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Evolution is a Lie, and you Skeptics KNOW it! Part 3
By Dr. Mark Purchase, Ph.D.
Posted on: 8/20/2003
All correspondence received by Skeptic Friends Network or its staff becomes the property of Skeptic Friends Network, and may be printed without the consent of the author.
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I, Tommy Huxley, responded to Dr. Purchase in a very lengthy email that I sent to Dr. Purchase as an enclosure, but the "Doc" says that he won't accept any enclosures. He also refuses to post my emails in their entirety on his web site, only his replies to me.
You'll notice that I'm not afraid to include his complete correspondence.
Mark,
> How is everyone today -- feeling like apes or men?
My sister is neither -- she's a woman.
> All mail is up on my webpage now --
> http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/bryanp/index.htm
> Just follow the link to 'Evolution". Keep the mail
> coming regards.
I'm also keeping a record of our exchange, which I plan to post as well. I'm hoping that a lot of Christians read it so they will learn from your example on how NOT to debate evolutionists. Your last letter revealed that you don't do your homework as thoroughly as you boast.
I also noticed that you didn't post my letter on your web site, only your response to my original letter. Is that fair?
> Your exegesis of the Bible [on the website] leaves a lot
> to be desired -- selecting verses and misrepresenting
> them to make the Bible sound foolish. While your
> 'friends' might think that's funny, it comes across as
> childish to someone knows the Bible. Maybe it's your
> age, but that dishonest handling of the Bible questions
> your creditability.
Fascinating. Your first letters to SFN burst forth with guns blazing, accusing all of us of being fools, ignoramuses, and brainwashed members of a "religious" cult.
But when I had the audacity to challenge your distortions and misrepresentations of science and scripture, point by point, you now attack my supposed lack of "maturity." I fail to understand why creationists find it necessary to turn every ideological disagreement into a personal vendetta. Believe me, I don't want to enlist in your culture war.
> Evolution demands an upward trend -- increasing
> order and complexity
No it does not. Evolution is not goal-oriented. Where do you acquire such misinformation?
> 'Agnostic', I'm not sure about that. An 'agnostic' is
> one who does not know whether God exists. He
> hasn't made up his mind. There are two kinds of
> agnostics, one who searches for God and the other
> doesn't. Which are you? You are more like an atheist
So now there are only "two" kinds of agnostics? Where did you get this godlike ability to redefine language and definitions?
> Yes but if highly qualified scientists reject evolution
> you should take them more seriously. There must be a
> reason. I challenge you to read their studies.
I'm not aware of any "highly qualified scientists" that reject evolution. I don't consider the members of the Institute for Creation Research to be highly qualified, because they all have to sign a "Statement of Faith" pledging that their data will coincide with the historical inerrancy of the book of Genesis.
> I confess 99% of quotes from my last letters were
> from Evolutionists. I've read SFN, other websites
> and materials and shown myself ready to listen.
> I have an open mind and willing to read.
Your list of quotations come straight from Henry Morris' book That Their Words May Be Used Against Them, a reference book of compiled evolutionary "quotes" that go back 50 years. Morris' book has been heavily criticized for misrepresenting the positions of various authors by taking their words out of context. For example:
> When you misrepresent people as above [i.e.,
> Gish/Taylor/Morris], and suggests by selective
> quotes that they taught evolution, it comes across
> as dishonest and suggests all your other quotes
> could be dishonest.
SURPRISE! Yes, Mark! And look at how EASY it was! Obviously, I made my point.
But you want to know what's really strange? I own a book by Colin Patterson titled Evolution: Second Edition, and I couldn't find the quote that you cited by him in your prior emails. Your bibliographic reference simply said "Master Books," USA 1984.
Funny thing is, Master Books is a publishing arm of the Institute for Creation Research. I can't imagine Colin Patterson publishing anything through Master Books.
> Not all my "book recommendations" are 'creationists'.
> Some are just scientists who reject evolution.
Oh good grief, Mark. Do you take me for fool?
Every author on your list is either a member of the ICR, CRS, or the Discovery Institute's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture. All of these men are "creationists" in the sense that they ALL believe that the Judeo-Christian God created the earth and universe, although they can't agree on whether it took Him six days or 12 billion years.
> The 'progressives' you will quote from and
> they are liberal. They don't hold the Bible as
> 'authoritative'. Personal I believe there's no
> conclusive evidence the world is over 6,000
> years old, the 'progressives' would agree to
> 14 or 50 or 12 or 1 or whatever billion years
> old. But why ignore the serious contradictions
> among evolutionists as you do?
Interesting. I again point out the fact that "Bible believing" scientists disagree on the age of the universe by a factor greater than 2.3 million, yet you attempt to whitewash that obviously painful inconsistency by trying to deflect attention to disagreements among evolutionary biologists. Nice try, Mark.
It's true that evolutionists aren't united in lockstep harmony over specific issues, but their disagreements pale in comparison to the young-earth, old-earth, and intelligent design creationists fighting among themselves for supremacy in their Tower of Babel.
> I think many things ARE 'universally' accepted
> in science, but evolution is NOT.
Neither is quantum mechanics, special relativity, general relativity, string theory, or cosmology.
> There's no proof from science for any of these dates.
> The dates are guesswork based on evolutionary theory
> not scientific evidence.
>
> Perhaps next mail you could use 'all the natural sciences'
> and describe to me why the universe is millions of years old.
I scanned the following paragraphs from a pamphlet that's available for free from the American Geological Institute called Evolution and the Fossil Record.
quote:
Determining the age of a rock involves using minerals that contain naturally occurring radioactive elements and measuring the amount of change or decay in those elements to calculate approximately how many years ago the rock formed.
Radioactive elements are unstable. They emit particles and energy at a relatively constant rate, transforming themselves through the process of radioactive decay into other elements that are stable -- not radioactive. Radioactive elements can serve as natural clocks, because the rate of emission or decay is measurable and because it is not affected by external factors.
About 90 chemical elements occur naturally in the Earth. By definition an element is a substance that cannot be broken into a simpler form by ordinary chemical means. The basic structural units of elements are minute atoms. They are made up of the even tinier subatomic particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons.
To help in the identification and classification of elements, scientists have assigned an atomic number to each kind of atom. The atomic number for each element is the number of protons in an atom. An atom of potassium (K), for example, has 19 protons in its nucleus so the atomic number for potassium is 19.
Although all atoms of a given element contain the same number of protons, they do not contain the same number of neutrons. Each kind of atom has also been assigned a mass number. That number, which is equal to the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus, identifies the various forms or isotopes of an element. The isotopes of a given element have similar or very closely related chemical properties but their atomic mass differs.
Potassium (atomic number 19) has several isotopes. Its radioactive isotope potassium-40 has 19 protons and 21 neutrons in the nucleus (19 protons + 21 neutrons = mass number 40). Atoms of its stable isotopes potassium-39 and potassium-41 contain 19 protons plus 20 and 22 neutrons respectively.
Radioactive isotopes are useful in dating geological materials, because they convert or decay at a constant, and therefore measurable, rate. An unstable radioactive isotope, which is the 'parent' of one chemical element, naturally decays to form a stable non-radioactive isotope, or 'daughter,' of another element by emitting particles such as protons from the nucleus.
The decay from parent to daughter happens at a constant rate called the half-life. The half-life of a radioactive isotope is the length of time it takes for exactly one-half of the parent atoms to decay to daughter atoms. No naturally occurring physical or chemical conditions on Earth can appreciably change the decay rate of radioactive isotopes. Precise laboratory measurements of the number of remaining atoms of the parent and the number of atoms of the daughter result in a ratio that is used to compute the age of a fossil or rock in years.
Age determinations using radioactive isotopes have reached the point where they are subject to very small errors of measurement, now usually less than 1%. For example, minerals from a volcanic ash bed in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, have been dated by three independent isotopic methods (Baadsgaard, et al., 1993).
The potassium/argon method gave an age of 72.5 plus or minus 0.2 million years ago (mya), a possible error of 0.27%; the uranium/lead method gave an age of 72.4 plus or minus 0.4 mya, a possible error of 0.55%; and the rubidium/strontium method gave an age of 72.54 plus or minus 0.18 mya, a possible error of 0.25%. The possible errors in these measurements are well under 1 %. For comparison, 1% of an hour is 36 seconds. For most scientific investigations, an error of less than 1% is insignificant.
As we have learned more, and as our instrumentation has improved, geoscientists have reevaluated the ages obtained from the rocks. These refinements have resulted in an unmistakable trend of smaller and smaller revisions of the radiometric time scale. This trend will continue as we collect and analyze more samples.
Isotopic dating techniques are used to measure the time when a particular mineral within a rock was formed. To allow assignment of numeric ages to the biologically based components of the geologic time scale, such as Cambrian, Permian, Cretaceous, and Quaternary, a mineral that can be dated radiometrically must be found together with rocks that can be assigned relative ages because of the contained fossils. A classic, real-life example of using K-40/Ar-40 to date Upper Cretaceous rocks and fossils are described in Gill and Cobban (1973).
> "Unfossialized dinosaur bone" in 1992 Geological Society
> of America also, Davies in Journal of Paleonology 61 (1):
> 198-200. ''In Thailand'' [The Times. June 20 1996 -- Nature
> August 22 1996 pg.709-708 New Scientist].
Your references are far too general to find anything useful, and I also suspect that you got confused about your sources.
There''s a 1992 creationist article that''s frequently cited in combination with a Geological Society of America abstract where a careless person could''ve gotten mixed up. For example, in "Have blood cells ever been found in dinosaur fossils?" at: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c026.html, the article says:
"Biologist Dr. Margaret Helder alerted readers of Creation magazine to documented finds of ''fresh'', unfossilized dinosaur bone as far back as 1992." 3
Footnote number 3 refers to:
"3. Creation 14(3):16. The secular sources were Geological Society of America Proceedings abstract. 17:548, also K. Davies in Journal of Paleontology 61(1):198-200."
The person might have gotten the "1992" incorrectly associated with the GSA abstract in the footnote. The creationist paper is:
Helder, Margaret, 1992, Fresh dinosaur bones found. Creation Ex Nihilo Magazine. vol. 14, no.3, pp. 16-17. (June-August 1992) found at http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/
Area/Magazines/docs/v14n3_dino.asp
The GSA paper is:
Clemens, W. A., 1985, Late Cretaceous Terrestrial Vertebrate Fauna, North Slope, Alaska. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 17, pp. 548.
This abstract just announces the discovery of these dinosaur fossils, but doesn''t say anything about their preservation.
> Davies in Journal of Paleonology 61 (1):198-200.
The full reference is:
Davies, Kylie L., 1987, Duck-bill dinosaurs (Hadrosauridae, Ornithischia) from the North Slope of Alaska. Journal of Paleontology Vol. 61, no. 1, pp. 198-200.
This refers again to the same North Slope dinosaur fossils from outcrops along the Colville River north of Umiat, Alaska. This article is a preliminary report on the discovery of these fossils, their age, stratigraphy, and character. About the preservation of the bones, Davis states:
quote:
"The bones are stained a dark red brown but otherwise display little permineralization, crushing, or distortion."
Thus, Davis does indicate that mineralization of the bone has occurred, contradicting the claim that they did not fossilize.
Also, fossil bone might look unaltered and lack mineralization, yet still suffer significant recrystallization of the bone itself and technically be "fossilized." Davis (1987) does not show the petrographic of x-ray diffraction data that would allow someone to determine whether or not these bones had recrystallized.
The strata, as discussed below, has been dated above and below by radiometric dating of volcanic ash and palynomrphs.
>''In Thailand'' [The Times. June 20 1996].
I looked through the June 20, 1996 of The Times, but couldn''t find any significant articles about dinosaurs in Thailand. You need to at least cite a page number and the town that distributes this periodical, so that I can find the correct Times newspaper or magazine.
However, I searched European newspapers using "Academic Universe" and found no articles in The Times. But with a CNN transcript and Deutsche Presse-Agentur wire copy, I found:
Berry, Adrian, 1996, Dinosaur finds solves riddle of T-Rex. The Daily Telegraphic, June 20, 1996, p. 16.
This article discussed new dinosaur remains excavated 19 years ago in Thailand. The dinosaur was Siamotryannus, an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex that predated T-Rex by 20 million years. All three articles referred to a paper that appeared in the June 20, 1996 Nature, and probably originated from the same press release. None of these articles said anything about the bone''s preservation.
Th Nature article is:
Buffetaut, E., Suteethern, Y., and Tong, H., 1996, The earliest known tyrannosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Thailand. Nature. Vol. 381, no. 6584, pp. 689-691. (June 20, 1996)
This dinosaur is also discussed in:
Buffetaut, E., and Suteethern, Y., 1999, The dinosaur fauna of the Sao Khua Formation of Thailand and the beginning of the Cretaceous radiation of dinosaurs in Asia. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. Vol. 150, no. 1-2, pp. 13-23
Far from being intact, this dinosaur is only known from the left half of the pelvis, the sacrum, the 13 anterior-most caudal vertebrae, and five dorsal vertebrae. None of the transcripts, articles, or papers describes the condition or preservation of the bone.
The picture of the half pelvis in Buffetaut et al. (1996) shows the bone to be badly fractured, as if had once been a jigsaw puzzle. Nothing about this dinosaur mentions unfossilized dinosaur bones, although it does describe it as a transitional fossil.
> Nature, August 22, 1996, pg.709-708.
Page "709" is likely a typographic error. Pages 708 to 710 contain an article about molecular biology titled "Tracking the Evolution of Warning Signals" by R. V. Alatalo and J. Mappes. On pages 706-708, there is:
Erickson, G. M., Van Kirk, S. D., Su, J., Levenston, M. E., Caler, W. E., and Carter, D.R., 1996, "Bite-force estimation for Tyrannosaurus rex from tooth-marks bones." Nature Vol. 382, no. 6593, pp. 706-708 (August 22, 1996)
This article doesn''t say anything about the degree of fossilization where the bone shows teeth impressions. Of course, this bone raises the question that if the Cretaceous deposits from where this bone came were deposited late in Noah''s Flood, how did the Tyrannosaurus have time to chomp on a Triceratops while treading water?
It''s not unusual to find unpermineralized dinosaur and other types of fossil bone, and given that bone is already composed of mineral, additional mineralization is not necessary for its preservation as a fossil anyway, rather like shells do not have to be replaced or impregnated with additional minerals in order to be found as fossils.
It often does happen, but does not have to. Whether additional mineralization happens or not is dependent upon the chemistry of the pore water in the sediments and rocks after burial, and other factors determine whether or not the bone (or shell) dissolves and is eventually destroyed.
After burial, if the conditions never get to the point of dissolving the bone or impregnating it with minerals, then it can just sit there, intact, for a very long time. It might recrystallize, but that''s all.
There is nothing about these finds to suggest that these specimens were "young". The interest in these occurrences by young-earth creationists is based upon the fallacy that fossil bone must mineralize (or mineralize additionally) if it is a fossil and "old", so if it is unmineralized, it must "therefore" be "young". There is no such age-dependency for the fossilization process, because mineralization trends with age are extremely variable.
> Also, "The best-preserved dinosaur skin found to date is a
> recent discover.in New Mexico" [see ''No feathers on Spanish
> dino'' Sceince 276:1341 May 30 1997] And ''The associated
> Press release July 1997. DNA found in mammoths [Aust.
> Science Sept.1999 pg.19-21]. The scientific world was
> stunned in 1938 when a coelacanth fish was discovered
> [evolution fossil record 65million] in a fish mall. ABC News
> <abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/coelacanth001201html>
> 4 Dec.2000. Many of these are on the web. There''s so many
> references I could include them on a separate email.
> Or YOU should do some research like you expect of me.
First, the Science article didn''t say that paleontologists found actual dinosaur "skin," only well-preserved fossilized skin impressions in sedimentary rock.
Second, finding DNA from a wooly mammoth wouldn''t be that extraordinary since mammoths went extinct only nine thousand years ago in a sub-freezing climate.
Third, what''s the big deal about living coelacanths? We also have fossilized sharks, skates, rays, crocodiles, and turtles, too, who all lived during the Mesozoic Era as well as today.
> It''s NOT the "young-earth creationist" that "claim
> that the fossil record is arranged in a stair-step
> progression from the simple to the complex".
Are you claiming that young-earth creationists deny fossil stratigraphy? Do you even READ your creationist literature? Henry Morris and John Whitcomb once claimed that that the fossils were arranged in stratigraphic order due to the animal''s "differential mobility." When the rains came tumbling down, swift-footed people and mammals raced to higher ground to save themselves, the dinosaurs reacted more slowly and took their time climbing to shelter, and the stupid Cambrian arthropods made no effort to save themselves. The flood then picked up all their carcasses and arranged them in a stratigraphic sequence to resemble evolution.
> It''s the evolutionist who advocate a "sorted and
> arranged" geological column from Cambrian,
> Ordovician etc up to Pleistocene.
Evolutionists did NOT develop the geologic column. It was developed by Christian geologists in the 19th century, decades before the publication of Darwin''s On the Origin of Species. You''re getting careless, Mark.
> There are massive fossil graveyards around the world.
> The fossil graveyards have all the signs of rapid burial
> and many bones are mixed together. The coal seams and
> oil deposits are also more evidence of global flood. So
> once again Tom you have your facts mixed up.
Bob Schadewald made an interesting point about the infamous Karroo Formation:
quote:
Scientific creationists interpret the fossils found in the earth''s rocks as the remains of animals that perished in the Noachian Deluge. Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in "fossil graveyards" as evidence for the Flood. In particular, creationists seem enamored of the Karroo Formation in Africa, which is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate animals (see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61). As pseudo-scientists, creationists dare not test this major hypothesis that all of the fossilized animals died in the Flood.
Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota, has studied the Karroo Formation. He told me that the animals fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the size of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A minute''s work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion animals in the Karroo Formation could be resurrected, there would be 21 of them for every acre of land on earth.
Suppose we assume (conservatively, I think) that the Karroo Formation contains 1% of the vertebrate fossils on earth. Then when the Flood began there must have been at least 2100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense dinosaurs. To a non-creationist mind, that seems a bit crowded.
I sprang this argument on Duane Gish during a joint appearance on WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa, on October 21st, 1980. Gish did the only thing he could: he stonewalled by challenging my figures, in essence calling me a liar. I didn''t have a calculator with me, but I duplicated the calculation with pencil and paper and hit him with it again.
His reply? Creationists can''t answer everything.
(Robert J. Schadewald, Creation/Evolution IX, 1982)
Fossil graveyards also happen today. For example, enormous herds of wildebeests in Africa have been caught trying to cross rivers during thunderstorms, and the local floods typically drown hundreds of animals and carry their remains for miles down river until they pileup in a single location. In one case, a fast flowing river drowned 600 wildebeest calves within a single hour!
> So once again Tom you have your facts mixed up.
> Uniformitarian geology is now under attack for the
> evidence is contrary to the assumption.
Geology is "under attack" by whom? Young-earth flood geologists from the ICR? No surprise there.
> Can you provide me what was
> said about Dr Humphrey''s physics?
Byl, John. "On time dilation in cosmology," Creation Research Society Quarterly, v. 34, n. 1, 1997.
Conner, Samuel R. and Page, Don N. "Starlight and Time is the Big Bang," Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, v. 12, n. 2 (1998): pp. 174-194.
Conner, Samuel R. and Ross, Hugh N. "The Unraveling of Starlight and Time."
Fackerell, E.D. and McIntosh, C.B.G. "Errors in Humphreys'' Model," Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 14(2), 2000
> These don''t provide what I asked -- "one species into
> another" Nowhere on those websites is that information
> given.
It looks like you just skimmed the essays in search of something to rebut while ignoring their contents. When members of a single species are divided by geography, the parent species will frequently spawn a daughter species where the two become reproductively isolated and can no longer interbreed. Charles Darwin wrote two chapters describing examples of biogeography in his book On the Origin of Species.
>> There are experienced and intelligent scientists who
>> have all sorts of problems with flood geology as well.
>> Especially Christian geologists and astrophysicists.
>> Just ask Glenn Morton, Hugh Ross, and Alan Hayward.
>
> Name one "Christian geologist" to confirm this.
I already did, in my last email. Glenn R. Morton is a geologist who used to be a young-earth creationist that wrote articles for the Creation Research Society Quarterly, yet he later abandoned flood geology because of its garbled, convoluted logic.
Glenn''s website is at http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm.
His email address is glenn.morton@btinternet.com.
Also, check out Glenn''s article on the geologic column and its implications for the flood at the talk.origins archive.
> This sounds like I hit a raw nerve.
Yes, you did. Do you realize how many stupid, scientifically illiterate creationists write to me every single week proclaiming that "Evolution is a Satanic Lie because it Violates the Second Law of Psychics!"
Law of Psychics? What the Hell is that? Apparently, these idiots think the details of classical thermodynamics are so intimidating that they can use it as a "magic bullet" to refute evolution because the technical minutiae is way beyond their comprehension.
And I noticed that you made no effort to challenge my corrections, either. Instead, you just propped up some completely irrelevant quote by Isaac Asimov as supporting your position, despite the fact that Isaac Asimov has previously claimed that creationists'' understanding of thermodynamics "never rises above the level of kindergarten."
> You listed Frank Steiger''s web pages that explain the
> relationship of the second law of thermodynamics to
> the Creation/Evolution debate. To that I reply in the
> words of D.Gish Ph.D biochemist [and he knows
> more about it than Steiger]
Oh good grief, Mark! Did you get your Ph.D. from a diploma mill?
Frank Steiger is a chemical engineer. Duane Gish is a biochemist. As such, Frank Steiger''s profession routinely applies classical thermodynamics. Gish''s professional experience does not.
Frankly, I can''t understand what you and Duane Gish know about physics that nobody else is aware of. For example, there''s an amicus curiae brief filed by 72 Nobel Prize-winning scientists supporting the appellees in Edwards vs. Aguillard (the 1986 Supreme Court decision that barred Louisiana from plugging creation science in its public schools). And 29 of the 72 scientists that signed this brief are physicists.
Did you catch that? Twenty-nine Nobel Prize-winning physicists are on the record disputing creationists'' claims about thermodynamics, even citing a 1983 paper by Stanley Freske in a footnote titled "Creationist Misunderstanding, Misrepresentation, and Misuse of the Second Law of Thermodynamics." What does Duane Gish know about physics that authorities like Luis Alvarez, Murray Gell-Mann, and Steven Weinberg don''t know?
>> Young-earth creationists, in contrast, have a gloomy
>> history of perpetuating their own "Piltdown" hoaxes
>> that they''re loathe to abandon, which are also more
>> recent. Like the Paluxy, Olmo, Calveras, Castenadolo,
>> and Onyate "pre-flood" men. Kent Hovind was fooled
>> by "Onyate Man" only two years ago.
>
> Really? Can you back this up with better evidence,
> or is this just a "rhetorical contention"?
Ernest Conrad refuted the Olmo, Calveras and Castenadolo men. One of them was actually a hoax:
Conrad, Ernest C., "Tripping Over a Trilobite: A Study of the Meister Tracks," Creation/Evolution Journal, Issue VI, Fall 1981, p. 30f.
Conrad, Ernest C., "Are There Human Fossils in the ''Wrong Place'' for Evolution?" Creation/Evolution Journal, Issue VIII, Spring 1982, p. 14f.
Geologist Arthur Strahler refuted the Bauanthropus, Moab, and Miocene men in his book Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy, Prometheus, Buffalo, NY, 1987 and 1999.
quote:
Cambrian "moccasin" footprint, which turned out to be a trilobite, p. 459-460
Supposed Carboniferous footprints, p. 460-462.
Humanus Bauanthropus Man, invented by the Reverend Carl Baugh from dinosaur footprints in Glen Rose, Texas, which Rev. Baugh said originated from pre-flood giants, p. 462-470.
"Moab" Man, a Native American buried in soft sandstone only a few hundred years ago, p. 470-471.
"Miocene man," a Pleistocene skeleton falsely attributed to the Miocene epoch by creationist Bill Cooper in Creation Ex Nihilo, 1983, p. 471-472.
"Guadeloupe" woman, yet another Pleistocene skeleton that creationist Bill Cooper said was a woman who drowned in Noah''s flood in Creation Ex Nihilo, 1984, p. 471-472.
"Paluxy" Man, Carl Baugh''s reconstruction of a "child who fell victim to the Flood" from a single Cretaceous fish tooth!
In 1999, Kent Hovind (also known as Dr. Dino), told a church in North Philadelphia that fossil hunters uncovered an Allosaurus skeleton eating "Onyate" Man! Federal agents in New Mexico swooped in and seized all the evidence, but a few photographs escaped confiscation! See http://www.darwindisproved.com!
Oops! Dr. Dino fell for a 1999 April Fool''s prank! He should visit that site now.
> Read carefully S.J.Gould? "The absence of fossil evidence
> for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic
> design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to
> reconstruct functional intermediates in many cases, has been
> a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of
> evolution" [Paleobiology vol.6(1) Jan. 1980 pg.127].
> Do you know something Stephen Jay Gould doesn''t?
I know something you don''t.
quote:
"It is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I don''t know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level but are abundant between larger groups. The evolution from reptiles to mammals ... is well documented." (Stephen Jay Gould, Creation/Evolution 6: Fall 1981, page 38.)
>> Are you trying to tell me that I''m not an expert,
>> but you, in fact, are?
>
> Some would say you''re not "a expert" When a person
> is ''born again'' the Spirit of God enters their life and
> God reveals Himself to them. We need a Spiritual
> rebirth to understand God Word.
Leave it to a pompous ass like you to suggest that non-believers are illiterate and can''t understand English language translations of the Bible unless they have a theologian interpret it for them.
You also forget that I did have a born-again experience. I studied the Bible for decades as an earnest young Southern Baptist. But my faith began to waver after I started questioning the "inerrancy" doctrine, which my fellow fundamentalists insisted was an absolute requirement for faith in Christ. What happened, did God remove the Spirit of Understanding from me?
> When the Bible says the flood covered the whole earth
> and every living thing died [Gen.7:19-23] they reject it.
> The evidence for a worldwide flood however is very
> convincing!
As I pointed out before, a lopsided majority of all fossilized animals are fish and marine invertebrates.
But why would Noah''s flood bury marine life? According to the Bible, the flood was only supposed to destroy terrestrial life on dry land. For example:
quote:
"Every living thing that moved on the earth perished -- birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on DRY LAND that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.
"Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move ALONG THE GROUND and the BIRDS OF THE AIR were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark." (Genesis 7:20-23)
The Bible doesn''t say marine creatures died in the flood. Your apologetic defense is, ironically, unbiblical.
> Plants from a Biblical viewpoint are not alive in
> the same sense as humans and animals. The Bible
> makes a theological distinction between the life of
> animate beings [animals and man] and plants.
Obviously! According to the flood story in Genesis, God submerged the whole earth beneath miles of seawater for a whole year, yet when the animals finally disembarked, they entered a world with magically unharmed plants and trees. Butterflies, hummingbirds and bees found readily available flowers to pollinate, kola bears found hearty eucalyptus leaves, woodpeckers foraged for insects in astonishingly intact trees, and arboreal mammals had access to their previous jungle canopies.
You''d think that creationists would''ve learned some botany since then, but instead, they still carry on about the hardiness of olives.
In his Guide to the Old Testament (Doubleday: New York, 1968) Isaac Asimov said the reason why plants miraculously survived in the flood stories was because the ancient Hebrews didn''t consider plants to be alive in any real sense.
Creationists still promote such nonsense. They''re always preaching about how a single post-flood Ice Age flash-froze dinosaurs and buried wooly mammoths, yet miraculously spared citrus trees.
I also thought it was strange that Noah had to carry aboard seven pairs of every clean animal on his ark, which he promptly destroyed after landing.
quote:
"Noah built an altar unto the LORD; and took of EVERY clean beast, and of EVERY clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour." (Genesis 8:20-21)
Funny. Yahweh annihilated the whole world to rid it of evil, yet evil remained just as prevalent in the world after the deluge as it was before it. Why?
And poor Noah had to sacrifice of EVERY clean beast and of EVERY clean fowl after he went through the trouble of preserving them on the ark for a whole year, just so Yahweh could inhale the pleasant aroma of their burning flesh.
But if Noah killed all the "clean beasts," did God have to create new ones from the dust of the ground again for temple sacrifices?
>> These quantitative variables [of population genetics] can
>> be related to one another algebraically, and evolutionary
>> conclusions can be expressed as solutions to algebraic
>> equations.
>
> The talk of "better-adapted mutant forms" is utter
> nonsense. Professional evolutionists say different.
Name me one, just one, professional evolutionist that rejects population genetics.
> In evolutionary theory, the role of creating new information
> is given to mutation -- random, accidental mistakes which
> happen as this information is copied. We know that such
> mistakes happen, and are inherited (because the next
> generation is making a copy from a defective copy). So the
> defect is passed on, and somewhere down the line another
> mistake happens, and so mutational defects tend to accumulate.
I forwarded your claim to Dr. Jeffrey Otto, a molecular biologist at Rush University in Chicago, Illinois.
The following is Dr. Otto''s response:
quote:
Regarding mutations: The vast majorities of mutations are point mutations and are neutral -- meaning that they neither improve nor detract from an organism''s survival. Now, I don''t know (and don''t know where I could quickly find) what the actual ratio of negative to positive mutations happens to be. But let''s assume for the sake of argument that it is 10,000:1.
So what? The ratio of neutral to non-neutral mutations is something like a 1000:1 (consider the size of the genome and divide it by the amount of coding sequence -- this is a rough estimate because it doesn''t take into account silent mutations, or non-silent but neutral mutations). So only 1 individual out of thousand is likely to develop a non-silent mutation.
It''s important that most individuals remain neutral or unaffected because if the mutation rate gets too high, we do end up with deleterious results. But in a very large population, lets say 1,000,000,000,000 individuals (which isn''t all that large of a population for single-celled organisms), we can expect that there will only be 333 mutations (based on the rate of mutation at 1bp/10^9bp -- which actually is on a per/year basis for higher organisms. Thus, the rate would be higher for rapidly dividing single celled critters -- but lets run with it).
Let''s assume that the critter divides every day and there is no death in the system, except by negative mutation.
Generation 1
1*10^12 individuals, 333 mutations (1/3chance of neg. mutation, 1/30000 chance of pos. mutation)
Generation 2
2*10^12 individuals 666 mutations (2/3chance of neg. mutation, 2/30000 chance of pos. mutation)
Generation 3
4*10^12 individuals 1332 mutations (1.332 change of neg. mutation -- but he dies! 0.01332 chance of positive mutation, the game continues.
But by this time, we have 4 trillion individuals before the first death due to mutation. Clearly the higher rate of negative mutation vs. beneficial mutation is not weighing on the population. Since most populations in a niche remain in balance in regards to population growth, we can expect:
a) That negative mutations will not have a deleterious effect on the population as a whole, and
b) When the beneficial mutation occurs, it will more likely occur in a population size where its benefits can be realized.
Clearly when we start talking about sexual systems and complex genetics, the picture changes -- to increase the effective mutation rate, and maximize opportunities in an out-bred population. We also have to consider beneficial effects of genes in the heterozygous state that when homozygous state are deleterious -- consider sickle cell anemia where its survival advantages in heterozygous states in countries where malaria is endemic.
I hope this helps.
Jeffrey M. Otto, Ph.D.
Section of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Departments of Biochemistry and Orthopedic Surgery
Rush University at Rush-Presbyterian -- St. Luke''s Medical Center
Chicago, IL 60612
Home page:
http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/7986/
> Evolution teaches that a comparatively simple creature, ie
> one-celled amoeba, has become a much more complicated
> one, like a horse.
Sorry, evolution does NOT say that horses or other animals evolved from amoebas. Instead, it teaches that horses and amoebas developed along entirely separate paths from single-celled eukaryotes.
> I asked -- where are the missing links in the evolutionary
> chain from primitive to modern plants? From cells to
> invertebrates, to fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals,
> sea mammals, etc. And you provided a few web pages
> [which I read]. Apparently you have no appreciation of the
> missing evidence.
Interesting. You asked for specific transitional fossils, and I provided them just as you requested. Yet now, you attempt to change the subject by declaring that I don''t "appreciate" the "missing evidence."
Yet I did, in fact, explain precisely why fossilization is an extremely rare event in nature, but you then curiously allege that "I didn''t answer your question. Where are they?"
Who are "they?" Where are "what?" What question "didn''t" I answer? Are you alleging that I didn''t provide you with the transitional fossils you asked for in the first place? Can you be more specific as to what you''re talking about?
> Tom you have NOT read creationist literature
> because you are ignorant of what they say.
On the contrary, I''m more familiar with the creationist literature than you are. You weren''t even aware that creationists had explanations for fossil stratigraphy. Instead, you claimed that "evolutionists" invented the geologic column decades before Darwin published his first manuscript, which is just plain wrong. Again, Bible-believing geologists created the geologic column.
> But waiting millions of years for dust
> to cover bones is questionable.
Are you putting words in my mouth? I never said that. I said that fossilization requires rapid burial in silt, although that doesn''t qualify as evidence for a "global" deluge.
Most large terrestrial animals that fossilized were buried in creek beds after a storm, or buried in situ by volcanic ash.
> We don''t find a series of fossils showing part-limb,
> part-wing; or part-scale, part-feather.
Of course not. Only Duane Gish believes that sexual reproduction propagates "half-formed, incomplete" animals. Frankly, most people think he''s being ridiculous.
> I know about the ''contamination'' story.
Really? Then why didn''t you acknowledge that in your cited references? Are you trying to conceal contradictory information from me that undermines your claims?
> They genuinely fool people like you and those looking
> for reasons not to believe God created man. They
> "publicize their" discoveries to get money. The more
> money, the more field trips, the more bones. The more
> bones, the more field trips, the more money etc.
I asked you why paleoanthropologists would publicize their own mistakes (like Piltdown Man) if they were involved in a conspiracy to deceive the general public about human evolution. Apparently, your conspiracy theory couldn''t account for that, so you changed the subject instead. Nice try.
I also think scientists have better things to do with their time than "look for reasons not to believe that God created man."
> They and scientists who accept evolution are
> prepared to bend their observations to fit evolution.
Of course, creation science NEVER reconciles its data to conform to doctrinal interpretations. When Henry Morris and John Whitcomb rebutted the Christian critics of their first book The Genesis Flood, they wrote: "The real issue is not the correctness of the interpretation of various details of the geological data, but simply what God has revealed in His Word concerning these matters. It is not a scientific decision at all, but a spiritual one." ("Reply to Reviews," Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 16, June 1964, pp. 55-61.)
>> All world religions change the lives of their converts.
>> That''s why their adherents join
>
> Christ certainly hasn''t transformed your life.
Is this how you substantiate the power of Jesus Christ in the lives of believers, by denying others'' salvation experiences? Are you sovereign and omnipotent?
> Those Christians you dismissed -- Michael Faraday, James
> Maxwell and William Thomson and Lord Kelvin are the
> foundation of modern science.
I didn''t dismiss their accomplishments. I just questioned why you felt that their opinions took precedence over modern scientific findings.
Do you consider these men to be the "foundation" of good science only because they agree with your exegetical interpretations of scripture? Their "politically correct" religious beliefs have no bearing on their scientific achievements.
>> A theory, in the scientific sense, doesn''t mean the same
>> thing as a "guess" or a "hunch." Theories must explain a
>> collection of facts, and evolutionary biology has itself
>> evolved to explain that process with greater precision,
>> accuracy, and clarity. To discount a theory, you must
>> instead present an alternative set of facts to falsify it,
>> and to date, creation science has failed to do that on
>> every single solitary count.
>
> A ''theory'' in ANY sense, means the same thing as a
> "guess" or a "hunch". Evolution is not really even a
> theory.
WOW! You DO have the godlike authority to redefine words, definitions, and terms at your convenience. I wish I could walk into any laboratory in the world and dictate to other scientists what does and does not qualify as a valid scientific hypothesis.
> If the earth is 550 million years old, how old is the sun?
> Various measurements by professionals [I have the data]
> indicate shrinkage calculated 2 feet or 5-6 feet or 0.6 feet
> or 1-2 feet or 1 foot per hour. That adds up over a year.
> Applying the most conservative calculation over a year
> its approx "1 mile per year". We can''t even go back one
> million years because the sun would be too big for life
> and 210 million years ago it would touch the earth.
Mark, it''s obvious that you did not read our creation/evolution page because we already picked apart that urban legend. In fact, it was debunked almost 20 years ago. The sun is not shrinking. If it was shrinking at the rate you attribute to it, then centuries of historical records recounting total solar eclipses would not have been possible because the moon would''ve been too small to conceal it.
The myth of the shrinking sun was also dealt with at length by three Christian scientists -- Howard J. Van Till, Davis A. Young, and Clarence Menninga, in their book Science Held Hostage: What''s Wrong With Creation Science and Evolutionism (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. 1989)
> You are trying to make it sound funny and unbelievable
> as you do with history and science. The fruit wasn''t
> "magical fruit" and no mention they even spoke Hebrew.
Hmmm. How can fruit pass along "forbidden knowledge" unless it''s enchanted?
Furthermore, the Bible doesn''t say that the serpent was possessed of Satan. It only says that the serpent was "the craftiest beast in the garden," so it''s not impertinent of me to question how it could talk when it doesn''t possess lips or a larynx. You can patronize me by claiming that "I''m trying to make the story sound funny," but you''re only dodging a legitimately reasonable question.
> There are people [like you] who don''t want to
> take the Bible literally and believe what it says.
> They believe parts they like and ignore parts they
> don''t like.
From the following examples, I could say the exact same thing about you.
> Read Gen.1:29-30. God told them to eat only plants.
Actually, the verse says, "I give you every green plant for food." God does not explicitly prohibit what an animal can or cannot eat. I''m sorry, Mark, but it just doesn''t.
Furthermore, creationists claim that after Adam and Eve sinned, God supernaturally metamorphosed a fraction of the animal kingdom to become predators.
Funny, but the Bible absolutely does not say ANYTHING about God redesigning the anatomy and physiology of vegetarian animals to require a carnivorous diet.
Again, I''m sorry Mark, but you and your fellow young-earth creationists are rewriting the bible to fit within your cushy doctrinal creeds. Hugh Ross and other progressive creationists let the Biblical passages speak for themselves without imposing contrived qualifications. It''s young-earthers like you who corrupt the plain meaning of scripture.
> From Roman we learn that sin and death are interwoven.
> Sin entered the world and had universal effect. It does
> emphasize death of men, but it does not preclude death
> from the animal kingdom. "Sin entered the world" can
> refer to all creation.
Excuse me, but you''re adding to scripture.
> Perhaps that''s why the phrase "and he died" is repeated
> over and over again throughout the genealogy of Genesis
> chapter 5, a confirmation that sin has brought the unnatural
> state of death into our world.
Oh good grief! It''s completely natural for genealogies to record the death of patriarchs. Your allegation that the scribes only documented their deaths to draw attention to Original Sin is ridiculous.
> And are you saying that when God finished what
> He made and said "it was good" [Gen.1:25,31] it
> wasn''t? But there was death, killing and suffering
> going on all around man? "Behold it was good"
> was a lie?
Actually, the statement that the creation was "good" is vague and ambiguous. The word "good" can mean just about anything. The Bible doesn''t say it was "perfect," "immortal," or "unencumbered from the effects of entropy."
I''d assume that a creation that was really good wouldn''t have "the craftiest beast in the garden" slithering around tricking people into ushering death and destruction onto the entire universe. After all, Henry Morris claims that Adam''s sin caused stars to explode.
> You think Adam was created on top of a graveyard,
> yet he never would have died if he didn''t disobey God
If Adam and Eve were already immortal, why would they need access to the Tree of Life?
> When creatures ate fruit from the plants, they didn''t die.
> The "digestive processes" didn''t kill the plants but spread
> the seeds.
The process of assimilation in the digestive tract IS death, decay, and decomposition. If there were no death in the world, why would animals require nourishment in the first place? You''re not making any sense!
> The fact is, God created a perfect world, free
> from death, and death is the result of man''s
> rebellion against God.
Look at the implications of what you''re saying. In Genesis chapter 2, we read:
quote:
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the DAY that you eat from it, you surely shall DIE." (Genesis 2:16-17)
Do you think that God''s talking about literal, physical death here?
quote:
And the woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, "You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.''"
And the serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die! For God knows that on the DAY you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:2-5)
The serpent told Eve that if she ate the fruit, she wouldn''t die. And he was right. She didn''t.
The serpent also told her that if she ate the fruit, then she would be "like" God only to the extent that she would acquire the knowledge of good and evil. And that''s exactly what happened, just as he said it would.
So if you''re going to argue that Genesis chapter 3 tells the story of how physical death entered the world, then you''re making the serpent the hero of the story because he told Eve the truth, while God did not.
But I can already predict your response. You''ll attempt to harmonize the conflicting accounts by parsing the text in such a way that the word death can mean either "physical" or "spiritual" depending upon the criterion YOU choose for its specific context. It''s funny how so-called "Biblical literalists" practice a selective fundamentalism.
> You say Rom.8:20-22 doesn''t refer to God''s "curse"
> on creation and then you say, but it does refer to
> "decay" from the "beginning". Contradictory?
No. Paul never said the creation was cursed. He said it was in bondage to the pangs of childbirth right up until the present day while awaiting its redemption. As I told you before, this passage refers to future glory, not original sin.
> There are people [like you] who don''t want to take the
> Bible literally and believe what it says. They believe parts
> they like and ignore parts they don''t like. When the Bible
> says the flood covered the whole earth and every living
> thing died [Gen.7:19-23] they reject it. The evidence for
> a worldwide flood however is very convincing!
Conventional geologists insist there isn''t a single, solitary speck of evidence for a global flood.
As for Biblical interpretations of a "local" flood, Hugh Ross is quick to remind his critics that when the Bible talks about "the whole world," the "whole world" only encompasses the Middle East.
For example:
quote:
"The famine was over all the face of the earth...And all countries came unto Egypt to Joseph to buy corn; because the famine was so sore in all lands." (Genesis 41:56-57)
Don''t the words, "over all the face of the earth" mean folks in China, Japan, Australia, and North and South America must have traveled to go to Egypt to buy corn?
quote:
[The Lord said to the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert] "This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee." (Deuteronomy 2:25)
Don''t the words, "the nations that are under the whole heaven" mean the nations that are under the whole heaven?
If they mean what they say, then people in Singapore, Korea, and the Hawaiian Islands must have been trembling when they "heard the report of Israel."
"I have set my king upon the holy hill of Zion. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen [as slaves] for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." (Psalm 2:6-9)
The above psalm was supposedly sung at the coronation of Hebrew kings. But giving a king "the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession" is an exaggerated promise to say the least.
quote:
"All the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom." (2 Chronicles 9:23)
Don''t the words "all the kings of the earth" mean all the kings of the earth? If the Bible means what it says, then even kings in South America must have begun paddling their canoes toward Israel the instant they heard of Solomon''s wisdom.
quote:
"The devil took him [Jesus] up into an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them." (Matthew 4:8)
Shown "all the kingdoms of the world?" Yes, if the mountain was "exceedingly high" and the earth was flat.
quote:
"A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth." (Luke 2:1)
Don''t the words "all the inhabited earth" mean all the inhabited earth? If the Bible means what it says, then the Australian aborigines must have taken part in Augustus'' census!
quote:
"And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven." (Acts 2:5)
Out of every nation under heaven? Was Chief Running Bull of the Sioux Nation there, too?
"A great famine all over the world took place in the reign of Claudius." (Acts 11:28)
A great famine happened "all over the world?" Did China, France, Norway, Greenland, Japan, and Honduras suffer the effects of this famine during the reign of Claudius?
"Their voice [of first century Christian preachers] has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. The mystery is now manifested and has been made known to all the nations. The gospel, which has come to you, just as in all the world which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister." (Romans 10:18, 16:25-26; Colossians 1:5-6, 23)
Sorry Paul, but the Gospel in your day had only reached a handful of churches in the Roman Empire, not "all the earth," not "to the ends of the world," not "all nations," and certainly not "all creation under heaven."
Maybe God should have given the Biblical authors some inspired geography lessons, just to show them how big the earth really was.
Heck, if you can''t believe the Bible when it says, "all the earth," "to the ends of the earth," "from the uttermost parts of the earth," "all the inhabited earth," "in all creation under heaven," "under all the heavens," "every nation under heaven," then how can anyone be expected to believe Genesis 7:19 where it is written, "the water [of the flood of Noah] prevailed, and all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered?"
Is the global flood described in the Bible yet another scriptural exaggeration?
>> I''m not aware of any "frauds" surrounding Lucy. Can
>> you be more specific?
>
> There''s seems a lot you don''t know. Johnson thought he had
> a hominid skeleton [about 40% complete]. But without the
> skull no estimate of brain capacity can be made. The
> announcement and publicity was carefully orchestrated for
> maximum effect [for money too]. When ''Lucy'' was formally
> presented at the Nobel Symposium on Early Man in 1978 the
> scientific establishment was not impressed because there was
> no skulls [hence no hard evidence, no proof]. Yet the news
> continued to circle the world that it was the missing link.
Lucy was not the first australopithecine ever discovered. Paleoanthropologists had already uncovered a number of australopithecine skulls. When Dr. Johanson found Lucy, she was remarkable only because she was the most complete skeleton of her kind yet recovered.
And her skull wasn''t completely missing. Dr. Johanson found shattered pieces of her cranium and a complete mandible, so it wasn''t difficult to compare her jaw to other australopithecine jawbones. I''m still at a loss to comprehend why you''re calling Lucy a "fraud."
> "The Beatles" even made a song out of it.
Mark, you kill me. The Beatles did NOT write a song based on the Lucy discovery. Dr. Johanson named his specimen "Lucy" because he happened to be listening to the Beatles singing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" on the radio while he was prepping his specimen at his campsite.
>> Hitler was born a Roman Catholic, baptized as
>> an infant in Austria, became an altar boy, and
>> was confirmed as a "soldier of Christ" in that church.
>
> I can''t find those quotes anywhere, what page?
Are you claiming that since you can''t "find" these quotes yourself, I must be making them up? Try looking here.
> Was he a creationist too?
As a matter of fact, yes, Adolf Hitler WAS a creationist.
quote:
"The undermining of the existence of human culture by the destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent Creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from Paradise." (Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin: 1943, p. 383)
"A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord, and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape." (p. 402)
"By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind his education-based, religious-dogmatic principles -- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles -- by abolishing this religious education without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of his existence. We may therefore state that not only does man live in order to serve higher ideals, but that, conversely, these higher ideals also provide the premise for his existence." (pp. 379-380)
Here''s a quote from John Toland''s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Adolf Hitler, talking about the autumn of 1941.
quote:
The Fuhrer made it known to those entrusted with the Final Solution that the killings should be done as humanely as possible. This was in line with his conviction that he was observing God''s injunction to cleanse the world of vermin. Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy ("I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"), he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God -- so long as it was done impersonally, and without cruelty. (Adolf Hitler, Doubleday: 1976, page 507)
Did Hitler''s anti-Semitic views emerge from a cultural vacuum? Of course not! Germany had a history of persecuting Jews under the guise of Christian duty.
Remember the great Protestant reformer, Martin Luther? Are you aware of the fact that Luther once published a religious tract titled On the Jews and Their Lies that urged Christians to burn down Jewish synagogues?
The following is a collection of notable quotes from that vile pamphlet.
Furthermore, if the Nazis were really intent on campaigning for "evolution," why would they execute Dr. Rudolf Kaufmann, one of Germany''s most celebrated paleontologists, because he was a Jew?
In his book Trilobites: Eyewitness to Evolution (Harper Collins:2000), Richard Fortey says that Dr. Kaufmann independently developed the theory of "punctuated equilibrium" almost 40 years before Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould won fame for it, but the Gestapo murdered Kaufmann before he could publish his dissertation. (Eldredge even acknowledged Kaufmann''s influence on his own work.)
Had Dr. Kaufmann published his paper first, he could''ve won much-needed respect for Germany''s scientific scholarship, but Hitler was apparently more interested in exterminating the descendants of those who killed Christ than earning Germany recognition for evolutionary research.
In an ironic twist, although Rudolf Kaufmann was born a Jew, he had converted to Christianity. But since he still accepted the evidence for biological descent with modification, you''ll probably disqualify him from your list of "Christian Men Who Were the Foundation of Modern Science."
> Did you see the Lynchburg Story?
No, but I''m well aware of the history of the eugenics movement both here and in Germany. But Charles Darwin never advocated forced sterilization of undesirables, and eugenics was based upon a wacky, pseudoscientific premise far removed from evolutionary biology. Even Stephen Jay Gould ridiculed eugenics in his book The Mismeasure of Man.
>> The Thirty Years War pitted Catholics against Protestants
>> in the early 1600s and killed more people in Western Europe
>> than World War II did for the entire planet. Of course, this
>> was a war that pitted Christian against Christian, creationist
>> against creationist, which undermines the dogma that only
>> "atheistic evolutionists" slaughter people en masse.
>
> This sounds like ''conspiracy theory'' off the web. From the
> web page that has all those conspiracies.
For someone with a Ph.D. who loudly condemns others for their "historical ignorance," your unfamiliarity with the Thirty Years War certainly reveals your own ignorance.
quote:
The thirty years war began in 1618 when Protestant leaders threw two Catholic emissaries out of a Prague window into a dung heap. War flared between Catholic and Protestant princedoms, drawing in support religious armies from Germany, Sweden, France, and Italy. Sweden''s Protestant soldiers sang Martin Luther''s "Ein Feste Burg" in battle. Three decades of combat turned central Europe into a wasteland of misery.
(James A. Haught, Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990)
Herbert Langer, in his book The Thirty Years'' War (New York: Dorset Press, 1990) claimed that this war killed more than 14 million people in Germany alone, and more than one-fourth of Europe''s population perished as well. In contrast, World War II killed 15 million people in a conflict that was spread out worldwide over many continents.
This war pitted Christian kingdoms against Christian kingdoms, believers in Jesus'' deity against believers in Jesus'' deity, Trinitarians against Trinitarians, and Christian "creationists" against Christian "creationists" in one of THE bloodiest conflicts in human history.
And what did this war accomplish? NOTHING!
The divide between Catholic and Protestant religious ideologies are still as great now as they were before the war. In Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants STILL kill each other, annually.
Funny, but I''ve never heard of rival "Darwinists" shooting, bombing, burning down homes, or killing each other''s children over competing theories. They only attempt to discredit one another in print.
Here is some more historical background on the Thirty Years War.
> And you quoted a lengthy article that hid behind
> ambiguous words. I confess not have understood
> the details. But can I say this. I base what I believe
> on what I DO know not on what I DON''T know.
I did not "quote" from a "lengthy article." I wrote a direct answer to a direct question you asked about increasing the information content of a genome. But apparently, you were unable to understand my "ambiguous words," because you again told me that a cell couldn''t increase its information content.
So in essence, you asked me the same question twice. Look at the three examples I gave you in my last email starting with the serine proteinase family, and if you still can''t understand my "ambiguous words," I''ll send you another example.
Congratulations, Mark. I''ve debated hundreds of creationists online, but this is the longest response I ever emailed to a single person. And I only went through this much trouble because your opening salvo called us all dumb, stupid, ignorant, uneducated "atheists" when you were wrong on every single count.
> Keep the mail coming.
I will. And I also hope that you actually post this letter on your web site instead of just your "response" to my email. I even saved this letter in html format to make it easier for you.
In conclusion, let me quote from your hero Duane Gish:
quote:
There should be no room for question, no possibility of doubt, no opportunity for debate, no rationale whatsoever for the existence of the Institute for Creation Research! (Duane T. Gish, Acts and Facts, December 1981, ii).
Best,
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