YET MORE CREATIONIST PROPAGANDA

 

Dr. Carson, blah blah blah. I don't think he needs an introduction, but if you don't know who he is, Google him. I'm not wasting any more words on the current creation-tard fiasco than is necessary.

"It comes down to a matter of ownership. Who owns the universe, who owns the earth, who owns your life? Those who believe in evolution, and in a naturalistic explanation of the universe, ultimately see themselves as end-owners--as the creator and ultimate source of authority. In this way they answer to nothing and nobody, for there is nothing higher than themselves"

Dr. Carson is stupid. In fact, he's worse than stupid; he deliberately dishonest. How in fuck's name can I and other intelligent people who accept the fact of evolution consider ourselves to be the "creators" of the universe? How idiotic is this drivel? But it gets worse. Evolution, naturalism, etc., are matters of science, and do not come down to "ownership". They come down to evidence. Cold, hard proof.

"By believing we are the product of random acts, we eliminate morality and the basis of ethical behavior."

Yep, he's a liar. If this were true, then scientists and atheists would run around raping and killing and looting 24/7. But lo! we do not. So I guess the good doctor is just full of shit. The secular basis for ethical behavior is that humans are stronger in groups, and without codes of conduct, will be weakened by chaos and anarchy. This is the same way lower animals survive; weak or murderous members of the pack/herd are cut out when they threaten order. *gasp* By golly! Morality that doesn't require a racist, sexist, genocidal cosmic bigot peeking over your shoulder day and night.

"For if there is no such thing as moral authority, you can do anything you want. You make everything relative, and there's no reason for any of our higher values"

Creationists are idiots. There is simply no other way to describe their willful ignorance of facts that don't cater to their religious bias. And it doesn't matter how brilliant he may be as a surgeon; he has no facts, no evidence, and no compelling arguments against evolution here, just bare assertions that a first-year philosophy student could tear apart. Or someone like me, who's taken two semesters of geology and knows what the evidence for evolution comprises. All he does is make claims, and then fails to back them up. And conservative idiots still defend him and claim that he's being "bullied". Oblivious to the fact that he hasn't been silenced and has the right to believe in bullshit, but not the right to be respected for holding easily falsified beliefs about science.

"Yes, in my education I had to learn evolutionary theories, and as a God-fearing Christian I wondered how to make God and evolution mesh. The truth is that you can't make them mesh--you have to choose one or the other"

If you have any real knowledge of evolutionary theories, then you do an excellent job of concealing it. Furthermore, Francis Collins, who knows far more about evolutionary science than you, accepts evolution but also believes in god. Your false dichotomy reeks of lies. 

"Yes, my answer is that the more you understand science, the less you can believe all this is an accident! Just look at the brain, with its billions and billions of neurons, and 100 billions of connections, and how it remembers everything it has ever seen and heard . . ."

Argument from Ignorance; a logical fallacy. Natural selection accounts for complexity. The entire fossil record shows simple organisms becoming increasingly complex without any magic involved. And Richard Lenski's E. Coli experiment proved that major adaptations can be set up by more than one mutation, which means that highly complex organs can evolve in stages so to speak.

"Put a probe on the hippocampus of an 80-year-old man, and he can tell you verbatim the words of a book he read 60 years ago. This is a highly complex and sophisticated organ. Not a likely result of chance processes"

Your ignorance is astounding. Creationism fails for this reason. As the fossil record shows, no magical sky fairies (gods, that is) are required to account for complex systems, since biological organisms adapt and change to survive.

"Even if you allow the formation of a single cell. And a single-celled organism is also amazingly complex--the cell membranes, the nucleus, the nucleolus, the mitochondria. . . . Plus, we give evolutionists too much if we start with a single cell. Try starting with inert substances!"

Holy shit. This kind of ignorance is mind-boggling. Cells weren't always complex. The first single celled organisms observed in the fossil record from the Archean are simple and did not possess plastids, mitochondria, or a nucleus. They consisted of a plasma membrane, cytoplasm, and DNA [source]. In addition, the emergence of life from "inert substances" is the purview of abiogeneis, not evolution, which deals exclusively with the development and adaptation of life, not it's origins. It's sad that I, a freshman college student, know more about evolution than you.

"Even if you accept evolutionary theory--developing a more sophisticated organism in this theoretically "logical" fashion, then there should be a continuum of organisms."

Once again, it is clear that you have no idea what you're blathering on about. Who has ever said that evolution must produce a continuum of organisms? This is the most dreadful rubbish I've ever read. He's not even arguing against evolution, but a pathetic straw-man of his own making that has "evolution" painted on it's chest. Evolution is a state of flux. Organisms adapt based on current environmental or sexual pressures with no pre-ordained results. So a "continuum" of organisms is impossible.

"And why did evolution divert in so many directions--birds, fish, elephants, apes, humans--if there is some force evolving to the maximum?"

What? Does this all make sense in some strange parallel dimension?  What "force"? Oh, wait; straw-man. And the useful idiots at Red State defend this crap! Unbelievable.

"Why isn't everything a human--a superior human?"

Why isn't everything a unicorn--a superior unicorn? Never mind logic or evidence, or valid questions, let's just make up random stuff and throw it out there like it's some devastating argument. 

"Darwin specifically stated that his theory hung on the discovery of intermediate forms, and was sure that we would find them. More than a hundred years later we still haven't found them. Even the earliest fossils don't show such intermediates"

Idiot creationists and the supporters of I.D. voodoo lie about fossils all the time. This is their only defense [source].

"Take the simple case of ape to human. It should be easy to find abundant fossil remains since, according to evolutionary theory, this is the most recent transition. If we can find so many fossils of dinosaurs, which are further back in the evolutionary scheme, we should have plenty of evidence of intermediates between apes and humans. But we don't have them. We have very few supposed intermediates--like "Lucy," based on fanciful reconstruction with a lot of filling in. Today we have people with significant congenital abnormalities whose skeletal remains would seem like a missing link. So "Lucy" does not make the case, and there should be multiple "Lucys" if the transition from ape to human were true."

 http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/

"Also, there's the whole subject of irreducibly complex organisms--the idea that everything has to be there all at once for it to work. How could all the complex items evolve simultaneously--as in the eye, for example"

Richard Lenski and the E. Coli experiment blew that argument out of the water--20 years ago.

"Before Darwin most scientists were Christian. Even Darwin was brought up a Christian, but he became embittered. He set out to prove another explanation to life. I have to give the man credit--he was a powerful observer. On the Galápagos Islands he found thick-billed finches whose bills were capable of breaking apart hard seeds. He also discovered iguanas and tortoises with different adaptations. Therefore, he concluded that these organisms were evolving, and he was right in terms of microevolution--adaptation to the environment. Imagine if you only got fed if you could dunk a basketball . . . "

Once gain; the distinction made by creationists between micro and macro evolution is thin at best, and preposterous at worst. If life adapts to it's environment on a cellar scale and on a scale of species, than eventually one species will diverge into another. Macroevolution is just microevolution occurring for a lengthy period of time. We see macroevolution happen when new species of mice split off from ancestor species [source]. But Dr. Carson conveniently forgets to mention that macroevolution has been observed.

"Only tall people would be fed and would survive. They would pass on their tall genes to their offspring. Is this evolution or adaptation?"

Both. Evolution is defined as adaptations to the environment over time. Although, in the case of this basketball analogy, it would be evolution via artificial selection.

"Obviously it's the latter."

Wrong. Evolution;

1. A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. See Synonyms at development.

2.

a. The process of developing.

b. Gradual development.

3. Biology

a. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.

b. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny [source].

"But evolution means one organism eventually changing into another quite different, and there's no evidence for such change. God allowed for adaptation, which speaks of a wonderful Creator who gave His creatures a genetic structure flexible enough to adapt. But that's not evolution"

Take a good look at this. This is what creationism does to intelligent people; it makes them look like utter idiots in light of real science. This kind of hair-splitting rhetorical word-game is beyond retarded, but it's something that creationists do every day.

"Look at the complexity of the universe, too. The Hubble telescope has revealed much more to us. But our galaxy is just a tiny dot in the great scheme of the universe, and there's much more beyond what we know. Even in our own solar system--we orbit 93 million miles from the sun. If it were 92 million miles, we'd be incinerated; 94 million miles, and we'd be a frozen iceball. There's so much--it's all so extraordinarily organized with such complexity. How does that happen?"

If the universe was merely the size of our solar system, or even an entire galaxy, you might have a point. But it's not. Our galaxy isn't even a dust mote compared to the cosmos. Life emerged here because the conditions were right; the fact that life is impossible in vast swaths of the cosmos confirms that. Fine-tuning fails for this reason. No human alive can fully comprehend the size of the universe. So to say that it all revolves around us because we just happen to be here is absurd in the extreme.

"Then take the ideas of the origins of the universe. The scientists speak about the second law of thermodynamics, which states that everything tends toward a state of disorganization . . ."

Oh sweet freaking christ, I see where this is going...

"So how could our incredibly organized universe come about as the result of a big bang? This flies in the face of the second law, which says it would be less organized as a result, not more! Scientists have to be consistent."

Oh! I thought he was going to launch straight into the whole Ken Ham "herp, durp, evilution violates the Second Law, duhhh..." Sorry about that. Perhaps I gave the good doctor less credit than he merits. But seriously, that's God of the Gaps fallacy. You don't have a degree in astronomy, or physics, so how are you sure that you know all there is to know about the Big Bang? And just because science doesn't have a definitive answer yet, doesn't mean you can point your finger to the sky and proclaim, "GAWD DONE IT!!".

" Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics..."

I take back anything good I've said about this hack. That's just slander, and everyone knows it. The Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Salem witch trials, Jim Crow, the McCarthy era... none of those times had any outstanding ethics, but were all the doing of christians.Take the beam out of your own eye, doctor...

"...you don't have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires."

Which is what morality is. Morality has never derived from a "Higher power" or "authority". It is based upon subjective societal needs and wants. That's why christians reference Leviticus as a source for calling homosexuality an "abomination" while conveniently ignoring verses in the same chapter describing the eating of shellfish and wearing garments woven from multiple fabrics as "abominations". That's why they caterwaul about the teachings of Jesus, while ignoring his commands to sell all of their possessions and give the money to the poor. That's why ethics has emerged to replace antiquated concepts of "morality". We can all agree that we have the right to live our lives without fear of persecution, and without having to persecute others. Causing needless pain to others is therefore "evil".

"You have no reason for things such as selfless love, when a father dives in to save his son from drowning."

Unless I love my son. Love is a natural feeling towards offspring and relatives. It has been accounted for by science, not magic. Educate yourself. Evolution is a scientific theory. it doesn't address issues of ethics any more than gravity or particle physicists. Or neuro-surgery, for that matter.

"You can trash the Bible as irrelevant, just silly fables, since you believe that it does not conform to scientific thought. You can be like Lucifer, who said, "I will make myself like the Most High."

Rejecting a nonsensical book filled with talking animals, magical zombie resurrections, and impromptu violations of the laws of physics--all without a single scrap of historical proof, just like myths in other cultures--does not mean I want to make myself a god. Your slander is stupid and childish.

"Can you prove evolution? No."

A bare-faced lie is most unbecoming of a professional surgeon.

"Can you prove creation? No."

But at least he possess some degree of honesty where his personal beliefs are concerned. I'll give him that much.

"Can you use the intellect God has given you to decide whether something is logical or illogical? Yes, absolutely. It all comes down to "faith"--and I don't have enough to believe in evolution. I'm too logical"

Sure, you're logical; and Ted Nugent is perfectly sane. Go back to school, Dr. Carson. Your education is clearly lacking.

http://www.adventistreview.org/2004-1509/story2.html