No one said you have to be bright to be a Senator

[McBell]

Whether a person believes in evolution or not is immaterial. The EVIDENCE shows evolution is false. The argument I hear from evolution proponents is: believe in evolution because a lot of scientists believe in it, and you're not smart enough to understand how we know evolution happened. Even though the earth and it's life shouts "Creative genius! intelligent Design!", our ToE advocates want us to shut our eyes and cover our ears to the obvious truth that "In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth." That's my view.

Your double standards are most entertaining.

 

[Agnostic75]

Whether a person believes in evolution or not is immaterial. The EVIDENCE shows evolution is false.

But as I showed, some of your own sources accept evolution, including Michael Behe. How can you know more about evolution than Michael Behe does? Even when you quote experts who agree with you, that does not provide any proof at all that you understand their arguments well enough to agree with them from an entirely scientific perspective. Your approval of creationist experts is based on religion, not upon your own personal understanding of science. All that you are really saying is that you believe that your experts are right because you believe that the Bible is right. Science does not have anything to do with your own personal opinions.

Some African natives who live in remote jungle regions of Africa are creationists. The majority of them cannot read and write, and have very little contact with the outside world. Surely most of them have not evaluated any scientific evidence at all about evolution, and yet you do not object to that. So, examining the evidence does not really matter to you after all as long as people choose creationism.

The argument I hear from evolution proponents is: believe in evolution because a lot of scientists believe in it, and you're not smart enough to understand how we know evolution happened.

And that is excellent advice since evolutionary theory is often very complex, such as Ken Miller's article on the flagellum at The Flagellum Unspun, which you have refused to comment on many times since you know that you do not understand it. You would even be able to pass the first biology test in a first year of college biology class, let alone adequately understand Ken Miller's article. At the very least, surely many creationists know very little about biology, certainly not enough to understand evolutionary theory well enough to have an informed scientific opinion about it.

It is most certainly very reasonable for people who are not experts in science to accept the opinions of a very large consensus of Christian and non-Christian experts.

And what about geology, and the global flood? Surely many global flood advocates know very little about geology, certainly not enough to understand evolutionary theory well enough to have an informed scientific opinion about it. Surely many global flood advocates would not even be able to answer very easy questions about geology, let alone the many complexities of global flood theory. Anyway, Sumerian flood stories predate the Bible flood stories.

 

[Father Heathen]

The EVIDENCE shows evolution is false.

Well? We're waiting.

 

[dust1n]

Whether a person believes in evolution or not is immaterial. The EVIDENCE shows evolution is false. The argument I hear from evolution proponents is: believe in evolution because a lot of scientists believe in it, and you're not smart enough to understand how we know evolution happened. Even though the earth and it's life shouts "Creative genius! intelligent Design!", our ToE advocates want us to shut our eyes and cover our ears to the obvious truth that "In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth." That's my view.

Wowser. I wonder if it took all day to formulate that paragraph.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Whether a person believes in evolution or not is immaterial.

True. Evolution is a fact regardless whether one believes in it or not.

Even though the earth and it's life shouts "Creative genius! intelligent Design!", our ToE advocates want us to shut our eyes and cover our ears to the obvious truth that "In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth." That's my view.

Another belief which is immaterial regarding whether evolution is true or not.

 

[Agnostic75]

Even though the earth and it's life shouts "Creative genius! intelligent Design!", our ToE advocates want us to shut our eyes and cover our ears to the obvious truth that "In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth." That's my view.

For the millionth time, evolution does not have anything whatsoever to do with how life began on earth. It does not need an original foundation because it is possible to study changes in life after it began without studying its origins. Your comment is utter nonsense since millions of Christian theistic evolutionists do believe that God created the heavens and the earth, and created man over a long people of time.

Regarding intelligent design, just so you understand what it means in the context of evolution debates, it does not deal with how life started on earth. Here is what it is from one of Ken Miller's articles on the flagellum, an article that you have refused to comment on many times:

The Flagellum Unspun

In any discussion of the question of "intelligent design," it is absolutely essential to determine what is meant by the term itself. If, for example, the advocates of design wish to suggest that the intricacies of nature, life, and the universe reveal a world of meaning and purpose consistent with an overarching, possibly Divine intelligence, then their point is philosophical, not scientific. It is a philosophical point of view, incidentally, that I share, along with many scientists. As H. Allen Orr pointed out in a recent review:

"Plenty of scientists have, after all, been attracted to the notion that natural laws reflect (in some way that's necessarily poorly articulated) an intelligence or aesthetic sensibility. This is the religion of Einstein, who spoke of 'the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence' and of the scientist's 'religious feeling [that] takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law.'" (Orr 2002).
​

This, however, is not what is meant by "intelligent design" in the parlance of the new anti-evolutionists. Their views demand not a universe in which the beauty and harmony of natural law has brought a world of vibrant and fruitful life into existence, but rather a universe in which the emergence and evolution of life is made expressly impossible by the very same rules. Their view requires that the source of each and every novelty of life was the direct and active involvement of an outside designer whose work violated the very laws of nature he had fashioned. The world of intelligent design is not the bright and innovative world of life that we have come to know through science. Rather, it is a brittle and unchanging landscape, frozen in form and unable to adapt except at the whims of its designer.

Certainly, the issue of design and purpose in nature is a philosophical one that scientists can and should discuss with great vigor. However, the notion at the heart's of today intelligent design movement is that the direct intervention of an outside designer can be demonstrated by the very existence of complex biochemical systems. What even they acknowledge is that their entire scientific position rests upon a single assertion – that the living cell contains biochemical machines that are irreducibly complex. And the bacterial flagellum is the prime example of such a machine.

Such an assertion, as we have seen, can be put to the test in a very direct way. If we are able to search and find an example of a machine with fewer protein parts, contained within the flagellum, that serves a purpose distinct from motility, the claim of irreducible complexity is refuted. As we have also seen, the flagellum does indeed contain such a machine, a protein-secreting apparatus that carries out an important function even in species that lack the flagellum altogether. A scientific idea rises or falls on the weight of the evidence, and the evidence in the case of the bacterial flagellum is abundantly clear.
As an icon of anti-evolution, the flagellum has fallen.

The very existence of the Type III Secretory System shows that the bacterial flagellum is not irreducibly complex. It also demonstrates, more generally, that the claim of "irreducible complexity" is scientifically meaningless, constructed as it is upon the flimsiest of foundations – the assertion that because science has not yet found selectable functions for the components of a certain structure, it never will. In the final analysis, as the claims of intelligent design fall by the wayside, its advocates are left with a single, remaining tool with which to battle against the rising tide of scientific evidence. That tool may be effective in some circles, of course, but the scientific community will be quick to recognize it for what it really is – the classic argument from ignorance, dressed up in the shiny cloth of biochemistry and information theory.

When three leading advocates of intelligent design were recently given a chance to make their case in an issue of Natural History magazine, they each concluded their articles with a plea for design. One wrote that we should recognize "the design inherent in life and the universe" (Behe 2002), another that "design remains a possibility" (Wells 2002), and another "that the natural sciences need to leave room for design" (Dembski 2002b). Yes, it is true. Design does remain a possibility, but not the type of "intelligent design" of which they speak.

As Darwin wrote, there is grandeur in an evolutionary view of life, a grandeur that is there for all to see, regardless of their philosophical views on the meaning and purpose of life. I do not believe, even for an instant, that Darwin's vision has weakened or diminished the sense of wonder and awe that one should feel in confronting the magnificence and diversity of the living world. Rather, to a person of faith it should enhance their sense of the Creator's majesty and wisdom (Miller 1999). Against such a backdrop, the struggles of the intelligent design movement are best understood as clamorous and disappointing double failures – rejected by science because they do not fit the facts, and having failed religion because they think too little of God.
​

Miller disscusses the flagellum, intelligent design, and irreducible complexity in great detail, with text, and a number of diagrams. Since you do not understand the article, there is no way that you can adequately refute it based upon your own limited knowledge of biology.
​

The earth and its life might shout the existence of a God, but if a God created life on earth, according to most experts, he did it slowly, over a long time.

And what about the global flood theory? Would you like to claim that it is obvious to laymen that a global flood occured?

 

[Musty]

Democracy = Popularity contest

Popularity contests are generally not the best way to determine suitable leaders. Things like experience, competence and the willingness to make unpopular decisions rather than bowing to the wishes of the ignoring masses are important to me but rarely seem to be characteristics of our elected leadership.