Putting the JW Stand on Evolution in Perspective

[Hockeycowboy]

And how do you think that a million years of technology, advancing at our present rates, could make a difference?

This made me think of the ‘70’s TV show, “Space:1999”, w/ Martin Landau.

Do you remember that show? Mankind was supposed to have had a base on our Moon, by then....we’re nowhere near that advanced yet!

There was another show, back in the ‘60’s (?), where the scene was set in the 1990’s, and hover cars were the common mode of transportation, and ‘aliens’ — mostly females w/ purple hair — lived among humans? Does that sound familiar? I can’t recall the title.

 

[John53]

(Oh brother, lol!)

No, but Jehovah allows others to do so, for now. That’s on them.

Odd behavior for a god.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

I think they see the word explosion and think instant. The Cambrian period was 55 million years....

Yes, for 1,000’s of distinct species.....But each one appears in the record suddenly!

Is it really that hard to grasp? Of course, your bias would inhibit you from grasping the correct concept.

 

[Deeje]

You could have taken the honest route, and just written "I do not understand, and therefore do not base my rejection of evolution on evidence or science. God did it, I believe it, and that is that, and I am a-scared of Hell, so I believe what my pastors order me to believe."


And Deeje thinks WE are 'condescending'....

I have to smile because of all the accusations of inaccuracies supposedly posted by myself and other ID creationists, you say something like this.....its hilarious....and blatantly obvious that you have no idea what we believe. That was the response of a three year old.

You base your "belief" in evolution on interpretation of evidence that can be read several ways. Of course the evolutionary scientists are going to interpret that evidence to fit into their obscure little evolution box.

Look at this little gem......Whale Evolution....

"These first whales, such as Pakicetus, were typical land animals. They had long skulls and large carnivorous teeth. From the outside, they don't look much like whales at all. However, their skulls — particularly in the ear region, which is surrounded by a bony wall — strongly resemble those of living whales and are unlike those of any other mammal. Often, seemingly minor features provide critical evidence to link animals that are highly specialized for their lifestyles (such as whales) with their less extreme-looking relatives."

The evolution of whales

"Oh look, we found an ear bone that makes that land dwelling, four legged furry creature, Pakicetus into a whale!"
Isn't that amazing!? All that from an ear bone that "strongly resembles" a whale's.

"Seemingly minor features provide critical evidence to link animals. . . . with their less extreme-looking relatives. " This is critical evidence???

The one thing that stands out for me is the fact that there is nothing linking these creatures except science's imagination. Similarity does not necessarily mean relationship.....its amazing what the power of suggestion will do. Keep on suggesting and the masses will believe everything you say....no real evidence required.


We see design everywhere in nature and in the multitude of systems that interact to make humans and other living things function. For evolutionists, its all a monumental series of fortunate flukes that don't really stand up to reason or statistics, and they have no real evidence to confirm that macro-evolution is even possible. Nice diagrams, but if there is no proof for the claims then you have as much "belief" in science as I have in the Creator.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Odd behavior for a god.

Not so odd, when we understand what Genesis 3 tells us...that God’s rulership was challenged, and the issue of man ruling himself instead of God ruling mankind, was brought to the fore.

So Jehovah has stayed out of mankind’s affairs, allowing bad things to happen, letting them rule themselves without His help and protection...(But He hasn’t left those humans who want and appreciate His guidance; He’s provided the Scriptures, and the ability for us to approach Him sincerely in prayer.)

The issue of sovereignty is about settled.
Man ruling himself is a failure... Too many people are suffering, even in what some consider the greatest nation on earth, the USA....but especially in many other countries of the world.

 

[Deeje]

Big Pharma had nothing to do with it being banned in the US. Instead, it was racism and Big Timber in association with holy rollers.
Since you were too lazy to follow up, I'll add a little more. Look up William Randolph Hearst. Mega newspaper publisher. Owner of vast timber holdings that supplied him and many other newspapers with paper. He knew that cheap hemp could also be used to make paper. He was also a Nationalist racist who hated Mexicans.

Once he started his campaign, holy rollers jumped on the bandwagon. Just as they did with alcohol prohibition.

That is just a small addition to what is presented in the video. Its documented history. The big boys in the commercial world have a lot to answer for,
The link you provided does not state the real reason why cannabis was added to opium and coca in the Geneva Convention. It was a sinister addition that facilitated decades of unnecessary suffering, but large profits for big pharma. Always look at who benefits.

It is interesting to see that JW and its followers are so in tune with Right-Wing Conspiracy Nutcakes. Interesting, but not surprising.

Interesting but not surprising that you dismiss them out of hand so readily. You don't think you can be fooled along with the best of them?
Let's wait and see who the "Nutcakes" are.....

These are my personal views BTW.....they have nothing to do with JW teachings, although I do find the information presented to align with the state of the world foretold in the scriptures to occur at the time of the end. Not coincidental methinks.

As I have said before....a good way to hide the truth is to surround it with half truths and lies. People can make up their own minds about whether it rings true for them or not. It explains lot of things to those who wonder how we got into this mess.

 

[tas8831]

Does that change anything? Not one iota.

If you say so.
No 50 year old plagiarized quotes this time? I am stunned...

Funny that you replied to that post of mine yet totally ignored this one:

Putting the JW Stand on Evolution in Perspective

Cool - a quote from a book published in 1965. With 2 instances of ellipses. Did you read the book? If so, can you tell me what you ellipsed out? It costs $165 on Amazon - wow, you must really be into decades-old geology books to shell out that much cash.

And the weirdest thing of all?

When I googled that quote, a SINGLE return showed up -

Haryn Yoyo, the wacky dishonest creationist's website.

Imagine that? A SINGLE return, and I'll be darned if that quote did not match yours ENTIRELY - ellipses and all! What a coincidence.

But then, I truncated the quote, and just googled the up to 'surprising'... and wow - 90 returns. EVERY SINGLE ONE to a creationist website, creationist comment on a forum or website,. etc.

What an amazing coincidence!


So, yeah, cool that you can copy-paste creationist quotes, but I guess you cannot actually address my simple request.

YOU WROTE:

Too much diversity exists, for evolution to reasonably explain and account for. No undirected, mindless force could greatly mutate these organisms, and still maintain the balance in nature that exists.​

I asked you to imagine that I understand biology but know nothing of evolution and to EXPLAIN what you wrote to me.

You reply with some plagiarized quote from 50 years ago that does not - at all - address anything you had written.

A. Are you just one of those creationists that copy-pastes all of your arguments from creationist websites?

B. Or are you the rare exception that actually has a relevant background and can deal with the evidence?

I'm thinking A at this point.​

Also funny how you later, in a reply to Jose, demanded that he prove one of your quotes wrong.

I guess that means that you could not very its relevance? Can you even understand this stuff?

Given that you are STILL prattling on about "sudden" appearance of taxa in the Cambrian, I suspect that you bought into the creationist brainwashing and quote bombing and just don;t know any better. Or care...
You people are so mundane and predictable.

 

[tas8831]

Why? Do you think that these authors wrote something else that contradicted those paragraphs?

LOL!

I am betting... YEs, they probably did.

But I am not shelling out $165 for a 50 year old book.

Like you did, right? I mean, surely you did not just copy-paste that quote - ellipses and all - from Hairbrain Yoyo or whatever his name is.... The site that has your quote from a book you surely read verbatim...



My gosh, they cover up their dishonesty with more of the same!

'Christians'....

 

[tas8831]

Why? Do you think that these authors wrote something else that contradicted those paragraphs?

As far as 'more recent' data....there hasn't been any further developments/ discoveries that would overturn those authors' descriptions of the Cambrian evidence. No unambiguous precursors have been unearthed. (And never will.) In fact, if anything, what has been discovered since then, just reinforces the Cambrian organisms' sudden appearances. As creationism would predict.

Even Darwin himself recognized that such Cambrian discoveries, representing most of the phyla we observe today BTW....it would sound the death-knell to his theory if no obvious antecedents could be found.

“The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs…” (Stephen Jay Gould, "The Panda’s Thumb", 1980, pp. 238-239.)

That is not where you got that quote.

You copy-pasted it from here:

The Cambrian Explosion | Genesis Park

Ellipses and all, just like a dutiful disinformation peddler. Or maybe it was from Yoyo again, who knows - you people seem totally OK with sharing dubious out of context quotes among yourselves, thinking it so clever.


But, we see this:

Quote #17
"The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs..." (Gould, Stephen J., The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 238-239)

Same page and paragraph:

"His opponents interpreted this event as the moment of creation, for not a single trace of Precambrian life had been discovered when Darwin wrote the Origin of Species. (We now have an extensive record of monerans from these early rocks, see essay 21)"

- John Wilkins​

Emphasis mine...

 

[tas8831]

There are quite comprehensive books written on the subject by highly qualified individuals. Have you read any of them?

Why read a whole book when one can go to a creationist website and copy-paste quotes of dubious authenticity that prop up one's a priori beliefs?

 

[tas8831]

In fact, if anything, what has been discovered since then, just reinforces the Cambrian organisms' sudden appearances. As creationism would predict.

So creationism 'predicted' that trilobites and sea worms and the like were created before Adam?

Huh...

 

[tas8831]

For one thing, this book was published in 1964, more than 50 years ago; a lot has happened in palaeontology since that time. Second, do you actually own a copy of this book? If you do, you must know that you have quoted three sentences, from two separate paragraphs, out of a 719-page book. Perhaps you should read some of the other pages in order to gain a better understanding of evolution and the history of life.

As fate would have it, our library has this book. I will sign it out and see if Hairbrain Yoyo and other creationists have done it justice, or if they have done their usual.

 

[ecco]

The moon's gravity doesn't have a significant effect on the orbit of the moon. The mass of the moon shifts the barycenter of the earth-moon system, but that isn't a gravitational effect.

Allow me to show my ignorance here: There are two masses involved but there is no gravitational effect?

 

[ecco]

Ha ha! You want to debate about UK newspapers in a discussion thread about the JW stand on evolution..???.! That's just wobbly!

I posted a random article about blood transfusions.
You trashed the reporting paper.
I asked you to pick any UK paper.
You failed at that, but showed that the Guardian has best reputation.
I posted a Guardian article about the dangers of blood transfusions.
You lost the plot and got stuck over newspapers...!!!
OMG!

That's where you went wrong........ you just posted nutty stuff.

ecco Previously...

That's a very nice long post where you failed to address...

I never said, "everything written by the Mail was distortion and lies".
I didn't pick the Guardian at all. I didn't pick any paper.
Any comments I made about JW or anyone else's beliefs regarding blood transfusions were fact-based.

If you disagree with any of the above, show where it's wrong.​

Since I've asked three times and you've failed three times I guess you are conceding that you lied. Would you care to explain why you had to lie?

 

[ecco]

Do you EVER have anything to 'back up' your accusations and assertions?

You sure like to make demands of others yet never seem to even be able to explain, much less support, your claims.

Do you think nobody notices?

Ah..... so you didn't have anything to back all that up after all.

oldbadger, we all notice that you can't explain, much less support, your claims.

We also notice how you post meaningless tripe when you've got nothing (which is most of the time).

 

[ecco]

Does anyone else find it odd that creationists are WAY too eager to use and apparently reliant upon archived dubious quotes and videos to do their "arguing" for them?

It is not odd at all. It's not unusual at all. When ya know nuttin, just cut and paste from Creo websites and hope no one notices.

 

[ecco]

@ecco , you only hope.

Are you getting so frustrated and upset that you forgot how to respond to a post?

Usually, I have a hard time understanding what you are trying to say. This time I have no idea what you are even referring to.

I can tell what you ignore.

OK, tell me what I ignore. Again, I have no idea what you are rambling on about.

 

[ecco]

I said (which, apparently, you didn't comprehend) that someone's body, 500,000 miles away from Earth, wouldn't be affected by the Earth's gravity.

Actually, here is what you said...

Gravity, just like evolution, has its limits, too. Go 500,000 miles into space, and see what effect Earth's gravity has on you.

In any case, are you arguing that someone's body would not be affected?
You really need to pick up a 6th-grade textbook.

In the meantime, please explain why you don't think a body would be affected. Please give a detailed explanation. With your permission, I'll copy it and let a 3rd grader take it to his classroom. It should be good for a couple of laughs.

And I know evolution is real....changes within species occur.

When you make silly comments like "changes within species occur", you demonstrate that you don't even understand what "evolution" means don't even know what evolution is. How can you claim to "know evolution is real" if you don't even understand what it is.

 

[tas8831]

Grief! They evidence is there for all to study...

"The introduction of a variety of organisms in the early Cambrian, including such complex forms of the arthropods as the trilobites, is surprising . . Why should such complex organic forms be in rocks about 600 million years old, and yet be totally absent from rocks in the previous 2 billion years? . . If there has been evolution of life, the absence of the requisite fossils in the rocks older than the Cambrian is puzzling."

-- Marshall Kay and Edwin Colbert, "Stratigraphy and Life History," p. 102.

Etc., etc.

So.. I am but the 6th person to have checked out this book from our library since 1966...

Page 102-103. There is the YEC quote - several paragraphs ellipsed out for effect.

On page 106:

"The richest fauna in so-called Precambrian rocks in one from South Australia having coelenterates resembling modern jellyfish and seapens, annelid worms, and other strange creatures. Quite similar fossils have been found on quartzites in western England, and recently on Axel Heiberg Island in Arctic Canada."

"The Australian fossils do lie below beds having an early Cambrian fauna..."​

Wow - PRECambrian fossils found in England, Austalia, and Canada. But golly, not enough not to be "puzzling"...

I think that is enough to prove my point. Your plagiarized quote is out of context, at best. Poor Hairbrain Yoyo (or whichever 'honest' creationist first came across this quote) did not bother to read a few pages more. Or they did and just know that their target audience won't bother to.

Why? Do you think that these authors wrote something else that contradicted those paragraphs?

Yes - 4 pages later. See above. Stating that something is puzzling does not mean that something is false. Not that hard to figger' out.

As far as 'more recent' data....there hasn't been any further developments/ discoveries that would overturn those authors' descriptions of the Cambrian evidence. No unambiguous precursors have been unearthed. (And never will.) In fact, if anything, what has been discovered since then, just reinforces the Cambrian organisms' sudden appearances. As creationism would predict.

It is amazing how much one can, you know, actually learn when one reads something other that YEC websites. Inspired by your out-of-context quote extravaganza, I googled this simple question:

'when were precambrian fossils discovered' and got a host of information - and not a YEC lie site in sight.


Now, even that 1965 book acknowledged some Precambrian fossils, so those authors' descriptions are fine for their time. But see, lots of things have happened since 1965, contrary to your silly assertion..

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2008 Apr 27; 363(1496): 1425–1434.

The earliest fossil record of the animals and its significance

is a nice resource. Tons of references to actual research, not books published for public consumption.

Like this one (emphasis mine):

Journal of Paleontology 74(5):767-788. 2000

PHOSPHATIZED ANIMAL EMBRYOS FROM THE NEOPROTEROZOIC DOUSHANTUO FORMATION AT WENG'AN, GUIZHOU, SOUTH CHINA

[FYI - NEOPROTEROZOIC is Precambrian]


or this one:

Precambrian Sponges with Cellular Structures
Science 06 Feb 1998

"The fauna indicates that animals lived 40 to 50 million years before the Cambrian Explosion."



I believe that 1998 and 2000 are more recent than 1965. Yes?

It is funny that you also quoted Gould's "Panda's Thumb" (1980) - in 1990, he wrote "Wonderful Life", which was largely about the Precambrian.

Can't wait for more quotes of dubious relevance and context that we can expose!


Oh - and a reminder:

YOU WROTE:

Too much diversity exists, for evolution to reasonably explain and account for. No undirected, mindless force could greatly mutate these organisms, and still maintain the balance in nature that exists.


I asked you to imagine that I understand biology but know nothing of evolution and to EXPLAIN what you wrote to me. And you didn't.

 

[ecco]

Here it is again......... how would you respond?

We have still not found the missing link between us and apes - BBC.com

I know you didn't ask me, but here's how I would respond...

1. Did you read the article?
2. What is your understanding of the gist of the article?
3. What was your objective in posting a link to it?