Do ANY creationists understand evolution?

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Just out of curiosity, do we have any creationists on this board who have demonstrated a solid understanding of the basic concepts of evolution?

It occurs to me that in all the creation/evolution debates I've been in over the decades, I've yet to run into a creationist who actually understands the theory of evolution.

I assume Michael Behe understands it, although I'm not sure he considers himself a creationist. Are there ANY creationists who understand what they are debating against?

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[+4] - Robert Gentel - 08/20/2008Do [i]any[/i] creationists understand evolution? [img]http://www.evilmilk.com/pictures/Religion2.jpg[/img]

ros, I hafta weigh in on the negative side; no one who actually understands and endorses the scientific method and has a functional grasp of the multiply cross-corroborational science and the irrefutable logic behind the Theory of Evolution can argue there might be any alternative. From the evidence on this and other boards, and that provided by their own publications, Creationists/ID-iots don't even understand what a scientific theory is.

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They don't want to understand science. Every discovery further erodes their crumbling ideology.

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Precisely.

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Fear.

The thought that what you currently believe, and did not have to examine ever might be incorrect.

Your belief obviously MUST be correct if your parents, grandparents, etc. believed it.

Well, except that one grandparent that no one really talks about.

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I think it would be interesting to have a creationist actually list, point by point what his/her idea of evolution is, so that each point can be verified or corrected.

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I guess I just find it amazing the after all these years of debating and debating, to realize the not once have I ever encountered a single creationist who actually understood what it was they were objecting to.

It's been year after year of burning straw men, over and over again.

I guess the real debate has been, what constitute valid evolutionary theory, and what does not. The argument has not been over evolution itself, but rather, if any given strawman is real.

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Look out--Here comes spendi with a fresh pack of oven waffles.

Evolution is a simple concept, deceptively simple. AS DAwkins said, Darwin is is fair game for critics with any degree of ignorance. Everyone thinks he understands it..
As deceptively simple as it is howcome nobody thought of it until 300 years. after Newtons principia. How come all te greats missed it until Darwin and Wallace.
Dawkins opines that the human mind is specifically designed to misunderstand it (Blind WAtchmaker), and further, to find it difficult to believe. Theres a number of misunderstandings. For example, the element of chance is taken to mean "blind chance" by Creationists. Also, we are equipped to deal with timescales that are radically different than those that apply to evolution (or many of the support sciences like stratigraphy or structural geology)

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real life, in the other "evolution How?" thread, is certain that the evidence that science has collected supports Creation as opposed to Evolution. HE just fails to show any examples of where or how such "redefinition of evidence" is accomplished. There are no real journals engaged in research re: cReationism .Creation ex nihilo is just a billboard and a compilation of what ifs. There is never anything of substance and Ive looked extensively hoping to find some taters on them vines.

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rosborne979 wrote:

I guess I just find it amazing the after all these years of debating and debating, to realize the not once have I ever encountered a single creationist who actually understood what it was they were objecting to.

Don't feel to badly about it. I run into plenty of people that are hardcore evolutionists and they don't seem to understand it either. Very Happy

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Creationists seem to me to require a solid foundation in their life, something imutable that they can rely upon and have to ask no questions of.
The perpetual (relative) uncertainty of science with the "if you don't know, go find out" ethos is anathema to them.
They can't stand that their understanding of something they accept as true may in fact be almost entirely incorrect and/or require drastic modification in the face of new information.
It's the change thing.

Science changes and those who can cope with change personally on a fundamental level have no problems with it.
Those who require to have their understandings unchallenged and prefer the certainty of an idea go for creationism and religion and other ideologies where the challenging of their fundamental consituent ideas is discouraged to say the least.

So basically it's all psychological.
I understand that some people require certainty in their lives, the rock solid, absolutism and unshakable, unchangeable certainty of religion, creationism and their variants etc... but I don't understand why they need that.
If I had a handle on why then I'd be a lot further along to accepting that the ideas they need are the same as someone liking peanut butter or not liking asparagus etc...

ie. A matter of personal taste that doesn't require justification or any explanation on a personal level because that predilection is trivial and irrelevant to the world at large.

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I've actually picked up a copy of Darwin's "Origin of Species" and actually started reading it. Although it is supposedly light-reading (according to the Editor's Introduction) it is actually very heavy reading.

I was amazed to read the opening introduction and read that the book was an abstract. That's insane. I've never seen an approximately 500 page abstract before.

It's no wonder Creationsts can claim to read the Origin of Species and still not believe in Evolution. That book is merely an abstract, containing little data from Darwin's 3 years of research.

What I want to know is what happened to his main thesis? What happened to his main research paper, filled with the full methodology and all the research data? It must have been huge!

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There were 6 editions of Origin... He called them abstract as a "summary" of his lifes work in raisng pigeons etc. If youve got the book, its complete. HE had also published his notes on "artificial selection and hybrids" as a separate volume and hiw "Voyages" and a few others.

What ed do you have?

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Heliotrope wrote:

Creationists seem to me to require a solid foundation in their life, something imutable that they can rely upon and have to ask no questions of.
The perpetual (relative) uncertainty of science with the "if you don't know, go find out" ethos is anathema to them.
They can't stand that their understanding of something they accept as true may in fact be almost entirely incorrect and/or require drastic modification in the face of new information.
It's the change thing.

Science changes and those who can cope with change personally on a fundamental level have no problems with it.
Those who require to have their understandings unchallenged and prefer the certainty of an idea go for creationism and religion and other ideologies where the challenging of their fundamental consituent ideas is discouraged to say the least.

So basically it's all psychological.
I understand that some people require certainty in their lives, the rock solid, absolutism and unshakable, unchangeable certainty of religion, creationism and their variants etc... but I don't understand why they need that.
If I had a handle on why then I'd be a lot further along to accepting that the ideas they need are the same as someone liking peanut butter or not liking asparagus etc...

ie. A matter of personal taste that doesn't require justification or any explanation on a personal level because that predilection is trivial and irrelevant to the world at large.

Precisely

Perhaps it's a feeling of security?
Peanut butter and asparagus will always taste the same.

What if peanut butter suddenly tasted like broccoli?

Some would shrug their shoulders and accept it. Others would claim devine intervention so that children would no longer want to eat something they might be allergic to.

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farmerman wrote:

What ed do you have?

No idea, it didn't say. It's a version edited by J. W. Burrow, published by Penguin ISBN 0-14-043205-1

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seems that the mods have removed my last entry . The Burrow edition is of the first edition of the Origin.

His other works include
Journal of a NAturalist (1836)
Narrative of...HMS Beagle (1840)
A naturalists Voyage (1860)
On te Various Contrivances by Which Orchids are Fertilized by Insects (1862)
The Movement and Habits of Climbing Plants (1865)The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868)
The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex (1871) The Expressions and Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)
The Effects of Cross and Self-fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom(1876)
Volcanic Islands(1877)
Different Forms of Flowers (1877)
The Power of Movement in Plants (1880)

All these plus the new editions of the Origin

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Heliotrope wrote:

I understand that some people require certainty in their lives, the rock solid, absolutism and unshakable, unchangeable certainty of religion, creationism and their variants etc... but I don't understand why they need that.

IMO, it isn't all that hard to see it. Have you ever worked in a job where your boss told you how something was to be done and then told you it was done wrong every single time you did it that way? Beleive me, it gets extremely frustrating is little or no time.

Religion is created and employed for the same reason we create civil laws. It creates order (or at least a sense of...) and a set of ground rules for people to interact with amongst each other in a society.

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fishin' wrote:

Religion is created and employed for the same reason we create civil laws. It creates order (or at least a sense of...) and a set of ground rules for people to interact with amongst each other in a society.

Why can't we just stick with the civil laws? Religion must provide something more than just a bonding and control mechanism, or people would just move toward civil structures alone.

Religion is also providing emotional succor.

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Another thing providing many of us with emotional succor is knowing that President Bush has a plan for success in Iraq. His vision will lead the Iraqi people to a glorious future of democracy and peace!

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rosborne979 wrote:

Why can't we just stick with the civil laws? Religion must provide something more than just a bonding and control mechanism, or people would just move toward civil structures alone.

Religion is also providing emotional succor.

You've answered your own question here. The emotional relief and security of having someone to fall back on wouldn't be available if the bonding didn't exist. Civil society can provide financial relief but long term emotional support isn't likely to come from a government assistance program.

The idea of a civil (i.e. secular) society that is 100% seperated from any religion is still a fairly recent concept and I much prefer to have the two of them seperated.

I suspect that if there were an attempt to totally eliminate religion you'd see the imposition of many religous concepts into civil law (many are complaining about that already!) since many religions delve into areas that civil law dare not tread. MA gave up the idea of civil law forcing people to attend church services against their will quite a while back. I'd rather not see that sort of thing come back again.

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fishin' wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:
Why can't we just stick with the civil laws? Religion must provide something more than just a bonding and control mechanism, or people would just move toward civil structures alone.

Religion is also providing emotional succor.

You've answered your own question here. The emotional relief and security of having someone to fall back on wouldn't be available if the bonding didn't exist. Civil society can provide financial relief but long term emotional support isn't likely to come from a government assistance program.

So, is religion necessary, or might something else fill the void if it didn't exist?

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Do ANY creationists understand evolution?

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Do ANY creationists understand evolution?