Piltdown Superman

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Edited 12-06-2015 I was quite pleased to see an article that was discussing some of the same things that I have been combating in my discussions with anti-creationists . More specifically, their double standards. It amazes me that any unqualified s hmoe off the street is "qualified" to rail against remarks and articles by creationists, and is joined by a dozen "Me, too!" interlopers. Yet, if someone dares breathe a word of disagreement about evolution, he or she is expected to have impeccable credentials in every area under discussion. That is, I point out a flaw in evolutionary theory, and get asked if I am trained as a scientist . Qualifications or not, we can still speak the truth and can identify bad logic that people are using when attempting to liberate us from our knowledge and faith. Atheist popes like Richard Dawkins are cited as experts on religion and philosophy, but guess what? They are do not satisfy the qualification "st

Several times a week, I am hit with faith-based comments where the users believe they are speaking "science" in defense of evolutionism (links to sources are given, until they get embarrassed and delete their comments): Evolution is   as much science as quantum theory is. To claim otherwise is totally absurd. Note the equivocation between evolution and quantum theory, followed by a form of   ad hominem   attack. Edit: My charge of ad hominem  was challenged. I verified it with two experts, one said it was abusive ad hominem, the other narrowed it further to Appeal to Ridicule , which can fall under the "umbrella" of ad hominem . Proof   has been steadily accumulating over 150 years, as science advances more appears. that's how science works.  Wrong.   True  science is willing to discard a theory if the facts do not fit instead of making excuses, wishing that an answer will come along someday, or faking the data. Also,   tru

A well-publicised paper by Claudia Huber and Günter Wächtershäuser in Science proposed a scenario for a materialistic origin of life from non-living matter. They correctly state: The activation of amino acids and the formation of peptides under primordial conditions is one of the great riddles of the origin of life. Indeed it is. The reaction to form a peptide bond between two amino acids to form a dipeptide is: Amino acid 1 + amino acid 2 → dipeptide + water H 2 NCHRCOOH +H 2 NCHR′COOH → H 2 NCHRCONHCHR′COOH + H 2 O (1) The free energy change(ΔG 1 ) is about 20–33 kJ/mol, depending on the amino acids. The equilibrium constant for any reaction (K) is the equilibrium ratio of the concentration of products to reactants. The relationship between these quantities at any Kelvin temperature (T) is given by the standard equation: K = exp ( –ΔG / RT ) where R is the universal gas constant (= Avogadro’s number x Boltzmann’s cons

Responding to “How far has ID come in the last five years?”, locally famous commenter markf responds, Every single one of those headlines is about “Darwinism” and “Darwinists” (whoever they are – their most important common characteristic appears to be they are government funded which rules me out). Looking at the detail on the posts the only positive achievement I can see for ID is the controversial Dembski and Marks paper. All the rest is about perceived failures of this Darwinism. Which is an excellent demonstration of missing the point. Failures of Darwinism are not merely a negative. They are a positive. The growing number of stress points at which Darwinism fails can, taken together, form a picture, one that points to general laws that govern how high levels of information are produced in life forms. Obviously, as with dpi, the more such points, the clearer the picture. We can’t have too many of them, though eventually, there will be enough to work productively with

Viruses have a bad reputation. They are ultra-tiny, well-designed machines that copy themselves in a process that sometimes causes disease in the organisms in which they reside. One class called retroviruses is equipped with machinery that splices its own viral code into the DNA of a host cell. Retroviruses have been portrayed as genetic "leftovers" from an evolutionary past, but how did they really originate? A report published in Science showed how one retrovirus was "born." Researchers discovered that a retrovirus named XMRV was formed when two DNA sequences called "proviruses" were brought together through "recombination." This occurs during gamete development when genetic material from the parent cells is rearranged into new combinations of genes in the offspring, resulting in more genetic variations. You can catch the rest of "Were Viruses Created or Evolved?" here .

We’re sure you’ve heard this claim before, probably hundreds of times: “Science has proven evolution is fact.” It’s like a strange Darwinian chant that emanates from atheist blogs and secular universities. Too bad (for them) it’s not true.  In fact, refuting evolution doesn’t require complicated equations or lab experiments—though those do the job, too. Just remember the two fundamental flaws we can use to show evolution to be, well, not even scientifically viable.  Where’d You Get Your Information, Bub? Everything that makes up your body requires genetic information. You’ve got hands and feet because your genes code for it. The same is true for any creature—dogs, camels, you name it. Read the rest of "Evolution: Impossible!" here .

Evolutionary teachers often use equivocation to indoctrinate unsuspecting students with the general theory of evolution (GTE). Anti-creationists, such as atheists by definition, commonly object that creation is religion and evolution is science. To defend this claim they will cite a list of criteria that define a ‘good scientific theory’. A common criterion is that the bulk of modern day practising scientists must accept it as valid science. Another criterion defining science is the ability of a theory to make predictions that can be tested. Evolutionists commonly claim that evolution makes many predictions that have been found to be correct. They will cite something like antibiotic resistance in bacteria as some sort of ‘prediction’ of evolution, whereas they question the value of the creationist model in making predictions. Since, they say, creation fails their definition of ‘science’, it is therefore ‘religion’, and (by implication) i

The claim that all, or most all, Darwin-doubters are fundamentalist Christians is commonly found in both in the popular and professional scholarly literature. Ohio State University Professor Tim Berra averred, “Creationists, for the most part, are fundamentalist Christians whose central premise is a literal interpretation of the Bible and a belief in its inerrancy” (Berra 1990, p. viii). Professor Douglas Futuyma, in his classic work attacking all Darwin-doubters, mentioned Christian fundamentalists or the term fundamentalists in connection with those who have problems with Darwinism over 14 times on pages 5 to 7 alone. He concluded that the Christian “fundamentalists assault” on science involves the challenge to evolution that was “mounted by religious fundamentalists [adversely] touches us all” (Futuyma 1983, p. 5).  Futuyma then adds, “according to the fundamentalists, physicists are wrong” and all “geology is under siege” by Christian “fundamentalists” and “in the

A free and independent press? Not quite. Our national media do not always operate at arms-length from state-backed science, as the California Science Center (CSC) affair has demonstrated.  As you probably know by now, in 2009 the state-run CSC cancelled a contract with the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) to screen a pro-ID documentary, Darwin's Dilemma , triggering a lawsuit over unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. That lawsuit was recently settled. By the terms of the settlement agreement, the Science Center paid $110,000 and again opened its doors to the film, an invitation that was acknowledged by AFA as an apology and then respectfully declined for pragmatic reasons.  True, the Science Center did not explicitly admit in the agreement that it engaged in viewpoint discrimination, but the large payout and invitation may be taken as an implicit admission that its defense regarding the viewpoint discrimination claim was weak, and that a public trial should

You've heard a lot in this space the past few days about the viewpoint-discrimination lawsuit settled by the California Science Center for $110,000. That's money the CSC found it advisable to pay out to the American Freedom Alliance in order to avoid having to go to court and argue the case in public, with all that would have entailed by way of exposing a trail of incriminating emails by CSC staffers and scientists around the Los Angeles area. Lead by Casey Luskin, ENV writers have already very clearly spelled out the evidence of duplicity and intolerance on the part of the California Science Center, the panicky attempt to squelch the airing of a viewpoint favorable to intelligent design and the subsequent cover-up. Now that there's a little bit of a breather following the widespread reporting of the settlement, I'd like to suggest why the whole thing matters so much. Read the rest of "Stampede! What the California Science Center Scandal Reveals about