Hovind Sentencing: Whiny Git Update
The Pensacola News Journal has
another article
about Kent Hovind’s sentencing. This one points out the contrast between Hovind’s behavior before the trial:
In a recording of one of the telephone conversations played in court Friday, Hovind said the Internal Revenue Service, presiding judge and prosecutor broke the law by going after him, and there were things he could do “to make their lives miserable.”
Comparing himself to a buffalo in a lion fight, Hovind’s voice was heard saying “As long as I have some horns, I’m going to swing. As long as I have some hoofs, I’m going to kick. As long as I have some teeth, I’m going to fight. The lion’s going to know he’s been in a fight.”
and after spending two months in jail:
Before his sentencing, a tearful Kent Hovind compared his situation to that of the lion and the mouse in Aesop’s Fables.
“I feel like the mouse,” Hovind told U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers. “I stand here in great fear of the power of this court. Your decision can destroy my life, my ministry and my grandchildren.”
Note, also, the subtle difference between Hovindland and the real world:
“I am not a tax protester and never have been,” Kent Hovind told Rodgers. “The laws are just fine. It is just that some are enforcing laws that are not there.”
The recordings, compiled by the IRS from phone conversations from jail, showed Kent Hovind was trying to hide assets from the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Heldmyer said.
See? Just because he hid money from the government and didn’t pay payroll taxes, doesn’t mean he’s a tax protester. And besides, he’s a fine upright moral citizen:
“My father is not a man who is in love with money. He’s in love with God,” son Eric Hovind said. “He is a man who loves this country and loves others.”
Hovind’s supporters don’t get it either. Apparently a man is either 100% good or 100% evil. They can’t imagine that Hovind might be a liar and a crook, and also be kind to puppy dogs.
Oh, and the judge didn’t let the bit about loving his country slip by:
When handing down the sentence, Rodgers admonished those present the trial “is not and has never been about religion.”
…Furthermore, Rodgers contended Kent Hovind had failed his fellow citizens and the men and women of the military — who fight to defend his freedoms — by refusing to pay taxes.
So let’s not have too much bogus sympathy for Hovind. He brought this on himself. He had every chance in the world to comply with the law, to make restitution before the matter came to trial, to plea-bargain. Heck, he didn’t even mount a defense, and tried to play tough throughout. Well, it looks like he picked a fight with the wrong federal agency. Maybe he’ll learn something in Federal PMITA Prison, but I wouldn’t count on it.
I think it’s probably a very good idea to try walking before you can run. For example, going forth and demolishing all of quantum mechanics without first mastering algebra is not likely to yield results.
If you want to trace back the references, you can always head over to the talkorigins.org side. It may take some serious effort before you have the background to read the original papers, though.
Have you read Darwin’s research?
That’s how any quest for knowledge works. Bad solutions are replaced with better ones. Are you suggesting that if the first answer is wrong, we should just give up and walk away?
Really? You’ve never tried to solve a problem with a group of people? You’ve never iterated to a solution? The way you separate truth from errors is to carefully examine the data and the conclusions. There’s no “easy” path in which the first guy who gives it a shot gets 100% of the answers dead on. Scientists put in generations of work on these problems and examine mountains of data to make sense of it. This is a feature, not a bug.
Forgive me, but this sounds like something that you just made up. To me, this question boils down to what is easier to accept:
1) Thousands of scientists over a century and a half have different ideas about incomplete data, and that our understanding has evolved over time.
2) Thousands of scientists over a century and a half are conspiring to hide the truth, even though replacing evolutionary theory would be the key to professional fame and fortune.
What astounds me about these discussions is the arrogance of somebody who has clearly not even scratched the surface of the material declaring that thousands of hardworking experts in their fields are either stupid or dishonest. What are you basing this on? I know it probably sounds like I’m trying to squelch dissent, but dissent is really only worth anything at all if it’s informed.
It seems to me that a better way to do this is to start with one evolution factoid that you find difficult to believe. Make it small in scope. Dig into it and come to a resolution. Figure out how we know that fact. Follow it all the way back to the beginning until you’re satisfied one way or the other. Don’t try to swallow the whole thing at once. Since, IIRC, you’re a young-earth creationist, you might not even want to start with evolution. You may want to start with the age of the universe. What is our evidence for the age of the Earth? Find one test that you think is problematic and become an expert. Otherwise, you’re going to go on saying things like, “My understanding of the supporting data is shaky and incomplete, and from that perspective, everything looks weird and confusing, so this whole thing must be a farce.” That’s not the way to go.
In the spirit of our isochron discussion earlier, I recommend starting with this page and trying to get a handle on why the first graph on that page produces such a straight line. What does that line mean, and how do we know? How would it be explained if prevailing theory is wrong? This is an isolated topic that doesn’t require delving into biology. It’s mathematically straightforward and based on uncontroversial physics.
It’s not a cheap shot (although it was sort of a joke), it illustrates the point of “why does god need a starship?”. Your god should not need the website to see who is acting like Christ and who isn’t. He should be able to see in their hearts as well as see each and every deed they have done or will do in the life. Just as an illustration you make it seem like your god is sitting somewhere saying “That Chad is not being Christ like again, he just called someone a retard on a blog discussion”. Wouldn’t you think he would have known that already by the countless times you have thought about putting a fist through the person face who just cut you off or any other non-Christ like thought you have had? The point is that you try to shoehorn your god into every situation but in the process you belittle him. It’s though you don’t really believe in an omniscient and omnipotent god.
Just what Andrew said, it’s pretty much shorthand for Christian. I don’t mind typing Christian at all but I usually get a typo and have to redo it and with Xian I rarely get one. Before I become an atheist I thought of Xian as a derogatory term as well. Now I know it’s just a simpler way to say Christian.
Your comment here proves you have no understanding of the way God works. I don’t know exactly how He works. I only know what is revealed. Like in the scripture I quoted. That shows that even something as simple as commenting in blogs can be a tool used by God to correct His children. I find it amazing you cannot see this. You don’t even know it but in your attacks on the believers that come here you are unwittingly allowing yourself to be a tool for a God you don’t even believe in, to strengthen His children. That is where the irony is.
Chad,
I went through the Berkley site (because I have never been there) and it’s just about as laymen as you can get while keeping it to a reasonable length. Really should check it out, it’s not that long and it gives you a really good idea of what almost everyone here is trying to tell you.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_02
The Talkorigins FAQ (http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html) is more dry to read but it should answer almost every one of your preliminary doubts you might have.
Let me get this straight, you don’t understand how your god works, but you presume to tell me that I don’t understand either??? Doesn’t that seem a bit arrogant and maybe even prideful?
But is interpreted several different ways.
Yet again you move the goal posts. You also keep thinking that because someone disagrees with you, that it’s an “attack on a believer”. It’s not an attack on a believer, it’s not even an attack. It’s a disagreement I have with you (Chad) because I don’t think that you are making sense with what you claim to believe. You may think that god needs to use a website for his purposes, but I don’t think an all powerful god should or would need a human device to do so. If you think that any response besides “god can use everything for good” and “praise to be him” is an attack you have a highly distorted outlook on life. I find it interesting as Dawkins says something similar in his book the God Delusion. He asks why is it OK to question someone’s political or even economical views but as soon as you disagree with them with religiously, it becomes an attack. Are your faith and beliefs so weak and fragile as to be threatened anytime anyone disagrees with them?
Chad:
In addition to what Troublesome Frog said:
Are you talking about the Berkeley evolution site? The folks at talkorigins.org tend to be pretty good about providing references in their FAQs.
There are two questions to ask, here: 1) What do scientists believe? and 2) How do they know it’s true? Both are important questions, because creationists often misrepresent scientists’ claims (when they say evolution is a theory of chance, or when they ask “has anyone ever seen a dog give birth to a cat?”). Obviously, you have to get the first question out of the way first: it doesn’t make sense to ask how scientists know that a cow gave birth to a whale, when that’s not at all what they claim.
Berkeley’s evolution site is good at answering the “what do scientists claim?” question, since it has lots of pictures and is written in non-technical language for the layman. Think of it as a freshman course on evolution. Talkorigins.org is better at answering the “how do they know?” question, and is more of a sophomore/junior level course.
If nothing else, Google Is Your Friend. But as Troublesome Frog said, it might be better to start out with an overview of what scientists claim before going on to the details.
You’re talking about this page, right?
And no, I don’t think they’re talking about Darwin. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, Charles Darwin did not come up with the idea of evolution. By the time he came along, it was already established that life on earth has changed over time. People like Lamarck had already proposed explanations for this. What Darwin and Wallace did was to come with the idea of natural selection to explain why populations evolve. (And the reason we remember Darwin instead of Wallace is mostly because he published first.)
I repeat: by the 1850s, it was already known that populations evolve, but no one knew why. Darwin and Wallace supplied the “why”.
I don’t understand why you think this is a bad thing. If Darwin was wrong about something, he was wrong. He wasn’t some guru who delivered The Truth™ on gold plates. He was just a human who came up with some good ideas, but also made some mistakes. Let’s keep the good ideas and discard the bad ones.
Look at Isaac Newton, for instance: his work on mechanics and optics, to say nothing of calculus, was brilliant, and is still used today because it works. But his work on astrology and numerology is largely forgotten or ignored today, because it was garbage.
As Troublesome Frog said, have you never tried to solve a problem as a group?
If one scientist’s data is bad, that’ll show up when someone tries to reproduce their experiment. That’s the whole point of demanding reproducibility. If one scientist says that he mixed two parts baking soda and one part gin and created gold, what does that mean? He could be lying. He could have mistaken gin sludge for gold. He could have mistaken flour for baking soda. He could have gotten the proportions wrong. He could have omitted a crucial ingredient, or forgotten to say that this only works on alternate Tuesdays. Or he may have found the secret formula for creating gold out of common ingredients.
Reproducibility means that other people have to be able to reproduce the first experimenter’s results before they’re accepted as valid. If he forgot an ingredient, or got the wrong recipe, other people won’t be able to make gold by following his instructions, and it’ll be written off as a mistake.
In fact, science itself is not a series of pronouncements. Rather, it’s a method for getting at the truth. Over the centuries, we’ve discovered a lot of ways people can be wrong or mistaken. That’s why there are things like double-blind experiments, peer review, reproducibility, and so forth. Those are all there to prevent certain types of errors.
IMHO this applies much more to religion than to science. Greta Christina had an excellent article about it recently.
Chad says:
So? It’s not at all uncommon in human entertainment for fictional characters to be written to deliver an insight more successfully than legions of real humans are capable of doing. Doesn’t mean the character physically exists (see: Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Old Man Trouble, unicorns. et.al.).
So you don’t know how He works. You only have a guess. Based upon what some other human has told you is right and proper. From a chapter in a book they author of which cannot be reliably identified. For some inexplicable reason you are willing to dispense with any and all necessary and healthy skepticism when it comes to what you personally believe to be true while at the same time you’re attempting to set an evidentiary bar to an insurmountable height based on even less personal knowledge and understanding while surrounded with the answers to all of your queries.
Why the double standard?
Chad:
We can solve a lot of the arguing above by simply addressing your original claim. You wrote:
You’ve proposed a hypothesis, one that’s either true or false. So how can we tell?
For starters, how can a third party, who hasn’t read any of the discussions here, tell whether someone is wheat or chaff? Also, how can someone who has only read this thread tell who is wheat and who is chaff? Be specific, and try to avoid subjective criteria.
As I understand it, what you’re claiming is: someone who knows Fez or nikka or Terry in real life or from other fora can tell whether that person is wheat or chaff. That you can read this thread and apply some set of criteria to independently come to a decision as to whether Fez or nikka or Terry is wheat or chaff. And that if you compare notes with the other experimenter, you’ll both independently arrive at the same result.
Is this correct so far? If so, what are the criteria you and the other experimenter use to arrive at your respective conclusions? Be explicit and as objective as possible. The idea is that anyone else should be able to follow your instructions and get the same results as you did.
There’s also the claim that this site helps Christ. That is, that Christ finds it easier to use your criteria for distinguishing wheat from chaff, than to use some other method. How can we find out whether this is true?
How do you propose to eliminate alternate hypotheses, for instance that this site actually helps Horus or Krishna or the FSM? Or that it doesn’t help any deity at all?
Since Fez asked,
Chad, have you made any progress in figuring out what a Hindu would have to do to convince you that he’s right and you’re wrong?
To Arensb, Fez and Menes:
You all really have a knack for missing the point of something and tearing apart the smallest aspects of a comment made that can be typically understood by any Christian. I guess that is my fault. 🙁 We (Christians) forget sometimes that when we speak to non-believers that they won’t understand spiritual things. Again, this is my fault. 🙁 I think the reason I have been so willing to visit the sites mentioned is because of the advice given through the Apostle Paul: “to the jew I became a Jew, to the genile, a gentile…” The whole idea being simply “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” kind of thing. This is hard for most Christians as we are accustomed to being able to rebuke, exhort, correct, edify, etc. when the other person understand some basic fundamental spiritual things. For this I apologize.
As far as my “hypothesis” as you call it. Well it was just more of an observation without much more intended than to toss a new thought out there.
Menes you still don’t get it…I never said God “NEED”‘s anything to accomplish His will but rather, USES, the base things to make foolish the wise.
I don’t think in any way it can be assumed that my statement that I don’t understand fully how God works as being prideful at all…unless Darwin changed the definition without me knowing. (Don’t waste your time with Webster’s I know what pride is)
Arensb: you can’t use naturalism (basically the tenants of the modern scientific method) to define, prove or disprove supernatural things. So I won’t even go down that route.
As far as the berkely site and talkorigins I will continue to consult them for references to the Evolution Religion in the same way I would look up in the Koran or other scriptures to speak to someone about those religions. Thank you for pointing me to the sources of your religious texts.
I would respond to more of your comments but I am growing weary of getting dragged into pointless rebuttals of things misunderstood on both sides. Honestly I have no idea how you all do it so much without going…crazy. Unless….ah nvrmd.
Peace out. God loves you whether you like it or not.
Arensb, A little, My best answer would be to show me a long history of fullfilled prophecy like the Bible does. Then since hinduism isn’t a typically evangelical religion I would need some miracles to prove that their god or god’s are actually powerful enough to care for my soul.
But thats about it.
Peace out.
Uh oh, looks like Flabber/Chad has “logiced” himself into a corner again, with the not unsurprising result of him getting defensive, angry, and insulting again.
Chad:
(Aside: the spam filter has started eating your comments again. I think I’ve recovered all of them all, but if any disappear again, let me know.)
Mind if I drill down here a bit? Can you pick one or two good prophecies from the bible and:
Tell us what the prophecy refers to.Why you think that the prophecy refers to that particular event/person/etc. and not another.When was the prophecy written down? When did the event happen?How you know that the prophecy was written before the event.How you know that the prophecy wasn’t altered during or after the event.
You may want to read the Prophecy page at Iron Chariots, because if our hypothetical Hindu were to present you with examples of prophecies in the Vedas, you’d ask the same questions.
Arensb: If you are curious you may want to start here
Oh, no, not the twatwaffle from bible.ca. I’ve exchanged words with him before, and wasn’t impressed.
Case in point: the very first “prophecy” listed is
Golly gee whillikers! Can you imagine that? They must have had magic clairvoyant powers to say that the messiah would be born not of a hippopotamus, not of a nebula, but of a woman!
Secondly, Genesis 3:15 as a prophecy? You have got to be kidding me.
Color me unimpressed.
Does Genesis 2:17 count as a prophecy? Because according to Gen. 5:5, it failed (actually, the failure is apparent throughout chapters 4).
Chad Says:
In which case Chad perhaps you could start here.
And you sir have a knack of changing what your point is and ignoring just about everything that you can’t answer to. If it is true that your comments can typically be understood by any Xian, why are there are so many different sects of Xianity? Your statement of separating the wheat from the chaff is not only used by Xians. What you were trying to say was that this website would show who the weak Xians were from the strong ones. Then you changed it say that this website would help strengthen Xians faith. Yes it could be used for both, however, you keep moving the goalposts to make it fit your agenda. You shoehorn one part of your argument to make yourself valid, but forget that you just unhinged another part of your argument. You then shoehorn that part and unhinge another and the cycle repeats itself over and over.
As far as “Spiritual things” go and how unbelievers won’t understand them it sure sounds like “these are adult things” as if you were telling a child they wouldn’t understand. You seem to be missing the point when I was trying to tell you that I use to be a Xian. I can’t speak for anyone else on this point but I can revert back into “Christian mode” and see where you are coming from. I also think everyone else here has some basic understanding of “spiritual things” and some are even former Xians themselves. So don’t go down that road of “Spiritual meat and milk” because it’s a huge cop-out. Similar to saying that you wouldn’t understand evolution because you aren’t smart enough so all my points are going to be lost on you. One is more insulting than other, but both equate to a lack of understanding that is required to progress further in the understanding of the oppositions arguments.
Of course it’s not prideful to say that you don’t understand, however it is arrogant of you to say that I don’t understand your god either. The pride comes in when you think you know you understand so much better than I do and surely would not know any less.
And your true colors show through. You weren’t really wanting the information to learn. You were hoping to find a source of information that you could quote mine and/or make your straw man arguments from. I can just see it now “Look at these stupid evolutionists they say that according to these homologies a cat has things in common with an ant!”. Having cherry picked what supports your views are, rather than reading all of the text and attempting to truly understand it. If you expect someone to read through the bible in it’s entirety and not just pick out what they can use again Xianity, you shouldn’t do the same yourself.
In the series of books about Harry Potter, there is a prophecy “…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.” That prophecy is fulfilled in the last book when Harry slays Voldemort. No, I am not mocking the bible, but making a point. It would be rather silly of JK Rowling to add a prophecy in the book and then not fulfill it. The same goes for anyone who wrote or had the power to change things in the bible.
These prophecies are concerning one of Xianity’s most core foundations. They are all about Jesus. How about some prophecies about the world after Jesus to present times? There are prophecies in the bible about Jesus and about the end times. Which those end time prophecies aren’t interpreted the same way by all Xians. Some view it as the end of the world and some view as lessons to the church. Either way there is very little (if you allow your interpretation to be broad) or no prophecy about any events between the time of Jesus and modern times. If the world is indeed finite don’t you think a prophetic time line would be more in order than a cryptic description of when the end times would be? Yes yes, we don’t know spiritual things and we don’t know how your god works. I can tell how charlatan’s and snake oil salesman work though. They keep things vague and give many self fulfilling references (oh yes on page 32 of the manual it proves this snake oil works). Nostradamus did it as well as many other prophets. The authors of the Bible just takes it one step further and write in when it’s fulfilled, because you know, no one ever writes anything down that’s not true.
My question is, how are your prophecies any more believable (or valid) than the Hindu prophecies that Fez provided the link to?
Is that how you do all of your learning? What in the world do you do for a living?
arensb:
Whether you believe in creation or evolution you still have to filter the evidence to fit you viewpoint.
The Bible’s account of Creation fits the evidence found by science with far less missing links than does the Theory of Evolution.
Statistically the possibility of evolution taking place over any amount of time is so impossible as to be unfathomable.
Evolution Science does not refute Creation Science because creation science is bad science it does it because it does not want there to be a God.
Apparently you don’t want there to be a God either. If that is the case you are losing more than you know There is ZERO evidence to prove evolution.
If you were to walk into a room that contained a chair, a piece of paper, a pencil, a lamp, PC, unless you are hopelessly ignorant would have no problem believing that even the simplest of these items were designed and created by someone. And, no one would find it peculiar that you believed so.
What I would find peculiar is that you would be able to believe that the most complex thing in the room aka YOU were somehow the product of random time and chance. Filter the evidence however you want but logic and reason as well as all of creation scream God made you!
Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
From the OA: “This entry was posted on Saturday, January 20th, 2007
And then comes:
barelybreathin Says:
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:20 pm
barelybreathin? Open your mouth a bit more.
barelybreathin:
Y’know, I keep hearing this argument that creationists and evolutionists look at the same evidence, but interpret it differently. And yet, I have yet to meet a creationist who’ll look at anything but a small, carefully selected portion of the evidence.
For instance, how does creationism explain the nested hierarchies found in nature? How does it explain the degraded centromeres in human chromosome 2, or the telomeres in the middle? Just for starters.
Oh, and “it’s a result of sin” doesn’t count as an explanation. Not without a bunch of explicit steps between “sin” and “centromere where there shouldn’t be one”.
Wow. How great is our God that he would allow this. He created us and loves us. He gives us free-will and this is what we choose to do with it.
It all comes down to faith. Faith as tiny as a mustard seed is sufficient enough.
I believe what God inspired to be written and would never doubt Him.
I hope the best for each of you. After all, he loves those who take him at his word and, get this, even those who deny it completely. <3
Kay:
Allow what? Hovind to go to jail? No gods required, just a functioning legal system.
In other words, you don’t have any good reasons for what you believe. Thanks for clearing that up.
Kay Says:
Yes, truly, because he also gives us this:
http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/kidsnews/assets/news_images/haiti-earthquake-95777946-lg.jpg
and this:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/03/01/article-1254171-0881CB2C000005DC-86_634x515.jpg
and this:
http://cdn.wn.com/ph/img/56/b8/c81eebc0e5e85ac076b6c1a414aa-grande.jpg
Got a real funny way of showing it. Feel the love as it presses the last breath out of your collapsed chest!
arensb:
No, it wasn’t a comment on the original Hovind discussion. It was more a comment on the blasphemy.
As for the faith I possess, according to your rebuttal, this means I must not also possess knowledge? I do have MANY reasons for what I believe and ALL good ones. If you are truly interested in them I would be more than happy to point you in the direction to finding them on your own. Though, I am afraid you could not care less. Please, correct me if I am wrong on that point.
fez:
I don’t find the way God shows his love for us to be funny at all. Matthew 27: 32-66
Also, He doesn’t cause things such as your examples to happen as you seem to believe. He is a God of free will, doesn’t MAKE us do anything. He does allow suffering to occur, but does not find happiness in our hurt. He allows times of despair so that we may cling to Him.
Kay sez:
So you are a deist and feel that the god of creation no longer takes an active role, nor even discernible interest, in it’s creation?
Kay:
Earlier, you wrote that “it all comes down to faith”.
So which is it? Good reasons, or faith?
And while I’m always open to evidence for the existence of any gods, I have serious doubts. I’ve seen a lot of apologetics in my time, and none of them hold water.
It’s not just me: if you believe that Jesus is divine, then two thirds of the planet disagrees with you. That is, whatever your reasons are they aren’t good enough to convince the four billion people who don’t share your faith. If you also believe that the pope isn’t Jesus’ representative on earth, then 5/6ths of the planet disagree with you.
Before presenting your arguments, you may want to do yourself a favor and check out the Iron Chariots Wiki to see if they’ve already been addressed.
Having said this, if you have a killer argument that somehow failed to become common knowledge, feel free to present it.
Back to the Hovind issue.
If any of you listened to Hovind’s debates and lectures, you will have noticed that he makes this claim: Origins are not in the realm of science since they are not observable.
Christians admit that their belief in Creation is based on faith in the Holy Bible. The very meaning of faith is “believing in something you have not experienced with the five senses.” Hebrews 11:3 says, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
Evolutionists, too, believe in something they have never observed with any of the five senses, but claim it is science. While there are many examples of evolution within species (microevolution), there are and never have been any provable instances of evolution between the species (macroevolution). If evolution were true, there should not be a missing link to find, there should be millions of missing links throughout the fossil record.
However, it is not a crime to subscribe to young earth creationism or old earth evolution or any mixture of the two–that is what America is all about. What is sad is that both sides of the argument would rather resort to name calling than sit down and examine the facts and talk about the issues of science with mutual esteem and compassion.
It is amazing how close-minded the people are who continually tell me to be more open-minded. On both sides of the issue, most people only want me to be more open-minded about their particular belief or philosophy! We should all be open-minded to theories that have become laws after repeated tests, reevaluations, and restatements.
Drewsky:
…which I have. Heck, I’ve even gone to see him perform live.
Are you seriously equating belief in electrons with belief in gods and unicorns?
Consider the variety of things people believe on faith: that there is a god; that there are multiple gods; that people go to hell when they die; that people are reincarnated after they die; that Mohammed visited heaven on a flying horse; that worshiping Jesus will get you to heaven; that worshiping Jesus will send you to hell; that Jesus is the messiah; that Jesus is not the messiah; and so on, and so forth.
The obvious conclusion is that faith is a very unreliable way of figuring out what’s true and what isn’t.
Because there’s supporting evidence. See The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins, Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne, 29 Evidences for Macroevolution, or just about any textbook that covers evolution.
Maybe I’m reading too much into the phrase “between the species”, but it seems that you think that there’s a fixed number of species, and that when a population evolves, it turns into some existing species.
If so, you’re wrong. New species appear. Oh, and this has been observed, both in the lab and in the wild.
I have. Have you? You clearly don’t know what the theory of evolution is, or what the evidence in favor of it is. Are you willing to visit your local library and read some books on evolution, written by evolutionary biologists?
Okay, what repeated tests has creationism withstood?
I have seen Kent Hovind live. I have also spoken with him.
Actually, it is interesting that you brought up “believing in electrons.” Hebrews 11:3 is very likely talking about electrons when the writer says that, even though no one had ever seen electrons, the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. So the author of Hebrews was using belief in electrons (though the name had not been invented yet) as an illustration of faith. You are correct!
You stated that evolutionists only believe in their theory because of supporting evidence. I don’t believe that to be an accurate statement. I think it has been demonstrated many times that the theory of evolution is believed in spite of evidence opposing it just as much as it is because of evidence supporting it. The belief in evolution precedes the interpretation of all evidence with an evolutionary slant. Just as does a belief in creationism or even intelligent design. No matter how fair minded a person claims to be, he cannot help but interpret evidence according to what he already believes to be true.
There have been many “hopeful” finds that seemed to support evolution since it became a widespread belief. One by one those “missing links” turned out to be hoaxes, species that still exist, etc….
What I mean by evolution between species, perhaps could be called evolution between genera, families, orders, classes, phyla, or even kingdoms. For evolution to explain the origin of life, there would have to have been evolution between every kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, and subspecies. Since those classifications have been made by scientists based on observed characteristic traits, our understanding of just what a species or genus or family is is muteable. Some species (genera, etc…) have been reclassified, you know.
My question is not if one type of evening primrose has ever become another type which can not longer breed with the original type. My question is if anyone has ever observed the spontaneous generation of life (necessary for evolution) repeatedly? Has anyone even observed the transformation from inanimate to animate? Has anyone observed the evolution of a non-mammal into a mammal? Those types of evolution have never been demonstrated. I know that you will say that Creation has never been observed or demonstrated. That is, again, correct. No Creationist that I know of has ever even implied that it has. They have, however, found evidence supporting intelligent design and/or Creationism within the fossil record, through archeological digs, and even in outer space. They do not have evidence for everything they believe, just as you do not, but to deny that any exists is foolish.
Does merely stating that evolution on a grand scale cancel my right to have an opinion? I have heard several theories of evolution. One scientist proposed that perhaps slugs carried crystals on their backs that evolved into life. Another well-known atheistic evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, speculated that maybe aliens seeded our planet. He said that this idea had intriguing possibilities.
Notice, I did not attack your ignorance of my beliefs to try to justify and prove them! I have not assumed you are a total idiot because you don’t agree with something I have said, though obviously, you have done the same to me. My specialty is not evolution–that’s true. Does that mean that unless someone knows as many different theories as you do, he doesn’t have the right to state his opinion or cast doubt on yours? If that is so, you have no business doing so either, because there are thousands of scientists on both sides of the argument who are better educated on the theories of evolution than you.
Are you willing to read thousands of pages of theological literature, beginning with the Holy Bible, before you debunk all religious beliefs out of hand? I have read books about and by atheists, spiritualist, evolutionists, cults, occultists, Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, Protestant Christianity. I have also read science fiction and non-fiction by Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, etc…. I am not an expert on any of these subjects except perhaps Christian Theology and the Bible, but I have a fair working knowledge of them. I may not use the correct term that is in vogue today, but if you don’t know what the hypostatic union is, it doesn’t mean that you don’t know that Christians claim that Jesus was God.
My last statement was intended to remind everyone that for something to be called a law, it has to have been tested and proven. I have never made use of the term of the “Law of Creation.” I have only spoken of a belief in creation. I don’t even call it a theory or a hypothesis. Either you believe in it or you don’t. I think the same should go for evolution (the origin of the species by means of natural selection, the origin of life). Again, science should not deal with origins, that is the realm of religion!
Drewsky:
Um, no. Hebrews 11:3 says:
This is a vague statement about invisible things. One can make it apply to anything, including pixies that hide whenever you look at them. You’re just taking an existing passage and shoehorning it into your preferred interpretation.
That’s because you’re not familiar with the evidence. How, for instance, do you explain the fact that living beings fit into a set of nested hierarchies if populations haven’t evolved? How do you explain the fact that human chromosome 2 looks as though chimpanzee chromosomes 2a and 2b have been fused together, complete with leftover telomeres and centromeres at just the right spots? How do you explain the fact that closely-related species exhibit similar patterns of retroviral infections?
Do yourself a favor and learn—from evolutionary biologists, not from creationists—what evolution is and what the evidence is.
Again, you sound as if you think there’s a fixed number of species that every living thing has to fit into. If so, you’re wrong.
Rather, living beings have a family tree, just like yours and mine, but writ large. If you look at your genealogical tree, you might go up a generation (your parents and your siblings) or two (to cover your grandparents and cousins as well) and call that your immediate family. You could go up a few more generations and call that your clan. Go up a few more generations and call that your tribe, or something.
Biologists do something similar, but on a vastly larger scale: they go up a few thousand generations from you and me, and call that our species. Up a few more thousand generations and call that our genus, and so on.
So yeah, the boundaries of kingdoms, classes, orders, etc. are mutable. That’s because they’re just markers on the tree of life, made for human convenience. Complaining that they shift around is like complaining if cartographers redraw the boundary between the Atlantic ocean and the Caribbean sea: the water is what the water is, and how humans decide to delimit it doesn’t affect the reality of it.
You’re confusing evolution (change in living populations) with abiogenesis (the origin of life). The two are independent of each other. If you could demonstrate that Yahweh or Brahma or the FSM created the first living thing 3.4 billion years ago, it wouldn’t affect the theory of evolution, which has to do with what happens once you have living beings, not how they appeared.
Once again, you demonstrate that you don’t understand how evolution works. If, say, a population of insects evolved into something that looked an awful lot like bats, they would not be bats. They would still and forever be classified as Insectae, although biologists would come up with a new name for the new bat-like creatures.
Likewise, if penguins evolve to look for all the world like dolphins, they won’t be dolphins. They’ll still be pengins. They’ll still be birds. But if they’re sufficiently different from present-day penguins, their branch of the family tree of life will get a new name.
I haven’t called you an idiot. You are, however, ignorant. There’s a big difference between stupidity and ignorance: ignorance is easily cured by learning.
And that’s what I’ve been urging you to do: go learn something about what you’re criticizing. There’s any number of excellent books by evolutionary biologists (the people who study this stuff day in and day out). I’ve given you some titles, above. Go to your public library and see if they can recommend anything.
You keep repeating the usual mistakes that creationists make, and proving your ignorance over and over.
You may also want to work on your critical thinking skills: the fact that you can defend Kent Hovind shows that you don’t recognize a logical fallacy when an avalanche of them hits you on the head. Then again, maybe that’s a prerequisite for a theologian.
And here you show that you don’t know what “theory” and “law” mean in science. A law is a description of some aspect of reality, like f = Gm1m2/d2, which describes how gravity affects bodies. When you hear “theory”, on the other hand, think “explanation”. A law does not become a theory.
Now go learn something. Please.
arensb said:
On that topic: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100517152530.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
Note especially the application of the phylogenetic visualization – by understanding the evolutionary development and relationships between bacteria suspected of sharing a common ancestor scientists gain the capacity to potentially develop protections from entire classes of infectious sources, not just the current bug du jour.
Kent Hovind did a lot of good in this world. I’ve met him personally and he is a very genuine, kind and sincere man that loves God and cares about people. Shame on those who dedicate whole segments of their life to insult, ridicuule, demonize and mock Kent Hovind. The only thing he’s guilty of is presenting evidence and theory contrary to what’s politically correct and popular in leftist academia where I can see some of you received your indoctrination, woops, education. He’s also guilty of breaking laws that DO NOT EXIST! I also love how the judge accused him of doing the military injustice by not paying taxes. Anyone with half a brain knows that federal income tax goes straight to the fraudulent and private owned federal reserve that has been fleecing America for 100 years. I pray for all of the willingly ignorant to wake up. And I pray for comfort for Kent Hovind and his family.
Yeah those darn leftist academians! They’re obviously too stupid to overcome the leftist bias of reality! They think they’re all smart with their multiple lines of evidentiary support for the facts they offer! REAL AMURICANS have the freedom to make up their own facts!