Suppose evolution was refuted, then what?

[rusra02]

To dismiss Tiktaalik's transitional status as 'nonsense' with such instant confidence indicates that you must have made a close study of its anatomy, and of fish/tetrapod features in general. Do, please, share your expertise and explain to us exactly why the conclusions of professional palaeontologists concerning Tiktaalik are nonsense. And be specific, now - we want the full low-down.

There is an abundance of information on the web regarding this fossil, much of it debunking the 'transitional' status of Tiktaalik, and I invite you to examine it for yourself, as I did.
There has been such a lack of such missing links that some paleontologists have stooped to manufacturing them. (Just google "fake fossils" for examples.)
Tells you something about the state of evolution theory.

 

[rusra02]

Luckily normal people are not as stupid as you think they are. Normal people can read, unlike the kids in your Sunday or Sabbath School class (whichever is appropriate).
In the first paragraph in post number 260, http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/2707846-post260.html, you stated the following: In post 261, http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/2707872-post261.html
You lied. Francis Hitching was not a scientist.

I didn't reference JUST Francis Hitching. Niles Eldridge, a paleontologist and staunch adherent to evolution stated that the fossil record shows: "“little or no evolutionary change accumulates in most species." I have quoted other scientists with similar views. Finally, even though I have quoted scientists, I don't share your view that the only persons qualified to speak about this subject are the scientific "priesthood" anointed by evolutionists as the oracles of evolutionary gospel.

 

[rusra02]

In order to adequately discredit creationism, all that is necessary is to find a major problem with creationism, the global flood theory, or the young earth theory. One of the easiest, simplest ways to discredit the global flood theory, a way that even science novices can understand, involves the law of gravity. According to the law of gravity, if a global flood occurred, lighter fossils and sediments would have to be sorted on top of heavier fossils and sediments. What do we find in the world today? Well, we find a number of examples where heavier fossils and sediments are sorted on top of lighter fossils and sediments, thereby adequately refuting the global flood theory. It is elementary science, my dear Watson. The only options for creationists is to claim that during the global flood, God temporarily changed the law of gravity. Believe it or not, some Christians have claimed that that is what happened. That is an example of the inerrantist Theory of Convenience, meaning using science only as a convenience when it agrees with the Bible. That is intellectually dishonest, and it makes a mockery out of science.
(QUOTE CLIPPED)

To clarify, I do not believe that the Bible teaches the earth was created recently. Genesis 1:1 states that "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This event predates the beginning of the first creative day mentioned in verses 3 and 4, and verse 2 shows the earth was in existence at that time. This means the earth could be billions of years old.
Regarding the Flood, I frankly don't understand your reasoning here. Specifically, you state:
"According to the law of gravity, if a global flood occurred, lighter fossils and sediments would have to be sorted on top of heavier fossils and sediments. What do we find in the world today? Well, we find a number of examples where heavier fossils and sediments are sorted on top of lighter fossils and sediments, thereby adequately refuting the global flood theory."
Can you elaborate on how this refutes the global flood mentioned in the Bible?

 

[rusra02]

I know we all (or most of us) are familiar with the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
wiki

But I think this nonsense has been repeated often enough and been around long enough it should officially be categorised as it’s own fallacy.

The “no new kind” fallacy.

ToE Propagandist: This is a new species of finch.
Reasonable person: But it is still a finch.
ToE Propagandist: This proves evolution.
Reasonable person: But it is still a finch.
ToE Propagandist: Silence! Evolution has spoken.
Reasonable person (to himself): It's still a finch.

 

[rusra02]

We don't need fossils to prove evolution because it has been directly observed by scientists over and over. You still haven't told us how many times anyone has observed creation.

No, what scientists have observed is variation within a group of plants or animals or bacteria, not a changing of one group into another, which is the layman's definition of evolution. Calling it micro-evolution is misleading and deliberately so, I suspect.

 

[gnosticx]

you may not like my answer but....if evolution was completely refuted it woulnt matter (the whole thing was a sham from the start)....it wold still be taught because of the illuminati's agenda.Ive said this before the elite would push (and still do) the evolution theory believe it was an act of sex( they believe love and sex are one) ie THE BIG BANG and they only ever discuss what happened next... thats why this push towards intelligent design is now being considered.... the amount of money poured into fabrication to plug up holes in evolutionary theory... ive had the irrefutable proof so i know what it would take....

 

[Krok]

I didn't reference JUST Francis Hitching. Niles Eldridge, a paleontologist and staunch adherent to evolution stated that the fossil record shows: "“little or no evolutionary change accumulates in most species."

Misleading people again, are you? Your posts did hint that Hitching was a scientist. You lied. Shown exactly where in my previous post. No amount of word salad is going to camouflage your lies.

In any case, there's nothing strange about the Eldridge statement. Fossils don't normally show small changes below species level, the big changes (like speciation) are the one's definitively pointed out in the fossil record. That's always been general knowledge. Small changes are shown in DNA.

Anyway, you refer to the same Niles Eldridge, who also said, from Sample Essay - Evolution: Modern Evolutionary Biology | Seminars on Science:

We know now that most morphological evolution occurs relatively rapidly in conjunction with speciation, and that most speciation events are concentrated into turnover events. Yet Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection remains essentially sound. All we need do is add concepts of isolation, speciation, and extinction; and understand the conservative action of natural selection producing stasis in stable ecological regimes, to grasp the actual context in which natural selection produces evolutionary change in the history of life.

He didn't question the Theory of evolution at all.

I have quoted other scientists with similar views.

Quote-mining is a form of lying, didn't you know that?

 

[camanintx]

No, what scientists have observed is variation within a group of plants or animals or bacteria, not a changing of one group into another, which is the layman's definition of evolution. Calling it micro-evolution is misleading and deliberately so, I suspect.

You keep claiming that evolution cannot occur at the level of "kinds" which you defined as groups of organisms which cannot interbreed (which sounds very much like the scientific definition of species). It is a documented fact that scientists have observed the evolution of groups which cannot interbreed from a single population. If you are going to claim that these groups are still the same "kind" then you will have to produce a definition of "kind" which doesn't rely on the viability of reproduction.

 

[johnhanks]

There is an abundance of information on the web regarding this fossil, much of it debunking the 'transitional' status of Tiktaalik, and I invite you to examine it for yourself, as I did.

Try as I might, I can't find any websites 'debunking' Tiktaalik's transitional status that are not laughable. Perhaps you'd better link me to one that you consider particularly persuasive.

There has been such a lack of such missing links that some paleontologists have stooped to manufacturing them. (Just google "fake fossils" for examples.)
Tells you something about the state of evolution theory.

OK, I googled "fake fossils" and came across abundant references to the faking of fossils by commercial dealers for sale to gullible collectors. As this article makes clear, the faking of fossil evidence by palaeontologists, with the intention to mislead, is more or less limited to Piltdown Man - probably the work of the Christian philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, as a joke on his colleagues that spiralled out of control. And of course, as with straightforward errors such as Nebraska Man and Archaeoraptor, its spurious status was revealed by other palaeontologists - the very profession you are attempting to indict for dishonesty.

 

[Krok]

you may not like my answer but....if evolution was completely refuted it woulnt matter (the whole thing was a sham from the start)....it wold still be taught because of the illuminati's agenda.

All a conspiracy. :shout Those millions of scientists from all over the world have all been conspiring for the last 150 years..Christians and Muslims and atheists and Chinese and Russians and Americans and Germans and Africans and English and Japanese....You mean, you think that all those English and German and American and Japanese and Russian scientists conspired from 1939 to 1945? I'm sure the KGB and CIA, FBI, MI6, Gestapo, etc. were all in on this conspiracy! :camp:

Ive said this before the elite would push (and still do) the evolution theory....

Luckily what you say is of no value at all. People in asylums normally do talk a lot of nonsense. It's what you can demonstrate that is important. So far you've demonstrated nothing.

...believe it was an act of sex ( they believe love and sex are one)....

You love lying, don't you? Even bacteria and viruses, etc. evolve, and most of them don't have sex. Their cells divide. Those bacteria sure love themselves and have sex with themselves, then. Maybe Bacteria see themselves dividing into two as masturbation.

ie THE BIG BANG ...

What, the Universe has sex? . With which other universe? I'd like to watch that! :areyoucra (I'll need lots of lubricant, too!)

...and they only ever discuss what happened next... thats why this push towards intelligent design is now being considered....

Intelligent Design has been demonstrated to be a creationist hoax. ID is not science. All they can do is lie. ID, together with the Flat Earth Society only does pseudo-science, although they pretend to do "science".That's why nearly all scientists rejected Intelligent Design as such. ID has got nothing to do with science, apart from trying to sound sciency. Even more than 99.9% of all Christian scientists agree with this.

...the amount of money poured into fabrication to plug up holes in evolutionary theory... ive had the irrefutable proof so i know what it would take....

Well, I guess that if you can believe that universes have sex, you can believe anything.

 

[Krok]

There is an abundance of information on the web regarding this fossil, much of it debunking the 'transitional' status of Tiktaalik, and I invite you to examine it for yourself, as I did.
There has been such a lack of such missing links that some paleontologists have stooped to manufacturing them. (Just google "fake fossils" for examples.)
Tells you something about the state of evolution theory.

Guess what, I didn't have to "examine" Tiktaalik by looking at information on the web, I examined it by looking at the real thing myself!

As has been pointed out, the only fake that kept paleontologists guessing was Piltdown Man, and it was not a Paleontologist who made the fake, but a Christian. Paleontologists discovered that it was a fake by examining the evidence.

Why are you putting Tiktaalik and "manufacturing" in the same post? Trying to lie again and as always? Don't you realise that lots of people are way more intelligent and way more inquisitive than the sheep in your church (or you)?

 

[Krok]

No, what scientists have observed is variation within a group of plants or animals or bacteria, not a changing of one group into another, which is the layman's definition of evolution. Calling it micro-evolution is misleading and deliberately so, I suspect.

Then the laymen needs to get a basic education before commenting on the subject. I think the layman you refer to here is yourself, but we've seen that you can never tell the truth. Other laymen are more honest than you.
Lots of laymen (apart from you) actually try to always tell the truth!

What's misleading about the word micro-evolution? Definition of the word micro-evolution Macroevolution: Its definition, Philosophy and History

Microevolution refers to any evolutionary change below the level of species, and refers to changes in the frequency within a population or a species of its alleles (alternative genes) and their effects on the form, or phenotype, of organisms that make up that population or species. It can also apply to changes within species that are not genetic.

Very specific. Species involved. Not "groups". Nothing misleading about it.

 

[johnhanks]

... and it was not a Paleontologist who made the fake, but a Christian.

To be fair, Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest who also trained as a palaeontologist. The suggestion that he was an accessory at least to the Piltdown hoax was made by Stephen Jay Gould in his essay 'Piltdown Revisited', part of the collection issued as The Panda's Thumb. Gould took the view that the hoax was not a malicious one intended to derail science, but a joke perpetrated on Teilhard's English colleagues to rub their noses in England's meagre stock of pre-human remains as opposed to France's abundance of such fossils.

 

[rusra02]

Guess what, I didn't have to "examine" Tiktaalik by looking at information on the web, I examined it by looking at the real thing myself!

As has been pointed out, the only fake that kept paleontologists guessing was Piltdown Man, and it was not a Paleontologist who made the fake, but a Christian. Paleontologists discovered that it was a fake by examining the evidence.

Why are you putting Tiktaalik and "manufacturing" in the same post? Trying to lie again and as always? Don't you realise that lots of people are way more intelligent and way more inquisitive than the sheep in your church (or you)?

You falsely accuse me of lying and then have the temerity to suggest that Paleontologists are above faking the fossil evidence.
French daily Le Monde reported the case of a paleontologist in India who “for 20 years . . . apparently deceived his colleagues concerning the origin of fossils that he submitted to them for their appraisal.” It is claimed that the “hijacking” consisted of sending them fossils obtained in the United States, Africa, Czechoslovakia, and the British Isles, saying they had been discovered in the Himalaya Mountains. This scientist published his findings in over 300 articles. The fraud was brought to light by an Australian scientist via the British scientific journal Nature. He wondered ‘how it could be that such a large quantity of doubtful findings remained unchallenged for such a long time.’ w90 2/15 p. 28
In 1999, National Geographic magazine featured an article about a fossil of a feathered creature with a tail like a dinosaur’s. The magazine declared the creature to be “a true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds.” The fossil, however, turned out to be a forgery, a composite of the fossils of two different animals.
g7/07 p.24
(Also turns out NG allegedly was told this fossil was a fake but published the article anyway.)

​

 

[rusra02]

To be fair, Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest who also trained as a palaeontologist. The suggestion that he was an accessory at least to the Piltdown hoax was made by Stephen Jay Gould in his essay 'Piltdown Revisited', part of the collection issued as The Panda's Thumb. Gould took the view that the hoax was not a malicious one intended to derail science, but a joke perpetrated on Teilhard's English colleagues to rub their noses in England's meagre stock of pre-human remains as opposed to France's abundance of such fossils.

Martin A. C. Hinton, a zoologist, has also been implicated in this fake fossil scandal. Regardless of motivation, the fossil was faked and accepted for decades as proof of evolution. And evolutionists claim people who believe in Creation are gullible!

 

[Dan4reason]

I have participated in a number of threads on creation and evolution. One thing that I have noticed is that antievolutionists, such as rusra02, have argued that there is no evidence for evolution. So I want to ask rusra02 something: suppose evolution was completely refuted. Suppose it was totally refuted and you got what you wanted. Suppose that everyone on this forum, including myself, finally was forced to conclude that evolution was not true due to the sheer weight of scientific evidence against it. Let's suppose that the case was so overwhelming as to make it impossible to deny that evolution was false.

Then what? What would Rusra02 like to see happen? Seriously. Even if it would never likely happen, what would Rusra02 like or hope would happen? Convert to creationism? Become Christians? At least declare agnosticism? Suppose that all of this talk about "propaganda" and other such conspiracy-talk was completely true, the facts all true and verifiable, and proven true to the extent that it was impossible to deny. What then?

If evolution was refuted, then creationism would be the most viable option, especially if the refutation of evolution came from the fact that the DNA information could not have evolved. However, I would be open-minded to alternatives.

 

[Dan4reason]

Martin A. C. Hinton, a zoologist, has also been implicated in this fake fossil scandal. Regardless of motivation, the fossil was faked and accepted for decades as proof of evolution. And evolutionists claim people who believe in Creation are gullible!

That fake was perpetrated 99 years ago and found to be a fake 58 years ago. It was found to be a fake with more modern methods of testing bones. So now we know how to discover these kinds of frauds.

Also from its discovery, many scientists expressed scepticism to the fossil noting how subjectively the bones were put together, and could have been put together differently. Many scientists decades before the exposure of the fraud also saw the pitdown man as a strange anomaly because it deviated from the path of evolution shown by other fossils. In 1953 scientists showed that the skull was human, the jaw was orangutan, and the teeth were chimpanzee. The teeth were stained with an iron solution and chromic acid to produce the appearance of age.

The skull falsely showed that a big brain had preceded an omnivorous diet, when other fossils showed the reverse. This forgery shows the fact that science is not perfect, but also demonstrates the the peer review process is a powerful way to root out forgeries and bad ideas from science. It also shows how new technologies will improve the self-correcting nature of science.

We have found thousands of hominid fossils, which all go through the modern peer review process, and many go through rigorous testing. In order to show that all 1,000 are all fakes, you will have to posit a huge scientific conspiracy, in which scientists make up hominid bones from humans and apes, and don't properly check them for forgeries.

Giving us a forgery from 100 years ago, that was crudely done by today's standard, and even had scientists suspicious even then, does not demonstrate an international scientific conspiracy. It shows that scientists care so much about the truth that they will be sceptical about the authenticity of a fossil which was supposed to be evidence for evolution.

 

[Krok]

You falsely accuse me of lying and then have the temerity to suggest that Paleontologists are above faking the fossil evidence.
French daily Le Monde reported the case of a paleontologist in India who “for 20 years . . . apparently deceived his colleagues concerning the origin of fossils that he submitted to them for their appraisal.” It is claimed that the “hijacking” consisted of sending them fossils obtained in the United States, Africa, Czechoslovakia, and the British Isles, saying they had been discovered in the Himalaya Mountains. This scientist published his findings in over 300 articles. The fraud was brought to light by an Australian scientist via the British scientific journal Nature. He wondered ‘how it could be that such a large quantity of doubtful findings remained unchallenged for such a long time.’ w90 2/15 p. 28

Don't believe you. I think you are lying again. Do you have a reference? w90 2/15 p.28 is not a reference. What is w? Can't find any reference to this. Only creationist sources refer to this, but none of them gives a traceable reference.

In 1999, National Geographic magazine featured an article about a fossil of a feathered creature with a tail like a dinosaur’s. The magazine declared the creature to be “a true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds.” The fossil, however, turned out to be a forgery, a composite of the fossils of two different animals.

g7/07 p.24
(Also turns out NG allegedly was told this fossil was a fake but pub[lished the article anyway.)

You're lying again. May I remind you that National Geographic is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but a magazine; the article was not written by a paleontologist and that the fossil, called Archaeoraptor, was forged by a Chinese fossil seller. Paleontologists had nothing to do with it.

Don't you ever stop lying?

 

[painted wolf]

Piltdown was essentially ignored by scientists for most of it's existence as "genuine". No one seriously wrote about it except those involved in it's discovery and a couple of their close friends... and it was only cursory included (usually pointing out how it didn't fit) in other work because they couldn't yet prove what they suspected.

Once the evidence was finally in, it was dropped like a hot potato.

wa:do

 

[Photonic]

Piltdown was essentially ignored by scientists for most of it's existence as "genuine". No one seriously wrote about it except those involved in it's discovery and a couple of their close friends... and it was only cursory included (usually pointing out how it didn't fit) in other work because they couldn't yet prove what they suspected.

Once the evidence was finally in, it was dropped like a hot potato.

wa:do

Which is how science works. Lesson over.