April, 2003
Any opinions or questions regarding either side of this discussion may be addressed to either myself, or more appropriately,
WasDarwinRight.com is a website purporting to question the scientific accuracy of Evolutionary Theory
while claiming that the Bible is infallible, to be literally interpreted, and that universal special creationism in 6 literal days approximately 6,000 years ago is supported by scientific evidence and can be defended on purely scientific grounds.
If you want to challenge them on that, they make the following promise on thier site;
"If you are an evolutionist and think that you have some evidence for the molecules to man theory,
I would be more than happy to set up a public debate on the topic."
So to see just how happy they would be to do a written debate, I wrote an invitation for their Guest book,
where all messages are restricted to 700 characters (with spaces) and usually won't post for about 24 hours, if at all.
Each paragraph represents a separate post. My words are in brown, theirs in blue.
.
================================================================================================
I would like to invite you to a formal debate on the scientific merits of evolution and/or creationism. I am confident that I can prove to your satisfaction that biological evolution is the truest, best explanation there is for the origin of our species,and the only option with evidentiary support. It should be a written debate, so that the claims of either side may be properly researched. I would like the entirety of our exchange posted verbatim on your site as I can address and refute many, (if notall) of the claims made here. If that isn't possible, then I invite you to participate in that debate via the Talk.Origins Usenet group where we'll each be subject to peer-review as well.
L. Aron Nelson (to) would like to invite you to a formal debate as below. I don't know if any of you other guys are interested, but I am afraid I don't have the time.
Best wishes. -Luke Randall
Having been once refused, I wrote again to their Guest book, where my original message had still not appeared.
I'm disappointed that my previous invitation was never posted to your comments column. And I'm disappointed that you make so many claims of the scientific veracity of creationism, and so many misstatements concerning evolution, yet you have declin to a written debate of their merits in public forum. Why is it you don't have time to type a debate at your leisure from the comfort of your own home and for global consumption, but you do have the time to travel to and promote live performs for a more limited audience? That doesn't make sense to me.
I checked the next day to find that both of my posts were on the board, and felt encouraged to continue.
If by "public" debate, you mean a written debate "in public forum", where any erroneous claims made by either side can be properly researched, vindicated if accurate and exposed or conclusively refuted if not, then I'm anxious to get started. Should n email exchange to be posted on the web verbatim and linked to your site? Or should this be done in a Usenet environment? Your choice. If you reply via email, be sure the header doesn't look like spam.
The next several replies were posted to the guest book.
Perhaps we should take a look at the accuracy of talkorigins' persona, since this was the proposed area for a debate that was to encompass accurate claims and whatnot. I will briefly go over several points that exhibit to the reader their partiality in relating and researching the facts pertaining to the creation/evolution debate.
--Kyle Shockley
*****
"{Evolution}goes against the law of BIOGENESIS which states that all living matter must come from living matter." -Ken; talkorigins feedback, May 2002... " There is no such law of biogenesis." -Mark Issac; writer for talkorigins.org, Feedback May 2002... "Thus it was that the studies of microbes by Louis Pasteur, published in 1861, helped to establish the principle of BIOGENESIS, namely, that organisms arise only by the reproduction of other organisms." -Encyclopedia Britannica Online; written by BruceM.Alberts; President, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco. Coauthor of The Molecular Biology of the Cell
--Kyle Shockley
*****
"Castenedolo Man: An official report on these skeletons in 1899 noted that all the fossils from the deposit were impregnated with salt, except the human ones. This implies that they are from relatively recent burials. Collagen tests in 1965 and radiocarbon dating in 1969 confirmed this. (Conrad 1982)" -talkorigins.org.
--Kyle Shockley
*****
Boule and Vallois, in writing on the Castenedolo finds, state; "In 1889, the discovery of a new skeleton was the subject of an official report by Professor Issel, who then observed that the various fossils from this deposit were all impregnated with salt,with the sole exception of the bones." In fact, no mention whatsoever of "salt" was made by either Issel or Ragazzoni. They both had referred to marine incrustations, which were absent from the 1889 find. However, these same marine incrustations WERE found with the four previous skeletons, indicating that they may have very l ikely been contemporaneous with the layer in which they were found in. "All of (the skeletal fragments) were completely covered with and penetrated by the clay and small fragments ofcoral and shells, which removed any suspicion that the bones were those of persons buried in graves, and on the contrary confirmed that fact that their transport by the waves of the sea." (Ragazzoni 1880, p.122)This implies 1.5 to 4 million yrs old
--Kyle Shockley
*****
"Scientists have employed chemical testing and radiometric tests to deny a Pliocene age to the Castenedolo bones. K.P. Oakley (1980, p.40) found the Castenedolo bones had a nitrogen content similar to that of bones from Late Pleistocene and Holocene Italian sites...(but), the degree of nitrogen preservation in bone can vary from site to site, making such comparisons unreliable as age indicators. The Castenedolo bones were found in clay, a substance known to preserve nitrogen-containing bone proteins."
--Kyle Shockley
*****
"Castenedolo bones had a fluorine content that Oakley (1980, p.42) considered relatively high for bones he thought were recent. Oakley explained this discrepancy by positing higher past levels of fluorine in the Castenedolo groundwater. But this was simply guesswork. The Castenedolo bones also had an unexpected high concentration of uranium, consistent with great age."
--Kyle Shockley
*****
A carbon 14 test yielded an age of 958 years for some of the Castenedolo bones. But,...the methods employed are now considered unreliable and the bones themselves were very likely contaminated with recent carbon, causing the test to yield a falsely youngage." "Forbidden Archaeology" (M.A. Cremo, R.L. Thompson, Bhaktivedanta Institute, San Diego; 1993, Govardhan Hill Publishing) p.422-432
--Kyle Shockley
*****
According to Ragazzoni (1880, p.123); "The stratum of blue clay (Astian layer), which is over 1 meter (3 feet) thick, has preserved its uniform stratification, and does not show any sign of disturbance. In accordance with the judgment of the excavator himself, who is not preoccupied with any preconceived ideas, the skeleton was very likely deposited in a kind of marine mud and not buried at a later time, for in this case one would have been able to detect traces of the overlying yellow sand and the iron-red clay called feretto, which forms the top part of the hill, and which by successive floodings has washed down and covered the lower formations of conglomerate and sand that cover the shelly Subappenine blue clays."
--Kyle Shockley
*****
R.A.S. Macalister commented in his work, "Textbook of European Archaeology" (1921), "...examination of the bones and their setting by Issel of Geneva revealed the fact that the strata were full of marine deposits, and that everything solid within them, except the human bones, shewed marine incrustations." What is true of Issel's observations of the 1889 discovery cannot be said of Ragazzoni's, nor Sergi's, reports on the earlier four discoveries, found undisturbed in the Astian clay. They wentngths to report on their oetons WERE found incrusted with both the blue marine clay of the stratum, as well as pieces of shells and coral (Ragazzoni, 1880, pp.120, 122; Sergi, 1884, pp.311, 312). Again, these findings would make these earlier discoveriescontemporaneous with the layer in which they were found.
--Kyle Shockley
*****
Creationism Implies Racism? talkorigins: by Richard Trott and Jim Lippard: The authors seemed to have missed the point that ALL are considered under a curse. They also missed this quote by Darwin: "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes..... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will thenbe wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." -Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man", 2nded. (New York: A.L. Burt Co., 1874), page 178
--Kyle Shockley
*****
This is, by far, not an exhaustive listing of the content of talkorigins in contrast to the recorded facts. And indeed, the opinions and research of the individual authors for that site must ultimately take personal responsibility for their results in their writing based upon their research methodology. But, I do hold the site in general responsible for holding such a castigating attitude towards anything that savors of creationism, while at the same time not being careful (nor checking) just what exactlythey publish as a rebuttal against it. I conclude that talkorigins is anything but neutral, and needs to exercise more caution in what they publish and endorse.
--Kyle Shockley
