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Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Saint Andrew at Work

Andrew MacRae used to be very active on talk.origins. At the time he was studying Burgess Shale fossils and his expertise was much appreciated. He earned the nickname "Saint" Andrew because he was kind to, and patient with, most creationists. Many of us weren't.

Andrew was also interested in "Polystrate" Tree Fossils because creationists often used them as "proofs" that evolution is wrong.

Here's Andrew extracting a fossil tree from the Joggin Fossil Site in Nova Scotia (Canada). He looked a bit younger when I last saw him in Toronto in 1998.


8 comments :

Robert Byers said...

These trees are4 what YEC want to find.
They were encased quickly and this from the great flood.
A rare thing in nature.
The slow deposition covering them is what creationists think is easily debunked.
The paper here is saying they are not saying it was slow.
Its not about evolution but against geology ideas that refute the flood story.
These trees were literally covered and fossilized while Noah was alive.

John Harshman said...

Larry, I feel your pain. It's tough when the only comment to a perfectly good post comes from a creationist troll. I'd say that Andrew's big claim to fame is his studies of Ediacaran-type organisms in the Cambrian. (And do I remember some leaking into the Ordovician too?)

Schenck said...

Don't recall him being called St Andrew, but I do recall running into his posts often on talk.origins.

But now talk.origins is a google group, and the creationist lunatics that post to it make the old-creationists-lunatics look, well, at least less loony.

Larry Moran said...

Here's a post from Ken Cox in December 1998 ...

Andrew MacRae wrote:
[A long, reasoned reply to Ed Conrad's usual distortions of reality]

For those who just tuned in, this is why we call him Saint Andrew. Most of us, after several years of being pestered by a crank, would have broken down and screamed at him (textually) at least once. Andrew has maintained a calm demeanor and still takes the time to carefully refute each bit of insanity as it arises.

JimBob said...

Being a creationist doesn't automatically make one a "troll." Nor does being a creationist automatically make one a "lunatic." If argumentum ad hominem assaults are the best you can do, you need to give up and devote your time to eating, drinking and making merry instead of wasting your pleasuring time on this.
Demonstrating that evolutionist true believers are in error does not prove supernatural creation. It only shows that their critical facts are not true. As every tenet of evolutionism has been thoroughly debunked, not only by creationists (whom you can ignore; they're all lunatics) but by prominent evolutionists, I'd venture that the current ideas of evolution are in serious trouble.
We live in a secular nation (USA) where each one of us is free to have whatever religious, philosophical beliefs or speculations he chooses, as long as acting on those beliefs does not injure others.

John Harshman said...

OK, I'll bite, Al Grayson Studio. Which critical facts are not true? Which tenets of evolutionism have been debunked, and how?

colnago80 said...

As every tenet of evolutionism has been thoroughly debunked, not only by creationists (whom you can ignore; they're all lunatics) but by prominent evolutionists, I'd venture that the current ideas of evolution are in serious trouble.

Would Studio care to support this claim with a citation or two? AFAIK, it is complete hogwash.

Cubist said...

sez al grayson studio: "Being a creationist doesn't automatically make one a 'troll'."
True enough—but, equally, neither does being a Creationist automatically prevent one from being a troll. And it is an empirical observation that most Creationists on the internet do types of behavioral patterns which are indicative of the Troll nature.
I realize that I have not exactly provided a whole lot of supportive detail/evidence here—but then, neither have you, al grayson studio. If you care to get down to brass tacks and grapple with actual evidence, feel free; if not, Hitchens' Razor ("That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence") applies to everything you've said.

"Nor does being a creationist automatically make one a 'lunatic'."
Again, true. Again, neither does being a Creationist automatically prevent one from being a lunatic. Again, it is an empirical observation that most Creationists on the Internet do exhibit types of behavioral patterns which are indicative of the Lunatic nature. Again, Hitchens' Razor applies to what you've written here.

"Demonstrating that evolutionist true believers are in error does not prove supernatural creation."
True enough—but since evolution has, in fact, not been demonstrated to be in error, I have to ask: What's your point (if any)?

"As every tenet of evolutionism has been thoroughly debunked…"
I call bullshit, and unsheathe the mighty Hitchens' Razor on this unsupported assertion.

"…not only by creationists (whom you can ignore; they're all lunatics) but by prominent evolutionists, I'd venture that the current ideas of evolution are in serious trouble."
If you ever decide to up your game from the current evidence-free-assertion style that you're currently practicing, it will be interesting to see if you have anything that isn't one of the proverbial Points Refuted A Thousand Times. It will be interesting to see if you can pony up a quote, debunking, endquote, of evolution which isn't covered in the Index to Creationist Claims at the Talk.Origins Archive. It will be interesting to see if your quote, evidence, end quote, includes any quote-mines. It will be interesting to see if your quote, evidence, end quote, includes any of the points which are included in the list of Arguments Creationists Should Not Use from Answers In Genesis.
Or, if you decide to keep on keepin' on with the evidence-free assertions, I guess I can keep on keepin' on with "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

"We live in a secular nation (USA)…"
Well, I live in the USA. I got no idea where you live, but my Bayesian prior for "al grayson studio is a US resident" is pretty high, so I'll tentatively accept that conclusion until I see reason to change it.

"…where each one of us is free to have whatever religious, philosophical beliefs or speculations he chooses, as long as acting on those beliefs does not injure others."
Yes, the USA is a secular nation. Its Constitution specifically forbids the Government from favoring any one religious faith over any other‚ and that includes teaching any one religious faith's dogma, as if said dogma were fact, in public schools. Since Creationism is religious dogma concealed under a thin veneer of sciency verbiage (see also: the Statements of Faith/Belief of every major Creationist organization, the Discovery Institute's so-called 'wedge document', etc etc etc), it follows that Creationists ideas have no place in the science classrooms of public schools in the USA.