Answering the baptists and others on evolution

[skydivephil]

This was written by a baptist on a related , i have started a new one becaus it was off topic:
"Let's face facts, Evolution is the modern religion. It has its own rites, rituals and traditions and try debating it with an adherent, they can be twice as fanatic as any suicide bomber. It has its own faith based decisions, buildings of worship, fanatical followers (as I mentioned earlier), and even religious clerics who will call out fatwā against unbelievers. Even your question begs the religious nature of Evolutionary theory. "Can Evolution explain God?", evolution has become personified and elevated in your question itself. Evolutionary theory is an explanation without ultimate proof because it can't be tested. Deductive reasoning, effectively the Scientific method, requires testing to bring a theory into truth. You can't test it so it remains faith based. Let's try another question, can God explain evolutionary theory? Yeah its called the Book of Judges, in short, "...They remain without a King and everyone did what was right in their own eyes." Evolutionary theory is a dodge from those who don't want to adhere to a God who created them and they are responsible....
One again the adherents strike back. Ever heard of Paradigm theory vs. Natural Selection or the canard amongst Intellectual Designers that "every time an evolutionary precept goes bust just add a few billion years to the universes age." Evolution is not substantiated at all. Many noted mathematicians, physicists, astrophysicists, cosomologists and others of the "hard sciences" are hotly debating the palentologists, biologists and anthropoligists who still rabidly hold to evolutionary theory. You can't test it. It would take too many years to really test how one species can turn into another. Microevolution, adaptations within species, is an accepted fact but macroevolution is still just theory. Understanding and articles written and people proclaiming that evolution is fact is not the same as proof no matter how many letters come behind their names."

Evolution is not a religion, not in any traditional sense anyway. I’ve heard people say ice cream is my religion. But in an any traditional sense religion involves the belief in a deity. Evolution does to require any belief in a deity, so it is not a religion. It does not have any rites or rituals, if you think it does why don’t you tell us what they are?
Attacking evolution certainly provokes a passionate response, how would you expect people to react if people attacked the spheroid shape of the Earth in favour of a flat one? Why should evolution be any different? But how do you get the idea that its defenders are twice as fanatical as a suicide bomber? Can you name me one evolutionary biologist that has suggested killing a creationist? If you cant you need to apologise for such an absurd statement.
Evolution can and has been tested. A classic example is that of chromosome fusion site.
Humans have 23 pairs of chromosome, chimps 24. If humans and chimps share a common ancestor evolution needs to explain the missing chromosome. If it had been deleted the organism would die, so evolution says the chromosomes fused. This makes a testable prediction. We should be able to find a chromosome that is a fused remnant of the ancestral chromosome and maps to two chimp chromosone and one human one . This was done; we might not have found it, if evolution was not true, and so it was a fair test. But unlucky for you, the exact match to theory was found in the data on humna chromsome 2
Read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human)
This is one of many many tests that confirm evolutionary theory as true.

You claim that evolutionists add a few billion years to the universes age to help the theory. This is absolutely false. Have you ever studied the history of physics? It was physicists, not evolutionary biologists that came up with the age of the Earth and the age of the universe. If you knew your science history, you would know that physicists at the time of Darwin had calculated the age of the Earth to be in the 10’s of millions of years. So evolution faced another test because this was not enough time for evolution to occur. Evolution effectively predicted that the physicists at the time had it wrong. Evolution passed this test as well, because at the beginning of the 20th century physicists discovered the weak nuclear force and this led them to a new set of dates for the age of the Earth that implied 4.5 billon years old. The age of the universe was determined by completely different means and the figure of 13.7 billion years was determined form data from the Hubble Space telescope. In no case were the dates derived by evolutionary biologists. You are just wrong.

You are also wrong when you imply a conflict between “mathematicians, physicists, astrophysicists, cosomologists and others of the "hard sciences" are hotly debating the palentologists, biologists and anthropoligists who still rabidly hold to evolutionary theory. “
As I’ve just said it was these hard sciences that gave us the billions of years date you seem to despise. Can you find me any peer reviewed papers by said mathematicians, physicists, astrophysicist or cosmologists that provide any evidence against evolution? Indeed if you go on the National |Academy of Sciences web site, you will see they are celebrating Darwin not doubting him.
You say it would take too many years to test the idea that one species turns into another. This is again false. We don’t need to witness an event in real time to know it happened. If we did we would have to let every murder in the world out of jail. No jury ever witnessed the crime they were trying. But events leave evidence behind and it’s that we test. The chromosone fusion sight I cited above is just one of many many testable pieces of evidence in favour of evolution. In summary evolution is accepted not because of any faith, not because of letters after anyone’s name. But because the evidence is there, it is testable; it’s been tested and confirmed.

[Sunstone]

Since when is deductive reasoning "effectively the scientific method"?

The various scientific methods all make use of both deductive and inductive reasoning and cannot be reduced to either one.

[MSizer]

Lack of education + superstition = the opening passage from the OP. Sadly, lack of education + superstition + digital mediea = lots of people thinking it too because they don't have the basic wherewithal to eschew folk science and think critically.

[Jose Fly]

Amazing how much unsubstantiated BS a person can pack into one paragraph.

I'm also amazed at how often people think their say-so constitutes valid argument, as if they expect everyone here to accept their assertions as unquestioned gospel.

"Evolution is a religion, with rituals, clerics, buildings of worship, and fatwahs you say? Well then, if you say so, it must be true!"

[imaginaryme]

That's your problem right there, you don't answer them, you kill them.

Understanding is key, and what should be universally understood is that truth is philosophy. What seems to be universally ignored is that only philosophy speaks of the truth. Yet philosophers of science try to be reasonable with believers of religion, and history clearly illustrates how reasonably that works. My current simplicity says, kill 'em all. Science is simply too broad a scope of knowledge to express with simple language. Trying to argue against creationism using science can only fail because these creationists have absolutely no respect for the truth. They have caused the common conception of truth to become polluted with the irrelevant terminology of right and wrong, good and evil, and their patently false philosophy of religious tolerance. My advice is not to argue evolution with science, but to argue the fallacy of creationism with religion; or, the historical precedent of burning heretics.

[fantôme profane]

I want to hear more about these rites, rituals and traditions. I think I might be missing out on something.

[Alceste]

Originally Posted by fantôme profane

I want to hear more about these rites, rituals and traditions. I think I might be missing out on something.

Come my my place later. We'll be praying to a Dawkins idol and burning an effigy of Andrew Schlafly, then eating some aborted fetuses to top off the evening.

[fantôme profane]

Originally Posted by Alceste

Come my my place later. We'll be praying to a Dawkins idol and burning an effigy of Andrew Schlafly, then eating some aborted fetuses to top off the evening.

That reminds me, I just got a new barbeque from Sears. I can’t wait to try it out.





Finally a store that sells the kind of appliances that Atheists can use.

[Alceste]

Originally Posted by fantôme profane

That reminds me, I just got a new barbeque from Sears. I can’t wait to try it out.





Finally a store that sells the kind of appliances that Atheists can use.

Oooh! Bring it over! My "spit and pit" baby-roasting arrangement is getting a little worse for wear.

[angellous_evangellous]

This same crap has been spammed here a few times....