Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

Actually, it's not. My answer has been 'I don't know what method was used to create the universe'.

But I do think that asking for (only) natural evidence of the supernatural is a rather absurd request.

In any case, the thread is not about 'proving creation', but about defending evolution.



Yeah, that's true.




Sorry that the world was not arranged for your gratification. Maybe you should discuss it with the owner.

Therefore, one may reasonably infer that although you admit to not knowing how the cosmos was "created," you do believe that it was created, and that the agency was supernatural.

Which is to say, you don't have the guts to acknowledge your imaginary friend superstition, and instead hide behind a smokescreen which is currently labeled "intelligent design."

Why it is considered specious to point out that FM reaches the same conclusion for two opposite scenarios?

That's simply wanting to have it both ways.

No need to infer any of that. I've stated it all before.

In which case you were lying when, in response to the question: In other words, when it comes to answering FM's question, your answer is *poof*--you responded by writing: Actually, it's not..

If you claim that, for whatever your ignorance may be, you consider the cosmos to have been created by a supernatural power, then your answer most definitely is "poof."

I don't usually refer to myself as an IDer.

Though creationism is technically a subset of ID (all creationists would agree that the world was design by an intelligent being, but not all IDers would agree that God created the universe), I find that using the ID label is vague and communicates an incorrect impression.

Well, when charged with positing "poof" as the origin of the cosmos, you demurred. You asserted your ignorance (which i will note extends much further than mere notional cosmogony), but stipulated a creation, and a supernatural agency. If you are unwilling to say that your imaginary friend created the cosmos, ID is about the only suitable label left.

Not really. Although I can understand why you would say so.

God, though He is supernatural, can and often does use natural means.

Whether or not He used natural means to do this is what I don't know, so my answer was 'no'.

If you want to argue that God's use of natural means would still be *poof* (since He himself is supernatural), then I would say that it is a distinction not worth arguing and I would concede the point.

If you see the worldof evolutionary synthesis as "reaching the same conclusion from two different areas" , so be it. However, there is significant and overwhelming evidence to support divergent and convergent evolution. (There are only so many ways to solve environmental adaptational problems and "being adaptively stingy" is a common conclusion that is evidence driven.

I realize that you cant stand up for your"beliefs" on a level similar to science, and that it must frustrate the hell out of you, but there is no cabal of 'evolutionists" that is trying to do in the Creationist viewpoint. Creationism just falls apart on its own merely by a casual objective view of the "Mt Evidence", or as Darwin stated in his 3rd notebook , "...The Fabric (of Creationism's doctrine of intelligent design) , falls" Ill have to extract the entire quote but his point was that , when we view the world in terms of the fossil record the evidence of biogeographic and temporal distribution of species and adaptive radiation of species, "intelligent design" and the concept of a Creator just falls apart.

I think you are confusing what the word " elegant" implies (in a scientific sense). It implies a simple , yet grand, explanation for a phenomenon in which all the data fits and nothing refutes (its like a theory). Thats hardly Creationism in which NO DATA fits and EVERYTHING refutes.

In that case, you had no business writing: But I do think that asking for (only) natural evidence of the supernatural is a rather absurd request. If you now assert that your imaginary friend could have created the cosmos by natural means, than it is not at all absurd to ask for naturalistic evidence. If your boy god used natural means, than it were perfectly reasonable to ask for natural evidence of this. You probably needed to re-tie and tighten your shoelaces here, you're stumbling all over the place.



I cannot but applaud anyone who has sense enough to see that there is no value to arguing imaginary friend poofism--it is not only a surreal exercise, but one in which the proponent enjoys the unfair advantage of being obliged to provide no evidence.

By itself either statement is falsifiable. Taken together, not.

I can see why you would be anxious to change the subject.

You have so far failed to demonstrate that FM takes both positions at once, as you characterize them.

Perhaps you should look back a page.

I've already read what FM wrote. That you choose to characterize as holding two opposite and contradictory views does not make it so. Furthermore, as small changes in alleles is evidence of microevolution, and broad, numerous changes in alleles is evidence of macroevolution (and basically defines the distinction between the two conditions), your silly attempt to make a snide accusation of self-contradiction is meaningless. The meaning of evidence cannot be divorced from context.

'Evidence driven', eh?

So, given evidence that two species share genetic information that produces similar traits, you conclude 'it's evolution'.

But then, given evidence that two species do NOT share genetic information but still have similar traits, you conclude 'it's evolution'.

See, it really doesn't matter what the evidence is, you're going to interpret it as supporting evolution, aren't you?

For those wondering, 'what's fm talking about?' , here's a concise link
http://www.txtwriter.com/backgrounders/Evolution/EVpage14.html

Note that the critters have similar features, but are not considered to have evolved from a recent ancestor.

But the mantra 'evolution' explains it all.

-----------------------------

As a side note, one particularly funny line on this link is



After remembering our previous discussions where some of our resident A2K evolutionists defended the idea that structures such as the eye had evolved independently as many as 40 or more times, I couldn't help laughing. Sorry, it's too funny.



Frustrated, me? no.

Amused is more like it.

WHY does this begin to sound like a performance of "whos on first?". The discussion of convergent evolution is fairly well (and simply treated on your link). Add to the fact that there are ranges of genetic information AMONG the marsupials, monotremes, placentals, and , as well as clear fossil linkages of all 8 or so mammalian orders from successive strata.



In the realms of reality and evidence, your own "elegant" fairy tales lack any semblance of order, systematics, derivation of forms , linkages, as well as geologic preservation of precursors. Its all just junk . Anyway, there doesnt seem to be much research going on in Creationist Camps worldwide ever since Edwards v Aguillard. There are however , now, a bunch of proposals to launch more "searches for Intelligent design" going on, but their websites are still pretty much barren even after 2 years of picking pockets of the faithful. Perhaps the Doverian debacle has shut them up (but I doubt it)

The facts as they stand are
The sytem of evolutionary synthesis has been derived via a century plus of hard work and research. The associated disciplines (using the same systematics as evolutionary synthesis) have produced many findings and applications in hundreds of applied as well as theoretical fields.(Hint-think continental drift and ore emplacement at continental margins, this gave us the data on predictability of the successive post Pangea fossil assemblages, and it also gave a bunch of geologists the idea that "hey if fossils spread out, how about ore bodies that started in the same terrains").

ANYWAY,
NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF CREATIONIST "THOUGHT" HAS SHOWN TO BE USEFUL IN ANY APPLIED FIELD. Can you even name one example in post Darwinian time? ( I know Ive asked you this so many times before but you keep peddling the question away from you and keep on giving the traditional misrepresentational spiehls)


You were guilty of quote mining at that point RL. The evidence I spoke of was clearly the scientific data underpinnings that result in the conclusions and findings in evolution. You merely transposed the sentence so that it appeared that I stated that the the conclusion was the evidence. TSK TSK .I didnt say anything of the sort; Thats a bit of dishonesty on your behalf. If you cant keep up with the spirit of the debate without resorting to intellectual dishonesty than perhaps you should go join in some political screaming where accuracy is less important to the topic and mere passion drives the bus.

You recently said that its not the point to defend yourPOV. When you come out and try to discredit the findings ofall the sciences that contribute to the study of evolution and present NOTHING in its void (if thats what youre trying to accomplish) then shame on you. Youre just an empty suit, sort of like spendius , except youre trying to sound more like a credible witness than he.

Ill bet you have your own pith helmet and are awaiting a call from the Cornesrtone Network (, unless they are one of the denominations whose "theory" of Creationism doesnt quite jibe with yours)
OF Course we will never know WHAT you are willing to defend, and I find that a bit dishonest also. BUT , like the single mantra that ALL CReationists use

"The ends are justified by the means";

So, instead, lies and one tenth truths, quote mining, and misrepresentations of your opponents are allavailable tools in your quiver. Ill stick with the pace of research and the step by step fashion that science moves ahead. The components at least are tested and ARE falsifiable.
(Despite how you whine that the components are not).

Doing some Homework today and ran across a paper by AA Snelling (we remember dr Snelling as a joint partner in Creationist ignorance with S Austen in the famous 1986 "K/Ar dating of Mt St Helens lava dome dacite'. Anyway, ole Mr Snelling is responsible for a REAL scientific paper dated 1990 wherein, apparently, he has repudiated his former "beliefs" in the erroneous nature of K/Ar. Snelling paper, in a Monograph of the Ozmanian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy wherein he discusses age dating (by , TADAAAAA --K/Ar/Ar) in the k0ongarra U province (never ad the plezhah of visitn a Koongara mates, so Oim a beet behoind inna map logashun).
Speaking of a bit of two-facedness, on one hand he's arguing the IN validity of K/Ar, and here hes using it to back up his points. Hmmmm, obviously his convictions dont stop him from trying to earn a living.
I have a Library "e-card" that gets billed to my dept so I can only say that its the Australian Mining and Metallurgy Monograph Series, Monograph 14.

Farmer; If you are still here, what explanation is there for the seeming overabundance of brain capacity in the human species?

How do you define that? Dont we see examples of Cat Scan EEG's where it can be seen that under normal circumstances the entire brain fires up during thought, feelings, and other stimulii. So, Im not a great source for answering that because I question the validity of the premise that you quote.

Ive just been away over the weekend messing about in boats (to quote Mr Rat)