Nick Matzke – Book Burner?

_{Barry Arrington
June 30, 2013

Intelligent Design

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Intelligent Design}

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Nick Matzke famously got the publishing company Springer to suppress the publication of the papers of a conference held at Cornell. See here. He did this without having seen, much less read, any of the papers. Obviously, his motivation could not have been the content of the papers. He was motivated by the mere fact that several of the conference participants were well-known ID proponents.

Let us do a little thought experiment. Suppose that Nick had published his famous piece on Panda’s Thumb a few days later, and the head of Springer had called him up and said, “Hey, Nick, I’ve got some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that it is too late to stop publication of the book. The printer has done his work and the first printing of the book is finished. The good news is that not a single copy has left the printer’s warehouse, and they are all in a pile that has been drenched in gasoline. Nick, all you have to do is come over and toss a match on the pile of books and it will be as if they were never published in the first place.”

Nick follows UD and posts here from time to time, so I have two questions for him:

(1) Nick would you have tossed the match?

(2) If the answer to (1) is “no,” are you not a hypocrite? After all, the ultimate outcome from tossing the match would be identical to what you actually did – i.e., no book out there for people to buy.

BKA: Updated in response to Dr. Sewell’s comment @ 2.

Comments

keiths, all blah, blah, blah and still absolutely no evidence to support his position. We get it, keiths...Joe_{July 2, 2013
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UB @ 176: I can't say I have taken adequate time to go through all of Dr. Sewell's stuff, and I think there may be some difficulty with the way he is presenting things, but one aspect he is absolutely correct about is this: The whole "open system" vs. "closed system" business is utter nonsense. Anytime an evolutionist or abiogenesis proponent responds to the improbabilities of life arising or new systems coming into being by saying "Yes, but the Earth is an open system . . ." you can immediately take it to the bank that they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and have no understanding of the issues on the table. The entire "Earth is an open system" is a complete red herring.Eric Anderson_{July 2, 2013
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From Granville Sewell’s paper, which Matzk’e attacks:
“If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering (or leaving) which makes it not extremely improbable.” Thus unless we are willing to argue that the influx of solar energy into the Earth makes the appearance of spaceships, computers and the Internet not extremely improbable, we have to conclude that at least the basic principle behind the second law has in fact been violated here.
I have never played in Sewell’s argument, but there is something I find interesting, and others can choose for themselves if they find it interesting as well: The appearance of spaceships and computers on Earth is wholly dependent upon the appearance of biological organization, which is driven by information (i.e. form recorded in the arrangement of a material medium). So how does the second law relate to the appearance of the information that drives biology? I am sure there are many ways to answer this question, but one of them relates directly to the possibility (or impossibility) of information to exist in the first place – and specifically how biological information exists in the genetic medium. For information to be recorded in the arrangement of a medium, where that arrangement can be temporally translated into a physical effect unrelated to the medium itself, a system of symbols or representations are fundamentally required (i.e. semiotic constraint on dynamical effects). (NOTE: Here, a symbol is materially defined as an arrangement of matter/energy that can evoke a specific effect within a system, where the arrangement of the matter is physicochemically arbitrary to the effect it evokes). The focus then turns to how the second law of thermodynamics relates to the material symbol structures which make genetic information possible (i.e. the physical means by which genetic information is recorded in the genome). And this is what I find interesting. In a private correspondence, an acclaimed professor of Physics related the issue to me, thusly:
One can derive from thermodynamic laws that stable structures are in some form of minimum energy state, e.g., see here. For one dimensional string structures like nucleic acids or words or bit strings there are an immense number of strings with the same minimum energy … That means that physical laws do not determine the sequence. That is, given no other information, the sequences are equiprobable. I argue that this is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for symbols and information storage.
The eminent physicist Howard Pattee talked about this issue as well in several of his publications, specifically in terms of “rate-independence”, i.e. that genetic symbols are organized independent of the rate of exchange in energy (second law), even as they operate under those laws.
Evolution requires the genotype-phenotype distinction, a primeval epistemic cut that separates energy-degenerate, rate-independent genetic symbols from the rate-dependent dynamics of construction that they control. This symbol-matter or subject-object distinction occurs at all higher levels where symbols are related to a referent by an arbitrary code.
(and also)
Physical laws and semiotic controls require disjoint, complementary modes of conceptualization and description. Laws are global and inexorable. Controls are local and conditional. Life originated with semiotic controls. Semiotic controls require measurement, memory, and selection, none of which are functionally describable by physical laws that, unlike semiotic systems, are based on energy, time, and rates of change. However, they are structurally describable in the language of physics in terms of nonintegrable constraints, energy degenerate states, temporal incoherence, and irreversible dissipative events.
The genetic symbol is the nucleic triplet; a dimensional symbol structure. What is operative about the triplet within the genetic translation system is not locally derivable from thermodynamics. This is a material fact before we even get to the content of the information. So what has been demonstrated is rate-independent symbol structures controlling the rate-dependent dynamics of biological organization, leading to computers and spaceships. So it seems to me that we do not have a violation of the second law, but a local exclusion of the second law instantiated within a system. This exclusion has been proposed by logicians, identified by physicists, demonstrated by biologists, and repeatedly pointed out by IDist (at the absolute scorn of everyone else). So to Sewell’s argument, does the influx of rate-dependent energy on Earth make the appearance of rate-independent symbols within a local system more likely? Matzke’s answer is that he won’t debate the issue, at least not with an ID layman like myself. On the other hand, ID critics like Elizabeth Liddle are all too willing to propose their solutions. They propose that from rate-dependent transcription (i.e. pair bonding), rate-independent symbol structures will emerge. This view is then defended as a “plausible explanation”. Who can argue with that?Upright BiPed_{July 2, 2013
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For anyone who still doesn't get it, here is an explanation of Granville's biggest error. The compensation argument says that entropy can decrease in a system as long as there is a sufficiently large net export of entropy from the system. Granville misinterpets the compensation argument as saying that anything, no matter how improbable, can happen in a system as long as the above criterion is met. This is obviously wrong, so Granville concludes that the compensation argument is invalid. In reality, only his interpretation of the compensation argument is invalid. The compensation argument itself is perfectly valid. The compensation argument shows that evolution doesn't violate the second law. It does not say whether evolution happened; that is a different argument. Granville confuses the two issues because of his misunderstanding of the compensation argument. Since the second law isn't violated, it has no further relevance. Granville is skeptical of evolution, but his skepticism has nothing to do with the second law. He is just like every other IDer and creationist: an evolution skeptic. You can see why this is a huge disappointment to him. Imagine if he had actually succeeded in showing that evolution violated a fundamental law of nature!keiths_{July 2, 2013
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keiths is attacking Granville yet neither keiths nor any other evo can produce any eviudence to refute Dr Sewell. That alone is very telling...Joe_{July 2, 2013
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Elizabeth BS Liddle:
Except that it’s worth making the point that some of us think that ID papers (with a very few exceptions) really are bad science!
LoL! Given what you accept as "good science" your opinion on ID means nothing.Joe_{July 2, 2013
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And the excuses for the inexcusable keep rolling on . . .kairosfocus_{July 2, 2013
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Gregory: I have never reviewed an ID paper for any academic publisher. *Nor did I ever say that I had.* I have, however, peer-reviewed scholarly books and papers on subjects other than ID, and that means I understand something of peer review. You challenged my knowledge of the peer review process. You were wrong to do so. I have been peer-reviewing for a lot longer than you have -- if you have ever done any peer-reviewing at all. I support peer review for all scientific articles and books, whether they are written by ID proponents or not. And I have nothing against ID articles being rejected if they are truly rejected for being scientifically substandard, and not merely because they they advocate ID (or -- as happens more often -- do not even advocate ID but are merely written by someone known to be sympathetic to ID). I ask for *no* special favors for ID authors. I ask only that no special prejudice be brought into play against them. We know that in Granville's case such prejudice was in fact brought into play; we know the same regarding the Sternberg-Meyer affair; and there is strong reason (pending clarification from Matzke) to think that such prejudice was brought into play regarding the BI conference papers. No one here is demanding "affirmative action" for ID papers. All that we want is a level playing field, with no behind-the-scenes manipulation of the normal publishing or editing processes. That's simple procedural justice. It's expected of every government and law court in the free world. It should be expected of academics (including scientists) as well.Timaeus_{July 2, 2013
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For what it's worth, at least one of the letters that was sent to Springer (by Bob O'Hara, a biostatistician) was posted at AtBC:
Hi! (I'm not sure if you're the correct person to contact about this, if you're not, could you pass this on to whoever is responsible). I've just found out about your forthcoming book "Biological Information: New Perspectives" (http://www.springer.com/engineering/computational+intelligence+and+comp lexity/book/978-3-642-28453-3). This has the potential to be a controversial text (as the editors are all active in pushing Intelligent Design), so I'm wondering why it's being published as an engineering text, rather than biology: it would seem to be a better fit there. Thanks in advance.
He also posted the response:
Dear Bob, thank you for your important mail concerning the planned book "Biological Information: New Perspectives". The book has been acquired and reviewed by our experienced series editors of the book series "Intelligent Systems Reference Library" so it was a natural choice to publish it there under the umbrella of applied sciences. Thank you for your very valuable remark concerning Intelligent design, we will doublecheck the situation with the reviewers and the book editors and definitely will add a suitable Biology code.
Do we have any information at all about who else wrote to Springer? Is there even any evidence that Matzke wrote to Springer? Also, I can't find anything about a boycott Nick has a response to this thread here. I will post Timaeus's questions in that thread.Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 2, 2013
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"I fully support the notion of peer review." - timaeus
...except when it invalidates IDism, *after* the paper has been read by accredited scientists/scholars, especially by Abrahamic believers. As you are in fact an editor, a non-academic, (purposefully) non-tenured timaeus, my remarks speak to reality, not to the fantasy ideal you wish for. Have you peer-reviewed a single IDist paper for a professional (non-DI-sponsored) journal? No. Say otherwise if you wish to deceive people here, timaeus. You rhetorically 'do not insist' on 'ID science,' yet nevertheless intentionally propagandize for it. That's a reality of on-line communication so far, timaeus. And it is sad in your case. Nick Matzske is a model of patience and academic disclosure compared with Expelled Syndrome (hide behind pseudonyms and fear) IDists like 'timaeus.'Gregory_{July 2, 2013
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Gregory: Don't speak about matters of which you are ignorant. I have in fact been peer-reviewing scholarly articles and scholarly books for more than 20 years now, and am still doing so in 2013. I have been regularly praised by the publishers and editors for the thoroughness and care (and academic balance and fairness) of my peer reviews. Authors have even sent back praise to the editors saying how useful my comments have been. So I am quite aware of what is involved in the process when it is executed properly, and I fully support the notion of peer review. What I don't support is prejudice which concludes in advance that a paper can't possibly be any good when the paper has not been read. Your continued ad hominem remarks are unwelcome.Timaeus_{July 2, 2013
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Elizabeth: I agree with most of your statements at the end of 157. As for: "As I keep saying, all I ask is that papers in a scientific imprint are properly reviewed" Nobody here disagrees with that! But as *I* keep saying, the inference made by Matzke, i.e., "Since these conference papers were accepted by the publisher, it follows that they couldn't possibly have been properly reviewed," is an illegitimate inference, given that he had not read a single one of the papers, and given that he had no acquaintance with the views of many of the authors. I could believe that Matzke acted in good faith if his communication to Springer had avoided all mention of "ID" "creationism" etc. and had posed a question like this: "Dear Sir or Madam: "I understand that you have undertaken to publish the proceedings of the BI conference held in Ithaca, NY. I was not at this conference and I have not myself read any of the papers, so I will not make any comment on their actual or potential contents, but may I ask -- not necessarily intending to alarm you, but purely for informational purposes -- were these papers individually reviewed by scientists in the relevant fields before being accepted for publication? "Sincerely, Nick Matzke, Ph.D. student, evolutionary biology" Such a letter could plausibly be construed as having been written in the interest of promoting good science, and not out of malice aforethought, because it would have avoided poisoning the well through the use of labels, emotive trigger words, and guilt by association. I fully expect, however (based on long experience of how Matzke operates), that the letter Matzke wrote was considerably more histrionic than this. That's all I have to say on the subject, unless Matzke provides information that requires a new evaluation.Timaeus_{July 2, 2013
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"I know that Nick will not respond to any questions from anyone he associates with the ID side." Nick has imo been rather patient responding to people here at UD. People 'associated' with IDism, like timaeus, are generally not worth wasting time on. "The way you and others represent ID science, it is so bad that even a non-specialist can see the errors in it." - timeaus But timaeus, even you do not 'insist on' the absolute 'scientificity' of IDT. So your complaint is yet again empty rhetoric. "anyone can smell the “creationism” in it [IDism] a mile away." - timaeus Yeah, of course, duh! Did you think people were too stupid to see this? timeaus, you sound like you have been so long out of the peer review process (2006 political science you said was your most recent publication) as to have little understanding of how publications work nowadays. Sure, you've published in a Discovery Institute Press book. But that's not 'normal' in scholarly publishing. In regard to 'publisher cowardice,' show to us please timaeus where you have participated in 'publisher courage'? I expect silence from timaeus.Gregory_{July 2, 2013
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CS3, I'm guessing that you posted your #163 before seeing my #162, which explains why you and Timaeus are incorrect.keiths_{July 2, 2013
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CS3, If there is no association with the second law (and there isn't, as the entropy equation shows), then what's left? Just Granville stating that he thinks evolution is improbable. Like every other IDer and creationist in the world.keiths_{July 2, 2013
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Timaeus: I agree. While Sewell may well personally believe that evolution is extremely improbable, his paper does not, and does not claim to, prove that. As you say, it is intended to refute the usual versions of the compensation argument. While intuition would certainly lead us to believe that humans and computers arising on a previously barren planet is, like a crushed bullet reforming or a mirror assembling from scattered glass, improbable, whether Darwinian mechanisms actually show that intuition to be wrong is a question to be decided by the biological evidence, not the Second Law.CS3_{July 2, 2013
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Timaeus, From the abstract:
Thus unless we are willing to argue that the influx of solar energy into the Earth makes the appearance of spaceships, computers and the Internet not extremely improbable, we have to conclude that at least the basic principle behind the second law has in fact been violated here.
Granville is not "willing to argue that the influx of solar energy into the Earth makes the appearance of spaceships, computers and the Internet not extremely improbable." Thus, by a simple deductive inference, Granville believes that "we have to conclude that at least the basic principle behind the second law has in fact been violated here."keiths_{July 2, 2013
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Even if one does not want to agree that there is an association with the Second Law, the following statement holds as a logical tautology:
If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering (or leaving), which makes it not extremely improbable.
CS3_{July 2, 2013
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keiths: "Granville wants the second law to rule out evolution" -- no, that is not his argument. He puts in many warning statements and precise qualifications in order to guard against that misinterpretation. You need to read his paper more carefully. cs3 has understood that Sewell's paper is limited to a refutation of the usual versions of the compensation argument. The larger question, whether evolution is compatible with the second law, is not addressed.Timaeus_{July 2, 2013
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I think a lot of the confusion regarding Sewell's paper results from a lack of familiarity with the compensation argument that it refutes. Thus, perhaps a summary of that argument, as presented by Styer and by Bunn, would be useful. They estimate how much more "improbable" some organism is than an ancestral organism, plug that and the time taken to evolve from the latter to the former into the Boltzmann formula, and then multiply by the number of organisms, to get a value, in Joules per degree Kelvin per second, for the entropy decrease due to the evolution. Then, they compare this value to the value for the increase in entropy in the cosmic microwave background. So long as the magnitude of the evolution entropy decrease is less than the magnitude of the cosmic microwave background increase, they conclude that "the second law of thermodynamics is safe." When discussing Sewell's work, critics will often say something along the lines that the influx of solar energy does make the appearance of humans, computers, etc. not extremely improbable. Certainly solar energy was necessary for the development of life, and one might argue that it could be considered a causative factor in the evolution of some features, such as photosynthesis. However, I cannot see how one could possibly argue that it is the causative factor for all of evolution. Does solar energy cause the mutations necessary to develop, say, a flagellum? Obviously not, so it is clear that Styer and Bunn are assuming that the increase in entropy in the cosmic microwave background need only compensate for, not cause, the entropy decrease in evolution. This illogical argument is what Sewell's paper shows to be flawed, due in large part to the fact that they assume that “entropy” is a single quantity which measures (in units of thermal entropy!) disorder of all types.CS3_{July 2, 2013
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CS3, The compensation argument is just a restatement of the entropy equation for open systems, which in turn is a direct consequence of the second law. When Granville argues against the compensation argument, he is unknowingly arguing against the second law. If you want to join him in his folly, be my guest. It's quite funny, actually. Granville sets out to show that evolution violates the second law, but he ends up inadvertently contradicting the second law himself! Besides incorrectly disputing the compensation argument, Granville also mangles his statement of it:
Anyone who has made such an argument is familiar with the standard reply: the Earth is not an isolated system, it receives energy from the sun, and entropy can decrease in a non-isolated system, as long as it is “compensated” somehow by a comparable or greater increase outside the system.
That is wrong, of course. The compensation argument, being a restatement of the entropy equation for open systems, requires a net export of entropy across the boundary of the system. An arbitrary increase in entropy in some arbitrary location outside the system won't suffice. The entropy equation for an open system merely says that if the entropy of an open system decreases by a certain amount, then the net entropy exported from the system exceeds the entropy produced within the system itself by the same amount. That's it. Granville is unhappy that it doesn't do more than this. His frustration is palpable:
One can still argue that it only seems extremely improbable, but really isn’t, that under the right conditions, the influx of stellar energy into a planet could cause atoms to rearrange themselves into computers and laser printers and the Internet. But one would think that at least this would be considered an open question, and those who argue that it really is extremely improbable, and thus contrary to the basic principle underlying the second law of thermodynamics, would be given a measure of respect, and taken seriously by their colleagues, but we aren’t.
He is effectively saying that the compensation argument allows for entropy reductions on Earth, and evolution is an example of an entropy reduction; but he thinks evolution is improbable, so the compensation argument must be invalid. A total non-sequitur. Granville wants the second law to rule out evolution, but all it does is rule out violations of the second law. His skepticism about sunlight producing computers over the long haul is just your standard ID skepticism about evolution. The second law has nothing to do with it, because the second law is not violated by it.keiths_{July 2, 2013
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Timaeus:
Elizabeth: Thank you for your clarifications. I know that Nick will not respond to any questions from anyone he associates with the ID side. He may respond to you. If he is amenable to replying to you and allowing you to post either his actual words, or your own summary of his words, here, or on your site, that would be helpful.
In that case, I will do so.
I find it beyond belief that if the papers at the conference were largely substandard, that Springer’s internal and external review processes would not have uncovered this. One or two weak papers might have slipped through the net, but the whole set? That’s hardly credible. The way you and others represent ID science, it is so bad that even a non-specialist can see the errors in it. And the way Nick represents ID science, anyone can smell the “creationism” in it a mile away. So presumably, on Nick’s characterization of the likely quality of the papers he hadn’t read, at least every other paper would have been decaying refuse whose stench would give it away to a reviewer with even minimal scientific competence. But apparently this was not the reaction of the publisher or the reviewers. So were the papers accidentally sent out to the Three Stooges for review, instead of to profs at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, etc.?
In my experience, papers get through peer-review when they are sent to reviewers out of field. This sometimes happens with papers that cross disciplinary boundaries. I've sometimes reviewed a paper that I thought was terrible, but has been approved by another reviewer, presumably not expert in the part of the paper that was terrible. And a lot of bad papers are nonetheless published. And I don't think all papers by ID proponents are terrible. Usually those are the ones that are peer-reviewed!
You say that third-party intervention *after a publisher has accepted a paper* is not particularly rare. I would like you to document this. I believe it may happen when a third party knows that a certain paper was plagiarized, has appeared elsewhere, etc. I do not believe it is very common outside of this. All the full-time scientists I know of are very busy people, who have their hands full with teaching, research, and peer-reviewing papers that they have been *asked* by journal editors to review; they have very little time left over to interfere in the peer-review process of other papers concerning which they had no initial involvement.
Well, it's rare in that papers are usually not publicly available before they are published! It may become more common now that e-pubs are available so much earlier than the paper version, and you certainly find emendations to the versions in print. So I shouldn't have implied it was common. But it's not that unknown. And, indeed, as I said, apparently BIOcomplexity pulled a paper by Bozorgmehr, because of what was posted at UD. Although knowing Bozorgmehr he might have made that up.
I would guess that only 1 out of a 100 full-time scientists has ever, even once in his/her life, interceded as a third party to request that a publisher not publish *an already accepted paper*. And I would guess that in almost all such cases, the scientist in question has known something very specific about the contents of the allegedly problematic paper — either heard it read at a conference, or seen an early draft, etc. That certainly was not the case here. Matzke was not at the conference and had not read or seen early drafts of any of the papers; further, some of the authors were unknown to him and he would have had no way of judging the likely quality of their work. So this *was* unusual behavior under such circumstances.
I would agree.
In fact, I would say that third-party intervention even *before* a paper is accepted by a journal is relatively rare. Scientists are simply too busy doing peer-reviews of their own to be policing the peer-review process in other situations in order to make sure that the other peer-reviewers are doing their jobs well. And it would be professionally insulting in any case: a scientist wouldn’t walk into another scientist’s lab and tell the other scientist how to conduct his experiments (unless his advice was invited); so why would he write to a scientific publisher and say, “I hear you are thinking of publishing an article by Tom Smith, and I think Tom Smith’s work is trash, and I don’t think your usual reviewers, Bobby Jones and Glen Carpenter, are competent enough in the field to detect the trashiness of it, so I urge you to reject the article even if they recommend acceptance”? That would be an insult to the other reviewers, and to the publisher (implying that he was too ignorant in the field to appoint qualified reviewers). So I contend that this happens rarely. But if you think otherwise, document it, please.
I grant you "rarely" :) But I still think that Springer are the incompetents here - either for accepting a book without adequately reviewing it, or rejecting it on spurious grounds following pressure. Ironically, on free speech grounds I defend Nick's right to protest. Equally, I defend the book's authors right to publish. As I keep saying, all I ask is that papers in a scientific imprint are properly reviewed.Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 2, 2013
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F/N 2: Pardon my taking a moment to go off-topic for UD, to document what it is that so excited OM and ilk to try to push me into the same boat with Nazis, linked from here: __________ >>The concept of a watershed is a classic idea from Geography. There is an imaginary line, where if two raindrops fall on two sides of it, no matter how close, they fall into different drainage basins, and so could end up in oceans a continent apart. (Of course, (a) while two "drops" on different sides of a civilisational divide are still fairly close together, if one is on the wrong side, it is not too late to step back to the right side. But (b) the key thing about a watershed is that it naturally forces drops on either side farther and farther apart. So, (c) time is of the essence if the polarisation that a divide imposes is to be reversed. That is, (d) there is a window of decision, and time is not your friend, when you are on the wrong side of a watershed. And, let us never forget, that those who promoted various divisive heresies, and those who failed to handle them well in good time, between about the fourth and the early seventh centuries created the deep alienation and disaffection of Egypt and Syria, that opened the way for external invasion by the armies of the Islamic Caliphate. A house divided will not in the end be able to stand. [--> and yes, that is yet another relevant parallel drawn from history]) That is where our civilisation now stands, at a kairos -- a decisive moment and window of opportunity -- where our history will move in one of two ways beyond this point, for good or ill: either we become reconciled now, or soon from now the polarisation being injected into the body politic by the radicals pushing a destructively divisive agenda will create more and more alienation and irreconcilable differences. *And, what is at stake today is the destruction or survival of marriage, the foundational institution of stable families and communities alike. {U/D, May 12:} As Girgit, George and Anderson observe in the just linked Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy paper:
[T]he current debate is precisely over whether it is possible for the kind of union that has marriage’s essential fea?tures to exist between two people of the same sex. Revisionists do not propose leaving intact the historic definition of marriage and simply expanding the pool of people eligible to marry. Their goal is to abolish the conjugal conception of marriage in our law 10 and replace it with the revisionist [--> i.e. homosexualised] conception . . . ---------- F/N 10: Throughout history, no society’s laws have explicitly forbidden gay mar?riage. They have not explicitly forbidden it because, until recently, it has not been thought possible . . . [T]raditional marriage laws were not devised to oppress those with same?sex attractions. The comparison [to racist anti-miscegenation laws that forbade inter-racial marriages] is offensive, and puzzling to many—not least to the nearly two?thirds of black vot?ers who voted to uphold conjugal marriage under California Proposition Eight. See Cara Mia DiMassa & Jessica Garrison, Why Gays, Blacks are Divided on Prop. 8, L.A. TIMES, Nov. 8, 2008, at A1. [Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, & Ryan T. Anderson, "What is Marriage?" Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol 34, No. 1, p. 250 of 245 - 287. [--> I add, cf here on Masha Gessen's revealing remark]]
Already, the force of the homosexualist civilisational divide is at work, driving people on opposite sides of the issue farther and farther apart, and creating the perception that those who stand up in defence of marriage as it has historically been established are little better than hateful, racist bigots. [--> this was said over a year ago] Which, is obscenely slanderous, but is increasingly routine. Indeed, this smear- and- demonise strategy is not calculated to foster dialogue and build a new consensus, but to shut it down, and to intimidate objectors to the homosexualisation of marriage -- thus the destruction of its essential character. Then, eventually it is intended to crack down on those who insist on objecting, under the colours -- but not the true substance -- of law. Which, in some jurisdictions, has already begun. The polarising divide has begun. So, I am of the view that time is short, and we need to step back from the brink of a division being injected into our civilisation on the core nature of family that once it goes far enough cannot be healed and will do great harm. Harm, that zealous advocates of "fairness" and "rights" and even "progress" as they imagine them may not even fully understand. For instance, a claim to a right is in the end a moral claim that calls for respecting something inherent to our being made in God's image. So, rights are not to be equated with political entitlements, and one cannot properly demand a "right" in defiance of the creation order established by God; here, that we are made in two complementary sexes, so that committed marriage is the foundation of family, stable child rearing and a stable community. There is and can be no right to destroy the foundation of a viable society by arbitrarily abusing political power or media and/or academic influence to mislead the public, and backing it up with the organs of state power. [--> observe the principles laid out here] That is, there is no such thing as a right to do evil based on falsehoods and then demand approval of evil by force of law. That, is injustice -- just as was the notion that one man could steal and trade another, selling him or her to a "master" who then had the power backed up by state power to do anything he pleased with his slave. But, once slavery and the evil trade that fed it were deeply entrenched in the halls of power, it cost our civilisation a terrible fight, with much bloodshed involved, to root it out. [--> notice the historical parallel on what happens when a society entrenches evil under false colour of law backed up by economic and political interests] And yes, the evil that is now upon us, homosexualisation of marriage and family -- thus, of community, education and law -- in defiance of the patent creation order, is the full moral equivalent of slavery. For, if successful, it will impose an iron tyranny on the conscience; never mind cheap promises to protect sensibilities for the moment. After all, we are already seeing just how clearly ruthless radical factions will forever be demanding more, more and more until they get their way regardless of who else they must trample upon to get what they want. [--> note the issue of the principle of liberty vs license] Rights, to such, are simply the rewards of power. In short, we are back to the problem of nihilism: might (and manipulation) make "right" and "rights." . . . >> [More there . . . and of course from Plato on it has been notorious that evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers open the door to just such nihilism, cf here.] __________ Of course, this same pattern of trying to shut down open and responsible discussion is exactly what has motivated the bully-boy tactics used to censor the Proceedings of the conference held at Cornell two years ago. In short, the tactics being used by too many Darwinist supporters are all of a common pattern. Whether or not the radicals are willing to admit it. Most likely, not. Radicals like this are usually not open to either reason or pleas to decency. Let us hope, however, that enough ordinary people of common good sense will wake up to stop the mad rush of radicals to polarise, defame and marginalise those who challenge darwinist orthodoxy or radical homosexualisation or ever so many other partyline agenda items
[ --> if you want to change create a crisis, so our time rushes from one manufactured crisis tot he next . . . all of which pursue the one and the same design through one and the same pattern of abuses and usurpations that trespass on our reluctance to stand up, often until it is too late . . . ],
. . . before we pay a terrible price for our folly as a civilisation. KFkairosfocus_{July 2, 2013
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KS: It is patent that you are addicted to the twist-about, false accusation that I had occasion to highlight in 132 above as a key warning flag on dangerous trends in public discourse in our time. It is of course an often effective rhetorical cheap shot to try the immoral equivalency game. But there is no immoral equivalency between trying to promote a slander that tries to push me into the same boat with Nazis on a matter where I agree with a great many people across the ages and today who have serious questions of principle, policy and prudence about the radical push to homosexualise our civilisation [Onlookers, you can start here as just one step . . . the attempt to smear and stereotype then scapegoat and even criminalise those who question homosexualist agendas in light of principled concerns is itself a sign of the violently hostile and destructive nature of the agenda (notice how those who come here to push this partyline simply will not show any sign of seriously taking note of the matters of concern and principle raised there and in other serious reflections; to get an idea of my reasons for my views, try here for a blog post written as a response to Mr Obama's endorsement as another, which pivots on homosexualisation of marriage as a watershed cultural and moral issue, and where it leads our civilisation . . . )] and plainly unprincipled bullying used to censor a publisher. I must repeat, there is and can be no moral equivalency between such slander by OM as has been hosted at TSZ for months and which is still being defended by you and your ilk through unscrupulous rhetorical stratagems, and the pattern that is evident even in the thread above, of your ilk's denial and enabling of evil, twisted-about turn-speech accusations, projections of immoral equivalency that have no foundation, and promotion of outright censorship by bullying of publishers. And, this comes just after I took time to point to the exact nature of what was censored, as an obvious poisonous distraction from it, as in red herrings, led out top strawman caricatures deliberately loaded with ad hominems and set alight to cloud, confuse, polarise and poison the atmosphere. A sorry spectacle. That after being corrected on such, you still try to play the twist-about rhetoric game in order to blame the victim of a slander speaks volumes, and none of it to your good. KFkairosfocus_{July 2, 2013
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KF,
KS: You came here picking a fight. You got one in spades. And your credibility — on the assumption that you had any coming in the door, on track record — has evaporated.
So says Mr. "Don't call me a Nazi, you Nazi!" What was that about credibility?keiths_{July 1, 2013
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CS3: Well put. KFkairosfocus_{July 1, 2013
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F/N: Instead of speaking in the abstract, we can look at the collection of papers here and examine the Amazon announcement here. It is quite obvious from the exchanges above that we have had a case of ideological thuggery used to intimidate a publisher and to force withdrawal of a proceedings with significant papers in it, from publication, because of ideological pressure. For instance, I would find this paper by Dembski, Marks and Ewert, is already highly significant as extending and making more conceptually explicit the whole idea of search by evolutionary algorithms and the consequences of such. This, by Montanez and others including Sanford, on the issue of polyfuncitonality and how it constrains the likelihood of successful mutation, is worth noting. Already note this from the abstract:
"the probability of beneficial mutation drastically diminishes as the number of overlapping codes increases. The growing evidence for a high degree of optimization in biological systems, and the growing evidence for multiple levels of poly-functionality within DNA, both suggest that muta-tions that are unambiguously beneficial must be especially rare. The theoretical scarcity of beneficial mutations is compounded by the fact that most of the beneficial mutations that do arise should confer extremely small increments of improvement in terms of total biological function. This makes such mutations invisible to natural selection."
That point alone is enough to drastically question and undermine the macroevolutionary picture so often presented to us as assured fact. Let's just say that I never even bothered to try the tricks used by talented microcontroller designers where the same memory space on one view is data and on another is code. I was ever so glad that in my day we had enough RAM and EPROM to do otherwise. Polyfunctional codes interwoven in a system is a significant indicator best explained on design. Similarly, this by Sewell -- in a paper that was already suppressed previously under similar circumstances -- is at minimum well worth pondering:
the equations for entropy change do not support the illogical [energy inflow] “compensation” idea; instead, they illustrate the tautology that “if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering (or leaving) which makes it not extremely improbable.” Thus unless we are willing to argue that the influx of solar energy into the Earth makes the appearance of spaceships, computers and the Internet not extremely improbable, we have to conclude that at least the basic principle behind the second law has in fact been violated here.
In the terms of config spaces and narrow zones of interest, with tightly restricted search relative to space, that makes a lot of sense. The stunts repeatedly used to duck this point on the 500H toy example recently, underscore its relevance. McIntosh's remarks here are similarly of significance, building on the point long ago made by Thaxton et al in TMLO:
Are there laws of information exchange? And how do the principles of thermodynamics connect with the communication of information? We consider first the concept of information and examine the various alternatives for its defini-tion. The reductionist approach has been to regard information as arising out of matter and energy. In such an approach, coded information systems such as DNA are regarded as accidental in terms of the origin of life, and it is argued that these then led to the evolution of all life forms as a process of increasing complexity by natural selection operating on mutations on these first forms of life. However scientists in the discipline of thermodynamics have long been aware that organisational systems are inherently systems with low local entropy, and have argued that the only way to have consistency with an evolutionary model of the universe and common descent of all life forms is to posit a flow of low entropy into the earth’s environment and in this second approach they suggest that islands of low entropy form organisational structures found in living systems. A third alternative proposes that information is in fact non-material and that the coded informa-tion systems (such as, but not restricted to the coding of DNA in all living systems) is not defined at all by the biochemistry or physics of the molecules used to store the data. Rather than matter and energy defining the information sitting on the polymers of life, this approach posits that the reverse is in fact the case. Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/ organisational interactions, which despite the efforts from alternative paradigms has not given a satisfactory explanation of the way information in systems operates. Starting from the paradigm of information being defined by non-material arrangement and coding, one can then postulate the idea of laws of information exchange which have some parallels with the laws of thermodynamics which undergird such an approach. These issues are explored tentatively in this paper, and lay the groundwork for further investigative study.
Finally, as an excerpt for pondering, this from Sanford, is well worth pondering though it is not from a paper but a section introduction:
When DNA was discovered, it finally became clear that genetic information is very much like human written information — an extensive array of language-encoded strings of text. Where did all these text strings come from? For most biologists the already-ruling Darwinian paradigm seemed to be sufficient — they assumed that all biological information must arise merely by random letter changes in the text, combined with some reproductive filtering. In the last 60 years, many thousands of scientists have made a truly monumental effort to try to explain the entire biosphere, just in terms of random mutations which are fil-tered by natural selection. Has this effort been successful? It has certainly been successful in a sociological sense — this view is now faithfully upheld by the large majority in the academic community. The neo-Darwinian paradigm literally saturates the content of most biological journals. In fact any deviation from this view is generally regarded as academic treason — often being characterized as a threat to science itself. Yet in this section of our proceedings (Biological Information and Genetic Theory), we will show that there are huge genetic problems which bring this reigning paradigm into serious question.
And, it is almost funny how prophetic those bolded words were. The result of the intervention by NM, as obviously intended, was delay of publication probably by over a year, and forcing the proceedings to come out in the name of a much less prestigious publisher. Prior restraint on publication by exercise of power is a classical definition of censorship. And in that context boasting of how ID-friendly papers are not frequent in the literature or in the top drawer literature, is a boast of successful censorship, not a statement on the actual merits of the matters at stake. Copies may not have been burned, but censorship rooted in ideological thuggery dressed up in a lab coat and driven by a priori Lewontinian evolutionary materialism and/or its travelling companions is precisely what we have had here. For shame! Or, at least, try to have the decency to be ashamed! KFkairosfocus_{July 1, 2013
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What you’re missing is that if the compensation argument were invalid, as you claim, then any local decrease in entropy (including in plants) would be a violation of the second law.
No, the compensation argument claims that a type of order that enters an open system need only compensate for a decrease in some type of entropy that would have been improbable in a closed system, while Sewell has shown that the type of order that enters the open system needs to cause the decrease in entropy that would have been improbable in a closed system. If what enters is a type of order that makes the local decrease not improbable, then indeed there can be a local decrease (for example, sunlight entering a plant can cause growth). However, if what is entering the system is not causally related to the event in question, then its entry into the system does not simply "compensate" for the unrelated decrease in entropy (for example, cosmic rays entering a computer won't result in the bits changing into an ASCII representation of a Shakespeare play). You still have not answered my question as to whether you believe Styer and Bunn's methodology of using the Boltzmann formula to convert the change in the "improbability" of organisms at one point in time to their "improbability" at another point in time to Joules per degree Kelvin per second seems perfectly sensible to you. As Sewell acknowledges in the paper, it may be possible to defend the appearance of spaceships and computers in other ways without postulating a violation of the second law, just not using the compensation argument as presented by people such as Asimov, Styer, and Bunn. Maybe only a few people actually make this compensation argument as presented by these people, and thus Sewell's point is only contrary to them and not relevant to neo-Darwinists as a whole. However, I know the first rule of message board posting for neo-Darwinists is to never, ever concede that any person associated with ID could ever be right about any point in conflict with any person associated with defending neo-Darwinism, even if that point is not necessarily fatal to neo-Darwinism.
Sure, you think the appearance of spaceships and computers is improbable; but that is not the same thing as saying that their appearance violates the second law.
Below are three quotations. Two are from standard physics and chemistry textbooks (Basic Physics by Kenneth Ford and General Chemistry by Whitten Davis and Peck), while one "would be laughed out of any reputable physics conference." Which are which?
Imagine a motion picture of any scene of ordinary life run backward. You might watch…a pair of mangled automobiles undergoing instantaneous repair as they back apart. Or a dead rabbit rising to scamper backward into the woods as a crushed bullet re-forms and flies backward into a rifle…. Or something as simple as a cup of coffee on a table gradually becoming warmer as it draws heat from its cooler surroundings. All of these backward-in-time views and a myriad more that you can quickly think of are ludicrous and impossible for one reason only: they violate the second law of thermodynamics. In the actual scene of events, entropy is increasing. In the time reversed view, entropy is decreasing.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is based on our experiences. Some examples illustrate this law in the macroscopic world. When a mirror is dropped, it can shatter...The reverse of any spontaneous change is nonspontaneous, because if it did occur, the universe would tend toward a state of greater order. This is contrary to our experience. We would be very surprised if we dropped some pieces of silvered glass on the floor and a mirror spontaneously assembled...The ideas of entropy, order, and disorder are related to probability.

Thus unless we are willing to argue that the influx of solar energy into the Earth makes the appearance of spaceships, computers and the Internet not extremely improbable, we have to conclude that at least the basic principle behind the second law has in fact been violated here.
The only difference in these three statements is that neo-Darwinists believe they have a mechanism for the third. And perhaps they are correct, as Sewell acknowledges. But you can't just dismiss the issue by appealing to the compensation argument.CS3_{July 1, 2013
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KS: You came here picking a fight. You got one in spades. And your credibility -- on the assumption that you had any coming in the door, on track record -- has evaporated. Take a moment to look back above and see how you and your ilk arfe cming across in this thread and related ones, starting with the attempt to dodge and duck about a case of censorship, multiplied by copious doses of attempted twisting-about of issues at stake. KF PS: I am very aware of Darwin's little discussion on remorse at having improperly hit a dog. That simply shows that his conscience had not utterly been corrupted by the amorality and nihilism that -- on a long, grim track record of history multiplied by the implications of a worldview with no foundational IS capable of bearing the weight of OUGHT -- evolutionary materialism so often opens the door to. As Plato warned against.kairosfocus_{July 1, 2013
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Hi Franklin, please post the complete email from Eric Merkel-Sobotta. The one Mr Zimmer got! The book got pulled for additional review after Springer was contacted and notified that the authors were ID proponents.julianbre_{July 1, 2013
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