In response to PB_guy's "rebuttal" of the "29+ evidences" article:
The article does not state that abiogenesis is statistically impossible, it states that "abiogenesis is not considered in this discussion of macroevolution: abiogenesis is an independent hypothesis".
Nor is abiogenesis even said to be accepted (never mind due to faith) by the article's author; not only is he assuming a self-replicating life form existed for sake of argument, he says the origin of that life form is irrelevant! (i.e. abiogenesis does not have to even be correct; a deity could have created this life form and it would not affect the validity of anything in the paper!)
I am very tempted to bring up your thoughts on worldviews here. We are not even out of the paper's abstract and many words have been put in the author's mouth which he did not say or even attempt to say.
There is an absolute ton of evidence for common descent (and by extension, the phylogenetic trees that common descent is so often modeled by). The genetic evidence is certainly the most overwhelming; the 29+ evidences page does cover them in section 4, but the profoundness of the evidence is unfortunately not conveyed. Even if no other evidence existed, the genetic evidence alone would still be enough to support evolution.
An excellent page which explains not only the genetic evidence, but additionally why it is so overwhelming: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/ .Unfortunately, this article is very long. I wouldn't mind it if you skipped over this article entirely; in fact, that's what I expect you to do, as reading it all would take time that you probably don't have. It is a good read, though; so far every creationist that I've shown this page to that has taken the time to read the whole thing has dropped their "creationist" label entirely (a small sample size of 2, but still noteworthy).
AIG is infuriatingly vague. What constitutes a "kind", why can one "kind" never change into another "kind" by evolutionary processes, what does classifying by "kind" achieve, etc.? Straight answers to these questions seem hard to come by, which is unfortunate because those answers are absolutely necessary if we want to dissect the relevant claims. It's almost like the claims are designed with the intention of being unfalsifiable...
That is an unfalsifiable statement that contributes nothing and could be altered to "explain" almost anything. Such claims are essentially just ways of ensuring "victory" no matter how true the claim actually is (if the animal kingdom does not have a lot of similarities, then evolution is wrong, but if the animal kingdom does have a lot of similarities, then it's obviously just common design by God, and evolution is wrong! Q.E.D.)
While "common design, common designer" cannot be disproven, my best argument against it lies in the overwhelming evidence for evolution (and specifically the genetic evidence as posted above in that unfortunately long article). In my eyes, if an intellectually honest person accepts said evidence, they must necessarily conclude via Bayesian thinking that common descent via natural selection is a profoundly more logical explanation than "special creation" is. Of course, all bets are off if the evidence for evolution is rejected.
"We have to realize that the entire line of reasoning by evolutionists is based upon a single assumption: that the degree of similarity between organisms indicates the degree of supposed relationship of the said organisms. In other words, it is argued that if animals look alike, then they must be closely related (from an evolutionary point of view)"
I stopped reading right there. I literally facepalmed. That is not at all what evolutionary theory is based on; if it were based on such an assumption, it would be a pathetic theory worthy of ridicule.
I have literally no idea what this article is trying to claim. I did notice, though, that it claims some stuff about a man named "Richard Dickerson" and his tests that he did that showed surprising results: "In this test, it turned out that humans are more closely related to the chicken than to any living mammal tested!", which AIG immediately pounces upon as clear evidence for a falsification of evolution.
However, doing a search for information about this study yields literally 0 results. There aren't even any mentions of this on other creationist websites. Funny how there exists this profoundly powerful piece of information which so obviously proves evolutionary theory incorrect and could revolutionize our understanding of the world as we know it, and yet it's literally only known to one specific creationist organization with considerable bias.
If you claim a conspiracy/dogma explanation for how that information is not widespread, you must first explain why that data would be released in the first place, as both the AIG page and external research on Mr. Dickerson show without a doubt that he was adamantly in favour of evolutionary theory and was even an expert witness on certain trials challenging the imposition of creationism into science curriculum. If he did an experiment that generated such anti-evolutionary evidence, and there really was a conspiracy involved, why wouldn't he just destroy, or alter, or otherwise be dishonest with the evidence?
I'm going a bit off-topic, but I thought that was worth writing.
[Click to Show Content]
Quote:Note that even the evolutionist accepts that abiogenesis is statistically impossible, therfore it is assumed (taken on faith): "it is taken as axiomatic that an original self-replicating life form existed in the distant past"
The article does not state that abiogenesis is statistically impossible, it states that "abiogenesis is not considered in this discussion of macroevolution: abiogenesis is an independent hypothesis".
Nor is abiogenesis even said to be accepted (never mind due to faith) by the article's author; not only is he assuming a self-replicating life form existed for sake of argument, he says the origin of that life form is irrelevant! (i.e. abiogenesis does not have to even be correct; a deity could have created this life form and it would not affect the validity of anything in the paper!)
I am very tempted to bring up your thoughts on worldviews here. We are not even out of the paper's abstract and many words have been put in the author's mouth which he did not say or even attempt to say.
Quote:Section: Introduction to phylogenetics. Evolutionary phylogenetic trees are common. ie. "a method for determining phylogenetic trees based on morphology" But classification of organisms based on morphology was invented by Linnaeus, a creationist who believed that God is a God of order, and not chaos. A major problem with phylogenetic trees and other related models is the lack of evidence that supports the links between known organisms and their supposed fossil relatives. An alternate to the phylogenetic tree is the phylogenetic orchard, where each tree in the orchard is the original created "kind", approximated by family, and the branches of the tree going down to species and sub-species. see: http://www.answersin...lassifying-life
There is an absolute ton of evidence for common descent (and by extension, the phylogenetic trees that common descent is so often modeled by). The genetic evidence is certainly the most overwhelming; the 29+ evidences page does cover them in section 4, but the profoundness of the evidence is unfortunately not conveyed. Even if no other evidence existed, the genetic evidence alone would still be enough to support evolution.
An excellent page which explains not only the genetic evidence, but additionally why it is so overwhelming: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/ .Unfortunately, this article is very long. I wouldn't mind it if you skipped over this article entirely; in fact, that's what I expect you to do, as reading it all would take time that you probably don't have. It is a good read, though; so far every creationist that I've shown this page to that has taken the time to read the whole thing has dropped their "creationist" label entirely (a small sample size of 2, but still noteworthy).
AIG is infuriatingly vague. What constitutes a "kind", why can one "kind" never change into another "kind" by evolutionary processes, what does classifying by "kind" achieve, etc.? Straight answers to these questions seem hard to come by, which is unfortunate because those answers are absolutely necessary if we want to dissect the relevant claims. It's almost like the claims are designed with the intention of being unfalsifiable...
Quote:Since everything was created by a single Creator, could not the same thing be said about common design? That God would only need a single code for DNA? The argument proves nothing.
That is an unfalsifiable statement that contributes nothing and could be altered to "explain" almost anything. Such claims are essentially just ways of ensuring "victory" no matter how true the claim actually is (if the animal kingdom does not have a lot of similarities, then evolution is wrong, but if the animal kingdom does have a lot of similarities, then it's obviously just common design by God, and evolution is wrong! Q.E.D.)
While "common design, common designer" cannot be disproven, my best argument against it lies in the overwhelming evidence for evolution (and specifically the genetic evidence as posted above in that unfortunately long article). In my eyes, if an intellectually honest person accepts said evidence, they must necessarily conclude via Bayesian thinking that common descent via natural selection is a profoundly more logical explanation than "special creation" is. Of course, all bets are off if the evidence for evolution is rejected.
Quote:I found this statement astounding because it is so true, and so rare.Now for some problems with the assumptions.
Problems with Chemical Homology: http://www.answersin...ion-been-proven
"We have to realize that the entire line of reasoning by evolutionists is based upon a single assumption: that the degree of similarity between organisms indicates the degree of supposed relationship of the said organisms. In other words, it is argued that if animals look alike, then they must be closely related (from an evolutionary point of view)"
I stopped reading right there. I literally facepalmed. That is not at all what evolutionary theory is based on; if it were based on such an assumption, it would be a pathetic theory worthy of ridicule.
Quote:Problems with Homology: http://www.answersin...rities-homology
I have literally no idea what this article is trying to claim. I did notice, though, that it claims some stuff about a man named "Richard Dickerson" and his tests that he did that showed surprising results: "In this test, it turned out that humans are more closely related to the chicken than to any living mammal tested!", which AIG immediately pounces upon as clear evidence for a falsification of evolution.
However, doing a search for information about this study yields literally 0 results. There aren't even any mentions of this on other creationist websites. Funny how there exists this profoundly powerful piece of information which so obviously proves evolutionary theory incorrect and could revolutionize our understanding of the world as we know it, and yet it's literally only known to one specific creationist organization with considerable bias.
If you claim a conspiracy/dogma explanation for how that information is not widespread, you must first explain why that data would be released in the first place, as both the AIG page and external research on Mr. Dickerson show without a doubt that he was adamantly in favour of evolutionary theory and was even an expert witness on certain trials challenging the imposition of creationism into science curriculum. If he did an experiment that generated such anti-evolutionary evidence, and there really was a conspiracy involved, why wouldn't he just destroy, or alter, or otherwise be dishonest with the evidence?
I'm going a bit off-topic, but I thought that was worth writing.