Doubting Didymus

LWF. You are yet to point out any mistakes made by evolutionary scientists that were not corrected, let alone any lies made by them. Nor have you shown any creationist mistakes or lies that were swiftly, honestly and openly corrected. You also claim that there are creation scientists in existence, and that they may even be good scientists. Please direct us to these people, and demonstrate their research. Until you do so, your allegations are empty words.

Your knowledge of evolutionary science is lacking, as evidenced by your suggestions that embryonic recapitulation and punctuated equilibrium are mistakes. I don't hold it against you of course, as it is folly to expect everyone to educate themselves in a subject just because I think it's an important one, but if you want to argue with someone about something, it is only sensible to learn something about it first.

No, I say 'prove it' to all parties. Including you. I strongly suggest you follow through on some of your challenges. Demonstrate some evolutionist mistakes. Demonstrate some evolutionist lies. Importantly, show that fellow scientists do not immediately disapprove of and publicly attack said mistakes and lies. Demonstrate any creationist doing scientific research into relevant feilds of biology or geology. Demonstrate an instance where a creationist error was quickly and HONESTLY corrected. Demonstrate a single thing that a creation scientist was ever positively right about (positively in the sense that they predicted something would be true, and then discovered it to be true. Negatively right would be pointing out someone elses mistake, which they occasionally manage, probably because, when you claim that every single thing a group of people says is wrong, you must be right eventually.)

Note that I am not strongly claiming that these are impossible, just that I consider them unlikely and that they are vital to the case you are trying to make. If you can not do this, then I have no choice but to assume that you are talking a lot of hot air.

long winded fool

Did you read my last post?

Sigh... I'm not used to having to provide specific examples to prove a logically sound argument, but...

Ernst Haeckel said that when an embryo develops, it passes through the various evolutionary stages that reflect its evolutionary history. He drew illustrations that were later proven to be doctored so that they supported his view. This theory lasted into the beginning of the twentieth century, (it was started in the 1860's) therefore his fellow scientists didn't immediately disapprove of it. He also believed that the environment acting directly on organisms produced new races instead of natural selection. This has also fallen by the wayside.

In 1990 Carl Sagan used a version of Haeckel's strict recapitulation to show that an unborn baby doesn't become human until approximately six months into the pregnancy. In other words, killing it before would be killing a primate, or an amphibian, or a fish, or a worm. Is that enough for you? Would you like me to run and find you some more proof?

Now show me how stupid these examples are and prove to an already admitted evolutionist that evolution is the only way to go.

PS:

Dr. Alan Galbraith - science & biology: Colorado State University
Dr. Russ Humphreys - nuclear physicist: Louisiana State University
Dr. David Menton - anatomy and cellular biology: Washington University School of Medicine
Dr. Emil Silvestru - geology: ‘Babes-Bolyai’ University, Romania
Dr. S.E. Aw - Biochemist
Dr. Thomas Barnes - Physicist
Dr. John Baumgardner - Electrical Engineering, Space Physicist, Geophysicist, expert in supercomputer modeling of plate tectonics
Dr. Kimberly Berrine - Microbiology & Immunology
Prof. Vladimir Betina - Microbiology, Biochemistry & Biology
Dr. David R. Boylan - Chemical Engineer
Dr. Choong-Kuk Chang - Genetic Engineering
Dr. Harold Coffin - Palaeontologist
Dr. Lionel Dahmer - Organic Chemistry
Dr. Raymond V. Damadian, M.D. - Pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging
Dr. David A. DeWitt - Biology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience
Dr. André Eggen - geneticist
Dr. John Marcus - Molecular Biologist
Dr. Ian Macreadie - molecular biologist and microbiologist
Dr. Joachim Scheven - Palaeontologist
Dr. Harold Slusher - Geophysicist
Dr. Michael Todhunter - Forest Genetics
Dr. Lyudmila Tonkonog - Chemistry/Biochemistry
Dr. Tas Walker - Mechanical Engineer and Geologist
Dr. Keith Wanser - Physicist
Dr. Clifford Wilson - Psycholinguist and archaeologist
Dr. Kurt Wise - Palaeontologist
Dr. Bryant Wood - Archaeologist
Prof. Seoung-Hoon Yang - Physics
Dr. Ick-Dong Yoo - Genetics
Dr. Sung-Hee Yoon - Biology

and the list goes on.

Incidentally, this research was very annoying. You should know that in professional debates it is considered bad form to demand examples and references for statements that can be accepted as axiomatic. If I say I know a creationist scientist, then just assume I do. You're a smart kid; you can do the homework just as well as I can. Not everyone is going to do this for you. Next time, please do it yourself and use it to prove me wrong, instead of automatically assuming I'm wrong because I'm telling you something you don't want to hear. I don't need examples of proof that evolutionists make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes.

PPS:
Your knowledge of evolutionary science is lacking, as evidenced by your suggestions that strict embryonic recapitulation and evolutionary punctuated equilibrium aren't mistakes. I don't hold it against you of course, as it is folly to expect someone to educate himself in a subject just because he thinks it's an important one, but if you want to argue about evolution vs. creationism, it is only sensible to learn something about both first.

LWF

Secular Pinoy

Punctuated Equilibrium and Phyletic Gradualism are not all-or-nothing positions. Both can be inferred through the patterns in the fossil record, as they are descriptions of rates of morphological change within a lineage. The question is which is more common.

Secular Pinoy

I fail to see your logically sound argument. Care to schematize your argument, so that we can see your premisses?

A version of Haeckel? Doesn't sound like it. I assume you're referring to Sagan's article in Parade Magazine and reprinted in his last collection of essays (Billions and Billions). Sagan argued that human-only traits does not appear within an embryo till it's partially developed, which is usually during the middle of the pregnancy. He's trying to figure out when a fetus would be human-like to be worth protecting from abortion. Aside from his discussion on embryos, there is little to connect him with Haeckel. And he's referring to abortion, not evolution, so your example is misleading. Might you have gotten it from creationists?

That might be of some merit in oral debates, but written debates are quite different. You should be well researched and can give proper citations when you engage in written debates.

Poppycock. We are not required to prove anyone wrong unless they've overcome the burden of proof. You have not because you base it on unverified premisses and unproven assumptions.

Amazing, you have no idea about PuncEq and then use it to sloppily to somehow support your point. I'm sorry if I'm less than impressed.

Well, since you think your argument is philosophical, I really would like to see you schematize your argument. Show me a deductively sound and valid argument, and we can start from there.

Albion

Yes, why don't you run and find some proof that Dr Sagan used a version of strict recapitulation? Because the only thing I can find is that he is talking about recapitulation as accepted now, not Haeckel's strict recapitulation of adult stages. If by "a version of strict recapitulation" you mean "non-strict recapitulation," that's really pushing the definition of "version." And this is the sort of thing that makes people very wary of creationist quotes from scientists.

Here is some of Sagan's writing from Dragons of Eden:

"It is very difficult to evolve by altering the deep fabric of life; any change there is likely to be lethal. But fundamental change can be accomplished by the addition of new systems on top of old ones. This is reminiscent of a doctrine which was called recapitulation by Ernst Haeckel, a nineteenth-century German anatomist, and which has gone through various cycles of scholarly acceptance and rejection. Haeckel held that in its embyological development, an animal tends to repeat or recapitulate the sequences that its ancestors followed during their evolution. And indeed in human interuterine development we run through stages very much like fish, reptiles and nonprimate mammals before we become recognizably human. The fish stage even has gill slits, which are absolutely useless for the embryo who is nourished via the umbilical cord, but a necessity for human embryology: since gills were vital to our ancestors, we run through a gill stage in becoming human. The brain of a human fetus also develops from the inside out and, roughly speaking, runs through the sequence: neural chassis, R-complex, limbic system and neocortex (see the figure on the embryology of the human brain on page 208).

The reason for recapitulation may be understood as follows: Natural selection operates only on individuals, not on species and not very much on eggs or fetuses. Thus the latest evolutionary change appears postpartum. The fetus may have characteristics, like the gill slits in mammals, that are entirely maladaptive after birth, but as long as they cause no serious problems for the fetus and are lost before birth, they can be retained. Our gill slits are vestiges not of ancient fish but of ancient fish embryos. Many new organ systems develop not by the addition and preservation but by the modification of older systems, as, for example, the modification of fins to legs, and legs to flippers or wings; or feet to hands; or sebaceous glands to mammary glands, or gill arches to ear bones; or shark scales to shark teeth. Thus evolution by addition and the functional preservation of the preexisting structure must occur for one of two reasons -- either the old function is required as well as the new one, or there is no way of bypassing the old system that is consistent with survival."

He is making the distinction between comparative embryology during development, which occurs in all chordates, and Haeckel's strict recapitulation, which states that embryological changes reflect changes in adults throughout evolution.

And to pick up on your point about abortion, in the same book he refers to the development of the embryonic brain as a possible guide to the time during pregnancy when abortion could be performed and when it should not be, and this is his conclusion:

"We might set the transition to humanity at the time when neocortical activity begins, as determined by electroencephalogy of the fetus… Undoubtedly there would be a variation from fetus to fetus as to the time of initiation on the first neocortical EEG signals, and a legal definition of the beginning of characteristically human life should be biased conservatively -- that is, toward the youngest fetus that exhibits such activity. Perhaps the transition would fall toward the end of the first trimester or near the beginning of the second trimester of pregnancy."

The reference to the sixth month was in the context of Roe v Wade, in which the woman's privacy is paramount in the first trimester, the foetus's life is paramount in the third trimester, and a balance is attempted in the second trimester.

"What was the reasoning in Roe v. Wade? There was no legal weight given to what happens to the children once they are born, or to the family. Instead, a woman's right to reproductive freedom is protected, the court ruled, by constitutional guarantees of privacy. But that right is not unqualified. The woman's guarantee of privacy and the fetus's right to life must be weighed--and when the court did the weighing' priority was given to privacy in the first trimester and to life in the third. The transition was decided not from any of the considerations we have been dealing with so far…--not when "ensoulment" occurs, not when the fetus takes on sufficient human characteristics to be protected by laws against murder. Instead, the criterion adopted was whether the fetus could live outside the mother. This is called "viability" and depends in part on the ability to breathe. The lungs are simply not developed, and the fetus cannot breathe--no matter how advanced an artificial lung it might be placed in—until about the 24th week, near the start of the sixth month. This is why Roe v. Wade permits the states to prohibit abortions in the last trimester. It's a very pragmatic criterion."

and the last paragraph is:

"Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester--except in cases of grave medical necessity--it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life."

So to say that Dr Sagan is advocating elective abortions until the last trimester is to misunderstand (or misinterpret) what he wrote. And to say that he bases his opinion on strict recapitulation is also incorrect. The text of the article is to be found here; perhaps you could point out where he's using any sort of version of strict recapitulation or advocating elective abortion until the third trimester.

Daggah

Let's talk about one of your examples, LWF.

". . . try as I might, and even with the benefit of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it impossible to pick up the Bible without it being rent in two. I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible. . . . It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science."

"Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand."

This kind of attitude is NOT SCIENTIFIC.

Source

Also, LWF, what are your thoughts on the following creationists:

"Dr." Kent Hovind
"Dr." Carl Baugh
Duane Gish
Jonathan Wells

(Edited because I asked about the wrong creationist)

Monkey

There is no Dr. Alan Galbraith of Colorado State University in the Biology department.
http://rydberg.biology.colostate.edu/faculty/

There is no Dr. Russ Humphreys of Louisiana State University in the Physics department.
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/dept/direct/staffphone.html

There is no Dr. David Menton of Washington University, School of Medicine.
There is no Dr. Emil Silvestru of ‘Babes-Bolyai’ University, Romania, in the research team of the Geology Department. However, the following paper was written by an E, Silvestru in "Papers published in the journals of the Romanian universities."

Doesn't sound like a creationist.

If you care to find out what Universities these other scientists work at, we can investigate them aswell.

~Monkey

RufusAtticus

I'm curious if you've read any of mine.

Nice try, but I am a working evolutionary biologist. So when I say that your understanding of recapitulation and punctuated equilibrium is wrong, you look foolish to respond this way. Now if you really want to be someone educated in this discussion I suggest that you first start with Evolutionary Biology, 3rd edition by Douglas J. Futuyma.

Edited to change 2nd to 3rd.

Monkey

Looks great. Have to save up for that one though!

long winded fool

Sorry, I should have been clearer. Those were the universities where they earned their PhD's. They don't work there. Are you really trying to prove that there are no creationist scientists? I guess Albion was right in pointing out how upset evolutionists are with creationists. Look at these things through objective reason and not subjective emotion. I fail to see how proposing lithostratigraphic units from the Lower Triassic and Upper Jurassic implies that Silvestru is not a creationist. Again you assume all creationists are young earth creationists who believe solely based on the book of Genesis. THERE ARE CREATIONIST SCIENTISTS! (There are creationists who believe in evolution by the way. )

If you don't want to believe me that's fine, but it IS your job to do the research yourselves. To assume you're right because it makes you comfortable is dishonest and unscientific. I have neither the time nor inclination to bring you up to speed on current scientific creationist theories. You're welcome to be ignorant of them under the assumption that evolution is unconquerable, but I prefer to be as well rounded on the subject as possible; not so I can successfully defend evolution and refute creationist dogs, but so I can find the weak points of my current beliefs and hopefully strengthen them with a little objective analysis.

Here is a quote from "PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM AT TWENTY: A PALEONTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE." I hope this clears up any misconceptions about the nature of punctuated equilibrium.

"As Eldredge and Gould (1972) pointed out, paleontologists were raised in a tradition inherited from Darwin known as phyletic gradualism, which sought out the gradual transitions between species in the fossil record. They viewed species as part of a continuum of gradual change in anatomical characteristics through time. The classic metaphor showed each species as part of a bell-shaped frequency curve, with the mean shifting gradually up through time (Figure 1). Each species was thus an arbitrary slice through a continual lineage, and paleontologists agonized for years as to whether these arbitrary slices should be designated species. Indeed, this debate had its own label: "the species problem in paleontology."

Even their detractors concede that Eldredge and Gould were the first to point out that modern speciation theory would not predict gradual transitions over millions of years, but instead the sudden appearance of new species in the fossil record punctuated by long periods of species stability, or equilibrium. Eldredge and Gould not only showed that paleontologists had been out-of-step with biologists for decades, but also that they had unconsciously trying to force the fossil record into the gradualistic mode. The few supposed examples of gradual evolution were featured in the journals and textbooks, but paleontologists had long been mum about their "dirty little trade secret:" most species appear suddenly in the fossil record and show no appreciable change for millions of years until their extinction."


"PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM," Jay Lidga 1997

"Margulis and Sagan (1986) note that the appearance of the nucleus in the evolution of a cell "looks as drastic as if the Wright Brothers' Kitty Hawk flying machine had been followed a week later by the Concorde jet" (p. 115).

Arguments against punctuated equilibrium state that the fossil record is too scant to show any transitional forms. Further, gradual change may occur in the soft tissue of a given species. Soft tissue change would not be evident in the fossil record. Also, there does appear in some of the fossil records a gradual change, but in most cases there doesn't (Rensberger, 1983).

Alan C. Wilson (as cited in Rensberger, 1983) of the University of California at Berkeley concludes that evolution is slow and gradual for most species, faster and more abrupt for others. Leigh Van Valen (as cited in Rensberger, 1983) of the University of Chicago doesn't support either of these view points: "I don't think the evidence is good enough to resolve the issue" (p. 5). He believes there is probably a range of evolutionary rates."


Uh oh. Evolutionists are divided. Instead of being ashamed and dogmatically deny it, why don't we just accept the fact that scientists make mistakes and realize that it's not the end of evolution? Listen to yourselves. You ravenously deny that evolutionists make mistakes! Are you that afraid of creationism? Truth makes itself known, it doesn't need defenders. Lies are what need defense. I can't believe a confident evolutionist would demand proof that evolutionist scientists make mistakes, or that there are creationist scientists. They exist folks. Try reading about the opposition from the opposition's point of view sometime. They aren't all liars.

Since not all creationists are ignorant and not all evolutionists are honest, it is as misleading to say "Creationists believe the earth is 6,000 years old," as it is to say "Evolutionists believe that evolution occurs sporadically at punctuated intervals through drastic mutation and then goes through a long period of stasis." Evolutionists are divided. You can refuse to call someone who believes in evolution in a different way than you do an evolutionist, but the fact remains that he calls himself an evolutionist. You try to lump all creationists into one category and apply all the ridiculous claims to this category. Creationists do this to evolutionists as well, that is why you get refutations of "the law of recapitulation" and exaples of evolutionary confusion such as "gradualism vs. punctuated equilibrium." I think evolutionists should treat them objectively and honestly, even if they fail to treat us that way. If we think objective science is superior to emotional dogma, why don't we practice what we preach?

Here is a quote from an objective evolutionist named Mark Vuletic:
"There are many different kinds of creationists. Although virtually all creationists fall on the highly conservative end of the theological spectrum, their exact theological commitments can vary in some important respects. For instance, while Henry Morris is committed to a young earth, Hugh Ross is not, and Michael Behe goes so far as to concede that humans share common ancestry with other primates. Likewise, creationists have widely varying levels of intelligence, education, and honesty."

You don't like it when a creationist picks Ernst Haeckel and uses him to refute all of evolution. So pick a particularly left-field creationist belief and refute it alone. Refuting the young earth theory doesn't automatically refute creationism. It refutes the young earth theory, in the same vein that refuting the law of recapitulation only refutes the law of recapitulation. The errant beliefs of a particular group of creationists don't necessarily imply that creationism is patently false. "Creationists believe that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. This is proven to be untrue, therefore creationism is false." or "Adolf Hitler believed that aryans were more evolved than any other race. This is not true and was used as an excuse to execute Jews, therefore evolution is false." These arguments are equal in weight and weigh almost nothing. Base your arguments on respectible creationist scientists, and maybe they'll start giving us the same courtesy. If they don't, then at least we can still call ourselves objective and honest.