Back at your revisionist approach, eh CTD?

No, the "roles" have been pretty well defined for some time: I provide statements based on facts and science, and back them up with substantiation from objective reality, while you avoid substantiation and try to misrepresent what I said. You pretend it is a game to make fun of what I said, while you ignore the issues and fail to deal with the evidence.

Take the latest little gem "I openly defy you to find even one example of me trying to make anything unclear" - which is not what I said. Thus you either misunderstand or misrepresent what I said. Trying to be unclear and misrepresenting things are different.

That you do misunderstand or misrepresent things IS clear from many of your posts.

Take the issue of half-lives and your "quarter"lives, an issue where you clearly did not understand the mathematics and tried to make out that exponential curves were wrong. It was mathematically proven that you were false, but you have yet to acknowledge that fact (lots of little smilies as you danced around the issue not withstanding).

Or take the issue of the charts on the page about the link between alpha particle energy and the rate of decay, where you tried to claim that the curves were fudged because the scales were jimmied and the lines were straight - when clearly you did not comprehend that the graph was a log-log graph until that was pointed out.

Or take the issue of Darwin's definition of evolution as descent with modification, where you said it was substantially different from the modern definition as the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, where you said something was missing from the modern versions that was included in the original, that the modern versions were watered down, etc etc, yet you were totally unable to demonstrate any difference.

Or take the issue of "pre-adaptation" of e.coli. in the experiments that show that this cannot be so, yet we have your continued usage of this falsified concept.

Or take the issue of uranium halos showing that the earth is indeed old, and the related issue of polonium halos, where it was shown that they only occur where the polonium can be provided by radon decay.

We could also take the example/s from the Grand Canyon, and many other places, but the pattern is pretty solid.

No, it is all that is needed to show that you are wrong. If you were right you would be able to provide evidence that you were right, as you should be familiar with the evidence that lead to your claim. That is what substantiation means, btw, something you could do a whole lot more of if you wanted your arguments to have more credibility.

A rather facile example based on the logical fallacy of hasty generalization, and an empty threat based on the logical fallacy of consequences: empty, when your behavior has been consistently to mock what you don't understand anyway.

All your example of actually demonstrating that both dogs and cats have four legs shows is that it is possible to find evidence for any claim, but that the real issue is dealing with all the evidence, including the evidence that falsifies a claim.

Of course you can - you frequently do - say anything you like, but the issue is making your case by substantiation and dealing with all the evidence, including the evidence that contradicts your claim. For instance, I would point out that a dog is not a cat because (a) it does not have retractable claws, (b) does not have little "hooks" on its tongue, (c) has four toes instead of five, (d) has different dental patterns ... just for starters.

And yet this very statement shows that you misunderstand evolution. The fact is that evolution is observed to occur every day of every year, that evolution occurs in all living species, and that to deny that this is so is to deny the truth.

Part of that truth is also that evolution is not a religion by any definition, and that attempts to portray it as such are just more evidence of misrepresentation. It is a science, a fact that is substantiated by the massive numbers of people involved in doing science within the field of evolutionary biology.

Another misleading straw man.

I see no "whining" about evolution being treated with "respect" ... What I do see is evolution substantiated by evidence, evolution as a science being based on evidence and observation, development of theories and the testing of those theories by new evidence and observations, and it's discarding of false ideas, like Lamarkism and Haeckles recapitulation theories. Evolution is part of the science search for truth based on objective evidence.

If you want to disrespect and deny the truth, that is your problem, and your continued misrepresentation of evolution is just more evidence that you misunderstand and misrepresent it.

Curiously, science in general, and evolution in particular, is not in the business of "respecting" people or ideas. It is in the business of testing concepts against the objective evidence of reality and discarding any and all falsified concepts without any respect for who had the idea or what it was.

Nor does truth "respect" falsehood. If your concepts are false there is no reason to "respect" them.

So you agree that all the videos that Russ provides are essentially useless information, because they are easily made with faked, false, forged, or fictitious information. Substantiation of the validity of concepts would involve going to the original sources, sources where the content is reviewed in peer reviewed journals, or by repeating the study in question, looking at the original evidence.

We can discuss the Hovind video on the Grand Canyon in this context, where it fails to mention that the location of the canyon is not the low point of the ridge so that his argument is falsified by the actual topological evidence or by his own argument.

No, what I expect you to do is to substantiate your own statements, and in this case your statement that "The factual content in many of the videos Russ has posted can be verified to a high degree of confidence without too much trouble."

Note that you even claimed that it could be done without too much trouble. Time to belly up?

Cop-out. This from the person who claims to be the person who claims his "role" is to "reveal" the truth instead of hiding from it.

Strangely I don't expect anyone to trust sources, either, but I note that you need to actually provide sources so that they can be evaluated for validity. The issue also should not be affected by who posts the source, rather it should be about what the source says.

Even "someone you trust" can be wrong (the logical fallacy of appeal to authority), especially if the source is not an authority on the topic in question.

For instance, anyone who "trusts" your claim that 'decay rates changed' should be wary without any form of substantiation that rates can change. They should also be skeptical of this as a creationist claim, as it is not supported by any biblical reference (to my knowledge the bible does not mention radioactivity, uranium or decay rates anywhere). This amounts to a made up fantasy based on wishful thinking rather than any evidence, logic or reason.

Curious that the only thing demolished, then, is your understanding of the evidence. Shall we go over the log-log chart issue again? Of course I could ask for one (1) example of such an instance, but we all know that you won't bother with a straight answer.

Again, a logical fallacy of appeal to authority), which in this instance ignores all the factual basis for his theory of descent with modification. The fact that Darwin imagines various scenarios is part of the process of developing tests for theories.

The fact remains, however, that Darwin could imagine thousands of things and the science of evolution would be totally unaffected: we know that evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation - occurs, and we know that speciation - the division of populations into non-interbreeding daughter populations - occurs, so we know that evolution is a fact that can be observed in every day life. We know that mutation is a fact of life, we know that natural selection is a fact of life, we know that there are other mechanisms that lead to evolution and speciation. We also know that the fossil record is a fact of life, and thus we can test the theory that evolution and speciation can explain the diversity of life can be tested against that record. We also know that it is a fact of life that the DNA strands of organisms contain mutations, changes, that can be compared to demonstrate heredity of individuals from individuals, and of populations from populations, and thus we can test the theory that evolution and speciation can explain the diversity of life against that information.

These facts are not affected by Darwin's use of the word "imagination" no matter how you try to hide the pea,

Actually, this again betrays a misunderstanding of evolution and a misrepresentation of what the theory of evolution proposes versus the evidence of the fossil record.

According to a proper definition of evolution, the process of change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, evolution is constantly occurring, and this means that every fossil is part of the transition from one life form to another, and every fossil thus is a "transitional" fossil. Every fossil lineage shows such change over time occurring, with intermediate age fossils being intermediate in form from previous ages and forms to later ages and forms. This is what the theory of evolution predicts we should find in the fossil record: intermediate forms at intermediated ages in the lineages.

Again, this betrays a false understanding of evolution and what evolution proposes for the diversity of life. This is a standard creationist straw man misrepresentation, one that is easily dispelled by any real fact checking with evolutionary biologists, studies, books, etc etc etc.

Creationists keep trying to compress generations of accumulated evolution into single generation events, and this just is not the way evolution occurs. There are intermediates between dinosaurs and birds, of which Archaeopteryx is but one, just as there are intermediates between fish and amphibian, of which Tiktaalik rosea is but one ... ignoring the reality does not make it go away, and nature and reality are both curiously unaffected by such ignorance.

This picture shows several intermediate forms between australopithicus and Homo sapiens

Each one of these skulls is a transitional fossil because it is intermediate between the one before and the one after. Furthermore, each of the species represented by a skull has numerous fossils associated with that species, and these fossils also show change in hereditary traits from generation to generation, with the early ones being similar to the previous species and the later ones being similar to later species. Many times there are controversies over which species some of the fossils found belong to because they lie between the existing (arbitrary) species classifications.

In addition, evolution predicts that IF the theory is true, that THEN intermediate forms will be found between any two closely related species separated by time: that every hereditary lineage that is known will be filled in by more intermediates. This is what they did with Tiktaalik rosea, where they predicted that an intermediate form of organism in the transition from fish to tetrapod would be found in the area that had the right age sedimentary deposits and the right environment for such an intermediate.

This image from Transitions: the Evolution of life, "Tiktaalik roseae[/i] and the Origins of Tetrapods" shows the intermediate form of Tiktaalik as part of the transition from fish to tetrapod:


This image from Transitions: the Evolution of life, "Dinosaurs Among Us" shows the intermediate form of [i]Archaeopteryx as part of the transition from dinosaur to bird:

Wikipedia also discusses the various feathered Dromaeosaurids that show development of feathers before flight, and from egg laying dinosaurs.

Curiously more transitional forms are found every year, from amphibians in Iowa and Pennsylvania and "Frogamanders" in Texas to feathered non-flying dinosaurs in China and elsewhere.

Anyone who claims there are few transitionals either does not understand what a transitional is, or is living in the past.

Creationists are not allowed to cherry pick some comments about some transitions and then ignore ones about transitions in the fossil record, particularly when made by the same evolutionist, as that is not confronting all the evidence. Such selection of evidence is just one more example of the logical fallacy of hasty generalization.

Gould for one, specifically states that there are transitional forms, for example, but you wouldn't know that from reading creationist sites that quote his evidence for "Punctuated Equilibrium" speciations as if it was a universal condition.

Such as creationist quote-mining of Gould comments on transitionals. The evidence is that evolutionists understand this much better than creationists, due to the number of posts where evolutionists debunk the quote-mining of creationists.

An example of this is The Quote-Mine Project, dedicated to showing the false impression of creationists sites by such misrepresentations.

I don't see any comparable project launched by creationists to (a) clean up their side and (b) show that evolutionists misquote/misrepresent creationists.

Are you now claiming that all evolutionary scientists that have been misquoted in general, and Gould in particular, are double-talking liars? If not then this little digression is just another CTD attempt to divert the argument from the issue of creationists providing misrepresentative quotes in a manner to imply and insinuate that evolution is wrong. It's just another attempt to evade the issue that the creationist quote-mining of Gould in the video is a falsehood.

Curiously Hegel's philosophy has nothing to do with the reality that genetics shows change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation and that populations of non-interbreeding species are related by common ancestors. Of course it is also your claim that they are antithetical, not Hegel, and reality is not kind to assertions based on fantasy either.

Just as your words and actions demonstrate your antipathy for reality and for hiding from truth rather than revealing things, your lack of substantiations for your many claims demonstrate that you are not interested in finding the truth but in hiding it. You equate evolutionists with car salesmen, double-talking liars, and drug pushers in what amounts to a desperate attempt to deny, disparage and denigrate reality.

Curiously this is just another way of your demonstrating that you don't understand evolution, because you don't base your understanding on the scientific facts. It appears from what you have said here that you prefer to base your opinion on your trust of people, and while this may be how faith works, it is not how science works. In science truth is independent of people.

By studying geology.

They are not subject to biological evolution, so "the theory of evolution explains that there are no offspring that have different hereditary traits." It is really a simple concept.

So we agree on this point.

They aren't. His "findings" are not anything new either:

Just more old hat creationism and the argument from incredulity based on the anthropic principle. Reality is strangely unaffected by such assertions.

He was dismissed because he didn't measure up to the Department of Astronomy requirements for performance as an astronomer:
Evolution did not come into the issue at all.

And yet what you still demonstrate is a misunderstanding of evolution. Even if Guillermo Gonzalez were correct it would not affect the fact that evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation - and speciation - the division of populations into two or more genetically isolated breeding groups - occurs every day and in every species.

Your "evaluation" is irrelevant. The fact remains that you need to look at all the evidence, and that anything else is "cherry-picking".

Yes, the power of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy to explain that things are like they are because they are like they are. Impressive.

And yet what you still demonstrate is a misunderstanding of evolution. Even if the video were correct it would not affect the fact that evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation - and speciation - the division of populations into two or more genetically isolated breeding groups - occurs every day and in every species.

Your denial is interesting, but ultimately pointless. The fact remains that you and Russ do not understand evolution, do not use the definitions as used in the field of evolutionary biology, and that your comments based on your false understandings are still false.

Yes, you argued that there were genetic mechanisms that would make it possible.

Curiously the subject is still your and Russ's misunderstanding and misrepresentation of evolution, as demonstrated many times by this one post alone.

Yes the history is clear. Russ could not defend how tanning would be transmitted or when and how it would be expressed, whether it affected newborns and whether children would be born with tan-lines and the like. All he had to say was that it would be:

A total non-answer that avoids the issue. Then he backed down and offered this piece of information:

In other words, he admitted to not being honest about his post of tanned skin being hereditary, ... and in the process demonstrating (again) that he does not understand evolution.

Yes, you suggested a mechanism for how it would work. That is support. Nor did you state your disagreement then (only after he dissembled?).

Funny that this still does not show that you understand evolution.

It's very simple: you start with a scientific definition of evolution, one used by evolutionary biologists. Then you apply that definition to observations of objective reality to see if - in fact - evolution occurs by that definition.

Enjoy.