The Anti-Evolutionists Are Crippled By Questions That Undermine Their Entire Case

Something I say in my initial Question 4 that perhaps Con missed were the words "Medic among others" and indeed the title of the debate uses the plural "Anti-Evolutionists". So this leads me into my Question 1 cross-examination, and my sources are in the comments: Lenski I would like to first point out the difference between the Lenski affair and the incidents revolving the frauds that were once tied to evolutionary theory. The difference is very much in the fact that scientists actually worked out those things were hoaxes and very quickly dismissed them. In contrast, Schlafly and his allies still haven't gotten with the times and are still denying the evidence. Con may potentially try and distance himself from someone like Schlafly, but if anything I've seen from the internet debates I've been in is anything to go by, Schlafly's views are hardly unique in the ignorance they project. Secondly, one thing I did notice Con mention in the forums was to essentially hand-wave the Lenski affair by saying that the "potential" already existed for the bacteria to do what they did. Well. .. sure, but then again us humans could "potentially" live even if they drink poison, but in a whole lot of cases they die. To apply that analogy to what happened in the Lenski experiments, it would be like if us humans not only gained the ability to drink poison and survive, but to actually drink poison and LIVE off it. Considering that the "ancestors" in the bacterial strain didn't have the ability to do what their "descendants" later on in the bacterial strain did, I'd say this is pretty good evidence of observable Common Descent, wouldn't you agree? Thirdly, Con is extremely unwise to use Genesis 1 as the basis of his objections to what Lenski said, considering that Genesis 1 is contradicted almost immediately by Genesis 2 (1). If Con truly wants to accept the literal truth of what the Bible says, then both Genesis 1 and 2 should be consistent in what they say, and yet we find vastly different accounts in the two chapters. Furthermore, Con does not understand that when we have a conflict between two opposing theories, then you can't simply just hold on to the theory you already believe in just because you admire the figure depicted in the theory you like. Looking at just the creation myth, we find numerous scientific errors that seriously casts doubt about it (2), among them the notions in Genesis 1 that "light and darkness" were created before the things that actually give off light, like the sun and stars, and also that plants came before the sun and the moon being described as a "light". By contrast, the evidence we've gathered for common descent is unbelievably strong (3) and nothing beyond objections about how it contrasts with ancient holy books has been provided as any kind of serious attempt to refute it. Bias Con laments the "bias" against theological thinking as well as the tendency to not give supernatural claims any real credibility. The thing is, Con only presents one side of the story. Yes, argumentum ad populum is a fallacy in most cases, but the difference between popularity among laymen and among scientists is that the latter consensus simply claims to be the best current understanding we have, and it's built on a strong structure of logic and definitive evidence - in contrast to prejudice and dogma like what we may see from any common pulpit. We agree with scientific theories (like CD) not because authority figures (like Dawkins et al) agree with it, but because such claims get constantly subject to reviewing and criticism by scientific peers. It's already been highlighted to Con via my Expelled Exposed link that if you actually present a theory with solid evidence then you can eventually overturn the scientific consensus. Also, Con misunderstands the purpose of science, or indeed the history of it. With regards to the latter, history shows the principle advantage of science in that it will actually eliminate bias no matter how biased the testers are. in the early days of science and the scientific method, most scientists did in fact believe in supernatural related topics. Indeed, many early scientific experiments were attempts to prove that those things were existent and what their true natures were so that all the arguments about them could be settled once and for all. It was only after decades of these experiments failing to produce anything that the community of science began to gradually and very reluctantly move away from such ideas. If we look at history, we can find countless occasions where natural explanations replaced supernatural ones in science (4). Another classic example are websites like the Sceptical Inquirer (5) and the Committee for Sceptical Inquiry, where creationist claims constantly feature. Time and time again we see the same thing - the claims are subjected to the scientific method, and when they are consistently proven to be wrong the creationists complain even though they agreed beforehand that the testing method was fair and valid. So ultimately, using natural explanations is the only reliable recourse in science because that knowledge is the only kind that can actually be applied, where as supernatural explanations are tempered by a preconditioned religious beliefs, have not been proven to be objectively true, and ultimately are not useful, especially when it can't even tell us the "Who" part of what's supposed to drive Creationism (Con claims the Christian God, but what evidence does he have to dismiss the Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Scientologist or Ancient Greek or Roman versions of Creationism? ) Why hasn't Evolution been exposed yet? Con's first paragraph in response to my Question 4 was largely irrelevant, as nowhere did I actually mention creationism in my Question 4, only the "evolution being exposed as wrong" part, for even if that happened it still wouldn't validate creationism. Furthermore, Con claims that common descent has been clearly refuted, but that was the point of my Q4: where is this evidence, and why isn't it all over the news as massive headlines (again, because common descent is a big deal in scientific theory circles) as opposed to just websites that presuppose Biblical Inerrancy. Con asserts without evidence that there is a bias against creation science, but again, going back to my Q3, what the hell would be the motivation? This is something Con still has not addressed. Creationist websites get discounted because they actively rely on Biblical Inerrancy to prove their arguments, and the problems with the Bible are well documented in many areas including science (6) and internal contradictions (7). With this in mind, is it more reasonable to trust the scientific method which is constantly self-correcting, or the supernatural explanations which refuse to accept anything else and base their ideas off of ancient holy books? Con keeps on asserting that CD hasn't been found to be true (it has) and that we can't get evidence that would provide a KO for common descent, but actually there are things that would falsify CD (8). Con keeps claiming there are organisms unrelated in ancestry and that scientists blindly "assume" their findings, but Con provides no evidence of this and as per the above there's plenty reason to discount other hypotheses like Creationism due to their known unreliability. Con ultimately fails to answer this Question 4, as he's unable to demonstrate just why - if Common Descent really is as wrong as he claims it is - it is the case that we still haven't seen anything within scientific developments and reporting of science to demonstrate this. As the Expelled Exposed link from the last round clearly showed, if a scientific theory is bogus, it WILL get found out, but this hasn't happened to CD.