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Darwinian Debating Device #17: “The Black Knight Taunt”

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The essence of the “Black Knight Taunt” is to pretend overwhelming victory after suffering a crushing defeat. Here we have a classic example from a commenter named “keiths.”

In my No Bomb After 10 Years post I noted that after 10 years of debating origins I had never encountered a “science bomb” that would disabuse me of my ID position.

Amusingly, keiths insisted that he had posted just such a bomb over at The Skeptical Zone that proved that Darwinism is “trillions” of times better at explaining the data than ID. His argument failed at many levels. Yet, even more amusingly, he kept on insisting he had debunked ID after his so-called bomb had been defused by numerous commenters. See, e.g., here and here.

Here is the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

In my example, WJM lopped off the Black Knight’s arms and KF took out his legs. Yet days later he was still posting shrill comments announcing his triumph.

In the clip above Arthur gives the only response to “The Black Knight Taunt.” We pick up the scene after Arthur has cut off the knight’s arms and legs:

Black Knight: Right, I’ll do you for that!
King Arthur: You’ll what?
Black Knight: Come here!
King Arthur: What are you gonna do, bleed on me?
Black Knight: I’m invincible!
King Arthur: …You’re a loony.

Arthur rides away.

Black Knight: Oh, oh, I see! Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what’s coming to you! I’ll bite your legs off!

Comments
I don't think Enkidu got the memo that those "hind limbs" actually help whales in having sex........Andre
November 4, 2014
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Astro man Bingo!!!!! Bad design does not mean not designed. But every point you raised in that rant as been refuted....... Check out parkcour to see how badly designed we supposedly are.Andre
November 4, 2014
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Silver Asiatic That’s how you summarize all the variety and complexity of biological life on earth? I can provide a coherent evolutionary explanation backed up with empirical evidence for cetacean hind limbs, wisdom teeth, and vertical spines. I'd love to hear the ID explanation for those features. Do you have one? Was the omnipotent Designer having an off day when he came up with those?Enkidu
November 4, 2014
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All that power and capability yet he still left the genes for growing hind limbs in cetaceans so we occasionally find whales and dolphins with atavistic legs.
That's how you summarize all the variety and complexity of biological life on earth? I think you set the bar too low for the unintelligent designer. There's a lot more on earth than wisdom teeth and finch beaks. I take it you're an atheist, right? Your philosophical assumption is that of materialism?Silver Asiatic
November 4, 2014
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There is no such thing as an atheist, just ignorant fools that have some sort of wonky idea of what God is, its dangerous I tell you. Enkidu, a God that deceives can not be the God that created this universe.This universe was created so that we can comprehend and learn about it.Andre
November 4, 2014
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Understanding phylogenetic incongruence: lessons from phyllostomid bats. 2012 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22891620 For more than a decade, evolutionary relationships among members of the New World bat family Phyllostomidae inferred from morphological and molecular data have been in conflict. In conclusion, the biological processes that generate phylogenetic conflict are ubiquitous, and overcoming incongruence requires better models and more data than have been collected even in well-studied organisms such as phyllostomid bats.Silver Asiatic
November 4, 2014
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bornagain77 said: "Astroman do you think that what we observe happening in existing populations can be extrapolated to say humans evolved from some chimp-like ancestor? much less extrapolated to say that all life descended from some bacterial ancestor? If you think so you would be wrong. There is no scientific justification for extrapolating what we see happening in existing populations to try to explain the origin of all life on earth." By existing populations, do you mean humans, or particular primates, or all primates, or all biological things, or what? And saying "chimp-like" just adds to your display of not knowing squat about Evolutionary Theory.Astroman
November 4, 2014
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Silver Asiatic The other, an intelligent designer, has a trillion times the power, creative resources and capability to design. All that power and capability yet he still left the genes for growing hind limbs in cetaceans so we occasionally find whales and dolphins with atavistic legs. He gave humans wisdom teeth that in many people require surgery to avoid painful infections or even death when they grow into a mouth too small to accommodate them. He gave humans vertical spines much better suited to quadruped locomotion so we'd have a lifetime of disk problems and back pain. ID must mean Incompetent Designer.Enkidu
November 4, 2014
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Enkidu is actually saying, dang God could be some malicious pitefull ass that is just deceiving us by planting bones of big reptiles. You are as ignorant as keith S...... All you guys have are religious statements, God is spiteful! God would not o it that way! Enough religious talk and show us what natural procesess can actually do.Andre
November 4, 2014
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Collin And thus we can conclude that evolutionary theory is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. Someone should do a paper on that. Evolutionary theory is certainly falsifiable. Just find some vertebrate species with six limbs. Or show that the phylogenies created from the fossil and genetic records are wildly discordant. Or show that different animal "kinds" have different incompatible forms of DNA. ToE is quite falsifiable. It just hasn't been falsified. What would falsify an Intelligent Designer? Showing natural processes causing evolution won't do it because a powerful enough Designer could be manipulating the processes to achieve its ends. No ID falsification means ID is unscientific, right?Enkidu
November 4, 2014
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Two designers One, blind, unintelligent designer shows extremely limited and inconsistent ability to create slight modifications in organisms, with its strongest effect actually in killing organisms. The other, an intelligent designer, has a trillion times the power, creative resources and capability to design. The explanatory task is for all biological life on earth (you could take it out to the entire universe). The difference between the minor adaptations in bacteria or in finch beaks, and the entire biosphere is a factor of over trillion times in magnitude. The intelligent agent with over a trillion times the power and creative resources is a trillion times better explanation for the entire biosphere.Silver Asiatic
November 4, 2014
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Collin And if you have chunks of DNA appearing almost unchanged, isn’t it a good explanation that a designer took some parts and put them into a different model? And doesn’t this mean there is no ONH? How big are these chunks Collin? What percentage of the overall kangaroo gene are they? The simple fact is all mammals have genetic sequences that are shared with humans. That's because we all have a common mammalian ancestor. The folks who sequenced the first kangaroo genome back in 2008 made the announcement as more of a publicity grab than for any real scientific amazement. I'd love to hear the ID explanation for why kangaroo DNA has chunks of human DNA in it. Do you have one?Enkidu
November 4, 2014
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Further analysis of Keith’s “logic”, (intro see post #41):
1) Unguided evolution explains X 2) A designer explains X, but also a trillion of alternatives. Therefore unguided evolution is a trillion times more likely to be a cause for X. - or: 1) a digital camera explains a picture 2) a mobile phone explains a picture, but also 100 other things. Therefore a digital camera is a 100 times more likely to be the cause for a picture.
In the absence of an explanation by Keith himself, I hold that his reasoning goes like this: There is a 100% chance that an action by a digital camera produces a picture. There is 1% chance that an action by a mobile phone produces a picture, assuming that the 100 functions of a mobile phone are all used equally. So far so good. We observe a picture on a computer screen. Is it more likely that this picture is produced by a digital camera than by a mobile phone? Keith’s answer would be: “Yes it is much more likely that a digital camera did it. In fact, there is 100% chance that the picture is produced by a digital camera and 1% chance that the picture has been produced by a mobile phone”. What went wrong here? How did we arrive at a total of 101%? According to Keith, the likelihood of being a cause = 1 / number of functions X 100% Obviously, this is nonsense.Box
November 4, 2014
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Astroman do you think that what we observe happening in existing populations can be extrapolated to say humans evolved from some chimp-like ancestor? much less extrapolated to say that all life descended from some bacterial ancestor? If you think so you would be wrong. There is no scientific justification for extrapolating what we see happening in existing populations to try to explain the origin of all life on earth.bornagain77
November 4, 2014
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Silver and Lifepsy, And thus we can conclude that evolutionary theory is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. Someone should do a paper on that.Collin
November 4, 2014
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lifepsy, do you think that the differences between primates, including humans, can be accurately described as "extinction or degeneracy of populations, cyclical movement around a mean average phenotype – varying levels of expression of pre-existing functional traits"?Astroman
November 4, 2014
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Silver Asiatic
“Evolutionary theory predicted that, given over 150 million years since divergence and the obvious differences in morphology between kangaroos and humans, that the two genomes would be radically different, but evolutionary theory was obviously falsified on this point.”
That's what I mean regarding Evolution accommodating opposing outcomes. If Humans and Kangaroos exhibited predictable levels of genomic divergence, then this would be used as "evidence" of Evolution. But since they exhibit unexpected levels of genomic divergence, this then becomes "evidence" of an unexpectedly extreme rate of genetic conservation in the mystical fantastical evolutionary past. Evolution "theory" is a shapeless fog that is always settling over the shifting landscape of data. Most of its' proponents don't even understand that and think it's actually a strength of the "theory". "Look it always fits!" lol.. Both funny and sad...lifepsy
November 4, 2014
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Willian j Murray asked: "Where have I attacked evolutionary theory?" William, you apparently think that your commenting history has magically vanished from UD, TSZ, etc. It hasn't.Astroman
November 4, 2014
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enkidu 129
Nowhere has ToE or any theory I know done that.
It does it all the time because ToE has no rigorous constraints. You just appear to be ignorant of that. Unexpected data can virtually always be accommodated by imagineering the past activity of these mystical common ancestors and lineages that are not found in evidence.
Life is a complicated place and somethimes there isn’t one simple explanation for all events.
"Natural Selection dunnit" is pretty simple... and stupid. Yet that has primarily been your useless slogan for decades now.
Take the arguments over gradualism vs. punk eek. In there real world rates of evolution are variable. Sometimes there’s stasis, sometimes there’s gradual change, sometimes there are raid jumps. The theory has to accommodate all the conditions.
In the real world there is no "evolution" as you imagine it. There is extinction or degeneracy of populations, or cyclical movement around a mean average phenotype - varying levels of expression of pre-existing functional traits. That is the real world. You consider such plain facts a blasphemy of course... and will of course continue to ignore addressing it. Your "theory" is useless since it can accommodate all conditions. This is ensured when you base the theory on imaginary data points (common ancestors and subsequent lineages of major taxa), and then task yourself with rearranging those imaginary data points to best fit with the data.lifepsy
November 4, 2014
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Collin 149
“We thought they’d be completely scrambled, but they’re not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome.” Does “surprise” mean that the theory predicted something different? And if we keep getting these surprises doesn’t that mean there’s something wrong with the theory?
Here's the way I read it: "We thought they'd be completely scrambled but they're not." That means ... "Evolutionary theory predicted that, given over 150 million years since divergence and the obvious differences in morphology between kangaroos and humans, that the two genomes would be radically different, but evolutionary theory was obviously falsified on this point." They continue ... "Kangaroos are hugely informative about what we were like 150 million years ago," Graves said. That means, "We won't pay any attention to the failed prediction and just make it appear like there is no problem whatsoever."Silver Asiatic
November 4, 2014
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Joe, so comments are closed because you already know there are no good responses. Really? You're going with that?Rich
November 4, 2014
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roding and Rich- Why is it that the leading lights of evolutionary biology have absolutely nothing to offer? Why is it that they spend most of their time talking about cats and other irrelevant nonsense? The comments get closed after it is obvious the opposition has nothing to offer. Deal with that, RichJoe
November 4, 2014
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This is a little late, but here is an article showing that scientists are surprised at how similar kangaroo DNA is to human. http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/11/18/us-australia-kangaroos-idUSTRE4AH1P020081118 Here's a quote "We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome." Does "surprise" mean that the theory predicted something different? And if we keep getting these surprises doesn't that mean there's something wrong with the theory? And if you have chunks of DNA appearing almost unchanged, isn't it a good explanation that a designer took some parts and put them into a different model? And doesn't this mean there is no ONH?Collin
November 4, 2014
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Roding @ 142: Joe has (had?) top secret clearance who wrote genetic algorithms for encryption projects. He's the real deal.Rich
November 4, 2014
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How is pointing out I've had my account deleted 4 times having "attitude showing", KF? Let's try this another way. Why do you close comments on your posts?Rich
November 4, 2014
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Astroman: Yep, the banning of ID opponents, blocking of comments, closure of comments, and comments off posts are gaining speed here at UD. Barry has predictably chickened out of allowing open commenting, and UD is quickly reverting to being the usual, boring, echo-chamber sanctuary that cowardly ID-creation proponents hide in.
Before you get banned also, can you highlight some of the best arguments against ID that have been offered during the last week? The kind that gives Barry no other option than to chicken out and start banning people?Box
November 4, 2014
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Umm, Rich, you guys don't have anything to say. You have proven that the best you have is your churlish behavior.Joe
November 4, 2014
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kairosfocus Rich, pardon but you have attitude showing Kairosfocus I noticed you started yet another thread with comments off so people can't point out your errors. That shows us your attitude but not in the way you think.Enkidu
November 4, 2014
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Yep, the banning of ID opponents, blocking of comments, closure of comments, and comments off posts are gaining speed here at UD. Barry has predictably chickened out of allowing open commenting, and UD is quickly reverting to being the usual, boring, echo-chamber sanctuary that cowardly ID-creation proponents hide in.Astroman
November 4, 2014
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Roding @139, as Axel points out, you’ve got “the intellects of the likes of Kairosfocus, WJM, Cornelius, VJT, BA77, Barry, Joe et al”
True, and I'm not disparaging their contribution. But several of these people don't even what to reveal their true names. And of these only Cornelius is a trained biologist?roding
November 4, 2014
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