[_ Old Earth _] Is ID science?

[Barbarian]

The problem with ID is quite simple. It doesn't work. Oh, they've tried. The "Explanitory Filter" was trotted out. But then, it became clear that unless the answer was assumed beforehand, even Bill Dembski couldn't use it to detect "design."

And then there was "irreducible complexity", but even Mike Behe now admits that it can evolve.

And then there was "specified complexity," but it turns out that specified complexity is just like the kind that evolves naturally.

This is why scientists don't bother with ID. It doesn't work.

And if it doesn't work, what good is it?

 

[BobRyan]

BobRyan, would you please demonstrate that you understand the difference between
arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification)
and
arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good
?

Why not have you take a look at Patterson's 1981 comments EXPANDING on that point and THEN look at Nile's Eldredge's response and help us understand what Niles was saying? When you finish reading the section below -- answer this question

What did HE mean by ""My g_d, how can he be doing this to us."[/quote]

Dr. Frair quotes Colin Patterson: NY American Museum of Natural History – talk - 1981.

Colin PATTERSON:

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view,well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

"...I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people: 'Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing you think is true?'
"I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence.

I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said: 'Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.' "...It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

(Patterson took the words of Neal C. Gillespie alleging that the "pre-Darwinian creationist paradigm" was "'...not a research-governing theory, since its power to explain is only verbal, but an anti-theory, a void that has the function of knowledge, but conveys none'" and suggested ")...It must seem to you that I'm either misguided or malicious to suggest that such words can be applied to evolutionary theory.

"...Most of us think that we are working in evolutionary research. But is its explanatory power any more than verbal?...I feel that the effect of hypotheses of common ancestry in systematics has not been merely void, not just a lack of knowledge-I think it has been positively anti-knowledge. "...

What about evolution? It certainly has the function of knowledge but has it conveyed any?...It is true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so, I haven't yet heard it.

"Well, here we all are with all our shelves full of books on evolution. We've all read tons of them, and most of us have written one or two. And how could it be that we've done all that, we've read these books and learned nothing from them? And how could I have worked on evolution for twenty years, and learned nothing from it?

"...There is some sort of a revolution going on in evolutionary theory at the moment...It concerns the possible mechanisms that are responsible for the transformation...natural selection is under fire, and we hear a rash of new and alternative theories..."

(Again quoting Gillespie accusing that those "'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"
Patterson countered with this- ) "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: (saying) 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, IF you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here... "...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge, apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

Going back to your question -- is Pattersons "antiknowledge" and "faith" statement about "evolution" or JUST about systematics being damaged by evolutionism's dogma?

before you answer -

Notice that Patterson admits that evolutionism has mislead even him.

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

Dr. Frair provides his own testimony as a front-row attendee of this talk by Patterson

Dr Frair:
I was sitting in the front row next to an AMNH curator of mammals, Karl Koopman, who, obviously very agitated kept slamming his pencil down in front of him.

Niles Eldredge in the Department of Invertebrates at AMNH was standing by the left wall (as one looks toward the speaker). Beside Eldredge stood a high school biology teacher, Roy Slingo, from the prestigious Scarsdale NY district.

Slingo later informed me that at one stage of the talk Niles Eldredge (well known for his anti-creationist perspective) grabbed his forehead and slid down the wall proclaiming, "My God, how can he be doing this to us."

Oh if only we had actual Christian devotees to atheist darwinism that were as honest and objective as the committed atheist darwinist Colin Patterson!


And WHAT is the thoughtful compelling response we get from the devotees to atheist darwinism as they are confronted with this open confession from PAtterson?

Bob has been caught out good and proper.

How "unnexpected" to find such substantive depth in their reponse.

Bob

 

[Barbarian]

Heh, Bob's still using the doctored "quotes" in spite of Patterson's own statement that they are not honest.

Bob thinks the guys re-writing Patterson know what Patterson means more than Patterson does.

Sad, but when you have no evidence whatever to support your ideas, you don't have much left but quote-mining.

 

[BobRyan]

As you already learned Patterson said the quotes are "ACCURATE" then Patterson ADDED the condemning statement to them that your story telling about how one thing comes from another ALSO IS NOT SCIENCE.

Remember - you yourself proudly posted that fact.

WORSE you also proudly pointed to the link that proclaimed to all that fossils CAN NOT tell you if they are ancestors to ANYTHING -- and worse -- that given that lack of data - atheist darwinist must STILL claim they are "transitional" in order to cling to atheism 'anyway'

this was your own work -- I am simply happy to point to you as the one who first pointed to it on this thread (So I wouldn't have to -- ;)

Thanks again!!

If you were not so stuck in what Patterson calls "anti-knowledge" I am sure you would have seen that one coming!

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Patashu wrote:
BobRyan, would you please demonstrate that you understand the difference between
arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification) and arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good

Is it your feeling that "Stories about how one thing came from another" -- stories that Patterson said "are not science" -- are getting pulled into the classification of species?

Come on admit it -- you actually like these quotes of Patterson and the more you see -- the better you like them.

(Again quoting Gillespie accusing that those "'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"
Patterson countered with this- ) "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: (saying) 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, IF you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here... "...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge, apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

Going back to your question -- is Pattersons "antiknowledge" and "faith" statement about "evolution" or JUST about systematics being damaged by evolutionism's dogma?

before you answer -

Notice that Patterson admits that evolutionism has mislead even him.

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

 

[Barbarian]

Going back to your question -- is Pattersons "antiknowledge" and "faith" statement about "evolution" or JUST about systematics being damaged by evolutionism's dogma?

Well, let's see what Patterson says...

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false...But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html
Yep. That's what he said.

 

[BobRyan]

Again you just can't help demonstrating Patterson's complaint about evolutionism being ANTI-KNOWLEDGE.

In that link Patterson firms TWO THINGS.

1. That the quotes were ACCURATE
2. That Theunissen's spin on Patterson's comments about "story telling" and the lack of transitional forms was "accurate" as well.

Well- did YOU READ Theunnissen's spin AS HE stated at that link?

IT says that EVEN though they all agree that the fossils CAN NOT reveal ancestory AND may in fact not be ancestral AT ALL to what evolutionists CLAIm -- they are NONe-the-less transitional!

i.e "Affirming the FACT while claiming ignorance as to the MEANS".

They are BOTH AGREEING that fossils CAN NOT tell ancestory!!

Theunnisen said IN your link -

Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with:

[quote:f449f]
PATTERSON:
". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else."

It is actually this statement which is the key to interpreting the Sunderland quote correctly; it is not possible to say for certain whether a fossil is in the direct ancestral line of a species group. Archaeopteryx, for example, is not necessarily directly ancestral to birds. It may have been a species on a side-branch. However, that in no way disqualifies it as a transitional form,[b/] or as evidence for evolution.
[/quote:f449f]

For a transitional form - -you can not continually claim "NOT IN ANCESTRAL LINE OF C" and yet claim it is "transition from A to C".

That would be "claiming ignorance as to the means while simply affirm blind faith in the fact"!!

(something patterson claims THEY ARE DOING)

Get it???

Darwinian Evolutionism:

A distinctively atheist set of religious doctrines and dogmas unwittingly expressed through a thin façade of hijacked science terms wrapped around a hollow junk-science core of both hidden and unmasked hoaxes, exposed frauds, logical fallacies, half truths and statements of blind faith.

Darwinian Science Faction: Darwinian Science Fiction (regarding the origin and etymology of life forms on earth) cleverly packaged and sold to the unsuspecting public as “science fact†by painting imaginative stories on a canvas of science terms and selling them with blind faith “affirmations of the fact while professing ignorance as to the means†– affirmations stated in practice as if in support of “revealed truthâ€Â

Barbarian -- I seriously need to find a way to pay you in real benefits for these perfect softball setups!

Bob

 

[Barbarian]

Again you just can't help demonstrating Patterson's complaint about evolutionism being ANTI-KNOWLEDGE.

In that link Patterson firms TWO THINGS.

1. That the quotes were ACCURATE

2. That Theunissen's spin on Patterson's comments about "story telling" and the lack of transitional forms was "accurate" as well.

Well, let's see what he actually said...

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

Imagine that. Did you think we had forgotten already, Bob?

IT says that EVEN though they all agree that the fossils CAN NOT reveal ancestory AND may in fact not be ancestral AT ALL to what evolutionists CLAIm -- they are NONe-the-less transitional!

Yep. I get it now. You don't know what "transitional" means. It would be astonishing if we happened to get the very dinosaur, for example that gave rise to birds. Transitionals are organisms very close to the line that gave rise to new taxa. For example, Archaeopteryx is not likely to be the particular species that is ancestral to birds. It is just very, very close to whatever species did give rise to birds.

The dishonesty we spoke of was in cutting Patterson's quote to make it appear he believed something he did not.

For a transitional form - -you can not continually claim "NOT IN ANCESTRAL LINE OF C" and yet claim it is "transition from A to C".

Uh, yes. That's what a transitional is.

Say we wanted evidence that Latin evolved into French. And we found a document that was halfway between Latin and French. It would be transitional, because it would document a transitional stage between Latin and French even if it happened to be a dead end that did not influence any later writing. That is a transitional.

Remember Bob, when I told you that ignorance was your enemy? It just got you again.

 

[Guest]

ID is not science. Science gathers together evidence and then draws a conclusion based on the evidence. ID has a conclusion right from square one and it frantically goes about searching for evidence to support this conclusion. ID exists to pour sugar in the gas tank of progress. It seeks to undermine science in general by thrusting the false claim that there is actually a real debate going on in the scientific community, making science seem confusing and inconclusive, thus weakening it to attack by lobbyists etc.

I think this video here sums it up rather neatly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO7IT81h200

 

[Bryce]

ID is not science. Science gathers together evidence and then draws a conclusion based on the evidence.

Then what do you call the Big Bang?
Or better put by the scientists."
"According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as "singularity" around 13.7 billion years ago. What is a "singularity" and where does it come from? Well, to be honest, we don't know for sure..."
http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

ID has a conclusion right from square one and it frantically goes about searching for evidence to support this conclusion.

Not just ID, everything. We look at a tree and ask " How did it get there? " Of course the answer would be from a seed; so then we might ask " Well where did that come from? " ..And so on until
eventually you have one person concluding that it came from an implosion and another concluding it was created.

ID exists to pour sugar in the gas tank of progress.

Progress? Many ID scientists have made some of the greatest thinkers of all time, take for example the Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel whom is called the Father of Genetics.
If for nothing else, ID is good for pointing out the flaws scientists make when on the topic of evolution.

It seeks to undermine science in general by thrusting the false claim that there is actually a real debate going on in the scientific community, making science seem confusing and inconclusive, thus weakening it to attack by lobbyists etc.

Now that's a bit ill-based, somtimes mis-information is thrown around just as evolutionists do to christains, yes. Your seeming to want to blame christains for every false piece of information out there.


@ On topic, I'd say no. ID is not science, ID is the belief that everything that was or ever will be had an intelligent creator, Science is Science.

 

[Barbarian]

Progress? Many ID scientists have made some of the greatest thinkers of all time, take for example the Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel whom is called the Father of Genetics.

That's unnececessarily harsh on Mendel; everything he did in his research was rigorously scientific. ID is a very recent ideology and Father Mendel was completely free of such foolishness.

If for nothing else, ID is good for pointing out the flaws scientists make when on the topic of evolution.

Could you give us an example? No one seems to know of a real one. Hint: Jonathan Wells made a few ethical shortcuts in his book. Use those "examples" at your own risk. (I wouldn't mind at all if you did, but trust me, it's not a good idea)

It seeks to undermine science in general by thrusting the false claim that there is actually a real debate going on in the scientific community, making science seem confusing and inconclusive, thus weakening it to attack by lobbyists etc.[/b[

Now that's a bit ill-based, somtimes mis-information is thrown around just as evolutionists do to christains, yes.

I'm a Christian, and he has it spot on. It's a political campaign against science, with everything that implies.

Your seeming to want to blame christains for every false piece of information out there.

That's unnecessarily harsh on Christians. IDers are hardly representative of Christians. Jonathan Wells, for example, is moonie.

 

[Bryce]

That's unnececessarily harsh on Mendel; everything he did in his research was rigorously scientific. ID is a very recent ideology and Father Mendel was completely free of such foolishness.

Harsh? I meant to compliment him. I don't know enough about Gregor Mendel's faith to argue with you, though I doubt he was old earth because it's more recent too, correct?

Could you give us an example? No one seems to know of a real one. Hint: Jonathan Wells made a few ethical shortcuts in his book. Use those "examples" at your own risk. (I wouldn't mind at all if you did, but trust me, it's not a good idea)

Here's an example I got from John that I've shown to you before, not sure who's it by.
http://www.evidencebible.com/witnessing ... lution.gif
Not the best example, but I'm in a bit of a rush; I'll post more later.

I'm a Christian,

I didn't know that, glad to hear it.

and he has it spot on. It's a political campaign against science, with everything that implies.

I believe Hovind whom is an intelligent design advocate once said somthing along the lines of " I have no problem with good science, it's all the bad science thats thrown out there that's claimed to be true when it most certainly isnt that I have a problem with."

 

[Patashu]

ID is not science. Science gathers together evidence and then draws a conclusion based on the evidence.

Then what do you call the Big Bang?
Or better put by the scientists."
"According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as "singularity" around 13.7 billion years ago. What is a "singularity" and where does it come from? Well, to be honest, we don't know for sure..."
http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

Uh-huh, that's great. Holding up a quote from a site explaining scientific concepts to laymen and children and proclaiming it the state of science.

 

[BobRyan]

ID is not science.

ID "IS SCIENCE" by definition. It is the "Academic freedom to follow the data where it leads EVEN if it leads to a conclusion in favor of design that does not pander to the dictates of atheist dogma".

By contrast atheist darwinism is "distinctively NOT science" -- even by the standards of well known well-accepted atheist darwinists like Colin Patterson who correctly observed that stories "about how one thing came from another ... are stories easy enough to tell but they are NOT SCIENCE". ( As atheist darwinist readers will learn at this link -
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&p=387969#p387969 )

Science gathers together evidence and then draws a conclusion based on the evidence.

That is true - and "by contrast" atheist darwinism has a "conclusion THEN seeks to abuse science to support it" as it claims manifestly "there is no god-- rocks somehow did this".

As atheist Darwinist Colin Patterson observes - darwinism operates under the religious premise of "revealed truth" it simply "affirms the fact while claiming ignorance as to the means". (We already learned this when we read Patterson's remarks here -
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=90#p387514 )

He points to atheist darwinism being touted as "revealed truth" accepted and promoted as a matter of "faith".

Both Patterson and the discussion by Theunnisen demonstrate that religious aspect of the distinctively religionist junk-science we call atheist darwinism when they claim that fossils are typically CLAIMED as "transitional" EVEN THOUGH they are not ancesstors to that which they are "transitioning" (As all atheist darwinist readers learned at this link -
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&p=387967#p387827 }


The religionist arguments of atheist darwinism simply exist to pour sugar in the gas tank of science and progress. In fact - as we saw in the previous page of this thread - Patterson argues that it conveys "anti-knowledge"
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=90#p387514

We can all see that it seeks to undermine science in general by limiting academic freedom and thrusting false claims to "science" with each of its confirmed "hoaxes".

The 40 year hoax of Piltown man.
The 50 year fraud of Simpson's horse series
the 50 fraud of Ernst Haekles "Ontogeny" claims
the 30 fraud of the Neanderthal dating methods

The list just keeps going - and no "critical mass" in that pile of junk-science frauds is "sufficient" to disuade the truly devoted "Believer" from their atheist darwinist orthodoxy.

I think the statements from the confirmed and comitted ATHEIST DARWINIST Colin Patterson sum it up nicely.

I think that continued blind appeal of "darwinists to their OWN ATHEIST DARWINIST sources" demonstrates the true fox-hole nature of their argument.

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

What was confirmed atheist darwinist Colin Patterson's view of darwinism's relationship to REAL science?

Dr. Frair quotes Colin Patterson: NY American Museum of Natural History – talk - 1981.

Colin PATTERSON:

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

"...I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people: 'Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing you think is true?'

"I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence.

I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said: 'Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.' "...It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

(Patterson took the words of Neal C. Gillespie alleging that the "pre-Darwinian creationist paradigm" was "'...not a research-governing theory, since its power to explain is only verbal, but an anti-theory, a void that has the function of knowledge, but conveys none'" and suggested ")...It must seem to you that I'm either misguided or malicious to suggest that such words can be applied to evolutionary theory.

"...Most of us think that we are working in evolutionary research. But is its explanatory power any more than verbal?...I feel that the effect of hypotheses of common ancestry in systematics has not been merely void, not just a lack of knowledge-I think it has been positively anti-knowledge. "...

What about evolution? It certainly has the function of knowledge but has it conveyed any?...It is true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so, I haven't yet heard it.

"Well, here we all are with all our shelves full of books on evolution. We've all read tons of them, and most of us have written one or two. And how could it be that we've done all that, we've read these books and learned nothing from them? And how could I have worked on evolution for twenty years, and learned nothing from it?

"...There is some sort of a revolution going on in evolutionary theory at the moment...It concerns the possible mechanisms that are responsible for the transformation...natural selection is under fire, and we hear a rash of new and alternative theories..."

(Again quoting Gillespie accusing that those "'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"

Patterson countered with this- ) "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: (saying) 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, IF you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here... "...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge, apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

Question for the reader: -- is Pattersons "antiknowledge" and "faith" statement about "evolution" in general or just limited to “ systematics being damaged by evolutionism's dogma�

before you answer -

Notice that Patterson admits that evolutionism has mislead even him.

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

[/quote]

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

STORIES EASY ENOUGH TO TELL -- NOT SCIENCE

Sunderland – reports:

Before interviewing Dr Patterson, the author read his book, Evolution, which he had written for the British Museum of Natural History. In it he had solicited comments from readers about the book’s contents. One reader wrote a letter to Dr Patterson asking why he did not put a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book.


On April 10, 1979, Patterson replied to the author in a most candid letter as follows:

[quote:09854]

“ I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?

I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record.

You say that I should at least show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived. I will lay it on the line- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defence of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job “

[Ref: Patterson, personal communication. Documented in Darwin’s Enigma, Luther Sunderland, Master Books, El Cajon, CA, 1988, pp. 88-90.]

[/quote:09854]


Bob

 

[Deep Thought]

ID is not science.

ID "IS SCIENCE" by definition. It is the "Academic freedom to follow the data where it leads EVEN if it leads to a conclusion in favor of design that does not pander to the dictates of atheist dogma".

There is no known definition of science that fits your bias apart from the Discovery Institute (which as we all know, is not exactly an impartial organisation)

By contrast atheist darwinism is "distinctively NOT science" -- even by the standards of well known well-accepted atheist darwinists like Colin Patterson who correctly observed that stories "about how one thing came from another ... are stories easy enough to tell but they are NOT SCIENCE". ( As atheist darwinist readers will learn at this link -
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&p=387969#p387969 )

Bob, you are like a broken record. Atheist Darwinism only exists in your head.

Science gathers together evidence and then draws a conclusion based on the evidence.

That is true - and "by contrast" atheist darwinism has a "conclusion THEN seeks to abuse science to support it" as it claims manifestly "there is no god-- rocks somehow did this".

That's absolute rubbish. Charles Darwin was a Christian all his life. He certainly didn't start with a conclusion, he observed the evidence and when it became overwhelming, he came up with TOE.

I've snipped the rest of your strawman arguments and false assertions that have been completely and thoroughly discredited in these forums.

 

[DavidLee]

Charles Darwin was a Christian all his life.

This is a misconception that is widely believed. You can do a google search yourself, but I found this article was the best of the six or seven I read:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/darwin.html

A (not so) random quote I found funny:
“I had gradually come by this time, [i.e. 1836 to 1839] to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos or the beliefs of any barbarian.†(Obviously the emphasis is mine.)

The idea that I should believe what a person says because he is a Christian is like saying I should believe him because he's a Rotarian, Shriner, or a Mason.

I have trouble with the idea that one can say they know God and yet deny His word.

(I'll go back to lurking now since I can't add anything to this thread.)

 

[Deep Thought]

As we all know, Christians come in many colours and flavours with each one claiming to be a "True Christian (tm)". Darwin believed in the Christian God until his death. While he may well have changed his views on the fundamentalist Christianity (which was considered normal at the time), he was still a Christian by most people's definition.

 

[BobRyan]

Charles Darwin was a Christian all his life.

This is a misconception that is widely believed. You can do a google search yourself, but I found this article was the best of the six or seven I read:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/darwin.html

A (not so) random quote I found funny:
“I had gradually come by this time, [i.e. 1836 to 1839] to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos or the beliefs of any barbarian.†(Obviously the emphasis is mine.)

Correct -- in fact the blind darwinist orthodoxy that tries to spin Darwin around as IF his own darwinian theology had NOT completely corrupted his Christianity by his own words - is a testament to the "blinders-on" kind of arguments so common among believers in atheist darwinism doctrine.

Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused thee. But I had gradually come by this time, i.e. 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus….

By further reflecting… that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracle become, - that the men of the time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible to us,- that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,- that they differ in many important details///

I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation…. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans… which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct.

I can, indeed, hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true[/b]; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine

Darwin (1887) III p. 308 omits the last sentence which is included in the later version of the work [Barlow (1958)].[/i]

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Why can our devotees to blind darwinism not simply admit the obvious -- EVEN Darwin ADMITS that his darwinian mythology completely destroyed his understanding and acceptance of truth and Christian teaching from the Bible.

The same way Dawkins and Provine admit to the same point and as you point out David in your post regarding Darwini.

Bob