Help with Creationism Discussion

I am going to be making my first You Tube video soon.
It will be a discussion/invitation to answer questions about the Creationism Community.
I do not use the term Intelligent Design, most who use that term are full of it.
"Intelligent Design" belief is the belief in the mechanical universe with some guidance, not that the Earth is 6000 years old with no evolution. Most who use that term now are full of shit.

My wife, a reformed Free-Will Baptist and I spoke of how do they deal with things like new flower breeds, new AKC and Westminster breeds and GMOs in their lives on a weekly basis?
Then this thread came up @ FSM, ironically. It was too much, so I decided to make the video:
Poster 1:

Years and years ago I was reading a hunting magazine and they were talking about 'trophy' hunting. The author put forth the notion that deer were (as a population) becoming smaller and had smaller 'racks' because the larger deer with more impressive antlers were being hunted in preference to the small deer with smaller antlers in some parts of the U.S.. The hue and cry in the letters section was amusing; people canceling their subscription and what not because he was talking about 'evolution'. I went back and re-read the article and no where did it mention evolution; words like "selective" pressure and living longer and producing more offspring were as close as the author got to the 'E' word. Sincerely the Warlord of Elephants
Poster 2:
Presumably the hunters who cancelled their subscriptions don't have dogs. Or maybe they think the way modern dogs got to look the way they do had nothing to do with selection.

I am going to use the article on Cod and Salmon farming, you may remember it. Point of No Return.
I would appreciate any help, material and feedback I can steal.
Plus, I think this will make a good discussion.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Who are you discussing this with in your film?

The selective breeding and cross breeding of livestock, food and non-food. They have changed the production of food, like meat, dairy and poultry by at least ten fold. That's all thoroughly documented by States, Feds and breed associations.
Non-food animals are bigger, faster, stronger and sometimes smarter. Talk to race horse breeders/trainers. Hell, talk to pig racers.

Talk to the AKC about how dogs have changed in just the last 100 years and how many AKC recognized breeds didn't even exist when they started.

We discussed in another thread how apples have been changed by selective cross breeding, usually by state universities. You can't find the type corn they grew when I was a kid any more.

There's plenty of documentation on how man has changed things which is proof it can be done. It's only logical if man can do it it can happen randomly at a slower pace.

[Clodfobble]

Your magazine anecdote is odd--most creationists do believe in natural selection, but they do not believe in the kind of species-crossing evolution you need to go all the way from primordial soup to intelligent humans.

Cellar user OnyxCougar is a creationist of the above-described type, and has debated the topic at length in several threads. Do a search for her posts and you're bound to find them.

[Cloud]

ugh. Why does this topic keep coming up in my life. I had a total meltdown on another board over this topic--a board in which I have many friends over many years, and on which I am the top poster.

To summarize, I stated (rather strongly) that, although I fully support every person's right to belief in whatever spiritual credo they want, creationism as science is a crackpot theory, and anyone espousing that it should be taught as science in schools is a whacko.

Many days of tears later, my new motto is:

religion+infelicitous expression=bad juju.

Don't hurt me!

[monster]

I'm sure I'm being dense here, but I can't work out what argument you are presenting and would like questions/opinions about?

I get the impression that you believe in a form of "intelligent design", but not that as currently understood by the pro-evolution media (i.e. that intelligent design is a political spin designed to answer critics of creationism in the most "cost-effective" way), but I shy from making this assumption without clarification.

I believe in NO form of ID or creationism, god, spirit, etc.
What I cannot figure out is how they maintain their belief with the benefits of selective breeding and evolution in our daily lives, examples in OP.
If you have a pet dog or cat that is not a wolf or tiger, eat GMOs and buy hot-house-flowers, you have no business being a creationist.

[monster]

OK, thanks, (sorry for the misunderstanding, I just prefer to be sure rather than hurt feelings when I don't mean to )

Bacteria/viruses evolving to deal with medications, should be part of the discussions, anyone have any articles or ideas on that one?... I have some but am open.

[Kingswood]

Here is a simple demonstration that shows how evolution works. I will describe a model that has physical objects, but running a computer simulation according to these rules may be more efficient.

You will need objects of two different contrasting colours, and a way to bind them together in pairs. Transparent plastic containers that hold kids' toys and red and yellow marbles would do the trick. You will need 80 containers and 160 marbles of each colour.

Experiment 1

Have 20 containers, 19 of them with two yellow marbles and one with one yellow and one red. Randomly pair these containers off into 10 pairs of two. For each pair of marbles, combine them like gametes in all four different ways. The red-yellow container should have two children that are also red-yellow.

Now we simulate predation. Place all the items into a bag and randomly pull them from the container. For each red marble a container has plus one, flip a coin. If the coin comes down heads, place the container back into the bag. Repeat the above until 40 containers remain in the bag.

We then simulate random chance. Pull 20 containers from the bag and set them aside without flipping coins. The 20 that remain form the breeders for the next generation.

If the above is repeated many times with the progeny of one generation forming the base for the next (this is why a computer simulation is good), the chances are good that the red "mutation" may become established, and eventually most of the containers will contain at least one red marble.

One may also find that the mutation does not become established. This demonstrates that beneficial mutations are no guarantee of fitness on their own becuase other factors in their environment also impose pressures for which the mutation offers no benefit.

Experiment 2 - control

Repeat experiment 1, but make the "red" mutation have no effect on survival. This time, one will find the results to be different. The mutation will tend to die out, and if it does become established it is unlikely to spread through the population.

Thanks.

[DanaC]

rk I assume you have read Dawkins? He gives some great arguments in Climbing Mount Improbable.

[Elspode]

One of the favorite themes espoused by Creationists is the "if you put the parts of a watch into a box and shake them, you'll never get a working watch". However, besides genetics and mutation, another thing Creationists don't understand is statistics.

Take an enormous number of watches, put them in an enormous number of boxes, and shake them for an enormous number of years. Statistically, at least *one* will end up as a working watch. As long as the probability of a given event is a finite probability, give it enough time and samples, and it will happen.

[SteveDallas]

My suggestion is, don't bother.

Read this.

[barefoot serpent]

or watch this

[Sundae]

Creationists use the terms Micro-evolution and macro-evolution to explain things like dog breeding. They agree that selective breeding can alter appearance, size, strength etc, but believe that in order to breed selectively you need to start with a pair of existing animals. In other words there is no evidence that all life has evolved from non-living chemicals available in the scientific community. You'll be fighting a losing battle I'm afraid.