Poll for Creationists

[Guy Threepwood]

Since a squad is nine to thirteen people, I stand by it, an army is in excess of 100,000 ... no army required, just a squad.

Your specification ignores the inevitable (and obvious) cross training (e.g., an oceanographer is expected to be competent as a chemist, a geologist, a physicist and a biologist and is likely a meteorologist to boot; a cosmologist is likely a completent physicist, etc.)

Besides, the depth of knowledge needed to counter any creationist claim is frankly, rather shallow never exceeding familiarity with rather standard literature search methodologies and the ability to read a scientific paper.

Just about any literate individual can deal with the full raft of creationist claims with little more than an internet connection and An Index to Creationist Claims, after all ... it ain't rocket science, its just a matter of countering bronze age fables.

Well you may have far more in the way of experience and qualification than the renowned paleontologist and curator of the Chicago Field museum, but I have to agree with him on this one I'm afraid. Nothing personal!

Appreciating the immense depth of this subject, requires a scientific standard, a little higher than simply Googling anti-creationist websites, though that does explain the content of many posts here.

The simplest explanation is always the most tempting Sapiens, but nature has shown little regard for Occam's razor so far. Would you not agree?

 

[Sapiens]

Well you may have far more in the way of experience and qualification than the renowned paleontologist and curator of the Chicago Field museum, but I have to agree with him on this one I'm afraid. Nothing personal!

I don't take it personally, you are unlikely to know even one oceanographer. I have a lot of respect for Raup, at least as a paleontologist, perhaps we should both check our appeals to authority and no longer take him seriously outside of his defined field.

Appreciating the immense depth of this subject, requires a scientific standard, a little higher than simply Googling anti-creationist websites, though that does explain the content of many posts here.

It is really not that hard, a reason that we scientists are continuously amazed at that otherwise seemingly bright people like yourself fail to grasp the obvious. Let's look at a random entry:

Claim CB930.1:
The coelacanth, thought to have been extinct for seventy million years and used as an example of a fish-tetrapod transition, is found still alive, unchanged in form, today.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 82-83,89.
Response:

1. The modern coelacanth is Latimeria chalumnae, in the family Latimeriidae. Fossil coelacanths are in other families, mostly Coelacanthidae, and are significantly different in that they are smaller and lack certain internal structures. Latimeria has no fossil record, so it cannot be a "living fossil."
   
   
2. Even if the modern coelacanth and fossil coelacanths were the same, it would not be a serious problem for evolution. The theory of evolution does not say that all organisms must evolve. In an unchanging environment, natural selection would tend to keep things largely unchanged morphologically.
   
   
3. Coelacanths have primitive features relative to most other fish, so at one time they were one of the closest known specimens to the fish-tetrapod transition. We now know several other fossils that show the fish-tetrapod transition quite well.

Links:
Lindsay, Don, 2000, Living fossils like the coelacanth. Living fossils like the Coelacanth
Further Reading:
Forey, Peter L., 1998. History of the Coelacanth Fishes. London: Chapman & Hall.

To grasp this entry one needs:

1) a basic knowledge of fish taxonomy and it lingua fracka.
2) a basic knowledge of evolution, that is to say being able to answer the question, "if I descended from my father why is he still alive?"
3) an understanding that often fossils are "uncles" rather than "parents."

Access to a descent scientific library to get a look at Forey's book would also be helpful.

That does not even need the whole squad, just one person could handle it easily, with little more than a good undergraduate education and an "anti-creation" website.

The simplest explanation is always the most tempting Sappiens, but nature has shown little regard for Occam's razor so far. Would you not agree?

I agree, that's exactly why I favor natural causes and effects without the hocus pocus of the unnecessary complication of pretending the nonexistent supernatural is real.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I don't take it personally, you are unlikely to know even one oceanographer. I have a lot of respect for Raup, at least as a paleontologist, perhaps we should both check our appeals to authority and no longer take him seriously outside of his defined field.

It is really not that hard, a reason that we scientists are continuously amazed at that otherwise seemingly bright people like yourself fail to grasp the obvious. Let's look at a random entry:

That was almost a compliment- thank you! I don't think you are just seemingly bright, you definitely are very bright. And what you believe is obvious I agree. Also elegant, intuitive, comprehensive, logical

Just like Newtonian physics.

& I agree, it is better to put aside authority and even more- our subjective opinions of each other's intelligence. The wise man knows himself a fool!

Claim CB930.1:
The coelacanth, thought to have been extinct for seventy million years and used as an example of a fish-tetrapod transition, is found still alive, unchanged in form, today.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 82-83,89.
Response:

1. The modern coelacanth is Latimeria chalumnae, in the family Latimeriidae. Fossil coelacanths are in other families, mostly Coelacanthidae, and are significantly different in that they are smaller and lack certain internal structures. Latimeria has no fossil record, so it cannot be a "living fossil."
   
   
2. Even if the modern coelacanth and fossil coelacanths were the same, it would not be a serious problem for evolution. The theory of evolution does not say that all organisms must evolve. In an unchanging environment, natural selection would tend to keep things largely unchanged morphologically.
   
   
3. Coelacanths have primitive features relative to most other fish, so at one time they were one of the closest known specimens to the fish-tetrapod transition. We now know several other fossils that show the fish-tetrapod transition quite well.

Links:
Lindsay, Don, 2000, Living fossils like the coelacanth. Living fossils like the Coelacanth
Further Reading:
Forey, Peter L., 1998. History of the Coelacanth Fishes. London: Chapman & Hall.

To grasp this entry one needs:

1) a basic knowledge of fish taxonomy and it lingua fracka.
2) a basic knowledge of evolution, that is to say being able to answer the question, "if I descended from my father why is he still alive?"
3) an understanding that often fossils are "uncles" rather than "parents."

Access to a descent scientific library to get a look at Forey's book would also be helpful.

That does not even need the whole squad, just one person could handle it easily, with little more than a good undergraduate education and an "anti-creation" website.


I agree, that's exactly why I favor natural causes and effects without the hocus pocus of the unnecessary complication of pretending the nonexistent supernatural is real.

I understand your logic, as I still do for Newtons law's. The argument of anyone who questioned that Newtonian physics adequately accounted for all physics, might similarly be unfathomable to someone who saw how obviously apples fell from trees. Anyone who questioned it must have some cognitive disability! Any notions of mysterious, unpredictable guiding forces predetermining specific outcomes.. was religious pseudoscience surely?

But the devil is in the details. Genetic apples also fall not far from their trees. Similarly for both gravity and adaptation- we are observing (I submit to you) a feature of reality, not a design mechanism for it. Crucial distinction; one that is inherent to all hierarchical information systems, natural or artificial, digital ones in fact in the case of DNA. An entire scientific field that, like quantum mechanics, was unknown in Darwin's Victorian era.

Is a forensic scientist deducing that a man was pushed off the cliff, instead of falling, or that the Rosetta stone was the result of ID, not natural forces- using a ' hocus pocus supernatural' argument?
They are arguing for an unknown intelligent agent, despite the lack of direct empirical evidence, because we know, scientifically, with increasing accuracy, how to recognize the unique fingerprints of such a phenomena.

The Ceolacanth is akin to 'if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?' . It's actually a very good question, but a la Douglas Adams, we have to understand what the question really is first..

appreciate the civil discourse- must run for now but will respond