"Dan, I have already answered your question. You appear to have dismissed it as an example of selective breeding."

You'll notice, however, that creationists like to identify the Nazi's selective breeding program as a product of evolutionary theory to spuriously claim that Darwin = genocide. Indeed, it's the central theme of the Intelligent Design propaganda film "Expelled".

They want a buck each way, it seems.

Dear Grim,

Thank you for the clarification. I apologise for the misunderstanding.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for your strawman argument about public schools being a recent invention. I’m not sure how that relates to what I was saying about fundamentalists choosing to home-school their children now, when public schools are available, in order to prevent their children learning certain facts. It is an act of futility to attempt to deny what the home-schoolers themselves admit to.

On another note, if this discussion is to proceed constructively, it would only be fair (and courteous) if you could acknowledge when you have been wrong instead of moving onto another point and leading everyone in circles.

I was going to list a few misrepresentations and fallacies as examples of what I meant earlier, but you’re doing a much better job than I could have done (and now with the help of Apis, we have yet another logical fallacy: The argument from authority).

Here are some of fallacies and misrepresentations think need retracting before we can proceed forth:

”Darwin was duly trumped by the discovery of genetics. So much that the Darwinist view had to be rearranged into what was newly dubbed Neo-Darwinism.

”Therefore the mechanism of heredity does not provide the capability to produce new design features. Variation in eye colour, length of beak, number of feathers on a wing? Yes, sure, absolutely. But can we arrive at eyes, beaks, and feathers? Unfortunately, no.”

“The entropic nature of this world bares witness daily that the properties of matter and energy alone are incapable of constructing life forms as we understand them.”

”The problem with Darwin’s thinking was that he ascribed creative tendencies to undirected matter ... This isn’t only counter-intuitive but it has no foundation. It is a thinking hazard.”

(Cont’d)

”We don’t gain anything technologically by thinking this way. Do aircraft engineers build anything by allowing aluminium sheets and turbine engines to just do what comes naturally over millions of years? We could say similar things about your genetic engineering. The crucial ingredients were adaptive functions already present and intelligent direction. And still nothing new was created.”

”The ‘Galileo affair’ was largely a personal spat between him and the pope, two headstrong personalities. Most church authorities were happy with Galileo’s contributions.”

Also, Michael, you say that the design argument in not based on ignorance, yet when I showed that it was, you had no response. Care to explain?

As for your list of books, none of them have been peer-reviewed and they all contain (at best) re-dressed arguments that have all been disproved. They are nothing more than fallacy-filled adventures that misrepresent science for an audience who were already going to uncritically believe what they said anyway.

I think you are probably on your last argumentary legs here, Dan S de Merengue, but I'd just like to add my own correction to all the others.

You first quote a snippet from one of my posts:

“[the laziest form of thinking is that] if something cannot be easily and completely explained, then God must have done it.”

...and proceed to add your diversionary tactic:

>>The problem here, Pericles, is that isn’t the creationist position. Those are your words not mine. Show me where I said anything approaching that.<<

But as you already know, but choose to ignore, is that the preface to my observation was not limited to creationists, but to "every objection to evolution theory"

This includes intelligent design theorists, of which group you have on many occasions expressed your approval.

And your attempt to divert attention from your lazy thinking fails dismally, I'm afraid.

>>Now it’s strange that you agree with the 1st statement [that we rest in the faith that another scientist will one day uncover something to affirm the Darwinian process]. Strange because usually we don’t want to think that faith has anything to do with science. Isn’t it about cold hard facts? Certainly not about things that are hoped to be discovered.<<

Here, you are simply manipulating the English language to assert that the word "faith" may not be used anywhere near the word "science".

However, "having faith" does not necessarily connote religion. Even Merriam Webster - by no means my favourite resource for such information - provides the synonym "belief", the nominative form of the verb "to believe".

So yes, I do have faith/believe that scientists will continue to discover new stuff. And no, it is not inconsistent with science to predict that something will, most certainly, happen in the future.

Bending simple English terms for religious purposes is a favoured tactic of the defensive creationist/intelligent designer, I have noticed, but is both deceitful and pointless.

Dance de Merengue - too clever by half

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"A Vatican-backed conference on evolution is under attack from people who weren't invited to participate: those espousing creationism and intelligent design. ... Organizers of the five-day conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University said Thursday that they barred intelligent design proponents because they wanted an intellectually rigorous conference on science, theology and philosophy to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species." (http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=17667)