Paul

These are fierce words. Are you implying that no creationists are real scientists

RufusAtticus

Not at all. It's just that creationists don't even try to publish their creationist literature through scientific channels. They have no interest in scientific peer review because they know that objective, educated, and informed people can tell the difference between actual science and their pseudoscience. That is why creationists work to convince the ignorant masses instead of the scientific community.

McLean v. Arkansas (1982):
Creation science as defined in Section 4(a), not only fails to follow the canons of dealing with scientific theory, it also fails to fit the more general descriptions of "what scientists think" and "what scientists do." The scientific community consists of individuals and groups, nationally and internationally, who work independently in such varied fields as biology, paleontology, geology, and astronomy. Their work is published and subject to review and testing by their peers. The journals for publication are both numerous and varied. There is, however, not one recognized scientific journal which has published an article espousing the creation science theory described in Section 4(a). Some of the State's witnesses suggested that the scientific community was "close-minded" on the subject of creationism and that explained the lack of acceptance of the creation science arguments. Yet no witness produced a scientific article for which publication has been refused. Perhaps some members of the scientific community are resistant to new ideas. It is, however, inconceivable that such a loose knit group of independent thinkers in all the varied fields of science could, or would, so effectively censor new scientific thought.

Shpongle

Then I would point out that I find the idea of French culture quite preposterous, and am forced to conclude that France is nothing more than a fictitious country concocted by world leaders on which to blame the world's problems.

So, you see? France doesn't exist.

pz

That's an assertion, not evidence. How would you show that that is the case?

We have quite clear evidence that brain sizes have evolved over time in the human lineage. We also see that there is significant variation in human brain sizes (although, admittedly, those do not correspond well with intelligence or complexity). We see change, yet you want to assert that they can't change. That makes your position look rather ludicrous.

An analogy: we see a car driving down a road. At every block, it is obscured for a little while by the buildings, but we see it again at every intersection. We see that the car can move, that it is moving in a particular direction, and that we have intermittent snapshots of its position; the best, most reasonable hypothesis is that it is a single vehicle moving across the field of view.

You want to claim that there are actually 10 cars. Each car stops as it moves behind a building, and the next identical car then starts up. That's a pretty elaborate hypothesis that raises many more questions and difficulties than it answers. You could maybe support it if you somehow showed that there was an impassible barrier across the middle of each block, or if you could show that the cars were so different that they couldn't possibly be the same one.

MrDarwin

There are any number of things that would make me seriously rethink or even doubt the truth of evolution. One such thing would be the appearance, de novo, of a new species of animal (meaning not a rodent or insect or other small creature that might have been overlooked, but something like a large mammal in a well-known area like North America). This would seriously compromise the evolutionary idea of the continuity of life--that all species evolve from previously existing species.

Even better, this new species would have nothing in common (i.e., no homologies) with any other living species--a dragon with 4 legs plus wings comes to mind. (No, I'm not being facetious. All vertebrates, living and fossil, have variations on 4 limbs, with wings always being derived from one pair of those limbs. Why not just give the animal wings, without sacrificing two legs? Because evolution works with what's already there; it doesn't invent new, complex organs from nowhere.)

Another would be finding fossils of complex animals (like modern mammals) in sediments that were laid down before the putative ancestors of these animals existed, e.g., Precambrian or Paleozoic sediments. This would seriously compromise the evolutionary idea that species change over time, and that certain groups of organisms have given rise to other groups of organisms in a pattern we can understand, e.g., mammals evolved from reptiles, which evolved from fish, which evolved from invertebrates.

The problem here is that you are making a very vague claim, and not giving any reason for claiming it. Without anything else to go on, you are simply making an argument from incredulity, I can't figure out how it could have evolved, therefore it must not have evolved.

As already pointed out, we have ample evidence that (1) brains can exist in a continuous range of complexity from species to species, (2) human brains can vary in their size and complexity from individual to individual, and (3) fossils show that the human brain has changed over time. Do you have reason to believe this variation has not been driven by mutation and natural selection?

Celsus

No Pete, you're thinking of Belgium.

Glad to be of assistance,
Joel

RufusAtticus

Personally, it wouldn't suprise if the Bushes invented Iraq so that they could wag the dog.

Happy Wonderer

What's wrong with fruit fly experiments? Some people seem to think that there is a moral issue with experiments on human subjects that could produce eyeless babies. (Not to mention that it is a lot cheaper to feed 100,000 fruit flys than it is to feed the same number of babies, and disposing of the corpses is so much more convenient....)

HW

Happy Wonderer

Simply stating that the growing number of new age spirituality books are all a complete load of rubbish is claim I find hard to believe.



HW

Paul

I think it was a coment from the New Scientist editor but she or he stated that there were no Creationists but many theistic evolutionists and implyed that there were no Creationist Scientists which believed in the six day creation. Does'nt this show bias in the New Scientist. Richard Dawkins also stated on a Radio programe that there were no Creationist Scientists.

(Richard Dawkins is BBC's pet evolutionist)

The picture your painting of No Creationist ever trying to publish
their experiments is painted in a very different light by Creationists who talk of a great bias against Creation and for Evolution.