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Since you're questioning somebody else's motives yourself now, what do you think is wrong about questioning the motives of someone who parrots tired old discredited creationist propaganda, describing it as seemingly sensible? Shouldn't you be as open to criticism as the scientific theories you're criticizing?


Well I wouldn't have 'parroted' it, had known that it as 'tired old discredited creationist propaganda'.

Does that answer your question?


Oh, so it is ok to question motives! I'm so relieved. Google and wikipedia will quickly and easily disabuse you of the idea that it's "a big flaw in the theory of evolution". What were your motives for thinking and parroting that there is a "big flaw" in evolution without bothering to look it up, when it's so easy to discover how tired and discredited the "absence of intermediate forms" argument is?

Here's the first google hit with the phrase "absence of intermediate forms" you parroted, a site specifically dedicated to spreading misinformation about evolution -- Gary Bates' Creation Ministries International: http://creation.com/that-quote-about-the-missing-transitiona...

>Gary has been speaking on the creation/evolution issue since 1990. With a background in management and marketing, in 2002, he was invited to join the ministry full-time in Brisbane and eventually became its Head of Ministry. Much in demand for his popular lay talks on creation, Gary and his family relocated to America to serve as CEO of CMI-US. He was also elected to the position of CEO of CMI-Worldwide, CMI’s international Federation of ministries.

http://creationwiki.org/Gary_Bates

>Bates has a keen interest in the UFO phenomenon and wrote the Amazon.com top 50 bestseller Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection. In July 2009 he was the keynote speaker at the first Christian symposium on the UFO phenomenon held in Roswell, New Mexico.

And here's a more reputable source that debunks the claim you parroted -- National Center for Science Education: http://ncse.com/creationism/analysis/transitional-fossils-ar...

>Fossils with transitional morphology are not rare. Fossils illustrating the gradual origin of humans, horses, rhinos, whales, seacows, mammals, birds, tetrapods, and various major Cambrian "phyla" have been discovered and are well-known to scientists. Explore Evolution's claims to the contrary are just a rehash of older creationist arguments on this point, relying on out-of-context quotes, confusion over terminology and classification, and ignoring inconvenient evidence.


What do you think that my motives were?


You're more qualified to answer that question than I am, so why are you asking me, instead of telling me your own answer?

What I asked you was why you were questioning somebody else motives, right after complaining that somebody was questioning your own motives? Is it OK to question people's motives, or not? Are you "entitled to ask questions without having our motives questioned" but nobody else is?


Like a lot of things I suppose I would say that it depends.

I think that it is OK to question if someone is being really charitable or helpful to you when they suggest that they are being so, in the context of what is otherwise a put-down.

On the other hand if someone asks a question about a scientific theory and has his or her motives for asking it scrutinised simply because the question implies doubt, then I don't think that's OK.




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