You missed my point. You can't be right 100% of the time, especially when you are defending the wrong position.
It's possible to be right 100% of the time, but I sincerely doubt anyone on Earth is anywhere near that. I'm nowhere near that, and you're nowhere near that. My strengths are in philosophy and engineering. Since they are my strengths, I may overestimate my abilities and become unaware of mistakes, or not foresee them. The only medicine is intellectual humility.
My responses vary according to who I'm conversing with and what the subject is. In politics, I'm always disclaiming that the chances are good that I'm wrong. If I'm in a conversation with someone who is inflexible, such as yourself, I will become inflexible as well. This reaction is borne from my disgust of inflexibility. To truly understand the characteristic, you need to realize a person will defend an erroneous position until the end of time, and will take a mile if you give them an inch. I honestly believe fundamentalism is one of the greatest threats to our country, and I refuse to give a fundamentalist even an inch that isn't rightfully theirs. Is religion good for communities? Yes. Is there truth within the bible? Yes. I will remain inflexible, but it will be an honest inflexibility. I will hold my ground for good reasons, and based on logic. You have no such intellectual code.
Back to your sentence. Are you saying that you realize how impossible it is to perform an experiment that would support creationism? That any such experiment has already been performed?
In hindsight, I would rather the challenge have been something I could produce, since I cannot change my beliefs to believe something which is false. Perhaps donating to a certain charity. Then we could put it behind us and focus on the results of the challenge, the implications. That very specific point in the conversation that betrays a hole in your worldview.
DNA repair mechanisms reveal a contradiction in evolutionary theory
04/26/11
The evidence in support of evolution isn't some collection of ambiguous data as you presuppose. Here's a hypothetical; It tells a story, a very very long and intricate story, with a majority of the chapters written word for word without error. The plot is obvious. It cannot be mistaken. This is not my opinion. This is the truth. Objective reality has written this book with us as pawns by giving very specific results during various experiments. There is still bias, and still a lot of work to do, but at the same time there is no doubt what story the book is telling.
Articles like the one you posted pop up many times per year. In almost every case I can remember, it was a scientist pointing to a small gap somewhere and declaring the theory to be void without that gap filled in. Which is precisely the type of article you're posting. In all the cases I followed, the gap was filled eloquently and elegantly by another scientist in the field who had greater experience, or specialized in the gap in question.
But that doesn't really matter. Even if there were a large number of such gaps that are eternally unfilled, we already have enough of the book to say, conclusively, what the story is. This has been told to you before. Why do you insist on ignoring it? Is your faith that powerful that it blinds you to the truth?
I don't follow your logic on the simulated national broadcast. It seems you just punted that. As for scientific integrity, it turns out there are a growing number of groups who are concerned about it.
There should always be a system of checks and balances to eliminate human bias and error. There are already such checks and balances in place. Could they be improved? Sure! I hope they are, with all my heart. I wish for every ounce of human bias and error to be eradicated from science. The group to act in the function of oversight is most certainly not any religious group. The bias is palpable in any group that relies on faith for their truths, by the very fact that they have beliefs which contradict observation. You have faith that manna fell from the sky. Why? That is a bias, and all your beliefs with respect to the bible are a similar such bias.
I have no problems with such a group reviewing any scientific findings, except that their results are actually the ones that most often turn out to be biased and incorrect. By saying "certain groups" are concerned about the integrity of science, you're placing greater trust in groups that have even less intellectual integrity. Such a group is the optimal choice for a peer review committee, except that they are so biased against evolution that no evidence is able to persuade them! Such a group has no place in peer review, and I'm sure you'd agree with that.
