Sue Sponte

Evolution is a scientific concept, not an aspect of religious belief. When you need to categorize science as "atheistic" is it telling you something?

True. It is evidence for the existence and characteristics of the universe. Your conclusion that those things are evidence of the existence of God isn't evidence, but rather a presumption that the universe could not exist in the absence of your deity.

Your reasoning boils down to attributing anything that you can't explain to the existence of God, when it should only be attributed to one of the many things that humans currently do not fully understand. When you lose your t.v. remote, do you presume that God moved it?

Jack the Bodiless

Ed:

An "ad hominem" is a logical fallacy, an attack upon the person instead of the argument.

But, where I have accused you of "lying", I am specifically attacking your argument (or lack of one).

Many times on this thread, you have made statements you know to be false. Even if you didn't initially know them to be false, you have repeated those statements after their falsehood has been exposed.

That IS lying, Ed.

You lied when you referred to Deuteronomy 22:23-24 as proof that the Hebrews wouldn't tolerate the rape of unmarried women.

You lied when you claimed AGAIN that atheism is inferior to Christianity because it has "no rational basis" for morality (this is a lie because the evolutionary basis for morality, and the lack of any rational basis for WHY God should be good, have already been explained repeatedly).

You lied when you tried to pretend that the Amalekites were punished for what THEY had done, and not who they were.

You lied when you tried to pretend that this is moral anyhow for all except governments.

You lied when you stated as fact your wild and ridiculous speculations made about Hebrew genealogies: speculations based, not on fact, but purely on a desire to move the date of Noah's Flood. You lied when you claimed this was a "correct translation" of the Bible.

I could go on...

But the big unanswered question is, WHY are you doing this?

Why is it necessary to go to such extraordinary and deperate lengths to preserve your belief in the integrity of the primitive superstitions of Bronze Age flat-Earthers?

Ed

Again that does not refute my contention that the forms have been observed but the "transitioning" has not. And the key differences between humans and apes do not show up in fossilized skeletons, such as abstract reasoning, language skills, the existence of a true will, and etc.

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jtb: The "no transitional forms" argument is a well-known creationist lie, Ed. The lie is in the claim that such fossils SHOULD exist if evolution were true, but DO NOT exist. Whereas actually they DO exist, just as evolution predicts!

Fraid not. No undisputed transition forms exist. Even if a few happen to exist, if evolution was true there should be millions.

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jtb: And DNA analysis is evidence that humans and apes share much of the SAME DNA. This even includes genetic defects such as the "broken" gene for vitamin C synthesis and so forth: we share the same defects in our DNA. This IS empirical evidence for the relationship. We have EVERYTHING that we should expect to have, and NOTHING that contradicts this. Ed: Yes, it is empirical evidence for a relationship but the relationship could just as easily be that they have the same designer rather than that one descended from the other. jtb: We have the same "junk DNA" and design DEFECTS, Ed.

Those could be the result of later microevolution and similar impacts by mutations.

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jtb: If "similar creatures have similar DNA", then please explain why we are genetically CLOSER to ordinary fish (e.g. cod) than lampreys are. This is exactly the sort of counter-intuitive result that evolution predicts. As we are descended from fish, we have a more recent common ancestor with these fish than lampreys do: they branched off earlier. Ed: For one thing we both have bones, lampreys are cartilagenous fish. Humans and bony fish also have circulatory systems very different from lampreys and there are other examples. Similar DNA is needed to produce these things in common. jtb: Most DNA is junk DNA, Ed. This has nothing to do with design similarities.

I am referring to the non-junk DNA.

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jtb: WHY is his moral character "good"? In other words: WHY IS GOD GOOD? If you cannot answer the question, then why not just ADMIT that there is no rational basis for morality in your worldview? Ed: We don't know why his character is good. Just because we don't know why He is good doesn't make the existence of his good moral character which is our basis for morality an irrational basis. jtb: There is no reason to assume that God ACTUALLY IS good. And there is no reason why God SHOULD be good. Therefore you have no support of ANY sort for your belief that God is good. Therefore the belief that God is good is irrational.

No, you learn he is good by experience.

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jtb: More on chimpanzees and abstract thought. There is a test used by child psychologists which works like this: The child watches Person A place a doll in one of several boxes. A then leaves the room, and the child watches Person B come in and move the doll to a different box, then leave. Person A then returns, and the child is asked which box A will open to find the doll. A young child will indicate the second box: they aren't yet capable of the degree of abstract thought needed to distinguish between what they know and what somebody else knows. An older child or an adult chimpanzee would indicate the first box. Ed: Huh? But the doll IS in the second box! The older child and the chimp would be wrong. But anyway, this is not really abstract reasoning, it is just a memory test. I never said that chimps were not intelligent and didnt have good memories. jtb: Of course the doll is in the second box! But that is NOT the question being asked! Human children can make this distinction at four years old or thereabouts. You have demonstrated that you have not yet reached this mental age, Ed. This is presumably due to either: 1. The mind-crippling effects of your religion. 2. Inept programming (AI is still a new field).

Your poorly written description of the experiment threw me off. And more ad hominems are making you look inept. I will need to learn more about the experiment, reference please?

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Ed: What? You're kidding right? No evolutionary scientist worth his salt believes that one can observe macroevolution taking place in a human lifespan! And that is all the "hominids" would be able to observe. The only way they could see macroevolution occur is if they transcended time! And only humans can transmit information over generations, Australipithicines are not human so they would not be able to transmit information from one generation to the next. jtb: Macroevolution and microevolution are the same process, Ed. Any observation of microevolution is also an observation of ongoing macroevolution. Certainly no creationist has ever succeeded in defining "macroevolution" as a different process that has never been observed! Speciation has been observed, information increase has been observed, and so forth. If you believe that macroevolution has never been observed in a human lifespan: that's another "lie of convenience", Ed.

No, macroevolution (the transition between orders, families and genera) has never been observed and is an unwarranted historical extrapolation of microevolution.

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jtb: And many animals can pass information from one generation to the next. Elephants teaching their young where to find water, for instance. In other words: the principle that "only humans can transmit information over generations" is like the principle that "only persons can produce the personal". It is pure invented garbage, with absolutely no relevance to the real world.

No, you claimed that they passed on complex information about their origin, ie evolving from another species. No ape such as australopithecus could do such a thing.

Ed

Hello Robert. Any evidence for your ad hominem attack?

Jack the Bodiless

Classic creationist circular reasoning. Dispute transitional forms because their existence contradicts the Bible, then claim that no "undisputed" transitional forms exist.

The facts are simple. Evolution predicts the existence of transitional forms in the fossil record. And, sure enough, we find thousands upon thousands of transitional forms in the fossil record, with more being discovered all the time. Therefore the prediction was vindicated.

Evolution IS true. The fossil record DOES show this.
It is ridiculously improbable that humans and apes would randomly acquire identical junk DNA and design defects. We ARE descended from apes. Get used to it.
And I was referring to the OVERALL degree of genetic similarity, based on ALL the DNA.

Bony fish are genetically closer to us than they are to lampreys, because they share a more recent common ancestor with us than with lampreys. Again, the FACT of common descent is undeniable.
Already addressed, several times.

This is another form of lying, Ed: bringing up old arguments and blatantly ignoring posts that have already addressed them.
I read about it years ago, not on the Net. But it referred to experiments by Premack and Woodruff, 1978: "Does the Chimpanzee have a Theory of Mind?".
Speciation has been observed. Transitions between orders, families and genera are not a separate process from speciation. The relationships between orders, families and genera are clear from structural similarities, the fossil record, and genetics. The claim that this is "an unwarranted historical extrapolation" is ludicrous nonsense: like arguing that the existence of the planet Mars is an "unwarranted" assumption from a pattern of light in a telescope. No sane scientist would describe macroevolution as an "unwarranted assumption" when thousands of pieces of evidence ALL point to this conclusion and NO evidence contradicts it.
No, I did not. I merely pointed out that your claim that such a change has "never been observed" was factually incorrect: you deny the existence of the observers. I also pointed out that YOUR claim that "only humans can transfer information between generations" was another fabrication: an attempt to arbitrarily decree a "law" into existence.

beyelzu

what about neanderthal?


clothes, tools, iirc and cromagnon as well.

Jack the Bodiless

...I wonder just how often you use the argument "it's never been observed, therefore it didn't happen" in everday life, Ed?

Fossilization of dinosaur bones has never been observed. So the existence of Tyrannosaurus Rex is an "unwarranted assumption" from natural rock formations that vaguely resemble bones?

No now-living observer saw Mohammed Atta's men at the controls of the airliners that hit the WTC and the Pentagon. So it's an "unwarranted assumption" that they were deliberately crashed into those buildings?

beyelzu

jtb,


I just wanted to say that I keep reading your posts, and I am still impressed by your staying power with ed. damn, you are the man.

Starboy

Ed, why do you do this? What do you hope to accomplish?

winstonjen

He's probably doing it because the bible told him to. Theists and bots like Ed are incapable of independent thought. I bet he's waiting for the Pope's latest declaration before he makes his next reply.