After my post at UD (https://uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1204) about creating a Hello World computer program by random mutation and natural selection, apollo230 alerted me to the fact that the Panda’s Thumb crowd had created a special thread designed to demolish my thesis. This pleased me to no end, because it was obvious that I had created major trouble. If my arguments and logic were utterly vacuous, no response would have been required.
Just to prove that I’m not a complete coward, I decided visited Panda’s Thumb, check out the thread, and make a reply. After wading through a tome of hand-wringing PT diatribes, I posted the following comment:
“The fact of the matter remains: Random mutation and natural selection as an explanation for all of life’s complexity, functionally integrated machinery, and information content is wishful speculation, unsupported by convincing hard evidence. This should simply be admitted.”
Within a few minutes I was responded to by Steve S with this morsel of intellectually satisfying insight:
“Oh, don’t worry, Gil. In a week or so, Paul Nelson’s going to be presenting Ontogenetic Depth v 2.0 at the Society of Developmental Biology meeting, and I’m sure that will obliterate Darwinism, you know, like the Explanatory Filter did, and the NFL theorems, and your analogies to computers, and Irreducible Complexity, and Sal’s plane anecdotes, and the last 400-500 dumb things you guys have said, and Intelligent Evolution will in the future, &c, &c, &c….”
Such a marvelously profound rebuttal inspired me to conclude that I must agree with David Berlinski’s characterization of the Panda’s Thumb crowd:
“The Panda’s Thumb, on the other hand, is entirely low-market; the men who contribute to the blog all have some vague technical background – computer sales, sound mixing, low-level programming, print-shops or copy centers; they are semi-literate; their posts convey that characteristic combination of pustules and gonorrhea that one would otherwise associate with high-school toughs.”