Are creationists purposely misquoting evolutionists?

Naturalism/materialism as a premise for science is fundamental to the difference of opinion. Evolutionists preach the "naturalism = science" faith.

The quote given isn't any more dishonest than when evolutionists mockingly pretend that creationists are anti-science or somehow not reasonable enough to objectively approach the evidence with a workable model... much less that creationists are more driven by their assumptions than evolutionists are.

Science should be about determining what is "true" or reasonable theories about what might be true. The pre-condition of assuming naturalism is completely artificial, metaphysical, and unscientific.

ID is a means of approaching the evidence without making the a priori assumption that intelligence was not involved. Saying that it might have been is no more nor less unscientific/philosophical than saying that it wasn't. Recognition of design evidence is much less assumption based than the elaborate speculations about the appearances of supposed intermediate or ancient animals that are based on very scant real evidence and much speculation.

 

My experience with this sort is that they equate astronomy with evolution, both being part and parcel with one another in the way that we are "tricked" into thinking that it is the way science shows us.

 

That's not faith, that's what science is - naturalism. If it can't be tested, it isn't science. Creationists, for reasons of their own, have decided to redefine "science".

Right, because ID is totally based on the a priori assumption that intelligence is involved - it starts with the conclusion and looks for evidence to back it up. That approach is backwards and unscientific.

 

Your link does not work for me, so I cannot see the quote in context. But, you should be able to answer the question yourself. Follow your own link. Read a few paragraphs before and after the part that is quoted. If the meaning remains the same, he was accurately quoted. If the meaning changes somewhat when placed in context, then he was misquoted. If it seems that whoever was the source for your quote likely selected just the bit that he did in order to spin the quote for his purposes, then likely he also dishonestly and purposely misquoted, though we cannot know for sure.

Another way to think about it is this. Ask yourself if the person being quoted would agree with the manner in which the quote is presented. If not, he's likely being misquoted.

My own personal experience has been that almost all occasions where you see YEers quoting scientists that the quote has been taken out of context. When presented with such quotes, my automatic response is to ask for a link where the whole document from which the quote has been lifted can be read in context. If the person refuses, it usually means that they know that the quote is out of context.

In the case of the quote that you have, you should also ask additional questions. Basically, it boils down to what is the relevence of the quote. Does the person accurately reflect the prevailing opinion? Or is it just his own opinion? I think the quote in question dates from about 80 years ago and I do not think that the author was well known or at the forefront of his field, so it is best to chalk it up as the opinion of one guy a long time ago and to not pretend that it has relevence as to the thought of the mainstream today.

I'll add that in general, the dishonest quote mining tends to give Christians a bad name. Outsiders are forced to wonder why YEers must lie to support their position instead of building a factual case.

 

Um.... Nope. That is simply NOT true. A bridge is applied science. You can use all sorts of tests on bridge components. You can estimate material age, composition, origin, etc... but you would never assume that its origin was from undirected natural sources. It bears the markings of design. When you see a bridge you "assume" intelligent design. That assumption governs every other test you apply to the bridge. If it were somehow naturally occurring, the results of those tests could be badly distorted by those assumptions.

Evolutionists assume naturalism. That assumption governs and predestines their testing to a range of answers consistent with naturalism. Their assumptions have badly distorted their results.

Forensic science is another "science" that neither assumes natural cause nor intelligent cause. It approaches it from the perspective that either could be true and that the evidence should be approached from a "best possibility" perspective rather than a strongly biased one. ID approaches origins in this same manner.

History cannot be tested. Macroevolution itself is still in search of a mechanism that can account for the diversity we see... That mechanism to date has not been tested and proven in a laboratory. The Big Bang cannot be tested and there are very strong evidences that it simply doesn't work.

In fact, very, very little of what evolutionists conclude comes purely from tests and observation. All of its major arguments are based on speculative interpretations or interpolation.

Nope. It is the naturalists/materialists that defined God out of science. This was apparently a conscious effort by Darwin and many of his contemporaries.

Not true. It, like forensics, assumes that either natural, intelligent, or both may have been involved. Evolution on the other hand limits the conclusions that can be made about the evidence to purely naturalistic ones... even when design is so evident that reverse engineering works to do molecular level studies... even when they find how finely tuned the universe is.

That is precisely what evolution does. It starts with the conclusion that naturalism and evolution are true then find ways within the theory to accommodate the evidence... then violating every rule of science and logic claim that the fact that the theory can be made to accommodate the evidence proves that the theory is true.

It parallels a suspect under interogation. Each time they are confronted with a new, contradictory piece of evidence, they change the story then proudly proclaim, "See, I am telling the truth"... even though the new story and evidence directly contradict the old story that was told as truth with every bit as much conviction.

 

"Evolutionists assume naturalism. That assumption governs and predestines their testing to a range of answers consistent with naturalism. Their assumptions have badly distorted their results."

Science must make one basic assumption. That assumption is that empirical data does not lie and accurately reflects the way things work.
The studies that science makes must by necessity make one additional limitation. That limitation is to limit study to those things which can be tested and reproduced. That is basically where methodological naturalism comes in. You cannot put God in a box and test Him. You cannot expect supernatural events to be reproducible.
So this is where ID enters the picture. If ID were the true answer, then all that empirical data would be expected to show certain things. Thus far, there is no empirical data to support ID. The empirical data does, however, support what one would expect to see if evolution was the correct answer.
This is very similar to debates that occasionally arise in archeology. Let's say that you find an oldly shaped stone. Did it get that way naturally or was it shaped by humans? Well, you can investigate and reach a logical conclusion based on the data at hand.

"History cannot be tested."

Wrong, but thanks for playing.
Let's say that I assert that there was a particular civil war battle that was fought. I assert that the battle proceded in a particular manner and that the North won. That can be tested. YOu could go search the location to see if a battle might have been fought there. There might even be enough evidence there to tell you something about the battle. You can research official military records. You can look for diaries or letters home from the participants. You can test assertions about history.

"Macroevolution itself is still in search of a mechanism that can account for the diversity we see... That mechanism to date has not been tested and proven in a laboratory."

By using the word "proven" you demonstrate that you are talking about something other than science.
Mutation and selection together constitute a fine mechanism. We can look into the genomes of extant life and see how the patterns fit this mechanism. We observe new and useful mutations in the world around us. The mechanism is there, you just refuse to accept it.
For example, there is case after case of genes showing the hallmarks of having been produced through repeated duplication and mutation. In some cases, duplication of an entire genome. (Vertebrates have at least a couple of whole genome duplications in their history.) We have examples of recently produced, useful genes from duplication and mutation.

"The Big Bang cannot be tested and there are very strong evidences that it simply doesn't work."

Wrong again.
The inflationary cold dark matter lambda theory makes very detailed predictions about what should be observed. You should read up on some of the data coming in from the study of the cosmic microwave background that provide stunning confirmation of the theories.
You can also test certain aspects in the laboratory. For instance, using supercolliders, you can generate collisions with tremendous energy and recreate conditions from the earliest moments of the universe.
And again, there is no good data against the BB at this point in time. Sorry.

"In fact, very, very little of what evolutionists conclude comes purely from tests and observation. All of its major arguments are based on speculative interpretations or interpolation."

Wrong once again.
Let's give an example. One of the great pieces of evidence for evolution comes from the twin nested heirarchy of life. On the morphology side, well, yeah, you are depending on interpreting the data to get your phylogetic tree.
But then comes the genetic side. You observe and test the DNA that you obtain to get genetic samples. You read out the sequences right there in your lab. And then, math provides you with a very rigorous way to analyze the data. It will tell you what tree, if any, fits the data. And it will give you all sorts of statistical feedback on how confident the answer is and what other answers there might be. There's not much interpretation to be done.

Daisy: "Creationists, for reasons of their own, have decided to redefine 'science'."

"Nope"

Yup. They even admitted under oath to doing so at the Dover trial. According to their own words, a definition of science that includes ID also includes astrology. Both have about as much support.

"[ID], like forensics, assumes that either natural, intelligent, or both may have been involved."

So, tell us how to spot supernatural causes and where they have been found. You are not going to dredge up the discredited concept of IC are you?

"even when design is so evident that reverse engineering works to do molecular level studies"

Why could an evolutionary process not yield an efficient design?

"... even when they find how finely tuned the universe is."

Perhaps life is fined tuned for the universe in which it finds itself. How could it not be?

"That is precisely what evolution does. It starts with the conclusion that naturalism and evolution are true then find ways within the theory to accommodate the evidence..."

Nope. Again.
Evolution only became widely accepted after there was sufficient empricial data to support it. In the intervening time, as more data has been collected, the support for evolution has only grown as details about the mechanisms and history have been elucidated.

 

Which has absolutely nothing to do with assuming that everything in natural history occurred due to undirected events governed by naturalism alone.

Then evolution should be abandoned since it cannot be tested. You cannot take a supposed ancestor into the lab and prove that it would be possible for random mutations + natural selection to result in the ascension of new, better species.

Nor can you put evolution in a box and test it.... nor can you put naturalistic cosmology in a box and test it.

But the proposed solutions of evolution are beyond our ability to reproduce as well... but that seems to be no problem for those who assume naturalism. It is somehow irrational to assume that supernatural/intelligent forces might have been involved in creation since it cannot be reproduced but somehow perfectly rational to assume natural forces... that can't be reproduced either.

Nope. If it is a viable theory then like evolution it should be able to accommodate the empirical data which is all we can reasonably expect from an OOL theory and which it does quite well.

Except for the simple, undeniable, inconvenient fact that information of the complexity we see in the genetics and other pieces of empirical data are far better explained by intelligence than any natural process. In fact, it is ridiculous to assume that complex codes arise from random events governed by natural law.

No it doesn't. At the very best, evolution is flexible enough to accommodate the evidence. At the worst, its preachers ignore or dismiss evidence that contradicts it.

Yes you can. If the shaping is uniform regardless of the relative hard and soft spots in the rock, you can infer that intelligence was involved. If the shape simply reflects the random pattern of hard and soft parts then you can infer that it was a natural occurrence.

Applied to the "empirical data"- when natural forces never work to yield the necessary mechanisms for abiogenesis, common ascent, creation of new function, etc, etc, etc... then you can infer that natural processes are NOT a reasonable explanation.

Thank you for playing. Your example assumes some interesting things. First that there were written accounts... like the one God gave for how He created the world and life. Second, you didn't assume naturalism though it would have been every bit as reasonable for the evidence left by this battle as it is for creation.

You might scoff that natural forces could come together to write words... but swallow whole the notion that natural forces can come together to write a code that is far more complex than the diary you mentioned... and no more likely to self-assemble.

Third, absent the intelligent, eyewitness accounts, your assumptions would strongly govern and limit your conclusions. While it might have been an actual battle it could have just as easily been a training ground, battle in a different war, or a battle reenactment from 20 years before.

Nope... but you have proven that you are willing to talk out of both sides of your mouth to maintain your faith.

Except for the fact that it does not work to cause ascension of species. Species have limits that are catastrophic when broached. Microevolution has not been proven to produce macroevolution. In fact, just the opposite. It is proving that it preserves the current genome greatly intact.

Nope. Assume that they fit it.

How wide is the universe in light years?

By which best explains the empirical data... something that you are unwilling to consider.

Because it lacks a reasonably possible mechanism to code.

You are one of the most incredibly closed minded people I have ever met. You assume along with the atheist naturalism and discard even a punch in the nose such as complex code when it seems to contradict that assumption.

 

Oh, the bottom line: I love your Civil War battle example. Especially the part about diaries and such... since God Almighty Himself left us a "diary" entry about how He spoke creation into existance, repeatedly took direct credit for it, and repeatedly told us how long it took Him.

 

Amen:thumbs:

To believe any different, would be calling God a liar.

 

"Which has absolutely nothing to do with assuming that everything in natural history occurred due to undirected events governed by naturalism alone."

Try again.

It means just what I said. We can trust empirical data. And, to date, that data does not require any more than natural causes.

"Then evolution should be abandoned since it cannot be tested. You cannot take a supposed ancestor into the lab and prove that it would be possible for random mutations + natural selection to result in the ascension of new, better species."

A fallacious argument.

There are options available to us other than having a living, breathing specimen from ages long ago. For example, to test the hypothesis that whales and hooved animals share a common ancestor, you have many options. You have a fossil record showing the common lineage and fossils connecting the extant fossils back to when they were in common. You have genetic tests which show the same pattern of decent. YOu have other genetic hints, such as the cetacean pseudogenes for a sense of smell. You have developmental comparisons of the embryos of extant relatives. You have vestigal structures and atavisms.

These are all things which you can observe and test for yourself.

"... nor can you put naturalistic cosmology in a box and test it."

Yawn.

Cosmology makes predictions. We test those predictions. You really ought to read some of the papers being generated from WMAP.

"But the proposed solutions of evolution are beyond our ability to reproduce as well..."

You seem confused. We can look at the predictions made by evolution and see if our tests and observations support the theories. We can also observe some of the processes in action.

"If [ID] is a viable theory then like evolution it should be able to accommodate the empirical data which is all we can reasonably expect from an OOL theory and which it does quite well."

Now I am confused. Our observations reveal a world best explained by natural processes, not intelligent design. Life on earth is full of examples of inefficient design, suboptimal solutions and reinventing the same answer with different results over and over and over.

"Except for the simple, undeniable, inconvenient fact that information of the complexity we see in the genetics and other pieces of empirical data are far better explained by intelligence than any natural process. In fact, it is ridiculous to assume that complex codes arise from random events governed by natural law."

It is chemistry. Nothing more, nothing less. Chemistry. Your complex code invlves the chemistry of just four nuclear bases.

We have theories on how the complexity you see today may have built up. We can examine the geneome to see how those theories test. Some tests are beginning to show how the code that we have today may have originated from even simpler systems.

You also expect us to believe the the genome that we see was the result of a recent and supernaturally intelligent design. With most of the code being non-coding. With the code containing odd, long sequences of the same "letter." With the code being riddled full of inserts from viruses. With the code being riddled full of copies of genes and non-functioning genes. With even the functioning genes mostly being variations of a relatively few templates which have been repeatedly copied and mutated instead of being optimized for a specific job, as if the designer needed a hammer but instead decided to just wail away with a wrench because it was laying around even though it might not really be the best idea and might have undesired consequences.

You expect us to think that an intelligent designer not only came up with numerous solutions to given design issues, but also decided which organisms got a given design not by some logical reason such as how they would be used but instead by something illogical, like whether they were mammals or not. YOu expect us to believe that the intelligent designer, for some reason, decided to not optimize the design but to mix and match parts that sort of work but often not so well.

You turn God into some sort of partially inept tinkerer instead of the Almighty.

I said: "The empirical data does, however, support what one would expect to see if evolution was the correct answer."

"No it doesn't. At the very best, evolution is flexible enough to accommodate the evidence."

SO funny.

It is proposed that one of the mecahnisms for generating new and useful genetic sequences is to take some of what you got, make a copy and let one of the copies mutate while the other continues to perform the same duty.

Empirically, we see where this seems to be the case over and over. I even expounded before on the globin genes that make up hemoglobin. The pattern that shows an original duplication way back near the base of the vertebrates. The two duplicates are then themselves duplicated multiple times. Even the little bits of junk inbetween, the introns, are duplicated. The copies slowly change. Today, only one copy for each globin remains active. The other copies all reduced to pseudogenes. Furthermore, not only can you trace these two genes back to a duplication of a single gene, that gene was then merely a copy of another gene used for a different but similar purpose.

And you see this over and over. Genes being duplicated and mutated. Whole families of genes, all with the same basic template, that do wildly different jobs. This is what would be expected from evolution, and we see it. If hemoglobin was intelligently designed, all of that associated junk and history would not be present.

"Yes you can. If the shaping is uniform regardless of the relative hard and soft spots in the rock, you can infer that intelligence was involved. If the shape simply reflects the random pattern of hard and soft parts then you can infer that it was a natural occurrence."

See, I knew that you would agree that genuine cases of intelligent design can be determined. Even by those pesky scientists.

"Applied to the "empirical data"- when natural forces never work to yield the necessary mechanisms for abiogenesis, common ascent, creation of new function, etc, etc, etc... then you can infer that natural processes are NOT a reasonable explanation."

Except that such theories exist and are being tested even as you ignore them.

"Your example assumes some interesting things. First that there were written accounts... like the one God gave for how He created the world and life."

Yawn. We Christians cannot even all agree on what those accounts convey. Those who insist on a strict, literal interpretaion are not even a majority.

"Second, you didn't assume naturalism though it would have been every bit as reasonable for the evidence left by this battle as it is for creation."

I want some of what you're having. We can tell the difference between natural effects and the effects of war. And there really are not natural explanations for written words.

"Nope... but you have proven that you are willing to talk out of both sides of your mouth to maintain your faith."

Where am I talking in two different directions? And you know as well as I do that it is not faith when you rely upon empirical data. It is quite the opposite.

"Except for the fact that it does not work to cause ascension of species. Species have limits that are catastrophic when broached. "

Ha. What are those limits? What causes those limits? Draw the lines for us, tell us what the "kinds" are specifically and how you know.

I said: "We can look into the genomes of extant life and see how the patterns fit this mechanism. "

"Nope. Assume that they fit it."

Sorry. Look again at my above example of hemoglobin genes. They fit the expected pattern. This pattern is repeated an innumerable number of times.

"How wide is the universe in light years?"

Fallacious statement. Why do you wave a red herring like that? You really, really should look into what is out there.

Knowledge of the width of the universe is not needed and may not even make sense if the universe is infinite. I could look up the size of the observable universe, but you are just as capable of doing so. And you might accidentally learn something in the process.

I said: "So, tell us how to spot supernatural causes and where they have been found. "

"By which best explains the empirical data... something that you are unwilling to consider."

I'll take that to mean that you do not have a way to spot intelligent design nor any examples.

"You are one of the most incredibly closed minded people I have ever met. You assume along with the atheist naturalism and discard even a punch in the nose such as complex code when it seems to contradict that assumption."

More fallacies there. Trying to poison the well by throwing out the word "atheist" I suppose. Maybe a bit of a personal attack.

First off, I only came to my current position because I was open minded while still a YEer. To relate this back to the OP, the lying quote mines I found being used to support YE were one of the major factors in me deciding to look outside of YE.

Second, your complex code is nothing more than chemistry with only four bases. Your code is full of junk that makes no sense in the light of a recent and intelligent design but which fits in with just what is expected based on evolution.

 

Ah, but those with access to info and access to educating others can spread great lies about what happened. For example, there never was a "Civil" war. It was a war fought between to sovereign nations, and this is according to official US documents that were written by the Union. But, how many text books teach this today?

By the same token, how many text books teach that the war was fought over slavery? Even if the text books don't teach that, how many teachers teach that?

In the same manner, both YEers and Evolutionists twist and distort facts in their favor.

There is no conflict between observable scientific fact and Scriptures. Scripture will not hold up to YE theory, and natural evolution will not hold up to scrutiny either.

Both sides twist and distort.

 

Now that we have had our standard derailing that comes with this subject...

Your link still gives an error, but I was able to track down the Google cache of the page. Yes, it does appear that Gitt changed the meaning by leaving out the context. Of course Gitt does this all the time when discussing Shannon information, so maybe it comes natural to him.

But this does seem to be a very good example of misquoting. Lewontin was talking about how absurd science seems to those who do not understand the logic and factual basis behind it. By leaving out that part, it seems that he was speaking of science actually being "counter-intuitive" instead of just hard for the uninitiated.

I would be curious to know your opinion, since you started the thread.

 

If you surf the patently compromised propaganda of atheist evolutionists in their slavish devotion to evolutionism and set about to untangle all the myths and twisted half-truths they spin out by the truck load you will have attempted to swallow an elephant of falsehood far larger than you could possibly digest in a life time - much less "untangle" their web of deceit.

Take the case above "the first step" it to identify "the salient points" of the argument that the atheist seeks to avoid obfuscate and deny. Do this BEFORE leaping headlong into the false conclusions of the evolutionist. Step 1 UNDERSTAND the argument.

The Atheist evolutionist wants you to "pretend" that you think that the ONLY argument against evolutionism (i.e. the only time you may quote an evilutionist) is when you find them "Being a creationist". But in fact nothing is FARTHER from the truth!!

The point of the quote above by AIG is NOT to "show an evolutionist BEING a creationist" (obviously).

The "salient" point is to show that they ADMIT to "aprior bias" -- PERIOD!

This point is so patently obvious that the true devotee to evolutionism only "survives it" by "revisionism" by "pretending" that the ONLY VALID quote useful by creationists SHOULD be in the totally illogical and nonsensical form of an "Evolutionist CLAIMING to be a Creationist"!!

A more rediculous position can hardly be imagined - yet this is "all that is left" to the hapless evolutionist confronted with clear objective points raisted against evolutionism and enforced by THEIR OWN sources!!

"The salient" point of "a priori bias" that will not ALLOW any other "solution" but a non-God "naturalist" solution - means that a devoted atheist evilutionists CAN NOT tolerate any fact that "is found to be inconvenient" to their doctrines. They "start" from a position of "determined censorship".

In Christ,

Bob

 

Excellent post!

 

Good point!

I love to contrast the doctrinal myths and speculations of atheist evolutionism against something like string theory. In a science not plagued by atheist evolutionist dogma at every step they are "Free" to point that EVEN IF they COULD use accelerator technology to force a graviton particle out of this dimension AND to measure it - this does not "prove" the string theory. It merely shows another step needed to EVER prove the theory to be true!

In Christ,

Bob

 

The question is "DID Gitt claim that the evolutionist WAS a creationist" OR was the point simply (and obviously) to point out that the evolutionist true believer was admitting to "apriori bias".

The point is very straightforward and easy and does not leap off the cliff that atheist evolutionists would have us to "believe".

In Christ,

Bob

 

The closest we get to God telling us directly what he did in creation is the speech of God to Job in Job 38-39. Unlike Genesis 1-2, this is written as a divine speech from God.

Ironically, creationists generally agree that this account should not be taken literally. If they did take it literally, they'd have to reject modern meteorology and a host of other modern sciences as well as biology.

Of course, there's another solution that doesn't require one to reject any of the Bible, nor to treat the non-literal passages as untrue. One can instead accept that nature was made by God, and so what nature does is what God has endowed it with the ability to do. So, the explanations from meteorology don't remove God from the picture of making the sun to shine on the wicked and the righteous or sending precipitation to the earth, and evolution and other biological processes don't remove God from making every creature, past and present, and knitting each of us together in our mother's womb.