The “hunger to be associated with the smart people”:
You really cannot understand debates about evolution, and other things, without appreciating the ego — the male ego in particular, you could argue — that is involved.
David Klinghoffer, “Douglas Axe: The Sway of Self-Image in Evolutionary Debates” at Evolution News and Science Today:
Did Darwin make it intellectually fulfilling to be an egotist?
So, essentially, Axe is resorting to just another conspiracy theory to explain the predominance of the theory of evolution and the failure of intelligent design to gain traction in academic circles.
As for the public health response to the pandemic, yes, it is reasonable to try and perform some sort of cost/benefit analysis comparing the number of lives saved against the economic burden of the measures employed to save them.
The other side of that coin is that those who argue that the cost in lives is a price worth paying to restore economic growth will not be putting their own lives on the line to achieve it. They will be taking all possible precautions and drawing on the best medical support money can buy while requiring their employees – who need the money – to risk their lives and those of their families and friends in the noble cause of preserving the owners and shareholders profits. Again, Axe explains skepticism about these clearly philanthropic endeavors on a conspiracy, a cabal of “experts” (expertise for these people is always evil – unless its your own) who have taken control of ‘”the microphone”, oblivious to the fact he is speaking into a microphone and doing exactly what he said the cabal was preventing. No matter, there are books to be sold.
Anyone who knows their history of science will be well aware that Linneus and Newton were both well ahead of Darwin.
Ego and arrogance are only found in people. Arrogance cannot be explained through nature, since arrogance does not exist in nature.
Bob, you clearly don’t live with parrots.
Hm, or cats.
I believe your points are done out of humor, but just in case your being, serious and believe parrots and cats to be arrogant, I will answer as if you are. Parrots, much like dogs, learn certain behaviors will be rewarded. Cat’s have smaller brains than dogs. As a result, they learn very little beyond what is instinctual to them. Animals have no human traits. Some people perceive this to be the case, but that is humanizing the animal in question. Humans, among our many traits, include the capacity for murder. Animals cannot commit an act of murder.
I like the title of Dr. Axe’s talk,, “How Four-Year-Olds Grasp (Intelligent) Design Better Than Most Biology Professors”
Perhaps it would be much more productive to have a four year old teach Jerry Coyne’s class 🙂
Despite what atheists may adamantly claim to the contrary, ‘seeing’ Intelligent Design is wired into each and everyone of us,
No matter how much atheists may deny it, studies have now established that the inference to Intelligent Design is a ‘knee jerk’ inference that is built into everyone, atheists especially included, and that atheists have to mentally work ‘suppressing’ their very own “knee jerk” design inference!
It is not that Atheists do not see purpose and/or Design in nature and biology, it is that Atheists, for whatever severely misguided reason, (i.e. ego, arrogance, and/or a ‘Cosmic Authority problem’ as Thomas Nagel termed it), ,,,
,,, for whatever severely misguided reason, Atheists, as studies now prove, live in denial of the purpose and/or Intelligent Design that they themselves are intuitively seeing in nature.
Here are two semi-famous examples of leading Atheists themselves irrationally denying the design that they are seeing in biology,
No matter how much atheists may deny the design that they themselves are seeing, atheists simply have no evidence that the design that they themselves are seeing can possibly be the result of unguided Darwinian processes.
Without any empirical basis to deny the design that we all are intuitively seeing, it is simply insane, especially in biology, for atheists to try to deny the design that we all intuitively see.
As Jay Homnick noted in 2005, “Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.”
Moreover, much like the teenager who rebels against his parents, and gets involved in drugs, the consequences for atheists in denying Intelligent Design, and therefore the consequences for rebelling against God in particular, are overwhelmingly detrimental for the atheist.
As Professor Andrew Sims, former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, states, “The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally.”,,, “In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life;,,”
In fact, “Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation.”
In fact, it is now found that “those middle-aged adults who go to church, synagogues, mosques or other houses of worship reduce their mortality risk by 55%” and “Religiously affiliated people lived “9.45 and 5.64 years longer…”
Moreover, besides having severely detrimental effects on their personal level, the Atheist’s irrational denial of the Intelligent Design that we all intuitively see, also has severely detrimental effect on societies at large.
In fact, Darwinian atheism lays at the foundation of all the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century,
It would be hard to exaggerate the unimaginable horror visited upon the people who were stuck, (and are still stuck), in those atheistic hellholes,
Many times, rebellious teenagers who rebel against their parents wishes and get involved in drugs, grow up after they have suffered from the consequences of their drug abuse, get into recovery (which can be a difficult process in its own right), and even admit that their parents were not so dumb after all, i.e. that their ‘uncool’ parents were right all along.
Yet, after debating atheists here on UD for years, I am forced to wonder if Atheists here on UD will ever ‘suffer enough’ to admit that they are wrong, and finally ‘grow up’ and get over their juvenile rebellion against God?
Seversky, you are clueless as there isn’t any scientific theory of evolution. That is because no one knows how to test the claims of evolution by means of blind and mindless processes.
People are dying from covid-19 due to nutritional deficiencies. The virus is easily fought off so we should get back to work and back to school
Bob O’H:
In more ways than one. They understood science, Darwin didn’t. They weren’t dumb enough to posit that nature did it, Darwin was.
BobRyan @ 6 –
Animals of the same species do kill each other – we have had to separate our lovebirds because we didn’t want them to do this. I’m not sure how their behaviour is different from murder, other than that there isn’t a written law proscribing it.
Animals kill other animals on a daily basis. And cats can learn quite a bit depending on the teacher.
“This is so simple a four year old child could do it. Quick, find me a four year old child, I can’t make heads or tails of it.” —Groucho Marx
Ever notice how these guys always do their presentations in a church and never in a university lecture hall?
IIRC Ben Stein used a university lecture hall in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Mind you, it was an empty university lecture hall.
University lecture halls are too stuck up to allow an ID presentation. They are too afraid that their religion will be ruined.
Seversky @1,
I just finished watching Douglas Axe’s video. It seems to me like your response had very little to do with his presentation.
For example, what do your references have to do with Dr. Axe’s discussion of the nature of existence, materialism, and our scientific assumptions (which are broadly acknowledged)?
Regarding your reference to “as for the public health response to the pandemic,” Dr. Axe simply used that as an example of how a few experts–not all-seem to dominate the narrative (“the microphone”) on the subject. For example, we all know how the experts disagreed on the efficacy of wearing masks in the beginning of the COVID-19 response. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s simply a general observation of something well-known in scientific circles about how hard it is to be heard. There are demonstrations on YouTube about wearing masks and how easily droplets pass through them. But that’s not the theme of Dr. Axe’s presentation.
Dr. Axe wasn’t denigrating experts. His main point was that they tend to be myopic on larger issues of existence and meaning, and your dismissive comments didn’t address any of Dr. Axe’s expertise on “alphabet soup” and protein sequences and folding as present in a ribosome.
I think Dr. Axe’s primary point was our innate ability to distinguish between coincidence and design, and his observations about the concept of hierarchy in invention applied to the human organism was his primary point.
You didn’t address any of this.
-Q
To realize how clueless are biologist about “evolution” is the prediction of junk DNA.
They really believed only 2-3% from DNA are useful for functioning ,the rest are the graveyard of milions of years of evolution. Who started this false ideea? Crick discoverer of DNA. 🙂
Now scientists discovered that even 100% of DNA is only 0,1 % of all information required for all processes of life . Where could be that information stored?
Sandy,
The idea of “junk” DNA was proposed by the American geneticist, Susumu Ohno in his 1972 paper So much “junk” DNA in our genome. It’s an interesting read and available online the last time I checked. His speculations on the utility of non-coding DNA were very reasonable given his evolutionary perspective.
However, what the problem was (and still is) the presumption of randomness. Just because we didn’t know about the functions of non-coding DNA, non-coding DNA was assumed to be evolutionary junk, and many scientists still cling to that idea.
But this presumption of junk isn’t new. For example, in the early to mid 1900s, there were dozens of “vestigial” organs, which were supposedly vestiges of evolution–evidence presented even at the Scopes Monkey trial. Among these “vestigial” organs included the appendix and ductless lands such as the thyroid. If you can find a dictionary from those times, you’ll see that the Royal Society speculated that the thyroid might have a function of helping project our voices upward through our mouth.
Had there been a presumption of Intelligent Design in these and numerous other cases, scientific progress would not have been slowed down.
-Q
🙂 I knew only about a study from 1980 in “Nature ” (Crick, Orgel-Selfish DNA: the ultimate parasite )
Have you heard of the “onion test”, originally proposed by T Ryan Gregory in a blog post?
Querius/18
Perhaps with good reason. This was originally posted by Larry Moran at his blog Sandwalk 4 July 2013
As for:
Probably not, but the presumption of an undefined Intelligent Designer would have been of precious little help either.
Seversky,
Genetic Load – Do you think this alarming rate of mutations will result in an evolved superhuman or eventual extinction? Support your assertion by including comparative rates of forming functional DNA by mutation.
The fact that not all mutations are fatal doesn’t prove that they’re absorbed in useless junk. Susumu Ohno first speculated this possibility in his 1972 paper. It’s a good idea, but a bad premise based on ignorance of the functions being discovered from non-coding DNA.
C-Value Paradox – The massive differences in genomes cannot be scientifically accounted for. I was going to write “explained by evolution,” but every potential outcome could be explained by evolutionary speculation. Again, this exposes the presumption of junk. I’ll even provide an example. What if the large-genome species actually spawned numerous smaller genome daughter species? You read it here first.
Modern Evolutionary Theory – All unsupported assertions. One can easily assert that nothing in biology makes sense in light of modern population genetics. It was once thought that genomes could resolve evolutionary and taxonomic controversies, but they haven’t.
Pseudogenes and broken genes are junk – A beautiful example of circular reasoning. Junk DNA is all junk because some DNA is presumed junk. Wow, brilliant.
Most of the genome is not conserved – Because the genome is amazingly adaptable rather than fixed, this proves that most DNA is junk?
The presumption of an unspecified Intelligent Designer would indeed have been instrumental in creating a brilliant, self-modifying genomic code and epigenetic switches crucial for the survival of organisms perhaps at the genus or family level of design.
Here’s an interesting quote from a popular science magazine:
Do you think the research behind the above is wrong?
-Q
Larry Moran is another coward who ignores the science and the facts. If Larry is right then somehow histone octamers just happened to evolve to spool up and organize all of the junk DNA.
The genetic load argument is also nonsense. Just because the sequence isn’t important doesn’t mean the physical nature of the sequence isn’t functional.
The onion test? Evos can’t even account for the existence of eukaryotes, so forget about onions. Has anyone ever heard of old operating systems that have many more lines of code than their newer counterparts?