Dispatches from the Culture Wars

You gotta hand it to Nathan Bradfield; he doesn't let his utter ignorance of a subject stand in the way of blathering on about it and making himself look stupid. Over at STACLU he's displaying his ability to regurgitate creationist nonsense. In this case, he's quoting another ignoramus named Dennis Peacocke as he says idiotic things like this:

The fact is, virtually every science book and every Ph.D. calls evolution a "theory."

Imagine that. Evolution is a theory and science books call it a theory. You've got an astonishing grasp of the obvious, except that you're burdened by the typical ignorance of creationists who think that "theory" means "wild assed guess." In reality, of course, theory is the highest level of certainty granted in science, not a step on the way to something else. The science textbooks call all scientific theories theories, including the big bang, the theory of gravity and the germ theory of disease.

However, those who say and teach this also, with scant exceptions, demand that it be taught and believed in as an absolute fact. This absurd hypocrisy or "contradiction" takes place through highly educated and intelligent people, so why can't they see it? I'll tell you why: When spiritual rebellion is present and active, its "victims" lose at least fifty IQ points. "Deception" is another word for blindness. Unfortunately, I have never heard the evolution theorists held accountable for the hypocrisy of presenting this theory as fact.

LMAO. I'll take religio-babble for $1000, Alex. Once again, he misses a crucial distinction. Evolution is taught as a true theory. You know why? Because it's a true theory, just like gravity, the big bang and the kinetic theory of gasses are all true theories. They've been well validated over decades and sometimes centuries and they are so well supported that it would be absurd to deny that they are valid and accurate explanations for the evidence.

Does that mean they're perfect and we understand every tiny detail? Of course not. We know that the germ theory of disease, the basis of modern medicine, is true; that does not mean we understand how every micro-organism affects the body or how every diseases is caused. We know that the theory of gravity is true, but we say that without having any consensus on what gravity actually is. And we know that the theory of evolution is true even while we do not yet have a consensus on the evolution of each lineage and how it took place.

They quietly and confidently respond, "Intelligent design is religion, not science." There goes the loss of fifty IQ points once again. "Science" demands conclusive evidence. They are missing two "scientific" absolutes here.

This isn't even coherent. Yes, we say that ID is religion, not science. And then he says that science demands "conclusive evidence." Is he claiming that ID has "conclusive evidence"? He doesn't say so, but then it would be hard to make that claim, wouldn't it? Of course, the phrase "conclusive evidence" is a nonsense phrase; conclusions are explanations, not evidence. Evidence simply is; you make conclusions based upon evidence, but that doesn't make evidence "conclusive."

Number One: the missing link that bridges species. Evolutionists even call it the "missing link." You guys have been searching now for more than 150 years. Where is it? Because you can't find it, you, by your own standards, are therefore forced to call evolution a "theory" because it is not absolutely conclusive.

Let's be very, very clear about this: anyone who thinks that scientists have been looking for one great "missing link" is a first class idiot who knows absolutely nothing about the subject. There are lots and lots of missing links throughout the fossil record; only someone abysmally ignorant of how fossilization occurs would expect anything otherwise. However, we have filled in lots of those gaps, many of them predicted in advance based on the anatomical and paleontological evidence. Tiktaalik roseae is an excellent example, but there are many more.

A classic example of this are the transitional forms found between artiodactyls and whales. Creationists like Duane Gish used to give lectures and put up a cartoon of a whale with legs and all the good little creationists would laugh at how ridiculous that was. Paleontologists, on the other hand, were busy predicting exactly where such fossils would be found and what they would look like. And they were right.

This is actually a perfect example of how the theory of evolution makes an accurate prediction that flies in the face of what one would expect. The average person would look at whales and dolphins and think that they were fish; after all, they live in the water like fish do. But Darwin, being the careful scientist that he is, noted that whales and dolphins aren't fish at all, they're mammals. They birth and nurse their young, they have lungs and hearts with ventricles and aortas, they're warm blooded, and many other features common to mammals but not fish (to be fair, Linnaeus noticed this a century before Darwin did).

Based on such evidence, Darwin hypothesized that whales were originally land mammals that went back into the water. Creationists, as I said above, scoffed at the idea and drew crude cartoons of whales with legs and they all had a good laugh. Except that we've now found multiple species of primitive whales that show how the transition from land to water took place, including - yep - whales with legs. And they found them right where they predicted in terms of the age of the rocks and the depositional environment. A perfect example of how evolutionary theory makes predictions about the nature of evidence before it's found, and a perfect example of how creationists consistently fail in their arguments.

Number Two: Without proof of this supposed missing link, your "evolution" is a faith, just like the faith of Judeo-Christianity. It is "provable" to you in the same way our intelligent design is provable to us. And we have as many ugly scientific questions for your evolutionary theories and "facts" as you have of us. To say our position is not "science" is worse than arrogant. It's unintelligent and dictatorial. So let's compete and not be afraid of one another's arguments. We're certainly not afraid of yours.

Of course you're not; you're too stupid to even understand it.

Bradfield then goes on to cite Samuel Hunt's hilariously ridiculous claims about having proved that the world was created by the voice of God. Nathan, seriously, Hunt is talking out his ass. He's just another crank who thinks he's overthrown all of modern science. The book he's pushing on his website isn't worth a cup of coffee at Denny's. He's sent out his loony "theory" to everyone on the internet. The response from every scientifically literate person was little more than giggling at how stupid it is; I'm not surprised you fell for it.

The rest of it is more of the same, including quotes from noted biologist Ann Coulter. Yes, you should be laughing right now.