Atheist diary at the GWT

[Gerr]

It's interesting how the ignorant label is put on those who believe in creation and intelligent and enlightened for those who believe in human speculation.

[Igakusei]

It's interesting how the ignorant label is put on those who believe in creation and intelligent and enlightened for those who believe in human speculation.

Ignorance isn't an insult, and it's also not simply a subjective 'label' that I throw at you to discredit you.

Ignorant. Adj. Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular: "ignorant of astronomy".

You've demonstrated a profound disinterest in even learning the basics of the reasons why virtually every biologist in the world accepts evolution as the only plausible explanation for the diversity of life. This makes you, categorically and completely objectively, ignorant about evolution.

Don't pretend I'm just name-calling in lieu of making actual arguments. That's your game, not mine.

[Gerr]

Sorry, I just don't have the time to spend time reading a whole book that you are presenting as your evidence. Maybe I should give you links to creationist articles?

[Igakusei]

Sorry, I just don't have the time to spend time reading a whole book that you are presenting as your evidence. Maybe I should give you links to creationist articles?

There's a reason that the fundamental basics of evolutionary theory are taught over an entire semester at universities. If I thought you had the remotest sense of curiosity regarding this, I'd happily spend the time debunking your articles for you.

[BobRyan]

Isaac Asimov admits that the evolutionist storytelling requires a "vast DECREASE in entropy" at the level of "planet earth" - piling up over 100's of thousands of years -- no matter the 2nd law of thermodynamics - standing in direct opposition.

I sorta like Isaac.

in Christ,

Bob

[BobRyan]

Wow, you apparently have no idea how ignorant that sounds.

Not sure how that keeps working out for them as their "solution" whenever arguments for evolutionism run aground.

in Christ,

Bob

[BobRyan]

At the risk of getting this thread back on topic -

The initial post was not about Igakusei's ability to fill his post with invectives - but more about the long view - the real heart of the matter.

Since CARDW has several threads discussing the atheist POV vs the Gospel. Here is an interesting scenario.

The atheist stands at the Great White Throne in Rev 20 and writes in his diary.

Dear Diary -

1. Just found out that God is real and really did create the world in 7 days -- oops!

2. Just found out that God made laws for the entire universe and the penalty for rebellion was said to be the 2nd death.... oops!

3. Just found out that Adam and Eve were created sinless - chose to rebel against God's Law and so mankind was doomed to the 2nd death since they were the only two people on the planet...oops!

4. Just found out that Jesus Christ really was the Son of God and came to save mankind.... oops!

dear diary - I now realize that if the beginning concepts were all true even though I doubted and disbelieved them - there is the strongest likelihood that the end of the Bible is all true as well.... big OOPS!

[Igakusei]

Post #499279

[Gerr]

ig•no•rant \ˈig-n(ə-)rənt\ adjective

14th century

1 a : destitute of knowledge or education 〈an ignorant society〉 also : lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified 〈parents ignorant of modern mathematics〉

b : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence 〈ignorant errors〉

Merriam-Webster, I. (2003). Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary. (Eleventh ed.). Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, Inc.

[Gerr]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Archaeological Forgeries

There is no fossil evidence to support the "ape-man" image, which is unceasingly promulgated by the media and evolutionist academic circles. With brushes in their hands, evolutionists produce imaginary creatures, nevertheless, the fact that these drawings correspond to no matching fossils constitutes a serious problem for them. Despite the fact that no complete "transitional form" fossil has ever been found, the theory of evolution is taught more than ever in classrooms around the world. We keep finding more and more huge burial sites of dinosaurs, which are supposedly 65 million years old, yet we cannot find a single skeleton of a half man, half ape, pre-human being. Such fossils should stand a much better chance of being preserved, since they would only be maybe tens of thousands of years old, not millions as with the dinosaurs (in the evolutionist's timeline). Now why do you suppose this is? Maybe simply because evolution never happened? If evolution were true, we would find at least thousands of skeletons of the "transitional" skeletons shown in the evolutionist drawing below. Now if I were a believer in evolution, I would need to seriously question my faith in the absence of any such skeletons.

But since there aren't any such skeletons, one of the interesting methods evolutionists employ to overcome this problem is to "produce" the fossils they cannot find.

Evolutionists present much of their finds as if they were compelling and factual explanations to human evolution. In fact, they base their conclusions on mere speculation and often the flimsiest of 'finds'. Many discoveries of supposed hominids consist of only a mouth fragment, a leg bone, a hip bone, or a knee joint. On this alone, they have considered it to be a hominid. They even name it, reconstruct what it looked like, and present it to the public as a fact. Some of these finds have turned out to be those of a pig, donkey, or the result of a hoax.

Piltdown Man, which may be the biggest scandal in the history of science, is a typical example of this method.

Piltdown Man

In 1912, a well-known doctor and amateur paleoanthropologist named Charles Dawson came out with the assertion that he had found a jawbone and a cranial fragment in a pit in Piltdown, England. Even though the jawbone was more ape-like, the teeth and the skull were like a man's. These specimens were labelled the "Piltdown man". Alleged to be 500,000 years old, they were displayed as an absolute proof of human evolution in several museums. For more than 40 years, many scientific articles were written on "Piltdown man", many interpretations and drawings were made, and the fossil was presented as important evidence for human evolution. No fewer than 500 doctoral theses were written on the subject. While visiting the British Museum in 1921, leading American paleoanthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn said "We have to be reminded over and over again that Nature is full of paradoxes" and proclaimed Piltdown "a discovery of transcendent importance to the prehistory of man.

In 1949, Kenneth Oakley from the British Museum's Paleontology Department, attempted to use "fluorine testing", a new test used for determining the date of fossils. A trial was made on the fossil of the Piltdown man. The result was astonishing. During the test, it was realised that the jawbone of Piltdown Man did not contain any fluorine. This indicated that it had remained buried no more than a few years. The skull, which contained only a small amount of fluorine, showed that it was not older than a few thousand years old.

It was determined that the teeth in the jawbone belonging to an orangutan, had been worn down artificially and that the "primitive" tools discovered with the fossils were simple imitations that had been sharpened with steel implements.65 In the detailed analysis completed by Joseph Weiner, this forgery was revealed to the public in 1953. The skull belonged to a 500-year-old man, and the jaw bone belonged to a recently deceased ape! The teeth had been specially arranged in a particular way and added to the jaw, and the molar surfaces were filed in order to resemble those of a man. Then all these pieces were stained with potassium dichromate to give them an old appearance. These stains began to disappear when dipped in acid. Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark, who was in the team that uncovered the forgery, could not hide his astonishment at this situation and said: "The evidences of artificial abrasion immediately sprang to the eye. Indeed so obvious did they seem it may well be asked-how was it that they had escaped notice before?"66 In the wake of all this, "Piltdown man" was hurriedly removed from the British Museum where it had been displayed for more than 40 years.

Nebraska Man

In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of the American Museum of Natural History, declared that he had found a fossil molar tooth belonging to the Pliocene period in western Nebraska near Snake Brook. This tooth allegedly bore common characteristics of both man and ape. An extensive scientific debate began surrounding this fossil, which came to be called "Nebraska man", in which some interpreted this tooth as belonging to Pithecanthropus erectus, while others claimed it was closer to human beings. Nebraska man was also immediately given a "scientific name", Hesperopithecus haroldcooki.

Many authorities gave Osborn their support. Based on this single tooth, reconstructions of the Nebraska man's head and body were drawn. Moreover, Nebraska man was even pictured along with his wife and children, as a whole family in a natural setting.

All of these scenarios were developed from just one tooth. Evolutionist circles placed such faith in this "ghost man" that when a researcher named William Bryan opposed these biased conclusions relying on a single tooth, he was harshly criticised.

In 1927, other parts of the skeleton were also found. According to these newly discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor to an ape. It was realised that it belonged to an extinct species of wild American pig called Prosthennops. William Gregory entitled the article published in Science in which he announced the truth, "Hesperopithecus: Apparently Not an ape Nor a man. Then all the drawings of Hesperopithecus haroldcooki and his "family" were hurriedly removed from evolutionary literature.

Ota Benga

After Darwin advanced the claim with his book The Descent of Man that man evolved from ape-like living beings, he started to seek fossils to support this contention. However, some evolutionists believed that "half-man half-ape" creatures were to be found not only in the fossil record, but also alive in various parts of the world. In the early 20th century, these pursuits for "living transitional links" led to unfortunate incidents, one of the cruellest of which is the story of a Pygmy by the name of Ota Benga.

Ota Benga was captured in 1904 by an evolutionist researcher in the Congo. In his own tongue, his name meant "friend". He had a wife and two children. Chained and caged like an animal, he was taken to the USA where evolutionist scientists displayed him to the public in the St Louis World Fair along with other ape species and introduced him as "the closest transitional link to man". Two years later, they took him to the Bronx Zoo in New York and there they exhibited him under the denomination of "ancient ancestors of man" along with a few chimpanzees, a gorilla named Dinah, and an orang-utan called Dohung. Dr William T. Hornaday, the zoo's evolutionist director gave long speeches on how proud he was to have this exceptional "transitional form" in his zoo and treated caged Ota Benga as if he were an ordinary animal. Unable to bear the treatment he was subjected to, Ota Benga eventually committed suicide.68

Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Ota Benga... These scandals demonstrate that evolutionist scientists do not hesitate to employ any kind of unscientific method to prove their theory. Bearing this point in mind, when we look at the other so-called evidence of the "human evolution" myth, we confront a similar situation. Here there are a fictional story and an army of volunteers ready to try everything to verify this story.

Java Man - Pekin Man

Fossils discovered on the islands of Java in 1891 and 1892 were given the name Java Man (Pithecanthropus erectus). Fossils discovered near Peking (Beijing) in 1923-1927 were given the name Pekin Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis). In 1939, however, two experts, Ralph von Koenigswald and Franz Weidenreich, revealed that both were actually normal human beings. And Ernst Mayr from Harvard University had classified both as human in 1944.

Neanderthal Man

After the first specimens were discovered in the Neander Valley in 1856, evolutionists suggested that Neanderthals were primitive ape-men. Subsequent archaeological discoveries, however, revealed that there was no scientific basis to that claim. Erik Trinkhaus, an expert on the subject of the Neanderthals and also an evolutionist, has admitted that, “Detailed comparisons of Neanderthal skeletal remains with those of modern humans have shown that there is nothing in Neanderthal anatomy that conclusively indicates locomotor, manipulative, intellectual, or linguistic abilities inferior to those of modern humans.”

In addition, the size of the Neanderthal Man skull—200 cubic centimeters greater than that of present-day humans—reveals the invalidity of the claim that it was an intermediate form between humans and apes.

The Taung Child

A fossil skull discovered by Raymond Dart in South Africa in 1924 was initially depicted as a supposed ancestor of man. However, contemporary evolutionists can no longer maintain that it represents such an ancestor—because it subsequently transpired that the skull belonged to a young gorilla! The famous anatomist Bernard Wood stated that this fossil constitutes no evidence in favor of evolution in an article published in New Scientist magazine.

Ramapithecus

A partial jawbone, consisting of two parts, was discovered by G.E. Lewis in India in the 1930s. Based on these two jaw bone fragments, claimed to be 14 million years old, evolutionists reconstructed Ramapithecus’s family and supposed natural habitat. For fifty years, the fossil was portrayed as an ancestor of Man but following the results of a 1981 anatomical comparison with a baboon skeleton, evolutionists were forced to quietly set it aside.

Australopithecines

Australopithecines are a group of extinct apes closely related to modern chimpanzees and orangutans. Although many evolutionists use the remains of these extinct apes to try to prove human evolution, the weight of scientific evidence indicates clearly that australopithecines, such as Ardipithecus (ARDI) and Australopithecus Afarensis (LUCY), were only primeval apes and not the evolutionary ancestors of humankind.

Lucy

This fossil, discovered in Africa in 1974, was widely esteemed by evolutionists and was the subject of some of the most intensive speculation. Recently however, it has been revealed that Lucy (A. afarensis) had an anatomy ideally suited to climbing trees and was no different from other apes we are familiar with. The French scientific journal Science et Vie covered the story in 1999 under the headline “Adieu, Lucy.” One study, performed in 2000, discovered a locking system in Lucy’s forearms enabling it to walk using the knuckles, in the same way as modern-day chimps.

In a recent study, Tel Aviv University anthropologists determined that Lucy’s lower jaw bone is some kind of gorilla jaw bone. Other parts of the skeleton are just like the bones of knuckle-dragging, tree-climbing gorillas. Yet Lucy has been Evolutionism's poster child. Very creatively designed sculptures of Lucy appear in tax-funded museums, and these sculptures are hoaxes, not following the obvious ape-like bone structures, but rather dishonestly presenting Lucy as if she had human-like bone structures. This is typical Evolutionary flim-flam. Evolutionists fool themselves first because of their confirmation bias. Everything looks like part of the evolutionary dream, because or Evolutionism's presupposition.

As a result, the evolutionary researchers concluded that Lucy should no longer be considered man’s direct ancestor. As is typically the case in the field of human evolution, a single bone structure overturns years of grossly exaggerated claims. In the face of all these findings, many evolutionist experts declared that Lucy could not have been a forerunner of man.

See creation.com/no-more-love-for-lucy for more info.

The fragmentary nature of most

specimens means that

reconstructions often have to

be largely speculative, i.e. guesswork, leaving free reign for evolutionary bias.

Ardi

The Ardi specimen is just another example of fragmentary evidence that's based on reconstructions wishful-thinking, hyperbole, and science-fiction without a demonstrative mechanism of mutational advance all the while ignoring evolution's splintered family tree and biological-genetic boundaries. Due to lack of phylogeny, evolutionists continue to make frantic attempts to justify their failing hypothesis by submitting random press releases with imaginative fraudulent sketches of "alleged" primate to human links and links between other completely different organisms to an unsuspecting public. With their own imagination and a few disconnected scattered bone fragments, evolutionists expect the public to believe that these archaeologists understand how this creature walked (straight legged), what its diet consisted of (without evidence), how such great changes "must have happened" toward the development of humans and chimpanzees while other animal species that existed in Ardi's day are still alive today with little to no change. No wonder the mass public around the world laughs at Evolutionists and really do not take them seriously anymore.

These are the actual Ardi bones found.

"The research team have suggested that even if Ardi is not on the direct evolutionary line in terms of human origins, the fossilized skeleton will definitely yield new insights into the evolution of the earliest ancestors of mankind and how we evolved from the common ancestor we share with chimps, bonobos, gorillas and other higher primates."

Translation: "We know this isn't a human ancestor, but we're exited anyway because we believe in evolution."

[Tom Wetmore]

Originally Posted By: Igakusei

Wow, you really just have no idea how ignorant you sound.

Our atheist contributors (or at least that one) seem to get a lot of lee way in the 'insult others' department.

Not sure how that keeps working out for them as their "solution" whenever arguments for evolutionism run aground.

in Christ,

Bob

Compare to the OP. You opened this door. It would seem the whole premise of this topic is to be insulting to atheists. Perhaps reacting that it all sounds rather ignorant just reflects back the tone you set.

[CoAspen]

...and I thought no one would notice.

(hate when a thread goes horribly wrong)

[Igakusei]

Here's a picture of what many scientists agree human evolution most probably looked like:

Now let's run through your list.

Piltdown man was discovered to be a hoax and discredited by evolutionary biologists, not creationists. Also worth noting is that there were many scientists who never accepted piltdown man for a variety of reasons. Also worth noting is that it was discarded precisely because we had discovered so many human fossils that it became clear that piltdown man didn't fit into the branching tree of human evolution anywhere. So this pretty much immediately discredits all the claims that we haven't found any fossils. We've found enough to reconstruct fairly detailed trees. So back to Mr. Piltdown, you have one rogue guy who fabricates data, and it is discovered and exposed by other evolutionary scientists. Really fits the picture of a conspiracy to promote evolution by any means necessary, doesn't it?

Nebraska man. This section of your article is really bad. Someone hasn't done their research. Osborn wasn't sure if the tooth was human or some other kind of ape, and other scientists expressed skepticism that it was even a primate. The pictures were done by non-scientists for a popular publication, and clearly labeled as "highly imaginative." So it was dubious to begin with, highly criticized, exposed as nonsense, and quickly discarded. I don't know why creationists keep bringing this up, since it's actually a pretty good example of how science sorts the good data from the bad.

Ota Benga is a sad example of racism and inequality, and has nothing to do with evolutionary biology. Using it here is an appeal to emotion, trying to draw a parallel between "Darwinism" and social evil. Notice how in your version of the story it's "evolution scientists" capturing and displaying him specifically to garner support for their theory? Obvious lie is obvious. Did you really even read this page before you posted it?

Java man and Peking man are both members of Homo erectus. (see graph above), not Homo sapiens. One of the entertaining observations to come out of the fact that creationists absolutely have to classify all fossils as either fully ape or fully human is that they cannot agree which are fully ape and which are fully human.

Neanderthal man. Your article seems to make the claim that neanderthals fit within the realm of human variation, so therefore they were just modern humans.

Neanderthals existed recently enough that we can extract DNA from their remains, and sequencing has revealed that they lie completely outside the range of human genetic variation. There may have been a very small amount of crossover (they were likely still genetically compatible, at least occasionally), but it was never significant as the graph above clearly demonstrates. They expanded to much of europe around 40,000 years ago, but were displaced and wiped out by modern humans when our ancestors expanded out of Africa much later. The last of them probably died approximately 24,000 years ago. We have substantial fossil evidence of this.

Taung Child. This was a member of the same species as Lucy, further down your list. Not a gorilla.

Ramapithecus This is sort of true, if twisted and sensationalized.

Australopithecines No, no, no!.

Your article references a "weight" of scientific evidence, but neglects to provide it. Please provide it.

Lucy. See above. Better yet, read some of the literature yourself. These guys were bipedal, and even most Creationists admit that.

Ardi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardi

Look at that graph at the top of the post. Say we found an Asian fossil of H. ergaster, that was more complete than other fossils we've found. We know it's not a direct ancestor, but we can still learn things about our ancestry from it because it's a very close cousin to a direct ancestor. Do you see how this sentiment is either misunderstood or simply misrepresented by their snarky "translation" at the bottom?

Notice how many of these they left out of their list? Blatant cherry picking, and they can't even get most of ones they did pick out correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils

Okay, your turn. Go through some of those lists I posted earlier and explain how they make just as much or more sense on your thousands-of-years timeline.

[fccool]

Quote:

I still don't doubt that a skilled enough person could trick someone into believing anything.

Of course, that's the case. That's why it's important to re-evaluate your beliefs and where they come from.

My point was though if you can actually trick yourself into believing something that's not true. We certainly can, but it's a lot more difficult to do so when the evidence is looking right at you.

[Gerr]

When Hoyle looked at a watch, he saw a watchmaker.

When Paley got on a 747, he saw Boeing the planemaker.

I wonder what's below the graph?

[Igakusei]

When Hoyle looked at a watch, he saw a watchmaker.

When Paley got on a 747, he saw Boeing the planemaker.

I wonder what's below the graph?

http://www.amazon.com/Human-Evolutionary-Biology-Michael-Muehlenbein/dp/052170510X

Read and find out. I have a PDF copy of this, if you want. Are you going to reply to any of my points/questions or are you going to keep letting other people do your thinking for you?

[fccool]

And what happened when they looked at God? Did they see a God-maker? You see, it explains nothing.

[Gerr]

And what happened when they looked at God? Did they see a God-maker? You see, it explains nothing.

In which case, we are back to what I stated in one of my posts - neither evolution nor creation can be proved by scientific experimentation. Both of them are worldviews that are taken by faith. The God of creation claims to have been forever. I don't recall any evolutionists claiming that the universe and life have always been here.

[Gerr]

http://www.amazon.com/Human-Evolutionary-Biology-Michael-Muehlenbein/dp/052170510X

Read and find out. I have a PDF copy of this, if you want. Are you going to reply to any of my points/questions or are you going to keep letting other people do your thinking for you?

I'm rather getting tired of your insults and consdescending attitude. Did you come up with these ideas on your own or did

somebody else tell you?

[Igakusei]

Originally Posted By: Igakusei

http://www.amazon.com/Human-Evolutionary-Biology-Michael-Muehlenbein/dp/052170510X

Read and find out. I have a PDF copy of this, if you want. Are you going to reply to any of my points/questions or are you going to keep letting other people do your thinking for you?

I'm rather getting tired of your insults and consdescending attitude. Did you come up with these ideas on your own or did

somebody else tell you?

To understand what your posts and articles look like to me, I'll link some articles that probably engender a similar reaction in you:

http://www.naturalnews.com/032484_vaccines_immunity.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/030928_fluoride_mental_retardation.html

If you want to keep making ignorant claims and asking pompous questions in the expectation that they can't be answered despite most of them having been answered over a hundred years ago, don't act all defensive when I call you out on it. I would have a much friendlier and respectful attitude if you were more interested in filling the gaps in your knowledge than in maintaining that your ignorance (still not an insult, even with your MW definition) is just as valid as the knowledge of 150 years of scientific progress.

[BobRyan]

Originally Posted By: Igakusei

To Gerry -- Wow, you apparently have no idea how ignorant that sounds.

Not sure how that keeps working out for them as their "solution" whenever arguments for evolutionism run aground.

[BobRyan]

And what happened when they looked at God? Did they see a God-maker? You see, it explains nothing.

[Gerr]

If I can't have a conversation without insults with you, then I have nothing further to say to you.

[Igakusei]

If I can't have a conversation without insults with you, then I have nothing further to say to you.

If you think calling ignorance what it is is insulting, then I guess we may have to go our separate ways. I'm not going to give in and say that your opinion is just as valid as mine simply because neither can be proven 100%

1. Probably the most-tested theory in science; a theory that has only grown stronger through over 150 years of scientific rigor. Some of the strongest evidence for evolution now comes from genetics, a field that hadn't even been conceived of when Darwin laid out the basic principles of the theory. There are thousands of simple ways in which evolution could have been completely falsified, and yet it continues to pass every single test.

vs.

2. Stories in a really old book written by dozens of unknown individuals, most of which have been thoroughly discredited on many different levels. Not only is the data completely incompatible with major events such as the flood, but creationism completely fails to supply any explanation at all for consistently observed patterns such as the fossil record, radiometric dating, genetics, etc.

So no, I am not going to give in on that point.

You have yet to reply to a single point I have made, and have only replied along the lines of "none of that fancy stuff matters, you can't PROVE it 100% so I'll just believe whatever I want and it's just as valid. Tell me why I should treat that behavior with respect. We can't PROVE anything in medicine, either. Should I just throw all that education I got away and believe whatever I want about human health since all opinions are equally valid? It's a patently ridiculous position, and you know it.

[Igakusei]

I like how Bob keeps bringing up my comment about Gerry's ignorance as if that's the only thing I have to say. Dishonest much?

Keep signing your posts "in Christ," Bob. Stay classy.