[It] is now obvious that the root is we are dealing with a domineering parasitical ideology in the course of destroying its host; through its inherent undermining of responsible rational freedom, the foundation of a sound life of the mind. Immediately, science, science education, the media and policy are being eaten out from within.
KF
Indeed. The immediate context of KF’s observation is the seeming inability of the Darwinists to understand plain English over the past few days. Allow me to establish some context. In a post over at his Sandwalk blog Larry Moran quoted me when I wrote:
For years Darwinists touted “junk DNA” as not just any evidence but powerful, practically irrefutable evidence for the Darwinian hypothesis. ID proponents disagreed and argued that the evidence would ultimately demonstrate function. Not only did both hypotheses make testable predictions, the Darwinist prediction turned out to be false and the ID prediction turned out to be confirmed.
He then wrote:
But, as most Sandwalk readers know, nobody predicted junk DNA, certainly not Darwinists.
I then provided quotations from two famous Darwinists (Collins and Coyne) using the very word “prediction”:
Darwin’s theory predicts that mutations that do not affect function, (namely, those located in “junk DNA” ) will accumulate steadily over time. Mutations in the coding region of genes, however, are expected to be observed less frequently, and only a rare such event will provide a selective advantage and be retained during the evolutionary process. That is exactly what is observed.
From this we can make a prediction. We expect to find, in the genomes of many species, silenced, or ‘dead,’ genes: genes that once were useful but re no longer intact or expressed.
I also linked to Casey Luskin’s excellent article an ENV showing several more such statements. There cannot be the slightest doubt that many famous Darwinists said the theory predicts junk DNA.
“But those statements cannot possibly be predictions, because they came after junk DNA was discovered,” the Darwinists shout. One in particular (lutesuite) has started beating a drum calling for a retraction of my claim. We have two choices here:
- Agree with Moran and lutesuite. But this would require us to believe Collins and Coyne are too stupid to understand what the word “prediction” means.
- Disagree with Moran and lutesuite. This would require us to believe that Collins and Coyne were using the word “prediction” in a different sense than “to forecast in advance.”
I vote for (2). Is there a sense of the word “prediction” that means something other than “to forecast in advance”? It turns out there is. Collins and Coyne are not stupid. Instead, they are engaging in the commonplace act of using the term “prediction” in the sense of “retrodiction” or “postdiction”. What is that? Wikipedia explains:
Retrodiction (or postdiction . . .) is the act of making a “prediction” about the past.
My dictionary agrees.
There you have it. The mystery is solved. Collins and Coyne are not so stupid that they don’t know the meaning of the word “prediction.” Moran and lutesuite are simply wrong when they suggest they are. A prediction does not have to be temporally prior to that which is predicted if the word is used in the sense of a retrodiction.
What does all of this have to do with KF’s observation? Everything. Sadly, both Moran and lutesuite are hosting a domineering parasitical ideology that is undermining their responsible rational freedom and destroying their capacity to think clearly.
Consider this. It really is the case that for Moran and lutesuite to be correct, it must also be the case that two of the most famous scientists in the world are so staggeringly stupid that they don’t know what the word “predict” means. I do not always agree with Collins and Coyne, but it really is a little much for Moran and lutesuite to imply they are imbeciles.
The only rational conclusion is that Moran and lutesuite are wrong, and not only are they wrong, they are wrong about a very simple matter that would take only two seconds of rational thought to sort out.
But two seconds is a long time, and rational thought is hard when one is in the grip of a domineering parasitical ideology.