Putting the JW Stand on Evolution in Perspective

[Jose Fly]

And DNA similarities -- of which almost every organism shares -- is not proof of common ancestry, i.e., shared kinship. It is only evidence that all life, being formed from one multi-pliable substance -- DNA -- came from one Designer.

You should try that in court. "Your honor, that the child in question shares DNA with my client merely shows that God made it that way."

 

[ecco]

​

One line of evidence: If you read about the events in Day 6...there was just too much going on, for it to be taken literally, as 24 hrs!

Wow- just too much going on.

The Sixth Day: Creatures on Land

24And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and [POOF] it was so.
26And God said, Let us make man in our image, ... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female [POOF] created he them.


And God said... [BRIEF SPEECH].


POOP, POOF and a BRIEF SPEECH and you think was just too much going on, for it to be taken literally, as 24 hrs. You obviously have a very poor opinion of your omnipotent god.


​

You like to take the Bible literally, except when you don't want to take to Bible literally, then you just make stuff up.

 

[ecco]

Besides, we know that JW lies to its believers just as it lies to everyone else. The following JW website asserts that science claims "Evolution is a proven fact."
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/teen-questions/should-i-believe-in-evolution/
CLAIM: Evolution is a proven fact.
That's a lie on multiple levels.

Why does JW lie? Why do you accept the lies of JW?

Really? Even Jose Fly believes the claim....

I won't speak for Jose Fly. I wasn't talking about Jose Fly. I was talking about what science states and what JW falsely states as the beliefs of science. Your attempted deflection is just more evidence of the deceitfulness of JW and JW followers.



You also skipped the rest of my post...

It really doesn't matter what is written in your publications. The truth is that you disbelieve evolution because it conflicts with your religious beliefs. PERIOD.

Here is another example of the deceitfulness of JW from the same site:
Despite decades of research, scientists have yet to come up with an explanation for evolution that they can all agree on.
There are differences of opinion in all branches of human endeavor.

All cars were rear wheel drive. Now most are front wheel drive. If we go by JW's view, cars cannot be real.

By that same viewpoint, since JW's were so often wrong about the End Of Times, JW must be as false as evolution. To believe otherwise is to be a hypocrite.[/QUOTE]

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You're correct about theories....they are not 'set in stone'. Therefore require a measure of faith for believing in them

Nope.

Evidence is reason enough to believe, and we have evidence that our scientific theories are valuable ideas that allow us to predict and at times control much of reality effectively. Nothing should be believed without a good reason, meaning that faith is never a good way to decide what is true.

How can a method that allows one to believe any idea at all or its mutually exclusive polar opposite, only one of which can be correct, be a path to truth? Even if you happen to guess correctly, you need evidence to confirm that you have. You might believe on faith that your lotto numbers are going to win, but you can't know that you have guessed correctly until you get confirming evidence - the results of the lottery.

Type 2 diabetes is not really diabetes at all...its an exhausted pancreas, shut down by overwork. It is advertising the fact that people eat too much junk. It is entirely preventable and treatable with diet alone.

No, it is not. That will be sufficient in some, but others will remain hyperglycemic and require pharmacotherapy to achieve euglycemia.

That is not what I have found in my own research.

Then your research is flawed. My research included years of studying and treating diabetes, and I can assure you that there are people whose blood glucose levels cannot be controlled without pharmacotherapy despite maintaining a normal body weight, eating properly, and exercising regularly.

But there is nothing surprising or different here from you. You believe what you believe because you want it to be true. You not only don't need evidence, you assiduously turn away from it, such as the evidence in this comment. The testimony of a physician who treated diabetes essentially every working day for decades is meaningless to you because it conflicts with your faith-based choice of what to believe.

Sorry, Deeje, but it is you that is living in a bubble. You're completely encased in a way of thinking that permanently sequesters you from evidence and the facts. Your bubble is impenetrable to one armed only with reason and evidence, which puts you at a disadvantage. You have no means of correcting your errors even when the evidence that you are in error is plainly visible to others, and should be to you as well, but instead is filtered out by a faith-based confirmation bias

I'm sure you have no idea how your words read to someone with our understanding of matters

Of course I do. I understand how you think. I don't know everything that you believe, but I understand faith-based thinking - how you process information, and how you decide what is true about the world.

I rest my case which you have just confirmed. Truth and proof are unnecessary....even irrelevant....I think we get it.

No, you didn't get it.

What I tried unsuccessfully to convey to you is that empirical adequacy is a more useful concept than proof or truth. Was Newton's work on gravitation true or proven? Einstein improved it, so it couldn't be completely "true." Newton's work could not account for the precession of the long axis of mercury's orbit. Einstein's improvements could.

Yet Newton's work was sufficient to allow man to explore space. It works in most applications, and therefore, we keep, use, and rely on his incomplete treatment of gravity. That's what is meant by empirical adequacy. That is the standard for acceptance of an idea, with no interest in proving anything, which is rarely possible or necessary, nor in deciding if we have reached ultimate truth yet, a problematic concept to begin with. Perhaps Einstein' ideas will be improved upon as well some day. It doesn't matter.

So what did you get out of that? Nothing. You think you've successfully made some kind of case, and are projecting your own indifference to empirical evidence onto me.

Yes, the ventriloquists voice in the fossil's mouth....we understand about that too.

I think you're confusing science with speaking for imagined gods.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If you can show a complete DNA line, fossil record or other journey all the way to mankind then that would be very helpful.

What help would it provide other than identifying the specific hominins that are ancestral to humans as opposed to branches that eventually died out ("cousins," not ancestors), and a timeline for the transition from the from any given point in evolutionary history to modern forms like Homo sapiens.

Regarding completeness and gaps, they are not an obstacle. It is expected that there will always be gaps, since the discovery of each form divides the gap it is placed in into two smaller gaps.

Furthermore, these gaps are not a challenge to the theory of evolution, which specifies nothing about the details of these transformations, just the mechanism powering them. For example, we know that after our chimplike ancestors came down from the trees, they lost a lot of body hair, stood upright, grew bigger brains, began using tools and making fires, experienced a change in relative bodily proportions, and changed from herbivores to omnivores, but we don't know or need to know in what order these changes came to understand that man evolved through these stages in some order. Even if this matter is never resolved, it would not constitute an argument against the theory.

DNA similarities -- of which almost every organism shares -- is not proof of common ancestry, i.e., shared kinship.

Proof is irrelevant. Evidence is the currency of belief.

As far as I know, there are only two categories of possibility. Either life arose and evolved by blind, undirected, naturalistic forces, or some supernatural, sentient intelligence is partly or completely responsible. Hopefully, you agree that at least one of these two things is correct. Presently, we have evidence for naturalistic evolution occurring before our eyes, but none for an intelligent designer, which, of course is the reason that most creationist apologetics are attacks on evolutionary science rather than a demonstration of evidence for an intelligent designer. The hope is that if evolution can be overturned, that the intelligent design hypothesis will be all that remains, and supercede the science by default.

Of course, although it may be tweaked here and there, the theory of evolution will almost certainly never be upended. Remember, that even if a falsifying discovery were ever made, it wouldn't make all of the evidence previously accumulated go away. It just forces us to reinterpret what that sea of evidence that strongly suggested that Darwin's theory was correct means in the light of the falsifying discovery. I don't think any other interpretation would be possible apart from a deceptive, superhuman, intelligent agency, whether a supernatural one, or just some advanced extraterrestrial race that developed naturalistically elsewhere.

Though possible, these ideas are much less likely to be the case than what Darwin proposed, and that is justification for the belief that the theory is correct.

there seems to be a kind of fashionable science movement which builds 'science' in to a kind of religion...... a cult, maybe?

How is science like a religion? Are you conflating being impressed with science's achievements with worship?

Lately, I've just gotten caught up in the progress in the forensic sciences, which has completely revolutionized crime investigation and prosecution. Many more perps are being brought to justice, the cases against them often so strong that they just belly up and accept a plea that relieves the taxpayer and the victim's family of the burden of a trial.

More importantly, many innocents have been cleared by these advances - people misidentified by eyewitness who almost certainly would have been unjustly convicted, leaving a killer on the streets. There may even be less violent crime in the future if people come to believe that the chances of them getting away with it is slim.

Isn't that cause for celebration and applause? What about that reminds you of religion or cultic thought?

 

[John53]

If I was a manager of a company that had problems with theft I would stop it. How would I stop it? As a fair-minded, rational atheist I would find those employees committing the thefts and then punish them - perhaps even fire them.

Doesn't sound right. The fair thing to do would be to curse each and every generation from then on for their mistake...

 

[oldbadger]

So your declarations on the subject aren't really worth much, are they.

They seem to keep you at bay easily enough Jose.
I just read what the reports are telling us, which is almost definitely more valuable to me than the rants of more extreme atheists, methinks.
Were you at one time a JW, or a Christian? A Devout one, maybe? it's the apostates that seem to rant and rave the most, is all.?

And yeah, I suppose I could be considered an expert in biology.

Oh, we have a member who considers himself to be an expert. The trouble with experts is, that if several are placed in the same room for long enough the disagreements between them can become so.... heated. And that leaves the question:- Which ones really were the experts?

You keep avoiding the same question over and over. Why is that?

Well, if you're such an expert, why can't you show a clear and certain flow of evidence all the way to mankind? We mostly all know about evolution, but we don't know about how the missing links to mankind were established.

And nor do you .... so much for your noise on here.

 

[oldbadger]

What help would it provide other than identifying the specific hominins that are ancestral to humans as opposed to branches that eventually died out ("cousins," not ancestors), and a timeline for the transition from the from any given point in evolutionary history to modern forms like Homo sapiens.

Regarding completeness and gaps, they are not an obstacle. It is expected that there will always be gaps, since the discovery of each form divides the gap it is placed in into two smaller gaps.

Furthermore, these gaps are not a challenge to the theory of evolution, which specifies nothing about the details of these transformations, just the mechanism powering them. For example, we know that after our chimplike ancestors came down from the trees, they lost a lot of body hair, stood upright, grew bigger brains, began using tools and making fires, experienced a change in relative bodily proportions, and changed from herbivores to omnivores, but we don't know or need to know in what order these changes came to understand that man evolved through these stages in some order. Even if this matter is never resolved, it would not constitute an argument against the theory.

Hello again....
But the question still rolls forward, and specialists obviously do still search for any clues to tie it all down. When you say, 'we don't know or need to know'..... that is not so far removed from some Christian denomination or other saying exactly the same kind of thing, obviously for different reasons.

I for one would love to read about a certain and clear discovery about how mankind 'became'. I'm not actually desperate for any one outcome, just not sure that those battering against 'creationists' are completely right, is all.

How is science like a religion? Are you conflating being impressed with science's achievements with worship?

Science (for me) is simply knowledge. Following knowledge is great, I reckon.

But some folks follow the word in a different way, and the media certainly abuses the word. So do the advertisers. And so some people will pay attention more quickly, purchase more readily, believe more surely, if they are told that 'scientists, or science' says it is so. Did you play the game 'Simon says' when you were young? Now turn that in to an adult game and call it 'Science Says'.

And so (for some) this can become a belief system. And some will quote a Science Doctrine if their claims are questioned, and only 'scientists' should be allowed to question such claims. It is/has become a kind of 'Faith' system, a religion..... I'm not saying that you belong to it, but some seem to do so.

Lately, I've just gotten caught up in the progress in the forensic sciences, which has completely revolutionized crime investigation and prosecution. Many more perps are being brought to justice, the cases against them often so strong that they just belly up and accept a plea that relieves the taxpayer and the victim's family of the burden of a trial.

Just so. I once detained a shop thief and as a standard practice the police took a dna sample. The man was later convicted of a serious offence committed many many years before, all from that evidence. I had friends and acquaintances who had been forensic specialists and/or expert witnesses, one in handwriting analysis, another in tyre track and finger-print analysis, yet another specialised in just ninhydrin development of prints on paper, etc. I learned how to save finger prints using domestic products just for the hell of it.

More importantly, many innocents have been cleared by these advances - people misidentified by eyewitness who almost certainly would have been unjustly convicted, leaving a killer on the streets. There may even be less violent crime in the future if people come to believe that the chances of them getting away with it is slim.

I worked on some cases for defence solicitors over the years. Obviously I was not involved in forensic sciences.. the defence would instruct their own specialists. Acquaintances of mine would appear as prosecution witnesses one day, and defence witnesses the next.

Sadly, very sadly, I can tell you that I trust forensics no more than any other kinds of evidence. In the UK we jhave caught out both prosecution and defence forensic witnesses being dishonest, for one or other kinds of gain. True. The man who wrote a handwriting analysis training manual for the Met Police got caught out, taking a bribe to change evidence.

You see? With experience we can't be sure of anything.

Isn't that cause for celebration and applause? What about that reminds you of religion or cultic thought?

Corruption, as already shown.
I loved discovering true evidence, loved the work, in a detached and separated way that would make me a good witness, either way, but forensic science became just as riddled with wrong as anything else that humanity can get hold of. There is another kind of belief system right there, that forensics must be true, when in fact they need shaking and testing for honesty.

Of course, most scientists in forensic evidence are good honest people, it's just the wicked ones....

 

[Subduction Zone]

They seem to keep you at bay easily enough Jose.
I just read what the reports are telling us, which is almost definitely more valuable to me than the rants of more extreme atheists, methinks.
Were you at one time a JW, or a Christian? A Devout one, maybe? it's the apostates that seem to rant and rave the most, is all.?


Oh, we have a member who considers himself to be an expert. The trouble with experts is, that if several are placed in the same room for long enough the disagreements between them can become so.... heated. And that leaves the question:- Which ones really were the experts?


Well, if you're such an expert, why can't you show a clear and certain flow of evidence all the way to mankind? We mostly all know about evolution, but we don't know about how the missing links to mankind were established.

And nor do you .... so much for your noise on here.

You keep complaining when people point out your ignorance in the sciences, but you continually demonstrate that you have no clue as to what you are talking about. When it comes to the sciences the experts will tend to disagree with each other on the details. That is how science advances. Various experts research topics and present their hypotheses and evidence through the peer reviewed journals where other experts can evaluate and retest those ideas. Eventually a coherent picture forms. We do not have any doctrine or dogma, claims that you have made but have been unable to support. If an expert's ideas cannot hold up to scrutiny they are eventually discarded.

And we can show a "clear flow of evidence all the way to human beings". I know of one YouTuber who is presently making a series on that very topic. I will provide a link and the first video in the series. This a a rather long series. It is currently at 35 videos and he has barely gotten into placental mammals:

They are rather short, averaging about ten minutes each, but are filled with information for you. And you can check all of his claims if you wish to. I would say that he is probably at least ten videos away from ending at man. You may have to wait a while for the sort of picture that you demand. The evidence is usually not presented in the way that you are demanding it.

 

[oldbadger]

You keep complaining .....................

I am not complaining, but you do, all the time........
I didn't bother to read any further..... you yourself haven't got anything to offer towards the discussion as far as could interest or inform me.
I think we're done............................

 

[Subduction Zone]

I am not complaining, but you do, all the time........
I didn't bother to read any further..... you yourself haven't got anything to offer towards the discussion as far as could interest or inform me.
I think we're done............................

Yes, you do complain. You keep repeating the same errors no matter how a correction is presented to you.

By the way, you are right that this is a discussion. There is no doubt in the sciences that man is the product of evolution. Scientists are merely working out the "How".

And earlier when you said that you considered science to be knowledge that indicated a lack of understanding of what science is. Science is knowledge that has been acquired by applying the scientific method. That is why I said more than once that we should go over the basics of this with you. Without understanding the scientific method one cannot have a proper understanding of the concept of evidence, at least when it is applied in the sciences.

And as to your aversion to forensics. Tools can be misused. People can make errors. One nice thing about the scientific method is that it makes the sciences self correcting. How were those flaws found in forensics? It was by application of the scientific method. Forensics, like all other sciences, is constantly in the state of development. Techniques are continually improved. That allows old errors to be corrected.

The scientific method and the sciences are well respected because they have earned that respect.

 

[SkepticThinker]

You consider unicellular monera as obvious precursors for the diverse, hard-shelled complex body plans of the Cambrian?

You are gullible! No one else does.

But I guess, if grasping at straws is all you got....

Stephen Jay Gould does. Ya know, a guy who was qualified to make such a determination.
But you wouldn't know that, having spent your time misquoting him and all.

Gould certainly wasn't the only one who was aware of Precambrian fossil life:

Precambrian Fossils
Get Precambrian Time Information and Prehistoric Facts
Precambrian fossils, once thought to be embryos, reinterpreted as... something else
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/earth-a...ry-geology-spring-2007/lecture-notes/ch9a.pdf
Late Precambrian (?) Fossils from Southeastern Newfoundland | GSA Bulletin | GeoScienceWorld
Namibia: Precambrian fossils | Highly Allochthonous



I've told you several times before, a large junk of Precambrian Shield exists a few hours drive from my house. I stop by it every year on my way up to the cottage. You should take a look sometime.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Some of the questions that evolutionary biologists are trying to answer include:

1. Does evolution tend to proceed slowly and steadily or in quick jumps?
   
2. Why are some clades very diverse and some unusually sparse?
   
3. How does evolution produce new and complex features?
   
4. Are there trends in evolution, and if so, what processes generate them?

Darwin - "On Origin of Species"
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by
numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

Along came a better knowledge and understanding of the cell - with its DNA, and its code of instructions.
The theory of Evolution galloped on.

Along with the fact that the fossil record was not supporting the theory, the Cambrian exploded,
BOOM!
Over 60,000 fossils in the Cambrian Explosion.
95% - 20 phyla of the 27 fossilized of the 36 in the history of life.

...and the search began for a solution - evidence to make the theory fit the facts. The events of the Cambrian explosion are subject of ongoing debate and research.

Fix...
1. The cry that the fossil record is incomplete.
2. Artifact Hypothesis
3. Punctuated equilibrium.

Now that I mentioned punctuated equilibrium, I think it's fitting to mention the "brilliant" mind behind the idea - Stephen Jay Gould
...see Conflicts of Minds

4. Now...
Evolution’s Clock Ticked Faster at the Dawn of Modern Animals
This so-called Cambrian explosion kept Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, awake at night, as he worried that his theory of natural selection couldn’t explain the sudden proliferation of species. Now, researchers have combined evidence from the fossil record with clues in the genes of living species to estimate the speed of that evolutionary explosion. Their finding - that the rate of change was high, but still plausible - may put Darwin’s fears to rest.

They found that when some early branches of the arthropod family tree were splitting off, creatures were evolving new traits about four times faster than they did in the following 500 million years. The creatures' genetic codes were changing by about .117% every million years - approximately 5.5 times faster than modern estimates, the group reports online today in Current Biology. Lee calls this pace “fast, but not too fast” to reconcile with Darwin’s theory.

This combined model for genes and anatomy represents “quite a stride forward,” Wills says. The results not only show that the evolutionary clock ticked much faster around the time of the Cambrian, but also hint at what may have sped it up. The fact that genes and anatomy evolved at roughly the same rate suggest that pressures to adapt and survive in a world of new, complex predators drove both, the authors speculate. Innovations such as exoskeletons, vision, and jaws created new niches and evolution sped up to fill them. Wills agrees that the new research makes this explanation for the Cambrian explosion “look a lot more probable now.”

Others caution that such analysis is in its infancy. “It’s an excellent first step,” says Douglas Erwin, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., but the exact rates of evolution in the study might not be reliable. He points out that while the study uses fossil data to determine when a given arthropod branch emerged, it doesn’t include the known characteristics of these extinct ancestors in its comparisons of physical traits, which involve only living creatures.

Some of the assumptions the authors make in estimating these emergence dates are also problematic, says Philip Donoghue, a paleobiologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. But he believes future iterations of this approach - incorporating fossil traits into the analysis - will yield a powerful new tool: “All the cool kids will be doing it soon.”

Major fossil study sheds new light on emergence of early animal life 540 million years ago
...new research from the University of Oxford in collaboration with the University of Lausanne suggests that for most animals this 'explosion' was in fact a more gradual process.

The new analysis presents a challenge to the two major competing hypotheses about early animal evolution. The first of these suggests a slow, gradual evolution of euarthropods starting 650-600 million years ago, which had been consistent with earlier molecular dating estimates of their origin. The other hypothesis claims the nearly instantaneous appearance of euarthropods 540 million years ago because of highly elevated rates of evolution.

The new research suggests a middle-ground between these two hypotheses...

...and the theory gallops on, as the algorithms are built up as evidence to support the undeniable facts that evolution fails to account for the diversity of living things.
Yet there is no evidence for intelligent design.
Just modern day myths.

Spoiler: Ambulocetus

animation

or movie

The Surprising Origins of Evolutionary Complexity
...recently some scientists and philosophers have suggested that complexity can arise through other routes. Some argue that life has a built-in tendency to become more complex over time. Others maintain that as random mutations arise, complexity emerges as a side effect, even without natural selection to help it along. Complexity, they say, is not purely the result of millions of years of fine-tuning through natural selection - the process that Richard Dawkins famously dubbed “the blind watchmaker.” To some extent, it just happens.

Darwin's Tree of Life is a Tangled Bramble Bush
Researchers at Vanderbilt University are tied up in knots trying to locate Darwin’s branching tree in contradictory data.
...... Read the article as well as the source - Untangling the Tree of Life
Evolutionists have been concocting Darwin trees in spite of the evidence ever since Darwin acknowledged the Cambrian explosion as a real problem that lodged a valid objection to his theory ...

Darwinism is a classic case of Finagle’s Rule #3, “Draw your curves, then plot your data.” Guru Charlie drew his little tree sketch by faith, then sent his disciples out on a hopeless quest to find evidence to support it.
Now, ... these guys are still telling us the tree vision is in conflict with the data!
They have to finagle their methods (“novel approaches”) to try to force a match with the uncooperative genes.

...they are even willing to lie, tossing out “uninformative” data sets and only using data that appear to support their foreordained conclusion. Were you told *the above* in biology class? Did your textbook mention *the above*? No; but you hear it here on CEH all the time, because we bring out into the open the dirty deals
evolutionists whisper to themselves in the journals.

Gish Gallop #9,573.

 

[Jose Fly]

They seem to keep you at bay easily enough Jose.

I'm sure that's what you think.

I just read what the reports are telling us, which is almost definitely more valuable to me than the rants of more extreme atheists, methinks.
Were you at one time a JW, or a Christian? A Devout one, maybe? it's the apostates that seem to rant and rave the most, is all.?

What does atheism or my religious beliefs have to do with this?

Oh, we have a member who considers himself to be an expert. The trouble with experts is, that if several are placed in the same room for long enough the disagreements between them can become so.... heated. And that leaves the question:- Which ones really were the experts?

Now this is positively fascinating. You asked both @Subduction Zone and I if we were experts. When SZ said he wasn't, you told him he should "stick to what he knows". But when I say that I am an expert, you wave that away because apparently experts always disagree.

So I guess we should all just defer to you?

Well, if you're such an expert, why can't you show a clear and certain flow of evidence all the way to mankind?

First, who says I can't? I mean, if you're wanting a walk-through of the evidence that supports human-primate common ancestry, we can certainly do that. It'll take a bit of time and likely some work on your part, but it's certainly doable.

But I wonder why you're asking in the first place? Are you really interested or is this just another round of "stump the evolutionist"? I figure if you truly were interested, you'd make the effort to educate yourself, rather than presenting it as a challenge on a religious internet forum.

Also, who decides what is or isn't "clear and certain"? You? Me? The Jehovah's Witnesses?

Finally, I'll just note how once again you completely dodged the same question. Obviously you're deliberately avoiding it, so there's something about it you'd rather not deal with. Wonder what that is?

We mostly all know about evolution, but we don't know about how the missing links to mankind were established.

That sentence doesn't make sense.

And nor do you .... so much for your noise on here.

Well, nice to see you not getting personal....don't want to be a hypocrite after all.

 

[nPeace]

Oh boy, another Gish Gallop

If you want to learn you need to bring up your nonsense one claim at a time. I am not bothering with a mile long rant full of errors.

Weaseling your way out again, I see.

You actually surprised me when you responded to the first one, which was nearly three times longer than this one. Although you probably only bothered with the first few lines.
So what's wrong with this one? The truth in it is a bit too stinging for you to handle? LOL

Don't worry, I don't post them expecting a capable response from you. From your posts I am already aware of your 'capability'.
I post the truth. Whether you respond or not does not matter, but when ever I see your inaccurate post, I will respond with the truth.
That's what I did, so it's clear why you don't want to respond to it.
It follows a logical argument from top to bottom.

On this inaccurate claim...

And the reason that we did not see fossil evidence for them is that the surviving Coelacanth are all deep ocean fish. The fossils that we get are from continental land masses that were temporarily shallow seas. Think of the continental shelves. Those are parts of continents. Animals that die there could be uplifted in a later tectonic event. Fish that die on the bottom of the ocean eventually tend to go along with the oceanic crust down subduction zones sooner or later. There are many fish that may have existed that would leave no fossil evidence for us to discover.

The deep sea was long thought to be a lifeless desert. Intense research in the last few decades, however, has revealed that it actually supports one of the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth.
There were few known fossils of deep-sea life older than about 100 million years.

Fossil discovery in Alps challenges theory that all deep sea animals evolved from shallow water ancestors
The team has thus far found over 2,500 fossils which have been identified as deep sea animal remains because they were clearly sea dwellers that were not light dependant. Also the rock in which they were found was similar to rock on ocean seafloors. Closer analysis of the fossils dates them back approximately 180 million years.
........
The deep sea appeared to have more biodiversity millions of years ago, than more shallow waters, turning conventional thinking on its head.

Current data again says, you are wrong.
So what do you say now?

 

[Deeje]

Then your research is flawed. My research included years of studying and treating diabetes, and I can assure you that there are people whose blood glucose levels cannot be controlled without pharmacotherapy despite maintaining a normal body weight, eating properly, and exercising regularly.

If you read the whole paragraph where you quoted from, you will see that I said something entirely different.

I said....."That is not what I have found in my own research. I am hypoglycemic and can control my sugar levels well with diet alone.
Hyperglycemia can be the result of stress affecting hormones. If it is an ongoing problem, (cause unknown) it is treated the same as type one diabetes.
I believe that diet is implicated in the majority of type two cases however."

In cases of type 2 diabetes, where they cannot regulate blood sugar levels, they are "treated the same as type one diabetes".
Please don't misquote me or twist what I say. Supplying insulin to a diabetic is not rocket science. My grandmother was a brittle diabetic and even she was using insulin 60 years ago. More primitive in the testing but still effective none the less.

You 'studied and treated diabetes' within the framework of the orthodox medical system.....one that became a business....remember?

I never heard of type 2 diabetes until relatively recently.....probably when the fast food industry began feeding the world. It took a while for regular consumer's pancreases to become exhausted but overwork will catch up with all of us sooner or later.

But there is nothing surprising or different here from you. You believe what you believe because you want it to be true.

But so do you....if you have no proof for what you "believe," then you accept the interpretation of scientists because you want to. You atheists are really no different to us....in fact I think it takes more faith to believe what you believe than for the existence of an Intelligent Designer.

You not only don't need evidence, you assiduously turn away from it, such as the evidence in this comment. The testimony of a physician who treated diabetes essentially every working day for decades is meaningless to you because it conflicts with your faith-based choice of what to believe.

What evidence am I denying? I have first hand experience with diabetes and am not convinced that type 2 is anything but a lifestyle disease....can medical science prove me wrong? Today's practice of medicine is not concerned with causes of illness....they just treat it once it manifests with ongoing drug therapy because they have been convinced that this is what 'medicine' should be. You go to the doctor who then writes a prescription for ongoing drug therapy and you may see symptoms reduced but hardly ever eliminated, and then you have to deal with unwanted side-effects that will probably be treated with more drugs......its nothing more than a money-go-round at the expense of the sufferer (in more ways than one).

Sorry, Deeje, but it is you that is living in a bubble. You're completely encased in a way of thinking that permanently sequesters you from evidence and the facts. Your bubble is impenetrable to one armed only with reason and evidence, which puts you at a disadvantage. You have no means of correcting your errors even when the evidence that you are in error is plainly visible to others, and should be to you as well, but instead is filtered out by a faith-based confirmation bias

The fact that the atheists have been so active and vehement on this and other threads where their lack of real evidence is exposed is very telling IMO.
We must be hitting a nerve or else why would you bother? Post after post of what amounts to meaningless accusations and name calling....apparently its all you guys have.

Of course I do. I understand how you think. I don't know everything that you believe, but I understand faith-based thinking - how you process information, and how you decide what is true about the world.

You should understand faith-based thinking because you atheists hold a lot of it yourselves. When you admit that science can prove nothing and that proof is unnecessary for what you "believe", then you have as much of a "belief system" as we do. You just can't admit it. The evidence is meaningless without the interpretation.....who gives interpretation its meaning? Should we be surprised?

What I tried unsuccessfully to convey to you is that empirical adequacy is a more useful concept than proof or truth.

"Empirical adequacy" ....what an interesting expression. What does it mean?

Empirical....."based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic." So what observation or experience does science have for macro-evolution? Science has first hand evidence of adaptation....small changes in members of one taxonomic family producing new varieties of the same creature....but no evidence whatsoever that it is even possible to cross the invisible line between 'micro' and 'macro' in the evolution debate. Goodness! it doesn't even need to be logical!

What about "adequacy"? Adequate is defined as..."satisfactory or acceptable in quality or quantity."

So IOW we have a theory that is impossible to observe or experience, but is satisfactory or acceptable to those who wish to put faith in it. How does science claim to have the upper hand in this issue?

No, you didn't get it.

What I tried unsuccessfully to convey to you is that empirical adequacy is a more useful concept than proof or truth.

I'll let that little gem stand on its own. ...emphasis on the word "useful"......useful to whom? Truth and proof are missing from your theory....and that doesn't bother you?

Was Newton's work on gravitation true or proven? Einstein improved it, so it couldn't be completely "true." Newton's work could not account for the precession of the long axis of mercury's orbit. Einstein's improvements could.

Yet Newton's work was sufficient to allow man to explore space. It works in most applications, and therefore, we keep, use, and rely on his incomplete treatment of gravity. That's what is meant by empirical adequacy. That is the standard for acceptance of an idea, with no interest in proving anything, which is rarely possible or necessary, nor in deciding if we have reached ultimate truth yet, a problematic concept to begin with. Perhaps Einstein' ideas will be improved upon as well some day. It doesn't matter.

Figuring out what the Universe is telling us is a little different to postulating ideas that have no basis in fact. Science assumes that adaptation can go much further than it has ever demonstrated in any testable way. Assumptions form the foundations of everything science believes about evolution.....yet you guys berate ID creationists for having no credible evidence.....open your eyes....its all around us and in us. The Universe and all the complex lifeforms on this planet are not random accidents.

So what did you get out of that? Nothing. You think you've successfully made some kind of case, and are projecting your own indifference to empirical evidence onto me.

If you are worried that I did, then maybe...just maybe, someone will see the the legitimacy of the arguments and do some research outside of the evolutionary science box....and find that there is way less than a mountain of evidence......not even a molehill to show how all life evolved from a single cell that mysteriously popped into existence all those millions of years ago....

I think you're confusing science with speaking for imagined gods.

I agree with @oldbadger actually....the most vocal atheists on these threads seem to be disgruntled ex-believers who didn't find God in life or science.....so they made him disappear. Only unintelligent people who hate science believe in God...isn't that what these threads demonstrate time and again?

Talk about deja vu.....

 

[Subduction Zone]

Weaseling your way out again, I see.

You actually surprised me when you responded to the first one, which was nearly three times longer than this one. Although you probably only bothered with the first few lines.
So what's wrong with this one? The truth in it is a bit too stinging for you to handle? LOL

Don't worry, I don't post them expecting a capable response from you. From your posts I am already aware of your 'capability'.
I post the truth. Whether you respond or not does not matter, but when ever I see your inaccurate post, I will respond with the truth.
That's what I did, so it's clear why you don't want to respond to it.
It follows a logical argument from top to bottom.

On this inaccurate claim...

The deep sea was long thought to be a lifeless desert. Intense research in the last few decades, however, has revealed that it actually supports one of the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth.
There were few known fossils of deep-sea life older than about 100 million years.

Fossil discovery in Alps challenges theory that all deep sea animals evolved from shallow water ancestors
The team has thus far found over 2,500 fossils which have been identified as deep sea animal remains because they were clearly sea dwellers that were not light dependant. Also the rock in which they were found was similar to rock on ocean seafloors. Closer analysis of the fossils dates them back approximately 180 million years.
........
The deep sea appeared to have more biodiversity millions of years ago, than more shallow waters, turning conventional thinking on its head.

Current data again says, you are wrong.
So what do you say now?

Gish Gallops are a way of lying. That is what you did.

As to the article that you did not understand it did not refute my claim one iota. You do not seem to be able to understand that the fossils found in the Alps are a rarity. That actually confirms my claim. Most fossils of deep sea life to down subduction zones. They reason they did not at the Alps.was.because that was a case where two continental plates collided and some deep sea beds were uplifted. Current data agrees with me. An honest person would have admitted his errors instead of clutching at straws.

 

[Subduction Zone]

One more point for @nPeace , I offered to discuss your claims with you if you brought them up properly. Clearly I did not "weasel". That means bring them up one at a time. Not as a Gish Gallop. When one does a gallop as you did it takes only one point refuted to refute the entire post. Are you sure you want to play that way? I will gladly do so next time you feel the need to stretch your legs.

 

[oldbadger]

I'm sure that's what you think. What does atheism or my religious beliefs have to do with this?

Ah ha....... could there be a teeny weeny agenda hiding in there, somewhere?
And you call me the question dodger, or something like that.

Now this is positively fascinating. You asked both Subduction Zone and I if we were experts. ..................................

You make this stuff up as you go along.

I asked if you are a scientist.

You're a scientist, right? (what did/do you do?).

And so we can see that you equate scientist and expert as one, it seems.
Innaccuracy, right there.....

First, who says I can't? I mean, if you're wanting a walk-through of the evidence that supports human-primate common ancestry, we can certainly do that. It'll take a bit of time and likely some work on your part, but it's certainly doable

...but you clearly cannot fill that gap......

Also, who decides what is or isn't "clear and certain"? You? Me? The Jehovah's Witnesses?[]/QUOTE]
Ah, you can decide what you like, but if you come on a thread to 'tell' folks your idea of truth then you can expect to get knocked back, just slightly, as in, 'we don't have a clear link to mankind yet'.

Finally, I'll just note how once again you completely dodged the same question.

There is only one question........ 'Where is the missing link?' .... and you haven't got it in your pocket just now, so you cannot help me much.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Ah ha....... could there be a teeny weeny agenda hiding in there, somewhere?
And you call me the question dodger, or something like that.


You make this stuff up as you go along.

I asked if you are a scientist.

And so we can see that you equate scientist and expert as one, it seems.
Innaccuracy, right there.....


...but you clearly cannot fill that gap......

The "missing link" is a creationist strawman. You have used language yourself that shows that it is a strawman. Did you not ask about the "link between man and ape" or words to that effect?