Part 7 - Dinesh D'Souza/ Dan Barker Debates

this is a terrible debate.... they dont have enough time to debate and get they're full points across.

how can an intelligent person like d'souza talk so much garbage?

Royak, sorry, I completely misunderstood what you wrote.

and? the OT is not an actually historic document. We know in history there was slavery long before Judaism. The first civilization on the planet in Mesopotamia had slavery. The first law code written had (Hammurabi) had slavery in it. Slavery was around before the NT or the OT. That is from history not two silly books, or the myths within them.

Royak, is not the god of the NT the same god as in the OT?

Slavery,How the F**k can it be a Christian concept when it was around Thousands and Thousands of years before Christianity. Dan Barker is a horrible debater, full of fallacies and leftist assumptions. He makes Atheist look bad.

Batman quooooote! =3 *does teh chicken dance* duh-duh-du-du-duh-duh-du duh-duh-du-du-duh-duh-du

This isn't a debate. This is just a joke. I would like to see that stupid clown D'Souza actually answer questions sincerely instead of being theatrical. Foucault was right about polemics -- it's a type of comedy. D'Souza is just a bloody comedian.

Conversely, neither creationism nor ID can be used to make predictions. ID did not predict Tiktaalik, nor did it predict the fusion of chromosome #2 in humans, with clear evidence (telomeres in the middle and 2 sets of centromeres) that it is a mutation from what are 2 distinct chromosomes in other primates. Evolution did. These are by no means the only examples, but they're pretty much slam-dunk verification of the accuracy of evolutionary theory.

You use a funny definition of the word "guess". To "guess" is to speculate based on no evidence. That's not what's happening with either the speed of light or with evolution.

With the speed of light, we have measurements that have been taken, and a model (theory) that both explains all of the data and makes predictions about further investigations. These predictions have been tested and found to be correct, thus substantiating the model.

The exact same is true for evolution. It's NOT guessing.

The eonly thing I could possibly find is more educated guesses about what MIGHT be true according to modern science.

This is what I'm saying: Science requires a certain amount of faith when explaining certain things about the evolutionary process.

For example, what Dinesh said about the speed of light. IT has been tested hundreds or thousands of times but how do we really know how fast it travels in certain environments or on other planets?

THE ANSWER: We don't. We guess.

By "it" I assume that you mean the eye? Setting aside for the moment the fact that most creationist propaganda neglects to include the entirety of the relevant quote from Darwin, you *do* realize that Darwin's work was the beginning of evolutionary science, and not the end, right? There's been a tremendous amount of work done since then! MUCH has been added, and some details of Darwin's work has been proven wrong. Search YouTube for "evolution of the eye", or any vid by cdk007 or thunderf00t.

Not so. Darwin could never explain it and relied on faith alone to explain it. Even Darwin relied somewhat on chance to explain certain concepts of his theories.

Evolution is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a grand unified theory explaining everything. It explains speciation- the changes in biological systems over time. That's it. It doesn't explain how life originated or where the universe came from because they're completely outside of the scope of the theory. Any claim that this somehow "disproves" evolution is creationist propaganda and scientific illiteracy. Likewise, the theory of gravity doesn't explain mate selection in peacocks. So what?

Wrong on all counts. Contrary to ID propaganda, the evolution of the eye is WELL understood, from photosensitive organelles to the variety of current eyes. Consciousness is an emergent phenomena from increasing mental capacity and complexity, and requires no supernatural explanation.

Reread the comment before my last one. Evolution is part of BIOLOGY, not cosmology. That it doesn't explain something completely tangental to speciation is NOT a flaw!

I know it doesn't. My point is that evolution is a flawed theory not just on the biological front (the eye,consciusness,etc..) but also when it comes to explaining how the universe came to be in the first place.

The Bible is FULL of factually incorrect information! Search for "The skeptic's annotated bible", check the first link, and then select "science and history" on the right under "Highlights". There are 336 points where the Bible conflicts with science.

As for your observations regarding Kepler, Boyle, Newton, and Einstein, I agree with you completely. What's your point?

Certainly it's been tested! Talk a zoologist or cultural anthropologist. Or for that matter, read any college level biology textbook that didn't come out of the Discovery Institute!

"Darwinism" (evolution) doesn't have anything whatsoever to say about the origins of the universe, in exactly the same way that the owner's manual for a 2006 Prius has nothing to say about cooking or cellular biology. Evolution deals with speciation, not cosmology. To claim otherwise is ignorance.

The Bible is my source. Has it been proven wrong by modern science? No

Kepler, Boyle, and Newton are not religious figureheads. They were great scientists who happened to be Christian.

Another thing too, Einstein wasn't a Christian, but he was a deist, which is as close as you can get to theism.

And it hasn't passed the test (or any test) yet. I guess what you're trying to say is that since your stance cannot be substantiated, it should be taken as truth even though it can be tested and proven wrong. Baloney

Tell me something, how does Darwinism account for the origins of the universe?

You're the one claiming that morals come from a specific source, so the onus is on you to prove your case. THEN we can talk.

Regardless, you're treating morals as a fundamentally different than any other emergent social behavior without justification. They arise from the same "source" as every other general class of behaviors, and there's no evidence that even implies a supernatural origin. Stop going to religious figures for your science education. They're clearly not qualified.

I don't argue that many famous scientists were also Christians, but that's completely orthogonal. Kepler knew a lot about orbital mechanics, but that gives him no insight into the existence of God or the origin of moral systems!

"because DUH!, God made them!"
Or it's a result of the fact that groups of social creatures who generally cooperate tend to survive better than ones which act purely out of self interest. My claim is testable and falsifiable. Yours is not.

The problem with that is they cannot attribute these morals to any particular source. Once you do that, and can prove it scientifically, then we can talk.

Obviously, we are talking about homosapiens.

And what of the greatest scientists of history? Koepler? Boyle? Newton? They were all Christian. Not to mention the head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins.

The reason they exhibit those traits is because DUH!, God made them!

That's not to say that one's morals *can't* come from scripture. They certainly can and for many people they do. But to presume that morality can *only* come from religious sources is to ignore the plain reality. The existence of a single moral atheist disproves this supposition, and I personally know many.