Theism And Atheism

[Stranger]

I know enough about it.

Obviously not. Not only did you not know the difference between the phenomenon and the theory but you linked to the hideous watchtower site, which I made the mistake of visiting and skimming through. I felt the need for a hot shower afterwards to wash off the stench of bullshit and dishonest misrepresentation.

Start a new thread, teach me, in your own words.

Whereas the principle of evolution by natural selection is fairly simple, if you want to learn about the details and the evidence that supports it, then there's a lot to learn and doing it on a message board with no links is just a silly condition obviously designed to make it impractical.

The fact is that you made an obviously false claim that "the theory of evolution is a myth" (even if you think it's wrong, that doesn't change the fact that it's a scientific theory, not a myth) from a position of ignorance and now you're running away from the subject.

[bluehillside Retd.]

TS,

I know enough about it. Start a new thread, teach me, in your own words.

You want a course in evolutionary biology? First, it’s a big subject that I’m not qualified to teach, and second why on earth should I invest a huge amount of my time even I was qualified? It’s simple enough – just buy a book and read it. Jerry Coyne’s “Why Evolution is True” is as good a place to start as any.

If you do that and still have specific questions I’ll be pleased to do my best to answer them. In the meantime though, on what basis do you blithely tell us that “evolution is a myth” when you know nothing of it? What fraction of understanding is that you think you have than justifies discounting a vast body of knowledge that’s overwhelmingly well-evidenced in multiple independent fields of study, and that has many real world applications – some of which could even save your life one day?

TS (Reply 69):

People on this forum have a real bad habit of dismissing everything they don't agree with simply as imbecility...

Also TS (Reply 18):

The theory of evolution is a myth.

Hmmm…

[Theoretical Skeptic]

a vast body of knowledge that’s overwhelmingly well-evidenced in multiple independent fields of study, and that has many real world applications – some of which could even save your life one day?

Excrement.

[Stranger]

Excrement.

Good description of your knowledge of the subject. Don't blame other people for your appalling ignorance.

[Dicky Underpants]

Excrement.

But since you've effectively said you know so little about the subject, apart from the noisome sewage eructated by Watchtower Inc, I suggest that such a 'judgment' is premature.
See, I've got the advantage on you - I've actually read the scientifically illiterate tripe from the Watchtower market stall, and have also read the writings of genuine scientists.
For me the best of all writers on evolution is the wonderful Stephen J. Gould, palaeontologist, essayist on wide ranging subjects, and a man of the widest culture. He even managed to find scientific import in baseball and the statistical relevance in the sale of Hershey Bars. Yes, guess what - he was AMERICAN. Your country should be proud of him.

[Theoretical Skeptic]

Good description of your knowledge of the subject. Don't blame other people for your appalling ignorance.

Eugenics for the modern man. See there was a schism. Two groups embraced the nonsense. Racists and atheists. Accountability was the issue with the latter. So with the advent of the steam powered ships and the subsequent international travel the prudish elite of western civilization got their first real look at exotic animals sent from abroad for their amusement. This at a time when even piano legs were covered for decency. They took to dressing chimps in clothes and making comparisons to dark skinned people in the artwork alongside the aforementioned Flintstones. When the nonsense of evolution caught on the phony intellectual atheists of that time embraced it to dispense with their bothersome accountability before the religious nuts and their idea of God who still ran the show.



 

[Theoretical Skeptic]

But since you've effectively said you know so little about the subject, apart from the noisome sewage eructated by Watchtower Inc, I suggest that such a 'judgment' is premature.

The sewage of the Watchtower is preferable to that of Empedocles, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Darwin the failed preacher running around trying to find any snake oil cure for his poor daughter, and the Nazis.

See, I've got the advantage on you - I've actually read the scientifically illiterate tripe from the Watchtower market stall, and have also read the writings of genuine scientists.

I don't think your scientific expertise compares to Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, has done scientific work dealing with genetic mutation in plants for the past 30 years, for 21 of those years with the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany. Also an elder in the Christian congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Byron Leon Meadows works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the field of laser physics. He is currently involved in the development of technology to improve the ability to monitor global climate, weather and other planetary phenomena. Also an elder in the congregation of Jehovah's
Witnesses.

Kenneth Lloyd Tanaka is a geologist employed by the U.S. Geological Survey of Flagstaff, Arizona. For 30 years doing work in scientific research in various
fields of geology including planetary geology. He has had dozens of research articles and geologic maps of Mars published in accredited scientific journals,
and is also a JW.

Paula Kincheloe has several years of experience as a researcher in the fields of cell and molecular biology and microbiology. In addition to studies in DNA,
RNA, proteins, and metabolic pathways she is also a volunteer Bible instructor for Russian speaking communities as a JW.

Enrique Hernandez-Lemus is a full time minister with the JW's and also a theoretical physicist working at the National University of Mexico. His secular
work involves finding a thermodynamically feasible explanation for the phenomenon known as gravothermal catastrophe, a mechanism of star growth. He has also worked with the complexity in DNA sequences.

For me the best of all writers on evolution is the wonderful Stephen J. Gould, palaeontologist, essayist on wide ranging subjects, and a man of the widest culture. He even managed to find scientific import in baseball and the statistical relevance in the sale of Hershey Bars. Yes, guess what - he was AMERICAN. Your country should be proud of him.

Gould preached Theodosius Dobzhansky as "the greatest evolutionist of our century" but Dobzhansky dismissed Gould's argument on mutations as irrelevant.

Guess where I learned that.

[Stranger]

Eugenics for the modern man. See there was a schism. Two groups embraced the nonsense. Racists and atheists. Accountability was the issue with the latter. So with the advent of the steam powered ships and the subsequent international travel the prudish elite of western civilization got their first real look at exotic animals sent from abroad for their amusement. This at a time when even piano legs were covered for decency. They took to dressing chimps in clothes and making comparisons to dark skinned people in the artwork alongside the aforementioned Flintstones.

The distortions and misapplications of the theory has nothing whatsoever to do with its actual content and the copious evidence that supports it. For example, the discovery of DNA could have falsified it entirely but instead we could make the case for evolution from DNA alone, without any other evidence at all.

You seem so totally indoctrinated that I doubt you'll have the courage to read it but this article explains some of the genetic evidence for human-ape common ancestry: Genesis and the Genome (pdf). Amongst the gems is the fact that humans have a mutated version of the gene for making egg yoke, located in the same place as the functioning gene in chickens and that we can reproduce the evolutionary relationship between humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orang-utans, that had been deduced from other evidence, using the disabling mutations of broken olfactory receptor (sense of smell) genes. It gives just a tiny window into a tiny fraction of the evidence for evolution.

And I think you'll find that the covering of piano legs is a myth - try a quick google.

When the nonsense of evolution caught on the phony intellectual atheists of that time embraced it to dispense with their bothersome accountability before the religious nuts and their idea of God who still ran the show.

You continue to dismiss as nonsense something that you have no knowledge of. What's more, atheists don't need evolution to dismiss baseless, primitive superstitions about god(s).

I'll leave you with a creationist who's honest enough to admit that evolution is backed up by "gobs and gobs" of evidence and that his rejection of it is entirely a matter of faith: The truth about evolution.

[Stranger]

I don't think your scientific expertise compares to Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, has done scientific work dealing with genetic mutation in plants for the past 30 years, for 21 of those years with the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany. Also an elder in the Christian congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Byron Leon Meadows works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the field of laser physics. He is currently involved in the development of technology to improve the ability to monitor global climate, weather and other planetary phenomena. Also an elder in the congregation of Jehovah's
Witnesses.

Kenneth Lloyd Tanaka is a geologist employed by the U.S. Geological Survey of Flagstaff, Arizona. For 30 years doing work in scientific research in various
fields of geology including planetary geology. He has had dozens of research articles and geologic maps of Mars published in accredited scientific journals,
and is also a JW.

Paula Kincheloe has several years of experience as a researcher in the fields of cell and molecular biology and microbiology. In addition to studies in DNA,
RNA, proteins, and metabolic pathways she is also a volunteer Bible instructor for Russian speaking communities as a JW.

Enrique Hernandez-Lemus is a full time minister with the JW's and also a theoretical physicist working at the National University of Mexico. His secular
work involves finding a thermodynamically feasible explanation for the phenomenon known as gravothermal catastrophe, a mechanism of star growth. He has also worked with the complexity in DNA sequences.

Project Steve.

[ProfessorDavey]

I don't think your scientific expertise compares to Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, has done scientific work dealing with genetic mutation in plants for the past 30 years, for 21 of those years with the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany. Also an elder in the Christian congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Byron Leon Meadows works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the field of laser physics. He is currently involved in the development of technology to improve the ability to monitor global climate, weather and other planetary phenomena. Also an elder in the congregation of Jehovah's
Witnesses.

Kenneth Lloyd Tanaka is a geologist employed by the U.S. Geological Survey of Flagstaff, Arizona. For 30 years doing work in scientific research in various
fields of geology including planetary geology. He has had dozens of research articles and geologic maps of Mars published in accredited scientific journals,
and is also a JW.

Paula Kincheloe has several years of experience as a researcher in the fields of cell and molecular biology and microbiology. In addition to studies in DNA,
RNA, proteins, and metabolic pathways she is also a volunteer Bible instructor for Russian speaking communities as a JW.

Enrique Hernandez-Lemus is a full time minister with the JW's and also a theoretical physicist working at the National University of Mexico. His secular
work involves finding a thermodynamically feasible explanation for the phenomenon known as gravothermal catastrophe, a mechanism of star growth. He has also worked with the complexity in DNA sequences.

Are any of these individuals evolutionary biologists TS? I certain don't believe that being an expert in laser physics really means you are also an expert in evolutionary biology, does it?

And of course you will find some scientists and engineers that are also JW - so what. There are always exceptions that prove the rule and there are many studies that have found that scientists are disproportionately likely to be non religious and atheist compared to the general population and this becomes more evident for the most eminent scientists. But that doesn't mean that all scientists are non religious or atheist - that would be a bonkers claim, just that they are more likely to be.

And while on the subject of eminence in science - are any of the people you mentioned particularly eminent or leading in their fields - I don't think so. They are notable as being scientists who are also JWs - they are not particularly notable as professional scientists (of which there are countless thousands).

So when you said to DickyU:

'I don't think your scientific expertise compares to ...'

That may be true for him (I don't think he is a professional scientist). However I am, and although their fields are somewhat different to mine I think my scientific expertise in my field is at the very least comparable to those individuals in theirs using the scientific-wide gold standard of your work being important enough to be cited by your scientific peers. So for example Bryon Leon Meadows ResearchGate page indicates that his 12 research works have been cited 57 times. My ResearchGate profile indicates that my 189 research works have been cited 6,201 times.

[ProfessorDavey]

In terms of their credibility as scientists let's look at their publications on Web of Science - the gold standard database for research publications:

Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, has done scientific work dealing with genetic mutation in plants for the past 30 years, for 21 of those years with the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany.

In those claimed 30 years he has published just 17 papers, the most recent in 2003. He is not a current active researcher.

Byron Leon Meadows works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the field of laser physics. He is currently involved in the development of technology to improve the ability to monitor global climate, weather and other planetary phenomena.

He has just 2 publications on the database, both in 2007 - his work has been cited just 10 times by his peers.

Kenneth Lloyd Tanaka is a geologist employed by the U.S. Geological Survey of Flagstaff, Arizona. For 30 years doing work in scientific research in various
fields of geology including planetary geology. He has had dozens of research articles and geologic maps of Mars published in accredited scientific journals,

Yup - he has 77 papers over the past 25 years, although nothing since 2016, suggesting he is no longer active. Typically mid author of many authors on his papers, which is the least important authors are place - convention is that the key authors to a piece of work are first or last on the author list. 4000-ish citations so, yes, a credible scientist in his field, but that isn't evolutionary biology.

Paula Kincheloe has several years of experience as a researcher in the fields of cell and molecular biology and microbiology. In addition to studies in DNA,
RNA, proteins, and metabolic pathways

Not a single published paper - she seems to be in a technical support role, not an active researcher.

Enrique Hernandez-Lemus is a full time minister with the JW's and also a theoretical physicist working at the National University of Mexico. His secular
work involves finding a thermodynamically feasible explanation for the phenomenon known as gravothermal catastrophe, a mechanism of star growth. He has also worked with the complexity in DNA sequences.

77 publications over past 12 years, so a good rate, but relatively low citations, just over 1000. Also he works in a field where high numbers of publication with very large numbers of authors is the norm and there is an expectation of high levels of citations. So, yes a credible researcher, but far from leading, and again in a field that isn't evolutionary biology.

So of these five, only two are even credible as researchers and one of those no longer seems to be active and neither are evolutionary biologists. If this is the best the JWs can put forward in terms of credible scientists then that speaks volumes.