From: "L. Aron Nelson" <ilcunl@hotmail.com>
To: <Mozart533@aol.com>
Subject: Re: Hello.
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 17:55:35 -0600
It is funny that Hovind's excuse is that he cannot type fast. I cannot type at all; I still hunt and peck! As for the Usenet, I am not familiar with it at all. I looked it up on the Internet, and the people who were supposed to explain it could not even explain.
There are three aspects to the internet; Usenet, email, and the World Wide Web. Usenet was the first, and is currently used to trade software, JPEGs, MP3s and the like as well as for purely-text-based discussion groups. There are many ways to access these, but if you don't have either a news reader or a news server, you can at least participate in the discussion part via the Google groups list. Just go to Google.com and click on GROUPS, then search out Talk.Origins. There are much better ways to access Usenet, but that one is the easiest to explain.
I will be honest, as you say you will be. If you prove something is not as I thought it was, than I will concede to your point. I will also try to be concise, and answer every point, as you will.
You are right, we should not need moderators if we both approach this with open minds, and a non-aggressive attitude. I am not suggesting that we not be aggressive with our debate, but I do not like to be aggressive or sarcastic
to people as a person. In other words, I do not think that you are a horrible person just because you believe in evolution, unlike some people I know.
Gosh, thank you. My perspective is that people are they way they are regardless of their beliefs in this area. Religion in no way begets morality, and the lack of religion has nothing to do with whether you choose to love your fellow man or not. Either way, that perspective is independent of your beliefs, whatever they are. However, the fact remains that more people have been harmed in the name of religion than any other excuse, and I doubt that record will ever be broken.
I genuinely believe that Creation is correct, and that is why I am going to attempt to debate you. I think that since I know that God created the earth in 6 days, I can find a way to prove that either evolution is not correct, or that creation is.
1. In point of fact, you don't actually "know" any such thing. Believing and knowing are definitely not the same thing, nor can they be. This is a critical point. Knowledge is dependant upon demonstrable evidence. Without evidence, all you can do is believe. Faith can be misplaced. Beliefs can be wrong and usually are. Knowledge can be demonstrated, measured, and most importantly, tested. Beliefs can't be.
2. Proving any aspect of evolution wrong cannot pave the way for Biblical creationism, which has already been proven wrong on nearly every point. Biblical creationism is not unique either. Without any scientific [evidence-based] Theory of origins, Biblical creationism would *still* be on equal par with Hindu and Taoist forms of creationism as well as a few others. All of which are purely faith-based notions concerning a dogmatic belief in traditional legends that still aren't true no matter how much you force yourself to believe otherwise. Seriously, there is *so* much wrong with the Bible that you would be wise not to mention it in this conversation again.
3. There is no way to salvage any part of creationism and prove that right. Whatever hasn't already been proved wrong can't be proved either way. That's because it is entirely evidence-free. That's what "faith" means. If there was any evidence involved, you wouldn't need faith.
When do you want to start? And how are we supposed to start?
Right now. This will be the 1st of as many as 24 total emails in our quid-pro-quo exchange, excluding outside comments or requests emailed separately.
PS, I am also going to store every correspondence between us in Microsoft Word, so I will have a record of this debate for my future reference, and anybody else's reference if they need or want it.
That's a very good idea. Every such conversation I've ever had has come in handy later. That's why I prefer that they be archived automatically, and that they be accessible on an easily searchable internet resource for all to see. I must also say that after making this challenge for so many years, I'm delighted that someone finally took me up it. This will actually be the 4th time it was accepted, but each of the previous occasions ended with them calling it off in the first reply without addressing even one point, or answering a single question. I have documentation for each of these occasions already in public archives. Hopefully you won't do the same.
Now
In your parody of my article, you made several statements that were in error, and should all be addressed, one being the idea that you somehow showed a flaw in my logic, yet never said what that flaw was. Instead you demonstrated that you have no idea what the twin-nested hierarchy is even while you pretend to refute it. So this is where I think we should begin. Re-read your article and compare each paragraph to my numbered responses.
1. You are composed of minerals. But you are not related to a rock, and no one ever claimed you were, except perhaps for Genesis chapter 2. A rock is a solid state where abiogenesis calls for a liquid.
2. You appear to agree that viruses are not alive. So you admit of complex RNA/DNA proteins that replicate and mutate, yet are not alive. This will be important to remember when you wish to discuss abiogenesis.
3. You failed to distinguish humans from all other eukaryotic life-forms yet you say we were specially-created unrelated to anything else. Have you shown any reason to believe that? Have you shown any reason to believe we are not related to anything else?
4.(a) The "You are a human" paragraph was put in to replace "you are an animal", and in so doing deliberately snipped the definition of what an animal is; a metazoan organism, and our cells are metazoan. So the claim that we are not animals is dead-wrong by definition.
(b) Other animals also have the ability to reason, particularly the other apes, but also dolphins, and a number of other "higher mammals". Some birds have shown profound reasoning skills as well. I personally know a parrot with a functioning grasp of the English language at the level of a 3 year-old child. It even creates composite words when it needs to convey an idea that it doesn't know the proper word for. Other animals, (even much less intelligent ones) also have the ability to love and appreciate, and no animal is as immoral as we are, (plotting the murder of others, etc.) We are not even unique in our adherence to religious notions since other hominids are just as gullible as we are when it comes to being told to believe in supernatural things like angels as a posthumous life-state.
(c) There is no difference in the chemical composition of our cells to exclude us other animalia. By every definition of that word within the confines of biology, we are animals. If you don't believe that, just look it up in a dictionary.
(d) The word "race" means sub-species, and implies biological descent. These classifications are not "only in the mind of man", they are demonstrable. In many cases, they are demonstrable in real time. For example, dachshunds, Shi-Tzus and Pekinese are all sub-species of other dogs, bred by humans with specific intent, (artificial selection). All of them, along with other domestic dogs and dingos, as well as coyotes are all daughter-species of wolves. This is testable, and can be shown to be true no matter what names you choose to ascribe to these groups or how you choose to categorize them. It is not just an arbitrary or artificial notion. This aspect of evolution is already an indisputable point of fact, unless you want to claim that all reality is an illusion.
5. (a) Your treatise of chordates is very confused. The notochord is a precursor to an actual spinal chord both in embryonic development and in evolutionary development as demonstrated by some Cambrian fossil fauna. It either shows an evolutionary pattern, which can be measured and studied, is already well-understood and known to exist, or it could perhaps be the work of some mysterious invisible magic being which no one knows anything about and can't evidence in any way. So we're supposed to believe it exists for literally no reason at all. Not only that, but everything it supposedly does looks exactly like the processes of known natural phenomenon, and the means by which this supposed entity does anything can only be described as pure magic with no reasonable explanation available now, or apparently by any means that will ever be possible. That's what believers claim, but that is not and cannot be an acceptible scientific explanation since it can't help us understand how anything works.
Believers actually insist that these things never be questioned. That's why they're not really scientists. Inquiry is the very first tenet of science, and it requires that we question all assumptions. That's why everything we know is true is referred to as Theory; gravity, heliocentricity, atomic Theory, germ Theory, etc. The word is synonemous with "study" and is used only for those concepts that have already survived every test the greatest minds among us could come up with. Its all a denial of blind faith in your assumptions. That coupled with the peer-review process among other things makes science the antithesis of faith where our study of the natural world is concerned.
Since we are talking scientifically now, and discussing material matters of the natural world, then since we already know a great deal about how evolution works, and some degrees of it are already known to be true for certain, then if you support the notion of this enigmatic master designer, you're going to have to show evidence that such a thing exists as well. Otherwise your assumption is unfounded. You may as well blame everything on elves.
(b) The entire twin-nested hierarchy of cladistic taxonomy stands as evidence that the "gill slits" you mentioned could still be a sort of recapitulation of evolutionary ancestry. Even your own source paragraph supports that according to the comparison of amphibians to amniotic tetrapods and the subtle variance of these clefts. However, current "evolutionist" biologist do not make such arguments, you did. But even if we still did, you haven't proved it wrong just because it isn't "proof" of common ancestry. In this case, proof in the positive sense is unattainable, and if you're arguing from a perspective of faith, proof of any kind wouldn't matter to you anyway.
(c) Most things do *not* have these nerve cords. The only things that do are the relatively few forms that appear to have evolved from Cambrian notochordates like Pikia.
(d) Not that I'm saying this is what is happening, but recapitulation of a phylogeny that is hundreds of millions of years in the making cannot be expressed in a developmental span of only a few months or less unless it is severely compressed, so your last comment here doesn't make any sense. It implies that you might not have any inkling of how evolution works.
6. You certainly have no idea what the evolutionary significance of the spine really is. Allow me to explain; the parent chordate group contains all the craniate groups, one of which contains all the vertebrate groups, one of which contains all the tetrapod groups, one of which contains all the amniote groups, etc. This is exactly what you would expect from any biological lineage. There are no exceptions such as you would expect from a magical creator not bound to produce only clades. Nowhere in the biosphere is there a single being which does not scream of an ancestral trace within all of the clades projected for it simultaneously, yet that is exactly what you would expect if these things were specially created. Somewhere you should find something that didn't fit simply because it didn't have to. But absolutely every last member of all these groups within groups show distinct derived synapomorphies consistent with projected trends in common ancestry, and this is secondarily confirmed at the genetic level. That's why the hierarchy is twin-nested, and that is why it is evidence of evolution *exclusively*! It can't even hint at special creation. This is another critical point that you need to be familiar with, as you have chosen to attack the single strongest evidence for common ancestry, thinking that it was just in the minds of men. Instead, I think you will find this to be more than you, (or anyone else) can contest.
7. (a) You are a tetrapod by *every* definition of that term, not just because you have four limbs, but also because you have a spine and a skull and a metabolic eukaryotic composition which exactly matches all other tetrapods including whales, snakes and amphisbanians which don't have four limbs anymore, but clearly did once according to the fossil record.
(b) There is no such thing as "devolution", and while some vestigial structures may still have some possible application, (like our fingernails for example) not all of them do. For example, the claws in the underdeveloped arms of an emu are completely useless as the animal has no ability to move them. These arms are similar to the arms of tyrannosaurs and a number of other non-avian dinosaurs indicating an ancestral relationship that cannot be taken to permit special creation according to any Biblical description.
(c) Again, commonality in the twin-nested hierarchy is based on derived synapomorphies such as would not be so consistently evident according to special creation, and there still is not the slightest indication of the creator you're pleading for evident anywhere.
8. (a) A mammal isn't just a warm-blooded, milk-producing hair-growing organism, though just having all those traits so consistently implies evolution as well. All mammals (without exception) are also synapsid amniotic tetrapoidal vertebrates with skulls, jaws and spinal chords composed of metazoan eukaryotic cells each according to the clades they descend from and are therefore part of. There are no whales with gills, no monkeys with scales, no hexapoidal vertebrates of any kind, not because God couldn't have made them. Imperceptible beings with magic powers can do anything we imagine they can. The reason these mythic creatures do not exist is because they couldn't have evolved. From manticores to Godsilla, every time men have ever invented imaginary animals for whatever story we wanted to tell, they have immediately violated taxonomy somewhere, so that is what we should expect to see somewhere in nature, if in fact all life was created by a common creator. Even if one pegasus were ever discovered, it would instantly reduce common ancestry to horse feathers, but of course no such exceptions exist, not just among weird monsters but tamer concepts too, like jackalopes for example. They can't exist because they violate evolutionary taxonomy.
(b) More importantly, all mammals are indeed animals, and that includes us.
9. Eutherians are but one of three parent groups among extant [surviving] mammaliforms. But there are (or rather were) a large number of semi-mammals in various families of "mammal-like reptiles" that were also synapsid tetrapoidal vertebrates, etc., just as we are. But they were like under-developed mammalian forms, transitional intermediate groups between synapsid reptiloforms and mammaliforms. Modern monotremes are similar in this respect. These also cannot be accounted for in Biblical terms but do offer profound evidence of evolutionary descent, especially since the extinct groups far outnumber extant ones.
10. You need to go back and read what a primate is again, because there is a lot of significance in that you need to understand.
11. Everything that you said makes you human also applies to every other ape from gibbons through orangutans and chimpanzees as well as all of the extinct hominids including early bi-pedal hominines like the Australopithecines and Paranthropines. Are you saying that siamangs, gorillas and proconsul are all human too? What about Oreopithecus?
12. (a) Nowhere in your entire parody did you provide any indication that humanity should be divided apart from any of the parent groups imposed by evolution Theory. In fact, you reinforced concepts exclusive of evolutionary clades in taxonomy several times.
(b) Nowhere in your entire parody did you implicate any creator entity in any way. You didn't even hint at one. You asserted there should be one but you failed to provide any reason whatsoever to believe that.
DO not cut-and-paste other people's arguments to speak for you. Rest assured I can refute any creationist's treatise you can lob at me. But it isn't fair to make me take on other people's perspectives especially if you yourself don't understand well enough to defend them adequately.
For the moment, I will only say that from the additional material you quoted that Porsche and Volkswagen are similar due to a common designer. But that doesn't explain Chevy, Ford, Peugot, Ferrari, Dodge, Triumph, Isuzu, Honda, or Bugatti, does it? In fact, since the last Lamborghini Countachs were manufactured by Chrysler corp, and the most powerful passenger car on earth is a Bugatti that is now made by Volkswagen, and the fastest motorcycle ever made is a Dodge, then the entire analogy falls apart. That is, unless your brand of creationism is polythiest, and you allow for a host of different designers. It also doesn't help that cars can't reproduce themselves but living things do, and new breeds and species have been documented as a result. That alone destroys the analogy.
Also the degree of genetic similarity does compare to linguistic use, but not in the manner your author implied. Try comparing Spanish to English, Swahili, Hindi and Mandarin. What similarities are there? Now compare Spanish to Portuguese, French and Italian. Now compare all of them to Latin. Based on their degree of similarity, and more than that, the types of similarity involved (derived synapomorphies) was Latin the common ancestor of these four languages or not?
And finally the very subject of the sentence itself, "There are many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications" is not just one flat-out lie, but several at once.
1. There is no paradigm and couldn't be since there is no alternative Theory. Evolution is the *only* option science has, and that includes Christian scientists. There is a much higher ratio of atheists among scientists than any other group of people, but even there they are still outnumbered by theists. Most Christians are evolutionists, and most evolutionists are Christian. It has always been that way. For example, Bob Bakker is one of the world's foremost paleontologists, and is very definitely an evolutionist, yet he is also an active and outspoken Pentecostal preacher who stands opposed to the creationist movement. Like most Christians, (and most other evolutionists) he supports the philosophy of St. Augustine where science is concerned. The faction you follow is on the other side of a widening rift in Christendom, they disregard the wisdom of St. Augustine in favor of the insane ravings of Martin Luther.
All scientists question evolution in a sense. But they question *how* it works, not *if* it does. That question has already been answered. There are admittedly some PhDs out there who believe otherwise, (all for purely religious reasons) but they are a pitiful few, comparatively, and most of them are medical doctors, mathematicians, and such. VERY few of them (almost none) are in fields immediately relevant to biological evolution; paleontology, anthropology, zoology, genetics, etc. And every last one of those who are were already creationists before they ever went to school. And in some cases, (like Jonathan Sarfati IIRC) they took evolutionary courses specifically to improve their credentials in the creationist movement, which (since it is faith-based as opposed to evidence-based) doesn't give a damn what the evidence really shows. They're going to believe what they're going to believe no matter what anyone says. That's no way to find out if you're right or not, or just how accurate you are, but it's a great way to remain wrong, and a good indication that you already are.
No matter what evidence you show them, they'll just say it doesn't prove anything, even when it definitely does. Yet all they have to show is.... well, they don't actually have anything to show. All they can do is plead for the extremely improbable on the sole basis that it remains a remote possibility.
2. The only "philosophical implication" of evolution, (and every other relevant field of study) is that the Bible is wrong. So what? Most Christians know the Bible isn't literal history. It is at best parable, and at worst, a collection of cultural legends, most of them borrowed from elder polythiest religions many centuries before Judaism. Either way, it has no significance either to our origins or our current understanding of the universe, which exceeded the Bible's even before the later books were written.
Most of this is redundant, and we'll be covering it all again anyway. So for your first response, I'll only require that you answer the following two questions.
1. Considering all I have just mentioned, and all I know that I haven't yet stated, why should I believe that any of it implies anything other than the only conclusion it logically seems to; that all living things evolve and have been evolving from successive stages of common ancestry?
2. Why should I believe anything about your position, whatever your exact position is?
From: Mozart533@aol.com
To: ilcunl@hotmail.com
Subject: The Debate
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 23:32:19 -0500
Hi, I have been busy with exams, that is why I have not answered you in a while.
Well, here are my answers as best as I could explain myself:
Answer to question #1.
Well, that is the point of a debate. We will find out whether evolution is what the evidence actually points to. Now, you will think that you know that your side is the correct side, but what if you are wrong? What if all that you have thought about evolution is just not right? Or, what if I am wrong? Well, we, or in this case, I, will find out what is the truth (since I know that you âknowâ that you are right, I will not dispute your belief). I will attempt to prove that evolution is not what the evidence points to.
Answer to question #2.
I have a reason to believe what I believe, and I believe that that reason is a valid argument. Since I believe and follow my belief, then according to my belief I believe that I should try to get as many people to believe my side as possible. It does not matter if my belief is wrong, or that I may be mistaken. If I am wrong, than logically I should be proven wrong by ambient evidence to the contrary of what I believe. If either of us does not convince the other, then either one of us is wrong, or we are both right. Since we both cannot be right at the same time (unless of course âproofâ can be interpreted two different ways), if we are prudent, and amply consider each other's evidence and proof, we should come to a mutual conclusion.
Now, for my questions to you:
1. Why do you think that the Theory of Abrupt Appearance is not a valid theory?
2. What was the initial impetus for a "hypothetical protobiont" to join with another "hypothetical protobiont" and form a symbiotic relationship that evolved and grew more complex? Do they think? Did these extremely simple life forms know that they needed each other? Is there a chemical explanation for this?
