Eric,
I’ll reply to your post and refer to each point you cut and pasted. Since you edited your post a little there might be some things I reference that no longer are contained therein. Please refrain from editing posts since it created confusion and problems down the line.
1. Let’s ponder this reply you quoted for a minute. This guy quotes and uses, at least at the beginning, ONE and only one use definition of the word “complex”. Look in a dictionary and see how many definitions of the words there are in total. I count 11 in my collegiate dictionary. His quoting of this specific definition is an example he so often points out in his own web site: an appeal to authority. In this case his “scientific” definition is the authority, and his arguments tries to restrict us to using this and only this definition. So, a pile of gold ore with impurities and dirt around it is complex? How is that complexity? A bunch of dirt and other minerals and such in a clump around a piece of gold ore is complexity? As he puts it, “We purify it, thus reducing complex microstructures and intermixed, interwoven materials into simple puddles of raw elements.” Wow, I never knew that when two elements are sitting in the dirt that their structures mix and intermingle. I usually just brush the dirt off orf rocks I find with my hands and a little water, I never knew that this was “removing complexity from complex microstructures and intermixed and interwoven materials.” Just making a mud pie must be one of the most complex things around according to this guy. Then he states that we take this complex mineral and make it into predictable, simplistic geometric shapes. He says that we’re taking a “complex” element that we’ve extracted from the ground, purify it thru heat and remove the dross and other impurities, and this process took the element from complex to simple. Simplification. Then, when using intelligence and intelligent design we take a lump of this refined ore, simple by his definition, and make it into a computer’s CPU, and he doesn’t call that making it more complex? He set the terms, invented the scenario, and then restricted it to where he is right and we’re wrong. His terms aren’t even used correctly. Refining and smelting is what we do to ore, not “removing complexity” as he states. Somehow he’s oversimplifying these words and their use. To say that a lump of dirt and gold mixed together is more complex than an intricate piece of Egyptian gold art work is utter nonsense. Or, to use his example, a piece of mixed up elements found in the ground is more complex than the CPU sitting in my computer, since my CPU is only some geometric shapes and such. A complex element, or compound, is complex since it has more than one element plus other possible impurities contained in it. A simple element is one that is composed of a single element. If that’s what he means he’s confusing definitions of words, and is using the wrong definition stated earlier for the example given. At the end of his paragraph here he switches definitions when it suits him.
Also, notice his argument here. It is that as disorder increases something gets MORE complex. Ok, let’s prove his theory. Take a car and park it somewhere for a period of 10 years. After just 10 years of sitting in one place, exposed to the elements, sun, heat, cold, etc. he says that this car is not only now less ordered, but more complex. HUH? How does he get the idea that less order equals more complex? Sounds like nonsense to me. As we find in all nature and science, order = complexity. The MORE ordered something is, the MORE complex it is. By his definition a 8088, which is less ordered than a modern Pentium 4 2.6GHz computer, is actually MORE complex? Wow, don’t tell Intel that they’re actually going BACKWARDS with their CPU and computer designs.
2. This defense is utterly nonsensical. Of course an
inanimate molecule can be created by nonliving molecules, uranium decay itself produces two molecules, lead and helium. The point he totally overlooks is that these same lifeless elements that existed 4.5 billion years ago gave rise to
life according to evolution. The argument isn’t whether a nonliving molecule can be created, it’s how did this lifeless molecule, and lifeless molecules, produce life! You can’t get around the fact that at some point in the teaching of evolution you have life coming from non-life. Amazingly, even his web site talks about an experiment in which a couple of scientists created an amino acid. Notice one very distinct feature that is left out: these scientists rigged the experiment by removing all the oxygen from it. Why? What proof do we have that there was no oxygen on earth at that time? None methinks. Why did the scientists design their experiment’s physical shape and volume the way they did? How powerful were the lightning bolts 2.5 billion years ago compared to the ones we have now? If there was a difference, how did their experiment replicate them since they aren’t known? Again, he uses two tactics he warns about on his site: appeal to authority and strawman. He refers to this magical experiment, but gives no info on it at all. Who did the experiment? What were their credentials? Where did they go to school? Was the experiment valid? Was it rigged? Etc., etc. He urges us to questions these things of those who disagree with evolution, and throw out what these people think due to these criteria, I would say throw out this guy’s stuff also since he does the same thing. The experiment was conducted by two gentlemen, their names are Harold Urey and Stanley Miller. What they did was control the environments of the experiment so that they would come up with the conclusion or outcome they desired: an amino acid. This experiment was setup to succeed since no one has ever proven that the conditions that were assumed for the experiment were the actual ones that existed here on earth way back when. They removed the oxygen from the experiment, as well as all the toxic by-products of the lightning. Even reputable scientists have dismissed this experiment as totally flawed. (See C. Thaxton’s book called, “The Mystery of Life’s Origins”) What is done here is that from the basis that evolution
had to occur, and for evolution to occur certain elements had to be present, and others absent in order for the experiment to succeed and prove evolution. Science? No, biased presuppositions.
Notice also this same bias coming out in this guy’s attack, “However, an organic molecule can certainly form from inanimate matter, and life began on this planet with nothing more than a molecule whose atoms happened to be arranged in such a manner as to permit self-replicating chemical reactions.” Tell me, where did we ever see an inorganic, lifeless molecule create life? Who has ever proven that these simple amino acids somehow combines themselves into the exact right order to form something like RNA? This again is a strawman argument based on nothing but assumptions and presupposition. This is a leap from an assumption into the abyss of absurdity. He is assuming that evolution occurred, nothing more. Life DOES NOT come from non-life, and evolution can’t get around that simple principle. At some point in evolution you HAVE to have life coming from non-life. It’s that simple. An amino acid is NOT life, and can’t produce life. He and others state that Pasteur proved that “fully developed” life can’t come from non-life. But Pasteur’s experiment was to see if something as simple as a bacteria could form when there was nothing living inside his jars. He wasn’t waiting around to see if a mouse or some other fully formed life would drop out of his beaker!
Here’s some more insight into what is being overlooked here. The creation of an amino acid is not enough to get life. An amino acid is just an amino acid. A bottle of amino acid sitting around in a health food store won’t produce a simple celled organism if left to its own devices for billions or even trillions of years. It takes the perfect combination of these amino acids forming into incredibly long chains to get anything with life. It takes four distinct amino acids to get DNA or RNA. They are represented by the initials ACGT. The fact that a right handed amino acid is created doesn’t explain how they somehow arranged themselves into a left handed chain millions of links long to form even the simplest organism. And, as mystic so appropriately pointed out, this rare occurrence of creating amino acids, lightning plus the perfect blending of gases and such, how does this explain how they came together? How does this explain the ability for these simple amino acids to then reproduce themselves. We’re not talking RNA or DNA molecules here, just simple amino acids. Again, how did we go from an amino acid to RNA again? How did this leap in complexity and order occur from simple amino acids to RNA? This assumptions done by this gentleman on how left and right handed amino acids somehow produced life is yet another fairy tale, not science. Right handed molecules don’t support life now, and couldn’t then. The experiment done by Urey and Stanley ONLY created right handed amino acids, not the necessary left handed ones needed for life. Since there are no living things with right handed DNA, no one has created anything living with this type of DNA, why should this be called science?
3. Here’s the deal with this guy’s argument you proposed. Fist off, he again uses his method of appeal to authority combined with another strawman. Who knows what was going on at the time our solar system formed? He quotes a book that states, “whole solar system formed out of a condensing cloud that lost most of its angular momentum through interactions with magnetic fields that resulted in the ejection of considerable mass and momentum from the system.” Amazing. How does science prove that we not only were a cloud, whatever that means - moisture, dust, ?, but that it was “condensing, lost its momentum thru interacting magnetic fields that resulted in the ejection of considerable mass and momentum from the system”? This is a whole string of
assumptions that can’t be proven since no one was there, science can’t roll back the clock with some time machine and see what actually happened, and all this assumes that the Big Bang occurred. Nothing more. This is a strawman argument based on a strawman assumption. This whole thing hinges on the Big Bang having occurred, nothing more. Another biased presupposition on which they draw their conclusions. No Big Bang, no dust and such with which to form the billions and billions of stars that exist.
4. Ok, once again we have another set of assumptions on which this guy bases his conclusions. He uses his famous and tried and true method of another appeal to authority, followed-up by yet another flimsy strawman defense. I doubt seriously, actually I doubt completely, that the UN has any real knowledge of the population of the earth at 1AD, much less 1650AD. Or at any time before the reliable implementation of the census. The attack here is laughable. If all I have to do is find some “authoritative” source that backs my biased presuppositions on the earth’s population at any particular time, then would mine be any more accurate? No. Since his attack is based on the UN’s figures, which are merely their estimation and invention and have nothing to do with science, his whole point of attack is a strawman, blown over by the slightest whisper of wind that comes close to it. Again, since we have not in any way tracked the population of the earth accurately for only a century or two at the absolute most, how does he come up with doubling figures of the population more than a century or two old? Answer: He can’t. They are guesses and not science. Assumptions, nothing more. The population growth of fruit flies is not done using arbitrary exponential growth figures that could tell us that we would have as many as he says here. That’s only a way to express the
potential growth of the number of the fruit flies. Like the estimated population growth of humans, we would have to track their population, difficult to impossible proposition at best, then extrapolate that observed info into real figures that would account for all the observable things like spraying of pesticides, invention of new pesticides that can kill more of them and THEN account for a more accurate growth figure. So the fact that he quotes something silly about fruit flies is not even remotely related to the argument about the earth’s population and growth rates.
Another thing he is missing is some basic math skills. A population growth of 2% is still only 2%. As the population of the earth increases 2% of a larger number each and every year, the growth represented by that percentage is larger each year. Now matter how you slice it, it still comes up to 2% per year. That doesn’t change, but the overall amount starts going thru the roof when the population reaches figures of 6 billion plus like it is now. 2% of 6,000,000,000 is 120,000,000 people per year! This argument reminds me of those democrats who argued that a flat 10% tax cut favored the rich since 10% of 100,000 is more than 10% of 10,000. Folks, 10% of your salary is 10%, and 10% of Bill Gates’ salary is only 10%. The percentage is the same, but the figure it represents is dependent upon the number you start with. Very simple math.
The cockroach argument also falls apart since he is again only mentioning
potential exponential growth of the roaches, not the
actual, observable growth that we can see and measure. We are taking the actual growth of the population, taking into account family size, lifespan and number of children and extrapolating that into the past to see what numbers we can come up with. Taking some arbitrary statement like he makes here about roaches is so off the wall I don’t even know what he’s trying to say. Who cares about using the same growth figures and apply them to roaches. That would be quite dumb to do. What we’re talking here is measurable and quantifiable numbers in population growth extrapolated to estimate what the figures would be like in the past. Another strawman blown over.
5. Here we see this man making one of the blunders he calls us creationists on: he assumes that the earth has always slowed down at the same rate of speed. He takes data from modern day, a slow down rate of .005 second per year, and applies it back all the way back to 4.6 billion years. Again he uses his old tried and true method of an appeal to authority. He uses one reference to say that others are wrong in their assumptions. How many people say that the earth is only slowing down .005 seconds per year, and that figure has remained constant for 4.6 billion years? In fact, if you read one of his quotes one guy proposes that the rate of rotation is slowing down, “motion of the oceans' waters in the ocean basins. In past ages
when the rotation rate was faster, the resonance was much less or nonexistent, resulting in a much more gradual slowing of the rotation rate. He uses these guys’ data to make his point, and the data he quotes refutes his assumptions and figures. Now, recompute the data factoring in some form of slowing down and you’ll see that his figures are WAY off. To quote him yet again, "extrapolating beyond region of known fit". He picks and chooses what he wants from these arguments, and just ignores that which violates and contradicts his thinking and presuppositions. Very bad science, and totally illogical! He also just appeals again to the authority of two articles and then says, Old Earth. Case closed since he quotes two articles to back his thinking.
Another thing is how does one use RMD, radiometric dating on porous material? Is it even possible to use RMD on something as porous as coral or bones? How does one capture and read the balance of something porous when each of the elements being read using ANY of the RMD methods has byproducts that wash away with water. Uranium to lead, potassium to argon, rubidium to strontium, and carbon 14 to carbon 12 would all be affected GREATLY due to the effects of tides and water upon the concentration of these elements. What RMD method did they use to date coral to show and prove that it is 370 million years old? What do they use to wash away radioactivity when something is contaminated? Water. As you can see, you’ve got a HUGE problem when you try and use RMD to date something porous, much less something that lived in water. If you want more info on how absurd RMD is, go to page 4 of this thread, and read my post on the assumptions that have to be made when using RMD. The whole argument here is based on the assumption that one can accurately use RMD to date things. If RMD is flawed, and it is, then ALL DATES GIVEN USING THIS METHOD ARE FLAWED ALSO. A flawed method used will always give a flawed set of results. Relying on RMD to date something, then extracting data using the dates given is a bad idea and bad science.
6. Moon to earth distance. After reading the article you linked I still have a few questions which I don’t believe were addressed. Such as: if the moon is moving further away now, that means it was closer at some point. The fact that it was closer would mean that the gravitational attraction between the two would have been greater. How did this decreased distance effect the rate of change of distance? How did this effect the tides? Now, using just the figures used on the site, here’s what I compute: a reported change of 1.95cm/year at 650 million years ago. Taking the current figure of 3.82 we can come up with a rough figure of 2.885cm/year. Using this over 650 million years we have a figure of 11,652.26 miles. Then from 2.5 billion years ago until 650 million years ago we have a figure of 1.27cm/yr we have an additional 14,599.12 miles. This is a total change of 26251.38 miles. What effect would this reduced distance have on the earth? What would it do to the tides? How much greater is the gravitational pull of an object the size of the moon when it moves some 27,000 miles closer to the earth? These figures are again assumptions. The entire evidence they use is tidal readings over billions of years. This is another appeal to authority since we have no idea where the info on tidal readings comes from, much less it’s validity. If I find an article that says that these tidal readings are again biased presuppositions that evolutionists use to prove the earth’s age, am I correct in my thinking? Or are we both trying to appeal to some authority, and both are questionable, they should be ignored or at least interpreted in light of what is more scientific and provable.
7. According to whom? Please site a reference of some kind stating that they’ve measured this occurrence, can tell us at what rate it occurs, and how does it occur. What is the rate of escape of helium from our atmosphere? I don’t doubt whether or not it CAN occur, but if it has been proven I’d like to know either way.
8. This is an amazing statement since even the paleontologists I quoted state that there are almost no intermediate species. Here we see what they suppose are three of those listed. What do the paleontologists say about these fossils of transitional species? Are there any paleontologists in the last century that have doubted the evolution theory? Are there any that are totally convinced that evolution is true, and have not a shred of doubt? Obviously not. This is a ridiculous statement made here. Look back to my original quote and you’ll see at least three of the biggest hitters in evolution saying that there is an almost complete lack of transitional species. Three is all they can come up with here. Three! And one of them, australopithecus, was removed from our evolutionary chain by one of the most preeminent evolutionists of our day - Dr. Richard Leaky. In an article in Time magazine, 8/7/77 he removed it from the chain linking us to apes. And he also did so in his book, Human Origins. He states it is the remains of an extinct ape that lived in South Africa. Wow, such proof we have of evolution. It’s so convincing that other evolutionists have REMOVED it from our supposed lineage. Is that what I would base my beliefs in evolution on, something others removed saying it was an extinct ape. Archaeopteryx is not half bird and half reptile. Other ancient birds had teeth as it does. Some current birds, such as the ostrich, have claws in their wings. Archaeopteryx has
perfectly formed feathers and wings—something necessary for flight. Proofs of evolution, or fairy tales? Does the ostrich also prove evolution since it’s a bird with claws? Will the ostrich one day lay an egg and give birth to a reptile, or some other species since it is only intermediary itself?
Try this Newsweek quote: In its analysis of a conference of the world’s leading evolutionists held in Chicago, Newsweek (Nov 3, 1980) concluded: The missing link between man and the apes…is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule… The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated….
Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school (p. 108). Wow, this is pretty amazing since “no paleontologists for over a century have seriously doubted the evolutionary theory.” He also stretches the truth here quite a bit when he says that if biologists hadn’t invented the theory of evolution that paleontologists would have. Utter science fiction. Evolution spurned the paleontologists on to prove evolution at all costs. Their searches were done with one thing in mind: prove evolution occurred. If you don’t believe me, look again at the list of our evolutionary chain and see the sheer number of hoaxes that are still listed, the number of times that bad decisions were made to select one skeleton the looked to fit what evolution hoped for at the exclusion of the evidence found at the dig sites, etc. If you think about why these things still exist, why they were started, and why people still believe in them, what conclusion can you draw? Since I have quoted some really famous paleontologists who’ve stated that the fossil record proves two things: stasis and sudden appearance, what conclusion would YOU draw from the fossil records? Evolution, slow gradual changes in species over billions of years, or creation, which stated that all things were created, and can only reproduce after their kind? Creation at least proves what these scientists stated: stasis and sudden appearance.
9. Since only SOME of the supposed links are hoaxes and such, please name the ones that still remain in our lineage. Since there is an “unbroken chain of life” that is so clearly linking us to the apes, please tell me what those links are. Once you remove just the hoaxes and bad science, there might be one or two left. How do you have a monkey at one end, and a person on the other with only 1 or 2 links between and call that science?
10. I can’t believe what I read in this guys’ answer so I had to reread it a few times. Evolution isn’t random, it’s directed by environmental conditions. Ok, let me repeat his statement back to you again using his own words. Evolution isn’t totally random because it uses stable and nonrandom environmental conditions to guide it. Name one meteorologist that teaches that our environment is not anything but totally random. To equate the environmental conditions as something nonrandom and stable is ludicrous. The only stable thing on this planet is change. Next, how does he equate the environmental conditional to guiding forces in evolution? How does something’s unstable, changing, random environment somehow make changes in the organism that lives there so as to enable it to turn from a reptile to a bird? Or from a land animal to a sea animal? Somehow I’m supposed to believe that environmental factors encourage an eye to develop from a light sensitive dot on a simple celled organism? He even states that the biosystem is “constantly changing” and yet thinks that this will help with the problems of randomness in evolution? Wow, he lost me again on that one. Everything he refers to is random, in a constant state of flux, and yet this cures the randomness issue of evolution?
Now, since even if you COULD disprove evolution, you still wouldn't prove creation! So let's have your top ten list of scientific proofs that we were created - and for the sake of saving time and effort, I'd recommend you check the two web sites mentioned at the beginning of this post for rebuttals and save me the effort.
The issue of whether a rebuttal exists or not isn’t the point Eric. As I’ve demonstrated in this rather lengthy post, a
good rebuttal is the point. If all your posts and sources are rebuttals of this nature, be warned that they are not scientific, well written, nor even logical. I’m still waiting for any proofs that we evolved. I will gather the info and post another thread on creation soon enough, but I would like to see something, anything, that is “proof” of evolution. Name something scientific about evolution please. Shrieks’ posted link was so full of errors, misinformation, deception, contradiction, and outright lies, that it wasn’t even funny. His post did more damage to the evolutionists’ argument than good. If you actually took a little time to read his material, and I read several pages, you’d get a laugh out of it also. He sets up rules by which people should follow when talking to a creationist, yet violates them over and over and over again in his own arguments. He attacks the wording of the arguments instead of the heart of it. His name calling is beneath him and shows his attitude and pettiness more than anything. His ad hominem attacks and strawman attacks and defenses are there on almost every single page.
