News you won't see in controlled mainstream media.

"Most people don't want the truth. They're looking for answers to confirm their prejudices."

The rest are willing to accept reason and logic to recognize that evolution is ridiculous.

Strange, I thought you were talking about the creationists at the beginning there. You'll find a number of questions in threads here that seem to be continually ignored, dodged or waved away by creationists; they appear to be unable to actually address them with evidence.

Speaking of evidence, would you like to explain here, with some of your own (keeping in mind that brevity is the sould of wit), why you're claiming that evolution is ridiculous? I could come here and say something like "I know the sun goes round the earth" -- and because I said so, does that mean I'm right?

I'm also a little hesitant to pursue this with you at the moment to be honest, Russ -- are you sure you want the aggro of having your beliefs questioned while you are not feeling well?

Linda, as you have heard me say many times before, my disbelieve in evolution has nothing to do with my belief in the integrity of the Bible (do you remember me saying this to you in the past?), although you continually attempt to imply that it does.

Both my belief in the integrity of the Bible and my understanding of the mythology of evolution (and the reason it is promoted like a religion) are both based on evidence.

As I've said, whether or not I believed in the integrity of the Bible, I would abhorrently ashamed to call myself an evolutionist because I have looked beyond the rhetoric and junk science.

If I was still at the point with amalgam fillings that you are currently at with your faith in evolution, then I would still have my amalgams filings in. You have to learn to see past the human rhetoric and junk science.

I have seen the sorrowful links that you've provided as "evidence" for evolution. They are or nearly always dissertations by evolutionary-religious fanatics stating that so-and-so is true and that it is evidenced by such-and-such, without providing any evidence.

Linda, the empty dissertations of people are not evidences.

I'm sorry to say that no matter how much you wish to believe it, rocks and water do not turn into highly-complex, symmetrical, self-reproducing, machines over time. In just the same way, the moon didn't happen to fall into orbit with the Earth at just the right distance being just the right size to match the perceived diameter of the sun—without intelligence.

The evolutionary-religion fanaticism of some will never remove logic and reason from the minds of those who clearly see that evolutionists are playing roulette for the sake of their own emotional gratification.


[color:"brown"]"For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom."[/color]

—Aldous Huxley, "Confessions of a Professed Atheist," Report: Perspective on the News, Vol. 3, June 1966, p. 19 [grandson of evolutionist Thomas Huxley, Darwin's closest friend and promoter, and brother of evolutionist Julian Huxley. Aldous Huxley was one of the most influential liberal writers of the 20th century].

No offense Russ, but when there's a pile of poop laying in the middle of the floor it needs to be cleaned up so that people aren't stepping in it everyday.

Generally the owner of the establishment takes care of things like that instead of expecting his patrons to clean their shoes all the time and provide diapers for the unattended infants that crawl in. Unless of course his intention is to attract patrons that eat poop and roll in it and don't mind the maggots. In which case, those who prefer not to eat poop and put up with the resulting infestation and contagion will dine elsewhere.

You are what you eat.

Nothing but bald assertions here, i.e. "I'm right and you're wrong." If you disagree with some of my links, Russ, then why not join those threads and explain your objections, giving your own evidence? Science is evidence-based, which is why evidence is asked for when claims are made in these threads. I'm not sure what the purpose is of this one unless it's to distract from the issues under discussion elsewhere.

Why don't I?

Because a word to the wise is sufficient.

I occasionally provide nuggets of wisdom for those who recognize it as such. For those who don't, I can't help, neither will I persuade.

Why won't I persuade?

Because this kind of person is not interested in evidence. They are interested in finding answers that support their prejudices.

You've heard me say "know yourself" many times.

I say this often because until we know ourselves, we don't know how easy it is for us to delude ourselves into accepting (believing) false ideas simply because they are appealing to our emotions, and if we don't know this, then we are quite guaranteed to gain a faith in false ideas without realizing they are false—self delusion.

Meanwhile others, who do know themselves, easily avoid this trap because they are aware of it, that is, they know themselves.

Another fascinating attribute of self delusion is that you don't really need solid evidence to support it. Depending on a person's "perception of power", you need only one of two things to enter into this kind of self delusion and hence accept false ideas:

(1) ideas are sufficiently complex so as to be "scientific-sounding" so that they "feel" like evidence, or

(2) the belief ("feeling") that a sufficient number of others believe it, so that it (the belief) feels "safe".

Evolution offers both of these, and hence, quickly draws into itself, a myriad of people who know themselves less well than did Aldous Huxley.

The second point is easy to disarm because there are many well-documented majority-held ideas in history that turned out to be false; So there really isn't safety in numbers, particularly when you are dealing with intellectual ideas.

The first point is difficult to disarm because the victim of the false idea is unable to grasp the complexity of the alleged "evidence" and therefore is unable to see the invalidity of it (in fact, they don't want to see the invalidity of it). This then provides the naive person (a person who does not know themself) the perfect excuse to believe the false idea without looking foolish. They avoid looking foolish because the majority of their peers are also unable to grasp the complexity of the alleged "evidence" and therefore are unable to see the invalidity of it, and therefore the idea becomes potentially mainstream, no matter how invalid it is. When the idea becomes mainstream, the naive person feels protected by the sheer numbers who share the false idea.

This is how it works, but there are other attributes of this continuing process that are clearly evident in you.

People who don't know themselves often don't quit at a faith in evolution, they continue on to propose the likewise blind acceptance of other eccentric religious ideas, ideas such as those you've proposed on this very system.

Coming from my point of experience, I look at your path and your faith-based reasoning and see not only where it originated, but where it is going, and this is easy to see because I know things about you that you don't know about yourself, as do the ones who incessantly promote the evolution-myth.

You see Linda, there is a good reason to get to know yourself, for only then will you understand the potential you have for self-delusion, that is, accepting ideas even though you don't understand them, yet accepting them for the same purpose as Aldous Huxley.

The difference with Aldous was that—unlike most evolutionists today—he knew himself well enough to be honest about his motives.


[color:"brown"]"Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the weaknesses and extrapolations that the theoreticians put forward or lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, [color:"blue"]purposely overlook reality[/color] and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and falsity of their beliefs."[/color]

—Pierre-Paul de Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms (1977), p. 8.

In other words, you're saying the majority isn't always right. No, it isn't. Sometimes it is. You need to look at the evidence -- I still don't see any for anything here.

When you're finished dodging the issues here and want to join a conversation in one of the other threads, you're more than welcome. There's all sorts of things to choose from, ranging from varves and tree rings to hominid fossils. You could also have a conversation with RAZD in your Grand Canyon thread and explain why the information he's presented there is nothing but delusions.

It's all about fundamentals.

Simply put, all matter in the universe works according to a set of rules. These rules are simple but they have no awareness of time. For this reason, the second law of thermodynamics opposes evolution.

I know this will not make sense to you at first glance, so let me explain.

There are rules that allow for the binding of elements to create molecules. These same rules enable the binding of molecules to form other molecules. These rules are all based on proximity forces—that is— forces that have a distance-dependency in the physical world. For this reason, molecules don't have an effect on other molecules that are a sufficient distance away.

This limitation—physical distance—is the reason there are two separate and distinct disciplines called chemistry and biology. This limitation is also the reason (really, one of many reasons) that molecules don't have the ability to form complex things without external intelligence; Because they don't know what's going on somewhere else. For this reason, they cannot say, "Oh hey, we are going to form an optic nerve here so we're gonna need an eye over there and then a brain over here, and then we're going to have to connect them all together". There is no coordination (if you will) between molecules that are outside the proximity stated by the existing rules. These rules only allow reactions within a certain proximity and then, only according to existing rules.

This is one of the many brick walls preventing evolution from occurring.

It's really a simple matter to see this concept, but I am well aware that many people get distracted away from the fundamentals by the incessant promotion of a certain science that is not really science at all.

As an example, and as I've stated before, it's exactly the same as global warming. We know the primary cause of global warming has nothing to do with CO2 (see water vapor), but the globalist agenda (profit and power) calls for the conversion away from fossil fuels to hydrogen power. The great irony is that hydrogen combustion puts large amounts of water vapor in the air which is much more conducive to creating global warming (many hundreds of times, in fact) than CO2 is, but the inconvenient movie left that part out.

It's also the same a colloidal silver. This substance gets nothing but bad press when in truth, it could solve some of the world's fundamental problems with no new problems created. Nevertheless, colloidal silver is detrimental to the globalist agenda so you won't hear the truth, which is that I and hundreds-of-thousands are receiving tremendous benefits from using it. No, in fact, there are laws in place in the United States that strictly control what you can even say about it; The U.K. as well, and most other countries. But again, it's not about truth, it's about an agenda related to profit and power.

Finally, the reformation empowered the common man when they were finally literate enough to realize that they didn't need the papacy to "interpret" the Bible for them. No, the common people (you and me—well, at least me <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> ) realized that rights were God-given and that we should have them regardless of what any government wants, as the Bible so clearly states.

Well, this Truth is also very inconvenient for the globalists because power in the hands of the middle class depletes power in their hands. For this reason, there has been an assault on the Bible for well over 100 years, and as people have become more and more Biblically illiterate, their rights have diminished accordingly.

The evolution myth is one of the leading weapons used to "prove the Bible wrong" and to keep people from even reading the Book that liberated them in the first place. The evolution myth is critical in order for the globalists to complete their horrible and devastating agenda, and this is the real reason for the incessant promotion of evolution through junk science, false discoveries, faked evidence, misreported news, deceptive textbooks, and flat out lies.

As I've said over and over on this forum Linda, evolution is a myth just as fluoride is a myth just as thimerosal is a myth just as the cause of global warming is a myth.

Unfortunately, many are so caught up defending the lie because they believe it liberates them, they haven't taken the time to actually discover the prophetic Book that has been the answer to the problem all along, the true liberator, as evidence by the early success of the United States.

There isn't too much time left Linda. This world is going to become a very scary place before too long, and this will occur because of those heros of yours who promote evolution while stripping you of your God-given rights for their own profit and power. It's time to stand up like a woman and to do some real research and to face the facts of life and the laws of physics.

Rocks and water do not conspire together to become highly-complex, self-aware, self-reproducing, symmetrical machines. Evolution is a myth.


[color:"brown"]"The problem of the origin of species has not advanced in the last 150 years. One hundred and fifty years have already passed during which it has been said that the evolution of the species is a fact but, without giving real proofs of it and without even a principle of explaining it. During the last one hundred and fifty years of research that has been carried out along this line [in order to prove the theory], there has been no discovery of anything. It is simply a repetition in different ways of what Darwin said in 1859. This lack of results is unforgivable in a day when molecular biology has really opened the veil covering the mystery of reproduction and heredity...[/color]

[color:"brown"]"Finally, there is only one attitude which is possible as I have just shown: It consists in affirming that intelligence comes before life. Many people will say this is not science, it is philosophy. The only thing I am interested in is fact, and this conclusion comes out of an analysis and observation of the facts."[/color]

—G. Salet, Hasard et Certitude: Le Transformisme devant la Biologie Actuelle (1973), p. 331.


The Bar Code and the Mark of the Beast

Loose Change (video)

Our Solor System

Biological Warfare: Experiments On the American People

The New Order of Barbarians

Return of the Nephilim, Chuck Missler

The Dangers of Evolution, Hovind

The Declaration of Independence

Evolution Disproved in 50 Arguments

FORUM THREAD: Chemtrail Inundation in Jamestown

Forum Welcome Page: Vote Fraud

Forum Post (Morgellons): Biological Warfare On the American People, Dr. Garth Nicolson

Hello Russ,

Thanks for a very amusing thread. Of course people don't want to hear about truths that contradict their beliefs. That is why Cognitive Dissonance exists as a easily observed behavior pattern. And then there is the irony factor. For instance this:

Has nothing to do with evolution, but some fantasy about evolution that you carry around with you.

If you want to talk about the truth, you need to be willing to put aside your misconceptions. Somehow I doubt you are willing to do so.

Enjoy.

Unfortunately, you are wildly mistaken.

The process of rocks and water turning into humans is exactly what is being taught as evolution and has been since long before I was in school. It is in textbooks, pop-science magazines, museums, and even the Smithsonian.

The *new* idea you promote as "evolution" is a vastly watered-down version of the same myth that feels more comfortable to the emotions because it sounds more "scientific". It is, in fact, more marketable in this new age of information.

I noticed that the true challenge relating to the universe working according to rules (etc.) has been (once again) completely ignored while you once again preach your *new* definition of evolution.

Cognitive dissonance, eh?

Russ Tanner wrote:


Uhm, no offense but are you sure you know what cognitive dissonance means?

The one thing I'm wondering about is this. The supposed complete geologic column. To the evolutionist, the layers are allegedly in "time order".

If this column existed, how does one then explain the "missing links" existing at the sametime (or around the sametime) as the creatures they supposedly evolved into (e.g. dinosaur to bird).

If this is not a problem for evolution, (as they now try and claim it's not), what does this leave for the ordered and complete geologic column? The geologic column (they claim exists) is, to them, proof showing the order that all these creatures evolved in. The layers they've been found in, all giving us proof that it happened in the very order they have described. Simple to complex, one above the other in order of evolution.

Yet when they are faced with these supposed "earlier" forms showing existence around the sametime as the animals they were supposed to have evolved into, (or their further advanced pals), evolution suddenly becomes "flexible" rather than "ordered". Disordered if anything. Or that evolution didn't need to happen to all things, at the sametime, or at the same rate, OR didn't happen in ways we think. Do they simply change their theory according to the circumstances? It seems it's not so much us they are contradicting, but themselves and eachother. If they claim one thing, how do they then make up for the other?

They tried very hard to explain their way out of fossils showing little to no signs of change by many different ways as we've seen, but no matter which way or explanation they think they have.....they seemed instead to be contradicting and in fact disproving the ordered geologic column in the process. Either not realising it, or not banking on anybody picking up on it?

There are two kinds of dating. Radiometric and carbon dating. They are not the basis of dating. The geological column is the basis of dating. Unfortunately, the geologic column is not found complete or anywhere NEAR complete in any part of the world. Well known anomalies confine the geological column scientifically to the level of a fairy story for grown ups.

Russ Tanner wrote:


One of the many? Would you mind listing more for us? Because the rest of your post seems to have gotten distracted with topics like colloidal silver, global warming and mercury amalgams. Even if all the conspiracy theories you've mentioned above are true, that does not validate evolution as one among them. For that matter, even if certain powers are using evolution for harmful acts and exploitation, that does not invalidate evolution -- because if it does, then all the evil things done in the Christian name throughout the centuries would mean, according to your own logic, that Christianity is also invalidated. I know, I know -- you'll tell me that those people aren't real Christians. Well what's stopping me from using the same argument and saying those people aren't real evolutionists?

These argument strategies you use work both ways. Case in point: citing that people believe what they want to believe. Very few people will choose to accept evolution out of desire. After all, what's so desirable about it? Religion, on the other hand, offers salvation, hope and fantasy. Evolution offers none of these things any more than biology or geometry does. So if anyone is believing what they believe out of desire, I'm sorry but it's we religious folk. That being said, evolution and religion are not incompatible. You have two posters as an example here, at least: myself and LinearAq, who has been quoted with saying (s)he's a Christian even.

Let's stick to the subject of falsifying and/or proving evolution and leave the parallels out of it, if you please. You have a pretty interesting point regarding molecules -- I'm interested to see how the other posters respond to that one -- but if there are so many other examples, as you've said, why waste time posting about other conspiracy theories when you can get straight to the point and show us these other examples?

Pwcca is now highly knowledgeable on these two VERY important words....why? cause the dictionary told him <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/graduation.gif" alt="" />

Diction cop <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/chiefwiggum.jpg" alt="" /> is on duty, keep your wits about you.

Are you saying that the chemistry at work in our bodies is different than the chemistry that makes iron rust or gasoline burn? How is it different?

Does the chemistry in our bodies require some kind of intelligence in order to operate? Is your brain controlling the conversion of fat to sugar then to energy in the cells of your body?

What about in an amoeba? Is its brain...wait...uh..nerves..no...something, controlling the chemical changes in its cell?

You mention the great distance between molecules preventing their organization into biological structures. Wouldn't that great distance also prevent their organization into non-biological structures? If so, wouldn't that mean we couldn't have chemicals like saltpeter, sodium bicarbonate, iron oxide...etc...etc? Could you go through this distance problem in more detail so I can understand how it allows non-organic structures to be naturally formed but prevents organic structures from being naturally formed?

This would help immensely in my understanding of your fundamentals.

Thank you Russ, for providing more evidence for your thesis.

The "*new*" idea I am promoting is also called "descent with modification" ... which if you will recall is the terminology that Darwin used to describe his theory of changes to life. The only thing "*new*" is that we have added to our knowledge of how descent with modification occurs. Curiously this IS how science progresses.

What is shown in museums, even the Smithsonian, is the natural history of life on earth. This natural history is the evidence of past life. It is the evidence that says that

• 4.55 billion years ago the earth formed from star dust born of novaic death of - even then - old stars ...
• 3.5 billion years ago there was unicellular life on earth, simple cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), in the oldest rocks that preserve fossils of sediments that we have currently found ...
• 2 billion years ago this simple unicellular life is accompanied for the first time by more complex life, eukaryotes, but which still only records life in the seas, and none on land ...
• at about 1 billion years ago we find the first tentative evidence of multicellular life ...
• and in the Devonian period for the first time we see fossil evidence of life crawling onto land, such as Tiktaalik rosea at 375 million years ago ...
• etc

It is not the theory or evolution that says this is what happened, rather this is the natural history of what actually happened.

Whether the theory of evolution is true or false, this natural history still exists, it is real, it is the hard evidence of objective reality that any theory - religious, scientific or fantasy - must explain. So far the only theory that comes close to this is the theory of evolution. The only competition in the minds of some people is the theory that all the evidence is lies and that something else made it happen, something for which there is an absolute dearth of evidence, and it magically made it happen JUST AS IF evolution occurred.

Ignoring the evidence of objective reality is what cognitive dissonance is all about Russ. If you try hard enough you can convince yourself the world is flat: all you need to do is ignore all the inconvenient evidence that shows that this is a false concept. Today anyone that claimed the earth was flat would be called delusional: being delusional and cognitive dissonance are linked:
A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence is the mark of cognitive dissonance as well.

Once again you equate evolution with something else. When you change from the term evolution as defined in life science to describe the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation (descent with modification), to the term evolution as defined in astronomy to describe the way stars etc form, then you are really using two different terms, and you are equivocating between the definitions. This is a logical fallacy. You are also avoiding the issue of what evolution really is.

Evolution in biology is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation (descent with modification), it is that simple. Also simple is the concept that evolution not in biology is not in biology -- it is a different concept. Conflating them is called equivocation, a logical fallacy

The theory of evolution is that this, and the inevitable division of populations into non-gene-mixing daughter populations, is enough to explain the natural history of life on earth -- the history that goes back to simpler and simpler life forms, and the history that happened, somewhere along the line, some 3 million years ago, developed into a branch of apes we call hominids. Confusing what has happened with what must happen is called a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.

Evolution is not the same as the natural history of life, as that would still exist if evolution were false, and it is this evidence that the creationist avoids like the plague. It is reality, and it won't go away.

Avoidance behavior is also typical of cognitive dissonance.

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

What ever happened to the rest of Darwinism? If the new version doesn't mention the rest, one might wonder if it's been abandoned (provided one were so gullible). One might also conclude that the rest is too weak, and the evopusher lacks confidence. But in any case, the trimmed down, 'streamlined', repackaged version differs from the old.
What is shown in museums, even the Smithsonian, is the natural history of life on earth. This natural history is the evidence of past life. It is the evidence that says that

• 4.55 billion years ago the earth formed from star dust born of novaic death of - even then - old stars ...
• 3.5 billion years ago there was unicellular life on earth, simple cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), in the oldest rocks that preserve fossils of sediments that we have currently found ...
• 2 billion years ago this simple unicellular life is accompanied for the first time by more complex life, eukaryotes, but which still only records life in the seas, and none on land ...
• at about 1 billion years ago we find the first tentative evidence of multicellular life ...
• and in the Devonian period for the first time we see fossil evidence of life crawling onto land, such as Tiktaalik rosea at 375 million years ago ...
• etc

It is not the theory or evolution that says this is what happened, rather this is the natural history of what actually happened.[/quote]I'm not aware of any evidence that says any such thing. If such evidence existed, it should have been presented. All you give is misinterpretations of evidence; the evidence itself can only reflect reality. When properly interpreted, evidence supports the history we read in the bible.
Utter nonsense. "JUST AS IF evolution occurred" wouldn't be a record of stasis in every kind of creature & plant that ever lived. "JUST AS IF evolution occurred" would include all the transitional forms Darwin claimed must have lived & died.

What we actually have, even if one imagines unlimited timespans, is a record of lifeforms without precursors and without any of them changing into a new kind of lifeform. Yet we have people imagining such changes took place in spite of a vast amount of evidence.

Yes it is. But if you understood the term properly, rather than attempting to hijack it and use it as propaganda, you'd know that it takes place at an unconscious level.

Thus the willful attempts evolutionists make to ignore evidence are properly called self-deception.
Trying requires a conscious effort. Such is no part of cognitive dissonance.

So when creationists use the term 'evolution', they must always be equivocating. Only evolutionists are allowed to define and use the term.

It was the evolutionist who came up with 'stellar evolution', 'chemical evolution', and all the others. Yet in order to defend one form, the evolutionist must switch definitions continually, and accuse everyone else of equivocating. Anyone buy that?

Oh? So the rest of Darwinism then must be utterly superfluous and useless to the biologist. Perhaps you'd care to amend your statement before we agree on something here.

Things change. This has always been known. Why should the type of changes we've always observed be defined as 'evolution'. That word already has several meanings, does it not? Why add to confusion?

Yep. Now we see why: in order to facilitate logical fallacies.

Was that an example? That bit about "inevitable division"?

At any rate, theories are supposed to be falsifiable. Your claim that you can imagine an explanation which features evolution is one I don't see as falsifiable. A theory is supposed to be testable as well, but all you propose to test is the capacity to imagine explanations involving evolution. 'Unimpressive' is too mild a term for this.

I find it noteworthy that evolutionism has a long, consistent history of hiding from falsifiability and attempting to evade the burden of proof.
On the contrary, creationists have been requesting evidence for quite some time in this forum. Perhaps you're confused. We'd like to see evidence - not more fairy tales.

Neither more sorry propaganda, nor more bogus 'theories', nor more equivocation.

Thank you PWCCA!

I think it's a pretty interesting point too. Indeed, I think it's compelling.



That was simply a symbolic way of asking, "Do you feel uncomfortable?"




On the contrary, evolution is very desirable because it "liberates" people from an oppressive religious influence; An influence that often offers fear and laws and guilt, etc.

Evolution is also appealing to the powerful because it is "mob rule", and in that kind of a society, if you're powerful, you rule because you control the mob (through media)—it is, in fact, Rome—survival of the fittest; A desirable place to be if you're powerful.

Religion (remembering that it is a man-made system of lies used to comfort the soul and spread a system of morality and is often used to create a center of power) is useless but can be appealing because of the emotional "perks" it can offer—in fact—it must offer to draw people to itself.

Nevertheless, evolution is indeed appealing to those who view themselves as powerful, and the world is full of those.


[color:"brown"]"For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom."[/color]

—Aldous Huxley, "Confessions of a Professed Atheist," Report: Perspective on the News, Vol. 3, June 1966, p. 19 [grandson of evolutionist Thomas Huxley, Darwin's closest friend and promoter, and brother of evolutionist Julian Huxley. Aldous Huxley was one of the most influential liberal writers of the 20th century].

(In this context, "the philosophy of meaninglessness" is referring to evolution.)


Where there is confusion is in the fact that the information offered by the Bible is not a religion. It is a historical document with ample evidence to support this assertion. The Book is numerologically perfect (so far as I've studied) and prophetically (foretelling the future) astounding.

The Bible puts fourth difficult truths that reveal how the world will eventually be completely controlled by evil near the time of the second coming of Christ, and that time is now. To come to an understanding of this time of evil (referred to in the Bible as the time of "Jacob's trouble") is extremely scary, and most people cannot handle it, or rather, don't want to even think about it. They are, in fact, in denial.

For this reason (the scariness of the truth of the time we live in), people want to avoid (kill) the book that points this out to them (...the messenger). It's just to scary for them. This is why I often say that Heaven is not for cowards.


[color:"brown"]The person who conquers will inherit these things. I will be his God, and he will be my son. But people who are cowardly, unfaithful, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars will find themselves in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. This is the second death."[/color]

—Revelation 21:7-8


The Bible reveals a global conspiracy to us, but just as people are too scared to come to meetings to work out solutions to the fact that the world currently hangs on the brink of global economic and military disaster, they reject the messenger (the Bible). This, of course, is simple human denial, and is stupid (I'm not trying to be insulting...we've all been there).

So, in summary, some people rebel because they think (wrongly) that they've gotten a bigger, better deal going to the other side. Others prefer to go into denial. Both are disgusting positions yet forgivable by God if we change our minds and decide to face reality.

Finally, evolution is nothing more than an attempt to answer the question that everyone would ask if an answer had not already been shoved down their throats all their lives, and that is: "Where did we come from? How did all of this highly-complex order come to be?"

If you can prevent people from even asking this question, then they will:

(1) never stick their nose in a Bible (in which case they just may discover that the Bible predicts the future and accurately describes the time we live in), and

(2) never have the opportunity to discover that the very people who incessantly promote evolution are doing it for the express reason of preventing common people from discovering the Book that would otherwise cause the common people to overthrow the tyranny we live under (just like it did in the past). Yes, the Book says "Here are the evil ones creating wars and killing for profit" while the evil ones say, "Um, there's no need to look in that stupid book. You already have the answers you need."


So, although it's more complicated than it first appears, conspiracy theory is perfectly at home in a discussion about evolution because evolution is a conspiracy.


The problem with denial is...

[color:"brown"]"Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."[/color]

—Matthew 10:32-33


[color:"brown"]"The second beast forces all people-important and unimportant, rich and poor, free and slaves-to be marked on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that no one may buy or sell unless he has the mark, which is the beast's name or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: Let the person who has understanding figure out the number of the beast, because it is the number of a person. Its number is 666."[/color]

—Revelation 13:16-18


The Bar Code and the Mark of the Beast


http://youtube.com/watch?v=rZ74G4lU84I
(listen to the words)

This thread is doing exactly what it set out to do: distracting.

Science is evidence-based. We've been discussing evidence in other threads, such as varves and homind fossils. RAZD presented evidence here for certain fossils that are found in certain layers of rock and what the dates are for those layers of rock. In another thread he gave evidence for why the Grand Canyon is not an example of catastrophic flooding. LinearAQ asked some questions about the scientific implications of Russ' version of chemistry presented here.

The answers we get? The Bible is literally true. Evolution is a conspiracy and scientists are liars. We've heard these 100 times over here, they're easy to say. Interesting how all talk of any actual evidence flies out the window. And then some people even claim there is no evidence at all. I'd really like to take up the discussion of the hominid fossils again; no creationist here has been willing to comment on them.

I also have a recommendation to make: 30 minutes of a podcast about the scientific method. it is very accessible as it starts from scratch and explains what it is, how it helps us to learn about the world, what a theory is, how theories grow and change, how scientists have to admit they're wrong when the evidence points to this being the case, and how the evidence-based approach of science differs from faith. This is a weekly show I listen to called AstronomyCast, hosted by an amateur and a professional astronomer. It touches on a lot of things that have been discussed at various points on this forum:

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/06/02/podcast-the-scientific-method/

Thanks CTD, for providing more evidence for cognitive dissonance by creationists.

Interesting that I note the actual theory as proposed by Darwin - descent with modification - and show how it is the same as what is now used - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation ...

... and all you can do is wave your hands and talk about a mysterious "rest" -- without even hinting at what this mythical "rest" is composed of. You imply something is missing but don't say what it is.

The fact is that you can't produce any such "rest" of the theory proposed by Darwin, and that what you are engaged in is self delusion, likely due to cognitive dissonance. The fact is that the theory of evolution today is little different from the theory of evolution as originally proposed by Darwin, other than to include more information on the actual mechanisms by which descent with modification occurs.

Darwin spent a lot of time reviewing the evidence of the natural history of life on earth, fossil and geological, and from the fossil evidence to what we have learned from animal husbandry and the breeding of animals by selecting for desirable (to humans) traits from the ones that occur naturally.

Darwin also spent some time theorizing on some of the possible mechanisms by which descent with modification occurred, some of which was (gasp) wrong (the heredity of acquired traits) and some of which has proven fairly accurate, predicting in effect the field of genetics.

Darwin also spent some time discussing existing (at the time) problems with the theory due to the limited (at the time) evidence from the natural history of life on earth.

But if you can show that he had some other even more major theory than the descent with modification theory, then please, by all means, present it -- along with the chapter for reference.

For instance this quote is from the section " CHAPTER XV RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION":

(color used for emPHAsis).

Conclusion: THE theory that Darwin proposed was descent with modification. The main mechanisms for the theory are variation - the preponderance of variation in all forms of life - and natural selection - the differential ability of organisms to survive and breed in different ecologies.

Here is an on-line version of "Origin of Species" for your ready use and perusal:

http://www.zoo.uib.no/classics/darwin/origin.chap15.html

In particular if you can provide a reference where Darwin says that rocks must necessarily turn into people, do by all means please provide this valuable reference for what Russ claims. Good hunting.

The fact that you - personally - are not aware of such evidence has no bearing on whether it exists or not. All it can show is that you are either ignorant of the evidence, have not really looked for it, or are busy pretending to yourself that it doesn't exist for any number of reasons ... one of which involves cognitive dissonance.

This is an example of just such ignorance, as it is rather obviously false to anyone that looks for the evidence. No two individuals are the same, no two fossils are the same, and layer by layer there is evidence of change in forms.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/foram_article3.html

And you can read more about forams here:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/Wetmore.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraminifera

(Note that foraminifera are a Phylum not a speces. Humans are in the phylum of Chordata - animals with a notochord and they include vertebrates, which include primates, which include apes, which include humans.)

Then there is the evidence of horse evolution:

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/Stratmap1.htm

Fossils that show plenty of changes while still being in the horse family.

Or there is Pelycodus:

http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Pelycodus_gradual.htm

See the diagram to see what they are talking about.

Neither foraminifera fossils, the Horse fossils, nor the pelycodus fossils show "stasis" so your assertions is shown to be false.

Yes, when ever they conflate more than one scientific use of the term with another that is totally unrelated. Astronomers also talk about the birth of stars, but nobody images that this is from stars having sex, getting pregnant and then a "mommy" star giving birth to a "baby" star.

Actually you are correct: only scientists get to define the terms they use and the conditions for using those terms within the science. This is science develops the terminology specific to the science.

Certainly astronomers do not get to define how the term "evolution" (or "birth") is used in biology. Most certainly people who don't have a clue about science don't get to redefine the scientific terminology -- they get to learn it and learn to apply it properly or they only demonstrate their ignorance of the scientific terminology and the proper scientific usage of the terminology.

If you were really interested in seeing the evidence you would have found it, you wouldn't need me to list just some of the pervasive evidence of evolution that easily show your assertions to be false. What I see here is a pervasive pattern of ignoring evidence that is presented -- such as about the real changes that have occurred in coelacanths -- in order to avoid confronting the evidence of objective reality: engaging in cognitive dissonance, not debate.

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Unfortunately Linear, you misunderstood my point on several fronts. Let me try and clear it up.



No. Exactly the opposite. The rules are the same.




It is clear that intelligence already exists in the rules. Once the rules exist, stating that the reactions they incur require intelligence is a matter of semantics.

By the way, intelligence in the designs/definitions of these rules is especially necessary if you believe that these rules were created (whoops!) ...exist in such a way that they caused matter to come together into highly-complex symmetrical self-reproducing forms. This would take a whole lot of forethought, and my question to evolutionists is:

"Who had this forethought?"



Wow. My point has really become mangled here.

What I said was that these reactions are spatially-dependent, in other words, they cannot occur over great distances (only when they are sufficiently close to each other) and that they have no awareness of what is happening a sufficient (small) distance from themselves. Therefore, there cannot be a sense of coordination between some reactions happening over here and some happening over there, which is—of course—required for the formation of symmetry, not to mention coordinated-complexity.

Instead, there must be an Intelligence external to the rulesets themselves that assembled the components—having an in-depth knowledge of the existing rules—so that the final (highly-complex, symmetrical, self-reproducing) machine can be spatially coordinated, that is, that an organ (for example) would work in conjunction with other remote organs without having any knowledge or understanding of each other (think chemical messengers, nerves, etc.). (Organs are not intelligent but they are intelligently designed.)

It sounds like you have my point quite backwards, but I hope this helps.


Let me elaborate just a little to shed some additional light here.

It is clear that our bodies, which are in fact machines, are constructed in a way that isolates complexity (rulesets) into layered, progressive units.

For example, before we could have computers, we had to have transistors.

The construction of a transistor is based on rules involving physics. For example, the MOS-FET transistor (the basis for most transistors in your computer) utilize the physical laws that enable current flow through a semiconductor material to be controlled by an electric field.

So, this not-too complex device was invented based on the discovery of these rulesets relating to current and electric fields.

Now, for a person to use a transistor, they don't have to know anything about the physics involved inside a transistor. They only have to look at the published charts (bias curves, etc.) that show the behavior of the transistor (its ruleset) to know how it will react under any set of conditions. This fact enables specialization in society and allows devices to be built that are more complex than before the transistor existed because the complexity of the transistor has been contained within a single unit. This containment is called "encapsulation".

This discovery and utilization of the rules enabling the development of the transistor cleared the way for the eventual construction of integrated circuits which are basically a bunch of electronic components (usually mostly transistors) on a single piece of silicone.

Early integrated circuits were, for example, the 7400 series, which were simple logic gates. These gates have a ruleset all their own which is published by their manufacturers. The rulesets they publish for these gates are called "truth tables".

So, now someone with no knowledge of transistor physics and with no knowledge of the bias curves of transistors can use these gates to do useful things. In fact, the useful things these gates are used for making today are microprocessors.

Companies who make microprocessors publish an "instruction set" which tells the user of the microprocessor exactly how it will behave under a certain set of conditions...its ruleset (each individual rule is called an "opcode"). So now, a person has no need to know anything about how to build a transistor, or how to use a transistor based on its bias curves, or even how to even use a logic gate in order to use a microprocessor. They simple have to look at the published instruction set (ruleset) for the device.

This demonstrates the use and value of encapsulation, and the interesting thing about this design philosophy is that the human body is designed in just this way. Examples of objects that operate on the principles of encapsulated levels of complexity are cells and organs.

A very nice thing about encapsulated complexity based rulesets is that it enables other complex units within the machine to work with each other efficiently, but it does require (and this is critical) that both units be designed so that their rulesets are compatible with each other ("ruleset interdependency"). This is no small feat (think signaling, messaging, connectivity, nerves, messenger hormones, etc.) because it's much like getting computers to speak to each other, which in the case of the Internet, took DARPA (some of the world's best minds) years to develop.

Understanding this concept of ruleset interdependency is essential for seeing one of the many fallacies of evolution, and furthermore, this interdependency is existent at each level of encapsulated complexity.

[color:"brown"]In summary, it takes a lot of intelligence to design complex things, but nature does not contain this intelligence, it only utilizes the intelligence already contained in its design by virtue of its design. There is a big difference between the design of a ruleset and the utilization of a ruleset, yet many become confused on this point and give nature all the credit.[/color]


I hope this is helpful.

Distracting/dodging, whatever else you want to come up with to accuse creationists, as you constantly do (plus the ongoing accusals of us calling all scientists liars) probably won't lend anymore credence to your arguments and character than before, but keep trying if you think it might help your case. If anybody has been on here long enough, they won't be too fooled by your commentary games.

Science is evidence based, which is why evolution should not be preached in a science room. It is a theory tossed around and made out to be responsible for the origins of our universe, because the evolutionist is looking for an explanation to explain our beginnings and existence by ousting design and having us believe that it all arrived by chance. Not taking into account (or wanting to) the complexity, vastness and uniqueness, laws and balance of the entire universe, purpose, let alone the DNA molecule.

None of you have yet been able to prove or fully explain simplicity becoming complexity, except by unproven ideas and jumping into the middle and quibbling over fossils and dates. Either closing gaps between apes and men, or widening gaps between fossils that are almost identical to the same today, by exaggerating any differences or even size. Or spouting that scales/skin can become feathers (even though feathers are more related to hair and actually grow OUT OF skin). Ignoring all the evidence that shows the impossibility of such a process occuring, pictures included. Not realising how utterly ridiculous and insulting to intelligence it is in the first place. I guess if you want to believe something bad enough, it'll be a reality either way.

The tricks never cease do they linda? You want us to be related to apes, so the gap closes and similarities are exaggerated. Then when faced with literally identical fossils of the past to the ones of today, (e.g. plants, other animals, non ape examples etc), the gaps suddenly widen and are exaggerated....how funny you won't do this with the ape to man scenario <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Your next idea is to then accusing people of calling all scientists liars if they dare to challenge such ideas. All scientists, I repeat are NOT evolutionists (can you get that through your head Linda?). Or do you need that repeated to you for the umpteenth time? The many hoaxes of the past that were allowed to continue for far too long is clear evidence that the very fact they had these guys who studied them actually for sometime approved of them as a "missing link", is once again proof that they either cannot do their job properly or "won't" or shouldn't be trusted as readily! They have been and no doubt are, easily taken in by the WISHES for these things to be genuine and build their case around it and present it at the time as a fact or a probable missing link. If you can build your ape-man case around the tooth of a pig, then you'll get away with just about anything else. As they don't have much else, they're create one instead and then tell us the scenario that took place.

What makes you think that the ongoing bias and assumptions no longer continue and that now it's all factual? Considering the failure of them in the past to realise (or admit) to such hoaxes/exaggerations. The only one you keep bringing up is Kent Hovind's idea of the sun burning by combustion and this is your one big statement against creation, yet forgetting the MYRIAD of hoaxes/exaggerations/wrong assumptions from the 'science community" (or should I say the evolution side). That you conveniently forget or side step. Mistakes are one thing, but presenting something as a scientific fact to the public and keeping it going, even after it's been proven a fallacy is dishonest and deceptive and you know it. Gosh Linda, do you think maybe these evolutionists might just deserve to be challenged? Or maybe you think we should all sit back and swallow whatever they tell us?


I'll tell you what we do get Linda, particularly from you 100 times on here (if you want to be completely silly about it), is big exaggerated claims for LOADS AND LOADS of evidence and you guys supplying nothing more than bias assumptions and then expecting that to be swallowed as fact. No matter how disimilar or how similar fossils maybe, you have no evidence whatsoever, that one evolved into the other. That any are a product of so-called evolution. Those are simply claims Linda. The geologic column exists in the textbooks, did you not see my post on here or something? Or did you conveniently miss it? Should I accuse you of dodging too? How can you possibly claim order in geologic column and then try and and explain away why the fossils shown on here and dated (according to the evolutationary time frame) have contradicted that order completely? Showing many existing around the sametime period (you know the ones, the ones they supposedly evolved into).

Coming up with "we dated this fossil" or "we dated this layer" and this is what we came up with...... That's it. Dating the fossils by the rocks/layers, or the rocks/layers by the fossils and so it goes on. The geologic column being presented as complete and as a fact, completely contradicting the other statements just confuses people further, which I guess in the end, is the entire point. Confuse everybody and hope they won't catch on.

Oh and you want to talk about dodging/distracting? Last time you were cornered by sosick, you didn't handle it too well. Rather than present the evidence you had been spouting about, you instead accused sosick in an attempt to try and distract her away from the fact you didn't know how to answer. Then she asked you again and you took a very long break. Suddenly, out of the blue, on pops RAZD (who had been off this forum for a long long time). Interesting that. With new found confidence, you bounced back! RAZD came to the rescue (providing further distraction for you towards thread). what a relief that was to you.

You'll deny this of course, but dish out silly accusations and you'll receive the same back. Though this one was so blatantly obvious it was funny <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Isn't it time you cut the cr*p and stupid accusations on here? Ever consider that some of us get tired too? Need a break? Or do not feel the obligation to answer each and every post? I notice it's ok for any of you to do that, but not ok for us.

There's plenty more to Darwinism, and everyone knows this. To carry on so is neither cute nor funny at this point. Darwin wrote more than one or two silly sentences. He wrote silly books full of nonsense, in which he explained all the things one needs to imagine if one is to buy his story.

Can't I? Why not? You linked to a copy of one of his books yourself. So what makes you think anyone's ignorant enough to take your word that Darwinism consists of nothing more than your diluted version?

"Little different"? A relative term, I suppose. And a red herring. What you've presented in this thread and in the one you started for the purpose of offering version after version is neither Darwinism nor Neodarwinism. It's your own attempt to follow the example of the priests at talkdeceptions like Dr. Theobald. It's just a con game to present hollow jibberish and confuse the unsuspecting.

Now if you can defend any form of Darwinism, why do you need to disguise it?

Actually, he spent a great deal more time attempting to rewrite history. Had he studied it, he might have easily learned how mistaken his atheist pals were.

Oh? Have you evidence of any such prediction? Genetics is quite contrary to what Darwin proposed. Genetics says you get what you inherit - that's it. You may inherit things from your great grandfather, or even further back, but whatever you have is what one of your ancestors had.

Now you equivocate again. You use "descent with modification" as a substitute title for Darwinian evolution, knowing full well it's not a substitute for the content of the mythology. You think that's clever? Well in that case, explain his "theory of the preservation of favored races". That'll make 3 "theories" if you want to count things that way.
How about for instance that's chapter 15. That means there were 14 chapters leading up to it. And that's not his only book on evolutionism either.

You were so thrilled to find the select phrase you sought, you seemed to have overlooked something rather important. Perhaps I can help with a little bold text
It is absolutely essential, according to Darwin, that life undergo perpetual struggle. He said so time after time, and complained in letters that people weren't getting the point, in spite of his efforts to make this clear.

Pay close attention. He says "this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions"... Without constant struggle (and by this he means death of all but the "most fit") Darwin himself contends evolution won't happen.

For all your adoration, you continually overlook what he actually said. He also claimed "parent groups" would be driven to extinction by more "highly evolved" replacements, as I pointed out not so long ago. But no evolutionist cares. You're too busy assuming evolution has happened to look at it even half as critically as Darwin did. ...And you dare to speak of cognitive dissonance? Ha!

Now do any of your watered-down versions mention this struggle? Please direct me to the post in which you even acknowledge this issue indirectly. It does not exist, as my memory informs me.

Yes, it has been called that. It has been called other things too, as I mentioned. But titles aren't contents. If you want to discuss Darwin's idea, that's fine. If you want to define it, you need to define all of it - not just name it. Same for the modern versions.

That's a later idea & you know it. But it's what evolutionists teach, so it's fair game. You think you get to choose what we can pay attention to, and what we must miss. This is not how discussions proceed.

We recognize there are different sects among evolutionists. It would have been fair to claim you don't buy the "rocks-to-man" scenario. But to claim it does not exist is false. It exists in more than one form. There's even a group claiming crystals were the basis for bringing about life. Crystals are rocks, are they not?

I'll say it again, since you choose to respond selectively.

I'm not aware of any evidence that says any such thing. If such evidence existed, it should have been presented. All you give is misinterpretations of evidence; the evidence itself can only reflect reality. When properly interpreted, evidence supports the history we read in the bible.

But the "change" we see is not consistent with your claims. This has been your problem for weeks now. Do we need to cut & paste whole pages from other threads?

Oh? So evidence consists of evolutionists' conclusions now? That's not how the word is properly used in English. Indeed, it's a pretty fundamental part of reasoning, no matter what language one speaks. Assumptions, evidence, and conclusions are things one needs to keep in their respective categories.

If this were a fresh discussion, I would take it as a sign of weakness that you present conclusions as evidence. But this discussion's more toward the stale end of the spectrum, so it's looking more like frustration. Does it not trouble you in the least that none of the evolutionists here are able to present actual evidence & make an honest argument based thereupon?

Does it not trouble you further that so many of your own "experts" acknowledge the lack of evidence and other critical weaknesses in the doctrines you seek to spread?

There is no scientific use of the term. That's like saying there's a scientific use of the term leprechaun!

So what term shall we non-believers use when discussing your god?

Huh? Since when is 'evolution' used in biology as anything other than a term to indicate submission to / membership in the cult? It has no bearing on any of the actual science involved.

You stray from the point. If you don't permit creationists to employ the name of your god, you need to provide a term for us to use when we discuss your god. Or we shall have no practical discussion at all.

Oh, we're supposed to find it ourselves. You're just here to distract us, eh?

Now I know it took about 3 - 5 years for the X Club to get their political monopoly in gear; but that's what, 1865 at the latest? That's quite a while evolutionists have had abundant financial backing & other resources with which to search for evidence. They too, expected it to be easily discovered; but so far nobody's found anything. Small wonder you'd send me off on a wild goose chase.

Now that's just a plain misrepresentation. I did not ignore the different sizes of coelacanths. You ignored the fact that they're fish! You said it was like comparing a 6' man to an 18' man. I even emailed the address you suggested, to see what was behind Glen Morton's other claim. You could have done the emailing yourself, and I don't doubt you would have if you thought it was worth wasting time; but you knew it wasn't.

Now I'm thinking I won't go looking for your evidence. If it were plentiful and easily found, somebody somewhere would be able to find it. It's particularly unreasonable to expect me to find this evidence while you claim I don't know what evolution is. From the looks of your definitions, you'd have a good many people unsure of what it is. I'm just supposed to trust you, eh? How could I begin to trust anyone who's afraid to be honest about the religion they're pushing?

But before your next lecture, you might want to make up your own mind as to what you think evolution is all about. On a sibling thread, you sayBut this is bogus. Who would claim it impossible for you to imagine an explanation for anything? That's no test of the premise. We all know you can look at anything and claim it evolved - big deal!

When I say there's a lot more to Darwinism & evolutionism than your summary, you say "The fact is that you can't produce any such "rest" of the theory proposed by Darwin". But it looks like your opinion varies considerably.Care to answer your own question? What purpose do you think is served?

And you give no indication that you'll ever find a formulation that suits you. Here's yet another RAZD evolution "theory".

Anyone care for more?There's no indication that you ever intend to stop talking about your "real definition", or your quest to find it.

Oh! Did I say "it"?Will you ever find your answer? It's like Goldielocks: one's too short, one's too long, one's too... whatever
In this one, you actually seem to appreciate your Goldilockshood
By now I'm hoping you can understand a few things. If you can't figure out what the core beliefs of your religion consist of, that's your problem - not ours. Until you do figure this out, don't come telling me a bunch of nonsense like you've got one little phrase that sums it up sufficiently & try to play like anyone who doesn't fall down & worship your prose is ignorant or suffering from some disorder.

So long as you fail to acknowledge what you're trying to promote, you'll never achieve your goal. Evolutionism is a system of replacing valid history with imagined events. Its purpose it to account for origins in a manner which excludes God. As a replacement for recorded history, evolutionism has a considerable burden of proof; and any attempt to dodge this issue or obfuscate will prove unsatisfactory to you, yourself. If you want to shed this obsession, you need to try a different approach.

Actually, it is not all that clear. You and I might think that it is self-evident that there is a creator, but that is far from showing this is so.

No. The question is still "Was there an intelligence?" You have not supported your contention that the existence of physical properties in the universe necessitates the existence of a "being" that created those properties. However, since I believe that a creator exists, I am willing to concede that point.
My admission that I believe in a creator quickly refutes your point that "evolutionists" have to answer your forethought question. My answer is God had the forethought. Good enough for you?

If intelligent manipulation is required for these biological systems (plants, people...etc) to be constructed, where in the construction is that intelligence applied?

You say that molecules cannot construct symmetry by themselves. Does this mean that God puts his hand into the construction and growth of each individual organism otherwise it would fail to grow and function since it's molecules don't "know" how to construct themselves?

Perhaps the intelligence is only applied in the design of the DNA that produces the organism. So God produced the DNA for each species of organism that ever existed, then let the chemical and physical rules take over from there.

Maybe God only produced the DNA for one organism, a long time ago, and then allowed the rules that He put into place to cause that organism's offspring to differ from the original and thus produce various species that we see living today and in the fossil record.

At which point did God stop designing and let the rules He set in place take things to the end that He desired? More importantly what evidence do you have that your choice really is the point where He stopped.

Maybe God only put a few simple properties (rules) into place that would through time result in life forming and evolving into the life forms we see today. This is a real possibility since the rules seem to be enough to make this work even though you believe that life is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

(BTW: That might be a good thread on its own....how is the formation of replicating molecules a violation of the second law?)



(and into the electronic analogy of layered rule sets and complexity)

Now I realize that an analogy can breakdown if scrutinized too literally. However, if we apply this analogy directly to the problem of life on this planet, we run into some confusing issues.

Each step in the analogy requires an intelligent hand in producing the next level of complexity. Are you saying that each change between generations of lifeforms is caused by God's hand? Wouldn't that mean each mutation is the result of God reaching down an monkeying with the genome of a particular species? Or does your analogy not really go that far?

To briefly add a comment to this, it has been popular since the age of computers began, to compare the human body to a machine. I'm not sure how well that really fits. It's quite a materialistic attitude and enables many scientists, for example, to equate the brain with a computer, or a processor: the mind IS the brain. Personally I feel that this is too reductionistic an idea about consciousness.

When I think back to what life on earth was probably like a few billion years ago, I think of those single-celled organisms -- blue-green algae and the like. At some point there evolved a kind of symbiotic relationship between some of them: co-operating with each other, to the benefit of each organism, would have saved energy and most probably been naturally selected for. This way of life could have progressed until multicellular organisms appeared. Again, it conserves energy if the cells within the organism are specialised, each carrying out a series of specific tasks, intead of each individual carrying out every single one of the processes necessary for its own life.

Multicellular organisms, including us, can be seen as the ultimate in symbiotic relationships. Even consciousness itself can be seen as a development that somehow emerges from this collection of living things, in order to facilitate the symbiosis. And why can that consciousness not regulate communication between different parts of our bodies, at all levels, from the individual cells to the entire body? I think there's a great deal to be learned about this.

So yes, I think it's entirely possible that this kind of complexity could have emerged from single-celled organisms in the past. It's a matter of finding an analogy that fits the reality we see and experience. And of course there's the physical evidence in the fossil record.

Hi Bex,



And yet it is what's happening here, because there isn't an iota of evidence under discussion in your post. If you believe that creationism is true and evolution is false, then you are not going to build a strong case by saying what amounts to "I don't believe it happened" and "I don't personally find the evidence convincing." This is not how you falsify a theory. Evolution and an old earth easily explain things like varves and transitional fossils, several examples of which you have been shown. How does creationism explain them?



It is a theory because it explains what we observe. Every time a new fossil is found or a rock layer is dated, evolution and "old earth" are tested. What's more, I would have thought that the presence here of LinearAQ, who is both a devout Christian and an evolutionist, shows that theism and acceptance of an old earth and evolution don't have to be a problem. What's more, he says that he's fine with the idea that God did design everything, and that evolution could well be part of his design. Why not?



This is what I am referring to when I talk about dismissing the evidence. You were presented with a series of hominid skulls which are classically transitional in nature. You were also presented with 3 different ways in which several of them had been dated. Instead of explaining how and why those skulls must be delineated as ape or human, and instead of explaining why the dating methods are wrong, you are here in this thread saying we were "quibbling." The fact of the matter is that you had nothing to say about the evidence there, and want to say here that it either doesn't exist or that it's just an inconvenient "quibble." A good scientist doesn't overturn a theory by ignoring bits he or she doesn't like. You can't just sweep evidence of objective reality under the rug if you are honestly in pusuit of the truth.



They're welcome to challenge, but they need to do it in a scientifically rigorous way. Much of the creationist "evidence" presented here has been from people who either know little about science, or who actually have scientific degrees and are still getting their scientific facts and methodology wrong even though they should know better. Which raises the question of what their motives are and whether they do indeed know better.



. . . that scientists occasionally make mistakes. Nebraska Man was never hailed as an important find and quickly sank without a trace. Even when Piltdown Man was gaining acceptance, there were still dissenting voices who recognised it for what it was. These are two examples and creationists seldom fail to bring them up because there aren't many, if any, others to refer to. This is another example of the creationist reasoning that takes one fact and generalises it to fit the entire rest of the body of evidence. You can see it when one of them finds one example of catastrophic flooding in one locality and says, "This proves there was a worldwide flood." You never know, there might just be a few million layers of distinctive varves in the vicinity too.



Did you look at the links here from RAZD? Horse evolution and foraminifera spring to mind. Look at the evidence there yourself. If anyone ever wanted to see examples of transitional fossils right the way through the evolution of a species, there they are. Please explain: a) How this is "bias and assumptions" and b) If you do not consider these to be transitional, then what is your definition of transitional? Or are you a creationist who, no matter what you are shown, will say "I need to see what's in between", ad infinitum, because you never will actually accept that a fossil can be transitional no matter how much evidence there is that this is the case?



This has also been explained to you. If the daughter population is isolated from the parent population, then this can easily be the case. If the daughter population fills a slightly different ecological niche than the parent population, then this can easily be the case. You might be interested in looking at ring species, which I have linked to before; they are an interesting example of gradual isolation in action.



I really don't know where this bizarre idea came from. Should we go back and discuss the hominid fossils which you and CTD refused to comment on at first? They're unusually complete specimens. Almost the entire skeleton of Turkana boy was found.



You presumably haven't heard of paleomagnetic dating, and you didn't pay attention to the posts in which I discussed how two hominid fossils were dated. We're hearing this pre-programmed PRATT instead.



In all seriousness, I have never felt cornered here about anything. If you feel I did not address something she said, please remind me of what it was and I will do so. I stopped my chelating agents at that point and was very ill. I thought you'd know what that was like and I didn't expect to be accused of bluffing about it here. But I'd be very keen to set the record straight on anything I might have missed.

By the way, I did not ask RAZD to come back. You don't know what's been happening with him either. We all have things that happen in our lives apart from talking on this forum. LinearAQ was up front enough to share some with us -- if he hadn't I expect I'd be accused of asking him to come back as well. You won't be surprised to hear that I am glad they are here, though, because their areas of expertise are obviously different from mine. I read the links they post here and I enjoy learning from them.



What I would like is for us to remember that this is a forum where we freely choose to participate. You've been shown that theism and evolution can co-exist but if you choose to believe that accepting an old earth and evolution means death to everything in your world, then I think that needs to be kept in mind while talking here. It's bound to be upsetting if you equate your faith with the literal truth of the Bible and perceive this as being constantly under attack. In fact if this is the case for anyone here, I would suggest that this isn't the place for you, because it will be an unpleasant experience; I am here because I enjoy an intellectual debate, not because I want to see anyone suffer.

I don't expect you to answer every post, Bex. What I do expect is that for someone who wants creationism accepted as science, evidence will be provided for this, and also that evidence for evolution will be addressed and shown to be wrong in a scientifically rigorous way. If the evidence from the natural world presented here is consistently ignored or waved away, then it doesn't say much for the scientific nature of creationism.

If you recall the previous posts on this forum on various threads and were honest about it, you'd remember how much has been presented from our side that you have obviously overlooked and disregarded. Therefore, I've concluded that it won't matter how much more is given or what is presented or repeated, we should expect the same thing - denials and time wasting and deliberate misrepresentation of the opposition.

Blocking your eyes and ears and screaming "it happened anyway", irrespective of what's been presented or finding excuses to explain why reality itself is failing to show what we'd expect had evolution been a fact is typical.

Their way of proving evolution is to claim people have not been able to falsify it. And this is their claim to science? That is shameful. But not surprising considering the lack of data/substance they have to present. I'll pretend that aliens made this planet Linda, can you falsify that? Seriously, I challenge you to falsify it!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mike.png" alt="" /> <-- guys like him. If you can't perhaps that'll give rights to teach it in a science classroom.

Evolution is completely falsified by the total lack (non existence) of transitional forms. You can make anything you want a transitional form if you want it to be I guess. Imagine it is. If it's similar enough, you can pretend it's an earlier transitional form, on it's way into evolving into what we see today. Forgetting that the so-called transitional forms have been dated around the sametime as their later counterparts. Yet you've tried to explain this as being "ok" too. You ignored my geologic column statements on here too that totally contradict this as well. Possibly because you're not sure yet how to get yourself out of that one.

I referred to a famous letter on this forum in another thread. It was from Colin Patterson, evolutionist director of the British Museum which contains one of the world's largest fossil collections (7 million plus). He admitted they did not have ONE such water tight case for any transitional forms. For this indiscreet admission, he was severely reprimanded by his evolutionist peers for letting the cat out of the bag. You must have ignored this also. This also lends even further credence to an interview that I also presented on here (that had been televised) with an evolutionary biologist making some very embarrassing and highly concerning admissions about the way they MUST present evolution to the public, regardless of what they find in order to keep their position (and of course financial support). The fact you could no longer claim "quote mining", due to the fact it was an interview and televised may have been why you failed to comment.



Normally I would not like to use such accusations, but since you feel free to accuse creationists of "dodge" tactics, I gave you a taste of it. Unpleasant isnt it Linda? I too have sickness, I too need to take breaks from this forum, but because of your "dodge" accusations, I felt obliged to get on here and try to tackle it, even though I am unwell, am in the process of doing a caregiving course and now have a head cold. Must I reveal my private details on here to give an excuse as to why I'm not answering everything OR answering within a specific time period? I don't think I or anybody should have to do that. I've said this before too but you guys continue to press us, yet feel free to have needed breaks yourself. It's absolutely hypocritical and tiring.



We do not see any such theory in action today, let alone should assume it occured in the past. They test everything from what they already believe happened. It's just a belief Linda, something you want to believe in order to tell yourself that it all came from time and chance.

Devout Christian eh? Is this an attempt to side-track me Linda? And you talk about distraction? Let me explain something to you. A christian is someone that not only accepts the bible being the infallible word of God, but has accepted Christ as being their own personal Lord and Savior by admitting they are a sinner and are in need of the saving blood of Christ. A Christian does not turn around and make out the bible is full of story tales or say "why should Christ be God, why cannot God be someone else". Or constantly look for ways of disproving it happened or hopes it will be disproven in favour of their evolution theory. Not only does a non Christian or Agnostic doubt, they also create and spread doubt and dissent in others and will be held accountable for their personal contribution towards this. A true Christian has accepted God at His word. Even Jesus has referred back to the old testament as being true. A true Christian does not go against the word of God, water it down, or twist it or scandalise others. Either they accept it and Christ as their Lord and savior, or they do not. Christ said "either you are for Me or you are against Me". The bible totally contradicts evolution, and I have been THROUGH this before on here of why they are polar opposites. It's been repeated and now it's happening again as though it was never discussed. What am I to do Linda? Go back through each and every thread and try and find it all again? God made man in His own image. The image of man was not an animal, not an ape like creature, but God Himself. God is not an animal, nor the image of one. God made every other animal (including the apes and monkeys, Giraffs, etc as well as the first human beings, co-existing). God made all things complete and instructed them to be fruitful and multiply (just as they were). Complete and perfect, not the degraded and sicker versions of today. The bible does not preach simple becoming complex, it preaches the opposite. Things wear down, age and die and have done since the original fall/sin. All things in the beginning were made perfect. God did not create death and suffering in the beginning, death and suffering were the result of sin, original sin and came after. Jesus' death is to do with original sin, all sin. The sins of our first parents. This is COMPLETELY opposite to evolution. I cannot believe I even have to repeat some of this here. This is why a person can get completely worn down by you guys. I am certain that this is the aim here. Wear people down, pretend previous discussions never took place, bring old matters back up, make false accusations etc etc. I will tell you again Linda, someone that compromises their faith to fit in with evolution is fooling themselves and insulting the creator. I have listed somewhere to show the total contradictions and how both cannot be taken onboard at once if you are to be true to yourself and your belief (should it be evolution or creation). I guess this too has drifted into oblivion on here and let's pretend it never took place. You just enjoy wasting my time and bringing the matter up again. I really hope I do not have to go through this again.



A good or even honest scientist would never have presented hoaxes to the public in the first place, nor would they have been fooled by them if they had really were searching for truth or allowed them to go on for any length of time. A good scientist would not allow any such hoaxes/misrepresentations to continue in any textbooks. And when you say "scientist" looks like i have to repeat my statements to you, not all scientists are evolutionists. Do you have some kind of mental block or something with this? Or do you just have a condescending attitude to any scientist that has a creation viewpoint? including the rest of us?

When you find a skeleton/skull, there is no way of knowing exactly what it looked like when it was clothed in muscle and skin, how it lived, or whether it was covered in hair or what kind of hair if you do not have anything more to go by. We can take some guesses based on the frame, but you'll find differing representations of the same skeleton (amongst evolutionists presentations). One will aperise it, the other will humanise it and you cannot always tell exactly which it belongs to. There are no doubt many extinct animals and humans out there and many misinterpretations and bias in studying and presenting these findings to the public. If you are working from a set belief, this will profoundly affect your observations, studies and presentation.

I can look at monkeys and apes today and tell you now that out of the animal kingdom, they would have to be the closest in similarity to a human being, but the differences are also marked and obvious to anybody observing them, but the evolutionist plays them down deliberately. Either exaggerating similarities and ignoring or playing down the differences. Finding a skeleton/skull and finding human-like characteristics or ape-like characteristics will very much depend on those studying it. Take a look at the contradictory pictures here Linda and it should give you an example of how difficult it is to know exactly what they looked like or how they lived. But it's constructed for us by the bias evolutionist who paints a picture of the unseen past, based on what they want to believe and want us to accept also.

Taken from: http://www.evolutiondeceit.com/chapter8.php. I encourage people to read this link and keep reading the information that follows. I have presented some of it here with pictures, but it goes into it all much more if you wish to find out more.

DECEPTIVE FOSSIL INTERPRETATIONS OF EVOLUTIONISTS

Since fossils are usually fragmented and incomplete, any conjecture based on them is likely to be completely speculative. As a matter of fact, the reconstructions (drawings or models) made by the evolutionists based on fossil remains are prepared speculatively precisely to validate the evolutionary thesis. David R. Pilbeam, an eminent anthropologist from Harvard, stresses this fact when he says: "At least in paleoanthropology, data are still so sparse that theory heavily influences interpretations. Theories have, in the past, clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data".61 Since people are highly affected by visual information, these reconstructions best serve the purpose of evolutionists, which is to convince people that these reconstructed creatures really existed in the past.[/b]

IMAGINARY AND DECEPTIVE DRAWINGS:

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In pictures and reconstructions, evolutionists deliberately give shape to features that do not actually leave any fossil traces, such as the structure of the nose and lips, the shape of the hair, the form of the eyebrows, and other bodily hair so as to support evolution. They also prepare detailed pictures depicting these imaginary creatures walking with their families, hunting, or in other instances of their daily lives. However, these drawings are all figments of the imagination and have no counterpart in the fossil record.

At this point, we have to highlight one particular point: Reconstructions based on bone remains can only reveal the most general characteristics of the creature, since the really distinctive morphological features of any animal are soft tissues which quickly vanish after death. Therefore, due to the speculative nature of the interpretation of the soft tissues, the reconstructed drawings or models become totally dependent on the imagination of the person producing them. Earnst A. Hooten from Harvard University explains the situation like this:

To attempt to restore the soft parts is an even more hazardous undertaking. The lips, the eyes, the ears, and the nasal tip leave no clues on the underlying bony parts. You can with equal facility model on a Neanderthaloid skull the features of a chimpanzee or the lineaments of a philosopher. These alleged restorations of ancient types of man have very little if any scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public… So put not your trust in reconstructions.62

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As a matter of fact, evolutionists invent such "preposterous stories" that they even ascribe different faces to the same skull. For example, the three different reconstructed drawings made for the fossil named Australopithecus robustus (Zinjanthropus), are a famous example of such forgery.

Evolutionists can misinterpret or come up with completely different ideas and pictures. You accuse creationists of doing becoming confused with skull tops, or fragmented skulls, or uncertain of which is which based on little overall completeness, but evolutionists are the ones who misinterpret and misrepresent findings based upon their theory and bias. Dishonest practices. Some human beings have a pronounced jaw more than others too, does not make them closer to any ape-like ancestor! Nor does it make them less advanced in evolution. Or do you think it might Linda? Any skull similar to either can be confusing when you do not see the actual features more clearly (more as they would be in life). They are often fragmented or incomplete as well, which does not help.

What I got from the pictures RAZD sent on the thread was certain skulls are completely missing the bone to the bridge of the nose. They do not have one. Take a look at the monkeys and apes and you'll find the same! Surprise surprise. Though, if you look around, there are some people who also can have a much flatter bridge than others, but all human beings have a bridge, however small or prominant it maybe. The monkeys are completely lacking one. The area above the mouth, especially in monkeys/apes slopes outwards also on the side view of those skulls, which you might have missed on the front view. You need a proper and complete view of the skull and skeleton and that is very hard when you still do not have a clear indication of how it looked when it was fully formed/covered. I took a look at the link you provided and I find that the skulls are not all completely formed and the full skeletons appear to be missing. It is much easier to judge a fully formed skeleton without parts missing, that bits of this and that or skulls that have bits missing to make any kind of judgement call in this area. We also cannot get much indication of their external features/appearance as it would have been more in life either. It is difficult to judge exactly which is which when you don't have the full picture.

Either way, you cannot simply fit it into an evolution scenario simply because you desire it. We cannot know that one became the other Linda. We can only dig up the present and then assume the unseen unobserved past.

Linda, pretend you've not seen an elephant before and you find an elephants skull, do you think you'd know it had a trunk? Or would you assume the nose it had and present it as a fact? Because that's exactly what your superiors do and have done.

Here's more of the same: (comes from same site as above).

PILTDOWN MAN: AN ORANG-UTAN JAW AND A HUMAN SKULL!

The story of a hoax : This forgery was revealed to the public in 1953. The skull belonged to a 500-year-old man, and the jaw bone belonged to a recently deceased ape! The teeth had been specially arranged in a particular way and added to the jaw, and the molar surfaces were filed in order to resemble those of a man. Then all these pieces were stained with potassium dichromate to give them an old appearance. These stains began to disappear when dipped in acid.

The fossils are unearthed by Charles Dawson and given to Sir Arthur Smith Woodward
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Pieces are reconstructed to form the famous skull.
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Based on the reconstructed skull, various drawings and skulptures are made, numerous articles and commentaries are written. The original skull is demonstrated in the British Museum.
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After 40 years of its discovery, the Piltdown fossil is shown to be a hoax by a group of researchers
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NEBRASKA MAN: A SINGLE PIG TOOTH

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The picture was drawn on the basis of a single tooth and it was published in the Illustrated London News magazine on July 24, 1922. However, the evolutionists were extremely disappointed when it was revealed that this tooth belonged neither to an ape-like creature nor to a man, but rather to an extinct pig species.

A SINGLE JAWBONE AS A SPARK OF INSPIRATION

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The first Ramapithecus fossil found: a missing jaw composed of two parts. (on the right). The evolutionists daringly pictured Ramapithecus, his family and the environment they lived in, by relying only on these jawbones.

By outlining the links in the chain as "australopithecines > Homo habilis > Homo erectus > Homo sapiens", the evolutionists imply that each of these types is the ancestor of the next. However, recent findings by paleoanthropologists have revealed that australopithecines, Homo habilis and Homo erectus existed in different parts of the world at the same time. Moreover, some of those humans classified as Homo erectus probably lived up until very recent times. In an article titled "Latest Homo erectus of Java: Potential Contemporaneity with Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia", it was reported in the journal Science that Homo erectus fossils found in Java had "mean ages of 27 ± 2 to 53.3 ± 4 thousand years ago" and this "raise[s] the possibility that H. erectus overlapped in time with anatomically modern humans (H. sapiens) in Southeast Asia"

HOMO HABILIS: THE APE THAT WAS PRESENTED AS HUMAN

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The first fossil found in Ethiopia, Hadar, which is to be supposed to belong to Australopithecus aferensis species: AL 288-1 or "Lucy". For a long time, evolutionists struggled to prove that Lucy could walk upright; but the latest research has definitely established that this animal was an ordinary ape with a bent stride.
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Above is seen the skull of Australopithecus aferensis AL 444-2 fossil, and below is the skull of a contemporary ape. The obvious similarity verifies that A. aferensis is an ordinary ape species without any "human-like" features.

HOMO HABILIS: ANOTHER EXTINCT APE

For a long time, evolutionists argued that the creatures they called Homo habilis could walk upright. They thought that they had found a link stretching from ape to man. Yet, the new Homo habilis fossils Tim White unearthed in 1986 and named as OH 62 disproved this assertion. These fossil fragments showed that Homo habilis had long arms and short legs just like contemporary apes. This fossil put an end to the assertion proposing that Homo habilis was a bipedal being able to walk upright. In truth, Homo habilis was nothing but another ape species.

"OH 7 Homo habilis" seen on the down left has been the fossil which best defined the mandibular features of the Homo habilis species. This mandible fossil has big incisory teeth. Its molar teeth are small. The shape of the mandible is square. All these qualities make this mandible look very similar to that of today's apes. In other words, Homo habilis' mandible once more confirms that this being is actually an ape.

HOMO ERECTUS AND THEREAFTER: REAL HUMAN BEINGS

Homo erectus: An Ancient Human Race
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Homo erectus means "upright man". All the fossils included in this species belong to particular human races. Since most of the Homo erectus fossils do not have a common characteristic, it is quite hard to define these men according to their skulls. This is the reason why different evolutionist researchers have made various classifications and designations. Top picture is seen a skull which was found in Koobi Fora, Africa in 1975 which may generally define Homo erectus. Second is a skull, Homo ergaster KNM-ER 3733, which has the obscurities in question.

The cranial capacities of all these diverse Homo erectus fossils surge between 900-1100 cc. These figures are within the limits of the contemporary human cranial capacity.

KNM-WT 15000 or Turkana Child skeleton on the right, is probably the oldest and the most complete human fossil ever found. Research made on this fossil which is said to be 1.6 million year old shows that this belongs to a 12 year old child who would become around 1.80 m. tall if he reached adolescence. This fossil which very much resembled to the Neanderthal race, is one of the most remarkable evidence invalidating the story of human's evolution.

The evolutionist Donald Johnson describes this fossil as follows: "He was tall and skinny. His body shape and the proportion of his limbs were the same as the current Equator Africans. The sizes of his limbs totally matched with that of the current white North American adults."

700 THOUSAND YEAR OLD MARINERS

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"Early humans were much smarter than we suspected..."

News published in New Scientist on March 14th 1998 tells us that the humans called Homo Erectus by evolutionists were practicing seamanship 700 thousand years ago. These humans, who had enough knowledge and technology to build a vessel and possess a culture that made use of sea transport, can hardly be called "primitive".

Even the evolutionist Richard Leakey states that the differences between Homo erectus and modern man are no more than racial variance: One would also see differences in the shape of the skull, in the degree of protrusion of the face, the robustness of the brows and so on. These differences are probably no more pronounced than we see today between the separate geographical races of modern humans.

NEANDERTHALS

False Masks
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Detailed comparisons of Neanderthal skeletal remains with those of modern humans have shown that there is nothing in Neanderthal anatomy that conclusively indicates locomotor, manipulative, intellectual, or linguistic abilities inferior to those of modern humans.86

Many contemporary researchers define Neanderthal man as a sub-species of modern man and call him "Homo sapiens neandertalensis". The findings testify that Neanderthals buried their dead, fashioned musical instruments, and had cultural affinities with the Homo sapiens sapiens living during the same period. To put it precisely, Neanderthals are a "robust" human race that simply disappeared in time

Neanderthals: A Robust People
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Above is seen Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis, Amud 1 skull found in Israel. Neanderthal man is generally known to be robust yet short. However it is estimated that the owner of this fossil had been 1.80 m. high. His cranial capacity is the largest ever seen: 1740cc. Because of all these, this fossil is among the important pieces of evidence definitely destroying the claims that Neanderthals were a primitive species.

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26,000 YEAR OLD NEEDLE: An interesting fossil showing that the Neanderthals had knowledge of clothing: A needle 26,000 years old. (D. Johanson, B. Edgar From Lucy to Language, p. 99)

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One of the most popular periodicals of the evolutionist literature, Discover, put the 800 thousand-year-old human face on its cover with the evolutionists' question "Is this the face of our past

This fossil even shook the convictions of Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras, who lead the Gran Dolina excavation. Ferreras said:

Our expectation of an 800,000-year-old boy was something like Turkana Boy. And what we found was a totally modern face.... To me this is most spectacular-these are the kinds of things that shake you. Finding something totally unexpected like that. Not finding fossils; finding fossils is unexpected too, and it's okay. But the most spectacular thing is finding something you thought belonged to the present, in the past. It's like finding something like-like a tape recorder in Gran Dolina. That would be very surprising. We don't expect cassettes and tape recorders in the Lower Pleistocene. Finding a modern face 800,000 years ago-it's the same thing. We were very surprised when we saw it.92

After recovering from the initial shock, the evolutionists who discovered the fossil decided that it belonged to a different species, because according to the evolutionary family tree, Homo sapiens did not live 800,000 years ago. Therefore, they made up an imaginary species called "Homo antecessor" and included the Atapuerca skull under this classification.

A HUT 1.7 MILLION YEARS OLD

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Findings of a 1.7 million-year-old hut shocked the scientific community. It looked like the huts used by some Africans today.

The remains of a stone hut. The unusual aspect of the event was that this construction, which is still used in some parts of Africa, could only have been built by Homo sapiens! So, according to Leakey's findings, Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and modern man must have co-existed approximately 1.7 million years ago.93

This discovery must surely invalidate the evolutionary theory that claims that modern men evolved from ape-like species such as Australopithecus

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Another example showing the invalidity of the imaginary family tree devised by evolutionists: a human (Homo sapiens) mandible aged 2.3 million years. This mandible coded A.L. 666-1 was unearthed in Hadar, Ethiopia.

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Recent researches reveal that it is impossible for the bent ape skeleton fit for quadripedal stride to evolve into upright human skeleton fit for bipedal stride.

Lord Solly Zuckerman is one of the most famous and respected scientists in the United Kingdom. For years, he studied the fossil record and conducted many detailed investigations. He was elevated to the peerage for his contributions to science. Zuckerman is an evolutionist. Therefore, his comments on evolution can not be regarded as ignorant or prejudiced. After years of research on the fossils included in the human evolution scenario however, he reached the conclusion that there is no truth to the family tree in that is put forward.

OTA BENGA: The African Native Put Into a Cage

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Ota Benga was captured in 1904 by an evolutionist researcher in the Congo. In his own tongue, his name meant "friend". He had a wife and two children. Chained and caged like an animal, he was taken to the USA where evolutionist scientists displayed him to the public in the St Louis World Fair along with other ape species and introduced him as "the closest transitional link to man".Two years later, they took him to the Bronx Zoo in New York and there they exhibited him under the denomination of "ancient ancestors of man" along with a few chimpanzees, a gorilla named Dinah, and an orang-utan called Dohung. Dr William T. Hornaday, the zoo's evolutionist director gave long speeches on how proud he was to have this exceptional "transitional form" in his zoo and treated caged Ota Benga as if he were an ordinary animal. Unable to bear the treatment he was subjected to, Ota Benga eventually committed suicide


The "honesty,integrity and reliability" of evolution scientists....hmmmmm.

NOTE: I am a young earth creationist and do not fall in with the old age beliefs. These dates are according to long earth dating and are accepted by the evolutionary science community. Yet, evenso, time evidentally is not helping them much either.

Sheesh Bex, your response to me is to paste pages and pages from Harun Yahya's site, which takes a second, and say, "there, refute that," which will take hours. How would you feel if every time I made a claim, I told you to read TalkOrigins and expected you to refute it in detail? Yahya is as full of PRATTs, misquotes and scientific fallacies as any other creationist site but when I get a chunk of time, I'll address some of this.

After what I put into that post, to have you come along and wave it away and insult the time I put into it is beyond belief. I could just weep. Linda it took me ages to do this.

Let me outline this for you in case you're under any illusions. I had to save each and every picture onto my computer, then download them onto this site and then go get the links and copy and paste them up. That is just the pictures alone. I tried to keep the information/quotes as brief as I could from the site, but did not wish to compromise the content at the sametime, so chose which parts I felt were necessary. That information/quote is in bold and/or italics.

You'll see my own words in plain type. Far from one big copy and paste, I put a lot of time and effort into that. I thought the work I put into this might be appreciated by the viewer, rather than just sending a link.

This is just another Linda slap in the face. You have not only slagged me off, but the site itself, and the time devoted to this. Obviously you are annoyed at what's been presented, so here's your chance to downgrade it and toss it aside.

Your "what about this" and "what about that" and refute this and refute that posts with links sometime thrown in and then accusing others of dodging when they don't answer specifics or when you want was growing tiring. So this was my answer to some of the issues you mentioned, but there is no way I could get the time to do it all.

And what's your reponse? To slag it off as if it's nothing but a whole pile of long winded rubbish which you now complain that you have to refute.

I'll refrain from further comments I wish to make at you right now, as it would be unwise to let you know what I really want to say here.

Hello CTD, thanks again for demonstraring cognitive dissonance so clearly ...

This is hilarious, thanks:

[color:"red"]You can't do it.
----------------------[/color]

If "everyone knows this" then why can't you provide something to substantiate you position?

The reality is that you cannot provide an example of "the rest of Darwinism" even after I provided you with a resource you could search with your web-browser. The fact that thousands of books have been written about evolution doesn't mean that Darwin's theory was not "descent with modification" (as demonstrated in my reference to his actual writing), throught the mechanisms of variation and natural selection, and there is no further theory of his that is now abandoned, one that goes beyond this basic theory. Rather than admit that you are wrong, you resort to what? claiming that the writing is "silly" -- precisely the behavior typical of cognitive dissonance.

Because they don't have to take my word for it, they can read the book, they can search it with their web-browser, they can look for the truth on their own. They can decide for themselves if you are just full of hot air and falsehoods without the integrety to admit whether you are either (a) wrong (b) ignorant (c) lazy (d) deluded (e) pathetic (d) silly ... etc (I wouldn't pretend to make that decision for them). That would be why I gave the link to you after all, so that you could point out what is now missing from his original theory.

So little different, in actual fact, that you are totally incapable of demonstrating any difference. Saying there is a difference is easy - actually demonstrating it is what an honest debater would do after making such a claim. I have given you opportunity, I have given you a resource, I have provided you with everything you should need to prove your point, and the fact remains:

[color:"red"]You can't do it.
----------------------[/color]

Denial does not make reality vanish. Mutations are real, they have been observed. They are fact. You have several hundred mutations that neither your mother nor your father had. Those differences make your DNA trace different from your parents, part of how "DNA fingerprinting" works.

Do you know that Darwin never used the term evolution?

No, it is still just one theory, CTD, and tacking theory onto a phrase doesn't make it a theory either. Again, one does not need to take my word for it, you can google your "theory of the preservation of favored races" (with the quotes) like I did:

That's on the whole google search database. Strikeout. You will find this though, that the full title of Darwin's book was "Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life" but that he talks very little about " the Preservation of Favored Races" or even just "favored races" ....

http://darwin-online.org.uk/

... this is another on-line resource with the complete works of Darwin, including on-line versions of each and every edition of his books.

Google <site:http://darwin-online.org.uk/ preservation favored races> (no quotes) and you get four (4) results all of which refer ONLY to the subtitle of the book as an alternate for natural selection. So much for that being a major theory (or part of a theory) of Darwin eh?

He does talk about the "struggle for life" but this is part of natural selection.

He also does call it his "theory of natural selection" but this is still a mechanism for descent with modification and not some grander theory that has been now "diluted" and it has also been validated in the years since: natural selection has been observed, it is a fact that natural selection occurs.

Google <site:http://darwin-online.org.uk/ "theory of descent with modification"> (with quotes) and you get nine different results, do <site:http://darwin-online.org.uk/ "descent with modification"> (with quotes) and you get

[color:"blue"]Results ... about 237,000 from darwin-online.org.uk for "descent with modification". [/color]

The quotes mean that the words appear in exactly that phrase 237,000 times on that site while your words without the quotes (ie can be dissassciated or in any order) only appear in four (4) places.

Perhaps you need to really read the book ...

Yes it is chapter 15, it is the last chapter in the book, and it is the SUMMARY of the whole book. My quote was from the beginning of that summary, a fairly prominent position..

No, I went to the part labelled "RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION" because it was a recapitulation of his book where he would present ALL the theories in the book in summary form and then provide his final conclusions. I already knew the phrase was there, it's part of knowing what you are talking about eh?

Which is the basis for natural selection: there are more offspring produced than needed to replace existing populations so there must be some losers, organisms that don't survive, don't reproduce, don't pass on their hereditary traits, while the "profitable deviations" are passed from one generation to the next.

And he then goes on to show how it does happen.

Are you going to argue that no organisms, no people even, die of starvation every year, many without reproducing, and that those that do reproduce do so in a limited way, often with the offspring harmed by fetal malnutrition so they are less functional than the offspring of the well-fed and "fit" organisms? This simple observation by Darwin was his insight that this - with variation - was enough to cause "descent with modification" ... evolution to us.

Actually I like Wallace better, he worked harder to come to the same conclusion from entirely different evidence. Funny how two different people, working in two different parts of the world, come to the same conclusion eh? Science is like that, it is part of dealing with objective reality.

Speciation occurs: parent populations have been observed dividing into daughter populations that no longer share genes between the groups. When those daughter populations are also different from the parent population (rather than one staying the same while the other changes) then yes, you do have the parent population become de facto extinct. The daughter populations are better adapted to their ecologies and replace the previous populations. THIS IS EVOLUTION.

No, the title is "the Origin of Species" not descent with modification. THE theory, as clearly stated by Darwin, is descent with modification, the mechanisms are variation and natural selection, the theory explains the diversity of life.

Now let's play the little game again, CTD: can you tell us what the "rest of it" is (or are you just going to continue waving your arms in the air)? Or does it become abundantly clear to any objective observer that

[color:"red"]You can't do it.
----------------------[/color]

Not because you don't want to, but because reality prevents it.

Okay so you admit that you cannot show that Darwin claims that rocks must necessarily turn into human beings: that's a start.

Yes, but the claim in question is that the crystals operate as a catalyzing matrix for assembling preorganic molecules, not that the crystals themselves become part of the molecule.

Nor do they claim that this necessarily happens, nor do they claim that this MUST RESULT IN HUMANS. This is just one (1) of many tentative hypothesis (not theory) on how life began on earth, however. The claim by Russ (and you through your adaption of it) is that evolution necessarily includes life forming from rocks and necessarily resulting in humans, and both of these are not in the slightest necessary to evolution in any part, piece or parcel ... all that is necessary to evolution is (a) the existence of life, (b) a mechanism to cause variation in organisms, (c) a mechanism for traits to be passed from one generation to the next, and (d) pressure on the population that causes some to survive and breed with better success than others. Descent with modification, through the mechanisms of variation and natural selection. The change in hereditary traits in populations from one generation to the next.

Putting it in bold doesn't make it true. All it really shows is that you are uncomfortable about just considereing the concept that populations do change, and that the fossil record does in fact demonstrate that this has happened in the past. This is cognitive dissonance.

Note that "properly interpreted" does not mean being constrained by preconceived conclusions, nor does it mean to ignore the rest of the evidence that exists, it means to determine the truth of the evidence no matter what that truth is.

No, the evidence consists of the fossils that do not show what you claim all fossil evidence shows. This really is humorous that you are unable to grapple with the evidence, or even recognize it for what it is.

Like the evidence of the foraminifera fossils, the horse fossils, pelycodus fossils, even hominid fossils that has been presented and ignored? The classic symptom of cognitive dissonance is to look right at the evidence and then claim that it does not exist.

Actually you are wrong. Again.

There you have an example that gives a definition specific to biology (oh look, it's descent with modification, it's the change in hereditary traits in populations from one generation to the next, it's the biological scientific definition of the term for use in that science ...) as well as one specific to mathematics. And you don't have to take my word for it: look it up.

And so far you have been unable to present anything more ... and so far all that you have posted amounts to a lot of hot air with little content and no support for your argument.

One mechanism is variation (caused by mutations). One mechanism is natural selection (the "struggle for existence"). One mechanism is genetic drift. They are all part of evolution, part of what makes the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation occur. They are part of descent with modification.

Curious that this is still all descent with modification, that in all those quotes evolution is still the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, and the theory of evolution is that this is enough to explain the diversity of life as we know it. In spite of all your hand waving, your frantic denigratory attempts to disparage (goldilocks?) you still:

• have not shown that there is more to Darwin's theory than descent with modification through the mechanism of variation and natural selection,
• have not shown that my definition of evolution as the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation is substantially different from Darwin's descent with modification in any way,
• have not presented ANY evidence to support your position in spite of repeated opportunities (repeating assertions don't make them true),
• have not shown that the evidence I've presented does not support evolution (claiming it doesn't is not sufficient, you need to demonstrate that it doesn't, and that means dealing with the evidence, not dismissing it),
• have not shown that there is anything missing from my (or any other modern) definition of evolution that was included in Darwin's theory, specifically the parts you claim have been omitted, neglected, or diluted out.

In short you have not in any way supported your position, you've just repeated it, waved your hands, engaged in substantial effort at distraction, and totally failed to address the issue: defining what is missing from the 'change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation' that was originally part of Darwin's theory.

[color:"red"][b]You can't do it.
----------------------[/color]

And the reason you can't do it is because you are wrong. It's really quite humorous to see you 'shuck and jive' ... dancing around pretending reality doesn't exist, pretending that quoting me is addressing the issue, pretending that you know something. Unfortunately for you, nature is completely uninfluenced by your opinion and knowldege of reality.

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Hello Bex, I can understand your frustration.

The problem is that the site you used is widely known as one of questionable at best value.

The problem I continually run into is how do you - as a creationist - determine the truth-value of various websites? What is your test for validity?

How do you know that they are not selling you a truck load of shinola?

Can you explain that?

Spending a lot of time copying pictures and formating a post that is as long as that without spending any time validating it seems to me to be wasted time before you begin, not when Linda sets it temporarily aside (she said she would get back to it eh?).

How do you know that your time wasn't being wasted by Harun Yahya?

http://www.harunyahya.com/

Doesn't he claim to prove that islam is true?

How do you test for truth.

Enjoy.

Hi RAZD,

thank you for your understanding! Yes, it was frustating to say the least.


Agreed. But first, would you let me know how you have tested this site for it's invalidity? And how you come to that conclusion and by whom? Let me know and I will get in touch with the site owner and invite him on the forum to refute the accusation himself. He has left his email, so hopefully he will respond. Being accused that his content is questionable at best (or rubbish) after the enormous amount of information he's given deserves his attention. Particularly when he's backed up the information and quotes with the people in question, the dates, the times and the sources and the fossil pictures themselves. That does not mean I agree with all his content either, I too have my own beliefs.

I agree with your statements however, but where does that leave the layperson RAZD? How do any of us know exactly what is being presented is factual or bias? On either side? Surely you haven't simply disregarded and ignored the fallacies and hoaxes from the evolutionists have you? They are well known. They do happen, they have happened, and many have been fooled. Should we not then be wary of this? Or does one accept anything because they are the side with the biggest and loudest voice?

One is usually going to gravitate to the side they on, be it evolution or creation. I really enjoy that site because it does more than many others - it gives the visible! seeing these fossils, not just "hearing" or 'reading" about it. An example is one of the pictures I posted up there was actually presented on National Geographic. Though that was not mentioned on his site. The presentation was misleading and deliberately so. In the ancient footprints depicting giraffs and other animals, they painted a picture accordingly. However, in the footprints that showed to be no different from human prints, they instead painted a creature resembling something along the lines of a baboon and human mix. Yet having nothing more to go on other than footprints. I cannot really equate that as being honest science can you?


How do you know it was? I don't wave away somebody simply because they're a creationist. But I am well aware the evolutionist does......We've had fallacies in science textbooks, yet nobody would have suspected they were at the time. Do any of us really know what is being presented to us is factual and unbias?


How does one ultimately test for truth? Everybody has a belief in what they think is the truth and testing stems from that. It seems to me that he believes in the same creator/Father God...I say this by reading his site and finding much of their basic foundational beliefs fit in with the old testament. They fail however to acknowledge the "person" of God as being Jesus Christ (as us Christians believe). And this is where we part ways. And much of this is down to personal faith also, and doing ones homework on biblical history, miraculous events/healings etc. One can never push somebody to believe, it is very much a personal journey, grace and faith.

But when it comes to observations of our world? Our origins and trying to prove the past by the fossils and interpretations of the present? that is another story.

Bex, can you not understand why I've said to Russ before why I prefer him not to come here and say "watch this video" and expect an evolutionist to spend hours refuting it? I would not do the same to you. It would be better to save time all round by picking one aspect and discussing it thoroughly from all sides. I'm not trying to insult you, I'm trying to point out why pasting whole web pages or links to videos is generally not a good idea in a debate. I'm happy to pick up some of the more ridiculous points by Yahya above, but it's going to take quite a bit of time and I'll have to wait until I can find a chunk. If it were just a few points then it wouldn't be a problem to take 10 minutes or so to comment. In the meantime I'm not sure if you answered RAZD's question above. In the time you took to paste all of that here, presumably you believed everything it said without question? I'm going to have to do a lot of searches to get at the actual facts, many of which have been distorted and misrepresented -- do you ever do the same, or do you accept the interpretation of the evidence being offered to you at face value because it says what you want to hear? Presumably this doesn't include his opinions on Islamist fundamentalism, an old earth, or holocaust revisionism?

At a second look, most of what he is doing in your extract above is making unsubstantiated generalisations without referring to the physical evidence, specifically the fossils themselves. He has deliberately omitted a lot of important information. You would know this just by going to some of the links I've given about hominid fossils but I'll elaborate on them myself for your convenience; maybe this evening when my daughter is in bed and I can concentrate for a while.

It's already been done. Pretending won't change that. You yourself argued that the mechanisms can't be omitted.

But why should I bother to address all or any of the versions you present? That's the real question. The impression I get is that you change your formula on a fairly frequent basis. I wonder if you change your oil as often.

Yet you claim the version you present today is the crucial one we all must accept, lest we be guilty of addressing a straw man. Get real! I want to see some credentials before I'll acknowledge your implied claim to be the Evoczar.

Even then, I'll <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hehehe.gif" alt="" />at your daily formulas.

No, I can't make you acknowledge that it's been done. SO WHAT?

So, no evidence of the prediction, even with recourse to your comprehensive online Darwinian library? Could have just said so.

I've seen it claimed. I wouldn't repeat the claim, knowing what I know of history.

Really? Have you a link? I've been curious about such claims for a while now, but unable to verify any of them.

I should be clear: I'm not looking for cases of poisoning or artificial selection. I mean natural 'natural selection'. And I'm particularly curious to see it's employment in a predictive manner - not its employment as an explanatory device.

I realize this is fairly strict. Maybe that's why it's so hard to come by. One would think if it were scientific, it could be used to make predictions in nature; but... I haven't seen much.

And this struggle appears where in your summary "descent with modification"? And where in your watered-down formulas?

As something Darwin claimed was essential, its omission might strike one as a difference. That is if one spoke enough English to be familiar with the term 'difference'.

So you seem to agree that it's essential. Now do you agree that you've omitted it?

As we discussed elsewhere, Darwin was wrong about this too. Populations have been found to regulate themselves in the wild.

Why should I? But this wasn't really Darwin's own idea. He borrowed it from Malthus. When his pal Spencer applied "survival of the fittest" to society & economics, he was just taking the principle back to its origin.

Had you read Descent of Man you might have known this.
Who you like, is that how you choose what to delete from your formulas? If it floats your boat... But it's still not saying the same thing Darwin said. Deletions have that effect.

Dare I say it? Why not? If any lifeform changed as much as your definitions change, you'd be claiming macroevolution faster than a goshawk flies through the trees. But you'd have to convert to Gould's sect.
But it's not in not in your encapsulation phrase, and it's not in the watered down formulas either, at least not the ones we see here. You say nothing at all about extinction, but Darwin did.

In evolutionese: you address only intraspecies competition (fairly indirectly). Darwin discussed both intraspecies and interspecies competition. He concluded that inferior species would be driven extinct in most cases.

You should hope the objective observer doesn't take too much offense when his intelligence is insulted.


He made suggestions along those lines, but was reluctant to say anything firm. His followers are no longer reluctant. They define anyone who questions this doctrine as unscientific, and take action to expel them. Or have you not noticed.

And actions speak louder than words. That's how come we have the term "indeed" and we don't yet have the term "inword".
Says you. But would you care to clarify exactly what the contents of these molecules are, and where they come from?

Do you mean happens today, or happened in the past?

Those who subscribe to it believe the others to be impossible. Those who subscribe to the others, believe this one is impossible. But it is a strict requirement that one must subscribe to one of them or be expelled. One is not permitted to agree that the others are impossible and agree that this one is also impossible.

Those evolutionists who have been expelled do not agree with this requirement, but they know it exists. And so does everyone else. But feel free to insult everyone's intelligence once again.

My claim is that evolutionism's purpose is to provide a replacement for history. To that end, evolutionists are compelled to account for origins. Thoroughly. I acknowledge that they've tried. Do you?

I also acknowledge that some are too cowardly to defend what they stand for. Shall I number you among the cowards, or have you the guts to either renounce or defend evolutionism's claims?

If you want to discuss post-abiogenesis evolution, nobody's stopping you. If you want to discuss abiogenesis, or even cosmic evolution; nobody's stopping you. But you're not satisfied with being allowed to discuss these things. You choose to insult others & say there's a straw man when we all know there isn't.

You might try thinking for yourself instead of regurgitating evoslander. You introduce it where it serves no purpose. The typical employment of this straw man accusation is to avoid discussing abiogenesis or simply take the discussion off-topic. But in this thread your usage is on-topic!

Putting it in bold got you to notice it this time. As for showing discomfort, your reasoning is irregular and dubious. You say I'm asking for something that will make me uncomfortable? I should think you'd oblige, rather than tell me "putting it in bold doesn't make it true". Oops... that rather assumes you could oblige, doesn't it?

BTW, thanks for choosing the "Shuck & Jive" title. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thanks.gif" alt="" />
Your links just lead to a bunch of conclusions. At least the horse "evidence" link and the Pelycodus link (I wasn't interested in forams, but I'll take a peek).

Okay, I peeked. I suppose it's going to get me accused of being stupid or blind or something, but I don't care. I don't see anything jumping out & crying "I evolved". I'm guessing it's one of those "fossils mean something evolved" deals, eh? Because they're fossils I'm supposed to buy evolutionism? Or because someone says they're old? But rocks are already old and they're fossilized by definition, so how does that straw man thing go again? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

What is it when one looks at conclusions and presents them as evidence?

Although my quoting you did entail the import of hot air, it also served quite well to support what I said. I hope no injuries resulted from the laughter, at least not serious injuries.

See, you responded but could not manage an answer to your own question. I call that funny.

Well, as you have argued yourself that there's more to it than "descent with modification", and you don't even acknowledge changing your mind repeatedly about 'what evolution is' I don't have much confidence in any definition or summary you care to present today. It'll probably change in a few minutes, and if this pattern holds you won't even acknowledge changing it.

But we have a term for this: bait & switch. It's also called 'equivocation'. That you openly display your intention to practice this is not a factor in favor of playing your game. That you play it in such an amusing manner, however is!

Now I have a question for all the evolutionists. Regarding speed, has the imagined evolution of man from monkey (or ape or apelike imaginary ancestor) been slow or fast? I mean if 1 is the slowest and 100 is the fastest, compared to the imagined evolution of other lifeforms, where does this rate? Shoot, define your own speed scale if you don't like mine.

pictures themselves. [/quote]Quotes can be (and frequently are) misused by people that don't understand science in general and evolution in particular. Will we get the usual misquotes of Stephen Jay Gould and the like?

http://www.harunyahya.com/refuted7.php
This is a falsehood. Neither Gould nor Eldridge said any such thing. The main criticism that Dawkin's has of "punkeek" is that it happens so slowely and so gradually in the "punk" sections that it is not really significantly different from the "stasis" sections.

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes sites like this questionable -- or should I be less polite and say full of gross errors and misrepresentations? Certainly it is easy to ascertain the truth of his claim by actually reading Gould and Eldridge, and seeing that they say no such thing. It is fairly easy to find information on what they actually proposed. I have so tested it and found him wanting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
Reference [8] is :

[8] ^ S. J. Gould, 1977. "Evolution's erratic pace." Natural History 86 (May): 12-16

So the above quote is from one of the early papers on punkeek. It is also clear from the rest of the wiki article that large scale change is not involved. Speciation is not large scale change, and that is the most that punkeek claims. We in fact see speciation events like this. We also (see foraminifera) see speciation events without this mechanism of small population isolates.

The best one can do is adopt a position of skepticism of all claims, for if you are not skeptical of one side of the issue you are, by definition, biased. You also need to be open to the idea that what you know could be wrong.

But if you regard every concept as tentatively valid until proven otherwise, and treat each idea with skepticism, then you end up in a position of believing everything and nothing. We make choices, all of us, based on our personal history, experience, knowledge and education on what is most likely to be true and what is most likely to be false. It comes down to basic beliefs about the nature of reality.

The issue of validation comes down to finding external means to validate what you think is true. If I see a tree in front of me, and I ask my friend if he sees the tree, and we compare notes on what the tree looks like, we will see a large degree of agreement on what the tree looks like. If I see a ghost in front of me and ask my friend if he sees the ghost and he replies "what ghost?" then we have two instances with entirely different external validation.

I don't equate it with being science, but with being journalistic, heavy on artistic license. No one can know what they actually looked like, but we can make educated guesses, and those educated guesses would include the body types of fossils from the same geological age as the footprints. Interestingly an ancestor that is intermediate in development from an ape ancestry to the complete bipedal human we are familiar with would likely have traits "along the lines of a baboon and human mix" -- why would you expect anything different in an artistic rendition? The artist can only base their drawing on what they know.

I showed above one good reason to treat the site with extreme skepticism, as it is demonstrated to present a false picture on punkeek: if it does so when the truth is relatively easy to determine, then what other things are questionable where there is less ability to test it against the truth?

I don't trust textbooks either, they are too often assembled by scientifically ignorant editors, not checked by actual scientists for accuracy, and increasingly driven to please ignorant parent groups who have even less knowledge of reality than the editors, whose goal is not to present truth but to make money. Even the university textbook that my dad (taught biology at the U of Mich) helped write contains errors, but textbooks don't define science or truth: they are aids to learning and understanding.

There is no endeavor known to man that is immune to fraud and deception: this does not make knowledge that we have gleaned over the centuries necessarily invalid. What makes concepts invalid, including all the frauds and deceptions that have been perpetuated on the gullible, is testing against the evidence of objective reality.

The only way I know of to test for the validity of concepts is to test it against the evidence of objective reality. If the concept is contradicted or falsified by evidence then it is invalid. If it is not contradicted then, tentatively, it can be regarded as valid (rather than "true") and subject to further testing.

When we get beyond the realms of concepts that can be tested against evidence - does god exist? - then the best we can do is base our opinion(s) on solid logical analysis, starting from the knowledge we can validate and building hypothesis. When we run into concepts that are not supported by logic or evidence we can be justified in being extremely skeptical of it's validity, and include the friend\tree\ghost method to see how others see things.

Obviously these end conclusions can only be regarded as tentative in the extreme, while those at the core, validated by evidence of objective reality, can be regarded with a fair degree of confidence in their validity.

Why is that any different than anything else you believe?

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

How silly do you want to look? Your own link to wiki yieldsYou want to blow a "common misconception" into some blatant, inexcusable blunder? Go for it.

If it's even incorrect, that is. You seem obsessed with redefining Darwinism; are we to assume you don't redefine other evolutionist variants as well?

Indeed, this may be catching. The wiki page you linked to is nothing but an attempt to define this variation, and it's been modified recently!

You were the one bringing up the issue of confidence in sources, right?

OK, Harun Yahya . . .


They are not all fragmented and incomplete. I will list my primary sources for this post here and refer to them accordingly.

Turkana Boy is a nearly complete skeleton of an 11 or 12 year old homo erectus. The skeleton has been dated to approximately 1.53 million years.

We also have Lucy, the famous skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis, which is about 40% complete.

These transitional fossil skulls are remarkably complete.

These are the ones I am aware of, though I am sure there are more. More recent skeletons such as those of neandertals exist, as do other australopithecines and other early bipedal hominids.

Scientists have plenty of evidence to work with and there are people called paleoanthropoligists whose life's work is to study these fossils, so no, this is not all conjecture as Yahya claims.

The quote given here by Dr. Pilbeam has done the rounds of creationist sites and although no provenance is given for it here, this seems to be traceable to a creationist called Richard Milton, who took it out of context in an effort to try to show a scientist "admitting" that there is little evidence to go on (this was written in about 1980 -- 28 years of archaeological finds have since ensued). Pilbeam was concerned about establishing the "how," not the "if," of evolution. For example, he also said at the time:


I'll leave it up to your imagination to pick the bit from the above quote that creationists also like to pull out of its context and quote mine.

I'm not sure what Yahya is trying to get at by calling the hominid drawings here fanciful. He's presented some quite old ones as well. Facial reconstruction based on a skull is a thriving field today, using computers and intricate knowledge of the anatomy of a face. We've changed a few of our depictions accordingly -- they are always our best guess -- but that best guess is getting more accurate all the time. Yahya gives zero credit anywhere here to people who study these things for a living and who might just know a bit about what they are doing.

Yahya's quote from Hooten, again unsourced, is irrelevant. Hooten was working and writing in the first half of last century and had no knowledge of modern facial reconstruction techniques. Yahya has also spelled his name wrong.

Pildown Man is now discussed here. My comments, as previously, are 1.) That not all scientists were fooled by it, and that scientists eventually exposed the fraud; and 2.) It is a logical fallacy to take a fact (this was one fraud) and attempt to make massive generalisations from it (they could all be frauds and no one knows the difference). After studying the history of this, and the fact that too many scientists of the time were too quick to accept what they expected to see without conducting all of the tests available at the time, I don't think it's likely that the same thing could happen today if someone tried to perpetrate the same fraud. We'd get interesting uranium dates from the teeth for a start.

The story of Nebraska Man is made into a straw man by creationists and trumpeted along with Piltdown Man by the "it's all fake and scientists are deceivers" crowd. I suggest you read the facts in the case at the above link.

Ramapithecus is no longer considered a hominid. Why? Because of finds which have been more recent than the information given here. Theories are modified when new evidence emerges; this is how science works. You would not have found a serious scientist then, or now, who claims that we have it all 100% correct. I'm not sure why there's supposed to be something wrong with an artist depicting their best estimation of what an extinct creature would have looked like. Have you seen some of the Victorian engravings of what they thought dinosaurs looked like? We've learned a little bit since then.


Yes, this is possible. Maybe he's trying to say what you were claiming before Bex: that a parent population co-existing with a daughter population is supposed to be evidence against evolution. What I said was that it's possible for the daughter population to become isolated from the parent population, and that the daughter population could fill a different ecological niche. It's also rather unlikely that if an isolated daughter population encounters the original parent population, the parent population will instantly poof out of existence. I invited you to look at the example of ring species, which can be observed today.


This is wrong, and here is an example of Yahya not telling you the relevant details. It is true that the skull of australopithecus is more similar to that of a chimp, though it has a larger cranial capacity. However, the teeth and jaws are more similar to those of humans. What is more, australopithecus was undoubtedly bipedal, as can be seen from the pelvis, femur and foot. Yahya doesn't want to show you those bits. I have, however, linked to them before, and there is a lot of information out there about this.


This is a misrepresentation of the facts. Scientists debate about whether to place habilis in the homo or australopithecus genus. You can read about habilis here. What is not in dispute is that this was a bipedal hominid. No serious scientist who knows anything about anatomy claims that it was an ape or that it did not walk upright.

Yahya then goes on to discuss homo erectus. He apparently has decided to say that homo habilis is completely ape-like (false for the above reasons; he has also ignored other transitionals such as homo georgicus and homo ergaster. What's more, the line Yahya draws between human and ape -- supposedly so obviously different from each other -- is typical of creationist confusion on this issue.

He says about Turkana Boy:

What he says here is such a bunch of phooey that I will ask you simply to read the real science behind this wonderful discovery, as you can do here and here (note what it says about morphology). A note about brain size: it was 880cc, and would probably have grown to about 910cc at adulthood. This is smaller than all but a fraction of 1% of modern humans of all sizes and both sexes. A comparable human brain would be expected to have a brain size of about 1350cc. You can read more about brain sizes here.

Yahya then strays further from fossil evidence and appears to be attempting to make claims for the "humanity" of subsequent hominids by talking about seafaring skills, evidence of clothing, etc. Scientists don't classify them according to whether they sailed ships or wore clothes; remember, paleoanthropoligists decide on the classification of species largely by comparing fossil evidence. Modern evidence, including mitochondrial DNA, sppears to be pointing to neandertals as being a separate species from us and not a subspecies. You can read about them here.

Yahya goes back in time to then discuss homo antecessor. He presents a quote discussing the similarity of the face to those of modern humans, and then insinuates that these were modern humans living 800,000 years ago (YECs take note) and that scientists made up a classification for them because they didn't want to admit that modern humans could be living at that time. This of course is nonsense, as you can read here and here. Yahya is expecting you to take his word for all this, even though the real science is there to be learned at the click of your mouse -- it's up to you to decide to make that click.

I have been unable to find a reference to this 1.7 million year old hut anywhere on the internet. I need to know its provenance in order to verify the assertions here -- where it was found, by whom, what was really said about it by Leakey, and so on. Until that information is presented here, I'm afraid I don't have much faith in the truth of another bald assertion from this site. I'd quite enjoy reading about a 1.7 million year old hut. This is quite extraordinary, considering the fact that mesolithic remains, consisting of little but post holes, are the oldest examples of human habitation outside of caves in Britain. The mesolithic here was rather more recent than 1.7 million years.


And no explanation of why this should be the case. We're supposed to take his word for it apparently. There is a picture of this at one of the hominid info links I presented at the beginning of this post, so I'm not too worried that it's going to bring the ToE crashing to its knees.


Zuckerman was working decades ago and he is not as "eminent" as Yahya would like you to believe, though anyone a creationist gets a quote mine from suddenly seems to come to the forefront of his occupation. Yes, he was a scientist. His views being presented here are are decades old and have been soundly refuted -- but I'll let Jim Foley take this up -- it's late and I'm tired.



As for the ridiculous attempt at the end of this to paint every evolutionist as being complicit in a racist event which happened a hundred years ago, I'll let it speak for itself. No need to mention as well, presumably, the numbers of Christian slave owners who also lived in the past, the numbers of Christians who did nasty things to their fellow humans, many of them creationists as well . . . I don't see that any of this has any place in the discussion of homind fossils.

I'm pretty tired after all this but I wanted to put my money where my mouth is when I say that this is just another site full of bald assertions, PRATTs, misrepresentations, etc. The real science is easy to find if you truly want to look. I'm not ignoring the things you yourself said, Bex; I will adress those. I need to stop here for now though.

I would have put this all into one post if I'd known how quickly I get results.

Harun Yayah's "wrong" statement:Gould himself:
Now unless 'major' is evodefined as exclusive of 'large'; or 'rapidly' is evodefined as exclusive of 'sudden', HY is RIGHT ON THE MONEY.

It is Redefinin' RAZD, talkdeceptions, the evoflunky who edited the wiki, and probably a few others who are commiting the error. How common it is, I can't say.

But as long as I'm started, I might as well make this more than a short supplement.

RAZD:(plus bold)Wesley R. Elsberry at talkdeceptions, in part #6, Common errors in discussion of PESo who's right, RAZD or Elsberry?

But then Elsberry disagrees with me:He should have said "a closed-eye reading". There's no evocode I could find embedded in the text which matches Elsberry's assertion, and I note that he does not quote anything at all to back up his misinterpretation.

But I have to say this article by Gould makes half good reading. But recall that RAZD cites Dawkins' analysis of Gould, if you will. Now check this out, before you consider Dawkins an authority on Gould. The Marxist Monster fires an entertaining return volley at both Dawkins and Dennett.

And it provides ample backup, lest anyone wish to take the lazy approach & trust talkdeceptions to interpret Gould:Gould even accuses his evoopposition of misquoting him. Evolit doesn't get much better!
And because there's no such thing as too much back-up

*** Bonus! Niles Eldridge says in this pdf:So a professional evolutionist does not think stasis is something which can be blown off...

What I've noticed on this forum Linda, is you have one rule for yourself and a rule for everybody else. You can bring many matters up into one post and then sit back and watch as the creationists figure out which one to discuss. When we discuss something on here, you will then go back and discuss past issues.

The videos on here were for people who felt like giving them a view, I never asked for refutation. In fact, I posted them also for creationists. And you'll notice that many posts do not contain videos, or simply copied and pasted pages of websites.

You also seem to forget that you yourself post up links when it suits you to webpages from your evolution side, but do not seem to like it when it's done back to you. I made the difference by getting pictures up there and the corresponding comments, which I narrowed down more, so the person did not have to click on a link and scroll through every page of the website.

You failed to acknowledge that, plus the text that was in my own words. You have tried to make out I simply went on a website, clicked copy, came on here and clicked paste and magically, the entire pictures and text appeared. I think I have already explained to you what I did and went through, which hasn't appeared to have sunk in yet. Do I need to repeat myself?

If you want to bring up ape-man and then other isues at the sametime, dating methods etc, what do you expect? See this is what happens, you do this and then when it backfires you cannot handle it. I am honestly not sure which ONE issue you really wanted to discuss, you keep talking about apes to men and referring to the skulls, yet when I put up how difficult it can be to dicipher them if we do not have full information, nor the ability to see what they were like when covered in in flesh/hair etc, and the rest.

Much of my post was to give an example of why it is difficult and to also let people see how much bias and deception have come into this and been presented to the public. I am unsure how you can possibly wave this away as being a lie, considering the pictures are there, in your face to back it up. Including the drawings and pictures of the evolutionists depicting these fossils in a deceptive manner. One of which appeared on national geographic also.

If you insist on making out this guy is deceiving us in one way or another, as I said, I am ready to email him and hopefully get him on here to defend himself. I am really sick of you waving away every creationist website and post and pictures, but deciding that anything you give from the evolution side should be swallowed as a fact, regardless of content.

You also seem only too happy to overlook or even ignore the deceptions of the evolution scientists and I'd love to see you trying to excuse all that's been presented, considering it's common knowledge and considering the sources and dates were given. I guess you got your side to tell and the side you tell is always right <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> Whereas everybody else has "gotten it wrong".

That's easy: whatever nobody else is trying to discuss. Really, follow what she suggests & see how fast she'll jump to something different.

If you present just your words, she'll ask for links. If you present links, she'll complain about that. No matter what you discuss or how you discuss it, there will always be some "issue". The only thing we haven't tried is giving in, but that'd be dishonest. And who'd ever believe such a ruse anyhow?

No need to bother emailing. I didn't read carefully, but most of that big post is shreddable. I'll leave it up for grabs for a while; but if nobody's game I think I can manage just fine.

But then it might not do any harm. I expect moslems like a good laugh. (Assuming they've learned to appreciate the funny in the sad/funny blend that is evolutionism.)

Hi CTD, thanks again.

This is where the cognitive dissonance really takes over -- you have now convinced yourself that you have done something that even a cursory reading of your posts will show has not been done. repeating an unsubstantiated assertion does not make it true. Claiming you have done something that has not been done does not make it a fact.

To be explicite once more, you have not shown that there is anything in Darwin's theory that is more than the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, nor that there is any other theory of his that is of such scope that ommitting it would be presenting a weakened version of evolution, a watered down version, a diluted version.

The mechanisms are the ways that descent with modification occurs, the ways that change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation occurs, they are not omitted from either Darwin's theory nor the way I state it. There is still no substantial difference between descent with modification and change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation that amounts to a weakened version of evolution, a watered down version, a diluted version.

This was your thesis. You have now abandoned it, so it appears, and we can presume then, that you are totally unable to defend it, and that rather than admit you inability, your error, your falsehood, you are trying to pretend the issue is about something else. Cognitive dissonance confronted by reality.

Nor have you demonstrated that there is any real change in any of the ways I have stated the basics: that evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, that the theory of evolution includes mechanisms by which hereditary traits change in populations from generation to generation, that the theory of evolution is, in essence, that this is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it. Pretending that there are different versions does not make it so: it just makes your position one of make believe.

Nor have you shown, in any way, that the way I have described evolution is in any way substantially different and less than Darwin's theory of descent with modification.

That variation in traits existed was an observed fact in Darwin's time. That traits were hereditary was an observed fact in Darwin's time. What was not known was the mechanism by which variation occurred nor how it was passed from parent to offspring. The theory of descent with modification predicts, in effect, that a mechanism for causing variation exists and that a mechanism for transmitting traits from one generation to the next exists.

One can also logically deduct from the theory, if this process was going on, that the various traits that go to make up the individual organism are hereditary, and that different traits of different hereditary ages (parents, grandparents, etc) would provide a map of ancestry. Biologists used mophology to do this, long before DNA was discovered, and the fact that the DNA ancestry matched the morphological tree of life is just validation of the concepts involve -- it is, in effect, a predicted outcome of the theory.

There are many. The more popularly known ones are the Peppered Moths and the Galapagos Finches. In both cases they show population shift in response to ecological change. That is natural selection. Light moths did not become dark moths, they died in larger numbers as the dark moths were favored. Small beaked finches did not grow large beaks, they died in larger numbers than the finches with larger beaks as the large beaks were favored. There are others: mice that become tan rather than brown as the environment shifts to sandy dessert. Dandelions that grow low to the ground where grass is regularly mowed but tall where it is not. Fishes that are drab in pools with predators but red in pools that have no predators and mate attraction is more important than survival.

You do realize, don't you, that the evidence for natural selection is so pervasive that AiG readily admits that natural selection occurs. See Darwin’s finches, Evidence supporting rapid post-Flood adaptation:
This is because natural selection has been observed and it is a fact.

Again, your failure to see anything is not a result of any lack of evidence, rather it is evidence of your refusal to look at the evidence: your cognitive dissonance reaction to the evidence of objective reality.

The basic prediction of natural selection is simple: change the environment slowly and the some organisms will surive and breed better than others, and as a result the following generations will be better adapted to the new ecology than the parent populaitons. If the change is to a drier environment, then future populations will be better adapted to drier ecologies. If the change is to a wetter environment, then future populations will be better adapted to wetter ecologies. Change the environment drastically and suddenly and organisms will perish.

You have yet to show that any "formulas" are watered down. Repetition is not truth.

Those that do not survive the "struggle" do not contribute to following generations in the same degree as those that do survive, and the populations of following generations are thereby modified to exclude their traits. It is one of the mechanisms that cause descent with modification, but it is a mechanism, not a theory.

Those that do not survive the "struggle" do not contribute to following generations in the same degree as those that do survive, and the populations of following generations are thereby changed to exclude their traits. It is one of the mechanisms that cause change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, but it is a mechanism, not a theory.

The "struggle for existence" is part of Darwin's explanation of the basis of natural selection, but his theory is still descent with modification. The fact remains that Darwin says that his theory is "the theory of descent with modification through variation and natural selection," ... no matter how much you shuck and jive you cannot change that fact. That the bulk of the book discusses the evidence for his theory does not mean that the whole book is his theory. The fact remains that this evidence not only still exists, but has grown as scientists study the science of evolutionary biology, and that there is more evidence that the theory is valid than existed in Darwin's time.

You really are a chuckle CTD

In other words, you agree that the "struggle for existence" is an observed fact, part of objective reality known to Darwin and everyone else, part of the evidence foundation for the theory of descent with modification. Surely we don't think we need to mention every fact involved in the foundation of a theory every time we state what the theory is. That is what the science covers.

But not in the statement of his theory, nor in the statement of other theories, but as part of the evidence of natural selection. You have still failed to show that there is part of Darwin's theory that is missing from the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.

Again, you seem to feel that every piece of evidence for evolution needs to be included in the theory of evolution. Perhaps you can tell me how a population that has died out is able to pass on hereditary traits to a following generation? How it is possible to descend with modification afterwards?

Whether extinction occurred or not, it would not affect the reality of evolution, nor would it change the theory of descent with modification, the theory of hereditary change in populations from generation to generation explaining the diversity of life as we see it. The fact is that extinction is part of the natural history, the evidence, the basis, the foundation for the theory of evolution.

Your claim is that Darwin had something in his theory that was more than descent with modification, something that is missing from my saying that evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation and that this is sufficient to explain the diversity of life we see, in life today, in history, in the fossil record, and in the genetic record. Extinction is just one of those pieces, those facts, of evidence that evolution explains, and explains rather elegantly.

Change in populations is intraspecies?

Now you are waffling. Perhaps you can show where he made these suggestions and then how they are fundamental to his theory, and then how his theory says that people MUST result. Again, good hunting.

No, I mean that Russ claims that humans are a MUST HAPPEN result, while evolution says no such thing: his continued characterization of evolution as rocks to people is false, misguided and misinformed.

What you claim is irrelavant to reality. You are free to claim that the world is flat, or that it is young. Unfortunately for you such claims have no impact at all on reality.

You make up a fantasy world wide conspiracy, and then call me a coward because I don't defend the conspiracy you have invented out of thin air? You really are a chuckle CTD.

Meanwhile your original claim is still undefended, still unsupported - that Darwin had something in his theory that was more than descent with modification, something that is missing from my saying that evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation and that this is sufficient to explain the diversity of life we see, in life today, in history, in the fossil record, and in the genetic record. You accuse me of cowardice and yet you don't have the integrity to admit your error or to actually do something about it.

What you do with the evidence is your own concern, your denial has no effect on it's continued existence, or on the objective reality that surrounds you. You asked for evidence, and so far all you have demonstrated is a total inability to actually deal with it. This is how cognitive dissonance deals with truth: denial after denial after denial. The stronger the dissonance the stronger the denial of reality, resulting in delusions of conspiracies that expands until it covers the world.

And yet evolution is still just descent with modification, just the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, and you have failed to demonstrate any substantial difference between what Darwin says and what I've said. You have still totally failed in any way to provide even a scintilla of a clue of this mysterious missing "something" that is your original thesis. All you have done in introduce diversion after diversion after diversion ... and avoided the issue.

Oh look -- another diversion ... looks like you will continue to fail, fail to support your position, fail to deal with the evidence, fail to acknowledge that you are wrong, fail to face reality.

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

I also put up pictures myself, did you miss them? Including that of Lucy, which is only 40% complete.

Most are fragmented and incomplete, but notice they barely ever present a complete skeleton to back up claims? And when they do, the skeletons seem to be recognisable for what they are. Whereas skulls or partial skulls are understandably more difficult. Unfortunately, when a skeleton is more complete and obviously human or ape, it then comes down to evolutionary commentary to claim them as transitional forms, just in case we were convinced by sight. Yet they, like us, do not know any more about them, nor how they were as they must have looked in completion (covered).

An extinct species does not equal a transitional form/missing link, whether of the monkey family or mankind. That is very much speculation based on bias assumptions of the past and automatic belief that evolution has taken place. Which shows one who has this belief, does not seem able to think outside of it or consider otherwise. We cannot possibly know that what we dig up and find is a missing link/transitional form, simply because their race may not exist today.

See even here with Turkana Boy (or Nariokotome Boy), you'll notice that the evolutionary scientists show surprise at the similarities to modern day humans, (which is no surprise to the creationist) considering it's been dated 1.5 million years old, they probably didn't expect this. They compare him to certain races existing today. Unfortunately, due to some differences, he is then considered to be a missing link, without knowing anymore about him. Again speculation based on assumptions of the past.

See here they say this:


Then they go onto say:


But then they go onto add this to make sure they keep us believing it's a transitional form:


This is clear evidence, that anything they dig up from the past MUST be a transitional form, even if it has significant similarities to modern day races because they already believe it. Rather than admitting that perhaps the similarities being significant, might actually indicate it is fully human...

Then they say this:


And this is their one big (hopeful) push that this will convince the unsuspecting that this skeleton is a transitonal form. By describing its smaller cranial capacity and its thicker eyebrow projections. Yet, if you check out many people living today, they too have the same cranial capacity (e.g. pygmies, Native Australians etc). Like Homo sapiens (archaic), native Australians also have thick protruding eyebrows, an inward-inclined mandibular structure, and a slightly smaller cranial capacity. And if cranial capacity had anything to do with being less evolved, this also contradicts the fact that Neanderthal has a larger brain capacity - (quote from Linda's own link) Their cranial capacity </wiki/Cranial_capacity> was larger than modern humans, indicating that their brains may have been larger. The brain size is related to a mutation </wiki/Mutation> in the microcephalin </wiki/Microcephalin> gene, which is also seen in the Homo sapiens genetic pool. So they can hardly claim one thing, if it's being contradicted by something by the other.
.
Also, differences in cranial capacity do not necessarily denote differences in intelligence or abilities. Intelligence depends on the internal organisation of the brain, rather than on its volume. So there goes that theory. But I can see why they were hopeful. This can also be said for neanderthal too. Distinct features that may differ from existing races that we can observe, do not make it a missing link/transitional form. That, once again, is simply evolutionary assumptions.

But back to Turkana. Then they go onto say more (admissions):


And in case we were inclined to believe he may have been capable of speech, indicating how human he probably was, they say this:


Yet it seems they still can't get past the fact it still points to the same functioning we have:


There are a mixture of admissions and speculations here, but no evidence that this is an earlier transitional form from ape to man, unless one is willing and ready to believe the evolutionary assumptions of our past. I would definitely ask people to check out the pictures of this skeleton. There are enough differences in races existing today, that if one modern day race with distinguishable traits that make them stand amongst the rest, had died out earlier, they too would have been labelled a missing link, rather than an extinct human species. Very sad. All are only variations and unique races in the human family. The difference between them is no greater than the difference between an Inuit and an African or a pygmy and a European.

It is not easy to always distinguish an ape skull or a human skull, unless you are seeing it from all angles and in completion. Consider they are the most similar animal in appearance to us, if you compare them to the rest of the animals kingdom, but the differences are also marked if you see them in completion. Differences could be confused when looking at a line up of skulls, considering there are races today which have flatter noses and stronger jaws than some of us. But as I mentioned, the human skulls have the bridge of the nose intact. Monkeys do not. That too can be hard to see in detail in some of those pictures. Would really prefer to see complete skeletons before making any kind of speculations on ape to man evolution or so-called "transitonal forms".



This doesn't require one to take anything out of context. He goes from stating that ape-man evolution occured, to then admitting there is a lack of evidence for those transitions but how hopeful he is that they will somehow, sometime turn up. And also admits the dangers of coming to conclusions about those they're not sure about (incomplete etc)....did you somehow miss all that Linda?

Thanks for posting this in full, it's much clearer, but more embarrassing for your side <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />. And just fits in with the contradictory statements by evolutionists that were posted on here awhile back that I also have on video. Big claims for myriads of transitional forms, but when cornered to provide them, then came the myriad of excuses <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> In other words, they didn't have any they could really present as a water-tight case (just as the owner of that Museum had admitted in a private letter).



Did the point somehow escape you Linda? Should be clear enough for anybody. Re-read my post again and look at the pictures again and see if you get it. It does not matter how old or how new those drawings were and are, they are to show us the bias that is involved with presenting evolution to the public based on depictions, rather than reality. Or "incomplete" reality. They cannot even agree on the apppearance of the same skull, which you can see by the different drawings. Why should he or we give credit to people who have employed such practises now or in the past? Simply because we now have advanced technology? Advanced technology, simply equals advanced and more realistic looking fantasy when it comes to evolutionary depictions. I don't consider it an honest practice to paint pictures of animals just as they look today matching the prints they found, yet in human prints, they painted a baboon/human looking creature instead, and you cannot even "see" the bias in this or the deliberate twist to their imagination. You can continue to make excuses for them if you wish. I doubt those made increasingly aware of such practises will be quite so fooled in future.



Wrong. It is very relevant and you don't get off that easy. Here is the source - Earnest A. Hooton, Up From The Ape, New York: McMillan, 1931, p. 332. You were given the link to gain further detail/information and failed to bother checking. As for excusing Hooton? Having no knowledge of modern facial reconstruction techniques is even less of an excuse to put them forth as a realistic depiction. Thereby fooling the public who also had no further knowledge to prove otherwise. Keep making excuses to the contrary though, they are of course on your side.



You spelled Piltdown wrong, check below. Feeling silly now? Pointing out a petty typing error won't help your case either.



Spare me the excuses <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/talktothehand.gif" alt="" />. For more than 40 years, there were many scientific articles written on piltdown man and many depictions (interpretations and drawings). It was presented as proof for human evolution and no fewer than 500 doctoral thesis were written on it . Source - Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1980, p. 5 While visiting the British Museum in 1921, leading American paleoanthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn said "We have to be reminded over and over again that Nature is full of paradoxes" and proclaimed Piltdown "a discovery of transcendant importance to the prehistory of man. Source - Stephen Jay Gould, "Smith Woodward's Folly", New Scientist, February 5, 1979, p. 44.



Who needs to create a strawman when a tooth of a pig makes a monkey out of an evolutionist? Even reading your link didn't help their case much Linda. I guess you think it does. It still shows that they are desperately searching for anything to prove ape-man scenarios and even a tooth to them is up for consideration. Making the case sound better and nicer, doesn't take away what happened, nor the embarrassment. What next we wonder?



You haven't elaborated on this at all....so I cannot really comment further either and won't waste more of my time doing so. .

By the way, I looked up the meaning of hominid and this is what I get from two differing websites:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominid
A hominid is any member of the biological family Hominidae </wiki/Hominidae> (the "great apes"), including the extinct and extant humans </wiki/Human>, chimpanzees </wiki/Chimpanzee>, gorillas </wiki/Gorilla>, and orangutans </wiki/Orangutan>. This classification has been revised </wiki/Ape> several times in the last few decades. These various revisions have led to a varied use of the word "hominid": the original meaning of Hominidae referred only to the modern meaning of Hominina </wiki/Hominina>, i.e. only humans and their closest relatives. The meaning of the taxon </wiki/Taxon> changed gradually, leading to the modern meaning of "hominid," which includes all great apes </wiki/Great_ape>.

And here from Talk Origins http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html
The word "hominid" in this website refers to members of the family of humans, Hominidae, which consists of all species on our side of the last common ancestor of humans and living apes.

And this is why people can become confused by the words evolutionists use, considering they can change their meaning somewhat and cause further confusion in the process. I always wonder where would they be if they were forced to stick to common and more simplistic terms? Try and imagine how they'd work the theory then.....what refuge would they have? Complexity and confusion is a big part of the game. And here below is another example of findings ways to escape why they still cannot come up with any water-tight arguments to prove evolution:



Yet... if the evolutionist worked from honesty and science the first time around, he/she would not need to constantly alter previous claims. If they are in any confusion or doubt, it should not be presented as a fact to the public. You constantly claim on here to have evidence for evolution. However, when pressed or things are brought to light, you'll go onto admit that no such claims for 100% certainty should be made. Therefore, if one does not have 100% certainty, then you and your superiors have no right to make claims ahead of time and confusing the public in the process and evolution has done so. Anything beneath 100% is not truckloads of evidence Linda, and in light of that, one should cease making such bold and unsubtantiated claims, unless their motivation is to convince people of something they themselves cannot be 100% certain of either.

Evolution has to continually be changed/modified, because there is no truth to it. It cannot afford to standstill, as I said in a previous post, but must keep moving should it be caught out in the same discrepancies that it's been caught out on in the past. They evolve better methods and definitions in an attempt to avoid being caught out. That is the reason why they have to keep changing the theory. New evidence keeps contradicting evolution, which is why they have to keep changing/modifying their theory. And as for artistic depiction of our past? It is a dishonest practice when it is done to paint our past in accordance with evolution beliefs. Creating a picture in the minds of human beings that ignorantly depicts how we once lived, how we once looked, etc when they have no such knowledge to present it as so. It is deceptive and deliberate and is always done according to the evolution belief. They either humanise or aperise something, depending on what is necessary to indoctrinate the viewer t their beliefs. When it comes to science, this should not be okayed and then waved away as though "oh well, it doesn't really matter". It would only matter to you Linda if the situation were in reverse. And no, I have not seen the Victorian engravings of dinosaurs, but would be interested to view them, considering much more ancient cultures had depicted dinosaurs, long before we had even unearthed them and seemed fully aware of them back then too. Please feel free to post them for curiosity sake. I'd enjoy that.



Did you actually look at the link I presented? I mentioned that it contained much more information and detail and sources. Here is the source if this helps. Perhaps you'll get lucky and find some way of attempting to rubbish it.
A. J. Kelso, Physical Anthropology, 1.b., 1970, pp. 221; M. D. Leakey, Olduvai Gorge, Vol 3,



Ahhh phooey, I have already mentioned this earlier Linda, so I do not want to repeat it here.



He hasn't strayed at all. It's just yours and their interpretation that differs. If scientists do not take any notice of seafairing skills, evidence of clothing, needles, and evidences of those things, alongside the fossil evidence, then we must ask why? Shouldn't they be taking all things into account when studying and then potraying these findings to the public? It seems to me they are very quick to portray them in magazines and drawings and Museums anyway they wish in the most brutish manner possible, without evidence to back it up. Yet when given evidence of such creative skills and handywork to the contrary, they ignore it. If that's not dishonest, I don't know what is.




Ridiculous attempt? Wow, you don't consider that a disgusting example of where evolution and the scientists against one human being? History speaks for itself. Yes, it is true that atrocities have been committed by both sides, but the evolutionary belief itself is a great motivation and gives many more reasons for one to back up such actions. And this is why this story was brought to light. If one believes they are nothing more than a product of chance with more relations to the monkeys in the cages, then to a creator being, one can also decide who is more or lesser evolved (and important) than the other and employ whatever actions they feel are appropriate. Even creating their own laws and methods to use, because to them, they have no ultimate being to answer to for such atrocities. Hitler also employed such methods and managed to convince others that these people were inferior and further down the evolutionary scale by referring to them as "vermin". Very similar to Pwcca's comparison to an unborn child having less importance than a hampster on the abortion thread. But I won't go into that any further here. However, if you can't see the where such a belief leads, then you're blind or deliberately so.

The same with Starlin and Lenin. When one has such a belief in their origins, their ideas about themselves and one-another can be profoundly affected. For them, they are their own gods, their own rulers and there is no ultimate being to answer to for their actions. They can, in a sense, do what they want, so long as they are in a position of power to do so.



Your idea of truth may not include the rest of the public. You simply present anything YOU believe as being THE truth and everything else is otherwise. There are both sides to this, which is what this forum is created for. Don't expect to have the traffic one way Linda.

PS, complaining about links to websites (or information/pictures painstakingly pasted) that you whine about refuting, makes little sense when you yourself continue to do the same. I included my own words, you included yours. I gave a link, but made it easier by putting up the information and pictures on the same post. Displaying them for anybody to see. You instead simply gave links to many other evolutionary websites....which doesn't seem to me to be any easier or better than the method I chose. So quit complaining.

CTD is fully aware you do this as well. You complain about anything done on here no matter what it is or how it's done. You've done the same to Russ, to me, to everybody on the opposition side, simply because anything we do and present is not palatable to you.

Hi Bex,

I'm going to go back and pick up some points that I haven't addressed. First I'd like to say that when discussing evolution, we're first and foremost talking about the evidence from the natural world. We both need to be referring to that, which is why I and others here provide links. What I tend to see is that you don't read them and then claim that there is no evidence. Recently, in particular, RAZD posted a fascinating link about the foraminifera fossil record, complete without gaps for millions of years, and I don't see any evidence that any creationist here has read it. If you go on to claim that there is a lack of evidence, and no transitional fossils, you need to discuss foraminifera. As I said earlier, in a scientific pursuit of what's true, you can't just sweep anything under the rug which inconveniently doesn't fit your model of how things work. So continually making claims such as


is pretty inconsistent with the evidence that's been presented in the various threads here. There's nothing to "block my ears and scream" about when the science is out there -- it's a question of whether people here are wiling to address this. When I accuse people of dodging, my primary definition of that is writing a post in which the evidence -- things like the foraminifera article -- is ignored or waved away. Notice the conversations about tree rings, varves and ice cores have stopped too. It's difficult for a creationist to explain how each of these pieces of evidence match up to give similar dates. Speaking of dating, I also see creationists claiming that dating methods are wrong, with no explanation as to how.

It must be frustrating to be asked by me and others to discuss these things, but it's how we figure the nature of the world out. How else do you propose getting at the truth? You can argue with someone, each of you making assertions, and maybe the loudest or most charismatic one wins. Does that means they also are right? Wouldn't it be better to explain why you are right, backing up your assertions with evidence of some kind? That's what we do here; though again, in following the scientific method, the evidence comes first and the arguments/opinions/ideas etc are based on that. The only reason I accept evolution as the likeliest explanation for what we see in the natural world is because there is so much evidence that it has happened and continues to happen.


I didn't comment on that because RAZD or LinearAQ did; though if you want to raise the subject again, you are welcome to. You've seen evidence here for transitional forms. Maybe we ought to discuss the foraminifera article in detail and discuss why these organisms are such good evidence. I can't remember when Patterson made the comments you refer to -- are they old? -- and I don't know anything about him, so I would need to be able to place his words and the incident in their proper context.


As I explained above, I personally call a dodge when someone writes a post which ignores or brushes away evidence which has been presented for evolution. You and CTD did not directly address the hominid skulls in your posts in that thread. You've said more here now. This is the last time I'll say this as well but if you are going to continue to claim that there are no transitional forms, you need to explain why the evidence here from horse, hominid and foraminifera fossils is not transitional. "I don't believe they are" unfortunately doesn't count for much when you are wanting to overturn a scientific theory.


Then I suggest you refrain from writing long paragraphs here about how the Bible is literally true, that a true Christian has to take the Bible literally, etc etc. You know that I for one don't believe this dogma and it also does not exist within the realms of science. If we're talking about evolution then we look at the evidence from the natural world. When you set yourself up to think that looking at this evidence objectively is going to destroy everything you believe in and hold dear, then cognitive dissonance comes into operation -- for example, sweeping things under the rug that don't "fit." I've seen many Christians claim that God gave us a brain to use and that he meant us to work things out with it, not deny them in the face of evidence to the contrary, but I guess none of these are "real" Christians by your definition.

Regarding your comments about hominid fossils -- we can learn a lot from the fossils and yes we can make an educated guess about what they would have looked like. I suggest you have a look at the links I provided in my post last night. In most cases it's as simple as looking the fossils up on Wikipedia and learning about why these are classified as particular species, and how they are similar and different to each other and us. This information comes from the fossils themselves, and increasingly from genetics as well; scientists don't sit around and make it up.

You said about Yahya's site:

But this information is all over the internet. As I suggested above, it's there on Wikipedia -- the real information, and all of it, unfiltered by someone like Yahya who has an agenda to manipulate and misrepresent it. Why is it a test for authenticity if it appears in National Geographic? Scientific articles written by people like paleoanthropoligists appear in peer-reviewed journals all the time. These hold rather more weight in the scientific community, yet National Geographic stands out does it?

Regarding cutting and pasting from websites. I used to have the time to sit here for hours and refute whatever was presented, but really that was because I had nothing else to do. I don't think it's fair in a debate to paste a block of someone else's evidence and expect others to accept the time-consuming task of refuting it -- especially as it's usually thankless because more rug-sweeping is usually all that comes of it. (Denial, waving away, etc.) I wouldn't paste pages from a website and ask you to refute.

What I suggest might have been a good idea was selecting a part of what you presented here, so that we could look at it in detail; for example, the fossil of Lucy. You could say you weren't convinced that she was anything other than an ape who walked on all fours, and we could discuss the fossil and what scientists have learned from it. We might have talked about other hominid fossils by way of comparison, and dating methods as well. That would be enough to keep us going for quite a while. Instead, I've addressed a wide variety of topics under the umbrella of hominid fossils in a rather shallow way in order to address Yahya's web pages; each of them deserves more discussion than I had time to give to it. Discussing one fossil at a time, or one geological phenomenon (for example varves) is the way I'd prefer to go and I think it would be less frustrating and time-consuming for all.


Yes, you've made the point very well by presenting Yahya's claims here.


You're welcome to do so, but he's not going to be able to make a more convincing case for Lucy and other hominids of her kind to have been apes who walked on all fours; the anatomical evidence is simply too sound that they were bipedal. Most of his other assertions evaporate as well when you simply look the facts up. While you're inviting him to come here and tell us that we're all infidels, maybe you can explain to him why Islam is not the true faith and why the earth is not old.

If I've omitted any comments you've made about the hominid skulls or other fossils, please let me know; it's hard to pick through what's here and try to sift out what hasn't been addressed. Keep in mind that those skulls are not the sole evidence we have, and that Turkana Boy for example comes with most of his skeleton intact too. The site I referred you to gives details about how the skulls differ from each other and from modern humans as well as chimps. You can't claim "we can't learn much from a skull" because there are people who spend their lives doing just this and publishing papers about it. The information is out there if you want to read it.

Actually, this is where my finite patience reaches its limit.

You need something more than repetition if your shuck & jive is to remain amusing, see? And amusement's about my only motive for playing, since there's not much educational value or challenge.

Am I so stupid & proud that I'll continue you're "no you didn't / yes I did" game? No. It is ended. I will play another round at pointing out <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hehehe.gif" alt="" /> the things your insane religion mercilessly <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smiliewhipit.gif" alt="" /> compels you to produce.


I don't care if you think I've shown jack. You haven't answered your own question!Hoping I'll forget? Hoping I'll <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/reallymad.gif" alt="" /> or <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/taz.gif" alt="" />?

More like <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/boogie.gif" alt="" /> or <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bunnydance.gif" alt="" />
Why pretend when we have so many examples?
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blah.gif" alt="" /> But no commitment. And just look at that last sentence up there. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blah.gif" alt="" />

It does? Oh what a genius was this Darwin, that he should be the first to observe that lifeforms reproduce after their kind! One takes it for granted now, and wonders that nobody ever noticed this before.

Now according to your story, how did domesticated stock come to exist before anyone noticed this?

I should think it more correct to say everybody predicted genetics, than give special credit to Darwin. But then I don't <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/imnotworthy.gif" alt="" /> the prophets of evolutionism.
What theory? How did biologists apply Darwin's "theory" long before there was a Darwin? You provide an observation and call it a theory? Not surprising, I suppose. You've provided conclusions and called them evidence; what next?

In the "Cracking Down" thread I posted a few things about evidence. Don't know if any of that might help, or maybe you're too far gone by now.
Nevermind.

I mean thanks for trying; but this isn't what I'm seeking.
No. I'm looking for the kind of evidence which Huxley said was required. Darwin said it was about impossible to provide, and maybe he was right.


No. I said nothing in that part of my post indicating I agreed with Darwin, Spencer, or Malthus. Elsewhere I indicated I disagree. Is this why you say I agree, just to be silly?

You really might want to think before you just <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blah.gif" alt="" /> Neither of your questions make sense, I mean not in hardly any context.

Now if you don't come up with the most backwards junk! It's clear you don't want to defend what Darwin says or what you yourself say. Keep it funny, or I WON'T be wasting very much more time.

Fine. Omit that too. Won't take you closer to Darwinism.

Waffling? Clarification is waffling? No. It's not. You're making a false accusation to draw attention away from the accuracy of my statement. Time for the bold.

He made suggestions along those lines, but was reluctant to say anything firm. His followers are no longer reluctant. They define anyone who questions this doctrine as unscientific, and take action to expel them.

Is this fundamental? Not much of an origin myth without it, is there?
Right... I think you read Russ about as well as you read Darwin.

Actually, my claims are some of the most relevant elements if we are to discuss very much. I never said they had an impact on reality, but they do have an impact on what gets posted. Surely your refusal to properly deal with my claims will have an impact as well. You might consider that in the future.

Your response is duly noted.

I said there were cowards. Did I say you were one of them?

Neither am I preventing you from arguing that such persons are not cowards.

As for my integrity, I do not fear. You cannot jeopardize it. A false accusation might harm one's reputation, but it's impotent against one's integrity. Evodefine those terms, why don't you?
You can show me a snowcone and call it evidence of evolution. Still won't mean jack. Calling it "evidence" doesn't turn it into evidence.

Seriously! Think if that was true. One could make any claim out of the clear blue sky - anything! And then one could start calling things "evidence" for that claim, and they'd have to be evidence because you said so. I think I'll pass on that offer.

Diversion? from what? Your never-ending, nonsensical quest?

More junk like this?
"Descent with modification" isn't an oversimplification, but "things change" is?

It's subject to the exact same criticism! What's descending? What's being modified into what? What's modifying it?

See folks, I'm playing too much now. I should exercise restraint, because this doesn't promise to get any funnier. I predict the funny/sad spectacle's going to devolve into just about pure sad.

But anyhow, we know what's changing & what's evolving. Nothingness is said to have evolved into everything that exists. Not one link in the fantasy holds up; no part of the story dares to be well-defined, lest it be shown defective. They have to keep the camera from zooming in or focusing.

Whenever things are clearly examined, the myth is shown false & they pretend not to notice. They say "look at the rest of this"; but a broken chain's no use. Protest & they'll say "we didn't need that part anyhow." But why did they make it if they didn't need it? Cause & effect.

Thanks, Bex, for a very interesting look at human evolution. It's something that certainly catches my interest because we're examining our roots and where we came from. I like to speculate as much as anyone else about what these hominids were like, and I wonder how "human" they were. I think most of us wonder about that. As always, it's the evidence that's going to tell us, and we learn more all the time as more comes to light.



I saw pictures of skulls and discussed what Yahya was saying about the fossils. What's wrong with being 40% complete for Lucy? She is not the only existing australopithecine fossil. Sure it would be nice to have more of the skeleton, but bearing in mind that humans are symmetrical, there's quite a lot we can learn from the 40%, especially when we compare it with other fossils. Or are you saying you will not look at any fossil which is not 100% complete because you don't believe anything can be learned from anything less?



The situation is more complex than this. None of the hominid fossils are "obviously" human or ape and if you looked at any of the links I provided, they will explain to you how they are both similar and different to apes and humans. That is what makes them transitional between humans and an apelike ancestor. Paleoanthropoligists are not just "convinced by sight" and they do not make their decisions about fossils from a cursory glance. We can take a case in point with Turkana Boy, which you discuss a little later.



Can you explain this please? How does extinction automatically disqualify anything from being a transitional fossil? Or is this the "were you there" argument again, claiming that nothing can be learned from the past? Again, if you took a moment to look on Wikipedia at some of the homind fossils discussed earlier, or Talkorigins, you will find information about how those fossils are transitional between an apelike ancestor and humans. Earlier, CTD and I were discussing an article about foot morphology and fossil feet, which showed in detail the transitional characteristics of these: transitional meaning intermediate between the two. Almost every post you write seems to contain the statement that there are no transitional forms of anything, anywhere, while the actual evidence of their existence is ignored.

From here you move on to discussing Turkana Boy. Indeed he shows some characteristics of modern humans. You then seem to be claiming that scientists are making up the bits about him that are not like us. Yet it is these "bits" which show him to be different from us -- and different enough that some scientists have proposed that some fossils which appear to be intermediate between Turkana Boy (homo erectus) and us should themselves be classed as a species in their own right, homo heidelbergensis. The classification of these kinds of fossils is tricky for the very reason that there are so many transitionals between homo erectus and us. This really appears to be a case of constant gradual change where the differences at either end are obvious, but graded so finely that it's hard to draw a line.

Back to Turkana Boy, there are small but significant differences which nonetheless delineate the skeleton as being homo erectus and not modern.

source


The skull is very similar to that of Java Man, which many creationists consider to be an ape. However, it is interesting to compare both of these to the skull of a modern human. While the Java Man skull cap is an extraordinary match for that of Turkana Boy, the differences between these and the modern skull are readily apparent. What's more, remember that the cranial capacity of Turkana Boy is equal to less than 1% of the modern population of any race or sex. If you looked at the link I provided to brain sizes, you will also see that it is relative to body size, so it is not an absolute measurement. Turkana Boy's cranial capacity is consistent with that of other homo erectus skulls of the time period. And neandertals, while possessing slightly larger brains than modern humans, were also much more robust.

You said:


This is the first time I've heard this assertion. What is your source please?

As far as discussing characteristics that we consider "human," such as speech and clothing and so on, I don't see it as a problem that homo erectus might have been capable of rudimentary speech, nor that neandertals might have talked. This capacity developed at some point so why not with these species? I think creationists want to characterise evolutionists as insisting that early humans had to be primitive apes; maybe this ups the horror-factor for those who don't want to think that we're related to apes. I enjoy learning about the possible human characteristics of our predecessors and I certainly have no burning desire to demote them to savages in every regard. This may have been a prevalent attitude in the past, when racist attitudes were more common and sometimes people wanted to believe that certain races were "less evolved" or more savage, but we've moved on from this and someone who still believes this is going to find themselves marginalised. Again, it's about looking at the evidence. Instead of saying that races like Australian aborigines must necessarily be more "primitive," what we find on the whole is that these people have tooth sizes more typical of archaic (early) homo sapiens, and that the smallest tooth sizes are found in areas of the world where food-processing techniques have been used for the longest time. Our mesolithic ancestors (10,000) years ago were also about 10% more robust than we are now, and 30,000 years ago they were 30% more robust. We're in transition even now.

You said:


Yet if you look at the skulls, you will notice small differences between them that amount to big differences when you look at the first, the middle, and the last. These cannot be explained by simple racial differences; there are no races alive today with completely absent chins, jaws that thrust to such an extent, or brow ridges so heavy. What's more, the cranial capacity can be seen to grow from the size of an ape's to the size of a modern human's. Why do you need to see the rest of the skeleton when looking at differences between these skulls? And again, taking them as a series, where do you draw the line and say this one is an ape, but the one next to it is a human?

The quote mine you discuss is quite honest in saying that we would like to see more fossils, because the hominid fossil record is incomplete. It is complete enough, as can be seen in the above link, for us to learn a great deal; but there is much more to find out, and no doubt ideas which will have to be revised in the light of new evidence. This is also why artists' depictions change, as we learn more and they can make their depictions more accurate. I find it odd that someone is laughing at science making progress in the light of new evidence: this is exactly what should happen if we're going to be open to learning more about the world.
What's more, as RAZD pointed out, intermediaries between apes and humans are going to have characteristics of both, and that's what the artists depict. What else do you expect to see?

One last point on this: Hooten's quote is from 1931. Creationists give quotes that are decades old and seem to think that nothing has moved on since then. If you want to find out about modern facial reconstruction techniques, here is an interesting site about Otzi the Iceman, the 5000 year old mummy which was found in the Alps. It talks about the meticulous techniques, including CAT scans, which were used to reconstruct his face. CAT scans didn't exist in the 1930s. Though again, I don't see the significance of the discussion here of artists' depictions. They become more accurate as we learn more. But with transitional hominids, you're always going to get the ape/human mix depicted because that is what we actually see in the fossils. What's more, they are not based on individual fossils, but on what we know from existing groups of fossils.

By the way, a niggling point but I'm typing on a forum and I occasionally make typos. If someone is running a website which purports to be scientific, then I expect them to spell their sources' names correctly. What I found was that Hooten's name is spelled in the same incorrect way on quite a few creationist sites, which indicates that Yahya did the usual creationist thing by borrowing off someone else rather than trying to verify the information himself. It's how quote mines tend to get passed around, without anyone ever being interested in establishing their original provenance or indeed their contemporary relevance.

The last thing I'd like to say about Piltdown Man is that if the proper tests were done on it in the first place, it would have been shown very quickly to be a fraud. You can find a timeline at the BBC site which states:



These kinds of tests would be routinely done today. What's more, there is enough knnowledge of the fossil record now for a forgery like this to show up as a glaring anomaly which would be immediately suspect. Piltdown Man has an interesting history and it serves as a reminder to always be thorough in investigating evidence, but it does not do what creationists wish for it to do, which is indicate that every single fossil should somehow be suspect and that all scientists are prone to being fooled by this. Nebraska Man is a similar minor case, though it never gained the sort of acceptance that Piltdown Man did. It has been built up by creationists looking for evidence of frauds so that they can say that fossils are hoaxes and scientists are liars.

If you would like more clarification about the terminology "hominid" or "hominin," then you are welcome to read here. Perhaps I should be using "hominin" here, as I am using the definition from Talk Origins which you provided. I learned the word "hominid" and it stuck in my mind.



We've spoken about this before. No serious scientist claims that they are 100% certain about anything. We can be nearly completely certain about some things maybe, but we're not doing science if our minds are completely closed. And as we would like to see many more transitional hominid fossils in order to clarify our own ancestral tree, then it would be obviously silly to claim that we're in no doubt about any of it -- the cladograms I linked to earlier show where some of these uncertainties lie. This is why people become scientists: because there are things to learn, discoveries to be made. You seem to want scientists to be as closed-minded and dogmatic about their positions as creationists are about theirs. Creationists don't appear to accept new evidence; they stick to trying to prove that the Bible is literal and therefore evolution must be wrong -- or do you disagree with this?

If you've got a clickable link to real information about this 1.7 million year old hut discovered by Leakey, can I have it please? When I attempt to Google this I get a slew of creationist websites. I would still like to establish the provenance of the claims being made here about this hut -- what it is exactly, and what Leakey says about it. I explained that I'm skeptical of it as Yahya portrays it because nothing like this is found in Britain; you get some post holes which are 10,000 years old and these are major finds.

So you really want to paint modern evolutionists as being complicit in racist ideas and occurrences of 100 years ago? This is desperation really. We're talking here about fossil evidence, which is as it should be. We can leave the racial slurs, conspiracy theories, and assertions that evolution is responsible for all the evils of the world to CTD in his designated thread; they have nothing to do with analysing the physical evidence for hominid evolution.



What I do is cite my source for the information I am giving so that you can see I'm not making it up. I expect anyone I talk with here to do the same, and I do visit the links they post. I don't consider this to be the same thing as taking a video or a chunk from someone's website, pasting it here, and expecting it to be refuted. I gave an example of how we could constructively narrow the field to something like a discussion of Lucy. Why do you think I ask my students to write things in their own words, rather than handing in printouts of web pages as homework? I want to see that they have digested that information themselves and that they can articulate it to me, which includes what they understood from it.

Again, please let me know if there's anything you feel is important that I've missed out. These posts are very time-consuming and you're going to end up getting me there: I can't spend hours every day on this. I suggest that your time would be better spent by looking up homind fossils on Wikipedia and learning something about what they can tell us.

I've come across this phrase from Yahya's site (which Bex gave without provenance) about intelligence being related to brain organisation. It was paraphrased from a creationist called Marvin Lubenow, who said:



I came across this while I was re-reading one of the sources I linked to two posts ago, about brain size. I think I can see what is meant now: this is claiming that we're looking at the brain as being part of that particular species and how it uniquely works for them, rather than brain size alone and comparing it amongst obviously different species. (I think.) What I said about brain size relative to body size would seem to be relevant here, and this article goes into the subject in detail. This is how the article addresses Lubenow's comment:



In other words, homo habilis shows clear transitional features from apelike to human; and its brain size is also quite small. This would appear to answer the point, which appears to have been that in order to compare brain sizes, we need to be sure that we're looking at closely related species in order for it to have any meaning. The above source then goes on to present a graph of average brain sizes between related hominid species over time, and gives some references to information about how intelligence can be estimated.

I keep waiting to see a creationist here look these things up and evaluate them. If I'd read this statement somewhere myself, I'd look into it because it's phrased in an odd way and I'd be wondering what the evidence for it was.

Well CTD, you seem to be running out ... on reality.

This is a falsehood, as I have never edited that article on wikipedia, nor am I affilitated with talkorigins in any way. This doesn't bother me, as (1) CTD's opinion of me is the least of my concerns (comes after what to do with toe clippings), and (2) it demonstrates, amply, that CTD is ready and willing to rely on falsehood for his debate instead of truth. This of course necessarily makes anything he claims untrustworty.

The last resort of cognitive dissonance is character assasination, the ad hominem attack, the shoot the messenger and ignore the message approach. This too demonstrates the complete, absolute and total failure of CTD to demonstrate that there was "somehing" (as he claimed above) that is a part of Darwin's theory that is somehow missing in his statement (descent with modification) and even more to the point, absent from my definition of evolution as the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, or in the definition of the theory of evolution as the theory that evolution (descent with modification or the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation) is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it, from the world today, from history, from the fossil and geological record and from the genetic record.

There are other parts of CTD's posts that can, at best, be called misunderstandings.

Why don't we see what Gould himself called "large" changes. From one of your other links we have this:
BOLD for empHASis.

Note that when you say "person A says large and rapid" then you need to see what that person means by "large and rapid" rather than what YOU think they mean.

Somehow I don't think size differences in Escherichia coli (a common intestinal bacterium) are what Harum Yahya is talking about, or what you think of as "large" or "rapid" macroevolution. In addition, from your link of Gould on Goldschmidt:
Somehow I don't think that qualifies as what you or Harun Yahya were thinking either.

Nor is this really controversial in evolution: this is the environmental effects on growth and development, rather than genetic traits being changed, and is why evolutionary biologist tell you that natural selection operates on the phenotype rather than the genotype -- the phenotype is due to the combined effect of genotype and environment.

Since we are both saying that punk eek is about speciation and not larger scale change, I have to wonder what the difference is. Let's also look at what Gould himself says, from another of your links (his dispute with Dawkins, which was ongoing and there was no love lost between them):
BOLD added for emPHAsis.

And from another of your links:
Looks like Gould says that punk eek is a mechanism of speciation. Of course punkeek is just one of many mechanisms by which ancestral populations are replaced by new better adapted daughter species, just as Darwin said eh?

But I am confused by your post - are you now claiming that speciation events are now generally considered "sudden, large" changes by creationists? If so, then hooray! "macro"evoluiton has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of all these creationists, as speciation has been observed.

It comes as no suprise to me that Elsberry disagrees with you, as you clearly are no authority on anything biological or evolutionary (to say nothing of truth).

It also comes as no surprise to me when what you have quoted here agrees with the rest of the other articles you took quotes from, as shown above. Gould emphatically states that punkeek does not involve saltationism OR a "hopeful monster" event. What it demonstrates is that you have misrepresented Gould and punkeek, as does Harum Yahya, and many other creationists, or misunderstood Goulds comments as others have. Such misunderstandings come from cursory reading rather than understanding of articles.

Which is not the argument. Stassis is a part of the natural history of life on earth, however this "stassis" is not a complete lack of evolution, just a comparatively slow rate of change in geological time. Here's the abstract of the paper linked:


But also please note that Eldridge also does NOT say that punkeek is more than speciation. And he is also talking about the evidence in geological time.

Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Well CTD, you seem to be running out ... on more than patience.

What do you call someone who says they have done something they have not done?

The fact remains, that Darwin's theory is that descent with modification explains the origin of species, and thus the diversity of life as we know it.

The fact remains that my version of the theory of evolution is that the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it.

The fact remains that there is no substantial difference between these two statements.

The fact remains that you have not demonstrated even slight differences in any way shape or form.

The fact remains that there is not something else that is an essential part of Darwins theory that is now omitted as you claimed.

The fact remains that there is not something included in Darwin's original theory that is missing from my version that would qualify as showing my version to be a weakened, watered down or diluted version.

The fact remains that you have not demonstrated even slight elements to Darwin's work that add up to something more than descent with modification.

The fact remains that you have not demonstrated even slight elements to Darwin's work that are missing from my version.

The fact remains that you have failed -- failed to provide evidence, failed to substantiate your argument, failed to deal with reality.

And you have failed to disguise your failures to provide evidence, substantiate your argument, and deal with reality by red herring arguments and distraction.

That you are frustrated by your failures, or my refusal to go along with your fantasy games, is understandable: there is a conspiracy out there ... it is the conspiracy of reality to be totally unimpressed by your opinion or belief.

Actually I have demonstrated that you've shown jack, and further demonstrated that several of your claims are false.

This is one of your red herrings -- it seems to be about the topic, but it has nothing to do, nothing at all, with what is "missing" from my version of evolution that is part of Darwins theory.

Now just for yucks let's list a few mechanisms:

• survival of the fittest (struggle for existence)
• natural selection
• the 'theory' of the preservation of prefered races
• punctuated equilibrium (PE or punkeek)
• mutation
• variation
• genetic drift
• isolation

And then see how many times you mentioned them (I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt that they are discussed as critical missing elements to the theory if evolution):

• survival of the fittest (struggle for existence) 4
• natural selection 1
• the ('theory' of the) preservation of prefered races 1
• punctuated equilibrium (PE or punkeek) 1
• mutation 0
• variation 0
• genetic drift 0
• isolation

Total 7

And how many times I've mentioned them (specifically in regard to the theory of evolution):

• survival of the fittest (struggle for existence) 8
• natural selection 21
• the ('theory' of the) preservation of prefered races 3
• punctuated equilibrium (PE or punkeek) 11
• mutation 3
• variation 14
• genetic drift 2
• isolation 1

Total 63

And how many times they've been mentioned by others (in quotes):

• survival of the fittest (struggle for existence) 3
• natural selection 5
• the ('theory' of the) preservation of prefered races 1
• punctuated equilibrium (PE or punkeek) 19
• mutation 11
• variation 6
• genetic drift 0
• isolation 4

Total 49

Specifically note that in message #255783 I said:
The sad thing is that this is all you have left in your artillery, complaining (or is it just more misrepresentation on your part) that I have not addressed something when I have.

So funny little dancing icons aside, the fact is that the mechanisms have been discussed, some in detail, and that their relevance to the science of evolution is important, but that does not make them a necessary part of the theory that needs to be detailed.

Of course you could still be conflating the process of evolution with the theory of evolution with the science of evolution (as I have noted before, and which you denied). Certainly the science of evolution discusses all the known and theoretical mechanisms, their relative merits and influence on evolution and their validity, and it tests them, but this is because this is what science does.

A theory is just a statement, and can be as simple or as complex as you wish, depending on who you are talking to or depending on the theory. The theory of gravity is that mass attracts mass: do we need to discuss mechanisms by which this occurs?

A theory can also be restated for different purposes: if you want to test evolution in the field you cannot use "the change in frequency of alleles in populations over time" as you cannot measure alleles in the field. Likewise it is impractical to use changes in morphology of fossils in a genetic lab.

As you note there are many different ways to say the same thing, but the fundamental aspect of all these ways of stating what evolution is and what the theory of evolution is remain fundamentally the same, they all involve measurable changes in the hereditary traits of species as a result of mutation variations, ecological opportunities, the relative levels of natural selection and other mechanisms, and the statements that are preferred by different subfields relate to those subfields (ie genetics, lab experiments, fossils and fieldwork)

And there is the matter of the level of detail you want to include in the statement of the theory and how much you want to include in a discussion of the theory in relation to the science, and how much you can assume your specific audience knows about the topic: I can say "descent with modification" to a biologist and he knows what I am talking about, while a layperson may think I'm talking about testicles and individual growth. I've been through a whole thread on another site about the different ways you can describe the theory of evolution:

http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=5&t=771&m=1
Or you could say that evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, and that the theory of evolution is that this is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it, from the world today, from history, from the geological and fossil record and from the genetic record.

This has essentially been the sum total of your response on this issue, this is your evidence for my statments being a watered down, weakened and diluted version of Darwin's original theories. Your evidence is a "smiley" denoting bored disregard. Thanks for the (total lack of) effort to defend your own argument. But then we both know that the evidence does not exist because your claim is false.

There is no "rest" of Darwin's theory that has been excluded from modern versions in general and from mine in particular.

Obviously I do not need to continue ... as you have demonstrated what Russ said at the beginning:

You have demonstrated this in spades, thanks.

Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

How does your faith (evolution) explain symmetry?

Seems we lost a couple chromosomes while getting smarter. That's quite an intelligent feat for an unintelligent (accidental) process.

Do the math. This is another example of the brick was I was speaking about.

Here's the situation: RAZD believes he has lured me into a trap. PE is poorly understood and subject to a ton of debate & different opinions even in top evolutionist circles. Confusion abounds, and there are some seasoned double-talkers involved.

He deliberately accused HY of publishing something that wasn't so. His words, with important emphasis:
He thought it would be nigh on impossible for me to wade through all the double-talk. And even if I could, how could I make the results clear? At first thought, this seems like a formidable problem. But he got a little too cocky, and he underestimated my skills as an evolutionologist (I study evolutionists).

The first thing he overlooked is that the burden of proof lies with him. He makes the accusation, you see. In my first post I amply defended Harun Yayah. In such a muck of back & forth evaluation of PE, RAZD's task of proving guilt is even more difficult than anyone taking up the defense, and we see what a failure has resulted.

My second post changed things. I said RAZD's accusation was false. I undertook a burden of proof. Oh how happy he must've been to see that! I have established HY's innocence, and now I shall establish RAZD's guilt.

Do not be shocked that I am able to do this. Truth is on my side, and truth is a powerful ally. And as I say, RAZD has been too cocky. RAZD didn't say "PE never said any such thing." Had he said this, my job of convincing everyone of his guilt would be considerably harder. He said "Neither Gould nor Eldridge said any such thing.[/b]"

But Gould did sayOne could debate whether Gould was speaking on behalf of himself alone, or PE. But such obfuscation is of no use to RAZD. One might quibble over HY's terms 'large' and 'sudden' vs. Gould's 'major' and 'rapidly'. But RAZD didn't say "these exact words". RAZD did say "any such thing". Clearly these synonyms are any such thing, and RAZD is guilty of making a false accusation.

There are some scriptures, RAZD, about setting snares and digging pits. If you're interested I could look them up.

But as HY's innocence is established and your guilt is established, for now I'll move along & see what may be responseworthy in your post.
Come now. The truth of my statement has nothing to do with your affiliation with the other erring parties. Whether or not the error is a result of affiliation does not alter the fact that all parties have made the same error. It could be coincidence for all we know.

The frequency with which you insult my intelligence by employing bargain basement evolutionist tricks confirms this. We are in agreement on one issue.

Oh no you di'n't! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/taz.gif" alt="" />

Recall please who's been shown guilty of falsely accusing Harun Yayah, and what the motive appears to be. I seem to recall some other things being said about Harun Yayah as well.

Now I'm next in line for my role in setting things straight? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/quickdraw.gif" alt="" /> Bring it on!

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/headdancer.gif" alt="" />"This", in conventional English usage, is a pronoun which must refer to something previously mentioned in the post. There is nothing in the post remotely connected with the discussion of RAZD's quest for a definition of 'evolution'.

You made the accusation, so it's your burden. Your "YOU" is you yourself.

And this is their explanation of a means to generate macromutations (or perhaps technically, macromutational results). Do you now insult everyone's intelligence by attempting to confuse macromutations with macroevolution? My opinion is that your intent is implied, and strongly.

...And this is why.

Just a reminder: the burden of proof is on RAZD. He is the accusor. He has not demonstrated all Gould's usages of the term large. Rather he has cherry-picked one item, hoping nobody actually checks it out and finds the quote in a little fuller context:Everything surrounding RAZD's cherry-picked quote shows how silly it was. Everything!

But he will maintain that Gould doesn't mean "large" when he says "large". The evoego cannot easily admit defeat. And he knew where he got that quote when he cherry-picked it, and yet insults our intelligence, most brazenly.

What's your point? If Gould ever used "large" in a different sense than I would, does that mean he never could have used "large" in a sense I would? That's not valid logic. Especially when the subject of the discussion is a double-talking evolutionist whose pet "theory" was somewhat polymorphic, as we have established. (Remember - that's the whole idea behind this trap!)

I'm rearranging a bit so the q-boxes don't become overnested.

Elsberry's organization is evident if one follows the link, but it translates poorly in the quote box. His format is : first sentence is the error (I'll colour) and what follows tells why. Adding bold to key words as well.

And as quoted above, Gould said "I envisage a potential saltational origin for the essential features of key adaptations. , etc." Double-talker. No news.

I suppose that would depend on the creationist. I haven't taken a poll; neither do I recall indicating that which you assert.

So? He also states the opposite. Don't act surprised.

Oh, many other creationists? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/playhorsey.gif" alt="" /> Well, I'm happy to vindicate every last one & show all who visit this thread who the real deceivers and double-talkers are.

Did you intend to convey they had resolved it? The italics should help.

I expect all who were there remember the issue.

Thanks for providing the extra sources to look at the interesting fossils of our history. A look at our "human evolution"? Ahh more "If I repeat this enough, others might believe it". Insecurity and need to reassure oneself in the process. I believe this is unscientific, as it leaves no room to question or consider otherwise.

The evidence is interpreted differently by those doing the studying/observations and delivery, depending on which side of the origin belief they are on. Even evolutionists can argue on the same fossil, so let's not be too hasty and state that all these things are a product of evolution, or we'd be saying "we know what happened at the very beginning and that all things arose simply and slowly and became what they are today". This has not been proven. Even if a fossil should have characteristics that we could attribute to both man and ape, how do you know (or any of us) that this is not just another species? Rather than a transitional form on it's way to becoming human. Think about it. Races today, as I mentioned, some of which too have the very small cranial capacity, jaw etc, just like the Turkana boy should not be overlooked or dismissed either. They also should not have to put up with such bias and insulting interpretations of those with smaller skull capacities.

Since we observe no such evolutionary process in our own time, nor history, why assume that the process occured before that? No time today or history has evolution been observed to take place. You cannot simply talk about variation and adaption and exaggerate this out of context and claim that one kind of animal, has in fact, become another before we could observe that it ever has. Or ape creature became human. How can you possibly know this? Think about it, you can only study the fossil itself and it's surroundings, you cannot know whether it's a transitional form becoming something else or simply another species.

I doubt this argument will ever be put to rest. Think about the animals and races alive today and consider some of those that have traits that stand out to you as being similar to another. Had they been extinct and we were unable to observe them today, they would have the assumptions drawn up also and been fitted into a transitional form mould also. If you are working from such a belief system, you won't even allow yourself to see through it.



There is nothing wrong with studying any fossils. Whether complete or incomplete, but there is something wrong when you decide to give a complete rundown of an incomplete fossil, when all things need to be taken into account about that fossil to understand how it must have lived. E.g. the creative materials surrounding the Neanderthal seemed to be overlooked or not taken into account...as well as this - (In 1908 a typical Neanderthal skeleton was found in Poland. It had been buried in a suit of chain armor that was not yet fully rusted ("Neanderthal in Armour," in *Nature, April 23, 1908, p. 587). (2) A Neanderthal skeleton was found in the Philippine Islands in 1910. Due to the extreme moisture of that land, it would be impossible for the skeleton to be as much as a century old ("Living Neanderthal Man," in *Nature, December 8, 1910, p. 176).).

It confuses me why the evolutionist always attempted to depict them as brutish to the public and simplistic, yet this is contradicted by what was found surrounding this famous fossil. These VERY important details were somehow....missed or "omitted" to the public, because it is not how they wanted to portray neanderthal. They already had the vision in their head. It doesn't seem there is any come-back or reprimand if they are proven wrong either. That is what I mean about a deceptive depiction, or incompleteness/inaccuracy.. I don't expect you to agree with this, or be at all bothered by it, as it fits in with evolution. But I am confident that other people who are not so blinkered will (and should) consider those things. They, as all of us have the right to the knowledge of all those aspects, rather than being fed only what the evolutionist decides to feed us.



You talk about the situation being more complex, yet don't seem to see the contradiction when evolutionists only present what they want the public to know, which is what I was stating before. I have already discussed Turkana boy and given examples of races existing today that have the same/similar traits as to the smaller cranium and jaw. To imagine that this is a sign of lesser evolution and intelligence is actually incorrect and has racist connotations. So if you want to go down that avenue, you need to be very cautious. There are people also with larger cranial capacities that may not be anymore intelligent than their less robust counterparts. If that is so, and the skull makes the difference, then explain Neanderthal's larger skull capacity means he was more intelligent and evolved than us? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> Linda, you cannot simply claim one thing (apes to men with corresponding head growth and then try and explain away Neanderthal at the sametime. Why does evolution have an answer to everything? It's just evolving it's theory to fit in with any imagined scenario, that way it can never be "falsified" because they won't let it be caught standing still long enough. It's about continual movement, denials and dilution.



Hang on, that's not what I said. What I meant - an extinct animal does not automatically equal a transitional form, simply because it does not exist today or in our observable history, even if the evolutionist says so. You misquoted me on that. Similarities does not equal transitional. It does not mean one thing is becoming another or one thing has become another. Those, once again, are ASSUMPTIONS. Any similarity between one creature or another, doesn't mean it's becoming one or the other. If we can observe the same today (similar traits between kinds), why should you assume it was any different in the past and then make claims that they are in the midst of transitional between ape and man? Can you even consider another species? I have repeated this time and time again, but you simply cannot look outside the box. As I said, this is why origins comes into it. You say we can simpy trace them back. How can you trace them back when you are only digging up the present and assuming an unseen/unobserved past? The only thing you can trace is our human history that has been passed down to all of us, the one that we all have access to learning about. And there is no such evidence that any of us are and were products of evolution within that history. Before that? It simply becomes the area where evolution decides to paint their story. What is there to trace other than the evolutionist filling in the gaps based on what he already believes from our beginnings.



Again, that's not what I said. Try this if you're confused --> If one has set ideas about our beginnings as arising from simplicity, then they are looking for "evidences" to fit in with this belief. Yet....the evidences are very much in the eye of the beholder. Do you see what I'm saying here? I have already gone through this with Turkana boy and we must be open to the differences he has to many races existing today and not assume he's a transitional form, considering there are races that share the same characteristics today as I mentioned and they could hardly be claimed as "less evolved" or "less advanced" and if you think that is the case with him, perhaps you'd like to share the same with them too? Again, it just contradicts the fact that Neanderthal was the opposite. His entire body may have been robust, but so what? Considering how they must have lived too. I'm sure you've seen the studies of Dr Weston Price and the cultures he's studied around the world and their bone structures, their diet, their lifestyle and what happens when a person deviates to a more westernised diet and the deterioration that follows. In fact, even in different races, the same patterns of neglect/malnutrition show up, the same symptoms. Yet the opposite has also occured. Proving that two western white people with typicall crowded teeth from narrow jaws (like many of us may share), changed their entire nutrition, before, during and after conception with their children and managed to produce children who grew up with fully formed facial structure, jaws and perfect teeth. No cavities and no need for braces. The experiment worked. It is amazing what can happen through early and long term alteration of diet and lifestyle to one that is more closer to nature. And vice versa through decline.



What? You're kidding right? I am very surprised you even need to ask this. Seriously! At any rate, here is a source
Brain size and evolution

If you actually believe cranial capacity and brain size corresponds with intellect and evolutionary advancement, then this is an insult to the humans living today that share the same Turkana smaller brain capacity (who show no signs of being less intelligent). Wow. We'll go further than that. Women have smaller brains than men......so do you really wanna go there <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> Dolphins have similar brain size than humans, yet elephants are five times bigger and whales double that!.....do you really want to go there? And if you consider the animals by body/brain size ratio. And then consider the rat. And you require a link to prove to you that smaller or bigger does not equal dumber of more intelligent? I'm surprised. It is very much to do with the inner workings of the brain itself, which is very much what separates us from the animals and gives us the capacity for organised speech, let alone everything else (flying planes, designing computer systems etc).
Another cute link



For starters, you don't know if the capacity evolved at all. You are telling us this, assuming and expecting we're going to take their and your word for it. As though "it's a done deal". This is part of indoctrination process. Evident by the unwillingness, or inability to consider that all this may not have arisen out of an evolutionary process from simple to complex. You can imagine all you want Linda and make any kind of assumption on any fossil dug up to try and fit in and then claim it as supporting your theory, but don't expect the rest of us to be quite so easily taken in. There is no proof whatsoever there we are in any such "transition" now, just as there isn't for our past. Assuming it, isn't proving it. Being less or more robust is not evidence that all things have arisen from evolution. Environment factors, diet/lifestyle etc can make a difference, even now, but do not have anything to do with ape creature becoming man, or man on his way to becoming further advanced in his "supposed" evolution. In fact, there is a lot of decline and our only hope is advanced technology and medical intervention and further attention to our lifestyles. Not any kind of evolutionary process and magic to hope for. Except to make wiser choices and bring our children up to do the same. As for evolution? that remains very much an imagined and unproven scenario. Digging up fossils you attribute with either/both qualities, it is still not known enough about them to be sure either way, or (as I've repeated so many times now) it' could be another species altogether (rather than one becoming another). Have we seen every species of every animal that has ever existed? Therefore how can we know that any of them were in an earlier stage of evolution? You think that telling this often enough will eventually convince people it happened. Because that is what you keep doing on here.



I hope everybody else is checking out this link you sent me for the skulls, because in almost every case, they are fragmented one way or the other. This is not a very good thing to judge a monkey or human skull on, considering, as I've said before, they are the only animal that mostly resembles a human being. And this is the best examples you've got? I mean come on, surely out of millions of years, evolutionists should be able to get past this by now?

I have looked at the skulls and I'm not overly impressed. A skull top does not help me much either, not sure how the heck I'm supposed to tell just from that exactly what kind of animal it is (human it is). Nor do skulls with missing parts or missing jaws. From what I can see, the top row - left. is very obviously monkey/ape (full skull showing on left). On the right of it, still looks ape, but I don't like to guess on a fragment.[/b]

Second row - again all jaws are missing on each skull. Not a good thing. However, they all appear to me to be ape/monkey kind.

The middle row (Third row) shows a skull top which doesn't help me at all. The next is a drawing of a skull which is complete and recognisable as a human skull and on the right side of it appears (to me) that it maybe an ape skull, due to the fact there seems to be a complete lack to a bridge of a nose (which is typical in all monkey/ape skulls) and the area beneath the nose itself is long and extend outwards.

The fourth row shows another incomplete skull that I am unable to even comment on. A side few fragmented skull does not help make any kind of decision. The skull next to it, to me at least, appears to be an ape skull. The third skull in the same line up appears is recognisably human and the skull following that also looks human. Again they are missing the jaw, except for the drawings. there are many species of ape too, I'd need to make comparisons with all of them and we are not to know what other specis of ape were once existing that we can no longer observe and have died out long before.

So it can be understood therefore that people may get confused over them. This does not prove anything, you can get any skull today Linda and make assumptions between monkeys/apes and men, particulary when bits like a jaw is missing, and you're matching it with a person who has a pronounced jaw and flatter nose. It does not make them any less evolved/advanced than someone with a more prominent bridge to the nose and a smaller jaw. I think one needs, again, to be careful when making assumptions like this in attempting to make monkeys out of human beings. It does also tend toward racism too when you make such generalisations.



How do you figure this quote-mine is honest and the rest you try to blow-off? Is this a judgement call based on which ones make you feel less or more comfortable? So it's just Linda's personal judgement that decides a quote mine. A creationist misquoting or quoting an evolutionist out of context, can very easily get them into trouble if that is the case. Particularly when he's got his name and the name of those he's quoting up there with a source provided. You hate this being done because it's one of those "catch them at it" embarrassing things that evolutionists wish they could sweep under the rug. Quotes bring their statements to the forefront and evolutionists don't like being reminded OR quoted. You've admonished me for doing it, Russ for doing it, anybody for doing it. Then you went and thanked somebody for getting quotes that you wanted on here on another thread sometime ago, which was totally hypocritical. And had nothing to do with you "teaching us a lesson". You just forgot yourself. Again!

RAZD points out alot of things Linda, it's no different that anything else he points out as a way of trying to fit apes into our family tree or any other area of evolution. We have already seen earlier how dishonest these artistic portrayals can be. Just like how they even portrayed Neanderthal as being brutish, which totally contradict the findings above that I provided. It seems they were likely anything BUT brutish. Even the skull of the Neanderthal was nothing less than striking, as was the skeleton. In fact, I was blown away by seeing it. Because of the evolutionary portrayal in a museum of Neanderthal, I was taken aback when I saw the actual skeleton. I wasn't ready and was expecting an ape-like brutish looking form.



Problem is Linda, recent or old, it continues to keep their statements on record, which I've mentioned time and again on here. Unfortunately for you, the attempts to discredit them are not going to work. They'll keep being brought to light. They've been thankfully snapped up and kept by creationists. Evolutionists own words being used against them. Not much you can do against a quote, particularly when source and dates are given. They have also been caught out making contradictory statements within the same interviews. And they will need to be very very careful with their statements in the future, because now that people are becoming further enlightened, the same problem is going to continue for them. As new evidence and awareness comes to light about how we are being deceived, their statements on record will be exposed in the process. That is unfortunate, but if we didn't do this, they would continue to get away with it and leave behind them a seemingly "clean" track-record for those new to the games, or those with bad memories.



I don't see anything wrong in borrowing information from others, so long as the content is credible and agreed upon. And the intentions honest. Copying/repeating what one beliefs is truth is expected, as it's shared around. Just as much as I don't see anything wrong with me borrowing the pictures from his website either, we have to get them from somewhere! Truth shouldn't change from site to site, even if it's presented by the person's unique style. Even if there is a spelling mistake involved, I hardly consider that a great fallacy considering the majority. It's about content and sources too (of which both were provided). The information,just as you said, it's all over the internet anyway. But it's much easier if someone has gotten much of it onto one website as he's done and I think done it extremely professionally set out, with sources also. I know you are looking for ways to discredit him Linda, as you try to do to any creationist or creation website (no surprise), but it seems picking on a spelling mistake and focussing on it or making out that this is proof that he's fobbing the information from other creationist websites is just speculation anyway and even if it were so....where's the issue? Considering evolutionists too would no doubt also borrow or copy information from eachother too I'm sure.



Exactly. And proper/thorough tests should always be done with the inclusion of all aspects, even if they contrast with the evolutionary belief. But unfortunately that is not the case. They clearly test from a viewpoint of indoctrination and bias. See here again for the evolutionist biologist's interview revealing the agenda and pressure there is to continue the evolution push, regardless of what they find in their studies and under their microscopes.
molecular biologist makes private admissions