Explaining Macroevolution to a creationist

[he_who_is_nobody]

I am delighted that not only was this exchange public but also written. Now with a simple Google search, people can see just how dishonest JohnHeintz truly is.

 

[JohnHeintz]

I am delighted that not only was this exchange public but also written. Now with a simple Google search, people can see just how dishonest JohnHeintz truly is.

Would you care to point out ANYTHING I was dishonest about ? How you know it's dishonest? And how you came to this conclusion?

 

[JohnHeintz]

My name was never Larry nor any variant of that. The convicted fraud and charlatan Kent Hovind refused to call me by my real name, and decided to call me Larry instead, just to show his disrespect. This new troll is doing the same, just being a dishonest dick on purpose, since that's all his belief system allows him to be.

Whatever Larry. Nobody really cares what your name is. You're a tosser whether your name is Aron, Larry , Susan or anything else.
Dishonest? Get a dictionary Susan. You don't know the meaning of this word apparently.
Online , it was as said , that you changed your name , in Texas, from Lawrence Nelson to Aron Ra. I thought it could be true. Not really a "far fetched" story. Maybe , I'm incorrect. BUt it's not like I knew and said it anyway. That would be dishonest.
You like to put down other people's intelligence or education. However, you don't know the difference between dishonest and possibly mistaken. This is one of many reasons you're a TOSSER

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Would you care to point out ANYTHING I was dishonest about ? How you know it's dishonest? And how you came to this conclusion?

Easy. You keep calling AronRa Larry. Do I need to go any further?

 

[JohnHeintz]

Easy. You keep calling AronRa Larry. Do I need to go any further?

Yes. Because I believe that was his name. I could be mistaken. That's very different than DISHONEST.
L. Aron Nelson. What does the L stand for then ? So you've shown ..... nothing.

 

[Deleted member 619]

You like to put down other people's intelligence or education.

You'd like to think so, but that would require that you possessed one of them to put down, and the evidence thus far suggests not.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Yes. Because I believe that was his name. I could be mistaken. That's very different than DISHONEST.
L. Aron Nelson. What does the L stand for then ? So you've shown ..... nothing.

You're just a pathetic creationist troll, just like every single one of them before you, every bit as much a liar, every bit as worthless to discourse and progress.

I'd say you were a waste of sperm, but enough has been wasted on you here, liar.

 

[JohnHeintz]

You're just a pathetic creationist troll, just like every single one of them before you, every bit as much a liar, every bit as worthless to discourse and progress.

I'd say you were a waste of sperm, but enough has been wasted on you here, liar.

Hack and slash. That's the name you chose ?
Is it after what your father did to your rectum as you were growing up ?

 

[*SD*]

We really are going to have to stop with the personal insults. This is getting out of hand and doesn't reflect well on the forum. Cease and desist, else I start clicking things. LAST UNOFFICIAL WARNING.

 

[We are Borg]

I still want a little red button for warnings, but i need to program that myself.

L. Aron Nelson. What does the L stand for then ? So you've shown ..... nothing.

I think Aron never said what the L. stood for in his video’s or on websites, because his name is Aron Ra he does not have to say to anyone what the L. stood for. Aron Ra is his legally name and because he was on the ticket for elections in Taxes you also know that is his legal name because you cant be on a ticket with a name that is not legally changed.

What is weird is that only creationists call him Larry or Lawrence but never other people.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

I think the best way to understand why evolution is the only viable explanation for biodiversity, John, is to havea read of this topic.

Rumraket - where are you, Rum? - in particular, addresses the probabilistic aspects of evolution.

As regards abiogenesis, given that biochemistry is a subset of chemistry, life can't help but occur.

All that's needed is for one atom of hydrogen and one atom of carbon to form the hydrocarbon bond to move from inorganic chemistry to organic chemistry, At this point, you're at the foot of the mountain leading up to the first cell. "Life" occurs somewhere on the path up the mountain.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[AronRa]

The troll calls me a name that he knows is not mine, and challenges us to show where he was dishonest.

The original agreement, which you can read here, was as follows:

John Heintz I'd be happy to explain evolution to you. Just understand that this will require a Socratic interaction, to correct any misinformation, and I'll need you to acknowledge the basics before we proceed to the next level. So you must answer every direct point or query. If you repeatedly ignore direct questions, I will have to interpret that as you simply trolling. Every time I have ever had this sort of discussion with a creationist, this is how they always ended, with me having to repeat the same question still unanswered three or four times and only getting feeble excuses or attempts at projection.
Hitchens' razor applies here. Positive claims require positive evidence, and what is asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence. That means that empty assertions are automatically taken as having no truth to them until you can show the truth of it.
Remember that evidence should be in the form of peer-reviewed studies or secular educational material, never pseudoscience propaganda from religious apologists. If you disagree with whatever peer-reviewed paper I present, you'll need a more recent study that rebuts that one the way you want it to.
Of course the same rules apply to both of us. I'll have to answer all your questions just as you must answer each of mine. Don't inundate me. Only ask me what you sincerely want the answers to.
If you agree to these, then within a couple dozen mutual exchanges, I will prove evolution even to your satisfaction, so that you will be an "evolutionist" for the rest of your life, (though you will never use that silly word) and you'll be embarrassed at ever having believed in creationism. As a bonus, I will also prove that creationism depends entirely on frauds, falsehoods and fallacies with no truth in it.
We can do that right here in this thread, or we can move this discussion over to the LeagueOfReason forums. What do you say?

I'm completely in. I also agree to your conditions.

Now, however, he says he has "zero interest" in answering any of my questions, and that he never intended to. We agreed to "a couple dozen mutual exchanges", but he now says it was only twelve, none of which have yet happened because he broke the first and most important rule on the excuse that he says that whether two species are biologically related or not is not a yes or no question. Yet he says I'm the one who failed this challenge, and he blames his own deplorable behavior on a projection of his own arrogance onto me. Very disappointing even from a creationist!

 

[Led Zeppelin]

Evidence is a body of facts that are positively indicative of, and/or exclusively concordant with one available position or hypothesis over any other. The truth is what the facts are, what we can show to be true, NOT whatever else we might rather assume or assert beyond or instead of that. If you don't care what the facts are, you don't care what the truth is.

I get your point. But regardless of my belief in a deity, I don't think the world actually works how you say it does in this quote above. Evidence requires correctly interpretating data, something us humans seem to be not very good at. Also people lie.

I know enough about biology to know that I will hardly ever understand any of it and there is no one I trust enough who can tell me how life came to be.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Rumraket - where are you, Rum? - in particular, addresses the probabilistic aspects of evolution.

I spoke to Bumcracket recently - he's well but busy!

 

[*SD*]

and there is no one I trust enough who can tell me how life came to be

So? How is that in any way different from saying "I won't accept anything because we don't know everything so I'm going to believe in this other thing for which I have no evidence instead" ?

 

[Sparhafoc]

I get your point. But regardless of my belief in a deity, I don't think the world actually works how you say it does in this quote above. Evidence requires correctly interpretating data, something us humans seem to be not very good at.

In science, there's an external arbiter of whether your interpretation is correct - that's precisely what experimentation is all about.

Also people lie.

They do, and other people look at their findings and try to replicate those results. If the claimed results cannot be replicated, that is reported. Soon enough, the truth will out. This happens all the time in every area of science.

I know enough about biology to know that I will hardly ever understand any of it and there is no one I trust enough who can tell me how life came to be.

It's not about trust: it's about limitations on what we can know. We can show several ways life could have originated; we just can't say with any confidence which way it was. Confidence bars are actually another vital aspect of science.

So in summary: scientific method is your best bet if you ever hope to find out. Experimentation, peer review, reproducibility, utility, and confidence bars - find me a more robust means of inquiry!

 

[Deleted member 619]

I get your point. But regardless of my belief in a deity, I don't think the world actually works how you say it does in this quote above. Evidence requires correctly interpretating data, something us humans seem to be not very good at.

This is a crappy bit of apologetic.

When you understand properly how science operates on the working side of a lab door, you'll understand why this is an absolutely preposterous objection.

An individual scientist might succumb to such human foibles, but science does not. In particular, every expert in the same field as the scientist WANTS HIM TO BE WRONG, and will work really hard to prove he is. Indeed, the vast majority of scientists really want to find something that massively contradicts what's gone before. In terms of evolution, you'd be the most famous human in history, past, present and for a very long time in the future, if you proved Darwin wrong in any substantive way.

Einstein didn't change the world by agreeing with Newton, but by fucking him up the episteme.

Also people lie.#

Science corrects. That's why Andrew Wakefield is an antivax crank.

I know enough about biology to know that I will hardly ever understand any of it and there is no one I trust enough who can tell me how life came to be.

Have you ever asked how walking came to be? How about accretion? Stellar nucleosynthesis? Why is life different from these in cognitive terms?

What is it about life, in particular, that you think is worth picking up on? Do you have the same incredulity when it comes to things like condensates and plasmas?

 

[AronRa]

I get your point. But regardless of my belief in a deity, I don't think the world actually works how you say it does in this quote above. Evidence requires correctly interpretating data, something us humans seem to be not very good at. Also people lie.

Yes, people lie, and that's why we have religion. It is dishonest to assert baseless speculation as if it was a matter of fact, pretending to know things no one even can know. Yet that is what all religions do. Creationism is even worse, because it is not possible to defend it honestly. As we have seen here, and in every other thread, creationists HAVE TO lie and deny reality in order to defend their baseless position, that are themselves lies by definition.

I know enough about biology to know that I will hardly ever understand any of it and there is no one I trust enough who can tell me how life came to be.

Yet you admit that you deny the facts that can be objectively demonstrated, because you actually do trust anonymous authors of ancient folklore, even though they obviously had no idea what they were talking about.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Einstein didn't change the world by agreeing with Newton, but by fucking him up the episteme.

 

[We are Borg]

What’s interesting is that all creationists start the challenge but never can answer simple questions because they know they will fail. Do they know just enough or do they no nothing at all.