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AronRa's Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism
10/25/08
AronRa's Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism
For a thorough treatment of the assumptions, presumptions and myths underlying creationism, you can hardly do better than to take in the scruffy-but-erudite AronRa's series on the Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism.
His expositions on transitional fossils, scientific hoaxes popular with creationists and beneficial mutations are top notch. The series is informative even if you are otherwise "in the know" on this topic.
You will also marvel at the pace and how long a sentence he can speak on a single breath. I envy the ability to roll this off the tongue (from #10 in the series):
For example, “Primates” are collectively defined as any gill-less, organic RNA/DNA protein-based, metabolic, metazoic, nucleic, diploid, bilaterally-symmetrical, endothermic, digestive, tryploblast, opisthokont, deuterostome coelemate with a spinal chord and 12 cranial nerves connecting to a limbic system in an enlarged cerebral cortex with a reduced olfactory region inside a jawed-skull with specialized teeth including canines and premolars, forward-oriented fully-enclosed optical orbits, and a single temporal fenestra, -attached to a vertebrate hind-leg dominant tetrapoidal skeleton with a sacral pelvis, clavical, and wrist & ankle bones; and having lungs, tear ducts, body-wide hair follicles, lactal mammaries, opposable thumbs, and keratinized dermis with chitinous nails on all five digits on all four extremities, in addition to an embryonic development in amniotic fluid, leading to a placental birth and highly social lifestyle.
My only complaints: a little too much in the way of Willy Wonka interludes and #13 in the series is of a lower volume than the rest.
Apart from that, highly recommended.
Favourite quote:
Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans ARE apes –definitely and definitively...
...So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!
2 comments
L. Aron Nelson (aka “Aron Ra” sun god):
You’re right when you say that “Demanding an ‘ape-man’ is actually just SILLY.” Glad you now admit that it’s “SILLY.”
Thanks for also admitting that there is the “problem with bridging the GAP between humans and apes.” Now, are you ready to admit that the reason there is a “GAP” (no “ape-man” transitional forms) in the fossil record is because humans did NOT descend from apes? As you always state: “If you can’t show it, you don’t know it!”
And your assertion: “So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!” Let’s not get “SILLY” now, okay Aron?
Humans are distinct from the animal kinds. Look in the mirror, Aron. Do you see an ape or a human looking back at you?
If you need help in distinguishing the difference between apes and humans, I can help you with that.
In fact, if you want to know WHY there is NO evidence humans evolved from anything, just let me know and I’ll be happy to explain it to you.
Camille
Aron is unlikely to darken the doorstep of my small corner of the Internet, but I’ve been tracking creationist arguments myself for a not insubstantial number of years.
>You’re right when you say that “Demanding an ‘ape-man’ is actually just SILLY.” Glad you now admit that it’s “SILLY.”
Wow, stop with the “gotchas"; it’s unbecoming, because that’s a strawman version of what he said, and what he said was a complain about strawmen in the first place. It’s the demands for creatures halfway between a clade and a member of that clade. It would be like demanding a book halfway between the Bible and the Vulgate, or the Bible and the NSV.
There are more gaps in the fossil record now, in large part because there are more fossils and less space between them. The going joke between biologists is of course that (from a creationist’s perspective) every gap we fill produces two new gaps.
>Humans are distinct from the animal kinds. Look in the mirror, Aron. Do you see an ape or a human looking back at you?
I’m sure the answer would probably be “yes".
To my recollection, chimpanzees and gorillas were classified with humans taxonomically back when Linnaeus was first sorting things out. Some readings I came across of the era thought gorillas might be a form of lower, cursed or devolved human, and that dovetailed rather well with some of the “erudite” thoughts of the age vis-a-vis black people.
But now that we know that gorillas are not actually devolved humans, well, the church is all about separate creation. Well, at least the sects that worry about such stuff.
But the original taxonomic tree wasn’t far off. Biochemically, anatomically, physiologically and genetically, chimpanzees and bonobos are closer to us than any other life forms on Earth, and gorillas aren’t too far behind.
I did a whole blog post on using online protein databases to tell, and it matters little what genes you start with, as long as they are commonly sequenced:
http://blogs.nimblebrain.net/index.php/a_little_of_the_tree_of_life?blog=2
Creationism’s playbook on baraminology/created “kinds” really hasn’t changed much since the seventies, and its proponents had a habit of seldom retiring any of them, no matter how short they were brought up in debate.
If you have evidence like that, publish it. I’ve been through numerous books and “papers", and the amount of handwaving, pretense of open questions, poisoning the well and outright deceit from those publications makes me despair of them actually making a forthright attempt to prove their case.
I went through Sarfati’s book with a fine-toothed comb and was appalled. There was food for another 45 posts if I were so inclined; I have scrawled notes all over my copy of his book.
http://blogs.nimblebrain.net/index.php/refuting-evolution-by-jonathan-sarfati?blog=2
