I think it's unfair to say that this shows intellectual dishonesty. If we look at what YEC actually wrote, we'll see two fundamental misconceptions about science and evolution.bdbthinker wrote:Wow...kind of a limited view you have there on science. I'm not suprised. I'm sure someone has explained to you how this argument is absurd. Bringing this up only shows intellectual dishonesty.YEC wrote:Did you ever WITNESS an animal mutate to the point that it is now a member of a different genera...or perhaps one mutate to a point that it now has a new body part, appendage or organ? didn't think so
misconception 1: nothing is valid unless we were there to witness it. "No one saw evolution happen, so it can't be true." We all know that this is specious, but it resonates with the non-scientists who really want creation to be true, so they continue to use it. The usual analogy in explaining why it is an invalid argument is forensics, in which forensic evidence is more credible than "eye-witness" accounts. We won't mention the fact that no one was there to witness the biblical creation, of course.
misconception 2: it is commonly thought that "mutation" refers to a single, individual animal changing into something else. Look at YEC's phrasing: "...an animal mutate to the point that it is now a member of a different genera [sic]..." This is a fundamental lack of understanding of how mutation, genetics, and evolution work. Of course it doesn't make sense! We'd all agree that no one has seen such a thing because genetics doesn't work that way.
I prefer to think that YEC holds these misconceptions than to think that he purposely says wildly wrong things as a carefully-crafted plan of deception. The misconceptions are so common, and the inferences drawn from them so clear, that the simplest explanation of the data is that the misconceptions explain what we observe.
You'll see, if you look about, that there are lots of people who believe that they have data supporting Genesis (like the ICR). Whether you agree with their interpretation is another story (e.g. the link points out that you have a lot of DNA, which is their evidence that you were "fearfully and wonderfully made"). The key here is the way that data are used to infer conclusions. It seems that the creationism world sees data as information that you find to support your idea. In the science world, data is information from which you build your idea. In the creationism world, data that conflict with your idea are deemed to be wrong. In the science world, data that conflict with your idea usually show that your idea was wrong, although there are many ways that you could be misinterpreting the data, or that you experiment provided you with some kind of artifact. In the creationism world, you look at data that agree with your idea, and pay little attention to the rest. In the science world, you have to pay attention to the rest of the data, because your idea must be compatible with all of it in order to be valid.bdbthinker wrote:I'm not aware of any evidence that points to Genesis at all. Are we talking the creation story , adam and eve, garden of eden?
This last bit presents an avenue of attack for creationists, which they have been using. Take polonium haloes, for instance. Gentry says "aha! Polonium haloes prove the earth is very young, and igneous rocks must have solidified in an instant."...so therefore, all of cosmology, geology, and evolution is wrong. The hooker is the rest of the data that Gentry didn't consider in reaching his conclusion, which the creationists don't mention. We can play this game all day. as they do--"oh yeah? Then how do you explain this? What about the peppered moths, for which I can claim there was an error, and therefore the entire thing has to be thrown out? How do you explain anything when your fossil record is so incomplete?" You know the schtick.
There's a fundamental difference in thinking about what constitutes data, and how to interpret the data, and how much background information one needs to interpret data accurately.
