at least an assumption of intelligent design. When one studies organs, you have to assume that they have a purpose and then try to discover this.
What? You know organs have a purpose because they're THERE. If they were worthless, evolutionary processes would've long since discarded them. An animal that wastes energy maintaining and growing a useless organ would not propagate its genes with as much efficiency as one that had reduced or gotten rid of the useless organ.
None of that requires intelligent design. Having a purpose doesn't require intelligent design.

You say it makes no sense why people should not work on the Sabbath but the Bible is very clear about why. "But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work . . . . that they manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou." God gave people a day of rest. But the key to understanding the conservative morality of the Bible is to understand peasant life. They believed in temperance, having only what you need, and rejecting all luxury.
What if people don't want to rest? There are many ambitious people out there who'd rather put their day to some use rather than sit around aimlessly. Some find it boring to rest the whole day. Why force people to rest if they're not tired? What makes this especially ridiculous is that people were stoned for working on Sabbath. That's moronic: you shouldn't have to enforce rest. If people want rest, they can take it. If not...well, don't stone them for it.

To see evidence of this understanding of ancient life, check out Plato's Republic pages 165-70. Now you probably think this is completely prejudiced and unfair but Plato explains that it is necessary unless we are to harm others. "Then we must take a slice of our neighbor's land, if we . . . . pass the bounds of the necessary and give [ourselves] over to the boundless getting of wealth. The next thing is we should go to war, Glaucon . . ." Here Plato says that one can only have more than they need if they take it from others through theft or conquest. So if this is true then maybe luxury was a bad thing. While you might think this is just Plato's delusional view, both Stoicism and Epicureanism agree with it and it is pretty much universal in any peasant society. The Bible makes a lot more sense from this point of view. In Samuel 1, 8 the Israelites ask for a king and God warns them that the king will be a tyrant and exploit them for his own luxury. Not a ringing endorsement of the morality of kings. But the Bible is more profound than Plato because Plato clearly rejects luxury but the Bible does not. This has made possible progress as people have been able to interpret the Bible differently as life changes. This is not a sign of weakness but strength and was something inherent in the Bible created long before any human had ever imagined an industrial revolution and modern technology.
Communism had a similar philosophy. Everyone's wealth was spread equally, because one man being richer caused another to be poorer. Guess what: it doesn't work. People are naturally greedy, with or without Christianity. You can't make anyone give up what luxury they have to go back to an agrarian existence. They may give to charity, but they will not sleep in a log cabin while giving their mansion to the orphanage: it simply goes against our nature.
But what does this have to do with materialism leading to immorality? This is plain old human greed leading to immorality.

An excellent example of materialism leading to immorality is the Renaissance. Epicureanism began to influence some educated people and they began to question the traditional rejection of pleasure and luxury.

You've got to be kidding me. Peasants lived in squalor because they were forced to, not because the Bible told them to. Everyone who could live in relative luxury did. The peasant's life was not a mere rejection of pleasure and luxury: it was outright torture.

They began to see pleasure as good and rejected Christian warnings as ignorant.
Of course pleasure is good. As long as it isn't at the expense of someone else, it's great.

This inspired by the example of the Roman Empire developed the sexual double standard in Europe. Men argued that as long as they got married and had children, they fulfilled their sexual duty and could indulge their lust with women consensually. This led men to have sex with servants and slaves and some men such as southern plantation owners became real sexual predators.
Give me a freakin' break. The biblical characters had concubines (see Genesis 30:3-6), yet were not struck down for it. They were no better than these nobles: furthermore, this kind of behavior long predated the Rennaissance. Plus, there were few nobles (see below).

Nobles began to think it would be ok for them to enjoy more luxury and started to expand their estates by enclosing the commons and meadows for farming. Then their peasants could not use them anymore.
By the time of the Enlightenment, nobles were all but gone. It was the time of the kings. Nobles didn't do any of this stuff. They couldn't afford to anyways: they relied on peasants for food.

But the materialism of modern hippies gave us free love that had all the negative effects that one would predict. But the main problem of materialism is that it causes people to criticize things rather than try to understand them.
That would be close-mindedness, not materialism. A materialist can be close-minded, but so can a theist.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-10-11 02:34am

My e-mail, Part 2 wrote:
And it is the bias of materialists, the unwillingness to admit the possibility of God's existence, that makes me question their assumptions and the validity of their science. Too many scientists, get ill when they see the evidence pointing toward the existence of a creator. My own study of intellectual thought has shown me that people are quite prejudiced and easily twist their objectivity. So while you assume a number of scientists sharing the same assumptions means a lot for their validity, I disagree. It is far too easy for people to get it wrong especially when they reject possibilities out of hand.
Care to provide any evidence of said Creator, rather than peripherally mentioning it?

As for evolution, beyond a few radioactive dating methods that do not provide conclusive evidence their is no proof that the earth is really old and that the rock layers reflect a time of millions of years.
Do you really understand the science of radioactive dating? Do you understand the concepts of alpha and beta decay and half-lives? If so, please provide specific criticisms that can be addressed, not this vague gesturing.

So assuming that fossils are old because they came from rock assumed to be old, is not proof but circular reasoning.
Rock is not assumed to be old: it must be old, because the formation non-igneous rock takes millions of years.

Many other natural "clocks" give evidence of a much younger earth. But do you reject the mathematicians who said that the universe even assuming a very old universe is not old enough for one new species to evolve when assuming gradual changes?
What natural clocks give evidence of a younger earth? Specific examples, please. Also, citing an unnamed mathematician in an incoherent sentence when debating a subject in biology does not constitute an argument. Who cares what mathematicians think? What the heck do they know about evolutionary biology and the rate at which genetic change can be built up?

As for evolution losing adherents, I am not saying it is a sea change but the holes in the theory and the lack of conclusive evidence are leading more and more people to question and even reject it.
Please provide specific claims of "holes in the theory".

I reject it because I don't see any good unbiased reason to have accepted it in the first place.
What about the fossil record? What about observed evolutionary change in laboratories? What about the existence of mutagenic viruses? Aren't those "good unbiased reasons" to accept it?

But why do evolutionists become creationists and not the other way around?
Of course some creationists become evolutionists: what evidence do you have that only evolution is losing adherents?

The universities are still full of people who believe that Cuba is the model of the future even though Communism is dying a slow painful death.
Communism already has died. Everyone in the university has heard of the USSR; only whackjobs believe in communism now. There are no universities full of nutcases like that.

And the evidence is becoming more and more overwhelming that materialism does not work.
What kind of evidence? You failed to provide one piece in your entire e-mail.
Also, the immorality inspired by the materialism of the hippies does not work. Even rock stars had to stop doing drugs and cut back on the alcohol or die.
Alchohol and drugs are not supported by materialism: it is those things that ruin the one life you have. Because of drugs, you can't enjoy life to the fullest, which is what materialism generally supports.

It is really hard for people to be real hippies who believe that sexual freedom will turn the world into a utopia because that obviously did not work and appears naive now. Now we have people who bitch about corporations and go to Grateful Dead shows. But over time, bad ideas die. Being wrong has consequences.
If anything, current times are more sexually liberal than the 70s. Pornography has reached new heights through the internet (yay!) and the plastic surgery industry is doing pretty damn well for itself. The only difference is that people are more wary of STDs. As for the death of bad ideas: no wonder creationism has been cut out of American schools. It's clearly an inadequate theory.

As for the Big Bang, you should study Kant. He made the simple point that categories of understanding like big and small or physical laws do not exist or operate outside time and space. So human beings cannot explain or really understand the spiritual world. God was not created by anything. As the Bible and Koran explain he is infinite and eternal. Creation only
occurs within time where something does not exist at one time and then does exist at a new time. God is Jehovah - he who was, and is, and will be. To ask who created God, makes the error of thinking about God in material terms that do not apply. So in terms of the Big Bang to talk about a thing creating time and space is silly and I would argue shows a basic philosophical error pointed out by Kant. I still feel you would deal with these questions better if you studied philosophy and saw why philosophers of the past rejected materialism. Science is a useful tool to understand the mechanical universe but it is limited to space and time. It can not achieve absolute knowledge because it can not say anything about the existence of God.
Why don't you prove that there is anything beyond space and time? Science works with what exists, here in the real world. You know, the place where God hasn't been observed at all? If God were interfering with the universe from some magical la-la land outside the universe, then we'd see some massive distortions from the model of the 'verse we expect. Entropy would be all screwy: it doesn't account for an input of energy from an outside source. It assumes the universe is a closed-system, and if it isn't, then our current model should not be working as well as it is. Since it is, we must assume that be there any gods, they do not interfere with our universe. They might as well not exist.

I apologize for the length of the e-mail, but you seem to have a peculiar talent of writing large amounts, and saying very little. Throughout the entire e-mail, you failed to provide any evidence for materialism's immorality, and failed to make any specific criticisms of evolutions.

Sincerely,
wolveraptor

[/quote]

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2005-10-11 07:17am

Anguirus wrote:Evolutionists becoming creationists? When did that happen?

Because eing an evolutionists doesnt mean you're immune to alzheimer, a brain stroke or Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease?

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-10-11 07:46am

I've actually never seen one who follows science and evolution becoming a creationist. This fellow makes the claim that we're all 'evolutionists' from birth, that we're heavily indoctrinated with a belief in evolution, but this isn't true. We gain a knowledge of evolution through either cultural osmosis, or education of some sort. Creationism, in contrast, is something that parents teach their children. It's not something you'll learn through observation of the world, since it's inconsistant with the real world in many ways, and it isn't something you'll learn in school, unless you go to a private school, which means your folks are probably fundies already anyways.

Does anyone know of an example of a fellow becoming a creationist after showing a bit of knowledge about what evolution actually is?

WyrdNyrd · Post by **WyrdNyrd** » 2005-10-11 07:51am

There a lots of scientists who support Creationism, but. . .

How many of them are called Steve?

GeneralTacticus · Post by **GeneralTacticus** » 2005-10-11 08:21am

Just something that jumped out at me from the general stupidity of that email:

An excellent example of materialism leading to immorality is the Renaissance. Epicureanism began to influence some educated people and they began to question the traditional rejection of pleasure and luxury. They began to see pleasure as good and rejected Christian warnings as ignorant.

This is a complete misrepresentation of Epicurus' philosophy (as opposed to the modern definition pf "Epicureanism", which is basically hedonism). Epicurus was completely opposed to all forms of luxury; he believed that true happiness lay in learning to be content with very little. The less stuff you need in order to be happy, he argued, the easier it is to be happy, and the harder it is for someone or something to take that happiness away.

If this guy is going to try citing philosophers in a futile attempt to make himself sound educated, he could at least try to get them right. Especially when they agree with his point of view.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-10-11 12:36pm

I actually agree with the point of view that one should learn to be happy with less to attain true happiness. Science doesn't lead to any disagreement with this, though. I'm still a materialist, as I believe that all things that exist are material. This guy obviously knows jack shit...

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-11 01:52pm

It is really hard for people to be real hippies who believe that sexual freedom will turn the world into a utopia because that obviously did not work and appears naive now. Now we have people who bitch about corporations and go to Grateful Dead shows. But over time, bad ideas die. Being wrong has consequences.

The idiot doesn't even realize that this point in and of itself is an example of survival of the fittest in action. Its not biological evolution but still, the mechanism clearly works thus refuting his argument.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-11 09:30pm

My response

sugestion: learn what 'paragraphs' are and use them.

Now this discussion is getting interesting.
I'm sorry I can't say the same as you seem to mostly be just repeating the same points that I have already addressed.

My faith is based fundamentally on reason and facts and a pretty thorough understanding of the history of Western intellectual thought and a growing understanding of non-Western thought.
Which facts would those be? And the history of thought is irrelevant to the way the universe really is. People can THINK anything they like. The key is in observable, measurable, verifiable evidence.

My point would not be that Christianity has been perfect,
Of course not. You just think it leads to greater morality than any other system of thought which claim I have shown is completely false.

and I believe that Orthodox Christians suffered from many prejudices exposed by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.
I could say the same about the way Christians treat science. The difference is the Scientists have EVIDENCE. The Christians do not.

But these were world-wide prejudices and you do not deny this.
By "prejudices" do you mean "didn't accept your religion; didn't convert when the missionaries told them to"? Why SHOULD anyone accept Christianity.

Christianity teaches that Jesus' message will improve all the nations of the world

You're just picking the good parts out of the bible. There is far more in there that is about death and destruction than there is about love thy neighbor.

and through the Enlightenment this is exactly what has happened.
You have utterly failed to show that Christianity has been a force for good in the world.

The mechanism of this has not always been moral and has often relied on force, but it has helped eliminate or at least reduce things like slavery, racism, human sacrifice and the other things that I cited.
The other things I showed that you were WRONG about?

There is NOTHING in the Bible that says slavery is wrong. The Old Testament explicitly allows the Jews to make slaves of other nations (Lev 25:44-46) Jesus never condemned it. The apostle Paul exhorts slaves to be obedient to their masters (Eph 6:5) view said masters whith honor (1 Tim 6:1). Peter gives similar advice to slaves, obeying even the cruel masters (1 Peter 2:18). Not ONCE does the bible ever say slavery
should be eliminated or declare the practice immoral. Those christians who DID figure out that slavery is immoral did it by using their BRAINS, not following religious dogma and there were just as many Christians
fighting to preserve slavery.

The Bible never says anything is wrong with racism. It elevated the Jews to a higher position than the rest of the world and for centuries, the "good
Christians" returned the favor to the Jews. You yourself described Jews as "enemies" exposing your OWN racism for all to see.

While Christians were agaisnt offering humans as offerings to the gods, their method for doing it was to wipe out the entire population practicing it. Curing the diesase by killing the patient. The "good Christians" didn't hesistate to murder in cold blood for assorted other reasons (like not being a Christian). Does it really make much difference if you kill someone to make it rain or kill someone for not following your beliefs?

While you would give the credit of this to opposition to religion, most of this was done by Christians.
I said it couldn't be attributed to any particular belief of Christianity since the "good Christians" buring witches claimed they were doing it in love.

John Locke saw the spread of monotheism in the world as providence. "For even to the light that the Messiah brought into the world with him, we must ascribe the owning and profession of one God, which the Mahometan (Islamic) religion hath derived and borrowed from it."(Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity, 59)
And again, you commit an appeal to authority fallacy. You have utterly FAILED to show that being a Christian leads to superior morality than being a member of any other religion. All you have been able to do is show that followers of the religion think it does. Hate to break it to you but quotes don't prove morality.

As for materialism leading to immorality, this is simple.
Then why can't you demonstrate it?

The problem is that most societies have always believed in providence, that things happen due to the divine will. That is what I believe. So because I believe that the Bible came from God I see it as the owner's manual for life. Because God loves us, his rules are not to harm but to help us.
OK, so do you take Mark 16:18 as divinely inspired where Jesus promises that true believers can drink deadly poison and not be harmed?

Do you think children who curse their parents should be killed (Exodus 21:17)

The 10 plagues Moses cast on Egypt was the world's first act of TERRORISM. I challenge you to find ONE difference between Moses and Osama Bin-Laden

http://www.creationtheory.org/Essays/Terrorism.shtml

How about any of the OTHER absurdities I mentioned in previous emails that you completely ignored?

You say it makes no sense why people should not work on the Sabbath
No, I simply asked, and I quote "Who does that harm?"

The fact that you can't answer that and need to change the question proves the answer is "no one" and therefore you admit that breaking this particular rule is a completely victomless crime.

but the Bible is very clear about why. "But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work . . . . that they manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou." God gave people a day of rest.
Correction, God FORCES them to rest under thread of death.(Exodus 31:14) Such lovely morality your God has.

But the key to understanding the conservative morality of the Bible is to understand peasant life.
News flash buddy, peasant life sucked.

They believed in temperance, having only what you need, and rejecting all luxury.
Why is rejecting luxury good?

To see evidence of this understanding of ancient life, check out Plato's Republic pages 165-70.
Another appeal to authority fallacy.

Now you probably think this is completely prejudiced and unfair
Stop trying to assume you know what I think. You
don't have the first clue what I think.

but Plato explains that it is necessary unless we are to harm others. "Then we must take a slice of our neighbor's land, if we . . . . pass the bounds of the necessary and give [ourselves] over to the boundless getting of wealth. The next thing is we should go to war, Glaucon . . ." Here Plato says that one can only have more than they need if they take it from others through theft or conquest.
That entire argument is a slippery slope fallacy. Examples where it has not come true: while people have various opinions on th quality of their product, Microsoft and Bill Gates have not declared war on anyone. Who did the owners of Wal-Mart ever declare war on or steal from?

Plato was clearly severely limited in his understanding of life and didn't have any clue about the various means of accumulating wealth in the modern world.

So if this is true then maybe luxury was a bad thing.
Too bad for you its NOT true.

While you might think this is just Plato's delusional view, both Stoicism and Epicureanism agree with it
Oh wow. Other people agree with it. You commit yet ANOTER appeal to authority fallacy. Can't you get it through your head that you can NOT prove that something is true just because your favorite historical figures believed it?

and it is pretty much universal in any peasant society.
Who gives a crap about peasant society? Peasant society sucked.

The Bible makes a lot more sense from this point of view.
A point of view that has been proven false? Concession accepted.

Didn't Obi-wan Kenobi say something similar about Darth Vader killing Luke's father?

In Samuel 1, 8 the Israelites ask for a king and God warns them that the king will be a tyrant and exploit them for his own luxury. Not a ringing endorsement of the morality of kings.
Yet God caved in and gave them a king anyway. Your God isn't very sure of himself. You'll notice that God promised that the Messiah would eventually come THROUGH that royal line.

And what was Israel's government BEFORE kings? Self appointed/called of God judges. Thats hardly much better.

But the Bible is more profound than Plato because Plato clearly rejects luxury but the Bible does not.
Oh no, Jesus just heaped praise on the woman who gave her last coin to the synagogue.

This has made possible progress as people have been able to interpret the Bible differently as life changes.
The only thing that did was create countless holy wars across Europe (and elsewhere Christianity spread) as each faction killed members of the other factions for being heretics.

This is not a sign of weakness but strength and was something inherent in the Bible created long before any human had ever imagined an industrial revolution and modern technology.
On the contrary, any work that can be endlessly re-interpreted is worthless. When something can be interpreted to say anything, it really says nothing. That is why science uses NUMBERS.

An excellent example of materialism leading to immorality is the Renaissance.
What are you talking about? The Renaissance produced some of the greatest art the world has ever seen and was a RE-AWAKENIKNG of thought.

Epicureanism began to influence some educated people and they began to question the traditional rejection of pleasure and luxury.
And you have FAILED to show why this is bad. Slippery slope fallacies and appeals to authority don't count.

They began to see pleasure as good and rejected Christian warnings as ignorant.
You said yourself that the bible does NOT "reject luxury" Please refrain from contradicting yourself.

ghost edit: I should have pointed out to him again that most of the Christian warning WERE ignorant. Oh well.

This inspired by the example of the Roman Empire developed the sexual double standard in Europe. Men argued that as long as they got married and had children, they fulfilled their sexual duty and could indulge their lust with women consensually. This led men to have sex with servants and slaves and some men such as southern plantation owners became real sexual predators.
Those southern plantation owners just HAPPENED to be God-fearing Baptists.

And people took additional lovers continually throughout the bible. Abraham, the father of the whole thing had at least FOUR different partners.

But the materialism of modern hippies gave us free love that had all the negative effects that one would predict.
On the contrary, the strict Christian conformity of the 1950s produced rebellion in the new generation. THAT is what produced hippies. Materialism had nothing to do with it. The "good Christian" parents
told their children all kinds of lies about drugs like Marijuana would turn you into a raving monster. Then some of them tried the drug and learned that the previous generation had lied to them. And if they were wrong about Marijuana, they could easily be wrong about countless other things.

But the main problem of materialism is that it causes people to criticize things rather than try to understand them.
On the contrary, criticism is VERY healthy. Its the primary mechanism we have for weeding out all the bogus ideas that come along. What mechanism does YOUR philosophy of blind faith have for getting rid of
falsehoods (other than "it contradicts the bible")?

And it is the bias of materialists, the unwillingness to admit the possibility of God's existence, that makes me question their assumptions and the validity of their science.
Its YOUR repeated strawman that makes we question YOUR claims. Materialists admit the "possibility" of God's existance. They just simply conclude that since there is no EVIDENCE that he exists, he therefore does not exist.

Too many scientists, get ill when they see the evidence pointing toward the existence of a creator.
WHAT evidence? So-and-so says so? Thats not evidence my friend.

My own study of intellectual thought has shown me that people are quite prejudiced and easily twist their objectivity.
How can you twist a number? If something is four inches long, all the twisting in the universe won't change that. A bible verse on the other hand can be twisted any which way as you alreadly admitted.

So while you assume a number of scientists sharing the same assumptions means a lot for their validity, I disagree.
I do NOT assume sharing the same assumptions makes for validity. That is YOUR position. YOU are one who's entire position is based on quoting other people and then declaring "see, they agree with me, therefore I'm
right".

MY position is based on PHYSICAL EVIDENCE. Do you understand the difference yet?

It is far too easy for people to get it wrong especially when they reject possibilities out of hand.
Which is PRECISELY what you have done with evolution and big bang. You clearly haven't even LOOKED at the evidence for either. Probably just surfed a bunch of creationist web sites.

As for evolution, beyond a few radioactive dating methods that do not provide conclusive evidence their is no proof that the earth is really old and that the rock layers reflect a time of millions of years. So assuming that fossils are old because they came from rock assumed to be old, is not proof but circular reasoning.
False.

1) Radioactive dating is quite accurate. There are about 3% of the samples that didn't work. That is hardly proof that the method does not provide "conclusive evidence"

2) Lord Kelvin calculated an age for the Earth of up to 500 million years based on cooling rates. He didn't know about radiogenic heating though which would push the figure even higher.

3) Sedimentary and metamorphic rock REQUIRES millions of years to form. That is a fact.

4) Simple EROSION of observable land formations gave the ancient Greeks figures far larger than what the Bible claims.

5) Plate tectonics also points to an earth billioins of years old.

6) The sheer distance to other stars requires the universe to be billions of years old since we here on earth can see that light and light moves at a constant velocity.

7) The meer existance of supernova remnants proves the Universe must be billions of years old since that is how long it takes for a star to go through its lifespan.

Many other natural "clocks" give evidence of a much younger earth.
Clocks you refuse to name or cite examles of?

But do you reject the mathematicians who said that the universe even assuming a very old universe is not old enough for one new species to evolve when assuming gradual changes?
Yes, since he clearly knew nothing about biology.

If an anthropologist said something in Chemistry was flawed, would you take HIS word over the experts in the field?

As for evolution losing adherents, I am not saying it is a sea change but the holes in the theory and the lack of conclusive evidence are leading more and more people to question and even reject it.
Sea change? You haven't even provided for ONE PERSON! And you have still failed to show ANY holes in the theory at all.

I reject it because I don't see any good unbiased reason to have accepted it in the first place.
Because you burry your head in the sand to all the evidence.

But why do evolutionists become creationists and not the other way around?
1) You have failed to show ANY examples of evolutionary BIOLOGISTS becomming creationists.

2) There ARE creationists who turn around and support evolution theory. 160 years ago, EVERYONE was a creationists. In that time, the vast bulk of biology experts changed from creationism to evolution.

We are all indoctrinated in evolution,
Hardly. People aren't taught about real evolution until high school. Creationists on the other hand begin teaching their fairy tales to children while STILL WEARING DIAPERS. Who is doing the REAL indoctrination here?

but he key to understanding the staying power of an idea in history is how accurate it is and how well it works.
And for 160 years, Evolution theory has proven to be quite accurate while the claims of the bible have been being shattered by physical evidence since the time of Copernicus.

The universities are still full of people who believe that Cuba is the model of the future even though Communism is dying a slow painful death.
And the its redneck parts of the country that are filled with people who think creationism is valid.

And as I said before, I can show WHY communism failed. You can not do the same with evolution.

The fact that theorists embrace it means little compared to whether it works or not.
And UNLIKE you and creationism, I do NOT accept evolution just becasue so-and-so says so.

Evolution has been widely accepted (except by the red-neck fundies of the world) because it DOES work.

And the evidence is becoming more and more overwhelming that materialism does not work.
The only "evidence" you have provided is that it might lead to immorality which is not evidence. Nuclear fission theory led to the creation of the atomic bomb which killed countless people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Does that immoral act prove that nuclear fission doesn't work? No. So why don't you DROP this red herring.

to be continued...

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-11 09:35pm

left out one little thing:

But materialists reject this. They don't try to understand why people in the past believed what they believed but just criticize it.
On the contrary. We understand quite well why people
believed in those things. They were IGNORANT about
how the world really worked so they chalked EVERYTHING
up to "God" or in other words, appealed to ignorance.

You can't understand anything if you just criticize it.
Sure you can. Criticizing something is the best way to put an idea to the test. Its when people like you FAIL to criticise an idea that absurdities take hold.

In fact, the science of anatomy requires at least an assumption of intelligent design.
Thank you for proving you've never sutided anatomy. As someone who majored in biology, I can tell you that there are many features in our anatomy that show down-right idiotic deisgn.

for example: we eat and breathe through the same opening. No reason to and it creates a lethal chocking hazzard. Evolution explains this just fine: our evolutionary ancestors who first came on land "gulped air" How does idio...I mean intelligent design explain this? (prediced response: "I don't know but God must have had SOME reason." Guess what,
thats not an answer and only admits that evolution explains the phenomena better).

When one studies organs, you have to assume that they have a purpose and then try to discover this.
No, you don't. The human appendix has no purpose what-so-ever.

final part later...

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-11 11:21pm

Last part until he replies again or wolveraptor posts a reply to his email.

Also, the immorality inspired by the materialism of the hippies does not work. Even rock stars had to stop doing drugs and cut back on the alcohol or die. It is really hard for people to be real hippies who believe that sexual freedom will turn the world into a utopia because that obviously did not work and appears naive now. Now we have people who bitch about corporations and go to Grateful Dead shows. But over time, bad ideas die. Being wrong has consequences.
And do you realize that this whole point was a BEAUTIFUL example of evolution in action? Whether you realize it or not, you just proved that evolution DOES work.

As for the Big Bang, you should study Kant.
And comments, concerns or criticisms?
ANOTHER appeal to authority???

He made the simple point that categories of understanding like big and small or physical laws do not exist or operate outside time and space. So human beings cannot explain or really understand the spiritual world.

Since there is no evidence that this "spiritual world"
even exists, why SHOULD we try to understand it?

God was not created by anything.
Your last email clearly stated that EVERYTHING was created. That there is no such thing as an uncaused cause. Thanks for admitting your position is self-contradictory.

As the Bible and Koran explain he is infinite and eternal.
More appeals to authority. Why should anyone care what EITHER of those books says? Believe it or not, both were written by falliable human beings.

Creation only occurs within time where something does not exist at one time and then does exist at a new time.
And you have failed to show that there was a time before the big bang in this universe.

God is Jehovah - he who was, and is, and will be. To ask who created God, makes the error of thinking about God in material terms that do not apply.
1) Provide evidence that God is eternal
2) Provide evidence he exists

So in terms of the Big Bang to talk about a thing creating time and space is silly and I would argue shows a basic philosophical error pointed out by Kant.
Appealing to Kant proves nothing. Kant knew nothing
about general relativity.

I still feel you would deal with these questions better if you studied philosophy and saw why philosophers of the past rejected materialism.
And I feel you would better understand science if you actually studied SCIENCE. Philosophy proves nothing, produces nothing Science on the other hand has doubled human life expectance, made global communication possible, and every other technological marvel you enjoy in everyday life.

What makes you think I haven't studied philosophy? At least philosophers understood what does and does not constitute a valid argument, unlike you who's arguments are completely falacious.

Science is a useful tool to understand the mechanical universe
Yet you reject its conclusions regarding said universe.

but it is limited to space and time. It can not achieve absolute knowledge because it can not say anything about the existence of God.
Of course not. Thats why there are scientist out there who accept evolution and big bang yet are still Christian. I made that point before and you ignroed it. However, you have uttrerly FAILED the challenges presented in the end of my last email.

You FAILED to show how the big bang was wrong after having a breif introduction to general relativity and instead appealed to the authority of Kant who knew nothing about relativity.

You FAILED to show the evidence for evolution was circular.

You FAILED to show that Materialism leads to immorality. Guess what, ANY system of thought can be abused but the ethic system of "God said so" is FAR easier to abuse than "Will this hurt other people" since you can justify any atrocity by claiming "God told me to do it" Our current President is doing that right now. In the process you created your OWN double standard (after accusing materialists of having one) in which you dismiss all the evils committed throughout the history of Christianity as "well the Christians haven't been perfect, but YOU'RE WORSE" without showing how, even though there have been far more wars in the name of Christianity than there have EVER been in the name of Materialism.

You FAILED to show any evidence of scientists becomming creationists.

Care to try again?

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-10-13 12:01am

Isn't it amazing how much space can be used to convey so little? This is basically what he said.

Materialism is bad. It leads to stuff beyond the Dark Ages.
Evolution is wrong. God is real because he is outside of reality.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-13 01:27pm

wolveraptor wrote:Isn't it amazing how much space can be used to convey so little? This is basically what he said.

Materialism is bad. It leads to stuff beyond the Dark Ages.
Evolution is wrong. God is real because he is outside of reality.

Did you tell him that?

If he replies again, I'm probably going to send several emails back, ONE point per email.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-13 06:27pm

Well, the guy writes back and its not much of a surprise.

Steve 'Strawman' Fundie wrote:I will respond one more time although all you have done is confirm my opinion about the incredible prejudice and ignorance of materialists that traces to the basic fallacy that religion is evil. Prejudice is something that you assume is true without evidence and the questioning of such prejudices is one of the main things initiated by the Enlightenment. When I say that somebody is prejudiced, I can prove it.

The reason that I accept Christianity is that I studied Orthodox Christianity and realized that it explained history, including thousands of facts, more accurately than anything that I had been taught in college. Orthodox Christianity is based on the theology of St. Augustine relying on Plato's philosophy. This philosophy was necessary when Europe was a peasant society. In such a society, one can not have luxury without harming others.

With modern industrialism we are able to produce more than peasants could produce. Was the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution evil as Orthodox Christians would argue or God's will? I say, God's will. The only human societies that have been based on materialism have been Communist societies and they failed. So Christian societies lasted for hundreds of years, while Communism is not making it a hundred. You say that you reject Communism which is good but materialism must still take credit for many of the errors of it. For example, the very belief that human beings could evolve to divine perfection as developed by the philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach. Thus, seeing materialism as a false path to truth, I have become very sceptical of theories such as evolution and the big bang created to make it possible.

As for evolution, the fossil record provides evidence against not for it. Darwin wrote, "But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" Time and much more research has not improved the situation any. The fossil record shows no evidence of gradual transition from one species to another. At the same time, there are exceptions in the fossil record such as human evidences in rock far too "old" to be possible according to the accepted idea of gradual evolution. Why do supposedly extinct animals such as the ceolocanth that disappeared in the fossil record long ago show up alive and well? Just another bit of circumstantial evidence that argues against evolution. Darwin's theory predicts a bizarre blur of animals evolving from one species to another and this is not seen today or in the fossil record. Many examples of micro-evolution are quite different than advertised. The oft-cited example of white moths evolving into black moths was merely the natural selection of pre-existing black moths that used already present genes to allow one minority to dominate the population. That does little to argue the random evolution of all life on earth from dead matter. In fact, the very idea is absurd. How many monkeys working on how many typewriters would it take to create Hamlet? I don't know but less than it would take for an amoeba to randomly evolve into a blue whale and more time than anyone assumes has existed in the universe. I am not even sure what mechanism you feel has created evolution. Maybe the greatest sign that evolution has not discovered truth is the theory's
continual "evolution."

At least he TRIED to answer my challenges but did so with just a cut and paste job of every other refuted creationist strawman argument.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-10-13 06:39pm

He never goes into details about ANYTHING. This guy isn't anymore educated then the hairs on my ass hole. Who the fuck claims to know what he's talking about when all that he says reveals his ignorance? Who the hell taught him all of these lies? Fuck... maybe it would be better to give up on this country..

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-10-13 06:57pm

Whoopee, he wrote back to me too.

Steve Jackoffman wrote:People have always believed that a Creator created the world. Jews, Christians, and Muslims believed that he existed beyond time and space. It is a universal belief because it explains the incredible organization of everything and has formed the basis of all world thought.

Please provide examples of this organization and show how it could not have been created through a combination of natural processes and the human mentality of seeing patterns in everything.

Furthermore, humanism and atheism are part of the world's thought, and were not based on the belief in a god or gods.

It really is incumbent on materialists to explain away God as they have tried to do. If they can not do that, then they are relying on the faith that only matter exists and not evidence.

You need faith that only matter exists? No evidence of it? How about the fact that nothing other than matter and energy has ever been observed? Nothing beyond such things has ever been reliably recorded. It isn't faith. It's parsimony, the process of weeding out unlikely hypotheses by their complexity. Including an all-powerful creator who always existed and can manipulate matter and energy in any way imagineable definitely adds a complex variable in to the equation.

Hence, materialism is not scientific.

Science is based on materialism. If every theory had to include the presence of God, all science would be useless. We would thint that gravity and "angels pushing people down to earth" were competing and equivalent theories.

The lack of real evidence for the evolution of all life on earth from dead matter and the inability of explaining how matter was created shows that they have failed.

What do abiogenesis and the Big Bang have to do with evolution? This is irrelavent, but I'll discuss it anyways. Matter cannot be classified as dead if it never lived. Is a rock dead? Is a star dead?
Life evolved, most likely, from self-replicating molecules, similar, but not quite like clay (which can crystalize and divide, i.e. grow and reproduce almost like life, but cannot pass traits down to its offspring; a hallmark of all life on Earth). If you are asking me to provide a detailed chemical explanation for this process and a step by step working theory that can be tested in a lab, you are committing an appeal to ignorance. Making the opponent in a debate answer every question you have due to lack of research is fallacious. I point you towards this site for a detailed explanation if you so desire: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

The big bang runs into the problem of explaining how something emerged from nothing.

The big bang is not a theory on the creation of the universe: it is an observation. All galaxies have been percieved to be rushing away from each other, and the rate of this rushing has been accelerating. Therefore, going back in time long enough, the universe must have been compressed into a singularity. The Big Bang is not a theory because it does not seek to explain how this happened: it is a fact because it simply states that that is how it happened.
The creation of matter is irrelavent to me: why does it need to have been created at all?

So the question is not can theists scientifically "prove" that God exists which is an absurd notion because modern science is mechanical explanation of the material universe existing in time and space but can materialists make him unnecessary. No, they can't.

Materialists can't make God unnecessary...because you say so? Prove it, I challenge you. The universe appears to be functioning without any divine manipulation or input. Prove that such input exists and I concede the debate.

Ironically, this entire paragraph addressed no specific points of my earlier e-mail.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-13 08:21pm

wolveraptor wrote:Whoopee, he wrote back to me too.

If I may, allow me to point out the logical fallacies in his post.

Steve Jackoffman wrote:People have always believed that a Creator created the world. Jews, Christians, and Muslims believed that he existed beyond time and space. It is a universal belief because it explains the incredible organization of everything and has formed the basis of all world thought.

Appeal to popularity fallacy. Those same people thought the world was flat.

He has STILL failed to show that the universe has "incredible organization".

Belief in God is NOT universal.

It really is incumbent on materialists to explain away God as they have tried to do. If they can not do that, then they are relying on the faith that only matter exists and not evidence.

It really is incumbent on Theists to prove God exists in the first place.

Hence, materialism is not scientific.

Appealing to ignorance and popularity does not prove that.

The lack of real evidence for the evolution of all life on earth from dead matter and the inability of explaining how matter was created shows that they have failed.

Evolution never says ANYTHING about the creation of matter. Nice red herring though.

The big bang runs into the problem of explaining how something emerged from nothing.

I already pointed out to this retard multiple times that Big Bang never claims any such thing. He is simply engaging his wall of ignorance.

So the question is not can theists scientifically "prove" that God exists which is an absurd notion because modern science is mechanical explanation of the material universe existing in time and space but can materialists make him unnecessary. No, they can't.

The tard has utterly failed to show that he IS necessary.

wolveraptor wrote:Ironically, this entire paragraph addressed no specific points of my earlier e-mail.

Are you surprised? Given his demonstrated WOI, broken record discussion technique reliance on logical fallacies for nearly EVERY point he makes?

Still, you should point this out to him. With enough proding, he DID eventually try (pathetically mind you) to debate even though it was just a cut and paste of the main refuted years ago creationist strawmen attacks.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-13 11:43pm

Well, I’ll give you points for trying to answer my challenges this time, even though most of your arguments are just recycled creationist nonsense that was refuted years ago. It is a testament to creationist dishonesty that they keep using these arguments.

I will respond one more time although all you have done is confirm my opinion about the incredible prejudice and ignorance of materialists that traces to the basic fallacy that religion is evil.
May I ask HOW? By not taking your empty claims on faith? By demanding you back up your claims? By showing your arguments are fallacious? By telling you to use paragraphs? By pointing out that Christianity is NOT the great source of good you wish it was?

Prejudice is something that you assume is true without evidence
And since I HAVE provided evidence, you have no business accusing me of prejudice. Meanwhile you have provided ZERO evidence. Who is the real prejudiced one here?

My negative view of you isn’t based on prejudice at all but rather your behavior throughout this entire discussion. I did NOT begin this discussion assuming you were ignorant just because you are religious but because you DEMONSTRATED you don’t know anything about science or logic. I did NOT begin by assuming all Christians are evil but simply pointed out that the morality model many orthodox Christians follow is MUCH easier to abuse than anything in materialism. I did NOT begin the discussion assuming you were a racist but you DEMONSTRATED your racism with statements like Jews are enemies.

YOU on the other hand insist that materialism leads to immorality with out one SHRED of evidence. By your own definition, YOU are clearly prejudiced against materialism.

and the questioning of such prejudices is one of the main things initiated by the Enlightenment.
Didn’t you insist in your last email that criticism was bad? Now you say it’s GOOD to question things? Please make up your mind.

When I say that somebody is prejudiced, I can prove it.
Then why haven’t you done so?

The reason that I accept Christianity is that I studied Orthodox Christianity and realized that it explained history, including thousands of facts, more accurately than anything that I had been taught in college.
Given your repeated failure to uses paragraphs even after I point it out to you will not give anyone a reason to believe you went to college. Your writing style would get you a failing grade in any college freshman composition class.

And you have not listed ONE SINGLE FACT that Orthodox Christianity can explain. I’m getting tired of repeating this.

Orthodox Christianity is based on the theology of St. Augustine relying on Plato's philosophy. This philosophy was necessary when Europe was a peasant society. In such a society, one can not have luxury without harming others. With modern industrialism we are able to produce more than peasants could produce.
Congratulations. You just admitted your entire morality system is obsolete. Concession accepted.

By the way this does NOTHING to justify the Bible making victimless crimes into capital offenses.

Was the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution evil as Orthodox Christians would argue or God's will? I say, God's will.
Unfortunately for you, your personal say-so doesn’t count for squat. I have SHOWN how “God’s will” as outlined in the Bible is horrifically evil and you have ignored that point every time.

How ironic that in past e-mails, you criticized scientists for supporting their ideas with nothing but their own say-so (even though you failed to back up that accusation with any examples) and now you turn around and use the same mentality yourself. Are you TRYING to be a hypocrite? Don’t you know that hypocrisy was the thing Jesus criticized the most?

The only human societies that have been based on materialism have been Communist societies and they failed.
You can NOT show that Materialism is bad just because a highly flawed system like Communism incorporates it. A poorly designed automobile engine may have perfectly good piston designs inside it.

Communism is NOT based on materialism. It includes that idea in its structure but it is not based on it. Communism is based on over simplifying human nature and society. The philosophy tries to separate humans into poor laborers and wealthy land owners when the truth is there is an entire spectrum between the two extremes and completely ignores the middle class.

Communism assumes someone must be in control of the market rather than the capitalist method of markets controlling themselves through the economic laws of supply and demand. As I pointed out before (but you ignored) in CAPITOLISM, strong businesses survive, weak ones perish and the economy as a whole becomes stronger—evolution in action.

Communism describes overproduction as a weakness even though it is really a strength. When there is too much production, there will not be a shortage and you can CHOOSE which one you want. You on the other hand want to return to the “good old days” of peasant life where there wasn’t enough to go around like there often was in communist Russia. Remember the bread lines?

Communism wants to put unlimited power in the hands of the government. Communism makes the mistake of assuming that the more power the government has, the more power the common people would have. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Communism wants to force everyone to work, not for personal gain but simply for the good of society.

Communism states the monopolies are actually a good idea.

Communism says to give everyone just what they need to live. Very similar to what is described in Acts 4:31-37. And of course when one couple tried to cheat the system in Acts 5, they were immediately struck dead, just like Stalin would have done.

All of the above highlight reasons why Communism was a bad idea. Notice materialism wasn’t mentioned ONCE. Care to produce a REASON why materialism should be considered a reason why communism failed?

For more details read this:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Marxism.html

So Christian societies lasted for hundreds of years, while Communism is not making it a hundred.
Appeal to tradition fallacy. Being old does not make something valid. Hinduism and Buddhism are both out-endured Christianity. That does NOT make them superior.

You say that you reject Communism which is good but materialism must still take credit for many of the errors of it.
You still have utterly failed to show that materialism is one of those errors.

For example, the very belief that human beings could evolve to divine perfection as developed by the philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach.

And WHERE in the Communist Manefesto does it EVER make any statements about humans trying to “evolve to divine perfection”. Communism is about ECONOMIC systems, not human beings themselves.

Funny how it DOES try and make everyone have just what they need to live (like the Bible recommends in Acts 4), praises the agrarian lifestyle (like you do with medieval pesants) and kills anyone who tries to break the rules (just like the Biblical God). Fact the facts: YOU have far more in common with Communists than Materialists do.

Thus, seeing materialism as a false path to truth, I have become very sceptical of theories such as evolution and the big bang created to make it possible.
As I have pointed out to you repeatedly, you can NOT say something is false just because a flawed system incorporates it.

As for evolution, the fossil record provides evidence against not for it. Darwin wrote, "But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" Time and much more research has not improved the situation any. The fossil record shows no evidence of gradual transition from one species to another.
Refuted years ago creationist argument #1

Yes it does. The oldest layers of rock contain no trace of modern animals like dogs. The youngest layers of rock contain no trace of ancient animals like trilobites or dinosaurs.

At the same time, there are exceptions in the fossil record such as human evidences in rock far too "old" to be possible according to the accepted idea of gradual evolution.

Refuted years ago creationist argument #2

The ONLY time that happens is in mineral deposits like coal seams. Considering humans have been mining those deposits for thousands of years and that ancient mining operations were nothing but open pits, its not surprising at all that we occasionally find a human bone or artifact in them.

Are such things REALLY too difficult for you creationists to think of? Why do you repeatedly ignore such simple explanations for these things?

Why do supposedly extinct animals such as the ceolocanth that disappeared in the fossil record long ago show up alive and well?
Because such animals live in the OCEAN and so most of their fossil record would be UNDERWATER, making it rather difficult to dig up. The way we have learned about such animals was where plate tectonics pushed the sea floor above land millions of years ago so OF COURSE their fossil record didn’t show them since they couldn’t exactly come onto land and leave fossils.

However, scientists being mistaken on the extinction of a handful of species does NOT invalidate the theory. As you do with your “materialism=communism and communism was bat therefore materialism is bad” argument, you throw the baby out with the bath water.

Just another bit of circumstantial evidence that argues against evolution. Darwin's theory predicts a bizarre blur of animals evolving from one species to another and this is not seen today or in the fossil record
Refuted years ago creationist argument #3

Darwin’s theory predicts no such thing. Just what do you think a transitional form is anyway? Evolution does NOT take place in a single animal as it ages. It takes place via changes in the DNA passed on from one generation to the next. Different environments will drive the selection of different traits in different directions. Given enough time, the two populations will be come so different that they can no longer interbreed.

Many examples of micro-evolution are quite different than advertised. The oft-cited example of white moths evolving into black moths was merely the natural selection of pre-existing black moths that used already present genes to allow one minority to dominate the population.
Refuted years ago creationist argument #4

No biologist has ever tried to claim that the changing moth color was an example of speciation. It is simply an example of natural selection (the MECHANISM for evolution) in action.

That does little to argue the random evolution of all life on earth from dead matter. In fact, the very idea is absurd.
Refuted years ago creationist argument #5

1) Evolution is not random. It requires random mutations but is DRIVEN by environment through natural selection.

2) You’re talking about abiogenesis, not evolution. They are two different theories. Evolution doesn’t kick in until AFTER the first living organisms exist and are reproducing. Even if you could disprove abiogenesis tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect evolution in the slightest. And abiogenesis never describes modern organisms or even entire cells springing out of the mud. The REAL idea is that certain chemicals combined to produce the first organic compounds. These compounds were of such a nature that they clumped together in long strands. One or more of these strands had the capacity to replicate itself. THAT is the theory for how life began.

3) You are right in that the idea of “ALL life coming from dead matter” is ridiculous. You just admitted Genesis is absurd since it describes a pile of dust transforming into a modern human.

How many monkeys working on how many typewriters would it take to create Hamlet? I don't know but less than it would take for an amoeba to randomly evolve into a blue whale and more time than anyone assumes has existed in the universe.
Refuted years ago creationist argument #6

See #2 above. To repair that broken analogy, imagine those same monkeys on the typewriters. Is it possible that a FEW of the letters are in the correct position? ABSOLUTELY! Now lock those letters in place and repeat. A few more letters in the right place? Certainly. Keep repeating the cycle and will you eventually get Hamlet? YES! That is FAR closer to evolution than what creationists describe. Computer simulations have shown that it only takes a few dozen repetitions. The only difference there is evolution doesn’t have a target. It will take ANY sequence that works and as the sheer variety of different functional proteins that do exist, essentially any sequence of DNA DOES work.

Chemical reactions are not random. They follow very specific rules. Put the right chemicals together under the right circumstances and you DO get the building blocks of life.

I am not even sure what mechanism you feel has created evolution.
Of course not. YOU blindly accept what ever your fellow creationists tell you about evolution, even when they were proven wrong decades ago. You obviously haven’t been paying attention to what REAL biologists have to say on the matter or even MY arguments. The answer is: natural selection, survival of the fittest, who ever leaves the most viable offspring in the next generation.

Maybe the greatest sign that evolution has not discovered truth is the theory's continual "evolution."
The fact that the theory continues to be improved in the light of new evidence only testifies to the honesty of the scientific community. Compare this to Orthodox Christianity which took 500 HUNDRED YEARS to admit they were wrong about Galileo and the Earth being the center of the universe.

So, I counted SIX standard creationist cut-and-paste arguments that were refuted long ago. I'll give him points for the "scientists were wrong about this extinct species" argument for originality even though its still utterly falacious.

So Mike, will this debate be going on the Creationtheory.org hatemail page or is this idiot too boring?

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-10-13 11:52pm

This guy is already getting boring. I can never decide whether to point out fallacies in his posts, or to show how those fallacies don't even match the facts.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-14 12:11am

Damn it, I wanted to add to my reply to his first point "By pointout out all the times you have contradicted yourself?"

make it "May I ask HOW? By not taking your empty claims on faith? By demanding you back up your claims? By showing your arguments are fallacious? By pointout out all the times you have contradicted yourself? By telling you to use paragraphs? By pointing out that Christianity is NOT the great source of good you wish it was?

defanatic · Post by **defanatic** » 2005-10-14 03:27am

Do you think this guy goes onto creationist/christian forums and asks
"Hey! This guy support evolution. I need an argument to demolish him. Here is what he wrote:"

???

WyrdNyrd · Post by **WyrdNyrd** » 2005-10-14 04:32am

defanatic wrote:Do you think this guy goes onto creationist/christian forums and asks
"Hey! This guy support evolution. I need an argument to demolish him. Here is what he wrote:"

???

If he did, he'd surely do better than this boring crud.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-10-14 05:29pm

WyrdNyrd wrote:
defanatic wrote:Do you think this guy goes onto creationist/christian forums and asks
"Hey! This guy support evolution. I need an argument to demolish him. Here is what he wrote:"

???
If he did, he'd surely do better than this boring crud.

You haven't been to many creationist boards, have you? They mindlessly spout the exact same bullshit there. The fact that creationist tards are still using the same refuted arguments for the last century proves they are incapable of comming up with something new. Even the one semi-original argument in the guy's last email was really just the same old "science isn't perfect, therefore its wrong" nonsense.