I am sorry if it appears that I am beating this horse long after it has expired, but I think it is important to expose the perfidy of prominent Darwinists and the depths to which they will sink when it is plain for all to see. By exposing their shenanigans on a matter that is plain to everyone, we will be able to judge their credibility better when they are arguing more subtle issues.
Nick Matzke is one such prominent Darwinist, and his false allegation of quote mining is a case in point. To review, in a previous post I argued that the fossil record did not turn out the way Darwin expected it would. Of course, I will be the first to admit that I am no expert on Darwin’s views, and there is no reason for anyone to care particularly what I say about that topic. So I quoted Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall:
Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.
Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 45-46.
Note that I am not arguing here that Darwinian evolution did not occur (though I have views on that). Nor am I arguing that there are no fossils demonstrating transitions between major groups as opposed to sister species (though I have views on that as well). I am asserting a VERY narrow point: The fossil record did not turn out the way Darwin expected it would. And I am quoting Eldredge to support that point.
Matzke came onto these pages and accused me of “quote mining,” which is the deceptive use of an out-of-context quote to make it appear that the author agrees with the proposition one is advancing when they really did not. It is a form of lying and is morally reprehensible.
In a nutshell, Matzke has accused me of morally reprehensible conduct in an internet forum that anyone on the planet with access to a computer can access. That charge is very serious and highly public.
But in order for Matzke’s charge to be true, Eldredge and Tattersall would have had to, in context, mean something other than the proposition for which I quoted them, i.e., that the fossil record did not turn out as Darwin expected. But that is exactly what they meant. Therefore, the quote mining charge is false.
I pointed this out to Matzke and asked him to retract/apologize. He has steadfastly refused.
Nick, I know you are a moral relativist, but even relatively speaking wouldn’t you admit that coming into a highly public forum and accusing someone of lying when they did not is wrong? Again, the only right thing for you to do is to man up, admit you were wrong and apologize.
Of course, Matzke knows his conduct is morally indefensible, but instead of retracting and apologizing he has gone into “full Darwinist spin mode.”
He writes:
As long as you keep refusing to admit the context of the Eldredge quote, you will be guilty of quote-mining when you use it to argue that the fossil record doesn’t support evolution.
(emphasis mine)
If I had argued that the fossil record does not support evolution this statement might have some force. I made no such argument (As I said above, I have views on that matter, but that is beside the point.) I argued something completely different. I argued that the fossil record did not turn out the way Darwin expected it to.
Keep in mind that for purposes of Matzke’s quote mining charge it does not matter whether I am right. It does not matter whether Eldredge was right. What matters is that I advanced a proposition and quoted Eldredge in support of it. The quote mining charge would be true only if I quoted Eldredge out of context and he did not really mean what the sentence I quoted apparently says. But that is exactly what Eldredge meant. He meant to say that the fossil record did not turn out the way Darwin expected, and that is what I meant to quote him for. I plainly did not quote him for some broader proposition.
Matzke goes on:
It wasn’t deliberately deceptive when you first did it,
Then why don’t you withdraw your charge and apologize Nick? Because Nick has his own personal definition of quote mining. You see, it turns out that Nick thinks Eldredge was wrong:
we’ve already been over what Darwin said he expected from the fossil record, and Eldredge got that bit wrong.
Now we get to the bottom of it. It is not that I misquoted Eldredge. My quote was perfectly accurate. Nick just disagrees with Eldredge on the point for which I quoted him, and under his personal definition of the term that makes me guilty of quote mining.
Nick, you don’t get to have a personal definition of phrases. “Quote mining” has a universally accepted meaning. You now admit that under that universally accepted meaning I did not quote mine Eldredge.
I call on you once again to man up, admit you were wrong, and apologize. Stop with the spinning Nick. It only gets you deeper and deeper into the hole.
Barry, Matzke (I don’t believe in God because he’s nasty) will only be confused by reasoning, as is invariably the case with atheist polemicists. He will sincerely apologise when figs grow on thorns.
Barry,
It took me many years to come to the following realization: there are people in this world who are apparently physically incapable of following a logical argument. Their brains are just not wired for it. You can walk them, step by step, from premise to conclusion… and they will respond with some maddening emotional non sequitur. It’s like trying to nail jello to a wall.
Nick Matzke cannot help himself.
Nick Matzke understands the arguments presented by Arrington and others perfectly well. He’s just a jerk and honor has no meaning to him. Typical of vociferous Darwinists everywhere.
Whatever came of Matzke’s visiting Dr. Tour for the purpose of explaining how evolution works?
My long response to this is in moderation, probably because of all the links.
Re: James Tour, we had a long phone conversation just before Thanksgiving. I’m going to send him some material on molecular evolution when I get a chance.
Why, look, a whole special issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach, devoted to transitional fossils, and edited by Niles Eldredge himself!
In his introduction, Eldredge even comments on Simpson’s views!
NickMatzke what do you think about the extended evolutionary synthesis?
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/E....._synthesis
Massimo Pigliucci, Eva Jablonka and Gerd B. Müller accept it, but Jerry Coyne rejects it… what’s your position?
Evolution? Are they telling us that Audrey Hepburn evolved?
Nick Matzke as to:
Nick seeing as you have a bit of a checkered past in this area, as to being able to behave honestly, I hope that you don’t mind that I just sent the following heads up to Dr. Tour to warn him about your seemingly pathological need to mislead people:
Supplemental notes:
Dr. James Tour, who, in my honest opinion, currently builds the most sophisticated man-made molecular machines in the world (even surpassing the Harvard Wyss group in that regards),,,
,,will buy lunch for anyone who can explain to him exactly how Darwinian evolution works:
also of note;
corrected link:
Science & Faith — Dr. James Tour – video (At the two minute mark of the following video, you can see a nano-car that was built by Dr. James Tour’s team)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR4QhNFTtyw
It’s a combination of moderately interesting additions to modern evolutionary theory, plus some hype by people tooting their own horns. On top of that there is some absolutely insane creationist propaganda about the “Altenberg 16” overthrowing evolutionary theory, yadda yadda, which is totally crazy if you know anything about it.
The really peculiar thing about the “extended synthesis” is that they always forget to include phylogenetics, although this is really the biggest revolution that has happened in evolutionary biology in the last few decades. Apparently phylogenetics hasn’t had promoters of the same sort.
Yes it’s mentioned here (as well as a quote from you):
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/A.....ontroversy
The creationists have embarrassed themselves on this one!
BornAgain, you quote an engineer as saying:
“I build molecules for a living, I can’t begin to tell you how difficult that job is. I stand in awe of God because of what he has done through his creation.”
What about parasitic microbes? Why did the Christian God create them? Will you in awe of God for them?
“If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.”
I agree and if that is the case then God has to be natural. If God is science then there’s no supernatural. Pantheism is my friend, have you read Spinoza bornagain?
TheisticEvolutionist:
And what is wrong with parasitic microbes? Personally, I think they are beautiful and complex little lifeforms, doing exactly what they’re supposed to do.
(Pan)TheisticEvolutionist asks
That is a Theological/Philosophical argument from evil. That is not a scientific argument for evolution. It is an interesting argument when you take it apart since it turns out in order to make a judgement of something as evil someone must first have some absolute standard of good in mind so as to be able to make the judgement. As C.S. Lewis put it:
Much the same can be said for the argument from reason in that a standard outside the natural/material order is required in order for someone to be able to make judgements on the natural/material order that are binding and true:
also see:
This would seem to be trouble for your preferred Pantheistic view as well since, I believe, Pantheism grounds its perspective within the natural order as well.
Of related interest to a ‘perspective outside the natural/material order’
A footnote to the Theological argument from evil that atheists unwittingly continually use, instead of using actual scientific evidence, in their attempt to justify Darwinism as plausible, is the following humorous episode. In the following quote, Dr. John Avise explicitly uses the theologically based argument from evil in order to try to make his case for Darwinism:
What is completely humorous in the preceding argument FOR evolution is that, without Darwinian theological binders on, the overwhelming rate of detrimental mutations compared to beneficial mutations (Behe; Sanford) is actually a VERY powerful SCIENTIFIC argument AGAINST Darwinian evolution ever occurring:
Dr. John Avise helpfully supplies us with the rope for his own hanging here:
I went to the mutation database website cited by John Avise and found:
To be more specific as to the insurmountable ‘scientific’ problem this presents to neo-Darwinism,,,
*3 new mutations every time a cell divides in your body
* Average cell of 15 year old has up to 6000 mutations
*Average cell of 60 year old has 40,000 mutations
Reproductive cells are ‘designed’ so that, early on in development, they are ‘set aside’ and thus they do not accumulate mutations as the rest of the cells of our bodies do. Regardless of this protective barrier against the accumulation of slightly detrimental mutations still we find that,,,
*60-175 mutations are passed on to each new generation. –
per Dr. John Sanford
But population genetics shows us that that a mutation rate of 60-175 per generation is far greater than what even leading population geneticists agree is an acceptable mutation rate, since detrimental mutations will accumulate far faster than ‘selection’ can eliminate them in any given genome:
Even bacteria, which are far more tolerant of a higher mutation rate than humans are, cannot bear a rate of 60 to 175 per generation:
This has all been worked out in computer simulation and the results, no matter how the simulation is tweaked to support Darwinian claims, do not support Darwinian claims:
Thus, if one wants to argue from evil to support Darwinian evolution, I suggest going to a priest or to a pastor to make the argument and not to the lab, for as far as the science itself is concerned, the argument is turned on its head and fails big time!
(Pan)TheisticEvolutionist asks
That is a Theological/Philosophical argument from evil. That is not a scientific argument for evolution. It is an interesting argument when you take it apart since it turns out in order to make a judgement of something as evil someone must first have some absolute standard of good in mind so as to be able to make the judgement. As C.S. Lewis put it:
Much the same can be said for the argument from reason in that a standard outside the natural/material order is required in order for someone to be able to make judgements on the natural/material order that are binding and true:
also see:
This would seem to be trouble for your preferred Pantheistic view as well since, I believe, Pantheism grounds its perspective within the natural order as well.
Of related interest to a ‘perspective outside the natural/material order’
A footnote to the Theological argument from evil that atheists unwittingly continually use, instead of using actual scientific evidence, in their attempt to justify Darwinism as plausible, is the following humorous episode. In the following quote, Dr. John Avise explicitly uses the theologically based argument from evil in order to try to make his case for Darwinism:
What is completely humorous in the preceding argument FOR evolution is that, without Darwinian theological binders on, the overwhelming rate of detrimental mutations compared to beneficial mutations (Behe; Sanford) is actually a VERY powerful SCIENTIFIC argument AGAINST Darwinian evolution ever occurring:
Dr. John Avise helpfully supplies us with the rope for his own hanging here:
I went to the mutation database website cited by John Avise and found:
To be more specific as to the insurmountable ‘scientific’ problem this presents to neo-Darwinism,,,
*3 new mutations every time a cell divides in your body
* Average cell of 15 year old has up to 6000 mutations
*Average cell of 60 year old has 40,000 mutations
Reproductive cells are ‘designed’ so that, early on in development, they are ‘set aside’ and thus they do not accumulate mutations as the rest of the cells of our bodies do. Regardless of this protective barrier against the accumulation of slightly detrimental mutations still we find that,,,
*60-175 mutations are passed on to each new generation. –
per Dr. John Sanford
But population genetics shows us that that a mutation rate of 60-175 per generation is far greater than what even leading population geneticists agree is an acceptable mutation rate, since detrimental mutations will accumulate far faster than ‘selection’ can eliminate them in any given genome:
Even bacteria, which are far more tolerant of a higher mutation rate than humans are, cannot bear a rate of 60 to 175 per generation:
This has all been worked out in computer simulation and the results, no matter how the simulation is tweaked to support Darwinian claims, do not support Darwinian claims:
Thus, if one wants to argue from evil to support Darwinian evolution, I suggest going to a priest or to a pastor to make the argument and not to the lab, for as far as the science itself is concerned, the argument is turned on its head and fails big time!
TheisticEvolutionist
My microbiologist friend believes every microbe has a beneficial role when in it’s prescribed environment, whatever that might be. I don’t claim to know.
He uses cholera as an example. In the wrong place, it causes horrible sickness. But it’s been shown to aid marine creatures moving from fresh to salt water, or vice versa by pushing sodium out of cells, which also draws out water. It also breaks down chitin and returns it to the carbon cycle. That it moves beyond prescribed environment and causes sickness in people he thinks is a result of man’s sin; bringing the death that was warned of in Genesis which also points to creation being altered because of sin.
Genesis 3 (ESV)
Asking why God creates bad microbes along with good microbes is no different than asking why there is left and right or up and down. God also created an immune system that defends against parasitic attacks. Most of the time it works but it can become defective. The body is a machine and, like all machines, it can work flawlessly or it can break down.
We live in a yin-yang reality. It cannot be any other way. Part of our training on the earth is to experience the good and the bad, happiness and sorrow, health and sickness, pain and pleasure, success and failure, beauty and ugliness, hope and despair, war and peace, etc. We cannot know one without the other.
Solomon wrote there is a time for everything. Earth is not paradise. It’s serious business. Paradise will come eventually for the chosen ones but now is not the time.
Nick, your reputation has already been sufficiently tarnished by your contemptible behavior over the last few days. Your comment that hung in mod was just more of the same, and for your own sake that is where it will remain.
Here’s the bottom line on this whole sordid affair: Apparently Nick Matzke believes being a Darwinist means never having to say you’re sorry, even if you get caught red handed falsely accusing another person of deceit. He believes that if you keep dissembling and distracting attention from the issue and spewing ever longer posts into the combox maybe no one will notice what a detestable boor he is. Sorry Nick. It didn’t work.