Merchant of evidence

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@bluebird1

People who “lose their faith” have many different reasons for it…but the YEC issue may be that reason for some.

How interesting it is that when it comes down to it, the “yec is at fault” blame game starts to unravel. Its gone from an absolute to a whimper as soon as someone posts actual statistical data (Gallop poll) which proves me right and the nonesense claims here wrong.

Again, the bible very specifically tells us exactly why people loose their faith…it is because of unbelief.

Given that faith is a belief in the gospel (that christ died to save us from sin and will return and take us to heaven), you cannot claim this has anything to do with evolutionary science timelines…you are simply making that up against the evidence. If i am wrong on this…then show me a gallop poll that says differently.

Does the above mean that evolutionary science timelines have nothing to do with it? No, its just one piece of the puzzle. However, what it does show is that a loss of faith in the gospel leads us to search for an alternative. We are driven by a search for the origins of life…“thats part of our dna” if you like. That does not mean our secular search is right according to the bible history and this should not be a suprise to any here.

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@adamjedgar

the claim YEC scientists are pseudo scientists is nothing more than a secular claim of sour grapes. So your statement above is bull.

Adam, what part of the word “rules” do you not understand?

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@adamjedgar

A significant one i have previously cited is the Piltdown man.

Yes, you have brought Piltdown man up before, so please read this carefully so you do not go on repeating this creationist talking point.

One. Piltdown man was never universally accepted, and was challenged immediately by a number of scientists. From your wikipedia reference…

As early as 1913, David Waterston of King’s College London published in Nature his conclusion that the sample consisted of an ape mandible and human skull. Likewise, French paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the same in 1915. A third opinion from the American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. concluded that Piltdown’s jaw came from a fossil ape. In 1923, Franz Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth.

Two. The people who definitively debunked Piltdown man were evolutionary scientists.

Three. From your wikipedia reference…

In November 1953, Time magazine published evidence, gathered variously by Kenneth Page Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark, and Joseph Weiner, proving that Piltdown Man was a forgery.

1953. That is before I was alive. 1953 is 71 years ago. Let it go man.

Creationists like to say that science is always changing, and that is true. Changing for the better, adding more detail, improving accuracy. Due to constant reappraisal, science has progressed enormously in my lifetime. Our understanding of nature, including black holes, the Higgs field, genetics, human evolution, and gravitational waves, is far beyond where it was. YEC is the opposite. Once it has been discredited, it just ignores the evidence and keeps on digging. YEC has a word for progress and discovery - “heresy.”

Four. Other than as a historical anecdote, Piltdown man is long long gone from textbooks. It persists as a link only in the obsessed and fervid minds of YEC.

Five. The reason YEC clings to Piltdown man is that they need a distraction from the subsequent overwhelming fossil and genetic evidence which yields a detailed history of human evolution and relationship to other primates, which has accumulated over the past decades. Look, a squirrel!!

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@adamjedgar

This rubbish talk about honesty is a red hearing, there are many examples that falsify evolutionary reliability and honesty. A significant one i have previously cited is the Piltdown man. That nonesense claim went on for 40 years…it is but one of many very problematic evolutionary claims.

The only red herring, the only nonsense being claimed with respect to Piltdown Man is the idea that just because that one data point, that was never accepted by evolutionary scientists in the first place, was debunked more than seventy years ago, that somehow could mean that hundreds of thousands of much more robust data points that have accumulated ever since must also be fraudulent.

It simply does not follow. Science does not work like that, and neither does anything else for that matter.

[Andy7 (Andy)]

Thank you for not letting the Piltdown Man argument go unchallenged. I think that Piltdown Man is a rather good example of how science, over time, weeds out fraudulent claims. As you point out, it was challenged from the outset. But it took some time to definitively debunk it, as claims and counter-claims must be rigorously studied.

[St.Roymond]

@adamjedgar

This rubbish talk about honesty is a red hearing, there are many examples that falsify evolutionary reliability and honesty. A significant one i have previously cited is the Piltdown man.

The difference is that for YECists the Piltdown Man escapade is standard operating procedure – throwing things together without regard for whether they actually fit.

@adamjedgar

Bart Erhman did not become an atheist because of evolution. He is a textual expert…not a scientist. He left the faith because of what he deemed were intrinsic textual errors within the bible itself. You have this completely wrong!

LOL

You just repeated what I wrote and declared I’m wrong.

@adamjedgar

Bart beleives that Christ did not rise from the dead…it has nothing to do with age of earth issues…you made that up.

I said no such thing – you’re the one making things up. You’ve really got to let go of this fixation with evolution as practically a demonic power.

@adamjedgar

Well given that Bart is an non Christian supporter of the historicity of the bible narrative…there is the fasifying evidence against your claim right there!

But what you wrote doesn’t do anything except agree with what I wrote.

@adamjedgar

I find its interesting you say Bart is an agnostic

Of course I say that – it’s what he says about himself.

@adamjedgar

actual statistical data (Gallop poll) which proves me right and the nonesense claims here wrong.

Except your Gallup poll was, as has been noted, flawed because of the way it worded the questions. As I recall a more reliable outfit asked better questions.

@adamjedgar

Again, the bible very specifically tells us exactly why people loose their faith…it is because of unbelief.

That’s not an explanation, it’s a tautology.

And it’s also both deceptive and naive. It’s just a way to avoid grappling with the real issues and the fact that YEC drives university students from the faith by the hundreds – it did when I was there and I have no reason to believe it has changed.

[St.Roymond]

@rsewell

Creationists like to say that science is always changing, and that is true.

Science is like target shooting: if you’re not adjusting your grip, your breathing, and other items so that you hit the target more and more often, you’re doing it wrong.

@rsewell

Look, a squirrel!!

My dog Bammer always ignored a friend who loved to say that.

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@St.Roymond

The difference is that for YECists the Piltdown Man escapade is standard operating procedure – throwing things together without regard for whether they actually fit.

I think the operative word is “parrot.”

It never ceases to amaze me how, no matter how carefully you explain to young earthists not just that their arguments are bad but why their arguments are bad, they keep on repeating them as if nothing you’d said was of any relevance whatsoever.

Bad arguments don’t become good arguments simply by repeating them ad nauseam. If they did, then you would be able to claim that “Pop goes the weasel, fusty musty dusty, open your books at page six” was a coherent argument for a young earth, because reasons.

[Terry_Sampson]

@St.Roymond

That’s not an explanation, it’s a tautology.

@adamjedgar

Again, the bible very specifically tells us exactly why people loose their faith…it is because of unbelief.

• Break the claim down.
  • “Faith vs. Unbelief” are, essentially, opposites. If someone has faith, they believe. If they lose faith, they don’t believe anymore - that’s unbelief.
  • The quoted sentence is a claim that simply says: “Unbelief causes Unbelief” or, in the alternative, “Loss of faith causes loss of faith.”

[St.Roymond]

@jammycakes

It never ceases to amaze me how, no matter how carefully you explain to young earthists not just that their arguments are bad but why their arguments are bad, they keep on repeating them as if nothing you’d said was of any relevance whatsoever.

I was thinking more of what their “researchers” do. Things I read on their sites often strike me as being about as coherent as high school freshman class papers where to meet the required length students will throw in anything that seems relevant, however tenuous the connection.

@Terry_Sampson

The quoted sentence is a claim that simply says: “Unbelief causes Unbelief” or, in the alternative, “Loss of faith causes loss of faith.”

Compare it to “high velocity causes speed” – that’s also a tautology, but one I think that makes the ridiculousness of calling it an argument more evident.

[T_aquaticus]

@adamjedgar

the claim YEC scientists are pseudo scientists is nothing more than a secular claim of sour grapes.

“No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation.”–Answers in Genesis

That’s pseudoscience. Period.

@adamjedgar

A significant one i have previously cited is the Piltdown man. That nonesense claim went on for 40 years…it is but one of many very problematic evolutionary claims.

Pseudoscientists will keep talking about a faked fossil that was already debunked by science decades ago, and then refuse to address the real transitional hominid fossils.

Piltdown man is not in that lineup.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

I have seen a YEC textbook that claimed that secondhand smoke is harmless. Not sure why they promoted that particular claim, but it’s not safe to assume that any example of pseudoscience won’t have its following in an audience.

[St.Roymond]

@paleomalacologist

I have seen a YEC textbook that claimed that secondhand smoke is harmless. Not sure why they promoted that particular claim, but it’s not safe to assume that any example of pseudoscience won’t have its following in an audience.

Yeah, and a YEC guy insisted it’s not possible to get stoned from second-hand marijuana smoke. I couldn’t stop laughing, which got him mad; I finally stopped and told him about how I got stoned the first time: I was at a party and since I wouldn’t take a puff on a joint three guys kept blowing smoke at me. He didn’t respond to that except to tell me that getting stoned is sinful. I told him it qualified as an herb of the field and left him to ponder that.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

Although it was about 40 years between the initial “discovery” of the Piltdown material (by someone seeking attention and later shown to be prone to faking archaeological discoveries) and the prominent publication of data showing that it was fake, there were scientific misgivings from the start, and by the time it was publicized as a fake it was already quite clearly not in accord with the actual evidence about human evolution. Carbon-14 dating is an important component of the disproof of Piltdown’s validity. The reality is that Piltdown Man is an example of scientific research making corrections. Conversely, nonsense young-earth claims debunked over 50 years ago are still circulated as true, such as the moon dust argument or claiming that layers were put in order based on evolutionary assumptions.

[T_aquaticus]

@paleomalacologist

Although it was about 40 years between the initial “discovery” of the Piltdown material (by someone seeking attention and later shown to be prone to faking archaeological discoveries) and the prominent publication of data showing that it was fake, there were scientific misgivings from the start, and by the time it was publicized as a fake it was already quite clearly not in accord with the actual evidence about human evolution. Carbon-14 dating is an important component of the disproof of Piltdown’s validity.

The discovery of Taung Child by Raymond Dart in 1924 was one of the major reasons why Piltdown was doubted from the start. There was little doubt that Dart’s find was authentic, and it differed from Piltdown in many ways.

It is also interesting that creationists fail to even mention the actual hominid fossils such as Taung Child. Cherry picking data is one of the features of pseudoscience.

@paleomalacologist

Conversely, nonsense young-earth claims debunked over 50 years ago are still circulated as true, such as the moon dust argument or claiming that layers were put in order based on evolutionary assumptions.

Reminiscent of Monty Python’s Black Knight. It’s just a flesh wound, I guess.

If I went onto a Biblical Theology forum and declared that all of the Bible experts were wrong about everything, surely I should be able to demonstrate I have knowledge in the area. So I tell everyone that none of the 6 gospels agree with one another, but at least they all agree on Jesus being resurrected 8 months after being hanged. I think most theologians wouldn’t give my opinions much weight. Unfortunately, this is the type of behavior we see from creationists all of the time. When their basic errors are pointed out they don’t seem phased at all. They still think all of the experts from the last 150 years have it all wrong and they have it right, even when nearly all of their creationist claims can be shown to be wrong. It’s just like hacking away at the Black Knight.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

@T_aquaticus

Reminiscent of Monty Python’s Black Knight. It’s just a flesh wound, I guess.

Come back here you coward! I can still bite you!

[St.Roymond]

@T_aquaticus

8 months after being hanged

On a pole – an upright pole, that is! Don’t forget that part.