Luis, he of assumptions and fallacies!

Luis has given us another doggie-treat over at the Jolly Nihilist's blog.

Money quotes:
--God wouldn’t have been constrained by this; he could have made bats to have bird-like limbs rather than limbs that closely resemble the arrangements found in non-flying mammals. Or he could have made a mammal with its photosensitive cells the right way around, like what we see in the cephalopods.
--I'd asked:  Prove that Tiktaalike had any children. Go ahead.

He responds: You really are one disgusting charlatan. Here’s the prediction, moron: things like Tiktaalik should exist.

--What we see in animals is emphatically unlike what we see in cars, or houses or computers.

The unintentional humor is striking.
So here's my response:


Hi Luis,

it makes no difference at all to whether the actual arguments on offer are true or not.

True, so I won't belabor it, since even producing the requested evidence wouldn't change your mind.



Having worked in the life sciences (unlike you)

Haha, I love how you assume you know anythg about me.


The cover of Nature and Science always have some new, exciting discovery that’s touted as importantly changing some aspect of our understanding of the world.

And?  Are you under the mistaken impression that the Xtian worldview looks down on science as a good way to discover truth?
As a matter of fact, all science under a naturalistic worldview commits a logical fallacy, so I'm not too impressed by your fallacious discoveries.


I must have missed the memo about the collapse of Darwinism.

Yep.  But since it's fallacious reasoning and b/c the very premise of evolution argues against naturalism, and b/c there's no evidence for Darwinism, you really have nothing going for you.  Sorry.  :-(


Too bad that the ravings of a creotard blogger

Hmm, didn't you just finish telling me: "even GIVEN this, it makes no difference at all to whether the actual arguments on offer are true or not"?



not the macroevolution clearly visible in the fossil record

Please prove that ANY organism found in the fossil record had children.  Don't assume it.  Prove it.


comparative genetics,

All that comparative genetics proves is that two or more organisms share similar genetic structure.  Prove (w/o assuming) that this is relevant to Darwinism.


morphology

Proves that two or more different organisms share similar...morphology.  So what?


biogeographical distribution of animals and plants (which utterly destroys the expectations of the Genesis dispersal model).

How so?


Nowhere does evolutionary theory say that an amoeba “evolved into” a giraffe in the caricatured sense you’re clearly trying to invoke.

Either you're dodging very obviously or you're very ignorant of what creotards like me are asking when they say that.
Where is your evidence that organisms turn into other organisms over time?  Don't assume it exists.  Prove it.


What sort of evidence did you have in mind, though?

Haha, the same sort of evidence that atheists usually demand to prove God exists.
In point of fact, just any evidence that:
1) Is not based entirely on assumptions you make, and
2) Can not be just as easily be explained on the YEC worldview.
I've never seen any - feel free to be the 1st to show it to me.


that giraffes could be produced from amoebae within a human lifetime? Such things would do more to verify creationism than Darwinian evolution.

As would showing that you can't show me any organisms that have evolved into another kind.  Which is the actual state of affairs.


You know, evidence that your position actually takes place.

It’s not my position, therefore the challenge isn’t mine to assume

Don't be so dense.  You're arguing that evolution took place in the way you say it did.  Prove it.


such as the tax-dodging preachers you get your “science” from

1) Where have I discussed Hovind?
2) For that matter, where have I brought fwd any science at all?  I'm discussing PHILOSOPHY OF science and logic.  If you can't deal on that level, feel free to give way to someone who's thought a little more deeply about it.
3) Please prove that tax-dodging is morally wrong, objectively.
Wait, let me answer for you - you can't.  But don't worry - your moral judgments were easy to ignore way before it became clear that you have no foundation for making them.


The following things are all predicted by evolution (and, while strictly allowed by creation – not your version, though

OK, awesome.  I'm waiting with great expectations for your best 5 lines of evidence for Darwinism.


a weird design strategy

Interesting - without an objective design template, a telos, for how the world "should be", you're just going to throw sthg out there, as if your idea of "weird" should mean anythg to anyone else?  How's that?



He could easily have produced a myriad of things that would leave us in no doubt about his Creation and the falsehood of evolution

1) He did.  There's this little thing you love and which you forgot about - sin and the self-deception of depraved man.
2) Who said that what you said was God's goal in creation?


1) the biogeographical distribution of animals and plants

Ah, so you must think you can prove it DIDN'T happen.  Proving a universal negative.  You don't know how it could've gone down, so you assume it couldn't've.  Argument from ignorance.  Impressive!



A creation model predicts no such thing.

A creation model doesn't PREDICT what happenED in the past, Luis.  That's why it's called "history".


After dispersing from Mount Ararat, there was no reason for all the koalas (all two of them J) to migrate en masse to Australia

How is this an argument?  No reason to?  Oh, do koalas think and wonder "What'd be best for us?" and then decide?  Hahahahaha.


Creationists, to this day, have had hardly anything at all to say about them, so they act as though these patterns don’t exist.

You sound just like Jerry Coyne.  In fact, this section seems pulled straight from his crappy book "Why Evolution Is True".
Yes, creationists DO have sthg to say about this.  God could've easily directed the animals thattaway.  See, we don't hold to naturalism, b/c it's irrational.



why all the platyrrhine, and not a single cararrhine, in South America?

Why?  All YOU can tell me is that they happened to end up there.  My explanation is at minimum the same.  How is yours any better?


There were once platypuses in what is now Argentina, before what is now South America broke away from Gondwana and became separated from what would become Australia.

1) Ah, b/c you found what you think is a fossil there?
2) What precisely about species going extinct or 2 diff populations ending up in diff places militates against YEC?



2) ...molecular markers...can therefore act as neutral markers for degree of relatedness

I'm looking for an argument to the effect that this proves Darwinism and is inexplicable on YEC.  See, molecular markers prove...that these molecular markers exist.  W/o your assumptions in place, they tell you nothing in particular.  You assume the conclusion before you arrive at your conclusion.
So do I, but only I recognise it.


There is no reason for the trees constructed from one marker to resemble another

Hahhaa, even on the weak sister of Xtianity - ID - this is easily explainable!  Please.
Ready?  God used the same code for multiple species.  Not that hard, Luis.




A creation model would predict a chaotic mismatch of phylogenies, because such phylogenies wouldn’t reflect common ancestry since it wouldn’t be there.

1) An assertion in search of an argument.
2) Who among YEC-ers thinks DNA doesn't degrade over time?
3) If you think it's weird that DNA would degrade in the same way, that's just another argument from ignorance.  Tiresome.



what evidence would we expect to find if creationism is wrong?

That's a great question.  Why not bring some fwd and let us know? That's YOUR job, not mine.


3) Observable evolution and its mechanisms...

I'd love for you to show me Darwinian mechanisms in action, doing what you claim it can do.   Show me a beetle that evolved into something that's not a beetle. YOu know, sthg that's actually in question.  So far, this is a big fail on your part.


Thus a beetle can qualify as a kind, even though the beetles constitute an entire Order of some 350,000 species. That’s a LOT of allowable evolution for one “kind”

Now give me an argument why I should accept the oft-changing Darwinian taxonomy you're assuming here.



That’s a LOT of allowable evolution for one “kind”, especially in only 6,000 years

Like I said, why would anyone be concerned that a beetle evolved into...a beetle?  Help me out.



but they do this at the cost of ignoring the evidence from geology.

1) Um, that's your 6th.  Cheater.
2) Please prove that rocks tell time.
3) If you appeal to radioactive dating, please prove that you can know with certainty how much decay was present at the starting point.



4) The underlying structures found in animals shared with other animals, again in a hierarchical pattern similar to that found in genes. One doesn’t find mammals with bird-like wings

Again... hahhaa, even on the weak sister of Xtianity - ID - this is easily explainable!  Please.
Ready?  God used the same structures for multiple species.  Not that hard, Luis.


God wouldn’t have been constrained by this; he could have made bats to have bird-like limbs rather than limbs that closely resemble the arrangements found in non-flying mammals. Or he could have made a mammal with its photosensitive cells the right way around, like what we see in the cephalopods.

1) OK, now I am going to throw out a Hovind-ism.  Cephalopods like octopuses live in the water.  Did you know that?
2) Why would He do so?  Go ahead and make the argument.  Of course He COULD have.  How is this an argument for your position?


Finding a dog with a different genetic code, or a bat with feathers, would put the theory of evolution in grave jeopardy.

Um, a bat with feathers wouldn't be a bat.  It'd be a diff kind of organism.  That is one of the dumbest things I've heard in quite a while, I'm sorry to say.


These small exchanges are rampant in microorganisms, which routinely swap genetic material.

1) Again, you ASSUME they did.  You can't observe it.
2) If you can observe it within a human lifetime, please prove that your human intervention and observation did not affect the outcome.  That's going to be hard, since you have to observe it, thus introducing intelligent intervention...which makes ID more plausible than your own fantasy.  Sorry.



God could just start off with a clean sheet of paper for each organism, and could have produced something that would clearly falsify a key tenet of evolution: genealogical affinity

Yawn.  You  haven't given us any reason to accept your position yet; to give more would be a bit of overkill, I should think.


What we see in animals is emphatically unlike what we see in cars, or houses or computers.

Hahahahahaa!  Yep, and those are designed.  LOL @ fideist Darwinist.


if we suppose that God made animals, then God made everything to look as though  it evolved by designing things to conform powerfully to a prediction derived from evolutionary theory and which, if counter-examples were produced, would have fatally wounded the theory.

This assumes your own conclusion, that the evidence actually does point to Darwinism's truth.  You have to prove that first before you can move on to figuring out why fundies think like they do.  I'm getting more and more pessimistic.


5) The fossil record.

Again, prove any fossilised organism had children.  Prove it, don't assume it.
Let's see - below you sort of address it -

Prove that Tiktaalike had any children. Go ahead.

You really are one disgusting charlatan. Here’s the prediction, moron: things like Tiktaalik should exist.

Haha, fail.  No argument given, just mockery.  Now, why would that not be "invoking Mammy Nature and Papa Darwin" on your part?




OK, your "best 5 evidences" are over.  Wow, that was refreshing - nothing new, and nothing good.
Moving on...

That’s because you’re irrational enough to think that minds can exist outside of physical media like brains

Prove it's irrational.
You know what else exists immaterially?  Thoughts, colors, numbers, logical laws, desires, dreams, ideas, value, meaning, morals, and many other things.  This is a novice move; try again with more sophistication.



clearly define what you even mean by a spirit, rather than vacillating between different definitions having nothing to do with each other.

1) Which I of course haven't done (vacillate, that is).
2) You know, since you're on teh 1nterwebz, you could go to dictionary.com just as easily as I.  A spirit is a conscious, incorporeal (and I'd add immaterial) being, as opposed to matter.


How do you imagine that this non-physical mind interacts with the physical universe?

1) Thru spiritual power.  He's the Creator - He can do what He wants.
2) The God I posit is far, far bigger than I or anyone can fully understand.  How would pointing out that there's sthg I don't understand about Him be an argument against His existence?


1) Please prove God didn't ALSO say that, THROUGH said prescientific nomads.

I don’t have to prove a thing. You’re the one making the claim that the Bible is God’s word.

Um, you made the positive claim.  So, you refuse to back it up, eh?
As for me, my position is that nothing is comprehensible w/o God's existence and His revelation. I don't conclude it, I presuppose it.  You'd have to show an alternative worldview that accts for rationality to compete.



They of course had SOME conception of what we would call the scientific method (nothing like the brilliant insights of the Greeks, though), but it didn’t suffice to move them past the ravings of liars

So the presence of liars and the fact that some, or even many, ppl fall for them is a reason not to think that a population conducted science?
I give you the massive amt of ppl who hold to astrology in the modern West!  Science is now disproven!


Prove that the things in the Bible could not have been invented by people at the time or been misinterpretations of natural events

Fulfilled prophecies couldn't've been.
Further, until you can bring fwd an alternative to explaining rationality, I'm not concerned with your long-range mudslinging.  Your worldview is irrational, so I yawn at such uppity talk.


You’re the one who has to demonstrate them to be more rational and likely than the naturalistic, mundane alternative.

You're a philosophical naïf.  Again you beg the question that the naturalistic explanation is "mundane", that "mundanity" is the key to truth, and that your position is even possible, let alone probable.  Probable compared to what, exactly?



That's just a stupid statement. GOD WAS THERE and He said how it went down.

Something you can’t show (what I said), because you weren’t there.

I'm sorry you're having trouble following here, but do try at least.  IF my position is correct, God's telling me how it went down is a perfect explanation.
What I'm pointing out to you is that you claim a superior level of knowledge but you weren't even there;  you have zero access to how it went down.  Your explanation is an argument from ignorance, a Darwinism of the gaps.



“Objective”, on the basis that its adherents say it is, which “therefore” makes it so.

...And a category error.  The fallacies just keep on coming.
It's objective in the sense that text is objective.  The Bible is not changing.  It's not ad hoc.  Anyone can read it. Just like your (and my) comments.



Each piece of evidence is taken against a backdrop of other evidence, and it’s the mutual agreement of these data that together corroborate evolution

And since inductive reasoning is always fallacious, you prefer a huge heap of fallacious reasonings rather than just one.  Hahaha, OK.



Darwinism also says what would count against evolution; YEC doesn’t stick its neck out in this way

I'd settle for ANYTHING.  'Twould be a great start for you.
Besides, since YEC is true, I would indeed expect it to acct for everythg.  Up to you to bring sthg fwd to get us started.




instead retreats to safety when the storm gets too rough by simply invoking “God did it”.

Really?  Quote a YEC-er doing that.  Just one.
(Since you can't, will you be intellectually honest to admit that you were pulling stuff out of the air and out of atheistic prejudices you've picked up from other bigots?)



Uniformitarianism is a) more simple and less question-begging than the ridiculous alternative

Now all you need is an argument!



South American and Africa are imagined to have parted ways in 40 days

Another argument from ignorance.
1) I don't know and neither do you know whether they were like that before the Flood.
2) You don't know what a worldwide Flood, 1000s of feet deep, could do.  You just ASSUME it couldn't do what you think I'm claiming it did.  Yawn.



2) there’s no a priori reason to suppose that the alternative is more likely

There's no a priori reason to suppose that uniformitarianism is more likely.
In fact, on naturalism, there's no reason to suppose that ANYTHING is likely.  You have no reason to trust that the future will be like the past.  So this is just about you assuming stuff, for reasons one can only guess at.



we exist, so the universe must necessarily have been amenable, in some capacity, to foster that existence

Boy, aren't we lucky?!
Please indicate how you get past the gross improbability of that occurring.


then decide which one more parsimoniously allows for the explication of newly discovered facts

Please prove the principle of parsimony is the best way to discover truth, or even a good way.  Or are you  just assuming again?
(No need to answer - it's clear already.)


makes the creator look like a bit of a schizophrenic goose who should be an embarrassment to theists.

1) Yeah?  Please point out sthg that would embarrass me.
2) That He'd be embarrassing to other so-called theists is in fact predicted by the Bible - it's called sin.



Not a big fan of correctly characterising opponents, eh?

A huge fan, hence my claim that you care nothing for chemistry or physics. Or biology, for that matter. Or astronomy. Or geology

1) Now you're just resorting to playground trash talking.  Have fun with that mind-reading.
2) So, do I need to accept fallacious reasoning to be taken seriously by you?  That's sorta ironic.



1) Another strawman. Not as *I* see fit.

Right, just the God that YOU need to invoke whenever you have no real answer, and need to crawl your way out of having to provide one.

Please quote me doing so.



The YEC one certainly doesn’t, hence its constant disagreement with nigh-on everything discovered by science.

Please make an argument that disagreement among YEC-ers gives any credence to your position, or hurts my position.




2) Prove there's sthg morally wrong with burning witches, on naturalism.

Not the claim being made. I said that this stupid and cruel practise would still be performed if your worldview was in charge of the world, as it was for so long.

1) Oh, OK.  So you didn't make a moral claim about burning witches.  So, why do you seem upset about it?  Why'd you single it out, as opposed to, say, eating McDonald's food?
2) Sigh.  Please prove that "cruelty" objectively exists.
3) Do you have any idea how many witches were burned in Salem?



2) I'm YEC. God created Adam and the rest of the organisms, and Eve, and the Earth, as mature specimens. Not as fetuses.

* Sniggers at stupid caricature * Ummmm….fetuses. Yeah, because that’s what evolutionists think the CE was all about.

Um, that was an explanation of MY position, given the question you asked me.  Do try to keep up.


don't try using science to bolster your Bronze Age mythologies

Man, thank God you're here to tell me not to do what I'm not doing!

So you ADMIT that the Cambrian Explosion doesn’t bolster your case?

You got lost somewhere along the way, Luis.



Information doesn't just happen.

Apparently it does, since you think that God doesn’t require an explanation.

1) Strawman - God didn't "happen".  He is the fundamental, the necessary being.
2) Speaking of dodges... want to answer the question?



It must be given.

Except, of course, when we consider God, which is just sort of...there.

1) Oh, is "information" like "God" to you?  Has information always been?  How did that work?
2) Does it matter that minds haven't always been around, for info to have always been?
3) Minds and info aren't material.  Weren't you just telling us that such things weren't real?


I’d recommend that you actually read a book about evolution written by a scientist.

Read several, thanks.  They all suffered from the same assumptions you've displayed here.  You're a dogmatist.


Peace,
Rhology