Evolution is Dead

Um, are you retarded?

Wow, just, wow. I think downing a pint of moonshine would kill fewer brain cells than that did.

That's Laurence Tisdall a computer consultant with a certificate in ecological agriculture from Mac Campus of of McGill University not exactly "a geneticist" as he claimed. I want to think that he has a point about homogeneous features deriving from dissimilar genes but it seems to me that, if, you have genetics to work with then, superficial anatomical characteristics would be an inferior way to determine ancestry. Am I wrong on this?

This guy is just spouting words that he does not understand. Creationists like this are pathetic and laughable.

I think the worst part about it is that people who don't know much about biology will think it makes sense. I find science education is caught in a kind of in a Catch-22 in these "debates." It's like playing whack-a-mole with myths about evolution, abiogenesis, and cosmology. (For the record, I have no idea what cosmology has to do with evolution or abiogenesis)

@Jared, the thing that cosmology has to do with evolution is that the stars created all of the elements that we are made of. Also, if it weren't for for the sun, we wouldn't have life exactly as we know it on earth. But that is all still scientific viewpoint without trying to interject made-up mumbo jumbo.

xtremely tiring

Gah! I am DED!

My brain broke that bad.

Oh boy, Laurence Tisdall!!

From creationwiki.org:
Laurence Tisdall holds a Bachelor's degree in General Agriculture from Macdonald College of McGill University and a Master of Science degree in micropropagation from the same university. He has published several scientific articles in peer reviewed journals, such as HortScience. Mr. Tisdall is presently a computer consultant.

He claims to never have lost an argument with an "evolutionist". As far as I can tell, this is because the argument always ends with him saying something completely outlandish that has little to do with evolution.

Tisdall was recently a guest on a local phone-in show (in Ottawa, Canada). I was astonished to hear him claim that Charles Darwin said that it was not possible for an eye to evolve. Fortunately, one of the good guys (from the Humanist Association of Ottawa) was the caller, and took him to task for conveniently ignoring the 2nd half of CD's rhetorical device. Later, Tisdall engaged in some discussions on the HAO blog: http://humanistottawaweb.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/need-to-rally-humanis…

I apologise on behalf of Canada.

Obviously a car can't exist because a car needs a bumper, a motor, the chassis, the panels, and so on - and obviously if you have just a bumper you don't have a car!

It's hard not to laugh at the clueless dumbshit who thinks his ignorance trumps knowledge.

He is using scientific terms, but I don't think they mean what he thinks they mean....

He's just restating Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument.

The unspoken assumption is that the simple organism he describes could not have evolved from a more complex organism by removal of parts that enabled the more complex organism to evolve in the first place.

This is the philosophical equivalent of claiming that an arch could not have been constructed brick by brick because removal of just one brick causes the incomplete structure to collapse. Arches are constructed brick by brick on top of a former which is then removed leaving a structure that would not be viable if one part were removed.

Similar modes of construction have been found in biology, for instance parasites that lose unneeded parts of their digestive system leading to an organism that could not have evolved by piecewise addition of parts.

Creationists must try harder, evolution is much cleverer than they are.

Speaking of clueless dumbshits, I don't believe some of the comments here.

This guy is just spouting words that he does not understand. Creationists like this are pathetic and laughable.

I think the worst part about it is that people who don't know much about biology will think it makes sense.

He is using scientific terms, but I don't think they mean what he thinks they mean....

Actually, he makes only one error, conflating (perhaps confusing) proteins/amino acids with the DNA structures that code for them. An easy error for a computer programmer to make, since they're effectively identical information structures. Except for that his argument is perfectly valid, and IMO demonstrates the implausibility of the of the RNA-World Hypothesis for the origin of life. Until researchers accept that there's got to be more stages between no-life and life as we know it, they're going to be vulnerable to this argument.

Obviously a car can't exist because a car needs a bumper, a motor, the chassis, the panels, and so on - and obviously if you have just a bumper you don't have a car!

It's hard not to laugh at the clueless dumbshit who thinks his ignorance trumps knowledge.

LOL at this clueless dumbshit who doesn't realize that the point of the argument was that the car had a creator, therefore (he claims) so must life have had. This sort of knee-jerk bullshit response actually serves the purposes of creationists, since any intelligent person can see through it.

"Until researchers accept that there's got to be more stages between no-life and life as we know it, they're going to be vulnerable to this argument."

I don't think mere acceptance (which I'm sure is abundant in that very undeveloped field) would remove their vulnerability to the observation that there's a lot of hand-waving going on and not much in the way of detailed mechanism. But given the scale of the task and the scarcity of remnants from the origin of life, that's to be expected.

No, really this chap erred from the start by selecting the argument from ignorance. He failed to establish that the organism he described was unevolvable, falling into Behe's "mouse trap" fallacy.

Okay I have no scientific training and am out of my league here. But I heard something different. There is a continuum of life evolving. Science can explain the evolutionary continuum. But can not explain , or scientifically replicate the origin (the step from no life to life). How does that negate our understanding of evolution? Isn't this just a limitation of science's ability to explain origin, at this point in time? Until thunder and lighting were scientifically understood some people believed they originated by a God called Thor. That didn't mean it was true until proven to be wrong. Why does science have to prove their theories and religion can skate by on just faith? Am I all wet here?

essentially tisdall says since we don't know how life began, evolution doesn't exist.

analgously, since we don't know about civilizations pre written word/cuneiform/glyphs the history in history books doesn't exist.

No, really this chap erred from the start by selecting the argument from ignorance. He failed to establish that the organism he described was unevolvable, falling into Behe's "mouse trap" fallacy.

Actually, in scientific terms, he's just using a different default assumption: any very complex entity without a proven natural provenance must have been created. Science assumes the opposite, in fact science starts out by assuming the absence of any sort of "divine intervention" in natural processes.

More importantly, recent work in chaos/complexity theory has demonstrated that many natural processes can (potentially) end up in a state of constantly increasing complexity. Thus scientists will always assume that life (or any other very complex entity) evolved from simpler antecedents, we just need to figure out what they were (through research).

Creationists, OTOH, tend to be very simple-minded people, and their reaction to the sort of complex explanations needed to understand abiogenesis is to throw up their hands: "it's too complex for me; God is simpler". They'll never accept complex science, in evolution any more than in atmospheric thermodynamics. (Of course, that doesn't mean that the current theories of either are actually correct.)

It is just the same old tired bullshit - because we haven't figured completely out how the first cells evolved into a reproducing and metabolizing entity it must have been created.

So- the best thing a presumably highly complex being - a creator of whatever spin - had time to do was create a first primitive cell? How ingenious, how stunning.

In this case the creationist argument that god created animals as they are makes a lot more sense - in the context of creationism of various flavours.

Don't they ever come up with new arguments?

The main problem with this video is that Jason Wiles' debating skills are as vigorous as a limp dishrag. Imagine the same debate with Dawkins or PZ in the hot seat.

FFS, I'm a stinkin' carpenter and I believe I would have been more effective in dismantling the creotards arguments.

creotard's, even :/

Was this supposed to be a debate about evolution or a debate about the origin of life? If it was a debate about evolution, Wiles clearly *did* lose on debate points. He allowed Tisdall to steer the debate off-topic without calling him on it.

That said, I think Tisdall's idea of a lost debate would be one in which he personally was convinced that evolution is a fact. I suspect that will never happen.

Do the creationists ever come up with scientific results of their own, or do they just borrow whatever they think looks likely from real scientists?

I don't have a problem with borrowing from the efforts of other (that's why we have academic publishing), but it would be nice of you not to poison the well in return. They are literally intellectual parasites.

Tisdall basically relies on arguments of incredulity for most of it, and at a couple points equates the first origins of life and the Big Bang Theory with evolution. Here's a tip Tisdall: abiogenesis and cosmology are NOT related to evolution at all and why you would think mentioning them somehow is important is indicative of your lack of any kind of knowledge of evolution. I also doubt you even have a basic understanding of biology or the scientific method.

Fuck, I want to rip off his ugly ass sweater vest and ram it down his throat, watching this is just painful at how stupid his arguments are.