What got things rolling,
My initial intention was to be a bit of a troll as my focus was on Ham's equating atheism to religion via evolution as well as his false equivalency of evolution to abiogenesis It didn't quite turn out that way. And to save my brain cells, I stayed focused on one "commenter" to prevent an overwhelming Gish gallop of ideas. (Don't ask how that went!)
Although Ham opened the door to where I wanted the conversation to go, "Ask evolutionists for the best evidence of evolution - they usually cite speciation, which has nothing to do with their molecules-to-man belief," I wasn't sure if that is where we would end up. You see I have a keen interest in the Kettlewell Peppered Moth experiment and its aftermath but I also wanted to demonstrated three points. Other studies of interest:: E. coli - Long-term Experimental Evolution Project Site and Watch Evolution Occur Before Your Eyes
As to the aftermath, scientific scrutiny is expected. What followed was creationists leaping on Coyne's criticism which lead to further study (Melanism gene found in peppered moth and The peppered moth story is solid, for example. (If you notice, Coyne's progression in accepting the Peppered Moth narrative is very similar to Bill Nye's support of GM technology. Nye was not a GM technology supporter but with further education on the matter he has become such.)One, yes some creationists are under-educated in regards to evolution, such as homeschooling. This posting is not directed toward them per se. This posting is directed towards those that are culpably ignorant, such as Ken Ham and my adversary. Those that choose to ignore the evidence for some gain and continue to spread the lies.
Coyne's criticism led to the subsequent follow-up experiment by Majerus with publication by Wood et al. This past year, van't Hof et al found the gene they had been looking for.
For decades we’ve known that the difference between the carbonaria and typica forms was due to change at a single gene, for genetic crosses showed a nice Mendelian segregation, with carbonaria behaving as a dominant allele. But we didn’t know the exact gene involved, although in recent years it was narrowed down to a 400,000-base section of the moth’s genome. Although the fact that this is a case of evolution by natural selection doesn’t depend on knowing the exact gene involved, to get the complete story from gene to color to the ecological forces involved (bird predation), it would be nice to know what that gene is and what it does.A big group of researchers has now reported in Nature that they found the gene. The paper is by Arjen E. van’t Hof et al. (reference below, sadly, no free download), and identifies the gene causing the moth color difference as cortex, a well-known gene that’s been studied in fruit flies (Drosophila). A companion paper in the same issue by Nicola Nadeau et al. (reference below, also behind a paywall) shows that mutations at cortex are involved in patterning and mimicry in many species of Lepidoptera. I won’t describe that paper in detail, as it’s only tangentially relevant here.
It is a point I have spoken to before concerning Ham. While it is an over simplified line of reasoning, one can not deny evolution but yet accept the benefits from modern medicine,,, Sorry you lose! (Kent Hovind is a mater at this point) Hell, you can't even be a very good doctor without an understanding of evolution.
Within medicine there is a standard of care that is developed by the medical community, but mostly driven by the recognized experts in their field synthesizing available evidence and experience. For the average physician in private practice, in order to be minimally competent they need to understand clinical decision-making and the current standard of care as it applies to their specialty. For procedure-based specialties, like surgeons, they also need to be technically competent. None of this requires an understanding of the science behind medicine.Two, there is no science in creationism, it is all criticism and opinion as demonstrated by my adversary. While anyone who knows me knows I am a citation freak, you will not find one citation in the entire sub-thread besides mine. (In fact I don't think there is a citation in the entire thread but mine up to the time I started writing.) While there are references made to AiG, their material falls under the same determination with the added distinction of NOT being peer reviewed.
Physicians who practice in this manner are essentially behaving like technicians, not scientists. They have the requisite fund of knowledge and know what practices are required in given situations. The more procedure-based a practice is, the more a physician can get away with this level of practice, as their technical skills comprise a larger portion of their daily practice.
However, while I think you can get to a level of minimal competence practicing in this fashion (cook-book style, following standards of care without necessarily understanding how they came about), this level of practice results in a mediocre clinician. This is because it is essential to understand scientific principles in order to be a fully functional clinician. Again I will break this down into two areas.
These quotes also reveal what creationism truly is – a bible-based faith. It is not science, it is not based on evidence, reason, or critical thinking. It is based entirely on faith in one particular interpretation of the Christian bible.
Ham, here, is at least being honest in that regard. It does also come off also as a surrender – Ham and other creationists now know they are not going to win against evolution in the arena of science. There is a simple reason for this – evolution is reality and creation is mythology. The fact that life on earth is the product of organic evolution and that all life shares common ancestry has been established by a mountain of evidence and is scientifically indisputable. Fighting against the evidence in the long term is a losing strategy.And finally. Creationists, when they don't like the direction a conversation is going, will take their ball and go home. In other words, when faced with science, they twist and squirm to get away from it. As you will see my adversary did just that when presented with the Peppered Moth. Another comment attempted to "discredit" the Royal Academy of Sciences when presented evidence from such instead of pointing to where the science was wrong; never mind that he out right lied.
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This frames their world-view nicely – it is not about evidence or logic, it is about authority. The debate is framed as God’s authority vs man’s authority, not in terms of logic or evidence. They set up a false dichotomy – evolution or God. I don’t know if this framing is deliberately manipulative, or if they simply cannot see past the assumptions of their own world-view.
At the recent Royal Academy of Sciences in London, XXX, the world's leading Neo-Darwinians came together to discuss the latest findings in the origins of biological life. And they were clear, Darwinianism - even Neo-Darwinianism has now been conclusively disproven in regards to the origins of biological life. Thus even the world's leading Evolutionists are now in agreement that evolution is a failed theory...And as they said at their meeting, Intelligent Design is the only possible answer to the vast complexities of biological life. So Creationists have been proven correct by science...For those of you who continue to hold on to what has now been proven to be a failed theory, you can only do so through faith...That makes any belief in evolutionary theory a religion by definition...AiG is masterful at this. When confronted with science they cannot refute, the revert back to "this is not the molecules-to-man evolution." They misrepresent what Darwin's theory is, by twisting what it is not.
If the moth population truly shifts in response to change in environmental conditions—which Majerus’s work and another of study of similar moths in the polluted northeastern United States suggest—then the peppered moth story is “fine example of natural selection in action.” And with Majerus’s observations now confirming moths really do rest on trunks before sunrise and get gobbled up by birds early in the day, we even know the agent of natural selection, at least in England. But the peppered moth is not and never has been proof of “Darwinian evolution” in the molecules-to-man sense.The strawman argument is a favorite tactic of Ham and his ilk. Making an argument out to be something it is not. Another is re-defining words that have specific (scientific) meaning, to mean something else (ie theory). This is part of Ham's strange belief that there are two sciences, historical and observational.
Now, secularists often misuse the word science when they use it to refer to their molecules-to-man evolution belief, and then also misapply it to refer to technology, which is operational science (observation and repeatable testing). There’s a big difference between knowledge about the past (origins beliefs) and knowledge for building technology! You can’t observe, test, or repeat the past, so historical (or origins) science isn’t the same thing as observational science that can be directly observed, tested, and repeated in the present.As Dan Arel notes,
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Secularists need to admit their faulty beliefs. But they don’t want to acknowledge they have any beliefs! They believe life somehow arose by natural processes, and they also believe in an unobservable process of molecules-to-man evolution. Secularists have a religion. They have beliefs about how the universe and life arose, and these beliefs affect how they interpret evidence in the present.
It’s funny to me that Ham insists on using religion as an insult, but that aside, science isn’t a belief. We can observe evolution, even his so-called “molecule-to-man” evolution. We have observed new species of finch, and we can replicate evolution in the lab for many species of insect.Remember, Darwin does not speak to abiogenesis. The current synthesis of evolutionary theory does not speak to abiogenesis. Abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution. As I have noted before, "natural selection is a measurement 'across a population and through generations'. If a creationist someone starts talking about natural selection being random and pointing out individual responses to the environment, then we might not be talking about the same evolutionary mechanism anymore. Everything that happens within evolution is happening to populations. Individuals do not evolve." [See:: “Is natural selection random?”]
This is again, something Ham knows. All of the natural processes involved in natural selection are observable and testable. Fossils, DNA, and other evidence confirm this.
We don’t believe in evolution, as Ham implies, but instead, we accept the evidence.
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