Hmmm.

I was trying, Dan S de Merengue, probably far too subtly, to draw your attention to the generally accepted definitions of causality.

"Some social statistics for Australia, showing a relationship between decline of church involvement of children and increased social problems" do not fit neatly under this heading, as there have been numerous other changes - economic, political, demographic etc. - over the same period. Unless you are able to test for the influence of these variables and remove them from your calculation, there can be no direct connection between the two events.

Or, to put it another way, objective evidence of causality. What you have is, at best, anecdotal.

>>That there was much time and distance between Darwin and Hitler means that the link is not immediately obvious. But others do see the connection<<

Again, what I was searching for was not the opinion of others as to the possibility of a "connection", but objective evidence that an acceptance of evolution theory causes mass murder.

May I say first that it clearly doesn't, otherwise there would be far fewer people on this planet. But more relevant to our present discussion is that once again we have a wealth of additional variables that contributed to the rise of the Third Reich, Hitler's use of power to implement race-supremacy policies, and the destruction of millions of lives. Most historians start with the Treaty of Versailles, in fact, rather than from Hitler's Darwinism.

So, no causality can be deduced from our base-point of objective evidence, I'm afraid. Your logic can be summarized as:

Hitler was Darwinist
Hitler killed six million Jews
Therefore Darwinists kill Jews.

I hope that I don't need to remind you, that my dog is not, in fact, a cat.

Pericles,
You can debate the strength of the causal connection and statistical correlation. Yet you can't say that the 'Answers' book doesn't give logical and evidence based argument, clear and concise. 

So do you think these things are totally unrelated, just a big coincidence? (e.g. the German intelligentsia's acceptance of evolution, and its consequences). 

And I think you're asking the impossible if you don't accept opinions as evidence, especially on matters of history. Without informed opinions, our courts and legal system would come to nothing overnight.

I wouldn't go down that path if I were you, Dan S de Merengue.

>>I think you're asking the impossible if you don't accept opinions as evidence<<

You are suggesting that "opinions are a form of evidence, whether or not they are based in reality". You thereby undermine the entire process of learning, appreciating and understanding, that forms the foundation of knowledge itself.

Can the opinion of a four-year-old on the benefits of ice-cream be accepted as evidence of its health-giving properties? Is the opinion of the Unabomber on the benefits of technology acceptable as evidence of the social value of urban terrorism?

Surely, opinions are formed *from* evidence, not in order to provide it?

Which brings us back to Answers.

>>...you can't say that the 'Answers' book doesn't give logical and evidence based argument, clear and concise<<

I can, and do.

Answers provides an elongated sequence of opinions, based upon the single premise that the universe was created, in one fell swoop, by a deity, around six thousand years ago. Not one single element of its argumentation would be of any unique and intrinsic value without the backcloth of that opinion.

>>So do you think these things are totally unrelated, just a big coincidence? (e.g. the German intelligentsia's acceptance of evolution, and its consequences)<<

Absolutely, there is no specific linkage between evolution and the attempt by Nazis to exterminate Jews. Throughout history, various power groups have taken it upon themselves to erase other peoples of whom they disapprove, for one reason or another. Some historians view the action of Rome against Carthage to be the first of these:

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-117922504/first-genocide-carthage-146.html

Predating Darwin by a couple of millennia, you will note.

Try re-visiting Answers with an educated, but unbiased eye. You will see that the "evidence" that is presented relies totally upon the existence of your first premise - God created the heaven and the earth, around six thousand years ago. Without this, every single one of the arguments remains in the realm of "so, what?", in that there is no independent need for them to be put forward at all.

Dear Pericles,
You've put quotation marks around something that I didn't say, which is quite misleading. I was clearly referring to informed opinion, not any random opinion, nor the opinion of a four-year-old.

I said I was happy to discuss the contents of the '"Creation Answers Book", which contains much evidence and reasoned argument. Your summary doesn't convince me that you've read a great deal of it.

DSdM, "informed" opinion? Informed by what? Science has moved on. Find out about Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620). Creation "science" is informed by the presumption of creation by your "God" and all accounting for observations flows uninterrogated therefrom.

If you start from scratch and take into account all the modern evidence based knowledge available to you you will find it unnecessary to conjure up a god to account for earth's existence and for the life on it.

If you want to believe in a god then go right ahead but please don't pretend one must be concocted for scientific purposes. Remember too that science never proves hypotheses like mathematics does, it only supports or falsifies them. Your 6000 year old earth was falsified by science long long ago.

Luciferase, really? Who falsified that and when did they do it? What experiment was it?

Informed by what, you ask? We are informed by documented history, the body of empirical evidence, and reason.

But I'm quite interested in what you mean when you say "starting from scratch". Who has done this? Who could  possibly do this? Do you mean starting with no thoughts, nothing? I don't think the history of science has developed in such manner. Rather we do but build upon the gains of those who came before.