...Continued

<<While you claim the debate was settled ‘long ago’ (when exactly?)...>>

I don’t know when exactly the debate was settled. The discovery of the archaeopteryx was a 'nail in the coffin' for Creationism - and Darwin was still alive then. Maybe around the early twentieth century. But it’s impossible to pin-point a precise moment in time.

Eventually, the evidence for a theory can reach a point where no amount of evidence could supersede the facts, and evolution has passed that point.

Creationism has even been defeated in a court of law. Heck, the judge at the Dover trial started getting frustrated with the Creationists because they kept going back to the 'Irreducible Complexity' argument when Ken Dover had not only shown it to be a mere argument from ignorance, but debunked it entirely as well.

The Creationists had nothing else.

<<...many are persuaded by the evidence, including some of the most esteemed scientific minds (von Braun, Chain, etc.) who gave themselves to design argument most vociferously.>>

Firstly, this is the ‘Argument from Authority’ fallacy, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity to point it out. Secondly, these scientists derived their beliefs from religion, not evidence (they have no evidence). Therefore, they are no longer “esteemed” because they abandoned the scientific method for religious belief.

As I stated previously: “It doesn’t matter who believes what, only why they believe it.”

If you're going to claim that those engineers/scientists were able to identify “good design”, then please explain what a non-designed object looks like.

<<Regarding paradigms, these aren’t something I made up, or a subversive creationist plot. The importance of the scientific ‘paradigm’ is widely accepted in the philosophy of science since the writings of Thomas Kuhn.>>

I agree with Kuhn, but Kuhn also vehemently rejected the argument for relativism that Creationists use his work for, arguing that when a paradigm is replaced, the new one is always better, not just different - and especially not worse.

I refer back to my request above in regards to your ‘paradigm’ argument, and the flaw in your 'House' analogy.

AJ Philips,
I agree that I should have subdivided #2 into (a), (b) and (c) the same as #1. However, then I would have to decide which one I opt for, which in my view is theological hair splitting, and as far as I know most believers see them as equivalent. On the other hand, my experience was that different atheists opt differently between #1 and (a) or (b) or (c) .

The text in brackets was not part of the premise, only an explanation.

Dan wrote: While you claim the debate was settled ‘long ago’ (when exactly?), many are persuaded by the evidence, including some of the most esteemed scientific minds (von Braun, Chain, etc.) who gave themselves to design argument most vociferously.

Dear Dan, Von Braun is not an esteemed scientific mind in regards to evolution. His field of expertise in rocketry has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. He has contributed absolutely nothing to the scientific literature in that area. I doubt that he was persuaded by any evidence as I don't think he examined the evidence. It has previously been pointed out to you that it is unnecessary to know anything about evolution to be a rocket scientist. You are repeating a discredited argument.

Please supply references that indicate that Von Braun has examined the evidence regarding evolution and has contributed any scientific papers on the subject. In reference to evolution Von Braun was not an esteemed scientist. As a Nazi Von Braun also subscribed to the nutty racist theories of Hitler. He did not spout in that area as Hitler's theories were not popular in the US. However, he had a ready audience for his nutty Creationism.

George,

Thanks for the clarification, and yes, I understood that the part in brackets wasn’t part of the premise.

Dan,

A correction... It was Ken Miller at the Dover trial, not Ken Dover. My apologies.

I’d also like to mention another reason as to why Creationism is such a negative force, and that’s the damage that can be done to the reputations of others because of Quote Mining.

The biggest victim of this is (not surprisingly) Darwin himself. More contemporary examples are Richard Dawkins, Stephen J. Gould and Michael Ruse.

But the most appalling example of Quote Mining I’ve ever seen, was when Stein quoted Darwin in “Expelled” to make it appear as though he was advocating eugenics. Not only was the second paragraph (as I mentioned earlier, but cut short due to word limits (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9292#149259 )) omitted, but the first paragraph had crucial lines removed from it as well. I’ve put the omitted lines between the >><< ...

”With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated;

>>and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health.<<

We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick;

>>we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox.<<

Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.

>>It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself,<<

hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

I checked www.creation.com for this quote, and sure enough there it was... http://creation.com/darwin-versus-compassion

But interestingly, they took a different approach to deceive.

Continued...

...Continued

They included the omitted lines above, but cut the following lines out of the second paragraph, replacing them with an ellipsis to make it look, instead, like Darwin had no compassion...

”The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.”

They then ended the quote by re-wording (yes, not just omitting anything, but re-wording) the next line:

”Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind;”

So that it read...

”We must, therefore, bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind.”

I’d also like to take this opportunity to touch on something that you’ve always appeared to think was a gift that’s been handed to you on a plate, and that’s the fact that macroevolution is not directly observable.

Despite the fact that observing macroevolution within our lifetimes would disprove it, observation has shown itself time-and-time again, in everyday life and experiments, to be the most unreliable evidence available. People have been convicted based heavily on eye-witness testimony and later released when new evidence came to light due to better science and technology.

I think these people would have something to say about your claim that directly observing an event is the only trustworthy way confirm it happened.

On a final note, please bear in mind that the ‘Days of our Lives’ episode that took place over the last week or so, in no way invalidates any of the factual and well-reasoned arguments I’ve made. This wasn’t a gift handed to you on a plate either.

All my points still stand.

I only say this because as an ex-fundamentalist myself, I understand how easy it is for those trapped in the fundamentalist mindset to convince themselves that such an event somehow invalidates what their opponents have said, and that it’s proof that they themselves were right all along.

Dear Dan,

You have cited von Braun’s views several times. He was not a biologist but was Nazi scum and a war criminal.

From a review of "Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon" by Dennis Piszkiewicz

Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (1912-77)?who helped develop the U.S. missile arsenal during the Cold War, built rockets for NASA, helped put astronauts on the moon and designed Disney's Tomorrowland was a major in the Nazi SS and one of Hitler's elite. Designer of Germany's V-2 rocket, which killed thousands of British civilians during WWII, von Braun supervised the rocket's construction at the Nazis' Mittelwerk factory, which used slave labor from the nearby Dora concentration camp. This gripping, well-documented biography shatters von Braun's claim that he never witnessed maltreatment of prisoners?a claim buttressed by the U.S. Army in its attempts to cover up von Braun's Nazi record to facilitate his entry into the U.S. Space historian Piszkiewicz (The Nazi Rocketeers) synthesizes available bits of information that prove von Braun's complicity. SS Major von Braun made at least one "official visit of inspection" to Dora in 1944 and participated in a Nazi administrative meeting at Mittelwerk to discuss bringing in a thousand French civilians as slave laborers; over 700 of them later died there. Moreover, in a letter to Mittelwerk's production manager, von Braun tells how he himself went to the notorious Buchenwald camp to arrange for the transport of more prisoners to Mittelwerk. Von Braun, who became a U.S. citizen in 1955, was a national hero to many and prophet of the space age. Including a history of the U.S.-Soviet space race, this biography makes a convincing case that he was also a war criminal, his past sanitized for expediency. The book may provoke moral outrage and a reassessment of the history of America's space program, launched with the help of 118 German rocket scientists brought here from Hitler's Third Reich.