E v. C

It is not infrequent that one would find straw man and the like in arguments against the YEC position. This does not translate to the false hypothesis that Pro is being disingenuous. Nor does the fact that arguing for the YEC position, qualify one to be labeled as a disingenuous person. Rather than entangling myself further in petty accusations and as such distracting from my main points, I will argue slightly against Pro, then restate my first arguments in a way that will take into account any and all of Pro’s objections. This will allow for a rebuttal to those points where Pro has not already addressed my arguments.Firstly, what exactly is a “kind”? It seems that this word is causing vast confusion in the Pro camp. “Kind” is the English interpretation of the Hebrew “min.” “Bara” means “Create”. Therefore, “Baramin” simply means “created kind.” I will link to two articles on the subject, which should have been familiar to Pro. [1][2] Pro claims that small changes as experimentally observed, changes that validate STE, will give rise to GTE. An assertion implies that it has no support or reason. The truth is quite contrary, however. In fact, this argument is made not only by YEC, but by evolutionists themselves. See [3]. At a conference comprising of some of the world’s leading evolutionary biologist, R. Lewin had this to say, “The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.” (Let me be clear on this point. The quoted persons are not YEC) So, the position that STE gives rise to GTE is one that is denied even by the experts that drive understanding of the GTE. Thus, Pro must present better arguments, even by his own standards. In fact, STE is part of the YEC position, so debating STE vs. YEC is odd because there is no debate.My first argument relies on the either/or scenario. I first established, using multiple sources which were uncontested, that mutation driven degradation of the genome is a real and well recognized phenomenon in the genetics community. This is not a misconstruction of the data, or of the opinions of population geneticists. Now that it has been established that I have not indeed misconstrued geneticists, let us reconsider the evidence. Muller’s ratchet is only one possible mechanism by which mutational informational degradation can and does occur. As shown by L. Loewe, Muller’s ratchet is not restricted to asexually reproducing organisms, but extend into the realms of humanity, which is exclusively sexually reproducing. This leaves us with the question of which model interprets the evidence better. A clear answer would be the YEC model rather than the GTE model. This is because if we extrapolate from the data a time to extinction, as Loewe did, and extrapolate into the past for the time of beginning, the dates match much closer to the YEC model than to the GTE model. This clearly is thus support of the YEC model rather than simply being an argument against a concept of evolution, of which tactic I stand accused. This is not a new argument, since it was made from the start.The second argument is that of evolutionary stasis. The basic argument is that the YEC model much more easily accounts for the fossil without the need for such terms as “evolutionary stasis.” Now, I’m not saying that it is impossible for GTE to explain such a phenomenon, but that the YEC position is a much explanation of the data than the GTE, which is all this debate is about. Pro argues that stasis is not a problem, since change can come and go from time to time. The fact is, stasis occurs under the GTE model in periods of over 400 million years, something I mentioned in the first round. Quite simply, GTE postulates that change has occurred near uniformly throughout time. Thus, any form of stasis is a problem for the GTE, but can be explained very easily under YEC. (The idea of PE cannot explain stasis either.) So what is the YEC explanation? The YEC explanation is that there has been no GTE, which is in keeping with the data, and that all of life has remained within the confines of their “baramins” (See above)As shown, in both of my arguments, the YEC model always fits the data better than the GTE model. Now that the main arguments have been shown not to contain any intellectual dishonesty by either party whatsoever, we can turn our attention to the more trivial matters of allegations.The most important allegation is the charge that I am dishonest. (The charge relating to WP is a charge that will be easily dismissed should Pro ever bother to carefully read my argument, which is complex for conciseness, something he asked for. Otherwise, it would be filled with caveats. As is, I made my point)So, the charge is that I have not begun “from first principles” and as such is “dishonest.” This means that I have to build up my argument in rigorous proof from axioms. However, like I said in the very first round, “I hope that I’ve not assumed anything outside of first principles. (Well, not so first, I’m not a textbook)” My very first assumption was that the data given by the scientists whom I cited were correct. To be very very first, I would have to question the data itself (Impractical). From there, I explained in detail what exactly this entails for the genome. This is a strong proof of the validity of the phenomena, which I then argued fitted the YEC model better. (I apologize if no one understood what the YEC model was beforehand, that was not part of the “from first principles,” which only kicks in when I want to find “truth value [in] evidence.” So, my argument is good in this regard, and not in any way dishonest. I will not elaborate on the second argument, due to space. The second accusation is that I insulted Pro. This is trivial, and Pro should bring it up in the comments section because I do not perceive any insults from me.The third accusation is that of fallacy. This fallacy primarily deals with equivocation and parts-to-whole (PtW). In summary, my accusation can be seen as stating that the idea that proving STE proves GTE is false because of PtW. As elaborated in this round, the idea is unsupported even among evolutionary biologists.The fourth accusation is that of rule breaking. The rule cited above, about “truth value,” was not set by me, but accepted by me. I have already quoted portions where I believe Pro broke this rule, and I will quote the last portions of his argument, where I allege that he does so again, “up to Con to establish an argument for why the standard cosmological view of the universe is unsound...” By forcing me to establish such a paradigm, Pro relieves himself of his BoP, which is to prove it sound. This means that he is assuming the truth of the prevailing paradigm rather than giving “further evidence,” as demanded by his rules. Indeed, he has provided evidence for the STE, but not for the GTE. Any further allegations is out of the scope of this debate, and should Pro repeat them, shall be dealt with in the comments section. As easily seen, in no case have I been dishonest in the slightest. In fact, I have consistently sought to avoid such flame wars and be as open as possible. I feel the same can be said of Pro, but that does not avoid the fact that he has made a grave allegation. With that, I would like to reservedly thank Pro for this debate, it has certainly shown me that the definition of YEC needs to be explicitly defined from the start of the debate rather than to assume that it is already known.1. http://creation.com...2. http://creation.com...3. http://www.sciencemag.org...