While one may correctly say that evolution is a fraud, that is not to say that that same person “believes in†Creation as it is literally set forth in Genesis.
The answer is: We don’t know where we came from. Let’s find out.
Evolution is as much, if not more, of an irrational religion than what any Creationist spouts.
Sean O’leary
The Church is funded entirely by your purchases of FSM merchandise. Thank you for your support.
An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American
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Sorry. I wanted to get my reference to South Park in there.
“You’re so totally moving it!”
Dang I just can’t win today.
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Not sure if you caught it Max Globs, but I did apologize for “being a prick”. You were right.
@Dr. Michael Martin….where did you go? At least let us know if you are taking a break or just not coming back!!
I did. It’s all good.
@Max Globs
Cool.
@Maxwell
Thats the second time today I aplogized to the good Dr. And both times that was the end of the conversation. I’m curious if that’s the magic bullet. They come tell us to go to hell or whatever and we just say “sorry”. And that’s the end of it???
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Nah, can’t be…
Oh, I almost forgot. That was definitely a good read Maxwell.
…..Well….I wanted to get in on this debate….but it’s just too pointless–not too mention moving too fast–for me. The doctor obviously isn’t about to change his mind, and I tend to laugh and switch threads when I see someone try to convince others that god/the bible has been PROVEN. (Newsflash: the whole idea of god is that you take him/it/her on FAITH. Whether that’s a good idea or not is a whole ‘nother debate, but proving that god is real is futile. As is proving that god a is SO TOTALLY REAL OMG as opposed to god b, which any idiot can see is a fake.)
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One more thing–he said a few times that the bible encouraged looking into things critically? Guess that doesn’t include the women, who, as Paul was so nice to point out, are inferior and should stay nice and quiet so they don’t bother their menfolk. Ah well.
Dear Dr. Michael Martin,
I visited your creationist website. I have spent at least 45 minutes looking for signs of science. I couldn’t find any. I found lists of scientists who support creationist ideas. I found it amusing that many of them were dead before Darwin published his evolutionary theory in 1859. None of the ones currently alive have published their work in peer-reviewed journals as far as I can tell. I also found a lot of tabloid style reporting of evolutionary theory, i.e. the articles were big on incredulous arm waving and lacked supporting evidence. In order to disprove evolutionary theory you would need to refute what I see as the four core principles upon which the theory is based. You can find these in any basic evolutionary textbooks but I will reiterate them:
1) Individuals within populations vary, i.e. everyone is different.
2) Variations in traits are heritable. It is important to point out that some traits are a product of the environment and are not heritable. For example my peg leg would not pass to my offspring, i.e. an amputated limb is not heritable. To claim that environmentally acquired traits are transmissible across generations is Lamarckian and wrong.
3) More offspring are produced than can possibly survive.
4) Many heritable traits increase or decrease the chances of offspring survival and thus the frequency of those traits change within the population.
Many creationists accept these principles but argue that they just demonstrate that microevolution occurs and that they do not prove that macroevolution occurs. But that argument is patently ridiculous. There in no distiction between micro- and macroevolution they are just convenient terms to denote the scale of evolutionary change as metres and kilometres denote scales of distance. To accept that a phenomenon occurs at one scale but not another is blatent obfuscation.
The four core principles of evolution are testable hypotheses, which can be measured and evaluated based on the strength of supporting evidence. They are scientific because they are testable. Creationism requires the intervention of God. God cannot be measured. Thus the hypothesis that God created life the universe and everything is not testable, ergo it is not science. That is not to say that so-called creation scientists do not generate testable hypotheses. They do. For example, teleological arguments such as “irreducible complexity” are testable and have been repeatedly falsified.
My dear Dr. Martin…
I see you recently had a hot date with Miss Information. Beware, she’s a fickle wench. Every cherry that she pucks is a lie masquerading as truth. Every quote she mines is a calculated assault upon reality. Her reason for being is to enlist you into her world of fantasy. Don’t dare turn your back on her or you’ll find a knife in your spine.
Go ahead if you dare. It’s your life. It’s your choice. Wallow in the mud of deception, find comfort in her arms of blind conception if it makes you feel better. But please don’t come here preaching your gopsel of ignorance on this message board and claim it has anything to do with science. When it comes to science, you couldn’t hit a bull in the backside with a bass fiddle.
RAmen
Hi ButtJester! Thanks for the compliment too. I wonder why you would say you were sorry to the good doctor though. We have nothing to apologize for. If christians come here to blast me, I welcome them. I don’t have anything to say ’sorry’ for. I don’t think you were rude to him, and I don’t think you should have to feel like you need to apologize for your beliefs. Do you think they would apologize to you for calling you a f*cking douchebag? They call us that all the time, and never say ’sorry’. As a matter of fact, we could say nothing, and they still spout off like fools! I’m not about finding a magic bullet to shut them up. I want them to say, out loud, the nonsense that supports their ideas. Maybe by saying (typing) it, they will hear how stupid it is, or someone will read it and judge their argument to be without merit. I mean, beer volcanoes and stripper factories! Come on, FSM makes much more sense than their stuff! I say we continue to seek out their ilk on their own blogs. Let’s invite them here to argue with us.
I have taken the time to read all of your inane posts and quite frankly, you could have saved us a lot of trouble by simply stating that ‘goddidit’. That would have summed it all up rather nicely. But noooooo, you felt that you had to share your mindless diatribes with us. How fortunate are we. Yet, once again, you have quite effectively demonstrated that since YEC has no scientific data to support it, so you must resort to the ususal tactic of (mis)information overload in order to feign victory. Well, sir, the apparent winning of a debate does not necessarily render that conclusion the correct one. Unfortunately for you, we have the opportunity of a full rebutal on this message board.
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You have made many unsubstantiated claims here, yet have failed to cite any valid references. Care to back up your postulations with peer-reviewed scientific journals? What was that? There aren’t any? Quote mining is not acceptable in a scientific debate because it is dishonest. (But then, I guess you wouldn’t be too concerned with the truth, would you?) You take statements out of context then twist them to fit into your preconceived notion. This is not scientific refutation, it is not even good philosophical debate, it is political coercion. You have not even come close to to proving that evolution is a fraud. Even if you had, it would still not prove YEC by default. That is an argument from incredulity.
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Clearly, you do not understand evolution. It is a scientific theory, and since god can neither be proven nor disproven by science, it cannot be used as part of the equation. That is why belief in god is called faith. Further, evolution is not about the origins of life it is the process of change over time after the fact. How did life begin? We don’t know…yet. Abiogenesis (life from non-life) is the current working model but it is not accepted by all evolutionary biologists and IS NOT part of evolution.
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You are perfectly welcome to believe in any god you choose, as are we. Why is your god so much more acceptable? Is this not arrogance? What about Allah, Yaweh, Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, Baal, et al.? Are they any less viable simply because your little book, based on a technology two-thousand-years-out-of-date, says so? How have you substantiated any claim that YEC is scientific in nature? Inane rhetoric certainly doesn’t.
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Creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive. They coexist quite peacefully in models such as theistic evolution. Have you read Kenneth Miller’s “Finding Darwin’s God” or “Random Designer” by Richard Colling?
Hi mad John. I’m glad to see that someone else sees the trees thru the forest of BS he posted. The dear doctor appears to rely on quantity instead of quality. As far as the theistic evolution part though, that really starts to get at the heart of the intelligent design debate, and is what ID proponents use to flog us every chance they get. They suggest that life is so complicated and diverse that only an intelligent being, aka ‘creator’ could have started the process. While I can’t dispute theistic evolution as a possibility, I think it goes against Pastafarianism at our most basic level. Maybe I am getting more radical in my old age? In my opinion, conceding theistic evolution as a viable alternative means we should allow ID in schools. Maybe I’m way off on this. What do you think?
Dr. Martin…
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You said that, “Your very a ability to think refutes Materialism.” Again, goddit. Again, an argument from incredulity. Gods have been given credit for lightning until science determined natural causes. Infectious diseases were attributed to gods until science discovered bacteria and viruses. God-fearing Christians burned thousands of mentally ill patients at the stake or left them in prison cells to rot before science found biochemical causes. Your logic is completely illogical.
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You also said that “Christianity is the only thig out there that tells us to check out all sides.” Since when? I took Christianity a around four hundred years to absolve Galileo of heresy because he said the earth revolves around the sun, for an example. Science, on the other hand, is a history of errors corrected and has found YEC to be wanting. Simply ignoring the overwhelming evidence and pounding your square peg into a round hole does not prove any claim in your favour. For the record, there are nearly 186, 000 peer-reviewed scientific journals supporting evolution, while you have only a single source which fails miserably at every turn to provide any semblence of refutation.
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Once again, abiogenesis is not part of evolution. Please wake up and smell what you are peddling. Evolution begins where abiogenesis ends. Evolution does not require a witness in order for the process to occur. It has occurred, is occurring, and will continue to occur whether anyone of us mere mortals is around, or not. YEC, on the other hand, does not exist without some to believe in it because it is based entirely on faith.
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You know nothing of genetics. If you accept natural slection, variation, and speciation, then you are describing evolution. The only part you left out was the fact that all living things are composed of cells. Geometric fecundity and pre-reproductive mortality provide the struggle for existence. Infraspecific variation and heretability of variations provide for the natural selection of favoured forms. Natural selection does not produce ideal forms, rather variations of original forms. Design is the result not the cause. These favoured forms exist at the expense of non-favoured forms. Or is that too complicated for you? How about something a little more on your level? More offspring are produced than can survive. Diversity is the spice of life. And the big guy can’t survive without the little guy. Or, as Richard Dawkins puts it: “The world becomes full of organisms that have what it takes to become ancestors. That in a sentence, is Darwinism.”
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Darwin did remarkable well considering he did not understand the mechanism. We have progressed quite a long way since then, with the advent of genetics, a more extensive fossil record, and an understanding of geographical isolation to explain how genetic drift can affect speciation.
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According to the Talk Origin Archives, evolution is one of the most strongly supported theories in all of science. It is nowhere near a theory in crisis, as you suggest. This claim has been made constantly since well before Darwin. At that time nearly all relevant scientists were creationists. Now the numbers sit at far less than one percent. Therefore, your claims of scientists abandoning evolution theory in favour of creationism is a bold-faced lie.
Dr. Martin…
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YEC is…asinine…maybe pathetic would be more descriptive. Look it up, it’s in the dictionary. You have demonstrated no understanding whatsoever of paleontology, biochemistry, geochemistry, physics, or genetics, to name but a few. In order to support this antiquated notion, you would have to redefine all kknow laws of science to include supernatural explanations. Chemistry becomes alchemy, astronomy becomes astrology, eg. There is NO scientific evidence to support Noah’s Flood. Nada, zero, zilch.
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Talk Origins Archives lists a vast load of evidence consistently pointing to the same big picture.
* All life shows a fundamental unity in the mechanics of replication, heretability, catalysis, and metabolism.
* Common descent predicts a nested hierarchy pattern.
* Morphological, biochemical, and genetic traits all show the same results regarding common descent.
* The fossil record is a history of transitional forms.
* The distribution of species is consistent with their evolutionary history.
* Evolution predicts that new structures are adapted from other structures that already exist.
* The same principle applies on the molecualr level.
* When two organisms evolve the same function independently, different structures are often recruited.
* The constraints of evolutionary history sometimes lead to suboptimal structures and functions.
* Suboptimality appearing on the molecular level can render much DNA nonfunctional.
* Some nonfunctional DNA, such as certain transposons, pseudogenes, and endogenous viruses, show a pattern of inheritance indicating common ancestry.
* The day-to-day aspects of evolution—heritable genetic change, morphological variation and change, functional change, and natural selection—are seen to occur at rates consistent with common descent.
The evidence is extensive and consistent, and it p[oints unambiguosly to evolution, including common descent, change over time, and adaptation influenced by natural selection. It would be preposterous to refer to these as anything other than facts.
@Mad John Kidd
Science is distinct from religion, they are mutually exclusive and do not coexist. That is not to say that you cannot believe in God, a god or many gods and be a scientist. Indeed many scientists do and they have every right to. Some supernatural entity may have sparked life but that theory is not testable and therefore does not constitute science. Theistic evolution is an attempt to find the work of God hiding out among gaps in knowledge. We may never fill that gap, which leaves room for the supernatural but equally it does not rule out the mundane.
Dr. Martin…
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You can cut and paste until your fingers throb, but your assumptions of radiometric dating have been well refuted by relevant science and require much more space than available here. I suggest you read an updated book on Geochronology and step away from the crackpipe of YEC if you really want to understand the concept. But that is the whole point, innit. You would rather rely on erroneous assumptions based on a dusty textbook that is fifty years obsolete. Talk about old hat. Dating methods have evolved quite extensively since then. Therefore, you have refuted nothing. Maybe you should join the twenty-first century before spouting mouldy ignorance and calling it science.
A wise old pirate once said, “A closed mouth gathers no foot.”
Dr. Martin…
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Here we go, back to square one. Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of your god. Referring to YEC as science is inane, irrational, and irresponsible. Analyze your god through all the theoidiocy and theocracy you choose, but it is still a violation of federal law to teach religious beliefs in a science classroom. What part of this do you not understand? I will repeat it more slowly, if necessary. There is NO EVIDENCE for Noah’s Flood. None whatsoever.
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Science is “functionally atheistic” by keeping supernatural explanations out of the equation. Contrary to your beleifs, this in no way inplies that all evolutionists are atheists. I have already discussed theistic evolution. Deal with it.
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While I admire your tenacity, your logic is all but non-existent. Religion can be defined as scrupulous conformity to an arduous principle as easily as a commitment to dogmatic faith. If you use the bible as proof of creation, you might as well use “The Cat in the Hat” to prove that the Cat in the Hat exists, while you’re at it.
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If you are seriously relying on Josephus to support your verbose postulation, then I must inform you that much of his writings have been discredited by actual historians. http://www.truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm
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There have been many artifacts found and claimed to be proof of Jesus. The problem being that science has failed to verify any such evidence. In fact, your shroud thingy has been overwhelmingly exposed as a forgery manufatured in fourteenth century France. And simply finding inscriptions with his name on it is not proof of anything other than someone did it. There is no indication that Jesus himself ever wrote anything down. Would have helped your cause immensly. But he didn’t. Since the gospels were written well after his death it could hardly be considered an eye witness account. In fact, very little of archaeology can unmitigatedly verify any account described in your bible. Don get me wrong, it is not that I don’t think that Jesus did not exist. I think that he was a very wise man and if his followers actually practiced what he preached the world would be a better place. But then, that is only my opinion, not a scientific fact.
“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”—Matthew 5:44
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RAmen
maxwell
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Sorry it took so long to post a reply to your questions. I was on a roll.
Theistic evolution is more of a scientific philosophy than an actual scientific position. It is still based on evolutionary theory, so that part should be taught in the science classroom because it is sciecne, but theistic evolutionists do not believe in incorporating the discussion of that “generating force” by whatever name it is given because that is in the realm of theology. Supernatural expalnations don’t belong in science, therfore the science classroom. Now, I would be okay with it in a current issues class or something of that nature, no problem. The National Academy of Science Education (US) has clearly stated as such.
RAmen
Hi, Maxwell. Your welcome!
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I apologized to the good doctor because that’s what seperates him and I. I know when I’m wrong and can admit it. I invite more debate, but while they tell me to die and go to hell, I will do my best not to return the favor. I am only human so I’m sure I won’t be perfect, but I will try.
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@Mad John Kidd
Wow, you managed to read all that? I tried but just couldn’t stomach it. It was like trying to eat one of those 100′ party subs full of rotten meat.