Calling all evolution deniers - come deny it!

So I was making a point on another thread about how Noah's global flood never happened and was nicked off the Epic of Gilgamesh written at least a thousand years before ~(and indeed, both accounts could rely on an even earlier myth). It's pretty easy argument to maintain since there really is no evidence to support the ark hypothesis (AH) and mountains of evidence to contradict it. Some might even say there is a deluge of contrary evidence...

In the debate, "The Theist" stated this absolute gem of a quote:
Whoa, there . . . now I never said I took Hovind seriously. In fact I would place him about on the same level as the average believer or atheist. Theologically retarded. But I do take him slightly more serious than the failed metaphysical experimentation called "Theory of Evolution." He makes more sense than anyone else I have ever heard on the subject and more importantly, though the atheists like to dismiss him as they do anyone who disagrees with them, he actually scares the hell out of them because he knows what he is talking about. He, uh . . . he pisses them off. That's why I like him.

To which I replied:

The Theist OK, so you have some half-baked idea that Hovind has a clue what he is talking about. Hint, he doesn't. What was one of his classiv lines? "I've never seen a dog give birth to a non-dog?" What a dick who doesn't have the first clue. He could do with investigating the "problem of species" which even Darwin was cognisant of. In reality, there is no such thing as a species, since all animals exist on a continuum of development over time. Check my post here: http://atipplingphilosopher.yo.... Species are a useful labelling tool to enable humans to understand a taxonomy of life; however, they do not have real ontology outside of the human conceptual mind. It is the same mechanism we use in laws. We allow people to vote when they are 18, to have consensual sex when they are 16, to drive... The reality is, there is no discernible difference between the girl who is 17 and 364 days, 23 hrs and 59 minutes 59 seconds, and that same girl a second later. However, one second she can't vote, the next she can. We draw arbitrary lines in time continuums for pragmatic reasons. This is what the idea of species does. However, if you found a fossil of an early Homo, you could rightly argue that it is actually a late Austrolapithecus (and this is what has happened with the famous fossil, Twiggy). Fossils which sit closer to that arbitrary line are harder to argue. That is because that line is arbitrary. It is not as if an Austrolapithecus gave birth to a homo. This gradual move took thousands and thousands of years. We, now, look back and whack a line somewhere to differentiate the two. However, at that line, there would be no discernible difference. So the questions "Why don't dogs give birth to non-dogs?" could only ever be asked by a complete wanker.

So you think that the global flood (already impossible for countless reasons like there physically not being enough water molecules on earth, the earth's crust would implode etc etc) led to the distribution of animals around the world. Let us check out this hypothesis.

So, all animals die but a bunch on an ark. Let us take a random animal: the koala. Now, on the ark hypothesis, one would expect to see a distribution of these animals across various suitable habitats ranging from where the ark settled to where they are today. Take penguins, one would expect the same. Take lemurs: we would expect a distribution of them, as they moved off the ark and multiplied, across the suitable world. Is this what we see? No. What we see is this: penguins exclusively in the south pole and surrounding areas. Marsupials confined to Australasia. Lemurs found exclusively on Madagascar. I could go on as there are thousands of examples. In fact, all the known distributions of organisms in the world.

What would we expect from evolution? Well, there are things called natural barriers. in fact, natural barriers are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to evolution. Without geographic barriers which prevent all bu the most infrequent migration, you would not get speciation, since all gene pools would continue mixing homogenously. What natural barriers do is isolate gene pools. By isolating gene pools, you get mutations and adaptions to particular environments. So Australia, being a whacking great island itself, also has within it countless natural barriers. Marsupials mutated and diverged and we are left with, within an isolated island barrier, a group of animals from koalas to kangaroos, which exist nowhere else.

In Madagascar, we have lemurs which exist nowhere else in the world because they evolved in situ, the island forming a natural barrier. And so on and so forth. Evolution predicts (actually necessitates) evolved speciation in given geographic areas. The ark hypothesis cannot account for this.

So on geographic distribution alone, the ark hypothesis fails.

And that is but one single solitary factor which discounts the ark, and backs up evolution.

In fact, anyone who denies evolution simply hasn't read enough about it. They simply don't know what they are talking about.

There's no denying it, Hovind is a plonker of the highest order and would struggle to adequately geographically differentiate his posterior from his elbow; however, sometimes you just hanker after a good tête-à-tête with evolution-deniers. As this site is Debunking Christianity and there are a good number of Christians who deny evolution (some 40% of Americans), it is part of our job to uphold the sense and rectitude of evolution against the onslaught of willful ignorance.

So here it is. The gauntlet is down. Let's have a good ole hum-dinger about evolution and see where that gets us. Come on deniers! Trot out some of your arguments against evolution. Hell, refute my comment above about geographical distribution!

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