"Debating Xianity" website thread on evolution

[Boots]

This is an 80 page, 800 post thread on ToE:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20468

Toward the end (P76), a theist named Ozgirl starts really getting into it, posting all kinds of facts/interpretations on specific findings that refute ToE (she claims).  My eyes started to cross because it is NOT my area of expertise, and I don't even know where I"d start researching some of this stuff--or even if, were I to research it, I'd understand any of it!!

any scientists in the crowd, I'm eager to see if you have anything to add to this.

[Traveler]

Oh my. She certainly seems, er, interesting. I don't have the expertise or time to refute her, much less read 80 pages to catch up, but I'd say she's simply a nutter. I think someone on here had a great article that explained evolution really well. Don't know that it would help, and I'm dashed if I can remember who posted it or where it is.

Good luck staying sane. 

[Garja]

I haven't headed over there yet, but here is a great website http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html for pretty much all arguments for creationism.  It refutes essentially all of them.

[Quesi]

I took a little glance at her arguments, and got a bit of a headache.

I am certainly not a scientist, but from a quick scan of her arguments this is what it looked like to me.

She is uncomfortable with the scientific process.  She does not like it when someone looks at some evidence, comes up with a hypothesis, and then, upon further examination of evidence, the hypothesis is disproven.  She seems to believe that all of science is hogwash, based on the fact that not every hypothesis is supported by evidence. 

KNOWING TRUTH is much more comfortable than exploring, hypothesizing, finding errors, revising your opinions, delving further, passing your findings on to subsequent generations who will find even more flaws and engage in even more revisions. 

So she prefers to KNOW TRUTH. 

But I am very interested in what some of our resident biologists have to say on the topic. 

[wright]

The first few pages, with several people patiently trying to educate HaLi, don't inspire me with hope about the prospects of convincing Ozgirl some 80 pages later. I'm afraid Traveler and Quesi have it right, and the deniers on that thread have too much invested in being deniers of evolution (and science in general, though they probably don't see it that way).

An interesting exchange nontheless, in that I'm learning a bit more about evolution myself. Thanks, Boots!

[Samothec]

I think Quesi hit the nail on the head - Ozgirl wants certainty. Although her passion for trying to rip apart the "evos" speaks to some sort of anger issues also - possibly misdirected?

From something she wrote, I had an epiphany. Bold mine.

The algorithms that evolutionary researchers use are based on what they think and is tied to a fossil record that they think is this or that, based on faith alone.

I finally understand why theists use this phrase and think this way. To theists "based on faith alone" means not based on facts. And they do not sufficiently understand science to realize that it is an ongoing accumulation of knowledge, theories (explanations), and hypotheses (ideas to explore). Since it is ongoing, part of it does use estimations – sometimes even questimations – until more facts are available.

So, even to theists, faith is the opposite of fact. And this thinking is proven every time they claim evolution or atheism is a religion; they don't see either as factual so it must be faith.

[ParkingPlaces]

It is funny how the unknowns in science bug the heck out of theists but the unknowns of religion are reassuring, or something like that.

When you have few or no standards regarding proof, anything you dislike can fail to meet those standards easily. Theists are used to making stuff up the agree or disagree with. Dissing fossils is a cinch.

The consistency of the fossil record zooms right over their heads. Tell a paleontologist the age of an unexplored fossil field and he or she can tell you what you will find and what you won't find. All a theist has to do is go into a fossil field that is defined by geologists as being 20-40 million years old and find a tyrannosaurus rex and evolution is suddenly in big trouble. But that can't happen.

Creationist theists just don't like facts though. Too frickin' inconvenient.

[Garja]

It is important when you are a Christian, particularly of the young earth creationist variety, that you not let little inconvenient things like "fact" get in the way of your "faith".

[Cyberia]

What it's like arguing with a creationist

[Samothec]

Cyberia, thank you for the video.

Boots, thank you. And I think Ozgirl would blow a gasket if she saw the video Cyberia posted above.   

[Illuminatus99]

HaLi8993 seems to have a severe learning disability.

[none]

This is an 80 page, 800 post thread on ToE:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20468

Toward the end (P76), a theist named Ozgirl starts really getting into it, posting all kinds of facts/interpretations on specific findings that refute ToE (she claims).  My eyes started to cross because it is NOT my area of expertise, and I don't even know where I"d start researching some of this stuff--or even if, were I to research it, I'd understand any of it!!

any scientists in the crowd, I'm eager to see if you have anything to add to this.

I'll have to peer at the data provided by the alien-reptile Ozgirl before I qualify my self as a scientist.