Thanks for the reply egan and everyone else for participating.

I believe this is a good and healthy debate, although a little course sometimes. This kind of dialog is important as it raises fundamental issues and places them squarely in the face of people—exactly where we should all choose to keep them—and has been the stuff that great changes are made of.

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I tell you what. I’ll watch the whole thing some time this week when I get a chance (but just remember the next time I ask you to watch something $ubbt_lang['ICON_TONGUE'].)

That's great to hear... and I will.

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I still maintain that the speaker relied on cheap tactics, not to mention his heavy use of quote mining.

"Quote mining" as you call it, is fine with me from any side of a debate as long as the quotes are taken in context, and Hovind does take them in context.

Oftentimes, the best way to demonstrate the essence of a point is to boil it down to its essential component, and this is exactly what Hovind does, and he does it honestly and effectively.

In very many cases, a close cousin of this technique even helps people understand the essence of their own beliefs.

Hovind tells a story later in the video about a woman who objected to him at a debate saying that some evolutionists believe that everything ultimately comes from "rock soup". Using a boil-it-down technique, Hovind quickly enabled her to realize the silliness of her own faith in evolution.

Boiling down issues is useful for understanding the silliness of evolution because evolutionists very often confuse issues as a last-ditch effort to evict common sense and/or well-known scientific principles from an argument in order to avoid confronting an impasse. The boil-it-down technique prevents them from getting away with it, and "quote-mining" is a component of this technique.

Also, in a practical way, "quote-mining" is necessary to keep lectures from reaching impracticable lengths.

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But it would behoove any debater – especially if they are indeed correct – not to fall back on tactics such as these. With quote mining alone I could put forward a nigh irrefutable document explaining .. well .. anything. I could create a pretty sound argument which says we are all really bananas and that the fruit which we call bananas are really aliens from some invisible planet who are all controlling us. I’m totally serious here.

I would basically agree with you except for one important point. If the "quote-mining"—as you call it—is using quotes in their intended context, this is a valid and even useful technique. So, you cannot discount this technique just because it can be used for deception. You have to do your homework and see if it is in fact being used for deception or not.

This discussion reminds me of first time I read the book Vultures in Eagles Clothing

The first time I read this, I was so astounded by the quotes made in the book that I had a very difficult time believing that they could be accurate. These quotes were from federal and state statutes, the UCC, CFR, USC, FR, and many others. These are quotes that are not open to interpretation but being legally-based, usually were intended to have a single and well-defined meaning.

So, my friend Laura and a couple of our friends and I spend many hours and about $130 in copies at legal libraries and law school libraries studying and making copies of the quotes made in the book. Statistically, we made source copies of 80% of all of the quotes made in the book. After studying them, we found that every one was taken in context and was accurate. Nothing was done to twist the truth or bend perception at all.

I then called the publisher and told them what I had done and thanked them for taking the time to publish this information and for making sure that it was accurate.

Now for the punch line. Part of the reason that I could not believe the quotes from the book without researching them myself is because there are so many places in law and in federal court that point out what "income" really means in federal statutes; in other words, "What is taxable as income?", and these legal descriptions and definitions are in direct opposition to what is commonly believed.

Now, what is really amazing is that this "common belief"—which is a false belief (this is not legal advice, by the way) is what is used to extract thousands or tens-of-thousands from an average household each year even though the actual legal requirements for paying income tax are completely different and would result in no "income" tax being payed by the vast majority of Americans.

This astounded me, to say the least. I was even initially confused, often asking myself, "Am I missing something?" Then, I eventually spoke with many people who had already done this research. They told exactly the same thing, and added how they learned that most people do what they think is expected of them without really checking out the facts. My fundamental view of how things really work was beginning to change.

Now, if that wasn't astounding enough, I also learned that many of the people who were convinced of income tax evasion and currently sitting in prison were doing so based on an assumption by juries and dirty judges, of which there are many.

This eduction that I received by looking into these issues (because I cared) was my introduction to the conspiratorial concepts of centralization of power, infiltration, assimilation, and divide-and-conquer, and it was my first major exposure to evidence that this activity was occurring on a national scale. I later learned that it is happening on a global scale, hence the title that I use to tag my political position: "global-conspiratorialist".

So, in an effort to try to keep this short, I'll say that at the end of this excursion—which was my introduction to conspiracy theory I had in the early 90s—I learned how true this statement is:

"...all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

—The Declaration of Independence

The writers of this document clearly knew and understood this principle that I was just learning in my thirties.

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Evolution does not say there is no designer whatsoever, in my opinion. It simply says how said designer has been and still is doing their designing. With that in mind, I'd say evolution (whether you accept it or not) isn't even concerned with a designer; that part of the argument is neither here nor there.

Well, here is the problem.

The theory of evolution is being used to undermine the integrity of the Bible, in fact, I believe it was designed for this purpose. When you undermine the Bible, you prevent the ability of people to believe in Yahweh. When you do this, you are effectively stealing souls (there is a lot to understand here, but I'll leave it there for now). It also sharply degrades the quality of our lives in terms of everything from money to health to relationships.

So, with evolution, you may be able to have some self-styled God in a belief system, but you absolutely cannot have the God of the Bible co-exist with evolution, otherwise the Bible is not reliable.

In fact, countless people lose their understanding of the God of the Bible directly because of being taught that the theory of evolution is a scientific fact, when it is not even a good theory. Ironically, Darwin is a perfect example.

It's important for me to state that I would have no problem with people losing faith in the God of the Bible if the God of the Bible were a myth. I would be one of the ones dutifully promoting evolutionary ideas if I found them to be true, but I have done my homework and found that they are not true, and I have found that the God of the Bible is real and is offering a solid, and very beneficial relationship to those who wish to have it. This relationship vastly improves the quality of life of the person who experiences it. It is, in fact, the most significant continuing event that any human can experience.

Unfortunately, there are those in the world who hate God or even hate the very idea of God. They spend their lives and their fortunes funding or creating lies like evolution that attempt to undermine the credibility of the Bible in order to ease their own conscience (denial is expensive and time-consuming) and to create a social climate in which they can obtain unimaginable wealth and power that would not be possible in a Bible-believing culture. This wealth and power would belong to the people instead of a few powerful power-brokers, and the former united States is a very real demonstration of this truth in action.

In light of a few previous posts, I will also say that socialism and communism are nothing more than the promotion of systems that facilitate accumulation of wealth and power by a few and promote the centralization of power. So, guess who are funding the promotion of these ideas.

Finally, this post ends with what this thread originally began with: The truth that evolution is possibly the single most destructive idea that has ever been incessantly promoted.

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Evolution is possibly the grandest social deception ever devised. I cannot express how amazed I am that anyone—anyone at all—believes this ridiculous and completely illogical idea.
  • Virtually ALL genetic mutations are harmful and destructive, not beneficial. This alone should give thinking persons an idea about how incredibly unlikely—virtually impossible—evolution really is.
  • The theory of evolution contradicts the established second law of thermodynamics.
  • If evolution is true, we would have found a myriad of transitional forms by now.
  • Common sense completely refutes that evolution could occur, even in the most fundamental stages.

The real reason for the promotion of evolution is to create a social climate for the centralization of power and the promotion of certain, otherwise, unethical activities. For these morally deplete power brokers, evolution solves all kinds of problems. It legitimizes:
  • Killing weak and "undesirables" like unborn children or elderly persons (natural selection [survival of the fittest])
  • Genetic engineering (If nature is a series of errors, we can certainly do better. However, if nature is by intelligent design, we better not mess with it.)
  • Immunization (Again, they promote the idea that natural methods are not enough since they are the product of a series of "errors". Intelligent design says we can solve these issues with existing "natural" technology, like enhancing the immune system via diet and supplementation.)
  • Democracy (rule—or government—of man. Hey, if there is no "Intelligent Designer", who else is going to rule or set the standard of morality?)
  • Communism & socialism (Same)

There is much that can be said about that vastness of this deception, but one thing is certain:

It is not the depth or integrity of the idea of evolution that extends it's life, it is in fact, the broad and unrelenting promotion of the deception coupled with the human tendency to follow.

To accept that evolution is false is to—by implication—accept that there is a conspiracy (a group of people working together) to conceal the truth, and this is, by itself, the reason most cannot overcome the evolutionary absurdness. Americans have been well conditioned to believe that usage of this word (conspiracy) itself undermines credibility. It takes a leader to take a stand against common misconceptions, no matter how farcical.

A simple mind conducting a little research would find that nearly all of the mass media in the United States (and most other industrialized nations) are owned by a handful of God-hating elitists with no morals and no accountability, and it is these who so actively promote the evolution theory.

"As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers."

Thomas Jefferson to Barnabas Bidwell, 1806. ME 11:118

"I deplore... the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them...

Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 1814. ME 14:46

Mutation looks like a mole; Unorganized, shapeless, useless and destructive. However, intelligent creation displays very highly organized symmetry which is absolutely impossible to explain by mutation (and therefore evolution).

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