This is my attempt at live-blogging Dr. Orlando Schwartz's talk at Darwin Week, we'll see how it goes…
Schwartz started his speech with an overview of evolution with the evidence for it. His conclusion is that evolution is amoral. It makes no claims about religion or about human behavior. I'm curious what Dr. Wasserman would have to say about that following his speech last night.
We're now talking about creation science. He's overviewing the claims: the earth is 6,000 years old and light bending makes stars look far away when they're actually close. The carbon dating argument is being discussed now. God tricks us by speeding up and slowing down decay, Schwartz jokes.
Schwartz makes the claim humans and dinosaurs never existed together. No evidence, he claims. OH REALLY.
Schwartz is showing home photos of his visit to Texas to see the evidence of human footprints next to dinosaur prints. Apparently scientists checked it out and saw no toes…toes appeared the next morning. God's doing? He's clearly testing our faith.
Great Flood would take 5x the volume of the present oceans and 40 days of raining would never be enough, Schwartz says. Did comets bring the water? The collision would make the earth's temperature rise to 12,000 degrees. Polar ice caps don't have enough water either. Schwartz states the obvious – local flooding appears global when it's all you know. The Ark was impossible to build without metal. 8000 birds, 5500 mammals, 2000 amphibians, etc all okay, but what about 10 ton T-Rexes, Schwartz asks? "My faith doesn't not allow me to ponder that question…God found a way," was the answer he found. This is one of the most thorough debunkings of The Flood I've ever seen.
We're now talking about the "missing links." Record is being filled in to connect dinosaurs and birds, Schwartz shows.
Onto intelligent design! Looking for blood clotting first. We have evidence of animals with different levels of blood clotting ability. Each "step" of the clot makes it better and better.
GUILLERMO GONZALES! Schwartz is taking shots, looking forward to Avalos doing the same. Gonzales uses circular logic and begs the question, Schwartz claims.
Back to intelligent design. PowerPoint actually says "wink wink nod nod" when discussing who the intelligent designer is. I laughed. Why do we have idiotic birth canal location and nipples on men, Schwartz asks? Stomach would be much better location for birth canal, he says! This dry wit is cracking me up. Room seems unsure about how much it can laugh.
Now onto discussion points of religion vs. science. The side-by-side comparisons are brutal. I'm hoping the
Q&A brings out some fundamentalists.
No Q&A questions, unfortunately. I'll be back at 12:30 for the next event I can attend.
3 comments:
fantastic idea, great for people who cannot be there
Wow, this guy must be really immature that he needs to resort to making fun of others so he feels smart and important.
I get disappointed when people on either side of the spectrum resort to attacking people and I instantly stop listening.
Unfortunate for you, I suppose. Not all ideas are created equally -- many are absurd. At some point we need to start calling it like it is. Some people think their hair dryer talks to them. Others think an invisible man talks to them. We shouldn't pretend either has merit.
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