The *new* idea you promote as "evolution" is a vastly watered-down version of the same myth that feels more comfortable to the emotions because it sounds more "scientific". It is, in fact, more marketable in this new age of information.
The "*new*" idea I am promoting is also called "descent with modification" ... which if you will recall is the terminology that Darwin used to describe his theory of changes to life. The only thing "*new*" is that we have added to our knowledge of how descent with modification occurs. Curiously this
IS how science progresses.
What ever happened to the rest of Darwinism? If the new version doesn't mention the rest, one might wonder if it's been abandoned (provided one were so gullible). One might also conclude that the rest is too weak, and the evopusher lacks confidence. But in any case, the trimmed down, 'streamlined', repackaged version differs from the old.
The process of rocks and water turning into humans is exactly what is being taught as evolution and has been since long before I was in school. It is in textbooks, pop-science magazines, museums, and even the Smithsonian.
What is shown in museums, even the Smithsonian, is the natural history of life on earth. This natural history is the evidence of past life. It is the
evidence that says that
- 4.55 billion years ago the earth formed from star dust born of novaic death of - even then - old stars ...
- 3.5 billion years ago there was unicellular life on earth, simple cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), in the oldest rocks that preserve fossils of sediments that we have currently found ...
- 2 billion years ago this simple unicellular life is accompanied for the first time by more complex life, eukaryotes, but which still only records life in the seas, and none on land ...
- at about 1 billion years ago we find the first tentative evidence of multicellular life ...
- and in the Devonian period for the first time we see fossil evidence of life crawling onto land, such as Tiktaalik rosea at 375 million years ago ...
- etc
It is not the theory or evolution that says this is what happened, rather this is the natural history of what actually happened.[/quote]I'm not aware of any evidence that says any such thing. If such evidence existed, it should have been presented. All you give is misinterpretations of evidence; the evidence itself can only reflect reality. When properly interpreted, evidence supports the history we read in the bible.
The only competition in the minds of some people is the theory that all the evidence is lies and that something else made it happen, something for which there is an absolute dearth of evidence, and it magically made it happen JUST AS IF evolution occurred.
Utter nonsense. "JUST AS IF evolution occurred" wouldn't be a record of stasis in every kind of creature & plant that ever lived. "JUST AS IF evolution occurred" would include
all the transitional forms Darwin claimed must have lived & died.
What we actually have, even if one imagines unlimited timespans, is a record of lifeforms without precursors and without
any of them changing into a new kind of lifeform. Yet we have people imagining such changes took place in spite of a vast amount of evidence.
Ignoring the evidence of objective reality is what cognitive dissonance is all about Russ.
Yes it is. But if you understood the term properly, rather than attempting to hijack it and use it as propaganda, you'd know that it takes place at an unconscious level.
Thus the willful attempts evolutionists make to ignore evidence are properly called self-deception.
If you try hard enough you can convince yourself the world is flat: all you need to do is ignore all the inconvenient evidence that shows that this is a false concept.
Trying requires a conscious effort. Such is no part of cognitive dissonance.
Once again you equate evolution with something else. When you change from the term evolution as defined in life science to describe the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation (descent with modification), to the term evolution as defined in astronomy to describe the way stars etc form, then you are really using two different terms, and you are equivocating between the definitions. This is a logical fallacy. You are also avoiding the issue of what evolution really is.
So when creationists use the term 'evolution', they must always be equivocating. Only evolutionists are allowed to define and use the term.
It was the evolutionist who came up with 'stellar evolution', 'chemical evolution', and all the others. Yet in order to defend one form, the evolutionist must switch definitions continually, and accuse everyone else of equivocating. Anyone buy that?
Evolution in biology is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation (descent with modification), it is that simple.
Oh? So the rest of Darwinism then must be
utterly superfluous and useless to the biologist. Perhaps you'd care to amend your statement before we agree on something here.
Also simple is the concept that evolution not in biology is not in biology -- it is a different concept.
Things change. This has always been known. Why should the type of changes we've always observed be defined as 'evolution'. That word already has several meanings, does it not? Why add to confusion?
Conflating them is called equivocation, a logical fallacy
Yep. Now we see why: in order to facilitate logical fallacies.
The theory of evolution is that this, and the inevitable division of populations into non-gene-mixing daughter populations, is enough to explain the natural history of life on earth -- the history that goes back to simpler and simpler life forms, and the history that happened, somewhere along the line, some 3 million years ago, developed into a branch of apes we call hominids. Confusing what has happened with what must happen is called a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.
Was that an example? That bit about "inevitable division"?
At any rate, theories are supposed to be falsifiable. Your claim that you can imagine an explanation which features evolution is one I don't see as falsifiable. A theory is supposed to be testable as well, but all you propose to test is the capacity to imagine explanations involving evolution. 'Unimpressive' is too mild a term for this.
I find it noteworthy that evolutionism has a long, consistent history of hiding from falsifiability and attempting to evade the burden of proof.
Evolution is not the same as the natural history of life, as that would still exist if evolution were false, and it is this evidence that the creationist avoids like the plague. It is reality, and it won't go away.
On the contrary, creationists have been requesting evidence for quite some time in this forum. Perhaps you're confused. We'd like to see evidence - not more fairy tales.
Neither more sorry propaganda, nor more bogus 'theories', nor more equivocation.
