"Biased Sources"?!

[Sophus]

When recently trying to provide sources for my explanations of evolution to a Creationist he claimed they were all "bias". The main thing I've been trying to get across before in great depth with evolution is getting him to understand:

More than 99% of the Scientific Community does accept it and it is fact.
We do have fossil evidence including transitional fossils.

Any good links to direct him to or am I just wasting my time?

[curiosityandthecat]

When recently trying to provide sources for my explanations of evolution to a Creationist he claimed they were all "bias". The main thing I've been trying to get across before in great depth with evolution is getting him to understand:

More than 99% of the Scientific Community does accept it and it is fact.
We do have fossil evidence including transitional fossils.

Any good links to direct him to or am I just wasting my time?

Do you like watching paint dry? It's probably a tad more productive ...

[JillSwift]

If the argument were about evidence and facts, it would have ended ages ago.

The argument, for creationists, is about emotion and perceived morality. No matter how clearly you can demonstrate the evidence supporting evolution, the creationist sees one thing: Reducing humans to animals means we no longer have to be moral. That idea scares the beeejeebuz out of 'em.

[Sophus]

One interesting quote I will relay:

The largest collection of fossils in the world is at the British Museum of Natural History.  Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist for the Museum was unable to give a single example of Macro-Evolutionary transition. In fact, Patterson wrote a book for the British Museum of Natural History entitled, "Evolution". When asked why he had not included a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book, Patterson responded:

...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader? I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived." I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument

If the argument were about evidence and facts, it would have ended ages ago.

The argument, for creationists, is about emotion and perceived morality. No matter how clearly you can demonstrate the evidence supporting evolution, the creationist sees one thing: Reducing humans to animals means we no longer have to be moral. That idea scares the beeejeebuz out of 'em.

You would think that. But it's not easy when everything gets labeled as incredible.

[Will]

When recently trying to provide sources for my explanations of evolution to a Creationist he claimed they were all "bias". The main thing I've been trying to get across before in great depth with evolution is getting him to understand:

More than 99% of the Scientific Community does accept it and it is fact.
We do have fossil evidence including transitional fossils.

Any good links to direct him to or am I just wasting my time?

The burden of proof is on them to demonstrate bias. I dare them to try and demonstrate that the scientific community is biased  without fundamentally misrepresenting science (strawman) or misrepresenting their claims (strawman). I'm afraid they've backed themselves into a corner on this one.

[Whitney]

Any good links to direct him to or am I just wasting my time?

The only obviously 'non-biased' source I know of other than wiki:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

If they think that is biased...then they think the word "bias" means someone who doesn't agree with their conclusion.  In which case you should do this:  

[Sophus]

What wonderful website. Thanks Whitney!

Okay so here's an update:

In spite of the overwhelming amount  of evidence for evolution he is hung up on the little fossil evidence. Well.... I tried to explain there was little although he insists there is none. 'll admit it is one of the weaker points in evolution (although not as weak as he thinks it is) and even Darwin himself said it. However there is a little bit of fossil evidence, which is already more than can be said for any Creationist's theory.  

[Squid]

What wonderful website. Thanks Whitney!

Okay so here's an update:

In spite of the overwhelming amount  of evidence for evolution he is hung up on the little fossil evidence. Well.... I tried to explain there was little although he insists there is none. 'll admit it is one of the weaker points in evolution (although not as weak as he thinks it is) and even Darwin himself said it. However there is a little bit of fossil evidence, which is already more than can be said for any Creationist's theory.  

Out of curiosity, which parts is he hanging up on out of curiosity?  I think many people arguing against evolution seem to somehow thing that fossilization is guaranteed thing once an organism dies - they are mistaken.

[Recusant]

Any good links to direct him to...?

To me, one of the clearest fossil records showing evolution in action is that of the horse.  I think it really depends on what you mean when you speak of 'transitional forms.'  I would guess that Dr. Patterson is using some very restrictive definition of that term, considering that the Wikipedia article on transitional fossils speaks of the fact that "...it is now considered that there is abundant evidence of how all the major groups of animals are related, much of it in the form of transitional fossils."

 

...am I just wasting my time?

Well, yes and no.  As has been mentioned, and encountered here many times, Creationists see all of mainstream science as "biased," so no matter what evidence you give them, they can easily dismiss it.  If you're trying to present evidence that's convincing to one of these willfully ignorant types, then, yes it could be said that you're wasting your time.  However: 1) If your correspondence is being read by others (some of whom may be less hidebound in their thinking,) then you can consider that those lurkers are your real audience, and you may be doing them a favor by helping to educate them. 2) On the other hand, you can look at it as a great opportunity to learn more yourself, and get a firmer grasp on what actually is available. If looked at from the perspective of these last two points, then it's not at all a waste of time.

[SSY]

Recusant, as usual, is exactly right.WIki also has an article listing the transitional fossils (horses amongst them), which is my favorite.

Nutter: "There are NO transitional fossils!!"

Sophus: *Presents list of transitional fossils*

Nutter: *Contemplates new evidence in unbiased way, before redacting previous claim about transitional fossils and retires to examine how this new evidence will alter their world view, after thanking Sophus for the information*

At least thats how I imagine it will go, your milage may vary.

[Sophus]

Thanks to Recusant!I actually have been able to learn more from this lol) but now believes in a sort of evolution that changes only within species, but doesn't lead to new ones and that a Creator has made the original species. I had explained that if you can believe that anything can make small changes and is constantly making small changes, given enough time that thing will become something else. So the idea is flawed for that reason, not to mention countless amounts of evidence that would also suggest otehrwise. So upon entering this discussion I thought he would be more open minded than your average creationist. So far not much luck though. Seems more concerned with "winning" than learning

Out of curiosity, which parts is he hanging up on out of curiosity? I think many people arguing against evolution seem to somehow thing that fossilization is guaranteed thing once an organism dies - they are mistaken.

True. I tried to explain that too. Part of the problem could be on me as I'm not exactly the world's great articulator.

[Sophus]

What do you guys think of the explanation from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Misconception on this website( http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html ). I'm tired of explaining things myself in vain. Anyways I'm not greatly familiar with this law. Is what he's saying about snow-flakes, etc. accurate? I mean this quote here:

Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?

[PipeBox]

They're not great examples, but we're already stretching the 2lot to its breaking point, so why not?  Phrased another way, those are examples of systems possessing enough undistributed energy to bring order in nature, rather than falling into greater disorder as lone systems.  The 2lot does not say all systems must simultaneously dissipate from order to disorder, which is why we can, say, charge batteries in the first place.   It's special pleading for any other system to be able to do thermodynamic work (lightning, snow flakes, solar panels, whatever really) while claiming life cannot.  There is no basis for saying that life cannot form based on the 2lot because life is not a closed system and local order could be supplied by universe.  If creationists had it their way, and we actually read the 2lot as stating that order always decreased in all systems, open or closed, crystals would not be able to form.  Mind, the actual 2lot is about heat transfer, anyway, which is not always synonymous with what we perceive as order.  Ridiculous creationists.

[SSY]

The second law simply states, that any process will increase the overall entropy of the universe.

Some things seem to disobey this, like a fridge, whent the food inside gets colder, it loses entropy. But the air outside that is heated by the fridge gains a lot more entropy than the food lost, so everything is ok.

Life does not break the second law for the same reason, we are contantly getting energy from the sun, which allows local lowering of the entropy here on earth ( at the expense of greater entropy elsewhere ).

 I am not sure about the examples, for example, with the crystal. The crystal itself will have a lot less entropy than a bunch of atoms floating around freely, but then, there is a lot of energy released from the making of all those bonds, this energy can heat the surroundings, increasing its entropy, or heat the crystal, which will have a lot of vibrational modes, again, huge entropy. Also, lightning is a case of a ysstem trying to increase its entropy, the charges are seperated, which is a pretty ordered state ( like all your clothes stacked in your wardrobe ), when the cloud discharges, the charges are now mixed around in melange of positive and negative ( like all your clothes jumbled together in the washbasket ), increasing the entropy.

Proceed with caution if using that site, I am not totally happy with the examples it posted, though I could be in need of correcting by a more thermodynamically aware member.

[Ayreon]

Creationists believe that transitional fossils consist of a half duck-half lizard creature.