Darwin's "Downfall?"

[ProLifeSkeptic]

This individual who calls himself Keith Truth has made a recent documentary in which he illustrates the "downfall" of Evolution (you can watch the whole documentary if you choose, or click on the numbers in the description of the video to jump to his arguments)



He shows "evidence" Against Macro-evolution: 05:25 - 31:07, he tries to show Alleged Evidence for Macro-evolution: 31:08 - 01:08:06, and proof for the age of the Earth and the flood The Age of the Earth and the Flood: 01:08:07 - 01:24:28

The final segment of the documentary is typical "evolution teaches that we're animals" and stuff like that.

[PghPanther]

[Replying to post 23 by Delphi]

What about the little leg bones in the modern whale skeleton?

10% of humans are born with an extra tendon in their upper arms that we share with a Gibbons and other tree dwelling apes.....

....that tendon gives a person a decided advantage at gymnastics and it is no surprise that if a person with that extra tendon is exposed to that sport growing up we find a higher concentration of the genetic anomaly in that sport than any other.....

[PghPanther]

[Replying to post 31 by H.sapiens]

So, it doesn't bother you one bit of they pull the Romans 1:18-21 escape hatch?

That passage is one of the lamest in the Bible for use as defense today because its claims are fashioned by humans centuries before the scientific method and its resultant technical applications of understanding our environment.

It made perfect sense for ignorant Biblical writers to make claims without knowing the first thing about astrophysics, biochemistry and quantum mechanics for starters.......but it is inexcusable for an educated person of today to claim this as a valid defense of their faith and shows either denial or ignorance within those scientific disciplines of what is fact....

That passage might as well say..........because there is a thunderstorm coming it is proof of God as he manifests his presence in judgment of us......because they believed such nonsense then..........

I contend that if you took the Biblical authors and were able to transport them in a time machine to the 21st century and after showing them, letting them experience, and explain/demonstrate everything we know today as a result of scientific discoveries and its applied technologies that they would be ashamed of what their claims were back then and would go on admitting they were clueless about reality ........

I'll bet the theists and apologists who are stuck defending a literal inerrant Biblical world view go to bed at night and when all alone in their thoughts must really struggle at best to continually accept their own dogma they claim belief in.........I know I was one for over 40 years myself before waking up and accepting reality as demonstrated by science for what it is........

[Bonky]

I would like to add, separately, that I hope you see the rather interesting double standard that cultists have in their dealing with science. They never claim science is wrong as it relates to their cell phones, or GPS, or computers, or medicines, or any time they use a plane or a car or a boat to get somewhere. Why? Because it doesn't contradict with their ancient manuscripts. But suddenly you get into the theory of evolution, and science is now some totally inaccurate mass conspiracy, incapable of getting anything right as it relates to the age of the planet or the progression of life.

It's a ludicrous self serving ploy.

Science cannot be both a highly effective and efficient form of investigation into the universe, AND a self-serving conspiracy with the main goal of hiding the truth about a particular god being that just so happens to be the basis of belief for the people claiming foul and evil intentions.

Hi Kenisaw, I'm new to the forum and in fact this is my first post. I'm a former Christian and now just a skeptic who's interested in science and philosophy.
Anyway, the creationist response I got from stating what you state here is the following:

The historical method is different from the operational method; and logically inferior in several aspects – namely 1) the claims themselves can never be subjected to observation, 2) therefore the claims can only be tested indirectly – through comparing the current evidence to the formulated models (i.e. unobserved stories about what might have happened in the past), and 3) since the claims themselves can never be tested through experimentation (only the models can be tested), no legitimate scientific confidence can be attributed to the claims without committing the logical fallacy Affirming the Consequent. Operational science does not suffer these logical weaknesses.

The only thing I get from this is that we can't have "absolute" certainty about radiometric dating perhaps but I have solid confidence in it.

[H.sapiens]

I would like to add, separately, that I hope you see the rather interesting double standard that cultists have in their dealing with science. They never claim science is wrong as it relates to their cell phones, or GPS, or computers, or medicines, or any time they use a plane or a car or a boat to get somewhere. Why? Because it doesn't contradict with their ancient manuscripts. But suddenly you get into the theory of evolution, and science is now some totally inaccurate mass conspiracy, incapable of getting anything right as it relates to the age of the planet or the progression of life.

It's a ludicrous self serving ploy.

Science cannot be both a highly effective and efficient form of investigation into the universe, AND a self-serving conspiracy with the main goal of hiding the truth about a particular god being that just so happens to be the basis of belief for the people claiming foul and evil intentions.

Hi Kenisaw, I'm new to the forum and in fact this is my first post. I'm a former Christian and now just a skeptic who's interested in science and philosophy.
Anyway, the creationist response I got from stating what you state here is the following:

The historical method is different from the operational method; and logically inferior in several aspects – namely 1) the claims themselves can never be subjected to observation, 2) therefore the claims can only be tested indirectly – through comparing the current evidence to the formulated models (i.e. unobserved stories about what might have happened in the past), and 3) since the claims themselves can never be tested through experimentation (only the models can be tested), no legitimate scientific confidence can be attributed to the claims without committing the logical fallacy Affirming the Consequent. Operational science does not suffer these logical weaknesses.

The only thing I get from this is that we can't have "absolute" certainty about radiometric dating perhaps but I have solid confidence in it.

The "historical" vs. "observed" arguments are horse puckey. There are any number of claims that have been made and tested experimentally ... not the least being finding Tiktaalik not to mention the failure to find rabbits in the Precambrian.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 14 by ProLifeSkeptic]

I notice in the video that he cites Jonathan Sarfati, who I believe has a degree in chemistry instead of biology. Would that be a red-flag? I apologize for asking.

Not really. One of my favourite Youtubers is Dr. Phil Mason, a.k.a. Thunderf00t. He has a PhD in Chemistry, having studied food chemistry. However, this does nothing to stop his 'Busted' video series, where he mainly uses physics to disprove various inventions, notably solar roadways and the proposed E.M. drive.

[Kenisaw]

I would like to add, separately, that I hope you see the rather interesting double standard that cultists have in their dealing with science. They never claim science is wrong as it relates to their cell phones, or GPS, or computers, or medicines, or any time they use a plane or a car or a boat to get somewhere. Why? Because it doesn't contradict with their ancient manuscripts. But suddenly you get into the theory of evolution, and science is now some totally inaccurate mass conspiracy, incapable of getting anything right as it relates to the age of the planet or the progression of life.

It's a ludicrous self serving ploy.

Science cannot be both a highly effective and efficient form of investigation into the universe, AND a self-serving conspiracy with the main goal of hiding the truth about a particular god being that just so happens to be the basis of belief for the people claiming foul and evil intentions.

Hi Kenisaw, I'm new to the forum and in fact this is my first post. I'm a former Christian and now just a skeptic who's interested in science and philosophy.
Anyway, the creationist response I got from stating what you state here is the following:

The historical method is different from the operational method; and logically inferior in several aspects – namely 1) the claims themselves can never be subjected to observation, 2) therefore the claims can only be tested indirectly – through comparing the current evidence to the formulated models (i.e. unobserved stories about what might have happened in the past), and 3) since the claims themselves can never be tested through experimentation (only the models can be tested), no legitimate scientific confidence can be attributed to the claims without committing the logical fallacy Affirming the Consequent. Operational science does not suffer these logical weaknesses.

The only thing I get from this is that we can't have "absolute" certainty about radiometric dating perhaps but I have solid confidence in it.

First off it should be noted that nothing in science is considered an "absolute certainty", which you probably well know. But we can certainly have degrees of certainty, and radiometric dating is one of those topics that has a high degree of certainty. Radioactive decay is a non-linear function, and each radioactive isotope of each element in the universe decays at a different rate. There are thousands of different tested samples that contain multiple isotopes in them. Each isotope within a sample dates to the same time frame as the other isotope(s) in that same sample. Over thousands of samples across a huge range of time this is found to be true time and again. It's a slam dunk.

It would take a rather large and complex system of changes in decay rates for these things to still match up today (non-linear mathematics is not forgiving of this idea). Since radioactive decay is related to the strong nuclear force (and that would have to change to change decay rates), literally every single atom in the universe would be affected by these changes. The entire universe would have to be radically different depending on these changes. Is there any evidence of the laws of physics and chemistry changing during the existence of the universe? None whatsoever.

Any believer I've ever met that tries to claim that radiometric dating is unreliable simply doesn't understand the massive problems created by claiming that decay rates can change. It can't possible be true.

Although HS has already answered the "historical" nonsense, I would add that ALL information that our brain perceives is "historical". Sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach earth. Impulses from synapse to synapse in your brain takes a microsecond. There is no information that is instantaneous. None. So technically everything we use as data and evidence is "dated". The whole concept of historical verses operational is ludicrous at it's very core...

[jester32]

What if God evolved? If He did, that would explain why the universe has chaos, pain, and evil. It would also explain why life on earth evolved over billions of years. But it would require the universe to be finite in time and space.

[Kenisaw]

What if God evolved? If He did, that would explain why the universe has chaos, pain, and evil. It would also explain why life on earth evolved over billions of years. But it would require the universe to be finite in time and space.

If a god evolved, it couldn't have created the universe because it would have evolved after the universe existed, right? Which means the god has nothing to do with what the universe has. It also wouldn't explain why life evolved unless it can be shown that all life evolved from a god, which I have never seen evidence for.

The only thing I could agree on is that the universe is finite. No one knows for sure of course, but it makes sense in my mind.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 47 by jester32]

What if God evolved? If He did, that would explain why the universe has chaos, pain, and evil. It would also explain why life on earth evolved over billions of years.

Hi, welcome to the forum.
The biggest reason I reject what you write above is the usage of the word 'evolved'. Evolution is, to put it simply, the process of change in populations. You don't have evolution with a single entity (no matter how many times Ash Ketchum says a single individual Pokemon of his evolves!).
If you want to say God changed, and life evolved, that would be a valid statement, and not a shifting of meaning of a term.

[jester32]

[Replying to post 48 by Kenisaw]

The idea is that God or Goddess evolved from Pure Mind, or absolute blackness. This is supported by the Big Bang Theory. This Oneness was the Source of All. It had no divisions or multiple aspects. It had no before or after at that point. It then evolved according to the rules of consciousness and geometry from the simplest state to ever more complex states. If God had always been perfect, He would have created perfect creations, who had free-will but like Him could not misuse it. Everything would have been given perfect bliss and knowledge of what pain was and how to forever keep it from happening. The existence of pain proves that God was not always all-knowing.