I love posting public comments and then finding that someone’s taken a dump in my inbox not ten minutes later. It all started on the Wall at the Protest Ben Stein’s Expelled Facebook group where I’ve been discussing evolution and playing with small minds.

With the private message he sent me being what appeared to be little more than a large block of random noise that he typed without thinking. Gosh, and why do people think you’re ignorant when you run off at the keyboard like this, in an apparent attempt to prevent people from answering your questions?

I posted this to a new discussion thread I created called Intelligent Design For Dummies

The original Wall posting from Eli struck me as funny, with some subtle changes, so I replied.

Eli Wayman (Iowa) wrote at 6:21pm
To completely deny the relevance of intelligent design one must be:
A.) Completely ignorant concerning the complexities of the human body
B.) Completely ignorant on the processes of carbon and other forms of radiometric dating

I found that to be nearly correct and said so;

Richard Murray wrote at 1:46am
Eli; you were very close to the right answer there… I’ve corrected your post for you;

To completely accept the relevance of intelligent design one must be:
A.) Completely ignorant

I’ve been rather active in the discussions there, and so I didn’t feel the need to elaborate on exactly why I was calling someone who “Completely accepts the relevance of ID” ignorant; if he had had a look around, he’d have seen my arguments pretty prominently in the top active discussions.

We could look, for starters at the word “Ignorant” as defined over at dictionary.com;

1. lacking in knowledge or training; unlearned: an ignorant man.
2. lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact: ignorant of quantum physics.
3. uninformed; unaware.
4. due to or showing lack of knowledge or training: an ignorant statement.

Now, allow me to edit Eli’s message for readability, as the One Big Run On Sentence approach that works so well for the Time Cube guy isn’t all that readable. Maybe I can respond in small, easy to digest pieces, and we can throw this open to others to comment on.

————————————————-

A. What people who disregard intelligent design openly deny is the evidence against evolution.

B. Radiometric dating is flawed up the wazoo and there is no substantial evidence for the processes of evolution.Implications of this process is not effective means of evidence and association does not mean causation.

C. Just because we share DNA with a monkey does not mean that we came from them.

D. If this were to be true [evolving from a primitive species -- RM], then where are all the millions of transitional fossils that will actually show a slow change in development over the supposed million of years of evolution.

E. We have fossils [of humans? -- RM] that date back to the dinosaurs (and according to scientists man did not live during these times), but we cannot find the fossils in between the dinosaurs and today to prove evolution to be true.

F. I recognize the potential of evolution through breeding, but this is hardly evolution. This is natural selection. The genetic variability already lies in the creature. It is not changed or created by the organism. It is merely expressed when a dominant gene is no longer convenient and the recessive gene is favored. It is a shift in the environment that causes the change. Not the organism.

G. Also, an organism that is in an unstable transitional form will be susceptible to many dangers. Most of this lies internally and deals with how the body must maintain chemical balances and temperature. I’ve considered a lot that deals with evolution vs. intelligent design. Have you?

H. Think about the implication of not having mitochondria in our cells to create energy needed for cell metabolism. Evolutionist say that mitochondria incorporated themselves in our system. What effects would this change make on the energy production of the human body? I cannot consider the potential chaos.

J. It goes well beyond my mathematical understanding of the odds of such spontaneous activity occurring with great success. What evidence do you have concerning evolution that would lead me to deny intelligent design? I think you will be hard pressed to find any that does not deal with flawed carbon dating (I can talk about this if you would like) and fossil evidence of the millions of transitional species.

K. I will discredit DNA since it deals with pure speculation of species that are associated with each other. Fossils have no DNA anyways. So really consider how ignorant I am concerning this issue. If anything I will say that you emphasize your ignorance by merely replacing “evolution” with “intelligent design.” This seems childish and petty.”

————————————————-

I’m going to start with just two points today; C and F. Your Gish Gallop isn’t going to phase anyone here.

C. We didn’t evolve from monkeys, or from apes, merely from a common ancestor.

F. With regard to the process which you refer to as Natural Selection. Selective breeding, such as that undertaken by a farmer in trying to find the sheep with the darkest wool is not an example of Natural Selection, but of Artificial Selection.

The mechanism is essentially the same between natural and artificial selection, basically it just comes down to a male and female of a species contributing half of the DNA that makes up an offspring creature. The reason for any specific male and any specific female to breed offspring that survive is what makes the difference.

In the artificial selection for dark wool, a farmer might pick the male and female from among his flock that each exhibit the trait that he’s seeking; dark wool. He breeds these animals to produce offspring, and then repeats the process a couple times, until he’s producing nothing but sheep with dark wool. This is artificial selection.

In natural selection, let’s say that we have a big box full of bug-eating lizards that are dropped on an island where their native food doesn’t exist. These creatures have to eat plants or starve to death, so they eat plants, even though their gut isn’t designed to process the cellulose efficiently. Many of these original lizards die off due to difficulties, but those that live breed with (obviously) other surviving lizards. Perhaps some of these lizards are genetically more able to deal with plant matter. The second generation has fewer deaths, and more lizards live to breed with other plant-tolerant lizards.

Forward a couple dozen generations, and other positive traits, of subtle adaptations are being rewarded. The lizards with slightly wider heads are able to bite off more of the plants quicker, gaining more nourishment than their narrower headed brethren, and that extra nourishment allows the females to lay just a couple extra eggs in a season and allows the males to fertilize more and more eggs.

The wide headed lizards’ DNA (discredited by you or not) has an advantage of numbers after a couple generations, and slowly the appearance of the lizards changes. Maybe other subtle alterations happen internally, such as development of cecal valves that aid the lizard in processing that plant material even better… even though these lizards never had such a feature before.

Wouldn’t that be pretty impressive if true? It’s not speciation, but it’s still pretty amazing

—

Image copied from Uncyclopedia and edited a touch.