russ_watters said:
Frankly, it's not that you aren't communicating your objections properly, it's just that your objections are just plain wrong/irrelevant.
You can usually tell how someone is going to debate you when they start out saying you are “just plain wrong,” and don’t bother to explain how. “I’m right and you are wrong” is about all you managed to say throughout this entire post.
russ_watters said:
At it's most basic, you are arguing that science is not science.
Show me where I said or even implied that. I am arguing science is science, but that in a couple of areas scientism devotees are exaggerating the evidence they have in order to convince the public that science is capable of answering the most important ontological questions about our universe. I have nothing bad to say about science that is only science.
russ_watters said:
But while you may think you understand the theory of evolution, you don't. Heck, even if you do understand it well for a layman, you certainly can't expect to understand it as well as a biologist. Case-in-point:
russ_watters said:
speciation, just like the example you cited, is a breeze to achieve. But how do you conclude from that something as high functioning as a liver could come about through simple adaptation? . . . The standard answer is, given hundreds of millions of years of gradual changes . . . However, how do you explain the huge numbers of new organs/organisms developed in the 5 to 10 million years of the Cambrian explosion?
Well, can't you answer that? [rhetorical: no point in actually going over the whole theory right here, just know that there
is an answer and if you want it, you can find it.]
This is an example of the condescending thuggery I’ve complained about. Thanks for supporting my point! To insist that no one is allowed to challenge claims unless one is an expert (or in a power position) is how tyrants typically argue.
And here you give yourself away “Well, can't you answer that?. . . just know that there
is an answer and if you want it, you can find it.” Why should I want to find a Darwinist answer? I don’t give a damn if Darwinist evolution theory is correct or not. If it is, then fine, if it isn’t, then that’s fine too.
See, it is you who is the “believer,” not me, because it is only those
pre-committed to scientism who are determined to stick some mechanistic explanation in the gaps whether they make sense or not. Where's that objectivity that is supposed to be a high ideal of science?
russ_watters said:
It appears to me that based on your lack of knowledge of the explanation, you assume there is no explanation. And based on that, you conclude that science is a faith.
You just so certain you are right that you don’t even have to respond to my arguments. I’d bet anything you haven’t even reflected on my points, and that is why the best you can do is condescend rather than make your case with logic and evidence,
and in response to my arguments.
russ_watters said:
With your line of questioning above, you'll always find questions to which you don't know the answers. You may get an answer that leads you to another question. But after a while, if you stop and turn around, you may find yourself buried 10 steps deep into some very limited issues with the theory. And that massive body of evidence behind you - not the pinhole in front of you - is why scientists accept the theory of evolution.
Look, why don’t you just show me where I’ve not understood. It isn’t that difficult to study evolution, nothing has mystified me yet. You haven’t cited one solitary example where I’ve misunderstood or under-understood. Here’s pages and pages of me sticking my neck out criticizing evolution theory:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=93364&page=4
Surely you should be able to find mistakes I’ve made if I am so uninformed of the great mysteries of evolution which you seem to think only a minority are so brilliant they can understand, and the rest of us MUST be real morons if we dare question anything about it.
russ_watters said:
Just because you don't know what the reason is, doesn't mean that scientists don't have a reason. Science isn't some grand global conspiracy/cult with which to extract research dollars or destroy religion. Have a little faith (pun intended) in your fellow man.
Oh, you mean bow to self-proclaimed geniuses like good little sheep? Don’t dare to ask for evidence, logic . . .? You are being paternalistic, which might be a good thing in the military, but around here I thought we were encouraging people to think.
There is nothing wrong in believing science may not have all the answers to how life came about, and if you continue to treat skeptics like they are stupid, you are going to do nothing but hurt the cause of science. Besides, it isn’t just non-scientism devotees who have concerns about evolution. Here’s a science believer I quoted in the above linked thread being, I thought, fair about some of the problems (edited so it would fit in one post):
http://www.angelfire.com/tn/tifni/misc/cambrianexplosion.html
“Half a billion years ago, during this "evolutionary big bang," life evolved at rates of over twenty times the Precambrian rate. From approximately 535 million years ago to 520 million years ago, nearly all the animal phyla in existence today (and many that are no longer with us), save the Bryozoa, first appeared in the fossil record. While this does not necessarily entail that all animal phyla came into existence during the Cambrian explosion – some scientists believe that the "explosion" was a change in climate that produced conditions favorable for the fossilization of preexisting phyla – the evidence for a period of astounding diversification of life is overwhelming. The animals that made their abrupt appearance during the Cambrian explosion are ancestors of virtually all the creatures that swim, fly, and crawl today.
Until recently, scientists believed that phyla evolved over a ridiculously short period of 75 million years. In 1993, a group of researchers from M.I.T. and Harvard did some zircon dating in Siberia, then took the Cambrian period, chopped it in half, and stomped down the evolutionary boom to the first 5 to 10 million years. ‘We now know how fast fast is,’ grinned Samuel Bowring of M.I.T. in an interview with
Time magazine. ‘And what I like to ask my biologist friends is, How fast can evolution get before they start feeling uncomfortable?
The possible causes of the Cambrian explosion are as numerous and whimsical as the animals it created. . . . The Cambrian Explosion leaves us humans, 500 million years later, with the most puzzling of questions. The Cambrian rocks of the geologic column contain a proliferation of complex life; however, no trace of predecessors to such complex and sometimes offbeat organisms is to be found in Precambrian rocks. For example, the evolution of vertebrate fish from invertebrate animals, which wore exoskeletons and left no traces of turning their exoskeletons inside out to produce vertebrae, remains a gaping hole in the evolutionary timeline. Thus the Cambrian explosion raises questions about Darwin’s grand theory of evolution.
Creationists exploit the Cambrian explosion as evidence that the Biblical record of creation is true. Then God said, ‘Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures.’ So appeared the abundant fish and marine life that appeared during the Cambrian explosion. These ‘stationary or slow-moving’ creatures were the first to be overwhelmed by the mud and silt of the Deluge, and they were fossilized to be discovered half a billion years later.
The existence of such a plethora of conflicting hypotheses, all of which are viable, some of which seem fantastic, may instill a sense of doubt in the reader as to whether any of them correctly explain the mystery of the Cambrian explosion. In my opinion, a propitious combination of true polar wander, predation, and an increase in the number of Hox genes provides the most satisfactory and comprehensive explanation. I tend to doubt the creationism hypothesis not because of a prodigious lack of faith, but rather because the creationists seem to embrace it too heartily and ignore the conspicuous incongruities between Genesis and current ‘scientific’ beliefs. However, the true polar wander hypothesis is relatively new and has been challenged in
Science, where it was first published. The unstoppable advance of science may eventually reach a firm conclusion as to what triggered the Cambrian explosion. For now we must continue to wonder about and wonder at this remarkable and baffling proliferation of life.”
. . . Sorry, I think I just need to cry some more.
umani Generis: Encyclical of Pope Pius XII 
