Creationist Bullshit -- Darth Brooks' PM at theForce.net

[Illuminatus Primus]

"Only thing that stands in the forum is one's point of view and substance to support such."

Terrific. Now please present one single solitary incontestable scientifically across the board agreed upon example of observed macro-evolutionary metamorphosis.

That shouldn't be too difficult, should it? That's at the heart of this argument.

A little incentive; there's likely a laureate's pot o' gold at the end of that cheery rainbow.


Exactly how objective and authentically impartial are you actually, hmm?

Can you answer this question for me?

Do we have tremendously large gaps in the fossil record because we haven't yet excavated those mysterious fossils awaiting discovery, or because some representative animals were never fossilized?
Or, could it possibly be that those alleged animals have never existed?

Can you verify any of this under the scientific method?

Can you give me something more than your esteemed say-so?




Can you tell me the evolutionary course leading up to the denizens of Cambrian explosion? That would possibly result in your second Nobel.
Can you exhibitionistically show me precisely what those creatures of that by-gone era evolved into? Factually, not hypothetically.

Are my questions unreasonable? Did I mention "creationism"? Can you explain to me, sans ad hominem, the bias in my line of questions? Can you evidence for me the fundamental ignorance of my curiosity?





Before you launch your nuclear inter-theological fiery ballistics in my general direction, why don't you try a simple question: "Why, Brooks, don't you subscribe to the ever popular notion of evolution by (un)common descent? C'mon dude, get a brain and life to go."

Well, that would be a long and interesting monologue <yeah, right>, but suffice to say, I once fully subscribed to evolutionary theories of the emergence of life as described by the naturalistic paradigm, ignoring such tiny annoying little gnats called by inconvenient titles like the Law of Biogenesis and it's ignorant implications involving spontaneous generation, and so on. And such impertinent synonomous words such as "hypothesize," "conjecture," "extrapolated," ad infinitum, began to gnaw at my tidy view of the extent of the universe in which I dwelt as I surveyed the data so prominently displayed. Or, maybe, it was my intrinsic mistrust of, and need to question and challenge, authority.

Innate to my personal dispostion was this compelling need to test waters, ask questions, and satisfy myself with answers as to their veracity, as opposed to just accepting pat answers and the status quo as unquestionable givens.

Merely reviewing history presented numerous examples of the status quo being irredeemably and absurdly wrong and/or unjust throughout the recorded ages. Socrates, Christ, Galileo, belief in Aristotelian concepts such as four elementals of earth, wind, fire and water, geocentrism, etc., ad infinitum. Then, also, was the incident in which the head of the ROTC and Christian atheletics league, aptly and simultaneously ironicly named Christianson, caused my expulsion from H.S. with the use of merciless and blatant lies involving my conduct when in fact the esteemed Major of unblemished repute had erred in his own conduct. "All that glitters is not gold." "Appearances can be deceiving." Quite and quaintly cliche, I know. Couple that with the spoon fed premise I was given, "There is no absolute truth." My dense mind, not yet fundamentalist or Christian, quickly perceived that the sagacious advisor of that profundity was hoodwinking me bald faced, as intuitively I recognized that statement was to be intended for me to be taken as an absolute truth.

Allow me to humbly ask you, what is more scientific than challengingly questioning and testing the information put before me?

I am far too dense upon my own, unassisted, to comprehend my own density in asking what are to me obvious pertinent questions, utilizing the basic bones of the scientific method, regarding the origin of life upon planet Earth. Perhaps, you can help me see the light?


So, I'm skeptical, but my skepticism isn't exhibited in "creationism," it's based on asking relevant questions which the varied disciplines of the sciences have been unable to incontrovertably and unambiguously answer, and especially without the implementation the aforementioned synonyms above.

History clearly evidences factually that erroneous conclusions had been made previously, with those errors taught as given facts at times under the auspices of science, and a modicum of reasonable common sense suggested to me that track record indicated unambiguously that contemporarily there is no reason to believe we are inoculated against history repeating itself in the promotion and dessemination of misinformation, intentionally and unintentionally. Continuously the textbooks on history and science illustrated a metaphorical wheel turning in which often commonly accepted misinformation, or in some cases disinformation, was subequently proven untrue.


Socrates poisoned the youth. He questioned the status quo, the contemporaneous beliefs of his time. He was executed, but the history books vindicate him. I think he sets a perfect precedence in questioning "authorities."

Examine the headlines of just the last few months, the Toumai Gorge archaeological discovery of another alleged hominid, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, at the time, it was labeled in the media as ‘the most significant find in living memory’, being ‘the oldest human ancestor,'
and yet as each day passes since that media announcement other experts have continuously been presented with dissenting opinions, refering to the skull as that of a female gorilla (Dr Brigette Senut, of the Natural History Museum in Paris, France, for one). Then, we had the fraud of the fossil in China, and we can trace such misrepresentations continuously back, to Darwin's contemporary and colleague Haeckel (y'know, the fella who coined the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") who falsified a chart of embryonic similarities that were pictured in biology textbooks as late as just a few years ago (Haeckel falsified quite a bit to promote evolution, but I'll skip the bio-detail, which is all historically documented). That was quite a span of time before Haeckel's 'error' was caught, in case you missed it. This is the proverbial tip of the iceberg, and I don't want to bore you with endless anecdotes from one who doesn't toe your party-line, wherein time and again such notoriously hyped fossil specimens have subsequently been identified as having been initially misidentified.

Another cliche in application to my preceding comments; "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."

All data that is not immediately verifiable by direct observation and repeatability is generally inconclusive. Do you know how much of the evolutionary theory of common descent this embodies?







The words of Charles Darwin;

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case."

The blood-clotting cascade, Mr. Darwin.



"The Journal of Molecular Evolution was established in 1971, dedicated to explaining how life at the molecular level came to be. One would hope to find studies exploring the origin of complex biochemical systems in this journal. But, in fact, none of the papers published in JME over the entire course of its life as a journal has ever proposed the origin of a single complex biochemical system in a gradual step-by-step Darwinian process."

Perhaps you'd care to do so now?






No, I'm not popular amongst the forums elitest liberal and atheistic crowd, and Christ was crucified by the authorities of his day. Majority consent and popularity contests have engendered little sway upon concepts of actual legitimate worthiness in my opinion. So what.


More importantly than impartiality and objectivity on the subject at hand is the character traits of integrity and honesty. Can you respond in honesty and candor to the questions I've presented, or will you simply evade and duck them, instead rendering rhetoric?

I fired my last post at you basically to give you a dose of your own medicine, to say, we can all immaturely bare our teeth, so to speak. We can all insensitively trample upon one another. I'd rather not. I'd rather a civil, open, and honest conversation develop.

My tendency is to be gentle and polite with those who are gentle and polite. Those in the forum whom I am brusque with have first been brusque, generally establishing precedent and a past history with me that has carried over to this time. Upon initially entering into this forum I was immediately informed Hitler was an example of a Christian (why would that insult a Christian, I wonder), and I disagreed using a bit of edgy humor, as I recollect. I was banned. I've been banned for less. Once for referring to philosophical naturalism as nihilistic. Generally I'm banned for saying far less than my sparing partners. Your own words, under my screen name, would have resulted in at least a week. You haven't lived until you've been banned. Go figure. I could go down the entire list. Maybe I deserved some. So did some others who didn't get banned.

You blithely posted how uneducated we are, those who hold evolution assailably quesdionable, and the clear insinuation is that there are no legitimate reasons to to do so. Well, I've spent considerable time looking into the matter, and there is substantially more reason to question than you are aware of apparently.

Have you read up on the disputes between Gould or Dawkins? Do you know why there is a dispute over punctuated equilibria and gradualism? Do you understand the implications of that debate? If two of the biggest names couldn't get their act together, why are you or I on the sidelines to be convinced it occured by either of their suppositions, if even at all?

This is long. Too long. And I'm not out to convince you it occured, but only that it isn't preposterous to question, and that I have spent considerable time looking into the matter, and freely admit I am no expert or authority by any stretch of the imagination. In the forum I ask how did it happen and the response received is "you don't understand evolution." That doesn't tell me how it happened, and then I must include in Gould and Dawkins, to prominent names, who likewise argue over how it happened. How could it have happened? What is the genetic mechanism? There is no answer but "evolution." But that answer is no answer. And all answers are tentative, based on diagrams of extrapolations, and genetic similarity. "Correlation does not imply causation." Yellow bananas are not from yellow crayons. Automobiles all have similar parts. All life on Earth must share a common environment on this sphere; if there was a creator then it is logically obvious we would expect to find genetic similarity for this reason.





A little parable (‘A Tale of Two Fleas’, Ex Nihilo 2(3)37–38, July 1979) told of two scientific fleas living in a motor-car, pondering how it came to be. One insisted that, since it was the most logical conclusion from the evidence, the car was not made by processes operating in the car. The other demanded that such religious ideas not be brought into the flea schools, because science could only deal with the sorts of processes observable and operating today. To propose a maker who could not now be seen, and a process of making that was no longer operating, was by definition unscientific in spite of the fact that it happened to be true! This flea was locking the investigation into the belief that the way the world WORKS is also the way it ORIGINATED. He believed that anything else was breaking the rules of science. Hadn’t their science developed by means of studying only the present-day, naturally occurring processes in the car? His ‘rules’, of course, meant that it became impossible for him to deduce logically the correct explanation in the case of the car. This is not just a cute story about fleas it is exactly the mindset operating today, as two recent incidents attest.

[Illuminatus Primus]

By the way, that was all his words. The quotes were probably of me.

[Nick]

By the way, that was all his words. The quotes were probably of me.

Assuming it is the same DB I've run into before, I advise classification as follows:

"A-Grade Troll:
Arguments based not on personal opinion, but expressly designed to garner maximum response from opposition. Ignore the baiting until he gets bored and leaves. "

[Nick]

Oh, and his entire rant can be answered with two questions:

"Please explain to me your understanding of the theory of evolution, your sources for said understanding, and what efforts you have undertaken to ensure that your perception is in accordance with current scientific understanding."

"In order to criticise a theory, it is not sufficient to point out that the theory has holes. Of course it has holes - that is why scientists are still working on it. In order to challenge the theory, you must come up with an alterate theory which better fits all of the available facts. Please explain to me your alternate theory of evolution, the exact circumstances in which it matches observations better than the predictions of the accepted theory of evoultion, and the additional predictions it makes that may be observationally tested, all while obeying the dictates of the principle of parsimony."

(Actually, most creationists can be answered with these two questions)

[Lord_Xerxes]

"Terrific. Now please present one single solitary incontestable scientifically across the board agreed upon example of observed macro-evolutionary metamorphosis. "

Any evolutionary theory of how life went from what we know of it in the past, to what it is today, is a far better and more logical approach than simply dismissing it with, "God made this." The fact that many scientists/theorists cannot agree upon the actual process of, as you put it, "metamorphosis" is a testament to how complex the issue at hand is. We're dealing with thousands to millions of years of back-history to this planet. Yes, there's going to be holes. Yes, there's going to be disagreements, or information that may turn up at a later date that may disaprove on aspect of a theory, or prove another. It's like taking a picture and ripping it into hundreds of pieces. We only have so many pieces, and we cannot see the whole image at hand.

"Do we have tremendously large gaps in the fossil record because we haven't yet excavated those mysterious fossils awaiting discovery, or because some representative animals were never fossilized?
Or, could it possibly be that those alleged animals have never existed?"
Yes, it's safe to say there are probably thousands of undiscovered fossils. Landmasses change. Water, wind, erosion, earthquakes, the shifting of the plates... Different parts of the landscape rise and fall, through nature or man-made means. What is accessible to us to find now, probably won't be in many many years to come. And conversely, new fossils will be accessible then.

"Can you verify any of this under the scientific method?"

Yes. Carbon dating, as well as other element decay rate dating method techniques. Sorry, but I seriously doubt even the oldest texts that are or became the bible can stand up to the dating of many fossils from the BCE era.

"So, I'm skeptical, but my skepticism isn't exhibited in "creationism," it's based on asking relevant questions which the varied disciplines of the sciences have been unable to incontrovertably and unambiguously answer, and especially without the implementation the aforementioned synonyms above.
History clearly evidences factually that erroneous conclusions had been made previously, with those errors taught as given facts at times under the auspices of science, and a modicum of reasonable common sense suggested to me that track record indicated unambiguously that contemporarily there is no reason to believe we are inoculated against history repeating itself in the promotion and dessemination of misinformation, intentionally and unintentionally. Continuously the textbooks on history and science illustrated a metaphorical wheel turning in which often commonly accepted misinformation, or in some cases disinformation, was subequently proven untrue. "

So, to sum up what you're saying here, you're skeptical about accepting evolution as an explanation to the creation of life on this planet solely because in the past, there have been errors with scientific means? Errors will happen, and as technology progresses, new information can be uncovered, or new ways of finding information can be made. The fact is, this is a working theory, one that is continued to be changed, added to, or expanded as new information comes to light. Yes, misinformation has happened, and will happen again. But that is why scientists don't simply apply this theory as an explanation to the life on earth and leave it as that. It continues to be tested, worked with, etc. In contrast, the bible only offers one means of a theory to explain it, and does not continue to offer new rational information to support its theory as time progresses. On the contrary, it more often than not is further proved to be further flawed by the new information that is brought to light, without any explanation or way of adapting to this new information. Instead it continues with, "This is what happened, and anything that proves otherwise should be dismissed."

"All data that is not immediately verifiable by direct observation and repeatability is generally inconclusive. Do you know how much of the evolutionary theory of common descent this embodies?"

And yet the bible offers a continous stream of explanation to this new data by simply no-selling with "God created everything"? And therfore it is a far better explantion to how life exists, simply by means of a supreme being who in theory is there working when good things happen in this world, yet offers no explanation to why this being allows such terrible atroscities to occur?

"if there was a creator then it is logically obvious we would expect to find genetic similarity for this reason."

Why would a creator go out of his way to make such intrisinc processes such as genetics, DNA, similarity between creatures in a time frame of what, a week? This theory requires that everything starts out to be ridiculously complex from the get go, where as evolution begins with simple organisms becomming more complex over long periods of time. And the diversity springing from the needs of survival and enviornment. Adaptation.