upcoming "accident or design" lecture

[HeyLeroy]

I'm planning on attending a lecture sponsored by a local church called "Accident or design- scientists presenting facts on the world's origin".

I'm really curious to learn the credentials of these 'scientists', and I'm hoping that the're assuming that they're 'preaching to the choir' and allow a Q&A session.

Unfortunately I'm not up-to-date on the pseudoscientific claims presented by IDers. Can anyone tell me about their likely 'facts', and how to counter them?

Thanks in advance, everyone.

[Hawk one]

This post made on the basis that there will be creationists spouting creationist "arguments", which seems likely, considering the title of the thing (evolution is of course no accident, it just doesn't require a designer).

Well, the best place to start with making a list about all the creationist arguments is to find a website (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html) that brings up a list about all the creationist arguments.

Of course, it's a very long list, and all the points won't come up, so allow me speculate some of the things I'm almost sure will come up. Open up my link in a separate window, and go through the points as I list them here. Note that it's a personal recommendation, and others with more knowledge may very well have a better recommendation for you than I.:

The CA claims will probably rise a lot, so study many of them well, especially CA001, CA002, CA010, CA041, CA 110, CA111, CA201, CA202, CA210, CA601, CA602, CA610 and most importantly, CA100! Others too will be important.

From biology, it's harder to venture which claims will come up. But hazarding a guess, CB010, CB101, CB102, CB200, the CB300 series in general ("complex organs can't have evolved") and CB900-CB930 (about mutations) in general is fairly likely to come up.

From paleonthology: It's amazing, but the creationists still bring up Piltdown Man. This forum's very own hammegk is proof of that. Which just goes to tell you how hard it is for this crowd to accept the facts. CC001 is therefore a must.
The stuff in between is also fairly likely to come up, but I'd still focus a bit more on the CC200 series. Still not getting the point, creationists drone mindlessly about "transitional fossils" to this very day.

In geology, it's best to study how all the different kinds of dating methods has a remarkable way of showing consistency as long as it's used properly. So go for the CD010-CD016 right away. I have seldom ran into the other claims, but anything that concerns Grand Canyon might be a good idea to look into.

Astronomy next: CE100 series (claims about the moon not being as old as it is) is a nice thing to read about. As is the CE400 series (claiming the universe isn't as old as it is).

Into physics mathematics. Oh joy, here we have it right at the beginning: Study CF001-CF011 and study it well. Second Law of Thermodynamics is one of the most abused physic laws ever. A creationist team "preaching to the choir" is not likely to miss this one, so neither should you.

Now, history. If you're already feeling overloaded, feel free to skip most of this. Pick up CG001 just in case, though. It's not that likely to be brought up, but it's one of the most despicable creationist lies (in my opinion).

To religion, which should not be skipped over, considering the church is the sponsors. CH101-CH184, and the old favourite CH220. In the "Flood scetion, advice is to find a link to a single article that deals with most of the claims, to avoid clicking all night long (as if you're not going to do that already. ;))

And finally, the creationist's currently most popular way of telling lies: Intelligent Design. Also important to read upon, and just about everything here is important.

The CJ part can be skipped.

Finally, don't focus much on the credentials of the scientists in such a debate: Insist that it's the arguments that count, not who makes them, as long as they are there.
Of course, if you can put up the names of them, feel free to post them up, and maybe someone here can help you checking out their credentials. This is only to be used if they keep insisting their credentials are in fact worth something, but your research indicates that they are either irrelevant (not degrees in biology) or received through a diploma mill. Again, use such knowledge (if you have it) with care.

Good luck!

[chipmunk stew]

In addition to what Hawk one suggested (great suggestions, BTW!) check out TalkDesign.org (http://www.talkdesign.org/) which is a spin off of TalkOrigins.org.

One critique of Michael Behe's ideas that I particularly like (Behe is one of the biggest motivating forces behind ID) is here (http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/oct03.html#run).

From the list provided by Hawk one, the bacterial flagellum is a favorite example of "irreducible complexity", which is debunked nicely in CB200.1 (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_1.html).

[HeyLeroy]

Excellent! Thank you very much.

I'm off to sleep now, but rest assured that I will take copious notes from the list you provided.

The only reason I mentioned credentials is that I'm suspecting that the 'scientists' they'll be presenting might possibly be speaking outside of their fields. I'm a tradesman, a machinist by training. An electrician is also a tradesman. Am I qualified to wire a house? No. 'Scientist' could be used to describe a wide variety of professions.

I'm hoping I'll be allowed to videotape this event, if only so I can provide a transcript. I'm sure it'll be interesting.

Thanks again!

[HeyLeroy]

Wow, thanks a tonne! I've got my studying to do, I see.

The only reason I'm curious about the credentials question, is I have the feeling that the 'scientists' might possibly be talking outside of their fields of expertise. I mean, I'm a tradesman, a machinist by training. Plumbing is also a trade, but the only things I know about plumbing is that crap flows downhill and not to chew your fingernails.

I'm hoping they'll let me videotape this event, and if they do I'll transcribe it and put it up on the web somewhere.

Thanks again for the reference material. I have to get some sleep now, so I'll be fresh for my studies.

[pgwenthold]

Is there a good way to point out that "accident or design" is a false dichotomy?

[stamenflicker]

Is there a good way to point out that "accident or design" is a false dichotomy?

I would merely point out that there are few in the evolutionary field who would even use the word accident at all. Natural selection is a very different concept than accident, however it is also quite different than the word design. Any meaningful discussion needs to have its terms correctly defined first.

Flick

[delphi_ote]

Natural selection is a very different concept than accident, however it is also quite different than the word design.

Not necessarily. Design by natural selection is certainly possible, though untestible.

[CBL4]

If they bring up irreducible complexity, they typically mention a mouse trap with 4 parts. They imply that any 3 parts are useless which means that it could not evolve.

Ask them why the evolutionary "mouse trap" could not have had 5 or 6 or even 7 parts before being simplified down to 4.

CBL

[Hawk one]

Addition to CBL4's post: Also, tell them that the only mousetrap that's evolved is mouse-hunting animals. The manmade mousetrap is not a living thing, and thus obviously not capable of evolving like living things are.

[Eos of the Eons]

You'll probably get a full rundown trying to smush evolution into oblivion with arguments like those found at Veith's site:

http://www.amazingdiscoveries.org/evolution.html

And just as much defending bible stories:

http://www.amazingdiscoveries.org/flood.html

If you can rip all those arguements apart, then you'll be fine. I didn't have the time when I tried to attend a similar lecture. There's just too darn much to cover! It's rather overwhelming.

[chipmunk stew]

Addition to CBL4's post: Also, tell them that the only mousetrap that's evolved is mouse-hunting animals. The manmade mousetrap is not a living thing, and thus obviously not capable of evolving like living things are.You could also tell them that although the pieces of a mousetrap cannot trap mice independent of one another, they can accomplish many other things. I'll leave it to you to imagine all the possible uses for a spring a small plank and a few pieces of wire.

You could also point out that the spring analogy is inherently flawed because a mousetrap does not trap mice until someone cocks back the lever, sets it in its trigger, and baits it with cheese. So human intervention is necessary to make it work.

Given that constraint, you can imagine many possible uses for a mousetrap that lacks any given set of parts. For instance, remove the trigger so that you only have a lever attached to a small plank of wood with a spring (useless for catching mice), and you have a handy memo clip that you could mount in your cubicle at work.

It's such a horrible analogy that I'm surprised the IDers continue to use it.

[Dr Adequate]

Here is a diagram of the human ear. All mammals have an inner ear arranged like this. Reptiles do not.

http://www.palaeos.com/Vertebrates/Bones/Ear/Images/Incus1.gif

The red bit is called the incus.

As you can see, the mechanism of the inner ear is irreducibly complex, like a mousetrap. If you take the incus away, the mechanism doesn't work any more.

Since the bones in the ear are bones, they fossilize. As we have literally thousands of intemediate forms between reptiles and mammals, we can see a set of intermediate forms (http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_05.htm) between reptilian jawbones and mamallian earbones.

http://www.gcssepm.org/images/fossil_a.gif

The mammalian ear is irreducibly complex, but we know that it evolved, and we know how it evolved.

Exit "irreducible complexity" as evidence for design.

[KingMerv00]

I just found out that there is an evo debate in the Constitution Center in Philadelphia today (10/19/05) at 6:30PM. Standing room only.

Hope I can squeeze in.

[Iamme]

I'm planning on attending a lecture sponsored by a local church called "Accident or design- scientists presenting facts on the world's origin".

I'm really curious to learn the credentials of these 'scientists', and I'm hoping that the're assuming that they're 'preaching to the choir' and allow a Q&A session.

Unfortunately I'm not up-to-date on the pseudoscientific claims presented by IDers. Can anyone tell me about their likely 'facts', and how to counter them?

Thanks in advance, everyone.

Why are you going with the mindset to counter them, if you don't have your facts in order already! You have preformed conceptions showing that your mind is already made up. You don't want to go and be satisfied in just listening to both sides of the issue. You want to have ammunition aheadof time for that which you don't even understand? Fascinating. Some scientist YOU are.

[Dr Adequate]

FACT: the consensus of the scientific community is the "Intelligent Design" is obfuscatory bullsh*t.

HeyLeroy wants to know why. This is an eminently reasonable enquiry.

[Eos of the Eons]

It's telling they are using "accident". Traits are most often selected for due to survival. It's no darn accident.

[Bronze Dog]

Scenario I'd like to do sometime:

IDer: "You can't believe it was just all just an accident!"

Me: "You say that as if it were a bad thing."

[HeyLeroy]

Why are you going with the mindset to counter them, if you don't have your facts in order already! You have preformed conceptions showing that your mind is already made up. You don't want to go and be satisfied in just listening to both sides of the issue. You want to have ammunition aheadof time for that which you don't even understand? Fascinating. Some scientist YOU are.


Umm, I think in my reply I stated that I'm not a scientist, but a lowly machinist. I don't have a problem with people believing whatever the heck they want to believe. What I have a problem with is those peoples' insistence on insinuating philosophy into science classes. I want my children to be prepared to deal with this world on a rational basis as they grow older.

I am actually going to attend this lecture with my mind open. However, seeing as how this is being sponsored by a church, and seeing as how the overwhelming majority of the scientific community rejects the notion of Intelligent Design as the opposite of Shinola, the dial on my Bullsh*t Detector is going to be set at eleven, thank-you very much.

[Eos of the Eons]

Righto. I'll bet you anything you'll see the kind of convoluted illogical pile of horse manure that I Linked to above.

[HeyLeroy]

I attended Thursday's lecture, or, to be more specific, sermon, and came away spectacularily disappointed.

The speaker, or, to be more specific, guest pastor, was John Aldom, technical director of the Public Health Laboratory in London, Ontario. (As an aside, just to hear him pronounce 'la-BORR-a-tory, like we were in a bad '50's horror flick, was quite a hoot!) His claimed fields of expertise are microbiology and infectuous disease. He says he graduated from the University of Guelph (Ontario). He also appears to me to be stark, raving, rat-in-a-coffee-can nuts.

After starting the sermon with a prayer and a song, he pronounced his rejection of 'Darwinian Evolution', stating, "wherever the scriptures touch on science...they are accurate and infallible, because they are the word [sic] of god".

Folks, this wasn't anything close to being about Intelligent Design in it's softest sales mode, this was full-blown, puts-the-mental-into Fundamentalism!

I don't have much time right now, but I was allowed to videotape the event. As soon as I can I'll transcribe things and post as many of his arguments for biblical literalism as I can.

[delphi_ote]

Folks, this wasn't anything close to being about Intelligent Design in it's softest sales mode, this was full-blown, puts-the-mental-into Fundamentalism!

Under its surface, that's what ID always is.

[Eos of the Eons]

Were these IDers or YEC? Young Earth Creationists claim the bible is the ultimate truth, and even say ID is a bad idea. They like the idea of a designer though, and prefer to name their god as the designer. No pussyfooting around when it comes to the YEC.

[Dr Adequate]

That was YEC. The flavor is unmistakable, as is the smell.

[delphi_ote]

Were these IDers or YEC? Young Earth Creationists claim the bible is the ultimate truth, and even say ID is a bad idea. They like the idea of a designer though, and prefer to name their god as the designer. No pussyfooting around when it comes to the YEC.

Except for the people actually writing books, there's really no difference. The ID crowd is the YEC crowd. All the details about the age of the Earth are conveniently left out when the "experts" are talking for precisely this reason.

[HeyLeroy]

It was kind of funny, actually. This guy was probably a revolutionary to this crowd. After going into a lengthy sermon about how god had built up this great big beautiful world, he showed some overheads quoting the bible and then said that god destroyed everything on the surface before putting little ol' us here. He said something like, "Now I don't want to upset anyone (this was definitely a YEC crowd) but I think humans were put here about 6,000 years ago, but I think the earth is older than that."

Oh, he upset me, alright, but not for the reasons he supposed.

More nifty overheads showed the fault-lines separating the earth's tectonic plates. He explained how, before the flood (y'know, that flood), the world was smooth and had no mountains. And there was a one-half to one mile thick layer of water, forty miles beneath the earth's crust. Then we went and pissed off The Big Guy so he boiled all this water, which cracked the crust and came spewing up to the surface. It covered the mountains (which he'd explained earlier weren't there to a height of 15 cubits (or 45 feet to us modern folk) and sent tidal waves racing around the globe at 1,000 mph, which, of course, is the earth's rotational speed at the equator. What with no mountains to slow them down (!) they roared around and around the planets for forty days and nights 'til those plates settled into the gap left by all that water, started the continents drifting apart, and (finally!) formed the mountains.

Now I get it! Let it never be said that Noah don't surf!

Oh, and since mammals stop growing when they reach a certain height, Noah was between five and six feet tall when he built the ark at the tender young age of 600. But reptiles keep growing all their lives, which is why dinosaur skeletons get so darn big. Noah only brought baby dinos on the ark.

So don't be surprised if the next big archaeological discovery is a li'l baby T-Rex puppy with a dino-tag that says, "My name is Chompy. I'm lost. Please contact Noah T. Boatbuilder. Just look for the glow from all his birthday-cake candles."

[delphi_ote]

But reptiles keep growing all their lives, which is why dinosaur skeletons get so darn big.

Based on the evidence you have presented, I can only conclude that the audience was mentally retarded.

[Mojo]

His claimed fields of expertise are microbiology and infectuous disease. A microbiologist who thinks evolution doesn't happen!!! :jaw-dropp

[Mojo]

After starting the sermon with a prayer and a song, he pronounced his rejection of 'Darwinian Evolution', stating, "wherever the scriptures touch on science...they are accurate and infallible, because they are the word [sic] of god". Ah, but has the word of God been peer-reviewed?

[HeyLeroy]

A microbiologist who thinks evolution doesn't happen!!! :jaw-dropp

Very early in his sermon, Mr. Aldom admitted his disbelief in
evolution. I'll get the exact quotes off the videotape as soon as I can, but he said
in so many words that, in spite of so many years of looking through a microscope
at bacteria, and personally observing how they can mutate and adapt
to survive in environments to which they had been previously
unaccustomed, he saw nothing to support evolutionary thinking!

[HeyLeroy]

Based on the evidence you have presented, I can only conclude that the audience was mentally retarded.

I can't say for certain, although there could've been some inbreeding goin' on there.

[HeyLeroy]

Were these IDers or YEC? Young Earth Creationists claim the bible is the ultimate truth, and even say ID is a bad idea. They like the idea of a designer though, and prefer to name their god as the designer. No pussyfooting around when it comes to the YEC.

He seemed like kind of an upstart, at least to this crowd. Kind of a post-pubescent earth/prepubescent every living thing proponent. Humans and animals were sneezed down here about 6,000 years ago, while the earth was only qualified as "older".

Oh, and did I mention, Noah only brought cuddly baby dinosaurs onto the ark? They must've been sooooo CUTE!!!

[Eos of the Eons]

Ah, but has the word of God been peer-reviewed?Now now, stop trying to confuse the masses by mixing up beleefs wiff siense.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Some IDers make a distinction between adaptation and evolution. I've never understood the distinction, but there you have it.

~~ Paul

[Mojo]

Very early in his sermon, Mr. Aldom admitted his disbelief in
evolution. I'll get the exact quotes off the videotape as soon as I can, but he said
in so many words that, in spite of so many years of looking through a microscope
at bacteria, and personally observing how they can mutate and adapt
to survive in environments to which they had been previously
unaccustomed, he saw nothing to support evolutionary thinking!Errrr...

:hb:

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Oh, and did I mention, Noah only brought cuddly baby dinosaurs onto the ark? They must've been sooooo CUTE!!!

Did he say what happened to the dinosaurs after they grew up? Having T-rexes, giant pterosaurs, centipedes six feet long(From about four-six hundred million years ago, the exact time I've forgoten. Remind me guys) etc., etc., etc. would be really hard on primitive human's survival.

[HeyLeroy]

Did he say what happened to the dinosaurs after they grew up? Having T-rexes, giant pterosaurs, centipedes six feet long(From about four-six hundred million years ago, the exact time I've forgoten. Remind me guys) etc., etc., etc. would be really hard on primitive human's survival.

I don't want to put a line of reasoning into Mr. Aldom's head (well, come to think of it, I DO!) but if Noah, at the tender young age of 600, could build an ocean freighter out of wood that could weather 40 days and nights of tsunamis, the T-rexes probably cowered in his path.

I sh*t you not, the guy actually believes that it was common for people to live for several centuries before the flood.

Also, I just realized that his math don't quite add up on the subject of plate tectonics. He mentioned that tectonic plates were moving at a rate of 1-2 cm/year. Let's be generous and allow 2.54cm (one inch). If the plates only started moving due to the disruption of the earth's crust from the loss of that one-mile thick layer of water forty miles down, and that event happened 4,500 years ago, then satellite imagery of the earth must be wrong, as it's only a par three from North America to Europe.

Repeat after me: NOW I get it!

[GodMark2]

I don't want to put a line of reasoning into Mr. Aldom's head (well, come to think of it, I DO!) but if Noah, at the tender young age of 600, could build an ocean freighter out of wood that could weather 40 days and nights of tsunamis, the T-rexes probably cowered in his path.

I sh*t you not, the guy actually believes that it was common for people to live for several centuries before the flood.

Also, I just realized that his math don't quite add up on the subject of plate tectonics. He mentioned that tectonic plates were moving at a rate of 1-2 cm/year. Let's be generous and allow 2.54cm (one inch). If the plates only started moving due to the disruption of the earth's crust from the loss of that one-mile thick layer of water forty miles down, and that event happened 4,500 years ago, then satellite imagery of the earth must be wrong, as it's only a par three from North America to Europe.

Repeat after me: NOW I get it!

Well, his reasoning is certainly par for the course.

[delphi_ote]

If the plates only started moving due to the disruption of the earth's crust from the loss of that one-mile thick layer of water forty miles down, and that event happened 4,500 years ago, then satellite imagery of the earth must be wrong, as it's only a par three from North America to Europe.

Yea, but that is one serious water hazard.

[delphi_ote]

Well, his reasoning is certainly par for the course.

His rough thinking is no stroke of genius.

[HeyLeroy]

Now you guys got me thinkin' 'bout all those "Jesus was out golfing" jokes!