implying that you should test your arguments with the same degree of scrutiny as the ideas you're dismissing, is not an appeal to authority. in case you hadn't realised the world of science isn't really shaped by posting on stardock's messageboards.

why are you letting the world go on in ignorance when you could contribute to the understanding of mankind?

implying that you should test your arguments with the same degree of scrutiny as the ideas you're dismissing, is not an appeal to authority. in case you hadn't realised the world of science isn't really shaped by posting on stardock's messageboards.

why are you letting the world go on in ignorance when you could contribute to the understanding of mankind?

AGENT kharma, omg.

Do you know what occams razor is? It means that you should strife for the simplest theory possible. An complex being suddnly appearing is not logical. Simple things making complex things are. HOW HARD IS THIS? 

Occam's razor is sometimes applied to the existence of God; if the concept of God does not help to explain the universe, it is argued, God is irrelevant and should be cut away (Schmitt 2005). It is argued to imply that, in the absence of compelling reasons to believe in God, disbelief should be preferred.

Also you dumb dumb person. Why would evolution not be proven? There is evidence, which you calim to be untrue:

Also becaouse you're clearly deaf blind or dyslectic:  CITE YOUR SOURCES. CITE THEM. CITE THEM. CITE CITE CITE.

GODDAMNIT I shoudlnt even take yyou seriosuly anymore.

Your entire argument is an appeal to authority - and apparently you're using your own authority, as you won't even reference anyone else's work, or supply data other than your personal assurances that such data exists. I've looked up quite a bit on creationist/ID "science" in the last few days, and I want to know exactly what you're basing your ideas on; maybe you found a few gems in the mountain of hog feces I just attempted to sift. Maybe I just missed the earth-shattering relevance of some part of it?

Deja vu all over again. Are we witnessing a time discontinuity?

All that aside, I do find your picture quite appropriate to this evolution discussion (a caveman, LOL), so you get points for that in my book, if nothing else.

This is exactly it for me in a nutshell.

Thing is, if I were quoting some ultra-obscure reference from some fringe scientist somewhere, I might feel a little more inclined to throw up some text, sources, etc.  But for God's sake, I was quoting Darwin himself, the Godfather of Evolution, and it is well-known that he said what he said about the fossil record.  So I figure if I have to spoonfeed THAT to them, what the hell else will I have to spoonfeed to them?  And even if I did spoonfeed it to them, it's not like they would accept it.

Also, if I were having this discussion with people who really wanted to have an honest, genuine discussion, I might also be a little more inclined to go out of my way to spoonfeed them things I shouldn't have to spoonfeed.  But these people sure don't fit into that category, LOL.  I mean, I don't take any of them seriously.

For the spectators, this is a fine example of psychoak's strength as a rhetorician trumping his rhetorical love of being 'smart.' Facts are facts, whether or not you have postmodern problems with the etymology of that particular English word. Rhetoric is the high art of speaking (or writing) persuasively in a way that includes facts, but does not limit you to using facts as part of a rigorous logical analysis.

Rhetoric has a bad rep in these post-Enlightenment days, but it is a true humanist art form and a very useful complement to scientific thinking. Facts about how things work are all well and good, but here we are using still-fundamentally-mysterious ugly bags of mostly-water to observe, abstract, and discuss those facts. Until such a (possibly horrible) day as science presents truly rigorous explanations for human consciousness and social interaction, real science deserves a worthy jousting partner that represents the chaotic psedo-computers in all our Homo sapiens neuroanatomy (not to mention the hormonal stuff).

Speaking of traditions that have undeservedly gained a bad rep in modern culture, WIlly's point here applies to scholarship in general, not just science; it don't count widdout proper references. Master rhetoricians of old could not only wield 'facts' in effective, illogical constructions, they could cite other people's work precisely and choose whether to use that work in the spirit its author probably intended or to simply mooch some of the glamour of a great name like Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas. Figuring out which was what and whether you liked that or not was part of the fun of being in the audience.

From my looking at it there in fact *may* be some *infinitesimal* neanderthal contribution to the human genome. Anything else is certainly a possibility but there's simply no preponderance of evidence that indicates any kind of intentional cover-up of the "fact" of human neanderthal interbreeding. If at some point there is sufficient evidence of human neanderthal interbreeding then I'm sure we'll all hear about it, until then all we have is that you read an article somewhere and sometime. Big Whoop.

From a couple of pages back...

I read through the more recent strips and it seems very hit and miss. Sometimes the irony can be, well, a bit too subtle. Or alternatively, cut a bit too close to the heart. I prefer heavy handedness in my social and political commentary. 

To be fair, things haven't changed that much. Medieval theologians composed their arguments and then dispatched their assistants to find appropriate Biblical passages. Nowadays, professors have grad students write their literature reviews.

zigzag, I might be a couple of decades older than you, and the history might be the difference for a new Doonesbury reader. Plus I try hard to be a raging moderate or a practical lefty or whatever, and I just don't need a lot of encouragement to get feisty about politics. I ration Maureen Dowd articles on that account. The saucy wench is right up my alley when it comes to talking trash DC-style, and I have enough trouble remember that you can catch more flies with honey, yada-yada...

My rhetoric rant was probably as much about the faux-populist power of sciency prattle as anything else. But I definitely enjoy disrupting a conversation by proclaiming that the first European doctors were priests who didn't want to be bothered by much contact with a congregation. Ah, professional culture.

Yes.  Evolutionists should try to apply it to their own theory sometime.

You see, the real philosophial basis for the theory of evolution was an attempt to avoid the last ditch explanation of "shit happens" to explain life (complex biological machines).  You can always try to explain anything by "shit happens" (i.e. random chance), but people didn't find such explanations intellectually satisfying back in Darwin's day.  So Darwin proposed a mechanical process to explain life, and kudos to him for attempting to do so.

Unfortunately, as people have pointed out here, it doesn't explain how the first life got here, rather it attempts to explain how life derived from other life.  So how did the first life get here?  Darwin himself, in a letter to a colleague (I read the text) constructed the iconic "promordial pool" - an icon which has been used ever since.  You know, some warm primeval pool with salts, minerals, mud, energy in the form of heat or electricity, etc.  Throw in some random chance and "BOOM" - the first life.  "Shit happens."

So what's my point?  In attempting to avoid "shit happens," we find it at the root of evolution regardless.  Well, "shit happens" plus "something else" (in this case, exotic mechanical process called "evolution/natural selection") is just "shit happens" - you don't need the "something else" attached.  This is much the same as "infinity + 1" - you don't need the "+ 1," just say "infinity" and be done with it.

Occam's razor would have excised out Darwin's exotic mechanical process from the get go.  If you ever need to appeal to "shit happens," just stick with that as an overall explanation, as it is simpler and subsumes everything else into it.

It was evolutionists' idea to go tearing through the fossil record looking for evidence to support evolution.  When they didn't find it, they said what you just said, i.e. "well the fossil record is incomplete, this is all a red herring, blah blah."  In other words, evolution can't be falsified, so don't even try.  Heads, you win, tails, everybody else loses.  If the fossil record had supported you, you would have cited it.  Since it didn't, you claim it's irrelevant.  This isn't objective science.  It's dogma.

Nope.  I deny that children looking like their parents proves that an amoeba transformed into a man, an elephant, a whale, a dog, a tree, and every other life form on the planet.  LOL.  Nice try though, I guess.

Nope.  I deny that errors in the copying process will build complex, specified machines, while at the same time also building the blueprints for such complex, specified machines.

Errors in the copying process almost always either harm the organism in question, or have little effect because it wasn't a relevant gene, or the genes were duplicated elsewhere, etc.  Very hard to find an example of a beneficial mutation.  4 winged fruit flies aren't a good example to use to try to make your case.

Yeah, that's the problem.

Yeah, I keep asking for things that haven't been delivered too.  I asked someone to show me how a simple machine is constructed step by step according to evolution.  All I got was a steaming mass of horseshit for one attempted explanation, a "you expect me to actually try to explain how my theory works?  screw you!" as another response, and text pasted from some stupid web site as another response, which I cannot challenge because the original author of the text isn't here for me to challenge him.  I ask for someone HERE to explain how this can happen IN THEIR WORDS yet I get nothing.

I'll say it again - the fossil record doesn't support evolution.  If you want examples of famous evolutionists who agree with this, go read Charles Darwin, go read Stephen J. Gould, etc. (the reason Gould came up with "Punctuated Equilibrium" is BECAUSE the fossil record doesn't show evolution, or a "tree of life).

You will tell me to go find where these people have said these things, and present it to you.  I will say "no."  My reason?  One reason is, if you people are serious about studying evolution and thinking about this stuff, then you should ALREADY KNOW it.  I don't think you should even be participating in a debate if you don't know it.  It's like, you aren't even qualified.  You should be embarassed.  It shows that you people aren't serious about any of this stuff, and shouldn't be taken seriously.

I threw you two big names in evolution.  If you are too lazy to go find where they say the fossil record doesn't match up with evolution, I think it's safe to say you aren't serious about this.  The funnier thing is, even if you did read what they said, it won't matter a hill of beans to you anyway.  You will just do what the guy above does - say "well the fossil record doesn't matter anyway."  Like I said, you people aren't objective scientists, you're dogmatists.

Congratulations.

It isn't up to me to disprove anything.  In fact, as far as I know, it is impossible to disprove anything (you can't prove a negative).  It isn't up to me to disprove, it is up to evolutionists to prove.  The burden of proof is on you, not me.

HINT: All theories start out with the "disproven" label attached by default.  The "disproven" label is removed when the theory is proven.  Evolution hasn't been proven.

Anyway, I challenged you to show me how a machine is constructed according to your theory.  Nothing was forthcoming.

LOL.  I won't do you the discourtesy of forwarding you other people's texts to argue my points.  If I have a point to argue with you, I will argue it with you, using my brain and my own words.  Kindly reciprocate.