Coming out as creationists: fear.

[Deeje]

That is completely accurate. People can accept science only up the the point it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Then one or the other has to give way. For those strongly indoctrinated since birth, that is a line that will never be crossed.

Am I detecting a pattern here? Are the scientists among us ganging up on the person who dares to question the validity of their pet theory? Oh no!!! Quick lets shoot her credibility to shreds by personal attacks instead of actually providing what has been asked for from the beginning....show us some evidence for macro-evolution that does not rely on supposition, suggestion or guesswork.....how hard can it be?

You rely as much on faith and belief as I do......you just can't admit it.

....

These responses are very telling....

 

[Subduction Zone]

Am I detecting a pattern here? Are the scientists among us ganging up on the person who dares to question the validity of their pet theory? Oh no!!! Quick lets shoot her credibility to shreds by personal attacks instead of actually providing what has been asked for from the beginning....show us some evidence for macro-evolution that does not rely on supposition, suggestion or guesswork.....how hard can it be?

You rely as much on faith and belief as I do......you just can't admit it.

....

These responses are very telling....

Deeje, you are making false attacks against the evidence that you do not understand and then complain about others supposedly attacking a poster.

All you need to do is to learn what is and what is not scientific evidence. Every creationist that I have ever met is afraid to even learn the concept. Wait, I take that back. There was one once who for a short while tried to learn. When it was obvious to him that I was right he ran from the discussion.

If you are correct you have nothing to fear. And if you are wrong you might learn something.

 

[Deeje]

No, the only verification science is evidences, and lots of evidences.

Again, proof is a logical or mathematical statement, like equations and formulas.

The more evidences that support the theory, the more probable it is true.

And the more evidences that are against the theory, the less probable it is true or it is improbable, in which case the theory has being debunked or refuted.

Science is all about verifiability, not absolute proof.

Maths can be absolute, but not science, Deeje. And you would know this, if you ever study the fundamentals of science (and I am not just talking about biology), because if there are newer evidences, meaning new information, that can better support alternative theory, then science must change too, and accept the better or more qualified theory.

Hence science isn’t absolute.

Take for instance the whole history of astronomy, since it has been recorded (meaning writings) that started with ancient Babylonians of 2nd millennium BCE (Bronze Age). They were the ones who began to organise stars the patterns, known as constellations.

These constellations are not real, they are just patterns made up by early astronomers, but they do provide useful way to identify and find the same stars again, each night, because it seemed unchanging. And constellations prove useful to navigators, especially for seamen.

All this, was done without telescope. The Babylonian astronomy prove useful to other cultures and civilisations, including the ancient Greek astronomers, then later Roman astronomers.

The Greek astronomers renamed the constellations and stars with Greek names to mythological figures (eg Orion, Perseus, etc), creatures (eg Jason’s Golden Fleece became the constellation Aries, or the crab that attacked Heracles or killed Orion became constellation Cancer, etc) and objects (eg Sagitta, Latin word for arrow, or the scale of Libra, etc).

It was the 2nd century BCE Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who was the first to do the most extensive cataloguing of the stars and constellations, but this is largely lost, but his works were mentioned by later astronomers including 2nd century CE astronomer Ptolemy.

Without the telescope, about less than 9200 stars can be seen.

What did survive, is that he was able to reliably calculate the solar and lunar eclipses based on observations (evidences) and trigonometry (mathematical proofs).

Ptolemy like most astronomers before him, believe the Earth was stationary, and the sun, planets and moon orbiting the Earth, at the center of planetary system. This system is known as the geocentric model.

An earlier Hellenistic astronomer of the Aristarchus of Samos (early to mid-3rd century BCE), was one who calculated the less heliocentric model, in which is sun was at the centre of planetary system, and the planets, including the Earth, were orbiting around the Sun.

Heliocentric model was so unpopular, that it didn’t reappear again in the West, until Nicolaus Copernicus, who prove (proof) but couldn’t verify (observable evidences), until the invention of the telescope, with Galileo, Johannes Kepler and Issac Newton, verifying Copernicus’ heliocentric model. Copernicus made more accurate calculations than Aristarchus did. But even more Keplers heliocentric, who was the first to discover the orbits were elliptical, not circular.

Although the early telescopes helped astronomers in Europe, the range was still very limited. After Kepler and Galileo, Charles Messier (late 18th century) and William Herschel (18th-19th centuries) separately, did more cataloging of stars and nebulae.

Before Edwin Hubble in the early 20th century, most (17th to 19th centuries) astronomers thought the Milky Way was the entire universe and the only galaxy. They thought Andromeda and Triangulum were nebulae, not separate galaxies.

Andromeda is about 2 million light years from Earth, Triangulum about 3 million, and because they were the most distant objects that can be seen without the telescope. But with the telescope (before Hubble’s time), they were blurry like other

It was Hubble who made the discoveries in 1919 about Andromeda and Triangulum, and found even more galaxies during 1920s and 30s.

Now, if we were rely on proofs (equations), and if proofs were absolute, then the calculations of stars and planets would shown no progress or no advances in our knowledge and we would be stuck with just the maths of Aristarchus and Ptolemy.

But astronomy and other science rely more on evidences than on proofs.

Evidences are what allow us to make better findings and come up with better solutions and explanations.

The reason why proof isn’t absolute in science, because new evidences come with new information, and that mean science must change and better explanations are required to increase out understanding of nature.

Without evidences, there is no progress, if proof (maths) is absolute. Facts come from evidences, not proofs alone.

The problem is that you are using proof and evidence as if they were synonymous, like judges and lawyers in the courtrooms. You are not thinking like scientists and mathematicians, because they both recognise that mathematicians deal with proofs, scientists deal with evidences.

You are not as smart as you think you are, and it doesn’t help when you refused to see that you are wrong on so many levels. You, who don’t have any qualifications in science, let alone in biology.

Thanks for the science lesson gnostic...but who are you trying to convince......me or yourself?

None of what you said in any way impacts on the fact that science has no facts supporting macro-evolution and is therefore 'guessing' about what happened all those millions of years ago but using an unprovable theory to accomplish it.....no one was around to record any of it except the Creator and you don't believe him! I do.....and nothing that science has provided has in any way demonstrated that their evidence is anything more that educated guesswork....find me something that doesn't have the terms "might have"..."could have"...."must have"..."leads us to the conclusion..."....as the basis for an assumption, and that will convince us skeptics....OK?

 

[gnostic]

None of what you said in any way impacts on the fact that science has no facts supporting macro-evolution and is therefore 'guessing' about what happened all those millions of years ago but using an unprovable theory to accomplish it.....no one was around to record any of it except the Creator and you don't believe him! I do.....and nothing that science has provided has in any way demonstrated that their evidence is anything more that educated guesswork....find me something that doesn't have the terms "might have"..."could have"...."must have"..."leads us to the conclusion..."....as the basis for an assumption, and that will convince us skeptics....OK?

I wasn't talking about evolution.

I was talking about your incapability of grasping the differences between "proof" and "evidence" even after all these years, people have been correcting you.

1. Mathematicians prove their equations, which is "proof".
2. Scientists test their hypotheses or theories with "evidences".

Science do use proof (AGAIN, mathematical equations or formulas), but it is finding "evidences" that verify the hypothesis is factually true or false.

You have heard of "empirical evidence", haven't you?

There are no such thing as "empirical proofs", science use "empirical evidences".

I won't hold my breath that you will eventually know the differences, but your wilful ignorance is really nothing to be proud of.

 

[Deeje]

I wasn't talking about evolution.

I was talking about your incapability of grasping the differences between "proof" and "evidence" even after all these years, people have been correcting you.

1. Mathematicians prove their equations, which is "proof".
2. Scientists test their hypotheses or theories with "evidences".

Science do use proof (AGAIN, mathematical equations or formulas), but it is finding "evidences" that verify the hypothesis is factually true or false.

You have heard of "empirical evidence", haven't you?

There are no such thing as "empirical proofs", science use "empirical evidences".

I won't hold my breath that you will eventually know the differences, but your wilful ignorance is really nothing to be proud of.

You know what's funny gnostic...? You don't get it either.

The whole point is not about explaining the meaning of words and how it excuses science for NOT having the ability to prove anything......the point is...science teaches lies. They have no way to state categorically that an Intelligent Creator is an impossibility, just because they say so.

Just because they have no test for his existence, but they do have a bunch of unprovable ideas, is no reason to poison the minds of children and rob them of any hope for their future. Why do you think there are so many suicides and an epidemic of depression in the world...? Wake up man! Everyone needs hope and evolution took away the only hope there was that didn't include relying on humans.....who have proven that they are hopeless at ruling themselves. How close do we have to come to another nuclear war before people understand that man's inhumanity to man has never gone away, no matter what form of government they have tried. It will never get better under the present system.

According to the Bible they have one last card up their sleeve.....a "One World Government"...it will seem like the only hope for mankind.....finally a way to ensure "peace and security" for all....but it will end in chaos when people understand that it will cost them every freedom that they ever fought for. You can believe it or not, but the idea has been around for quite some time, only needing the right catalyst to promote it.

These are interesting times.....especially for Bible students.

 

[exchemist]

No, the only verification science is evidences, and lots of evidences.

Again, proof is a logical or mathematical statement, like equations and formulas.

The more evidences that support the theory, the more probable it is true.

And the more evidences that are against the theory, the less probable it is true or it is improbable, in which case the theory has being debunked or refuted.

Science is all about verifiability, not absolute proof.

Maths can be absolute, but not science, Deeje. And you would know this, if you ever study the fundamentals of science (and I am not just talking about biology), because if there are newer evidences, meaning new information, that can better support alternative theory, then science must change too, and accept the better or more qualified theory.

Hence science isn’t absolute.

Take for instance the whole history of astronomy, since it has been recorded (meaning writings) that started with ancient Babylonians of 2nd millennium BCE (Bronze Age). They were the ones who began to organise stars the patterns, known as constellations.

These constellations are not real, they are just patterns made up by early astronomers, but they do provide useful way to identify and find the same stars again, each night, because it seemed unchanging. And constellations prove useful to navigators, especially for seamen.

All this, was done without telescope. The Babylonian astronomy prove useful to other cultures and civilisations, including the ancient Greek astronomers, then later Roman astronomers.

The Greek astronomers renamed the constellations and stars with Greek names to mythological figures (eg Orion, Perseus, etc), creatures (eg Jason’s Golden Fleece became the constellation Aries, or the crab that attacked Heracles or killed Orion became constellation Cancer, etc) and objects (eg Sagitta, Latin word for arrow, or the scale of Libra, etc).

It was the 2nd century BCE Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who was the first to do the most extensive cataloguing of the stars and constellations, but this is largely lost, but his works were mentioned by later astronomers including 2nd century CE astronomer Ptolemy.

Without the telescope, about less than 9200 stars can be seen.

What did survive, is that he was able to reliably calculate the solar and lunar eclipses based on observations (evidences) and trigonometry (mathematical proofs).

Ptolemy like most astronomers before him, believe the Earth was stationary, and the sun, planets and moon orbiting the Earth, at the center of planetary system. This system is known as the geocentric model.

An earlier Hellenistic astronomer of the Aristarchus of Samos (early to mid-3rd century BCE), was one who calculated the less heliocentric model, in which is sun was at the centre of planetary system, and the planets, including the Earth, were orbiting around the Sun.

Heliocentric model was so unpopular, that it didn’t reappear again in the West, until Nicolaus Copernicus, who prove (proof) but couldn’t verify (observable evidences), until the invention of the telescope, with Galileo, Johannes Kepler and Issac Newton, verifying Copernicus’ heliocentric model. Copernicus made more accurate calculations than Aristarchus did. But even more Keplers heliocentric, who was the first to discover the orbits were elliptical, not circular.

Although the early telescopes helped astronomers in Europe, the range was still very limited. After Kepler and Galileo, Charles Messier (late 18th century) and William Herschel (18th-19th centuries) separately, did more cataloging of stars and nebulae.

Before Edwin Hubble in the early 20th century, most (17th to 19th centuries) astronomers thought the Milky Way was the entire universe and the only galaxy. They thought Andromeda and Triangulum were nebulae, not separate galaxies.

Andromeda is about 2 million light years from Earth, Triangulum about 3 million, and because they were the most distant objects that can be seen without the telescope. But with the telescope (before Hubble’s time), they were blurry like other

It was Hubble who made the discoveries in 1919 about Andromeda and Triangulum, and found even more galaxies during 1920s and 30s.

Now, if we were rely on proofs (equations), and if proofs were absolute, then the calculations of stars and planets would shown no progress or no advances in our knowledge and we would be stuck with just the maths of Aristarchus and Ptolemy.

But astronomy and other science rely more on evidences than on proofs.

Evidences are what allow us to make better findings and come up with better solutions and explanations.

The reason why proof isn’t absolute in science, because new evidences come with new information, and that mean science must change and better explanations are required to increase out understanding of nature.

Without evidences, there is no progress, if proof (maths) is absolute. Facts come from evidences, not proofs alone.

The problem is that you are using proof and evidence as if they were synonymous, like judges and lawyers in the courtrooms. You are not thinking like scientists and mathematicians, because they both recognise that mathematicians deal with proofs, scientists deal with evidences.

You are not as smart as you think you are, and it doesn’t help when you refused to see that you are wrong on so many levels. You, who don’t have any qualifications in science, let alone in biology.

Spot-on!

 

[exchemist]

Well thanks for giving me an opportunity to defend myself.....I always respect people who believe what others say before actually asking the person about whom the slander is directed.....

There are two sides to every story you know.

You wanna line up to shoot the messenger too, or do you have some actual evidence to present to support your argument.

I've oodles of evidence and arguments, as you would naturally expect from somebody with Christian upbringing and a degree in natural science. But as it has been suggested I lay off in your case, by people who know you a lot better than I do, that is what I propose to do. I don't imagine my powers of persuasion will be any greater than those of my illustrious predecessors on this forum.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Around here, you can reasonably assume most people you will meet are Creationists. They may have a "persecution complex" and insist the world is set against them, but it's not.
You'll actually get more of a response if you come out as not believing in any sort of god and deny Creationism/ID.

You live in bizarro world.

 

[ecco]

Well thanks for giving me an opportunity to defend myself.....I always respect people who believe what others say before actually asking the person about whom the slander is directed.....

There are two sides to every story you know.

You wanna line up to shoot the messenger too, or do you have some actual evidence to present to support your argument.

Do you want evidence or do you want proof? There is substantial evidence to show that you demand proof for scientific endeavors when you have been told, over and over, that science deals in evidence, not proofs.

On the other hand, you blindly accept JW's teachings and philosophies as absolute incontrovertible truth, despite them having been proved wrong, repeatedly.

You have a double standard that can only be the result of deep religious indoctrination.

 

[Jose Fly]

Oh please...this is a response to valid questions? That is a very twisted version of what I said, but it obviously suits you to say it.

Shooting the messenger obviously works for you.....tell twisted half truths and all of a sudden its a basis for dismissal....gotta warn everyone in case they might think my arguments are actually valid.
I find your avatar to be quite appropriate since you seem to be big on tantrums and short on evidence.

But what really bugs you is that everything I said about you is true, and you have nothing to say in response except to cry "personal attack!!"

Funny how to you, repeating your own words back to you is a "personal attack". Kinda makes me wonder why you posted them in the first place.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You live in bizarro world.

I blame the over abundance of churches and meth.

 

[Deeje]

But what really bugs you is that everything I said about you is true, and you have nothing to say in response except to cry "personal attack!!"

Funny how to you, repeating your own words back to you is a "personal attack". Kinda makes me wonder why you posted them in the first place.

No one twists words quite like you do, Fly. Do you have a degree in that? None of what you quoted me as saying was true in context. Twisted half-truths seem to be your specialty....is it all you need....no wonder you support evolution.

Find my statements in context, including the whole post....since you are so good at quoting what I supposedly said.

As usual...you are big on the personal insults but short on what would silence me....give us conclusive evidence that what science teaches about macro-evolution is actually true. If you can't even prove that the way scientists interpret "evidence" is accurate, why are you continually trying to divert attention away from this fact by insulting me? (We all know that scientists are dead set on proving that evolution is true, so because they cannot prove that it ever happened, they desperately look for things that merely suggest it.)
Every time you make this personal, you reinforce the fact that you have nothing concrete to support your precious theory. Zip...nada.

Anything beyond simple adaptation in any real time scientific experiment is pure guesswork.....and you know it.

The fact that you are still trolling me shows us how annoying it is to you that you cannot provide what was requested.....let me ask it again.....simply provide evidence for "macro-evolution" that does not rely on "suggestion, supposition, conjecture, faith or belief". If science has the high ground on this subject and isn't simply an overblown "belief system", then it should be easy to provide what convinces scientists that macro-evolution "might have"...."could have"...."must have" happened.

Nothing provided to date has managed to meet the criteria.

Let's see you provide substantive for a change.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I blame the over abundance of churches and meth.

I hear ya. I did get a weird image of a pastor working away in a church basement on his next batch of ice, though.

 

[Deeje]

Do you want evidence or do you want proof? There is substantial evidence to show that you demand proof for scientific endeavors when you have been told, over and over, that science deals in evidence, not proofs.

And the evidence is interpreted by biased people who want to support their own beliefs....how does that put scientist in a superior position? "Beliefs" drive your "religion" just as it drives mine.

On the other hand, you blindly accept JW's teachings and philosophies as absolute incontrovertible truth, despite them having been proved wrong, repeatedly.

What I believe was "proved wrong, repeatedly"???....when did that happen? You mean you proved it was wrong to yourself? How does that make any difference to Bible believers like me?

You are free to believe whatever you like....if you are convinced that there is no Intelligent Creator whose productions seem to you to be entirely accidental to you, then you awe welcome to that.

You have a double standard that can only be the result of deep religious indoctrination.

There is no double standard except where evolution is concerned.
You are indoctrinated just as much as you think we are....you just can't see it. You swapped an unprovable God for an unprovable theory. That is about the only substantiated fact demonstrated by atheists. You believe what you want to believe without actual proof...just like we do. It's called "faith".

 

[exchemist]

No one twists words quite like you do, Fly. Do you have a degree in that? None of what you quoted me as saying was true in context. Twisted half-truths seem to be your specialty....is it all you need....no wonder you support evolution.

Find my statements in context, including the whole post....since you are so good at quoting what I supposedly said.

As usual...you are big on the personal insults but short on what would silence me....give us conclusive evidence that what science teaches about macro-evolution is actually true. If you can't even prove that the way scientists interpret "evidence" is accurate, why are you continually trying to divert attention away from this fact by insulting me? (We all know that scientists are dead set on proving that evolution is true, so because they cannot prove that it ever happened, they desperately look for things that merely suggest it.)
Every time you make this personal, you reinforce the fact that you have nothing concrete to support your precious theory. Zip...nada.

Anything beyond simple adaptation in any real time scientific experiment is pure guesswork.....and you know it.

The fact that you are still trolling me shows us how annoying it is to you that you cannot provide what was requested.....let me ask it again.....simply provide evidence for "macro-evolution" that does not rely on "suggestion, supposition, conjecture, faith or belief". If science has the high ground on this subject and isn't simply an overblown "belief system", then it should be easy to provide what convinces scientists that macro-evolution "might have"...."could have"...."must have" happened.

Nothing provided to date has managed to meet the criteria.

Let's see you provide substantive for a change.

OK you've talked me into having a go. Let's see if it is possible to have a reasonable discussion:-

It's in the fossil record. There were dinosaurs...and then, later, there were birds, with a number of transitional types, such as archaeopteryx and ichthyornis (see my thread on that subject) in between. That is evidence. Not proof of course, but then science never deals in proof.

In terms of species alive today, we have ring species, in which one can see a single species (in the sense of able to mate to produce fertile offspring) becoming separate species, in which this is no longer possible: Ring species - Wikipedia

And then of course we have the relationships in DNA, which show the family relationships between different animals, corroborating (usually, though not always of course) the family trees previously constructed on the basis of the fossil evidence.

This is all evidence, in just the same way that seeing particles of smoke jiggling randomly under a microscope (the famous "Brownian Motion") is evidence for the existence of molecules in random motion. The evidence in both cases is indirect, but then so it is in most of science.

Another good example of indirect evidence is the Geiger-Marsden experiment that provided the evidence for the structure of the atom: Geiger–Marsden experiment - Wikipedia. Nobody "saw" the atoms, but from the scattering angles of the alpha particles they deduced what seemed to be responsible and came up with a model that accounted for what was observed.

That's what science does: it makes models that account for observation and can be tested by further observation to see if they still fit.

 

[Deeje]

OK you've talked me into having a go. Let's see if it is possible to have a reasonable discussion:-

Well, thank you for the concession.....let's see....

It's in the fossil record. There were dinosaurs...and then, later, there were birds, with a number of transitional types, such as archaeopteryx and ichthyornis (see my thread on that subject) in between. That is evidence. Not proof of course, but then science never deals in proof.

The "science doesn't deal in proof" argument has been done to death. The truth is, if you can't "prove" something, you have no business calling it a fact, which is by definition "a thing that is known or proved to be true"..."something that has actual existence : a matter of objective reality."...."a truth known by actual experience or observation".

If you think something is true but you can't prove it, that is called "circumstantial evidence" in a court of law. You can convict someone but you cannot execute them on that conviction because it cannot be proven beyond a doubt, that the person actually committed the crime...its just that all the evidence points to it...correct?

What can science actually prove then? They have observed in a lab that organisms adapt to circumstances that change in their environment. In a lab these changes are artificially produced because a lab is hardly a natural environment for anything living.

But let's take Darwin's observations as this was the catalyst for the whole theory. What did Darwin see that made his think that evolution was something to explore?
He saw finches that had changed the shape of their beaks....iguanas that were happy in a marine environment unlike their mainland 'cousins' and he saw tortoises that were a bit different to others as well. What was Darwin's response? He saw adaptation in action. He saw new species of creatures that had "evolved" new features in order to survive in a different environment. But did Darwin see that the finches were anything but different species of finches? Were the iguanas something other than iguanas? Were the tortoises becoming something other than tortoises?

As far as I can see, science took something simple like adaptation and took it so far beyond what is observable and provable, on into the realms of science fiction. How did it do that? By building science itself into a substitute for religion. The status it achieved made its findings into "scripture" for those besotted by its suggestions.....and suggestions were all they really had. It made 'gods' out of the scientists that were writing these amazing things. Read any science article on evolution and you will clearly see the suggestions cleverly couched in the language that expose it as a fraud to those not indoctrinated or "converted" to their mind set.

In terms of species alive today, we have ring species, in which one can see a single species (in the sense of able to mate to produce fertile offspring) becoming separate species, in which this is no longer possible: Ring species - Wikipedia

From your link.....

"In a ring species, gene flow occurs between neighbouring populations of a species, but at the ends of the "ring" , the populations cannot interbreed."

Ensatina salamanders example of ring species.

What does this prove? It proves that a single family of creatures can produce an infinite variety of 'cousins' that cannot interbreed, but are clearly of the same taxonomic family. IOW no matter how many varieties emerge, the creatures never step outside of their "family". Just as Darwin observed...the finches were still finches and will remain so indefinitely. Same with the iguanas and tortoises. They will never become something else.....it is genetically impossible. Mutations almost always make an organism weaker not stronger. Beneficial mutations are so rare that they hardly ever happen.

Speciation experiments saw exactly the same result.....a new species of a creature in the same taxonomic family will never "morph" into something else. Science has no evidence that conclusively demonstrates that they can. The flies were still flies and the bacteria were still bacteria.....when science provides graphs and diagrams, it is all based on guesswork, not fact.

Fossils are a classic example.....these bones have no voice except the one scientists give them. And of course the voice will always point to evolution despite the fact that the 'missing links' will always be missing.

And then of course we have the relationships in DNA, which show the family relationships between different animals, corroborating (usually, though not always of course) the family trees previously constructed on the basis of the fossil evidence.

DNA is what codes us for who we are. We, as the product of one Creator are all made out of the same raw materials. If science can tell me that I am related to a fruit fly and a banana, then I have to question how they interpret DNA.

Another good example of indirect evidence is the Geiger-Marsden experiment that provided the evidence for the structure of the atom: Geiger–Marsden experiment - Wikipedia. Nobody "saw" the atoms, but from the scattering angles of the alpha particles they deduced what seemed to be responsible and came up with a model that accounted for what was observed.

Well, now you are talking about things that science can prove. Their deductions were based on mathematics, were they not? Wasn't it in the 1980's that science developed the technology to "see" atoms? Now we have nanotechnology that allows scientists to see so much more than they ever thought possible. What has this got to do with macro-evolution? Please understand that I am not anti-science....what I am, is skeptical of what science "assumes" as opposed to what it actually "knows".

I see holes in the evolutionary theory that you can drive a Mack Truck through and scientists like to pretend that they don't exist. I like to show people that science is not as clever as it makes itself out to be.

That's what science does: it makes models that account for observation and can be tested by further observation to see if they still fit.

And in the case of macro-evolution (as opposed to limited adaptation) they cannot make it fit without a lot of fudging...it is pure suggestion that something "leads them to believe" that what they "guess" "must be true".

I don't even mind the speculation as long as it it taught as such...but we all know that it isn't. They say in their articles that they "think" something "might have" or "could have" happened...but then you will find them saying that it "must have" because evolution demands that it did....do you see why I have objections? There is nothing to substantiate any of it. Guesses are backed up by other guesses. Is that real science?

You tell me.....

I see that you are Catholic but in name only....

I was raised in Christendom too....IMO it teaches as much rubbish as evolutionary science does. A person with a degree in natural science means about as much to me as a clergyman with a degree in theology.
Both are trained to believe what they are told by the system they have chosen as their truth.

We all believe what we want to believe and it seems as if both sides of this argument are relying on a false dichotomy....you think science is correct about its assumptions concerning macro-evolution and that all Christians must support YEC. (Some who want a foot in both camps, try to take the middle ground with a God who created evolution.)
To me it's not an "either/or" scenario....did you ever consider that both might be dead wrong?

Did you ever consider that both science AND the Bible could be correct and that you don't have to choose one over the other? All you have to do is be guided by what science "knows" (as opposed to what it thinks it knows) and read the Bible with an understanding about what the original language conveyed. Correlate the two and an amazingly simple truth emerges.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

There is no double standard except where evolution is concerned.
You are indoctrinated just as much as you think we are....you just can't see it. You swapped an unprovable God for an unprovable theory. That is about the only substantiated fact demonstrated by atheists. You believe what you want to believe without actual proof...just like we do. It's called "faith".

Atheists? You think it's atheists who have 'faith' in evolution??

 

[Deeje]

Atheists? You think it's atheists who have 'faith' in evolution??

Perhaps I should have said that I believe that atheists are the most vocal about it....the most desperate to promote it over that other position that they cannot even bring themselves to contemplate.

The ones who take out that 'spiritual insurance policy', (thinking that they can have a foot in both camps) are kidding themselves IMO.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Perhaps I should have said that I believe that atheists are the most vocal about it....the most desperate to promote it over that other position that they cannot even bring themselves to contemplate.

Still sounds like a parody to me. I'm an atheist in a religious forum, and my bookshelf includes a Bible and mtiple books on the history of Christianity.
Not sure how that counts as being desperate to not contemplate...

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You believe what you want to believe without actual proof...just like we do. It's called "faith".

I have "faith" in evolution just as I do gravity, Ohm's Law, germs, and the combustibility of oxygen. I don't have faith in any of those, things that are all theories (save for Ohm's Law which is a law) and all are facts.