macroevolution and intermediate links

[Texan Christian]

So, according to macroevolution, which I have done much study on (I made a 10 minute platform speech against it a year ago), there should be intermediate links between fossils of animals believed to be connected. The problem with this theory, is that there are few if any (I'd argue there are none, the commonly used "Lucy" actually has evidence that it is simply the skeleton of an ape which would be able to more easily sit upright, all the other bones besides the hip are the same as a normal ape. (if you wish bring up any "intermediate links" you know about)) intermediate links, when, there should be plenty. There should, in fact, be more intermediate links than the fossils of animals living today (or extinct).
I believe some macroevolutionists, seeing the faults in this, believe that animals evolved through many series of "good mutations" which actually benefitted the animal, but there have never been observed a "positive" mutation, and by that theory as well, there should be many positive mutations which happen. If I got anything a little confused or appear to have forgotten something let me know

Good day and God bless y'all

[For_The_Kingdom]

That's what is known as a "false equivalence," a logical fallacy which describes a situation where there is a logical and apparent equivalence, but when in fact there is none. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. In order to recognize it you need to understand both items being compared, which clearly you do not.

How about explaining why what I said isn't equivalent to what I compared it to.

Even if you discount the entire fossil record, that gets you nowhere, the genetic and immunological data have made the fossil record nothing more than a curious Victorian pastime, completely unnecessary to more than make the case for Evolution. Similarly the genetic data provides irrefutable and directly observable evidence for the inferences that established the TOE.

Sure, the whole "genetics" thing is something that we both have to account for. But the difference is; you believe that the "genetic data provides irrefutable and directly observable evidence for the inferences that established the TOE".

But I believe that the "genetic data provides irrefutable and directly observational evidence for the inference that is concluded in the IDT (Intelligent Design Theory)".

You believe the genetic data is evidence for common ancestry, and I believe that the genetic data is evidence for common designer. I think your view is just as absurd as you think mines is.

As for abiogenesis, that has nothing to do with Evolution and is an unknown at the moment. You make an argument from ignorance out of that, but that is just another logical fallacy.

Nonsense. Evolution has ever bit to do with abiogenesis. If abiogenesis is false, then there is no way that evolution could possibly be true (on the atheistic worldview). If you are an atheist/naturalist, and you cant conclusively prove how and/or whether life came from nonlife, then you cant definitively explain how life began to change forms.

If you talk to anyone that believes in evolution, they tend to want to just skip over abiogenesis as if it is insignificant. But that is crazy, because not only is it significant, but the entire TOE depends on abiogenesis being true (if the God hypothesis is negated).

This is a blatant cart before the horse fallacy.

Do you see the orbit of the Earth? Do you see continental drift? Do you even see your toenails grow? Do all of these things happen? Just because you can not directly witness them as the occur doesn't mean that they are not simply slow natural processes.

My objection isn't necessarily that just because I can't see it occur, therefore, it doesn't occur. I am saying that I only see animals produce what they are, not what they aren't, and I have no reason to believe that the animals of a million years ago were able to do something that the animals of today have never been observed to do.

Much of science is dedicated to transforming the scale so that it can be "seen." Microscopes make the tiny larger, telescopes bring the far away closer, special forms of photography make the fast slower and the slow faster, all sorts of sensors make the invisible able to be seen. No magic needed.

Magic is needed. Unless you can naturally demonstrate how life came from nonlife, consciousness came from unconsiousness, language came from the mute, and order came from chaos.

But I don't think you can do that, can you?

[H.sapiens]

That's what is known as a "false equivalence," a logical fallacy which describes a situation where there is a logical and apparent equivalence, but when in fact there is none. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. In order to recognize it you need to understand both items being compared, which clearly you do not.

How about explaining why what I said isn't equivalent to what I compared it to.

Goat already did:

This is what is known as 'equivocator', and attempting to put religion and science equal. There are some huge differences. One is the matter of being able to be tested, and falsified, as well, as being able to make predictions, and to be able to explain the mechanism behind the predictions.

NNiles Eldredge also does a great job, in a more complete explanation:

At the heart of the creationists' contemporary political argument is an appeal to the time-honored American sense of fair play. "Look," they say, "evolution is only a theory. Scientists cannot agree on all details either of the exact course of evolutionary history, or how evolution actually takes place." True enough. Creationists then declare that many scientists have grave doubts that evolution actually has occurred—a charge echoed by Ronald Reagan during the campaign, and definitely false. They argue that since evolution is only a theory, why not, in the spirit of fair play, give equal time to equally plausible explanations of the origin of the cosmos, of life on earth, and of mankind? Why not indeed?

The creationist argument equates a biological, evolutionary system with a non-scientific system of explaining life's exuberant diversity. Both systems are presented as authoritarian, and here lies the real tragedy of American science education: the public is depressingly willing to see merit in the "fair play, equal time" argument precisely because it views science almost wholly in this authoritarian vein. The public is bombarded with a constant stream of oracular pronouncements of new discoveries, new truths, and medical and technological innovations, but the American education system gives most people no effective choice but to ignore, accept on faith, or reject out of hand each new scientific finding. Scientists themselves promote an Olympian status for their profession; it's small wonder that the public has a tough time deciding which set of authoritarian pronouncements to heed. So why not present them all and let each person choose his or her own set of beliefs?

Of course, there has to be some willingness to accept the expertise of specialists. Although most of us "believe" the earth is spherical, how many of us can design and perform an experiment to show that it must be so? But to stress the authoritarianism of science is to miss its essence. Science is the enterprise of comparing alternative ideas about what the cosmos is, how it works, and how it came to be. Some ideas are better than others, and the criterion for judging which are better is simply the relative power of different ideas to fit our observations. The goal is greater understanding of the natural universe. The method consists of constantly challenging received ideas, modifying them, or, best of all, replacing them with better ones.

So science is ideas, and the ideas are acknowledged to be merely approximations to the truth. Nothing could be further from authoritarianism—dogmatic assertions of what is true. Scientists deal with ideas that appear to be the best (the closest to the truth) given what they think they know about the universe at any given moment. If scientists frequently act as if their ideas are the truth, they are simply showing their humanity. But the human quest for a rational coming-to-grips with the cosmos recognizes imperfection in observation and thought, and incorporates the frailty into its method. Creationists disdain this quest, preferring the wholly authoritarian, allegedly "revealed" truth of divine creation as an understanding of our beginnings. At the same time they present disagreement among scientists as an expression of scientific failure in the realm of evolutionary biology.

To the charge that "evolution is only a theory," we say 'all science is theory." Theories are ideas, or complex sets of ideas, which explain some aspect of the natural world. Competing theories sometimes coexist until one drives the other out, or until both are discarded in favor of yet another theory. But it is true that one major theory usually holds sway at any one time. All biologists, including biochemists, molecular geneticists, physiologists, behaviorists, and anatomists, see a pattern of similarity interlocking the spectrum of millions of species, from bacteria to timber wolves. Darwin finally convinced the world that this pattern of similarity is neatly explained by "descent with modification." If we imagine a genealogical system where an ancestor produces one or more descendants, we get a pattern of progressive similarity. The whole array of ancestors and descendants will share some feature inherited from the first ancestor; as each novelty appears, it is shared only with later descendants. All forms of life have the nucleic acid RNA, One major branch of life, the vertebrates, all share backbones. All mammals have three inner ear bones, hair, and mammary glands. All dogs share features not found in other carnivores, such as cats. In other words, dogs share similarities among themselves in addition to having general mammalian features, plus general vertebrate features, as well as anatomical and biochemical similarities shared with the rest of life.

How do we test the basic notion that life has evolved? The notion of evolution, like any scientific idea, should generate predictions about the natural world, which we can discover to be true or false. The grand prediction of evolution is that there should be one basic scheme of similarities interlocking all of life. This is what we have consistently found for over 100 years, as thousands of biologists daily compared different organisms. Medical experimentation depends upon the interrelatedness of life. We test drugs on rhesus monkeys and study the effects of caffeine on rats because we cannot experiment on ourselves. The physiological systems of monkeys are more similar to our own than to rats. Medical scientists know this and rely on this prediction to interpret the significance of their results in terms of human medicine. Very simply, were life not all interrelated, none of this would be possible. There would be chaos, not order, in the natural world. There is no competing, rational biological explanation for this order in nature, and there hasn't been for a long while.

Creationists, of course, have an alternative explanation for this order permeating life's diversity. It is simply the way the supernatural creator chose to pattern life. But any possible pattern could be there, including chaos—an absence of any similarity among the "kinds" of organisms on earth—and creationism would hold that it is just what the creator made. There is nothing about this view of life that smacks of prediction. It tells us nothing about what to expect if we begin to study organisms in detail. In short, there is nothing in this notion that allows us to go to nature to test it, to verify or reject it.

And there is the key difference, Creationism (and it comes in many guises, most of which do not stem from the Judeo-Christian tradition) is a belief system involving the supernatural. Testing an idea with our own experiences in the natural universe is simply out of bounds. The mystical revelation behind creationism is the opposite of science, which seeks rational understanding of the cosmos. Science thrives on alternative explanations, which must be equally subject to observational and experimental testing. No form of creationism even remotely qualifies for inclusion in a science curriculum.

Creationists have introduced equal-time bills in over 10 state legislatures, and recently met with success when Governor White of Arkansas signed such a bill into law on March 19 (reportedly without reading it). Creationists also have lobbied extensively at local school boards. The impact has been enormous. Just as the latest creationist bill is defeated in committee, and some of their more able spokesmen look silly on national TV, one hears of a local school district in the Philadelphia environs where some of the teachers have adopted the "equal time" or "dual model" approach to discussing "origins" in the biology curriculum on their own initiative. Each creationist "defeat" amounts to a Pyrrhic victory for their opponents. Increasingly, teachers are left to their own discretion, and whether out of personal conviction, a desire to be "fair," or fear of parental reprisal, they are teaching creationism along with evolution in their biology classes. It is simply the path of least resistance.

Acceptance of equal time for two alternative authoritarian explanations is a startling blow to the fabric of science education. The fundamental notion a student should get from high school science is that people can confront the universe and learn about it directly. Just one major inroad against this basic aspect of science threatens all of science education. Chemistry, physics, and geology—all of which spurn biblical revelation in favor of direct experience, as all science must—are jeopardized every bit as much as biology. That some creationists have explicitly attacked areas of geology, chemistry, and physics (in arguments over the age of the earth, for example) underscores the more general threat they pose to all science. We must remove science education from its role as authoritarian truth-giver. This view distorts the real nature of science and gives creationists their most potent argument.

The creationists' equal-time appeal maintains that evolution itself amounts to a religious belief (allied with a secular humanism) and should not be included in a science curriculum. But if it is included, goes the argument, it must appear along with other religious notions. Both are authoritarian belief systems, and neither is science, according to this creationist ploy.

The more common creationist approach these days avoids such sophistry and maintains that both creationism and evolution belong in the realm of science. But apart from some attempts to document the remains of Noah's Ark on the flanks of Mt. Ararat, creationists have been singularly unsuccessful in posing testable theories about the origin, diversity, and distribution of plants and animals. No such contributions have appeared to date either in creationism's voluminous literature or, more to the point, in the professional biological literature. "Science creationism" consists almost exclusively of a multi-pronged attack on evolutionary biology and historical geology. No evidence, for example, is presented in favor of the notion that the earth is only 20,000 years old, but many arguments attempt to poke holes in geochemists' and astronomers' reckoning of old Mother Earth's age at about 4.6 billion years. Analysis, of the age of formation of rocks is based ultimately on the theories of radioactive decay in nuclear physics. (A body of rock is dated, often by several different means, in several different laboratories. The results consistently agree. And rocks shown to be roughly the same age on independent criteria [usually involving fossils] invariably check out to be roughly the same age when dated radiometrically. The system, although not without its flaws, works.) The supposed vast age of any particular rock can be shown to be false, but not by quoting Scripture.

All of the prodigious works of "scientific creationism" are of this nature. All can be refuted. However, before school boards or parent groups, creationists are fond of "debating" scientists by bombarding the typically ill-prepared biologist or geologist with a plethora of allegations, ranging from the second law of thermodynamics (said to falsify evolution outright) to the supposed absence of fossils intermediate between "major kinds." No scientist is equally at home in all realms of physics, chemistry, geology, and biology in this day of advanced specialization. Not all the proper retorts spring readily to mind. Retorts there are, but the game is usually lost anyway, as rebuttals strike an audience as simply another set of authoritarian statements they must take on faith.

Although creationists persist in depicting both science and creationism as two comparable, monolithic belief systems, perhaps the most insidious attack exploits free inquiry in science. Because we disagree on specifics, some of my colleagues and I are said now to have serious doubts that evolution has occurred. Distressing as this may be, the argument actually highlights the core issue raised by creationism. The creationists are acknowledging that science is no monolithic authoritarian belief system. But even though they recognize that there are competing ideas within contemporary biology, the creationists see scientific debate as a sign of weakness. Of course, it really is a sign of vitality.

Evolutionary theory since the 1940s (until comparatively recently) has focused on a single coherent view of the evolutionary process. Biologists of all disciplines agreed to a remarkable degree on the outlines of this theory, the so-called "modern synthesis." In a nutshell, this was a vindication of Darwin's original position: that evolution is predominantly an affair of gradual progressive change. As environmental conditions changed, natural selection (a culling process similar to the "artificial" selection practiced by animal breeders) favored those variants best suited to the new conditions. Thus evolutionary change is fundamentally adaptive. The modern synthesis integrated the newly arisen science of genetics with the Darwinian view and held that the entire diversity of life could be explained in these simple terms.

Some biologists have attacked natural selection itself, but much of the current uproar in evolutionary biology is less radical in implication. Some critics see a greater role for random processes. Others, like me, see little evidence of gradual, progressive change in the fossil record. We maintain that the usual explanation—the inadequacy of the fossil record—is itself inadequate to explain the non-change, the maintenance of status quo which lasts in some cases for 10 million years or more in our fossil bones and shells. In this view, change (presumably by natural selection causing adaptive modifications) takes place in bursts of a few thousand years, followed usually by immensely longer periods of business as usual.

Arguments become heated. Charges of "straw man," "no evidence," and so on are flung about—which shows that scientists, like everyone, get their egos wrapped up in their work. They believe passionately in their own ideas, even if they are supposed to be calm, cool, dispassionate, and able to evaluate all possibilities evenly. (It is usually in the collective process of argument that the better ideas win out in science; seldom has anyone single-handedly evinced the open-mindedness necessary to drop a pet idea). But nowhere in this sturm und drang has any of the participants come close to denying that evolution has occurred.

So the creationists distort. An attack on some parts of Darwin's views is equated with a rejection of evolution. They conveniently ignore that Darwin merely proposed one of many sets of ideas on how evolution works. The only real defense against such tactics lies in a true appreciation of the scientific enterprise—the trial-and-error comparison of ideas and how they seem to fit the material universe. If the public were more aware that scientists are expected to disagree, that what a scientist writes today is not the last word, but a progress report on some very intensive thinking and investigation, creationists would be far less successful in injecting an authoritarian system of belief into curricula supposedly devoted to free, open rational inquiry into the nature of natural things.

Even if you discount the entire fossil record, that gets you nowhere, the genetic and immunological data have made the fossil record nothing more than a curious Victorian pastime, completely unnecessary to more than make the case for Evolution. Similarly, the genetic data provides irrefutable and directly observable evidence for the inferences that established the TOE.

Sure, the whole "genetics" thing is something that we both have to account for. But the difference is; you believe that the "genetic data provides irrefutable and directly observable evidence for the inferences that established the TOE".

Let's get one thing straight, I "believe" in nothing. I look at probability or likelihood in an evidence-based framework. You, on the other hand "believe." You have a right to any set of beliefs, no matter how bizarre, that you wish to hold ... but you do not have a right to your own facts. Yet, what you are attempting to do, in essence, is falsely equilibrate my evidence-based framework with you belief based framework and say, "well ... they are both frameworks, so they are the same, they are at the same level, one is as likely as that other.

But I believe that the "genetic data provides irrefutable and directly observational evidence for the inference that is concluded in the IDT (Intelligent Design Theory)".

As I said, you are entitled to believe even the most ridiculous things, if you so choose ... how about some evidence?

You believe the genetic data is evidence for common ancestry, and I believe that the genetic data is evidence for common designer. I think your view is just as absurd as you think mines is.

Even if you grant that there is a tie that needs breaking, which I do not, you loose on the basis of parsimony.

Once again you are appealing (andn abusing) our natural inclination to fair play and "reasonableness." But you are not reasonable, you are presuppositional.

As for abiogenesis, that has nothing to do with Evolution and is an unknown at the moment. You make an argument from ignorance out of that, but that is just another logical fallacy.

Nonsense. Evolution has ever bit to do with abiogenesis. If abiogenesis is false, then there is no way that evolution could possibly be true (on the atheistic worldview). If you are an atheist/naturalist, and you cant conclusively prove how and/or whether life came from nonlife, then you cant definitively explain how life began to change forms.

If you talk to anyone that believes in evolution, they tend to want to just skip over abiogenesis as if it is insignificant. But that is crazy, because not only is it significant, but the entire TOE depends on abiogenesis being true (if the God hypothesis is negated).

This is a blatant cart before the horse fallacy.

Abiogensis and the TOE are unconnected. There is no common set of rules, there are no common hypothesizes, the only link is that non-theists often advocate for both views. Abiogenesis does not imply evolution, some even argue for a theistic kickstart in the form of a creation of life followed by common ancestor based Darwinian evolution. I don't posit a theory for abiogenesis, I just say that we don't know - yet! I most assuredly can explain how life began to change forms, but others have already done that, far above my poor power to add or detract.

Do you see the orbit of the Earth? Do you see continental drift? Do you even see your toenails grow? Do all of these things happen? Just because you can not directly witness them as the occur doesn't mean that they are not simply slow natural processes.

My objection isn't necessarily that just because I can't see it occur, therefore, it doesn't occur. I am saying that I only see animals produce what they are, not what they aren't, and I have no reason to believe that the animals of a million years ago were able to do something that the animals of today have never been observed to do.

But they have been, evolution has been detected in many species, you can deny it all you like, that does not change the facts.

Much of science is dedicated to transforming the scale so that it can be "seen." Microscopes make the tiny larger, telescopes bring the far away closer, special forms of photography make the fast slower and the slow faster, all sorts of sensors make the invisible able to be seen. No magic needed.

Magic is needed. Unless you can naturally demonstrate how life came from nonlife, consciousness came from unconsiousness, language came from the mute, and order came from chaos.

But I don't think you can do that, can you?

I don't think I need to. Species differentiation, consciousness, language, and entropy are unrelated; except as an admixture in your witches cauldron of magic religiosity. It never ceases to amaze me how religionists will flail at creating a universal integration out of disparate elements on the sole basis of "presto changeo you are now all the same thing,"

[For_The_Kingdom]

How about explaining why what I said isn't equivalent to what I compared it to.

Goat already did:

This is what is known as 'equivocator', and attempting to put religion and science equal. There are some huge differences. One is the matter of being able to be tested, and falsified, as well, as being able to make predictions, and to be able to explain the mechanism behind the predictions.

Thats the point, evolution can't be tested. There is no "test" that you can conduct which will give you a reptile-bird type of transformation...and there isn't even a test at which you can lead you even in that direction. The fossil record is nonexistence, and you certainly don't have any observational evidence for macroevolution. The best you've got is the genetic trail but then again, you can't rule out intelligent design even with genetic trail.

So nothing has been "tested". But evolution can certainly be falsified. There is no fossil record, which is what one would expect if evolution is true..and you still have the abiogenesis problem and the problem from the origin of consciousness.

So basically, we have more evidence that macroevolution is false than we have that it is true.

As I said, you are entitled to believe even the most ridiculous things, if you so choose ... how about some evidence?

1. Kalam Cosmological Argument
2. Argument from Contingency
3. Argument from Entropy
4. Argument from Language
5. Argument from Consciousness
6. Modal Ontological Argument
7. Argument based on the Historicity of the Resurrection

Pick one.

Even if you grant that there is a tie that needs breaking, which I do not, you loose on the basis of parsimony.

?

Once again you are appealing (andn abusing) our natural inclination to fair play and "reasonableness." But you are not reasonable, you are presuppositional.

?

As for abiogenesis, that has nothing to do with Evolution and is an unknown at the moment. You make an argument from ignorance out of that, but that is just another logical fallacy.

Ok, so lets play the game then. At this point, science cannot explain how life could have originated from nonlife. Therefore, it is POSSIBLE for abiogenesis to be false. So, if abiogenesis is false, then how can evolution possibly be true?

Remember, this is based on your premise that God doesn't exist. So I will ask again...IF abiogenesis is in fact false, then how can evolution possibly be true.

That is a direct question and I expect a direct answer. If you cannot answer, then lets drop the whole "abiogensis has nothing to do with evolution" stuff. Because it has EVERYTHING to do with evolution.

Abiogensis and the TOE are unconnected.

Then you shouldn't have any problem answering the question I posed to you above.

Abiogenesis does not imply evolution, some even argue for a theistic kickstart in the form of a creation of life followed by common ancestor based Darwinian evolution.

Yeah, that is theistic evolution, and those that hold this view is smart enough to realize that if evolution DID occur, there still had to be a divine orchestrater behind the project.

But we are not talking about theistic evolution...we are talking about evolution from a naturalist/atheist perspective. No God, no intelligent designer. Just...nature.

That is the what I argue against. Of course, if God exists, he certainly could use evolution as a method of creation. But we ain't talking about that. We are talking about evolution WITHOUT God.

Atheists like to have it both ways; one on hand, they want to say that God doesn't exist and evolution is true. Then, when they are backed in the corner (as you are about to be, with the abiogenesis thing) then they want to posit theistic evolution. But if theistic evolution is true, then that would defeat the atheistic position of naturalism, wouldn't it?

I don't posit a theory for abiogenesis, I just say that we don't know - yet!

We don't know because it is impossible for inanimate matter to come to life. That would be similar to a warehouse that is full of items...and over the course of a few hundred million years, all of the items in the warehouse beginning to talk, think, see, hear, etc.

It is the same thing with abiogenesis and organisms. This is where you will say "no, its not the same!!" Then what is the difference? Before there was life, there was inanimate matter floating around. Then either suddenly/gradually, this matter "came to life".

How is that any different than the warehouse thing? It isn't.

I most assuredly can explain how life began to change forms, but others have already done that, far above my poor power to add or detract.

Oh, someone can explain how a reptile evolved into a bird? Do tell. This oughta be good.

But they have been, evolution has been detected in many species, you can deny it all you like, that does not change the facts.

Speciation is not macroevolution, it is microevolution. A dog, a wolf, and a coyote are all different species, but they are all obviously the same "kind" of animal.

I don't think I need to. Species differentiation, consciousness, language, and entropy are unrelated

If you can't have one without the other. If you can't adequately explain how life originated from nonlife, how can you jump from the origins of life to the changes in life? If your view on the origins of life is questionable (at best), then so is your view on the changes in life (evolution)

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to post 23 by For_The_Kingdom]

Yeah, that is theistic evolution, and those that hold this view is smart enough to realize that if evolution DID occur, there still had to be a divine orchestrater behind the project.

For this to be a valid point it would necessarily need be consistently true, and not simply true when you need it to be true, and not necessarily true when you need it to be not necessarily true.

Now, explain why it is necessarily true that evolution requires a divine orchestrator and why it is not therefore necessarily true that the divine orchestrator requires a divine orchestrator.

[H.sapiens]

How about explaining why what I said isn't equivalent to what I compared it to.

Goat already did:

This is what is known as 'equivocator', and attempting to put religion and science equal. There are some huge differences. One is the matter of being able to be tested, and falsified, as well, as being able to make predictions, and to be able to explain the mechanism behind the predictions.

Thats the point, evolution can't be tested. There is no "test" that you can conduct which will give you a reptile-bird type of transformation...and there isn't even a test at which you can lead you even in that direction. The fossil record is nonexistence, and you certainly don't have any observational evidence for macroevolution. The best you've got is the genetic trail but then again, you can't rule out intelligent design even with genetic trail.

You can't "rule out" anything; there's the old problem of logically not being able to prove a negative. You can't rule out leprechauns, or fairies, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, can you? So you apply the rule of parsimony: the principle in philosophy and science that assumptions introduced to explain a thing must not be multiplied beyond necessity, and hence, the simplest of several hypotheses is always the best in accounting for unexplained facts (also known as "Ockham's razor") and, voila, you have the TOE.

So nothing has been "tested". But evolution can certainly be falsified.

Then please do so, I rather doubt that your logic will hold up on that issue any better than it has on any issue. Your problem is inherent in attempting to argue from presupposition.

There is no fossil record, which is what one would expect if evolution is true

Of course there is a fossil record. It is the basic information on which most of the relationships between group of organisms were first discovered. It is supported, in detail, by now extensive genetic, genomic and immunological data.

..and you still have the abiogenesis problem and the problem from the origin of consciousness.

Both of which are completely irrelevant. Lots of things are said to "evolve," (that is to say, change over time), stars evolve, canyons evolve, cell phones evolve, individuals' political views evolve, philosophies are said to "evolve" as are fighter aircraft and programming languages. None of this is an issue until you start to play semantic games, as you are doing. Your statement that: "you still have the abiogenesis problem and the problem from the origin of consciousness" makes no more sense than if you had said, "you still have the problem of where C++ came from and the issue of the origin of the fourth generation IPhone or the F-22."

So basically, we have more evidence that macroevolution is false than we have that it is true.

All you have done is spout nonsequiturs. You have not made a case for falsification of the process of macroevolution and by extension falsification of the TOE.

As I said, you are entitled to believe even the most ridiculous things, if you so choose ... how about some evidence?

1. Kalam Cosmological Argument

Kalam is complete and utter crap, It has been debunked on this Forum many times. See Don Barker's excellent refutation here: http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_ ... amity.html

2. Argument from Contingency

You can not have both the Kalam horse puckey and make an Argument from Contingency, they are contradictory and weaken rather than strengthen each other ... please select one or the other and I'll be glad to tromp on it.

3. Argument from Entropy

This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder.

However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can't have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?

The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws. (thanks to TalkOrigins). See also: http://ncse.com/cej/2/2/creationist-mis ... use-second

4. Argument from Language

I assume your lining up here behind Perry Marshall's misunderstanding of the TOE (a rather classic example of, "2 weeks ago I couldn't even spell 'engineer,' now I are one.") Here's a transcript of PZ Myers' all to gentle dismissal of Marshall's foolishness:

Well, he’s trying to put a new twist on it, but he’s getting it all wrong. You know for instance when he’s – what I thought was very telling, it’s also telling in the book – he’s a software person, he’s an electrical engineer, and he’s trying to impose his perspective on biology.

So he says ‘ok, biology doesn’t make any sense when I look at it as the way software works’.

Instead of saying well maybe my analogy is totally off base and wrong, he says what we’ve got here is a situation where the biology does not conform to his expectations of how it will work.

And yeah biology is far more fault-tolerant than electrical engineering. You can’t directly compare it to software or code or anything like that because it’s got a lot more complications going on with it.

But on top of that in his book what he tends to do is throw out science buzz words like ‘transposition’ and the transposition discussion is a good example of this. He throws them out, but he doesn’t really understand them.

He’s got McClintock totally wrong. McClintock’s work, which was marvelous work, and yeah it was not initially accepted because it was difficult stuff. If you read her papers, she’s got an amazing mind, it’s really complicated, really difficult things to understand, and that’s largely why it wasn’t immediately accepted.

But she was very convincing because she brought the data to bear. But all of her work was on something called genetic instability, ok? It’s not about cells engineering solutions.

For instance, the stuff on bridge break fusion that Perry mentions. That’s about random chance breakage of chromosomes that have exposed ends. They tend to re-fuse and then when mitosis and meiosis occurs they break. And they break in random places.

Not in designed, engineered, planned places. But in an entirely random way which means that the progeny of that cell will exhibit greater genetic variation than the parent.

There was absolutely nothing in McClintock’s work that argues against the importance of chance in this business.

5. Argument from Consciousness

This can be dismissed with ease, all that it takes is to argue the case for physicalism of the human mind; poof, Argument from Consciousness gone.

6. Modal Ontological Argument

Another philosophically bankrupt construct that even it's originator (Anselm of Canterbury, 1033 - 1109) confessed was a specious semantic argument. Gaunilo of Marmoutier (first to respond to the ontological argument) wrote to Anselm positing that, "following Anselm's absurd logic, it is impossible to imagine an island of unrivaled beauty without such an island existing in reality." Gaunilo's writing forced Anselm to admit that his argument depended on the ambiguity of its terms.

7. Argument based on the Historicity of the Resurrection

There is no historicity to the resurrection.

Pick one.

No need to, they are all bumph, and equally falsifiable. You seem to have just grabbed a list of possibilities without understanding any of them. Your version of a Gish Gallop (the fallacious debate tactic of trying to drown an opponent in small arguments so that they are hard to rebut, each and every one, in real time) may cow some of your interlocutors, but (as you can see) it does not work with me. Two hints:
1) A Gish Gallop is far more effective in a verbal debate than in a written one.
2) Make sure that you actually understand your claims so that you don't put contradictory claims in your list.

Even if you grant that there is a tie that needs breaking, which I do not, you lose on the basis of parsimony.

?

Explained above. You really should come to understand it.

Once again you are appealing (and abusing) our natural inclination to fair play and "reasonableness." But you are not reasonable, you are presuppositional.

?

Basically you are saying, "don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up."

As for abiogenesis, that has nothing to do with Evolution and is an unknown at the moment. You make an argument from ignorance out of that, but that is just another logical fallacy.

Ok, so lets play the game then. At this point, science cannot explain how life could have originated from nonlife. Therefore, it is POSSIBLE for abiogenesis to be false. So, if abiogenesis is false, then how can evolution possibly be true?

That is a nonsequitur. You might as well be saying: "Science says that the moon is round, but the ocean is wet, how can evolution possibly be true?"

Remember, this is based on your premise that God doesn't exist. So I will ask again...IF abiogenesis is in fact false, then how can evolution possibly be true.

I never said that abiogenesis is, "in fact false," I said that, "we can not 'prove' it - yet!" Regardless, the obligate linkage of abiogenesis and the TOE has no realty, the linkage exists, only as a strawman, only in your head.

That is a direct question and I expect a direct answer. If you cannot answer, then lets drop the whole "abiogensis has nothing to do with evolution" stuff. Because it has EVERYTHING to do with evolution.

Then you need to demonstrate the linkage with evidence.

Abiogensis and the TOE are unconnected.

Then you shouldn't have any problem answering the question I posed to you above.

No problem at all, it is all in your head, you are clusily trying to put words in my mouth that I reject.

Abiogenesis does not imply evolution, some even argue for a theistic kickstart in the form of a creation of life followed by common ancestor based Darwinian evolution.

Yeah, that is theistic evolution, and those that hold this view is smart enough to realize that if evolution DID occur, there still had to be a divine orchestrater behind the project.
[/quote]No, I'm referring to those (e.g., Frances Collins) who hold the TOE, common ancestry, etc., are all well proven and that their God's only role was in "breathing life" into the goo that became you.

But we are not talking about theistic evolution...we are talking about evolution from a naturalist/atheist perspective. No God, no intelligent designer. Just...nature.

Fine by me.

That is the what I argue against. Of course, if God exists, he certainly could use evolution as a method of creation. But we ain't talking about that. We are talking about evolution WITHOUT God.

That is my view.

Atheists like to have it both ways; one on hand, they want to say that God doesn't exist and evolution is true.

I assume you find that syllogism to be flawless?

Then, when they are backed in the corner (as you are about to be, with the abiogenesis thing) then they want to posit theistic evolution.

No, I think theistic abiogenesis is a load crap. I think theistic evolution is also a load of crap. But just because they are both loads of crap there is no reason to a priori demand a linkage between the two. I was simply demonstrating that abiogenesis and evolution are not the same processes and that a sizable number of theists out there are in complete agreement with the fact that they are not the same thing.

But if theistic evolution is true, then that would defeat the atheistic position of naturalism, wouldn't it?

No. If it were true (and I maintain that it is not) that would mean that theistic evolution was true, nothing more.

I don't posit a theory for abiogenesis, I just say that we don't know - yet!

We don't know because it is impossible for inanimate matter to come to life.

No, we do not. We are both maintaining that it is possible, we are disagreeing over how. You require a God (and ultimately that will leave in the jaws of the recursive bear trap) and I say that there is no need to complicate the issue with a god who was made by a god, who ... ad infinitum ... popped into existence from nowhere. I cut to the chase and say that it is far simpiler (and thus far more likely) that under some unkown set of changing conditions inorganic chemicals formed organic chemicals and over a long period of time and many intermediates was the precursor to life as we know it. You, on the other hand, insist on a "creator being" whose origin is even more problimatical that abiogenic life. That is not "proof" for your side of the argument, that is evidence for mine.

That would be similar to a warehouse that is full of items...and over the course of a few hundred million years, all of the items in the warehouse beginning to talk, think, see, hear, etc.

No, items in a warehouse are static and preserved. Abiogenesis does not rely on all the items changing, rather (to extend your rather poor metaphor) one item changes and then feeds on all the others to imperfectly replicate itself at a rate faster than the environment can support. That is where evolution kicks in.

It is the same thing with abiogenesis and organisms. This is where you will say "no, its not the same!!" Then what is the difference? Before there was life, there was inanimate matter floating around. Then either suddenly/gradually, this matter "came to life".

How is that any different than the warehouse thing? It isn't.[/quite]Sure it is, I just explained how.

I most assuredly can explain how life began to change forms, but others have already done that, far above my poor power to add or detract.

Oh, someone can explain how a reptile evolved into a bird? Do tell. This oughta be good.

Who ever told you that? You need to free yourself from the Aristotelian "ladder of life" view. Birds and reptiles shared a common ancestor, it is shown rather clearly here: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... vograms_06

But they have been, evolution has been detected in many species, you can deny it all you like, that does not change the facts.

Speciation is not macroevolution, it is microevolution. A dog, a wolf, and a coyote are all different species, but they are all obviously the same "kind" of animal.
[/quote]If you insist on the layman's' term "kinds" please define it so that we may discuss it intelligently. The fact is that a dog, a wolf, and a coyote are all different species, are cursorial, pursuit hunting mammals whose close resemblance and relationship evidences a recent common ancestor, so close that they are all interfertile. So I will easily accept the idea that they are all some sort of ill-defined "same kind." Does that "kind" include all canids or just some canids? If just some canids, which ones and on what basis do you make the distinctions?

I don't think I need to. Species differentiation, consciousness, language, and entropy are unrelated

If you can't have one without the other. If you can't adequately explain how life originated from nonlife, how can you jump from the origins of life to the changes in life?
[/quote]That's rather simple. We don't know and may never know, how life originated. But we have got a rather clear idea of how life diversified. The are two different processes each amenable to different methods of inquiry.

If your view on the origins of life is questionable (at best), then so is your view on the changes in life (evolution)

That's one of your famous nonsequiturs, your real complaint is that I easily see thrughh your strawman approach to debate and reuse to honor it with anytiing but the back of my hand.

[H.sapiens]

How about explaining why what I said isn't equivalent to what I compared it to.

Goat already did:

This is what is known as 'equivocator', and attempting to put religion and science equal. There are some huge differences. One is the matter of being able to be tested, and falsified, as well, as being able to make predictions, and to be able to explain the mechanism behind the predictions.

Thats the point, evolution can't be tested.

Wrong. Look at the story of Tiktaalik. On the basis of projecting what a "missing link" should look like and the age of the rock outcropping that it should be found in scientists found the Tiktaalik fossils.

There is no "test" that you can conduct which will give you a reptile-bird type of transformation...and there isn't even a test at which you can lead you even in that direction. The fossil record is nonexistence, and you certainly don't have any observational evidence for macroevolution. The best you've got is the genetic trail but then again, you can't rule out intelligent design even with genetic trail.

You can't "rule out" anything; there's the old problem of logically not being able to prove a negative. You can't rule out leprechauns, or fairies, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, can you? So you apply the rule of parsimony: the principle in philosophy and science that assumptions introduced to explain a thing must not be multiplied beyond necessity, and hence, the simplest of several hypotheses is always the best in accounting for unexplained facts (also known as "Ockham's razor") and, voila, you have the TOE.

So nothing has been "tested". But evolution can certainly be falsified.

Then please do so, I rather doubt that your logic will hold up on that issue any better than it has on any issue. Your problem is inherent in attempting to argue from presupposition.

There is no fossil record, which is what one would expect if evolution is true

Of course there is a fossil record. It is the basic information on which most of the relationships between group of organisms were first discovered. It is supported, in detail, by now extensive genetic, genomic and immunological data.

..and you still have the abiogenesis problem and the problem from the origin of consciousness.

Both of which are completely irrelevant. Lots of things are said to "evolve," (that is to say, change over time), stars evolve, canyons evolve, cell phones evolve, individuals' political views evolve, philosophies are said to "evolve" as are fighter aircraft and programming languages. None of this is an issue until you start to play semantic games, as you are doing. Your statement that: "you still have the abiogenesis problem and the problem from the origin of consciousness" makes no more sense than if you had said, "you still have the problem of where C++ came from and the issue of the origin of the fourth generation IPhone or the F-22."

So basically, we have more evidence that macroevolution is false than we have that it is true.

All you have done is spout nonsequiturs. You have not made a case for falsification of the process of macroevolution and by extension falsification of the TOE.

As I said, you are entitled to believe even the most ridiculous things, if you so choose ... how about some evidence?

1. Kalam Cosmological Argument

Kalam is complete and utter crap, It has been debunked on this Forum many times. See Don Barker's excellent refutation here: http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_ ... amity.html

2. Argument from Contingency

You can not have both the Kalam horse puckey and make an Argument from Contingency, they are contradictory and weaken rather than strengthen each other ... please select one or the other and I'll be glad to tromp on it.

3. Argument from Entropy

This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder.

However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can't have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?

The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws. (thanks to TalkOrigins). See also: http://ncse.com/cej/2/2/creationist-mis ... use-second

4. Argument from Language

I assume your lining up here behind Perry Marshall's misunderstanding of the TOE (a rather classic example of, "2 weeks ago I couldn't even spell 'engineer,' now I are one.") Here's a transcript of PZ Myers' all to gentle dismissal of Marshall's foolishness:

Well, he’s trying to put a new twist on it, but he’s getting it all wrong. You know for instance when he’s – what I thought was very telling, it’s also telling in the book – he’s a software person, he’s an electrical engineer, and he’s trying to impose his perspective on biology.

So he says ‘ok, biology doesn’t make any sense when I look at it as the way software works’.

Instead of saying well maybe my analogy is totally off base and wrong, he says what we’ve got here is a situation where the biology does not conform to his expectations of how it will work.

And yeah biology is far more fault-tolerant than electrical engineering. You can’t directly compare it to software or code or anything like that because it’s got a lot more complications going on with it.

But on top of that in his book what he tends to do is throw out science buzz words like ‘transposition’ and the transposition discussion is a good example of this. He throws them out, but he doesn’t really understand them.

He’s got McClintock totally wrong. McClintock’s work, which was marvelous work, and yeah it was not initially accepted because it was difficult stuff. If you read her papers, she’s got an amazing mind, it’s really complicated, really difficult things to understand, and that’s largely why it wasn’t immediately accepted.

But she was very convincing because she brought the data to bear. But all of her work was on something called genetic instability, ok? It’s not about cells engineering solutions.

For instance, the stuff on bridge break fusion that Perry mentions. That’s about random chance breakage of chromosomes that have exposed ends. They tend to re-fuse and then when mitosis and meiosis occurs they break. And they break in random places.

Not in designed, engineered, planned places. But in an entirely random way which means that the progeny of that cell will exhibit greater genetic variation than the parent.

There was absolutely nothing in McClintock’s work that argues against the importance of chance in this business.

5. Argument from Consciousness

This can be dismissed with ease, all that it takes is to argue the case for physicalism of the human mind; poof, Argument from Consciousness gone.

6. Modal Ontological Argument

Another philosophically bankrupt construct that even it's originator (Anselm of Canterbury, 1033 - 1109) confessed was a specious semantic argument. Gaunilo of Marmoutier (first to respond to the ontological argument) wrote to Anselm positing that, "following Anselm's absurd logic, it is impossible to imagine an island of unrivaled beauty without such an island existing in reality." Gaunilo's writing forced Anselm to admit that his argument depended on the ambiguity of its terms.

7. Argument based on the Historicity of the Resurrection

There is no historicity to the resurrection.

Pick one.

No need to, they are all bumph, and equally falsifiable. You seem to have just grabbed a list of possibilities without understanding any of them. Your version of a Gish Gallop (the fallacious debate tactic of trying to drown an opponent in small arguments so that they are hard to rebut, each and every one, in real time) may cow some of your interlocutors, but (as you can see) it does not work with me. Two hints:
1) A Gish Gallop is far more effective in a verbal debate than in a written one.
2) Make sure that you actually understand your claims so that you don't put contradictory claims in your list.

Even if you grant that there is a tie that needs breaking, which I do not, you lose on the basis of parsimony.

?

Explained above. You really should come to understand it.

Once again you are appealing (and abusing) our natural inclination to fair play and "reasonableness." But you are not reasonable, you are presuppositional.

?

Basically you are saying, "don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up."

As for abiogenesis, that has nothing to do with Evolution and is an unknown at the moment. You make an argument from ignorance out of that, but that is just another logical fallacy.

Ok, so lets play the game then. At this point, science cannot explain how life could have originated from nonlife. Therefore, it is POSSIBLE for abiogenesis to be false. So, if abiogenesis is false, then how can evolution possibly be true?

That is a nonsequitur. You might as well be saying: "Science says that the moon is round, but the ocean is wet, how can evolution possibly be true?"

Remember, this is based on your premise that God doesn't exist. So I will ask again...IF abiogenesis is in fact false, then how can evolution possibly be true.

I never said that abiogenesis is, "in fact false," I said that, "we can not 'prove' it - yet!" Regardless, the obligate linkage of abiogenesis and the TOE has no realty, the linkage exists, only as a strawman, only in your head.

That is a direct question and I expect a direct answer. If you cannot answer, then lets drop the whole "abiogensis has nothing to do with evolution" stuff. Because it has EVERYTHING to do with evolution.

Then you need to demonstrate the linkage with evidence.

Abiogenesis and the TOE are unconnected.

Then you shouldn't have any problem answering the question I posed to you above.

No problem at all, it is all in your head, you are clumsily trying to put words in my mouth that I reject.

Abiogenesis does not imply evolution, some even argue for a theistic kickstart in the form of a creation of life followed by common ancestor based Darwinian evolution.

Yeah, that is theistic evolution, and those that hold this view is smart enough to realize that if evolution DID occur, there still had to be a divine orchestrater behind the project.

No, I'm referring to those (e.g., Francis Collins) who hold the TOE, common ancestry, etc., are all well proven and that their God's only role was in "breathing life" into the goo that became you.

But we are not talking about theistic evolution...we are talking about evolution from a naturalist/atheist perspective. No God, no intelligent designer. Just...nature.

Fine by me.

That is the what I argue against. Of course, if God exists, he certainly could use evolution as a method of creation. But we ain't talking about that. We are talking about evolution WITHOUT God.

That is my view.

Atheists like to have it both ways; one on hand, they want to say that God doesn't exist and evolution is true.

I assume you fail to see the flaws in that syllogism?

Then, when they are backed in the corner (as you are about to be, with the abiogenesis thing) then they want to posit theistic evolution.

No, I think theistic abiogenesis is a load of crap. I think theistic evolution is also a load of crap. But just because they are both loads of crap there is no reason to a priori demand a linkage between the two. I was simply demonstrating that abiogenesis and evolution are not the same processes and that a sizable number of theists out there are in complete agreement with the fact that they are not the same thing.

Err ... where was that corner? I seem to have missed it.

But if theistic evolution is true, then that would defeat the atheistic position of naturalism, wouldn't it?

No one is discussing theistic evolution vs. naturalism, though you do seem to have trouble keeping focus, what with your confusion concerning abiogenesis and evolution. Let's try to stay focused now.

I don't posit a theory for abiogenesis, I just say that we don't know - yet!

We don't know because it is impossible for inanimate matter to come to life.

No, we do not. We are both maintaining that it is possible, we are disagreeing over how. You require a God (and ultimately that will leave in the jaws of the recursive bear trap) and I say that there is no need to complicate the issue with a god who was made by a god, who ... ad infinitum ... popped into existence from nowhere. I cut to the chase and say that it is far simpiler (and thus far more likely) that under some unknow set of changing conditions inorganic chemicals formed organic chemicals and over a long period of time and many intermediates was the precursor to life as we know it. You, on the other hand, insist on a "creator being" whose origin is even more problimatical that abiogenic life. That is not "proof" for your side of the argument, that is evidence for mine.

That would be similar to a warehouse that is full of items...and over the course of a few hundred million years, all of the items in the warehouse beginning to talk, think, see, hear, etc.

No, items in a warehouse are static and preserved. Abiogenesis does not rely on all the items changing, rather (to extend your rather poor metaphor) one item changes and then feeds on all the others to imperfectly replicate itself at a rate faster than the environment can support. That is where evolution kicks in.

It is the same thing with abiogenesis and organisms. This is where you will say "no, its not the same!!" Then what is the difference? Before there was life, there was inanimate matter floating around. Then either suddenly/gradually, this matter "came to life".

How is that any different than the warehouse thing? It isn't.

Sure it is, I just explained how.

I most assuredly can explain how life began to change forms, but others have already done that, far above my poor power to add or detract.

Oh, someone can explain how a reptile evolved into a bird? Do tell. This oughta be good.

Who ever told you that? You need to free yourself from the Aristotelian "ladder of life" view. Birds and reptiles shared a common ancestor, it is shown rather clearly here: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... vograms_06

But they have been, evolution has been detected in many species, you can deny it all you like, that does not change the facts.

Speciation is not macroevolution, it is microevolution. A dog, a wolf, and a coyote are all different species, but they are all obviously the same "kind" of animal.

If you insist on the layman's' term "kinds" please define it so that we may discuss it intelligently. The fact is that a dog, a wolf, and a coyote are all different species, are cursorial, pursuit hunting mammals whose osteology, genetics, close resemblance and close relationship evidences a recent common ancestor, so close that they are all interfertile. So I will easily accept the idea that they are all some sort of ill-defined "same kind." Does that "kind" include all canids or just some canids? If just some canids, which ones and on what basis do you make the distinctions?

I don't think I need to. Species differentiation, consciousness, language, and entropy are unrelated

If you can't have one without the other.

Of course you can, saying that you can't is quite indefensible. All are quite independent, there is (for example) no linkage between consciousness and entropy (at least at the level of this discussion, there is an interesting theoretical basis that entropy/enthalpy considerations require inevitably, within a "Goldilocks Zone," the evolution of consciousness ...but that's for another thread).

If you can't adequately explain how life originated from nonlife, how can you jump from the origins of life to the changes in life?

That's rather simple. We don't know and may never know, how life originated. But we have got a rather clear idea of how life diversified. The are two different processes each amenable to different methods of inquiry.

If your view on the origins of life is questionable (at best), then so is your view on the changes in life (evolution)

That's one of your famous nonsequiturs, your real complaint is that I easily see through your strawman approach to debate and reuse to honor it with anything but the back of my hand.

[Goat]

How about explaining why what I said isn't equivalent to what I compared it to.

Goat already did:

This is what is known as 'equivocator', and attempting to put religion and science equal. There are some huge differences. One is the matter of being able to be tested, and falsified, as well, as being able to make predictions, and to be able to explain the mechanism behind the predictions.

Thats the point, evolution can't be tested. There is no "test" that you can conduct which will give you a reptile-bird type of transformation...and there isn't even a test at which you can lead you even in that direction. The fossil record is nonexistence, and you certainly don't have any observational evidence for macroevolution. The best you've got is the genetic trail but then again, you can't rule out intelligent design even with genetic trail.

Why, yes, evolution can be tested. Before we go into that, let's level set your knowledge base. I want to know how much I have to explain.

Can you give me the scientific definition of biological evolution? How do biologists define it?

You , by the way, are incorrect, since we do have observational evidence of 'macro-evolution'. But, just for level setting knowledge base, can you give me the scientific term for macro-evolution? One thing that we don't want to get into is the moving of goal posts.

1. Kalam Cosmological Argument
2. Argument from Contingency
3. Argument from Entropy
4. Argument from Language
5. Argument from Consciousness
6. Modal Ontological Argument
7. Argument based on the Historicity of the Resurrection

That are known as 'arguments'. You are conflating arguments with evidence. There is a difference between an argument and evidence. Good arguments might use evidence, but they are still arguments.

There has been great amount of discussion about each and every one of those, and frankly, they are all full of very many logical fallacies.

[For_The_Kingdom]

Why, yes, evolution can be tested. Before we go into that, let's level set your knowledge base. I want to know how much I have to explain.

Can you give me the scientific definition of biological evolution? How do biologists define it?

Instead of giving a definition of it, how about I give an illustration? Because we all know that no matter how a theist (a person that doesn't believe in evolution) defines the term, it is never good enough for the evolutionist.

And that will bring forth the "See, you don't even know what evolution is", or "But that's not what evolution says". That will bring forth a whole barrage of those, wouldn't it?

So instead of playing that game, I will just give you a simple/basic illustration of what evolution is; imagine a reptile....slowly...evolving...into a bird.

And you can't say that's not what evolution is, because the whole concept is embedded into the theory. It is part of the theory, it is what you believe occurred.

You , by the way, are incorrect, since we do have observational evidence of 'macro-evolution'. But, just for level setting knowledge base, can you give me the scientific term for macro-evolution? One thing that we don't want to get into is the moving of goal posts.

The whole macro/micro thing is just terminology we use to distinguish the two types of changes we see in organisms.

Macroevolution is the term we use to describe the large scale changes between two "kinds" of animals. By "kind", I guess that would mean either the genus or family. The whole reptile-bird thing would be an example of this. This concept is not science. It hasn't been observed, experimented, has not predictory power.

Microevolution is the term we use to describe the small changes between animals of the same kind. As we look at all the different varieties of dogs, we can see microevolution in full effect every single day. This is science. We can observe it, we can experiment with it...and it has predictory power (leonberger breed).

The difference is, one is science, and the other one isn't.

Is it just me, or did I just get suckered into defining evolution? hahaha.

That are known as 'arguments'. You are conflating arguments with evidence.

Actually, I'm not. The evidence will come once the argument is being PRESENTED. It part of the "presentation".

There is a difference between an argument and evidence. Good arguments might use evidence, but they are still arguments.

You are splitting hairs. It is the evidence that makes the argument an actual argument. It isn't as if we (apologists) have all arguments and no evidence, or all evidence and no arguments.

We have both, and we use both. When I make my case for Christian theism, I will present those arguments with evidence supporting those arguments stapled right to it.

There has been great amount of discussion about each and every one of those, and frankly, they are all full of very many logical fallacies.

Then take one of the arguments, and have at it.

[Goat]

Why, yes, evolution can be tested. Before we go into that, let's level set your knowledge base. I want to know how much I have to explain.

Can you give me the scientific definition of biological evolution? How do biologists define it?

Instead of giving a definition of it, how about I give an illustration? Because we all know that no matter how a theist (a person that doesn't believe in evolution) defines the term, it is never good enough for the evolutionist.

And that will bring forth the "See, you don't even know what evolution is", or "But that's not what evolution says". That will bring forth a whole barrage of those, wouldn't it?

So instead of playing that game, I will just give you a simple/basic illustration of what evolution is; imagine a reptile....slowly...evolving...into a bird.

And you can't say that's not what evolution is, because the whole concept is embedded into the theory. It is part of the theory, it is what you believe occurred.

You , by the way, are incorrect, since we do have observational evidence of 'macro-evolution'. But, just for level setting knowledge base, can you give me the scientific term for macro-evolution? One thing that we don't want to get into is the moving of goal posts.

The whole macro/micro thing is just terminology we use to distinguish the two types of changes we see in organisms.

Macroevolution is the term we use to describe the large scale changes between two "kinds" of animals. By "kind", I guess that would mean either the genus or family. The whole reptile-bird thing would be an example of this. This concept is not science. It hasn't been observed, experimented, has not predictory power.

Microevolution is the term we use to describe the small changes between animals of the same kind. As we look at all the different varieties of dogs, we can see microevolution in full effect every single day. This is science. We can observe it, we can experiment with it...and it has predictory power (leonberger breed).

The difference is, one is science, and the other one isn't.

Is it just me, or did I just get suckered into defining evolution? hahaha.

So, you can say that 'macroevolution' is just a lot of micro evolution put together.

Would you say that 'macroevolution' is a new species?


It appears that you want to leave definitions vague. Why is that?

[H.sapiens]

Why, yes, evolution can be tested. Before we go into that, let's level set your knowledge base. I want to know how much I have to explain.

Can you give me the scientific definition of biological evolution? How do biologists define it?

Instead of giving a definition of it, how about I give an illustration? Because we all know that no matter how a theist (a person that doesn't believe in evolution) defines the term, it is never good enough for the evolutionist.

There are no moving goal posts here, could it be that your attempts to date have, in fact, been inadequate and that, also, in fact, you really don't know what you are talking about? That's what I suspect and that is what I will clearly demonstrate in a moment.

And that will bring forth the "See, you don't even know what evolution is", or "But that's not what evolution says". That will bring forth a whole barrage of those, wouldn't it?

So instead of playing that game, I will just give you a simple/basic illustration of what evolution is; imagine a reptile....slowly...evolving...into a bird.

And you can't say that's not what evolution is, because the whole concept is embedded into the theory. It is part of the theory, it is what you believe occurred.

You , by the way, are incorrect, since we do have observational evidence of 'macro-evolution'. But, just for level setting knowledge base, can you give me the scientific term for macro-evolution? One thing that we don't want to get into is the moving of goal posts.

The whole macro/micro thing is just terminology we use to distinguish the two types of changes we see in organisms.

Macroevolution is the term we use to describe the large scale changes between two "kinds" of animals. By "kind", I guess that would mean either the genus or family. The whole reptile-bird thing would be an example of this. This concept is not science. It hasn't been observed, experimented, has not predictory power.

So ... which is it, genus or family?

Oh, now you claim that its not either of those, but rather, it is at the class level: "The whole reptile-bird thing would be an example of this."

That is bigger than genus, bigger than order, bigger than family ... that's CLASS! Do you know what a class is? Vertebrate classes are fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

Do you actually have any idea of what you are talking about? You toss the word "kind" off easily and continuously as a bulwark against the advance of evolutionary thinking, yet you can't tell us what it means.

Microevolution is the term we use to describe the small changes between animals of the same kind.

See, what is, "the same kind"? If you use your reptile to bird definition: then all mammals are, "the same kind." Are you advocating or accepting that all mammals share a common ancestor in the therapsids of the middle permian and that all mammals today arise from nothing more than microevolution changing, "the therapsid kind"? At the same time, are you arguing that there was no, "synapsid kind," because that would have required macroevolution?

As we look at all the different varieties of dogs, we can see microevolution in full effect every single day. This is science. We can observe it, we can experiment with it...and it has predictory power (leonberger breed).

OK, so all dogs are the same species and, "the same kind," but that does not define "the same kind," just its lower limit.

The difference is, one is science, and the other one isn't.

OK, do you think you can rationally explain your statement? Which is science and which is not ... and why?

Is it just me, or did I just get suckered into defining evolution? hahaha.

Joke's on you, since it must be., "just you."

All you have done is use the word "evolution" in a complete sentence on your way to evidencing massive confusion, misunderstanding and misstatement.

That are known as 'arguments'. You are conflating arguments with evidence.

Actually, I'm not. The evidence will come once the argument is being PRESENTED. It part of the "presentation".

You needed bother, your 7 arguments have already been debunked.

There is a difference between an argument and evidence. Good arguments might use evidence, but they are still arguments.

You are splitting hairs. It is the evidence that makes the argument an actual argument. It isn't as if we (apologists) have all arguments and no evidence, or all evidence and no arguments.

It's the former.

We have both, and we use both. When I make my case for Christian theism, I will present those arguments with evidence supporting those arguments stapled right to it.

There is not need, the arguments fail at the argument level, adding evidence to a failed argument is a waste of time and energy.

There has been great amount of discussion about each and every one of those, and frankly, they are all full of very many logical fallacies.

Then take one of the arguments, and have at it.

It has allready been done.

You are starting to exibit Black Knight Syndrome.