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Date Posted: 01:42:20 10/22/02 Tue
Author: Eponymous-30Sep02
Subject: Re: Evolution in the general and specific case
In reply to: ketch-28Sep02 's message, "Re: Evolution in the general and specific case" on 01:39:55 10/22/02 Tue

“Then I invite you again to show us these "thousands" of fossils.”

I don't know of any source online that has thousands of jpegs cataloguing hominid fossils, and it really wouldn't be practical to send you a bag of bones in the post (were I to have them in my possession). This is high school biology, and I already pointed you to one article that mentions the same number. (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html , first paragraph: “[T]here are now thousands of hominid fossils. They are however mostly fragmentary, often consisting of single bones or isolated teeth. Complete skulls and skeletons are rare [as I have stipulated]”). Even creationists don’t dispute these facts.

“Regarding your 1745 apple, if we had evidence that this apple had not followed the rules of gravity, then we would indeed have to consider that it may have been an exception.”

Just so. And we don’t have the evidence that homo sapiens was “ensouled” upon its appearance (which itself is an incoherent notion, as I pointed out two posts ago): The notion that the vague, unfalsifiable “intuitions” of some preferred personality can reasonably count as “evidence” as against a well-established scientific theory (or as an auxiliary hypothesis added thereto) is tenuous at best, and betrays a clearly unscientific attitude. Which is fine with me - but let’s call it what it is.

“As for your claims of what a creator would or would not have seen fit to do, this is simply arrogance.”

Your "simply arrogance" is simply a careless (not to mention possibly ironic) ad hominem. The fact is that the theist cannot provide any reason why a creator would insert clad-consistent pseudogenes into each species ab initio, or why a creator would use the same genetic code for all species (without which there would be no interspecies viral transmission), or why any of the dozen or so other molecular facts cited in the section of the article I linked to obtains; meanwhile, the evolutionist not only can provide reasons for these facts, in fact evolutionary principles predict such features. What this shows is that we have ample scientific reasons to believe one theory, on the one hand, and no scientific reasons whatever to believe an otiose, would-be theoretical supplement, on the other.

This argument arrogates nothing to itself as to the actual nature of a creator, but looks only to the imperfect faculties of human reason. No human being can, without arrogance, claim to speak for more than that.
_____________________________
Our unfortunate descent into personal attack, along with what looks to me like a general tendency to ignore the central conceptual issues, suggests that the time for fruitful argument on this issue has expired. I’ll therefore submit on what I’ve posted, Ketch; the last word is yours, if you want it. (I might respond, however, using quoted excerpts from my prior posts, just to make sure that you don't feel any of your arguments went unaddressed.)

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