Dr. Moran has asked me to respond to some technical questions over at Sandwalk. When I started writing this response I intended to put it in his combox. Then I realized there is a lot in it that is relevant to our work at UD. So I will put it here and link to it there.
Dr. Moran, before I answer your technical questions, allow me to make one thing perfectly clear. I am not a scientist, much less a biologist. I am an attorney, and being an attorney has some pluses and some minuses insofar as participating in the evolution debate goes. Like many people in the last 25 years, I was inspired to become involved in this debate by Phillip E. Johnson’s “Darwin on Trial.” Johnson is also an attorney, and he said this about what an attorney can bring to bear:
I approach the creation-evolution dispute not as a scientist but as a professor of law, which means among other things that I know something about the ways that words are used in arguments. . . . I am not a scientist but an academic lawyer by profession, with a specialty in analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the assumptions that lie behind those arguments. This background is more appropriate than one might think, because what people believe about evolution and Darwinism depends very heavily on the kind of logic they employ and the kind of assumptions they make.
Johnson is saying that attorneys are trained to detect baloney. And that training is very helpful in the evolution debate, because that debate is chock-full of faulty logic (especially circular reasoning), abuse of language (especially equivocations), assumptions masquerading as facts, unexamined premises, etc. etc.
Consider, to take one example of many, cladistics. It does not take a genius to know that cladistic techniques do not establish common descent; rather they assume it. But I bet if one asked, 9 out of 10 materialist evolutionists, even the trained scientists among them, would tell you that cladistics is powerful evidence for common descent. As Johnson argues, a lawyer’s training may help him understand when faulty arguments are being made, sometimes even better than those with a far superior grasp of the technical aspects of the field. This is not to say that common descent is necessarily false; only cladistics does not establish the matter one way or the other.
In summary, I am trained to evaluate arguments by stripping them down to examine the meaning of the terms used, exposing the underlying assumptions, and following the logic (or, as is often the case, exposing the lack of logic). And I think I do a pretty fair job of that, both in my legal practice and here at UD.
Now to the minuses. I do not claim personally to be able to evaluate technical scientific questions. Like the vast majority of people, I rely on the secondary literature, which, by and large, is accessible to a layman such as myself. When it comes to independent analysis of technical scientific questions, I have nothing useful to say.
Back to our cladistics example. I have a very general understanding of how clads are made and what they mean. But I do not claim to be an expert in the technical issues that arise in the field. Of course, that is not an obstacle to spotting a faulty argument about cladistics, as I explained above.
Digging deeper – to the fundamental core of the matter – my baloney detector allows me to spot metaphysical assumptions masquerading as scientific “facts.” This is especially useful in the evolution debate, because – to use KF’s winsome turn of phrase – evolutionists love to cloak their metaphysical commitments in the holy lab coat.
Consider the following claim: Evolution is a fact.
Yes it is, and it most certainly is not, depending on what one means by the word “evolution.” If all you mean is that living things were different in the past than they are now, then sure. Even YEC’s believe that. But if you mean that modern materialist evolutionary theory has been proven to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold consent, then the statement is absolutely not a fact. Even materialist evolutionists dispute such vital issues as the relative importance of natural selection. This is quite aside from the fact that many people (especially ID proponents) do not believe the theory is even plausible, far less unassailable.
Yet I can’t tell you how many times I have caught materialists in this very equivocation. I do not believe that materialists are always being intentionally misleading when they say this. Some are but not all. Those in the latter group have a commitment to materialist metaphysics that is so strong that they often cannot tell where their metaphysics ends and their empirical observations begin. A person who allows his materialist metaphysical commitments to blind him, may truly believe that the mere fact that living things are different now than they were in the past is, on its face, evidence for materialist evolutionary theory. Why? Because if materialism is true, then materialist evolutionary theory must also be true as a matter of simple logic even before we get to the evidence.
And as a matter of strict logic, they are correct. The conclusion follows from the premises. The argument is valid. But what materialist fundamentalists never stop to ask is whether the argument is also sound. Is that crucial premise “metaphysical materialism is true” a false statement? There are good reasons to believe that it is, and sometimes it takes someone with a good baloney detector – someone like a lawyer – to clue them in on this. As astounding as it seems, it is very often the case that materialist evolutionists not only fail to acknowledge an unstated assumption that is absolutely critical to their argument; but also they fail to even know that they’ve made that assumption in the first place and that that assumption might possibly be false. I can help them understand those things.
Good points here.
Cladistics is case in point of assumed evolutionary relationships and not demonstrating relationships are from evolution.
YES a top lawyer is and should be better able to see the merits of arguments regardless of expertise.
Indeed a top biologist should be able to evakluate law stuff if being intellectually careful about how data is used.
IN short anyone who has trained themselves to think carefully about contentions in anything should be credible to take on any contention.
So knowledgable (anyone but here lawyers) easily have the intellectual right to contend with evolutionist well degree-ed as long as the conversations demonstrate this.
Surely on uD this is demonstrated excellently and fot a long time.
From authors and posters on all sides if not all who post. Not all!!
No voting either. Especially the historic prejudice against canadians or I assume that to explain lack of support for me.
Yeah thats it.
Coming at this from the other side…
I’d fully agree with that so far; however:
While I’ve also seen this equivication, I think it may be less common than you think. I may be a little sensitive about this, because on another thread kairosfocus just (falsely) accused me of a very similar mistake. I said:
then KF quoted the first paragraph (highlighting the bits about common ancestry and mutation, selection, and drift) and replied:
Note that I said mutation, selection, and drift all clearly happen; I didn’t say they were the whole story. In fact, they clearly aren’t: at the very least, endosymbiosis is also involved. I didn’t claim that we know the whole story (we don’t). I didn’t claim that the whole story (when/if we figure it out) will involve only natural processes; I think it will, but I’ll freely admit that I don’t have a solid case for it. (I just haven’t been impressed by the case against it.)
But that still has important implications for ID: it means the only plausible ID hypotheses are those involve intelligent input in addition to (rather than instead of) mutation, selection, drift, etc. Genetic front-loading, guided mutation, guided selection, front-loaded fitness function (“active information”), etc are the ID hypotheses that fit with this evidence. Independent creation of different “kinds”, on the other hand, is pretty much out.
I also have to turn the accusation around, since you do something like the reverse (in the section I omitted above):
Just as it’s invald to use certainty about some aspects of evolution to imply certainty about all aspects, it’s also invalid to use uncertainty about some aspects of evolution to imply uncertainty about all aspects. There’s some controversy(*) about whether Napoleon died of arsenic poisioning, but that doesn’t imply any uncertainty at all about whether he died. Similarly, there’s some controversy about exactly how all the various mechanisms of evolution mesh together, but that doesn’t imply any uncertainty about whether they happen.
(* Actually, the Napoleon controvery seems to have settled out in the last decade; but the question of whether he was dead was settled way before that.)
I should also probably address your point about cladistics. I’ll start by pointing out that it’s not just the existence of cladistics that’s signicant, it’s the success of cladistics at grouping organisms with similar characteristics together. Your training as a lawyer may actually be a problem here, because you’re thinking like lawyer, not like a scientist.
(A qualification: I’m not a scientist either. But my father was a physicist, as were an uncle and aunt, grandfather, great-uncle, several friends… I also studied a fair bit of science [esp physics] in college. So I’m fairly familiar with how scientists — especially physicists — reason.)
Science involves a form of inference called abduction, or inference to the best explanation. This doesn’t necessarily mean the explanation you like best, it means the one that does the best job of predicting (and in this case that includes retrodicting) the evidence. Essentially, it means the explanation that does the best job of explaining why the evidence is the way that it is.
Take planetary orbits: Kepler worked out that the were eliptical, with the sun at one focus of the ellipse. Then Newton came along and proposed a theory of universal gravitation that said they had to be elliptical. It also explains why, for example, heavy objects have to fall at the same rate as lighter object. That’s why elliptical orbits and equal fall rates are considered evidence for the theory of gravity. (It’s also an oversimplification, but I’ll get to that…)
The situation with cladistics is similar. Linnaeus worked out that living organisms fell naturally into a nested hierarchy of similarity. Common ancestry explains why they have to fall into such a hierarchy (as well as why extinct organisms violate these rules in certain ways).
But wait, I hear you cry, organisms also violate the strict nested hierarchy! Doesn’t that mean that common ancestry is actually refuted? Well, no, no more than the fact that planetoids with sort of kidney-bean-shaped orbits exist, or that feathers fall slower than bowling balls, refute gravity. The strict predictions I mentioned (eliptical orbits, objects falling at the same rate, strict nested hierarchy) all follow only when there are no other factors interfering to complicate things.
In the case of orbits, you may need to take the effect of other planets (and maybe other forces) into account. In the case of falling objects, you might need to include wind resistence, buoyancy, electromagnetic forces, and anything and everything else that happens to be acting on the falling object. In the case of the nested hierarchy, you need to take into account not just common ancestry, but also endosymbiosis, horizontal genetic transfer, convergence, and anything and everything else that happens to have influenced the pattern of similarity of organisms.
This is one of the things that make science difficult. And interesting.
But it doesn’t make things hopeless; in all these cases you can pick out the most common pattern (ellipses, equal fall rate, nested hierarchy) and explain that, then look for anomalies and find explanations for them (wind resistence, horizontal transfer, etc), then look for still-unexplained anomalies and find explanations for them… making more and more complete pictures of all the contributing factors as you make better and better matches to the data.
Realistically, any good explanation of why things fall at the rate they do is going to have something like gravity as the dominant factor. Likewise, any good explanation of the pattern of similarity among organisms is going to have to have something like common ancestry as the dominant factor.
The nested hierarchy of similarity is something that needs to be explained, and any theory that hopes to replace common ancestry will need to explain it at least as well, and will also have to allow additional factors to explain the anomalies at least as well as endosymbiosis, HGT, etc do for common ancestry. I haven’t seen anything that comes even slightly close.
(If anyone is thinking of disputing that the nested hierarchy is real, I have a challenge: try arranging different cars into a nested hierarchy. If you organize them by, say, manufacturer and model, you’ll find sedans, coupes, hatchbacks, and wagons splattered all over with no correspondence to the tree. Same with auto vs manual transmissions, and front/rear/4-wheel drive, and various engine layouts, and Diesel vs gas, and with/without satellite radio, and… And any other tree you pick will be at last bad. Organisms mostly fit in a nested hierarchy, cars almost completely don’t.)
It is easy to build a tree on the similarities. Try doing it on the differences. Personally I have no beef with CD but I’m not convinced yet because there are other explanations that fit the data too.
Gordon,
Gradual evolution predicts a smooth blending of traits and therefore does not predict a nested hierarchy.
GD,
did you notice that you spoke to “evolutionary theory” and not to micro-evolutionary adaptations?
Are you aware that the extrapolation from the micro to the macro is a material and commonly made shift shift and one that is highly questionable on the issue of origin of FSCO/I by blind watchmaker thesis needle in haystack search?
That, the failure to make a clear distinction therefore implies much?
You go on to cite yourself from 173:
The problem here is of course that there is a commonly observed stalking horse that effectively implies commitment to metaphysics level evolutionary materialism by imposing a censoring rule on thought about origins.
Namely, so called methodological naturalism, which in effect boils down to only those entities acceptable to metaphysical naturalism etc will be acknowledged in science as we dominate it. Cf Rational Wiki and US NSTA and NAS etc for cases in point across a broad spectrum.
Yes, it is possible to formally deny this link between seemingly reasonable methodological constraints and linked metaphysical commitments and still be influenced by or even locked into the relevant ideological agenda; the implication is all that is needed (or even just the tendency), and/or the going along with the flow.
A long time ago, that was a routine problem with those influenced and controlled by marxism. Sometimes to the point of being puppets and agitprop false front operations that seemed to be grassroots but were in fact what in more recent times is termed astroturf.
A very good sign of such is something like I am one of you guys BUT . . . , and here comes the agitprop. Slightly less common is, I don’t agree with those extremists BUT . . .
Judging by the obvious success of cultural marxist disinformation pushes and the taqiyya of the IslamIST propaganda front men, such can work very well indeed, at the level of rhetorical manipulation.
I put it to you, that much the same obtains today for methodological vs metaphysical naturalism.
And in that wider context, when you say something like:
— you are giving off some pretty strong signs of underlying ideological influences.
Now, the onward context is that I had highlighted the challenge essay on the ToL, in the context of the common Darwinist claim it’s a fact:
(I intended to come back on technicalities but local events plus news on a biopsy elsewhere are intervening. I will just note here that he search for a golden search is in a power set to the direct config space so that we face thereafter exponentially harder searches for searches in higher order spaces. So, no the oh you mean flat random spaces is irrelevant. And hoping for a convenient forcing law of bias in nature that in effect solves the problem of OOl in absence of actual empirical observation of same, is questionable. Where the genome and the vast diversity of proteins points to the fact that there is no good reason to infer forced patterns or conveniently easy search spaces or strategies. At higher organisational level, it is even more evident that the organisation of he cell is highly contingent. The needle in haystack search challenge at OOL and thereafter for origin of body plans, remains. The fact is, the only actually empirically grounded source of FSCO/I is design, and that is exactly the issue we are looking at for the world of life from LUCA to us.)
And yes, notice that I spoke explicitly to what Darwinists all too commonly say, that the macroevolutionary picture of origins is fact not theory, even comparing to the roundness of the earth or the like. In the context that if they had the goods, the essay would be everywhere. Your hot retort, but I have not said that is at best tangential, especially when it leads straight to what I excerpted.
Now, too, no-one including informed YECs denies micro-evolution and linked empirically supported factors, so that suggestion on what the only viable ID would be is a strawman by suggestion.
The key clue I responded to, is the distinctions you fail to make, and the conflation of what should not be conflated.
Let me further clip what I responded to:
I here highlight two key points, first to show that you have joined the party of We are the Scientists [ which is used by evolutionary materialist ideologues and their fellow travellers, by way of disqualifying and dismissing those who differ] and an explicit affirmation of methodological naturalism while trying to distance oneself from the implied philosophical naturalism.
Just as a reminder, I again cite Rational Wiki (noting that here is plenty of back-up for the expressed sentiment):
Of course, this ideological imposition on science that subverts it from freely seeking the empirically, observationally anchored truth about our world pivots on the deception of side-stepping the obvious fact since Plato in The Laws Bk X, that there is a second, readily empirically testable and observable alternative to “natural vs [the suspect] supernatural.” Namely, blind chance and/or mechanical necessity [= the natural] vs the ART-ificial, the latter acting by evident intelligently directed configuration. [Cf Plantinga’s reply here and here.]
And as for the god of the gaps canard, the issue is, inference to best explanation across competing live option candidates. If chance and necessity is a candidate, so is intelligence acting by art through design. And if the latter is twisted into a caricature god of the gaps strawman, then locked out, huge questions are being oh so conveniently begged.
See what I mean when I talk about dressing up evolutionary materialist scientism (and its fellow travellers) in the holy lab coat?
And, going back to the original point, the missing essay speaks volumes. So should the primary focus of the macro evo is a “fact” claim.
So, on balance I suggest that in the first instance I pointed to a common claim, I did not personalise to you. You took it up and then showed a pattern of advocating methodological naturalism, which I then pointed out is tantamount to the implicit influence of metaphysical naturalism. This, I think you need to address, along with the underlying point on why that essay is so missing.
Gotta get going now.
Sorry, I have to cut off.
More later.
KF
PS: Johnson, replying to Lewontin:
PPS: We tend to forget what Lewontin so clearly put on the table:
Barry Arrington: Can a Lowly Lawyer Make a Useful Contribution? Maybe.
Sure. If a patent clerk can, then maybe a lawyer can to.
Barry Arrington: Johnson is saying that attorneys are trained to detect baloney.
Generally, attorneys are better known for making baloney.
Box: Gradual evolution predicts a smooth blending of traits and therefore does not predict a nested hierarchy.
Trees grow gradually, but the leaves still form a nested hierarchy when grouped by branch and stem.
Zach,
True, and that is exactly why we are trained to detect it.
Barry Arrington: Consider, to take one example of many, cladistics. It does not take a genius to know that cladistic techniques do not establish common descent; rather they assume it.
Analysis of traits, including molecular data, shows that the tree structure is an objective pattern — regardless of
baloney, er, rhetoric.Gordon,
I don’t mean to pile on, but I wanted to take issue with just one thing. You said we observe mutation. We certainly do. I understand that the vast majority of mutations are harmful and that even the mutations that confer an advantage also cause harm. See here at 53:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_XN8s-zXx4
Zach.,
Don’t the genome and the phenome give us conflicting trees though?
“I understand that the vast majority of mutations are harmful”
Generally, the vast majority of mutations are neutral. Behe’s trying to trick you a bit here. Notice his slide says “Of those that affect the organism,” in an attempt to hide this fact. Neutral mutations don’t affect the organism.
The lack of references should tell you something.
Try this one: “Adaptive mutations in bacteria: High rate and small effects. Science 317: 813-815.”
“Don’t the genome and the phenome give us conflicting trees though?”
Could you point us to a phenome-based tree of life? Does the data to construct such a thing even exist?
Collins: Don’t the genome and the phenome give us conflicting trees though?
Until the age of genetics, phenetics based on morphology was the primary method of tree-building. It’s still used in palaeontology and in species-level classification.
Trees constructed on genomes and those constructed on phenomes give largely the same pattern. Humans group with great apes, great apes group with primates, primates group with placentals, placentals group with amniotes, regardless of whether you look at phenomes or genomes. However, highly derived organisms can be difficult to classify on morphology alone. While everyone agreed that cetaceans are mammals, there was disagreement as to which branch of mammals they grouped with. Genomic data pointed to Artiodactyla, and eventually this was confirmed from the morphology of fossils. In other words, molecules predicted what would be found in geological strata.
The Philosophy of evolution accommodates whatever is found.
Darwin, a great mind? That’s a laugh. Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Rene Descartes, Max Planck were great minds. Darwin was a mental midget in comparison, a moron.
Larry Moran thinks Darwin had such a great mind that he takes it as an insult to be called a Darwinist.
hahaha
Here is the letter from Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin:
In fact, Darwin’s book contains far more (bad) theology than it contains anything of what may be considered proper science.
Moreover, Darwin introduced no math whatsoever in his theory of origin of species. In fact, Darwin said he found math to be ‘repugnant’:
Born, did you ever hear the radio debate that Bob Enyart had with Eugenie Scott?
I think you will like it.
@19 Born
It is the same when William lane Craig debated Ayala about Darwinism and Ayala wanted to talk theological arguments against God while Craig wanted to talk about what the Darwinian processes were or were not capable of.
Born, did you ever hear the radio debate that Bob Enyart had with Eugenie Scott?
not yet, thanks for pointing it out.
Bob Enyart has commented on UD once or twice that I know of.
It was about the junk dna idea, She was pretty firm about it, i think it was from 2001. She is a darwinist is she not?
I will try and dig it up for ya.
Apparently it was from 1998, they play a clip of it.
http://kgov.com/journal-nature.....enie-scott
Joe: “The Philosophy of evolution accommodates whatever is found.”
Do you have an argument or just an unsupported ascertain?
If you mean that the theory of evolution adapts itself to better fit the evidence, you are absolute correct. As does every good scientific theory.
Or are you going to claim that there is no theory of evution and demand that we link to it?
For someone who has been elevated to divine status by atheists and materialists, Darwin seemed to have had a surprisingly intimate knowledge and understanding of God’s mind and intentions.
But the truth is simpler than all that. Darwin was a mental midget and his followers and admirers are even bigger morons.
Brian
Have you ever wondered how evolutioniory theory can explain a round worm, a flat worm, a long worm, a short worm, a fat worm, a skinny worm, a green worm, a brown worm.
Don’t you wonder?
A theory that explains everything explains nothing. Evolution did it is no different than God did it….
Funny. I have studied Newtonian physics and I have never seen Newtonian gravity theory adapt to fit any evidence. It is still the same old Newtonian gravity theory. In fact, the current failure to find gravitational waves means that Newton was correct in supposing that the effect of gravity is instantaneous and nonlocal instead of traveling at the speed of light as Einstein claimed. Newton is reaching from the grave and falsifying a wildly acclaimed modern theory that came centuries after his death. Now, that’s a scientific theory. Darwinian evolution is chicken shit in comparison.
Good scientific theories do not adapt. They are either wholly or partially replaced by new theories if found to be deficient.
“Funny. I have studied Newtonian physics and I have never seen Newtonian gravity theory adapt to fit any evidence.”
No, it was superceded by the theory of relativity. But Newton’s equations are such a good approximation that they are of still practical value.
Collin says,
That’s a talk by Michael Behe in the lecture room two floors below my office. I was there—you can see him wave to me at 1:25:33 when he says, “… with some caveats due to stochastic effects …”
At 52:10 he says “This is what observations demonstrate about random mutations … we’ve known for a long time that of those mutations that affect an organism, about 99% are detrimental.”
This may or may not be true depending on what he means by “affect an organism.”
But here’s the problem. Many of Behe’s arguments about mutation and mutation rates depend on the idea that a mutation must be EITHER beneficial or deleterious. He argues, for example, that more than two mutations were required to get chloroquine resistance in malaria parasites. Since one of the mutations by itself was NOT beneficial (hence, it must have been deleterious) this means that the two (or more) mutations had to occur simultaneously in order for the parasite to develop resistance to chloroquine.
Behe argues (in “The Edge of Evolution”) that this is possible in Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria parasite, because of its huge population size. It won’t be possible in most other species so this is the basis of his argument that there’s an “edge” to evolution.
In other words, there are some things that random mutation just can’t achieve because a pathway requiring multiple mutations doesn’t include stepwise increases in fitness with each mutation. When you see things that required multiple mutations, this is evidence for guided mutation.
Recent results show clearly that all of the pathways leading to chloroquine resistance involve multiple mutations but that all of them involve sequential mutation events where one of the mutations is neutral. In combination with a second mutation, the combined effect is chloroquine resistance. The intermediate population carrying the first mutation was not a “little bit resistant” and the mutation was not detrimental. It was neutral.
Michael Behe’s final thoughts on the edge of evolution
Behe is misleading you when he says that most mutations are detrimental.
Here’s what a leading expert in molecular evolution says in his textbook.
If you don’t understand modern evolutionary theory, which includes Neutral Theory and random genetic drift, you won’t understand why Behe is wrong about the edge of evolution, even if you are a lawyer.
You can’t detect baloney if you don’t understand the subject. Anyone who thinks they can make a contribution to the debate about evolution without investing a lot of time and effort into studying the subject, is fooling himself.
He needs to call some expert witnesses to help him out.
Mapou says,
Have you read “Origin of Species” cover-to-cover?
A simple “yes” or “no” will suffice.
Barry Arrington says,
Barry, one of your readers has linked to the following article …
“Nature” Confirms Creationist Rejection of Junk DNA
Can you use your training to expose the underlying assumptions and the lack of logic in that article?
Or you you think it’s an accurate portrayal of the facts?
Zachriel:
“Box: Gradual evolution predicts a smooth blending of traits and therefore does not predict a nested hierarchy.
Trees grow gradually, but the leaves still form a nested hierarchy when grouped by branch and stem.”
Despite any point you think you are effectively making, we can observe the growth and the parts of an actual tree, from the tips of the leaves to the limbs to the branches to the tree trunk down to the roots. No need to make any assumptions there.
Supplemental notes:
Moreover, the development of neutral theory (and junk DNA) are actually the result of a theoretical failure of Darwinian theory within mathematics and is not the result of any compelling empirical observation:
@Mapou@28
You are gonna get people that are deluded to thinking there is a universal “theory of evolution” that all evolutionists agree with.
You have neo darwinist and those that reject it,etc
Such people are welcome to that delusion, Just like they are welcome to believe life originated spontaneously in nature in the past and believe chemistry in the present was different in their past.
hahahaha
Just like you are gonna get Moran who hates being called a Darwinist and does not use the term Darwinism or Neo Darwinism for his faith, making out that old Charlie is his hero.
While he really is a hero to Coyne who has no problem with using the term Darwinism to describe what he believes.
Coyne calls punctuated equilibrium as bunk and sticks to his Darwinian faith but Moran hasn’t and seems to admire Gould.
Some seriously odd people they are.
hahaha
Zachriel:
“Trees constructed on genomes and those constructed on phenomes give largely the same pattern.”
What about all of the inconsistencies between the genotype and phenotype. I am sure Born Again can supply a vast array of scientific literature discussing those.
Also,
Pardon my side comment but:
Too bad no one can “scientifically” demonstrate how the usually invoked evolutionary “mechanisms” are capable of originating and developing a “genome” or “phenome”. Let alone what is required to do such things.
Kind of reminds me of a point I took Barry Arrington to make regarding “evolutionary” arguments: (Barry, please correct this assumption if it is incorrect)
(being) “chock-full of faulty logic (especially circular reasoning), abuse of language (especially equivocations), assumptions masquerading as facts, unexamined premises, etc. etc.”
Not to worry though. You can always point to certain things in living systems and claim the good old standby argument that “God wouldn’t have done it that way, therefore unguided evolution did it” if you are inclined to invoke a common typical atheist religious argument into the mix.
This is a lie, of course. Nothing superseded Newtonian physics. Newton’s gravity equation is still part of general relativity. In fact, Newton (and even Galileo before him) already understood perfectly that the attraction of gravity on a body worked equally on all objects regardless of mass. This is the reason that gravity attracts even massless light particles. We don’t need Einstein to teach us this.
The only thing that Einstein did was to take the results of the Mickelson-Morley experiments and extended Newtonian theory to include the speed of light and clock slowing. Newtonian gravity is what NASA uses to send probes to the moon and the rest of the solar system. They simply factor the speed of light in their measurements and Newtonian theory works perfectly.
Darwinian evolution, by contrast, is continually being falsified by the evidence and simple logic. The combinatorial explosion alone kills it dead. It’s a religion of cretins and morons. More like a cult.
Joe: “Such people are welcome to that delusion, Just like they are welcome to believe life originated spontaneously in nature in the past and believe chemistry in the present was different in their past.”
Again, Joe lies about what other people say in order to make his point. Please point to the comment where anyone claimed that chemistry was different in the past than it is now.
I must say, you have earned the name Joe. Or would you prefer to be called Virgil?
From 36
“What about all of the inconsistencies between the genotype and phenotype. I am sure Born Again can supply a vast array of scientific literature discussing those.”
Correction to the above statement:
What about all of the unexpected results (from an evolutionary perspective) in the data concerning the genotype and phenotype when utlizing comparisons or whatever to support assertions regarding evolution? BA could probably easily site relevant information on the topic. Or can be found online. Or otherwise in the scientific literature.
bpragmatic, Casey Luskin did a piece on that:
One of the most saddest examples of someone who wants to be considered an authority in a scientific field is someone, like professor Dr. Larry Moran, who in order to criticize an experimental scientist, like Dr. Behe, and his real experimental work, has to use other scientists’ experiments to do so.
The funniest part of it all is that Larry often thinks that the very few experimental scientists he knows support his personal views.
The Fukuyama example has recently changed from the world’s best expert in the field J. Coyne. When Larry learned that Coyne doesn’t support his personal views, he quickly switched to Fukuyama in the desperation for support.
Larry, if your university lacks money for experimental work, I might be able to support to test some of your evolutionary delusions. What do you think? You could become a hero IF you emerge victorious.
“This is a lie, of course. Nothing superseded Newtonian physics.”
The physicists might disagree with you. Newton’s work was definitely revolutionary. And Einsteins work took Newton’s work and expanded on them to explain aspects that Newton’s work can’t explain. Does that sound familiar? Like Darwin proposing a theory that is expanded on by The modern synthesis. Which is further expanded on by neutral theory, HGT, etc.
We have not discarded Newton; after all, as you accurately state, that is all we need to put a man on the moon, and we have not discarded Darwin. But we know that neither of them told the complete picture.
J-Mac–Out of curiosity, what do you find Behe’s most interesting evolutionary biology experiment published in the scientific literature to be?
If I may butt in REC. I know of no experiment that Behe has personally done.
But in regards to peer review, Dr. Behe surveyed laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades, and that review was published in peer review:
As to another empirical falsification of Darwinian theory, I find another empirical falsification of Darwinism by the now empirically established fact that ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, quantum entanglement/information is now found in molecular biology on a massive scale.
Darwinism holds information (as well as consciousness) to be emergent from a reductive material basis. Quantum non-locality falsified that assumption.
That ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints (Bell, Aspect, Leggett, Zeilinger, etc..), should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule, is a direct empirical falsification of Darwinian claims, for how can the ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy) cause when the quantum entanglement effect falsified material particles as its own causation in the first place? Appealing to the probability of various ‘random’ configurations of material particles, as Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the material particles themselves to supply!
In other words, to give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space! i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain an effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘special’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place!
And although Naturalists have proposed various, far fetched, naturalistic scenarios to try to get around the Theistic implications of quantum non-locality, none of the ‘far fetched’ naturalistic solutions, in themselves, are compatible with the reductive materialism that undergirds neo-Darwinian thought.
Verse:
REC.
Doesn’t matter, even a little bit.
@ 45
“REC.
Doesn’t matter, even a little bit.”
What doesn’t? Truth? Facts? Rational thought?
“Rational thought?” and exactly how is “Rational thought” to be grounded in a Darwinian worldview?
Mapou @ your #17, yes, Darwin was strictly a dilettante. I believe there have been one or two scientific dilettantes of genius – I believe, aristocrats, with the time, money and a certain autonomy – but Darwin was surely a journeyman ‘stamp-collector’ of Kelvin’s famous, dismissive quip, concerning non-physicists.
In fact, he actually stated, and it is sometimes quoted, that if something* turned out to be true, then it would very gravel undermine his conjectures. Conjectures they were, and indeed, did turnout to be false.
But even if the significance of Darwin’s avowal were to be insisted upon with great vehemence, not enough scientists in that field have died yet, for it to be accepted. Well, the atheist tenure-baggers will never voluntarily accept it – never mind that it was Darwin, himself, who saw how hopelessly vulnerable his conjectures were.
*I’m sorry. I can’t remember what it was, but you boffins will know it well enough.
Moran:
Man, I’m not your dog. I’m a free man and a free thinker. I will not let either you or a deranged bozo like Darwin do my thinking for me.
“Man, I’m not your dog. I’m a free man and a free thinker. I will not let either you or a deranged bozo like Darwin do my thinking for me.”
A strange response to a simple question. All Larry asked is if you had read Origin of Species. Not if you agreed with it.
douglas,
I consider all Darwinists and materialists to be weavers of lies and deception. And they are not really all that smart about it. I simply refuse to play Moran’s stupid deceptive game. That’s all.
You got a problem with that?
Rec,
You got me. I am actually totally against rational thought. I certainly wasn’t referring to your implication that Behe has to do experimental biology in order to be correct in his criticisms of evolutionary theory. Nope, that couldn’t be it. I must have been saying that I don’t believe in rationality. If you are curious here are some of his journal articles and other publications according to wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe#Journal_articles I recommend you learn how to use google to find this kind of information.
“You got a problem with that?”
If it makes you happy, knock your socks off. For me, life is too short to be so hateful.
I’m not hateful. I’m just pissed. Understanding the origin of life and the universe is, IMO, the most important knowledge we can attain. You people just don’t realize how much harm you bring to humanity. You must be mocked and discredited at every opportunity.
Collin @52
Sorry, couldn’t tell if it was my posts above (e.g. @13) that you fled from or what it was you were replying to.
But for what it is worth, it was your compadre J-Mac was the one who attacked Larry Moran and lionized Behe above based on their experience in experimental evolutionary biology. So take it up with him…..
Zachriel:
“Trees constructed on genomes and those constructed on phenomes give largely the same pattern.”
So Zachriel, based on your comment above, to you, at least for discussion do you think there would be any value in assessing,commenting on and refuting at least some of bornagain’s references in his post at comment 40 that contradict what your conclusion probably is based on your statement? Genome and phenome studies significantly support your evolutionary assertions?
If not, why not?
I’ve read:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
I enjoyed Chapter 1, 6 and 9.
Darwin’s observation about artificial selection is spot on, the moment he tries to apply this to unguided processes the whole book falls apart. What I am glad about is that he understood the problems with his own theory.
Descent of Man
This is the most racist book ever written. As the world tries to deal with racism we continually teach this nonsense as true. How on earth can you tell one race they are superior another they are inferior and expect everyone to get along? This book is trash.
An astonishingly ridiculous and ignorant statement.
You should try checking out just about any of the other books from the era.
Some of the leading books of the subject of human races prior to Darwin: Account of the Regular Gradation in Man by Charles White, The Races of Men by Robert Knox, Types of Mankind and Indigenous Races of the Earth by Nott and Gliddon, Inequality of the Races by Gobineau, and Cannibals All! by George Fitzhugh
Many of the anti-Darwinian late 19th century books were equally ugly – such as Adamites and Preadamites by Alexander Winchell or The Negro a Beast by Charles Carroll.
But I wouldn’t recommend reading any of those if you don’t have a strong stomach.
In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a less racist book during Darwin’s time.
Anyone who reads Descent might be puzzled at how much time he spends actually arguing at how similar the races of humanity are in mind and body. This is because the leading theory of the time was polygenism, and so a major challenge was convincing others of his time that the races are similar enough to be related!
I also recommend Darwin’s Sacred Cause, which argues that combating slavery and the racism of his time was a major motivation for releasing his theory.
Those Negroes are like Gorillas
“The inability to move the ears in man and several apes is, however, partly compensated by the freedom with which they can move the head in a horizontal plane, so as to catch sounds from all directions. It has been asserted that the ear of man alone possesses a lobule; but “a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla”;*(4) and, as I hear from Prof. Preyer, it is not rarely absent in the negro.”
“The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies- between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae- between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked,* will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
The prevailing views by the authors you list all stems from the Darwin family views in the Victorian era.
It’s called scientific racism and its deplorable!
bpragmatic: Despite any point you think you are effectively making, we can observe the growth and the parts of an actual tree, from the tips of the leaves to the limbs to the branches to the tree trunk down to the roots. No need to make any assumptions there.
Huh? The very reason to use the tree as an example is because we can watch it grow over time.
bpragmatic: What about all of the inconsistencies between the genotype and phenotype.
The overall pattern is congruent.
Axel: Darwin was strictly a dilettante.
That’s hardly the case. Darwin published extensively, including original observations and experimentation.
http://darwins-god.blogspot.co.....2205882625
bpragmatic: do you think there would be any value in assessing,commenting on and refuting at least some of bornagain’s references in his post at comment 40 that contradict what your conclusion probably is based on your statement?
Bornagain is not willing or able to discuss any of his links. When queried, he merely spews more links. Perhaps you could choose one for discussion.
Zachriel spewing more of his lies:
“Huh? The very reason to use the tree as an example is because we can watch it grow over time.”
&
“The overall pattern is congruent.”
and yet there is no ‘tree’ as Zach falsely claims:
as to:
“Bornagain is not willing or able to discuss any of his links. When queried, he merely spews more links. Perhaps you could choose one for discussion.”
Translation,
There you go Zach, all better. You can thank me later for translating your words into what they actually mean.
bpragmatic: do you think there would be any value in assessing,commenting on and refuting at least some of bornagain’s references in his post at comment 40 that contradict what your conclusion probably is based on your statement?
Zachriel: Bornagain is not willing or able to discuss any of his links. When queried, he merely spews more links.
Case in point @61. Here’s what bornagain quotes:
Reading further, it’s clear there is a signal of several trees converging, but the points of convergence may not form a simple monophyletic relationship.
The author is clearly arguing for evolutionary descent. He suggests that there are two modes of descent, the usual tree, and a big bang period which involves rapid and tangled cladogenetic events. Most of the tangle in metazoa is probably due to incomplete lineage sorting on a grand scale. The tangle on the origin of domains is probably due to horizontal mechanisms, but there is still a lot unknown.
Nonetheless, the overall branching pattern remains.
Thought-provoking reading: https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/76-327A/readings/Campbell.pdf Note especially the implicit significance of speaking to Ch 1 of Paley but not Ch 2 on the thought exercise of a self replicating, time keeping watch, in light of the significance of OOL.
Zachriel, what you just dishonestly did is called ‘cherry picking’.
The fact of the matter is that the main point that Koonin admits to in the paper is exactly the point that refutes your claim that a tree is largely congruent from the data. Namely,
That is, to put it mildly, and no matter how much you try to lie about it, NOT a minor problem for the Darwinian narrative!
Moreover, it further exposes your inherent, and blatant, dishonesty towards the evidence when you brush aside glaring deficiencies in your preferred atheistic worldview to focus on whatever remains after such a stunning confession by Koonin.
Moreover, even on the point that Koonin tries to say is non-problematic to the Darwinian narrative, we still have ample reason to believe that the data, (even in this limited instance after ‘major groups’ are conceded by Koonin as being ‘non-Darwinian), to believe that the data is being ‘cherry picked’ by Darwinists to accord to the Darwinian narrative:
In fact, many times evolutionists will scan molecular sequences using computer algorithms to find a hypothetical Tree Of Life (TOL), but this is very problematic because of the inherent bias of researchers to look solely for evidence that accords to a preconceived evolutionary conclusion whereas ignoring all sequences that disagree with their inherent bias:,,,
Moreover, even if molecular sequences did accord to the Darwinian narrative, it still is of absolutely no use for Darwinists since you can mutate DNA ‘until the cows come home’ and you are not going to effect body plan morphogenesis
Case in point @61. Instead of responding to our comments, bornagain hurls insults, waves his hands, and spews more links.
That doesn’t mean there is no tree signal. It means that there are multiple trees converging, but that the point of convergence is not simple monophyly.
However, let’s be clear. Do you support Koonin’s hypothesis? That life evolved from common ancestors through two modes of cladogenesis?
Zacheriel, I quoted Koonin to expose you as a liar about the tree being congruent’.
That was your claim. Your claim was shown to be false. You do not concede the point. Ergo, you are a liar!
i.e. Calling you a liar is not an insult but is, in fact, merely a statement of fact. I can’t help it that you do not like that fact.
Perhaps, if you do not like it, you should ‘evolve’ into being honest towards the evidence instead of being a liar?
Moreover, I do not accept his, nor any other Darwinist’s dishonest attempt to ‘explain away’ the incongruences in molecular data and hold that the incongruences, which are rampant, to be yet another falsification of Darwinism than merely an anomaly as Koonin treats them. (By the way, do you like Koonin’s many worlds model which sought to ‘explain away’ the OOL?) 🙂
You simply have no real time empirical evidence to explain, by unguided material processes, such dramatic jumps in the genetic Data (jumps which are pervasive in the data)
bornagain: Moreover, I do not accept his, nor any other Darwinist’s dishonest attempt to ‘explain away’
So if Koonin is dishonest, why are you citing him as authoritative?
bornagain: I quoted Koonin to expose you as a liar about the tree being congruent’.
The phenetic and genomic trees are largely congruent across most taxa — as Koonin states.
Zachriel, repeating a lie does not suddenly make it true:
bornagain,
Try to deal with one citation at a time. So if Koonin is dishonest, why are you citing him as authoritative?
Andre,
?
The prevailing view of the western world that humanity is comprised of unrelated species separately created by God, with some races created to be slaves, came from “Darwin family views”?
Zachriel, I hold no man in science to be ‘authoritative’ but hold the empirical evidence itself to have the final word.
i.e. Koonin’s 2007 observation of the incongruent sequence data (like the latter 2009 and 2012 papers I cited) is, I hold, accurate to the empirical evidence. His attempt to explain it away is what is clearly lacking in empirical support and is thus what lacks ‘authority’.
bornagain: Koonin’s 2007 observation of the incongruent sequence data
You didn’t point to the data, but to Koonin’s interpretation of the data. He didn’t provide any novel empirical observations in the paper, and you already said he was dishonest.
Zach, You are missing the point of what Born is saying.
An evolutionist could honestly admit something about the data but then still try and dishonestly spin away the data afterwards.
The second point does not negate the first point.
Why are you having problems understanding that?
Jack Jones: An evolutionist could honestly admit something about the data but then still try and dishonestly spin away the data afterwards.
Koonin stated that the tree structure holds for most taxa. That’s not spin, nor is it a negligible finding.
Zach “Koonin stated that the tree structure holds for most taxa. That’s not spin, nor is it a negligible finding.”
Craig Venter said there is no tree but a bush and yet he is still an Evolutionist.
Will Provine came out against the idea of there being a tree pattern.
Evolutionists can agree or disagree whether there is a tree pattern and it does not hurt the philosophy of evolution one jot, they will accommodate any pattern.
The philosophy of Evolution will accommodate any pattern, a tree, a web or a bush etc, It makes no difference to an evolutionist.
That is why it is pointless of evolutionists trying to claim that any pattern supports their position, They will accommodate any pattern within the Philosophy of evolution.
Zach tries to spin and lie again and again:
Zach’s original fraudulent claim that he never acknowledged was wrong:
Koonin:
Koonin on where the divisions are
Zach’s original fraudulent claim, even by the cherry picked quote he used, is shown to be false.
I rest my case, Zach LIED when he said the ‘The overall pattern is congruent’.
Moreover, he refuses to admit that he was wrong on his claim and is thus now shown, by that refusal, to be pathologically dishonest in regards to the evidence in hand. i.e. “denialism”
Jack Jones: Craig Venter said there is no tree but a bush and yet he is still an Evolutionist.
Darwin knew the tree wasn’t perfect, so pointing out that the tree isn’t perfect doesn’t undermine evolutionary theory. Venter accepts the standard branching up to the origin of domains. Before then, horizontal mechanisms may have held sway.
bornagain: Koonin on where the divisions are…
You’ve already said Koonin is dishonest, so not sure why you keep referring to his opinion.
Zach in his reply said “Darwin knew the tree wasn’t perfect”
You sound like a politician spinning zach.
Venter didn’t say that the tree wasn’t perfect when talking about Darwin’s tree of life.
He said there is no tree not that it is imperfect, if it was just an imperfect tree then he wouldn’t need to throw the whole idea out and say there is a bush pattern.
A bush does not show the linear pattern but evolutionists can come up with all kinds of reasons, hgt, convergent evolution etc to excuse the pattern away.
The philosophy will allow any pattern.
Dawkins was flabbergasted at Venter’s claim of no tree pattern.
Provine said that it was a false prediction of the modern synthesis of there being a tree.
It was one of the reasons that he rejected the modern synthesis.
“You’ve already said Koonin is dishonest, so not sure why you keep referring to his opinion.”
Zach, the person that is showing his dishonesty here with your spinning like a politician is yourself.
I explained to you Born’s words in context and you are doubling down and still misrepresenting him.
Zachriel, I made clear my distinction where I disagreed with Koonin, i.e. when he went beyond the evidence to try to ‘explain away’ the incongruent data, I considered that intellectually ‘dishonest’.
That level of ‘dishonesty’ is somewhat understandable since he was trying to, however inadequately, give a naturalistic reason for the incongruent sequence data.
But that level of minor ‘intellectual dishonesty’ is nothing compared to the purposeful deception that you were originally trying to convey, i.e. ‘The overall pattern is congruent’.
That claim you made is an outright LIE to the evidence in hand! And you are a liar for repeatedly making that claim as I have seen you do in the past. There is nothing understandable or minor about the lie you are telling and refuse to admit you are wrong on. At least Koonin, in his honesty, willingly admitted the data is incongruent. I have seen, and expect, no such honesty coming from you.
Of related note, Koonin, though not an ID proponent, readily admits that neo-Darwinism is false.
In fact, he is one of the founding members of Shapiro’s “The Third Way”
Jack Jones: Venter didn’t say that the tree wasn’t perfect when talking about Darwin’s tree of life.
Venter called it a bush. It’s branched trees that become tangled near the trunk. Koonin hypothesizes that this is because there are two types of cladogenesis.
Jack Jones: He said there is no tree not that it is imperfect
The tree structure for eukaryotes doesn’t go away because of a stray or out of context quote.
Jack Jones: Dawkins was flabbergasted at Venter’s claim of no tree pattern.
Because it was an overstatement. There are multiple branching trees which appear to converge. The question is how they connect, and whether they show the same branching pattern or not. However, the individual branches are still trees.
Jack Jones: I explained to you Born’s words in context
Bornagain wants to refer to Koonin’s authority when he agrees with bornagain, and wants to reject Koonin’s authority as dishonest when he disagrees with bornagain.
bornagain: That claim is an outright LIE to the evidence in hand!
You haven’t referred to the evidence, but a hypothesis proposed by Koonin. Please note that Koonin makes clear where he thinks the standard branching pattern breaks down. So dinosaurs still form a branching pattern, as do hominids.
Zachriel, I made perfectly clear my distinction with Koonin. That you would try spin that clear distinction is yet another evidence of your inherent dishonesty.
Then you claim ‘You haven’t referred to the evidence,’ which is yet another outright lie. I, in fact, referred to several papers after Koonin’s paper that go further than Koonin did in saying the tree does not exist.
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-588281
Then you say Koonin infers ‘dinosaurs still form a branching pattern, as do hominids.’
So what?
I was not even contesting that point at this time! I was contesting your original fraudulent claim:
‘The overall pattern is congruent’
That claim you originally made is false! And you are a liar for making it and for not apologizing for making it.
“Venter called it a bush. It’s branched trees that become tangled near the trunk. Koonin hypothesizes that this is because there are two types of cladogenesis.”
Venter said there is no tree and not a bush of life, he said it was a false idea. He didn’t say some parts are tree like and others are not, he rejected a tree outright.
“The tree structure for eukaryotes doesn’t go away because of a stray or out of context quote.”
And when evolutionists fail in argumentation they lie and claim something is out of context. People can see the video for themselves of Venter saying there is no tree, not that some parts are not tree like, he rejected that there is a tree and said you could say there is a bush of life.
“Because it was an overstatement. There are multiple branching trees which appear to converge. The question is how they connect, and whether they show the same branching pattern or not. However, the individual branches are still trees.”
Provine said there is no tree pattern, he said the idea of all life going back to one orgin producing a tree pattern is a failed prediction of the modern synthesis.
“Bornagain wants to refer to Koonin’s authority when he agrees with bornagain, and wants to reject Koonin’s authority as dishonest when he disagrees with bornagain.”
So, You can accept part of what somebody says without having to accept all of it, to say that Born has to accept the whole and cannot accept a part of what is said, is the fallacy of composition, because Koonin may have been partially honest does not mean that he was not spinning later on.
If you accept a part then you do not have to accept the whole.
Because Born accepts that Koonin admitted one thing truthfully does not mean that he has to accept the spin on that truth afterwards.
Koonin can admit what the data shows and then try and spin away the problem, there is no contradiction in pointing that out.
Jack Jones: Venter said there is no tree and not a bush of life, he said it was a false idea.
And in the same talk, he discusses standard branching patterns. Do you have more from Venter than an off-hand comment?
Jack Jones: So, You can accept part of what somebody says without having to accept all of it, to say that Born has to accept the whole and cannot accept a part of what is said, is the fallacy of composition
Bornagain cited Koonin as authoritative while saying he was dishonest. The latter undermines the former.
Zachriel, I rest my case. I’m satisfied that it is perfectly clear to unbiased readers exactly what I meant with Koonin. And that it also perfectly clear you are doing your dishonest best to spin it.
It is interesting to note why Dawkins almost had a cow when Venter denied common descent in front of him:
The bottom line is that if any code is ‘randomly changed’ in part, it throws a huge monkey wrench into the code and will be ‘instantly catastrophic’, to use Richard Dawkins most appropriate term, to the species thus rendering gradual change to the code impossible.
In other words, the entire code must be implemented ‘top down’!
Please note, this is not randomly changing sequences within the code that we are talking about, this is talking about making changes to a code itself.
The reason I bring this ‘non-evolvability’ of codes up is because of alternative splicing codes.
Namely, alternative splicing codes are now found to be ‘species-specific’.
The ‘species-specific’ alternative splicing code:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UMbNM8V2b7mRzPJt05mlev3UO4SG1bMTV5wkNunezjY/edit
Excerpted references:
“And in the same talk, he discusses standard branching patterns. Do you have more from Venter than an off-hand comment? ”
it’s not an offhand comment, he dismissed that there is a tree.
“The tree of life is an artifact of some early scientific studies that aren’t really holding up…So there is not a tree of life.”
“Dawkins is Flabbergasted
Fast forward to 11:23, when moderator Roger Bingham turns the microphone over to Dawkins:
“I’m intrigued,” replies Dawkins, “at Craig saying that the tree of life is a fiction. I mean…the DNA code of all creatures that have ever been looked at is all but identical.”
WHOPPER. Venter just told the forum that Mycoplasma read their DNA using a different coding convention than other organisms (for “stop” and tryptophan). But Dawkins is undaunted:
“Surely that means,” he asks Venter, “that they’re all related? Doesn’t it?”
As nearly as we can tell from the video, Venter only smiles.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXrYhINutuI
Here is the whole video and I have seen it in the past, nothing was taken out of context.
http://thesciencenetwork.org/p.....life-panel
“Bornagain cited Koonin as authoritative while saying he was dishonest. The latter undermines the former.”
No it does not follow, To say that you have to accept all of something because you accept some part as true is the fallacy of composition.
“The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part).”
This was Will Provine on the tree.
“every assertion of the evolutionary synthesis below is false“:
10. Evolution is a process of sharing common ancestors back to the origin of life, or in other words, evolution produces a tree of life.
William Provine, Random Drift and the Evolutionary Synthesis, History of Science Society HSS Abstracts.
Provine said it was false and still, he remained an Evolutionist.
Tree of life or no Tree of life, The philosophy of evolution will accommodate it.
bornagain: I’m satisfied that it is perfectly clear to unbiased readers exactly what I meant with Koonin.
You were clearly relying on Koonin as authoritative. Let’s try this:
Just doesn’t have the same panache, does it? An appeal to authority is only valid if it represents a consensus in the field. Note that
Joe BlowKoonin makes clear that the dominant description is still the tree pattern, and that his is a tentative hypothesis.What you haven’t done is actually discuss the evidence, which would raise your argument beyond an appeal to authority.
Zach, baby put that thing on spin cycle you shameless liar.
http://ryanpolly.com/wp-conten.....estuck.jpg
Jack Jones: “The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part).”
Disregarding what a liar says is not a fallacy of composition. What the liar says may be true, or it may be false, but the utterance itself is not convincing.
Bornagain made an appeal to authority. Because Koonin said something, it must be true, and those that disagree with him must be wrong, unless, of course, they disagree with bornagain, in which case they are lying.
No Zach, it is just YOU, all by your lonesome, that is purposely lying about the sequence data.
Jon Lovitz Appears as the Pathological Liar on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkYNBwCEeH4
@88 Born “Zach, baby put that thing on spin cycle you shameless liar.”
You get more spin from Zach than a Laundromat.
“Disregarding what a liar says is not a fallacy of composition.”
it’s a fallacy of composition to say what is true of a part is true of the whole.
Because you accept Koonin’s spin does not mean that Born has to.
You can accept part of what somebody says without having to accept the spin for that they have admitted.
You claim otherwise but it is a non sequitur.
Your conclusion does not follow.
Jack Jones: it’s a fallacy of composition to say what is true of a part is true of the whole.
But that’s not the argument. If Joe Blow is a liar, some of what he says may be false. Some of what he says may be true. But what you can say is that you can’t rely upon what Joe Blow says.
Jack Jones: You can accept part of what somebody says without having to accept the spin for that they have admitted.
Bornagain said Koonin was being dishonest with the science, not merely wrong.
Do you think Koonin would reject the branching descent of theropods, for instance?
And there you have it Jack, no matter how many time Zach is corrected on a point he thinks if he can just repeat the same lie over and over again that he has somehow, in his twisted reasoning, won the argument.
Somebody on UD referred to this dishonest debating tactic as the ‘I can still type so I must still have an argument’ tactic. 🙂
In general an admission against interest, as Koonin did, is trustworthy. More so than the follow-up spin.
LM:
But wasn’t part of his argument about two mutations being required based on the actual rate of the development of chloroquine resistance as demonstrated by the experimental data? You make it sound like it was only a prior commitment to mutations being either beneficial or deleterious that led him to his conclusions. But if the rate of chloroquine resistance actually observed lines up with what would be predicted if two simultaneous mutations were required, then what conclusion should he or anyone else draw from that?
Of related interest to the unhealthy ‘denialism’ that has infected Darwinian thought:
also of note:
Phinehas asks,
It’s complicated. Behe based his argument on mutation rates that were not correct and he failed to account for the probability of fixation and the probability of detection.
The observed frequency of chloroquine resistance in wild-type populations should be far lower that the simple frequency that the mutations occur because not all occurrences will result in development of chloroquine resistance. (For example, in a patient who isn’t being treated with chloroquine.)
Understanding Michael Behe
As it turns out, the actual probability of two mutations occurring simultaneously is about 1 in 10^20 in most species but likely an order of magnitude more probable in Plasmodium.
If evolution were limited by the requirement that two mutations had to occur together (and become fixed) then these are pretty good ballpark numbers. Behe’s calculations were incorrect but that’s not really important.
The important point is that chloroquine resistance arose by stepwise mutations and not by simultaneous mutations. More than two mutations were required.
Lots of potential beneficial changes involving several mutations are well within the edge of evolution once you realize that neutral alleles—and even deleterious alleles—can be fixed in a population by random genetic drift.
That’s where Behe’s argument fails. He didn’t take that into account.
Box: In general an admission against interest, as Koonin did, is trustworthy. More so than the follow-up spin.
Hey! Someone tried to actually respond to the point raised.
What is the interest that involved lying on the one hand, and telling the truth on the other?
Actually Behe is doing fine and well in regards to the empirical evidence and it is the Darwinian just so stories that are, as usual, in very poor health:
bornagain@90:
Zachriel didn’t claim that they were exactly congruent, he said they were mostly congruent (‘The overall pattern is congruent’). Pointing out discrepancies here and there does nothing to refute this.
Compare phylogenetic trees based on different genes, and you’ll often find some differences. Now try the same thing with cars, as I suggested above. Make a tree based on transmissions, and another based on body style. They’ll have almost nothing to do with each other! Now try one based on engine layout (V8, V6, flat 6, flat 4, boxer, etc) and it’ll have nothing to do with either of the other trees. Make one based on manufacturer and model… again, completely different.
Well, ok, there’ll be some correlations, like Porsche and Subaru tend to use boxer engines. But you’ll be finding little bits of correlation against a broad pattern of nothing-to-do-with-each-other. Whereas with organisms you’re finding little bits of discrepancy against a broad pattern of agreement.
Take the study you linked under the headline “Contradictory Trees: Evolution Goes 0 For 1,070” (via Dr. Hunter, original article here. The first thing to ask is, how different were they? If someone measures something 1000 times and gets 1000 different results, that sounds really bad; but if the results are 1.00002514, 1.00000729, 0.99999830 etc, that’s not really bad at all. They’re all different, but not very far different. Did you or Dr. Hunter bother to look at this at all? No, you got a headline that fit your opinion, and stopped there.
Now, I haven’t read it either, since it’s paywalled. But I read the abstract, and I can tell a fair bit about it from that. First: this was a study about how to best handle statistical noise in reconstructing phylogeny. They looked at phylogenetic trees reconstructed based on different single genes. With a single gene, you expect to get pretty noisy data. In general, the amount of “signal” in the sequence differences is proportional to the length of the sequence you’re looking at (not surprising), and the amount of noise to be proportional to the square root of the length; that means the signal to noise ratio is proportional to the square root of the length being used.
That means that by looking at individual genes rather than all of them together, they were decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of over 30 (actually, probably worse because some genes will be shorter than others, some evolve slower, etc). This means you should expect the data to be pretty noisy, and the inferred trees similarly noisy. Certainly, much worse (30x worse) than even simply concatenating the genes would get you.
But I asked about how different the trees were. The details are in the section I haven’t read, but even just in the abstract there’s an interesting detail: “Incongruence severity increased for shorter internodes located deeper in the phylogeny.” There are two interesting facts here:
– The incongruence wasn’t so bad that they couldn’t tell where it was. If you tried something like this with my car example, you’d find there wasn’t enough matchup that you could point and say “there’s a mismatch here“; instead you’d be saying “there’s mismatch everywhere“. Even though none of them matched exactly, there was still enough agreement to pick out where they disagreed.
– The incongruence showed up exactly where I’d expect statistical noise to have the biggest effect: shorter internodes (there’s another square-root effect here, similar to the one I mentioned earlier, so you expect shorter links to be noisier) located deeper in the phylogeny (where the inference is least direct, and thus likely to be most fragile).
(Disclaimer: I’m not any sort of expert on data analysis, especially not phylogenetic analysis. But I’ve worked with enough data and am familiar enough with the principles to have a reasonably good idea how errors flow through an analysis and into the results.)
So, we’re seeing lots of statistical noise in a situation where we should see lots of statistical noise, behaving basically like statistical noise should behave. It appears the noise level was a bit higher than the researchers expected, but overall this isn’t a particularly bad result, and certainly doesn’t justify the OMG THIS IS ALL NONSENSE spin Dr Hunter put on it.
bornagain@45:
Wrong on all counts. Firstly, if we take the definition of “Darwinism” that the ID side seems to have settled on in these discussions (essentially, the synthetic theory of evolution aka new-Darwinism), it has no particular metaphysical entailments. It certainly uses methodological naturalism, but (despite KF’s ranting) that does not imply metaphysical naturalism.
You disagree? Ok, vital question: Is Dr. Francis Collins a Darwinist? He’s certainly not a philosophical naturalist; he’s a Christian, and a theistic evolutionist.
If you claim he’s a Darwinist, you’re contradicting your link between Darwinism and reductive materialism. If you claim he’s not a Darwinist, you’re saying Barry doesn’t know what Darwinism is (since he’s been using Collins as an example Darwinist).
As I said, evolutionary theory (and maybe Darwinism, whatever definition you settle on for that) does stick to methodological naturalism; but then, so do all other branches of science: geology, chemistry, astronomy, physics, etc… Do you rant against these and their materialist assumptions? Why just evolution?
Wait a minute… physics uses methodological naturalism; that includes relativity, thermodynamcs, quantum mechanics…. but you’re busy claiming that QM supports some sort of supernaturalism!
Which brings me to my second point: quantum mechanics is just as much based on naturalism as evolutionary theory is: they’re both based on methodological naturalism, but do not require (or contradict) metaphysical naturalism.
(I’ll note, though, that QM can be regarded as inconsistent with a strict view of materialism; it seems to imply that something like quantum fields exist, despite not really being “material” themselves. Philosophers sometimes distinguish between “materialism” and “physicalism”, where physicalism includes materials and other physical things like fields as real. Most interpretations of QM violate strict materialm, but are consistent with physicalism.)
I’ve pointed out before that your claims about QM are nonsense, but last time we talked you said you thought that nonlocality was inherently supernatural. I didn’t seriously reply to that, because frankly the claim made no real sense to me. My reaction was more “huh???” than anything else. I think I’ve figured out your reasoning, but if I have… it’s wrong.
Let me give you a little physics history. Fairly early on, people figured out that objects could interact without touching. The sun and planets could exert gravitational forces on each other without touching, magnets could repel or attract without touching, etc. Some people regarded this “spooky action at a distance” as supernatural, since how else could objects affect each other without touching? But physicists came to regard this as being mediated by fields: a magnet produces a magnetic field, that spreads through space, and then the field acts locally on the other magnet. Similarly, electric charges produce an electric field, and objects with mass produce a gravitational field, and those spread through space and interact with other objects.
Supernaturalism purged, materialism (well, physicalism actually) was safe, everyone was happy (except those who wanted a supernatural explanation for why planets stayed in their orbits).
(And then the Aharonov–Bohm effect came along and people freaked out again; but that’s another story.)
Quantum mechanics has brought in a whole new class of “spooky action at a distance,” thanks to entanglement. It’s not clear what’s actually going on, but whatever it is has to violate some things that we think of as obviously true. One class of possibilities involve a measurement at one location influencing another measurement at a different location. (There are other possibilities; superdeterminism and some versions of many worlds evade this requirement.)
So what’s wrong with a similar explanation here? QM already includes a field-like thing, the quantum wavefunction, which can fully explain the effect. The big thing that’s different about this vs. the older types of spooky action at a distance is that this can happen instantaneously across long distances. Changes in the electromagnetic and gravitational fields don’t travel any faster than the speed of light, but whatever’s behind these QM effects doesn’t obey that speed limit.
The reason this is significant is that according to relativity, time is not absolute. When you have two events (e.g. the two measurements) far enough apart in space but close enough in time that light couldn’t get from one to the other, then it’s undefined which is before the other. Some observers will say one event happened first, some will say that the other happened first, and according to relativity, both are equally correct. This means that faster-than-light causal influences are sort-of equivalent to backward-in-time causal influences.
So, this leaves us with a number of possibilities for what could cause these long-distance spooky correlations:
1) Something like superdeterminism or many-worlds could be correct. I’ll ignore these for present purposes, but keep in mind that they are possible explanations.
2) Relativity could be wrong. In fact, we pretty much know that relativity is wrong (it doesn’t get along with quantum field theory), but this particular aspect of it is generally thought to be solid. Let’s ignore this possibility as well.
3) The measurement events could be linked via the quantum wavefunction (or something similar to it) in a way that violates normal forward-in-time-only causality.
4) The measurement events could be linked via some spooky supernatural force/entity/whatever in a way that violates normal forward-in-time-only causality.
You’re assuming that option #4 is the only possible explanation. That’s clearly wrong, but your case is actually even weaker than that because #4 doesn’t have any advantage at all over #3. Once you’ve given up forward-in-time-only causality, there’s no reason at all to think the thing that violates it is supernatural. In fact, I’ll go considerably further than that: option #3 explains why we get the specific correlations that we actually see, while with #4 the spooky supernatural force/entity/whatever it could do pretty much anything it feels like.
If you want to claim that #4 is the correct explanation, you have to explain why the correlations follow the specific predictions of QM so closely.
In the particular case that you think the supernatural thing in #4 is God, then you have to explain why God would act like such a slave to the equations of QM. Pray, and God might decide to answer you; rotate the polarizer on your detector, and God will hear and obey. I really don’t think you want that in your theology.
It is as if Moran did not read Behe’s rebuttal of his article “Understanding Michael Behe”. As far as I can see in #98 LM just rehashes points already addressed and which brought up nothing.
A few more notes in regards to the SEVERELY incongruent sequence data:
Of note, since Gordon was so far off the mark on the sequence data (i,e, “Not Even Wrong!”), I will not even bother to read his diatribe against quantum non-locality which I suspect to be even worse. Much worse.
bornagain: Koonin, Eugene V. (2011-06-23). The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution
Here is a picture of Koonin’s Big Bang.
http://www.zachriel.com/blog/B.....enesis.gif
Now, compare to Darwin’s original diagram.
http://darwin-online.org.uk/co.....iagram.jpg
Notice that Darwin did not posit that branching would always be through bifurcation. Each of his nodes has multiple branches — not unlike Koonin’s diagram.
(Odd that Koonin didn’t discuss incomplete lineage sorting in his book, as that would seem to be an important mechanism obscuring branching order during adaptive radiations.)
spin it baby spin it! You’ll be a politician yet! 🙂
Three Shell Game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFLa_tl4Rk0
bornagain, you haven’t shown that I was off the mark; all you did was spew links without bothering to understand them. The only one directly relevant to my comment was an update from Dr. Hunter (“Here Are Those Incongruent Trees From the Yeast Genome – Case Study – Cornelius Hunter“), but it doesn’t show what you (or Dr. Hunter) think it does.
He says “In fact, as the figure above shows, the individual gene trees did not converge toward the concatenation tree”; I’m not sure what he means by “converge”. Possibly he thought most of them should show short distances from the concatenation tree, i.e. that the distance graph should have its peak near 0 distance? If so, I think he’s unfamiliar with how noise will show up in many-dimensional spaces.
The average distance from the consensus tree (0.40) is quite a bit smaller than the distance between the individual trees (0.52), though, which is what I’d think “convergence” would refer to here.
The graph he gives does show something much more significant, though, that you and Hunter missed completely. See the dotted line on the right? Those are the distances between 1000 random trees; they have an average distance of 0.98. The distribution of distances for the actual trees doesn’t overlap the distribution of trees for random sequences! The actual distances are almost all under 0.7 (most are between about 0.3 and 0.6); as far as I can see from the graph, none of the random sequences have distances below 0.9 and almost all are barely below 1.0.
In short, the actual trees are far from perfect matches (again, expected because of the small sample size), but they’re far FAR better than would be expected from random data.
That means there’s a real pattern here. And that pattern needs explaining. Do you have an explanation that fits the data better than common ancestry + statistical noise?
Gordon, the severely discordant sequence data is real. It is not an anomaly limited to just one study as you are pretending but is pervausive across all studies as my ‘spewed links’ clearly indicate. Your just so stories that try to explain away the one study are imaginary. I side with reality and against the usual Darwinian imagination that has no real data but only shallow excuses as to why the evidence does not ever really support Darwinian evolution.
For example, Here is Nelson on severely discordant bacteria ORFan data:
@94
“And there you have it Jack, no matter how many time Zach is corrected on a point he thinks if he can just repeat the same lie over and over again that he has somehow, in his twisted reasoning, won the argument.
Somebody on UD referred to this dishonest debating tactic as the ‘I can still type so I must still have an argument’ tactic. :)”
Born my friend, he is relying on the fallacy of argument ad nauseam.
‘argument ad nauseam’
Ha ha ha ha 🙂
bornagain@110:
I never said discordant sequence data isn’t real (although I think “severely” is an exaggeration), nor did I say or imply that it was limited to just one study. “Pervasive across all studies” — have you looked at all studies? No, of course not, you’ve only looked at studies that appear to support your case; any that don’t get discarded.
I only commented on one study (mostly because I happened to have looked at it before), but that certainly doesn’t mean that I think it’s the only one that exists. However, what I explained clearly shows that at least one of the studies you claimed supports your side does nothing of the sort!
Common ancestry does not imply exact concordance, any more than the theory of gravity requires that feathers should fall at the same speed as bowling balls. As I said back at #2, you need to take into account everything that is acting on the phenomenon in question. In the case of gravity, you can’t pretend that gravity is the only force acting on a falling body and expect to get agreement with actual results. Similarly, you can’t pretend that common ancestry is the only thing influencing similarity among organisms and expect to get agreement with actual results.
What you can do is say, e.g. “ok, gravity explains why most things fall at approximately the same rate; let’s look at the ones that don’t, and try to figure out what else is acting on them.” That’s essentially what a lot of the studies you cite are: “ok, common ancestry explains why most things fall into approximately convergent nested hierarchies; let’s look at where they don’t and see if we can figure out what else is going on.”
(Hints: statistical noise, horizontal genetic transfer, endosymbiosis, convergence, maybe a tangled net at the beginning of life, etc…)
I don’t claim that all trees are exactly concordant, that’s plainly false. What I do claim (and even your own citations support this) is that there’s far too much convergence to happen by chance (again, look at that graph that Cornelius Hunter posted — there’s no overlap!).
Concordance is real, and it needs explaining. You have no explanation.
Discordance is real, and it needs explaining. We have explanations. Trying to use discordance to refute common ancestry is exactly as bogus as trying to use feathers and helium balloons to refute gravity.
(And no, ORFans don’t support your case either. Did you forget that Vincent Torley refuted that recently?)
(I just noticed Jack’s comment — you’re seriously accusing someone other than bornagain of argument ad nauseam?)
Gordon, Your just so stories are what they are. Just so stories. You have no empirical evidence.
The severely discordant sequence data is far from your only problem.
For instance, you have no evidence whatsoever that radical changes to body plans are even feasible by mutations to DNA as is held in neo-Darwinism (or mutations to anything else for that matter).
Thus the sequence data, whether you agree with it or not, is moot and void anyway to the overall point you would like to make for your atheism:
It would be nice if you guys ever actually followed the evidence where it leads instead of just making up flimsy excuses every time your hand is caught in the cookie jar.
Friggin liars! All of ya!
Box said,
Of course I read Michael Behe’s response.
You can assume that I haven’t changed my mind based on that reading and that’s why I explained the correct facts in #98.
It’s pretty obvious that Behe and I disagree on a few of his claims in The Edge of Evolution. That shouldn’t come as a big surprise.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to decide who’s right. How are you going to do that? Ask Barry Arrington?
My goal here is not to convince you that evolutionary biologists are always correct, although that would be a nice bonus. My goal is to make most of you understand that ID proponents are not always correct and you shouldn’t always assume that everything they say is the truth. Be as skeptical about ID proponents as you are about evolutionary biologists.
If you want to know the truth you are going to have to study the issue on your own.
Did you look at the graph that Hunter posted? The complete lack of overlap between the distances for the real vs. random sequences?
THAT
IS
EMPIRICAL
EVIDENCE.
It’s far from the only evidence on my side, but it’s plenty to refute your claim that I have no evidence.
So stick your fingers in your ears and your head in the sand for as long as you want, but it’s you, not I, that is ignoring reality.
Gordon Davisson, your idea of what constitutes real time empirical evidence and what real time empirical evidence actually is are two VERY different things.
I’ve been looking for real time empirical evidence for Darwinian evolution for a long time now. I’ve found none
The last four decades worth of lab work are surveyed here, and no evidence for neo-Darwinian evolution surfaces:
How about the oft cited example for neo-Darwinism of antibiotic resistance?
That doesn’t seem to be helping.
How about we look really, really, close at very sensitive growth rates and see if we can find any evidence for neo-Darwinian evolution?
Well, that doesn’t seem to be helping either.
How about if we just try to fix an unconditionally ‘beneficial’ mutation by sustained selection?
Well that’s certainly disappointing.
How about if try to help neo-Darwinian evolution out a little and just saturate genomes with mutations until we can actually see some ‘evolution’ in action?
Now this is starting to get a little frustrating.
Perhaps we just have to give neo-Darwinian evolution a little ‘room to breathe’?
How about we ‘open the floodgates’ and look at Lenski’s Long Term Evolution Experiment and see what we can find after 50,000 generations, which is equivalent to somewhere around 1,000,000 years of human evolution?
Now that just can’t be right.
We should really start to be seeing some neo-Darwinian fireworks by 50,000 generations!
Hey I know what we can do. How about we see what happened when the ‘top five’ ‘beneficial mutations from Lenski’s experiment were combined?
Surely now the Darwinian magic will start flowing?
Now something is going terribly wrong here. Isn’t neo-Darwinian evolution an established fact on par with gravity?
Tell you what, let’s just forget trying to observe evolution in the lab. I mean it really is kind of cramped in the lab, and let’s REALLY open the floodgates and let’s see what neo-Darwinian evolution can do with the ENTIRE WORLD at its disposal.
Surely now neo-Darwinian evolution will flex its awesomely powerful muscles for all to see and forever make those IDiots, who believe in Intelligent Design, cower in terror!
Now, there is something terribly wrong here!
After looking high and low and everywhere in between, we can’t seem to find any substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism anywhere!
It is as if the whole neo-Darwinian theory, relentlessly sold to the general public as it was the gospel truth, is nothing but a big fat lie!
And that would make anyone who claims it is an established fact on par with gravity a LIAR!
Gordon makes this humorous claim in 116:
Now this ‘reality claim’ is a very humorous claim for Gordon, a materialistic atheist, to make since, given the reductive materialistic premises that he believes in, Gordon himself does not even really exist as a real person, but is merely a neuronal illusion.
At the 23:33 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins agrees with materialistic philosophers who say that:
A few minutes later Rowan Williams asks Dawkins
at 37:51 minute mark of following video, according to the law of identity, Richard Dawkins does not exist as a person: (the unity of Aristotelian Form is also discussed) i.e. ironically, in atheists denying that God really exists, they end up denying that they themselves really exist as real persons.
And in the following article Dawkins reluctantly admits that it is impossible for him to live as if his atheistic worldview were actually true
Indeed, anybody who lived as if atheism were actually true would be considered psychopathic
Although many atheists, because it refutes their atheistic worldview, try to claim that they still really exist as real persons even given materialistic premises, many prominent atheists actually do readily, and honestly, confess to this self-refuting absurdity, that is inherent to the materialistic philosophy, of denying that they really exist as real persons:
Dr. Nelson weighs in here
And although Dr. Nelson alluded to writing an e-mail, (i.e. creating information), to tie his ‘personal agent’ argument into intelligent design, Dr. Nelson’s ‘personal agent’ argument can easily be amended to any action that ‘you’, as a personal agent, choose to take:
Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
What should be needless to say, if raising your arm is enough to refute your supposedly ‘scientific’ worldview of atheistic materialism/naturalism, then perhaps it is time for you to seriously consider getting a new scientific worldview?
Excellent links Born.
I asked Larry Moran what chemicals are free, you know, seeing as how he likes to judge other peoples reasoning and sees people as soul-less chemical bags in motion but he never did tell me which chemical elements that he teaches his students are free, Yet the materialist Moran likes to judge others as wrong. It makes no sense to say chemistry is acting incorrectly.
These Materialists are very strange people.
Joe: “I asked Larry Moran what chemicals are free,…”
Could you provide a link to where you asked Larry this question? I looked, but can’t seem to find it. But I am using an iPhone and the search features are non-existant.
bornagain@117:
What’s the relevance of “real time” empirical evidence? We are (or at least were) talking about common ancestry, which is a historical claim, and thus inherently cannot be tested in real time. You seem to have switched to talking about limits on the capabilities of evolution. But since as we’re told over and over (and I agree) that ID is fully compatible with common ancestry, I don’t see any relevance at all.
Your objections to my philosophical views are even more irrelevant.
Gordon Davisson actually since you cannot establish that unguided evolution is in the least bit feasible with real time empirical evidence then that refutes YOUR atheistic claim for common ancestry by unguided material processes. That you say ID is compatible with common ancestry is a shameless attempt by you to avoid having to deal with the gross empirical shortcoming of your preferred atheistic worldview.
Most honest people would realize that this complete failure to empirically validate their atheistic worldview with real time evidence refutes their atheistic worldview as true and then drop atheism as their worldview.
But you are not an honest atheist and just pretend as if this complete failure in validation is no big deal.
You are wrong!
It is, as far as science itself is concerned, a very big deal.
You simply have no real time empirical basis whatsoever for the grand sweeping claims you are making for unguided material processes in the remote past.
Integrity is certainly not a strong suit of atheists.
Now if you want to argue common descent more honestly and admit that Intelligence is necessary to even explain life in the first place, as say gppucio and Torley honestly do, then you may have a more firm basis to stand on as far as CD is concerned. I personally consider the Theistic evolution position to be pathetically weak, but at least you would have a firmer foundation to stand on, as far as science itself is concerned, than you do now.
Your foundation which I affectionately refer to as the ‘feet firmly planted in mid air foundation’. 🙂
Moreover, it is impossible for me to debate your philosophical position with ‘you’ since there is no ‘you’ to have an opinion one way or the other in the first place.
There are only a bunch of neurons producing an illusion of a person named Gordon who thinks that his opinions matter.
Given atheism, they don’t matter since they, and the person holding them, don’t even really exist.
i.e. I don’t object to, nor have arguments with, illusions. Just as I don’t debate rocks. It is insane argue with rocks and with illusions.
Only real persons can have real opinions! But “You” don’t exist, ergo no debate is possible.
LM:
We can talk about potential beneficial changes ’til the cows come home, but what changes do we actually observe? For me, this is where Behe’s argument edges out his detractors. What he is proposing appears to line up with what we actually see. He may still end up being wrong, but at least he’s stepped out of the bubble where everything is about what could happen and into the reality of what has actually been observed to happen. Would that others would join him there!
Phinehas asks,
In the case of chloroquine resistance, you should read my post where I point out that Behe’s reliance on Nicholas White is misguided for several reasons.
Taking the Behe challenge!
Flunking the Behe challenge!
He is wrong to assume that White’s observation can be directly interpreted as due to just the mutation rate. What that means is that Behe actually didn’t rely on “the reality of what has actually been observed to happen.”
As for the likelihood of any human gene acquiring two different mutations in the past few million years—something that Behe predicts can’t happen—see …
CCC’s and the edge of evolution
Now let’s see what we actually see … what’s actually observed in the development of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium. The important paper is Summers et al. (2014).
You can read about it on Sandwalk where I discuss why it is relevant to Behe’s calculations.
Michael Behe and the edge of evolution
What Summers et al. did was to look at existing populations of chloroquine resistant Plasmodium to see which mutations were required for resistance. They discovered that multiple mutations were required but that most of them had no effect by themselves. Some strains required just two mutations while others required three or four. They all had the key K76T mutation. The authors show that this mutation by itself is neutral with respect to chloroquine resistance. It needs additional potentiating neutral mutations at other sites.
They then look at natural populations of Plasmodium that were sensitive to the drug and found that single copies of these mutations were present in many of the populations. What presumably happened, according to the observations, is that neutral mutations arose in a populations and reached significant frequency by random genetic drift. Then a second mutation occurred on this background and the combination of the two mutations gave rise to chloroquine resistance.
This is all based on actual observations of living populations of the malarial parasite. You do not need two particular mutations to happen simultaneously; therefore, it is incorrect to calculate the overall probability by just multiplying together the mutation rates for two single mutations.
Why is this a problem for you? Why do you think that Behe’s incorrect guesstimate based on White’s observation is better than the actual sequence data of Summers et al.?