Review of Darwin’s Doubt slams ID theorists for not publishing in Darwinist-run journals
| May 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Books of interest, Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Peer review |
From Daniel Muth at Living Church, reviewing Steve Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt:
I am fairly certain that there are thoughtful and potentially influential intellectual movements that have been subjected to more shameful and inexcusable misrepresentation and ill treatment than Intelligent Design (ID), but the list is not long (Roman Catholic teaching on artificial birth control comes to mind). To be fair, ID theorists have invited critique in no small part by tending to hold theirs out as a valid area of scientific research while mainly publishing popular books rather than peer-reviewed articles. If their intention was not to be lumped in with creationists, it has not worked.
From the disastrous Dover School Board lawsuit to the propaganda screeds of the New Atheists, ID has managed in a short time to fix itself in the popular consciousness as little but another movement of bellicose anti-scientific crackpots. That is a shame, because the theorists are generally quite thoughtful and reputably credentialed. The stuff they have written is informative, challenging, and worthwhile. More.
Muth appears to believe the incorrect information I (O’Leary for News) know for a fact that they were not. They thought the Dover school board’s decision, which resulted in the case, was appalling but also felt they ought to get involved to try to minimize the damage. The myth he refers to persists because people often don’t actually want to know what happened. If they do, they can’t really say the things they feel burdened to say and can gain approval for saying.
As for “mainly publishing popular books rather than peer-reviewed articles,” surely Muth is not so naive as to imagine that Darwinist-run journals would publish good ID research?
Just recently, Gunter Bechly, the gifted scientist who was disappeared from Wikipedia after he turned out to be an ID supporter described a beautiful dragonfly fossil with ID implications, which he had spent some time studying, in a peer-reviewed ID journal, BIO-Complexity.
He was promptly slammed for not publishing it in a Darwinist-run journal—as if Darwinists would have accepted it. And as if they would allow a discussion of the way it upsets neat Darwinian categories—other than a discussion entirely controlled by themselves which closes with reassurances that all is well.
But then that is probably what Living Church readers want: reassurances that a good Christian just accepts whatever mainstream science says, whatever it is. Makes life easier.
Here’s a thought: When a “thoughtful and potentially influential intellectual” movement is “subjected to more shameful and inexcusable misrepresentation and ill treatment,” it is usually due to intellectual corruption in the establishment. Again, one hesitates to believe that Muth is too naive to know that, but is there a better explanation? If so, what?
See also: Evolution News slams “sloppy” IV book by BioLogos advisor
and
Fossil dragonfly named in Mike Behe’s honor has implications for ID
Note: In the combox below, bornagain77 offers examples of what happens when ID theorists or sympathizers try to publish in Darwin-sympathetic journals. I he taken the liberty of posting it here to the OP. Essentially, the evidence the ID theorists offer against Darwinism proves that they are outsiders. Insiders circle the wagons to protect a theory (Darwinism) that has become largely meaningless where it is not metaphysical. It has become so vague as to be largely unfalsifiable. And they like it that way. And they plan to keep evolution studies that way. nyway, here are some stories to ponder in that light:
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At post 9 Allan Keith states this in regards to Darwinian journals not allowing ID friendly papers:
I often here this claim but I have never seen any concrete examples. It would be of great interest to post a rejected paper here along with the reviewers comments and reason for rejection.
Well, here are a few examples of Darwinists publicly suppressing dissent from their views:
Richard Sternberg
Richard Sternberg – Smithsonian Controversy
In 2004, in my capacity as editor of The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, I authorized “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories” by Dr. Stephen Meyer to be published in the journal after passing peer-review. Because Dr. Meyer’s article presented scientific evidence for intelligent design in biology, I faced retaliation, defamation, harassment, and a hostile work environment at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History that was designed to force me out as a Research Associate there. These actions were taken by federal government employees acting in concert with an outside advocacy group, the National Center for Science Education. Efforts were also made to get me fired from my job as a staff scientist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Subsequently, there were two federal investigations of my mistreatment, one by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in 2005 , and the other by subcommittee staff of the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform in 2006. Both investigations unearthed clear evidence that my rights had been repeatedly violated. Because there has been so much misinformation spread about what actually happened to me, I have decided to make available the relevant documents here for those who would like to know the truth.
http://www.richardsternberg.com/smithsonian.php
Douglas Axe:
Douglas Axe, director of the Biologic Institute in Seattle, knows this first-hand. As a post-doctoral researcher at the prestigious Medical Research Council Centre in Cambridge in 2002, he was experimenting on protein structures when his superiors discovered that his research was being funded in part by an intelligent design organization. The science was solid – he later published his findings in a prestigious journal – but his association with intelligent design was considered unacceptable. He was asked to leave.
http://www.jewishpress.com/ind…..016/07/27/
Granville Sewell
ENV readers will recall that last year, University of Texas El Paso mathematics professor Granville Sewell was disallowed from publishing an article in Applied Mathematics Letters (AML) simply because it was (indirectly) critical of Darwinian evolution.
https://evolutionnews.org/2012/04/double_censorsh/
Guillermo Gonzalez
As we amply documented at the time, the real reasons Gonzalez did not get tenure at ISU were simple: discrimination and intolerance. Despite an exemplary record as a scientist, Gonzalez was rejected by ISU because of his support for intelligent design.
https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/setting_the_rec/
Günter Bechly
Wikipedia Erases Paleontologist Günter Bechly
https://evolutionnews.org/2017/10/wikipedia-erases-paleontologist-gunter-bechly/
William Dembski and Robert Marks:
Academic Freedom Expelled from Baylor University
https://evolutionnews.org/2007/09/academic_freedom_expelled_from/
Michael Behe
ID theorist Mike Behe was refused a response in Microbe – September 22, 2013
http://www.uncommondescent.com…..n-microbe/So, Michael Behe Was Right After All; What Will the Critics Say Now? – Casey Luskin July 16, 2014
Excerpt: Will Ken Miller, Jerry Coyne, Paul Gross, Nick Matzke, Sean Carroll, Richard Dawkins, and PZ Myers now Apologize to Michael Behe? (for their ad hominem attacks),,,
Is an apology from Behe’s critics then forthcoming? In a world where debates were conducted with the goal of discovering truth rather (than) scoring points, it sure ought to be. Unfortunately, I’m not sure we live in that world.
What we’ll probably get is nothing more than PZ Myers’s concession, offered in the context of the rant quoted above,,,
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2…..87901.html
Stephen Meyer
The Letter that Science Refused to Publish – November 8, 2013
Excerpt: Stephen Meyer sought the opportunity to reply, in the pages of Science, to UC Berkeley paleontologist Charles Marshall, who reviewed Darwin’s Doubt in the same publication. Without explanation, the editors refused to publish the letter. We offer it for your interest.
See more at:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2…..78871.html
The attempted censorship of the book “Biological Information: New Perspectives”
Censorship Loses: Never Forget the Story of Biological Information: New Perspectives
Casey Luskin – August 20, 2013
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2…..75541.html
James Tour and anyone he knew who signed the “Dissent from Darwinism” list
“In the last few years I have seen a saddening progression at several institutions. I have witnessed unfair treatment upon scientists that do not accept macroevolutionary arguments and for their having signed the above-referenced statement regarding the examination of Darwinism. (Dissent from Darwinism list)(I will comment no further regarding the specifics of the actions taken upon the skeptics; I love and honor my colleagues too much for that.) I never thought that science would have evolved like this. I deeply value the academy; teaching, professing and research in the university are my privileges and joys… ”
Professor James M. Tour – one of the ten most cited chemists in the world
http://www.uncommondescent.com…..evolution/
If silencing by intimidation, or censorship, does not work, Darwinists simply ‘EXPEL’ anyone who disagrees with them:
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (full movie)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5EPymcWp-gSlaughter of Dissidents – Book
“If folks liked Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” they will be blown away by “Slaughter of the Dissidents.” – Russ Miller
http://www.amazon.com/Slaughte…..0981873405Origins – Slaughter of the Dissidents with Dr. Jerry Bergman – 2011 – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6rzaM_BxBkSlaughter of the Dissidents – Dr. Jerry Bergman – June 2013 – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v5nAYU2GD0
Here are some of the peer reviewed papers supporting ID that have been published in spite of the systematic bias against ID:
BIBLIOGRAPHIC AND ANNOTATED LIST OF PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS SUPPORTING INTELLIGENT DESIGN – UPDATED – July 2017
http://www.discovery.org/scrip…..8;id=10141Evolutionary Informatics Lab – Main Publications
http://evoinfo.org/publications/Bio-Complexity Publication Archive
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/…..ue/archiveBiological Information – New Perspectives – Proceedings of the Symposium – published online May 2013
http://www.worldscientific.com…..8818#t=tocDr. David L. Abel (The Gene Emergence Project) – list of published papers
http://lifeorigin.academia.edu/DrDavidLAbel/Papers
Of related note:
But Darwinism is universally accepted among “real” scientists! – December 30, 2016
Excerpt: A friend started making a list of books that doubt all or most of modern Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, the slightly elastic Extended Synthesis, and came up with a three-tiered, hardly exhaustive, shelf:
St. George Mivart, On the Genesis of Species (1871)
Charles Hodge, What Is Darwinism (1874)
Samuel Butler, Evolution, Old and New (1879)
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (1907/tr. 1911)
Svante Arrhenius Worlds in the Making (1908)
Richard Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution (1940)
Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (1941)
Lecomte du Nouy, Human Destiny (1947)
Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (1959)
Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried (Delta, 1971)
Pierre Paul Grassé: “L´evolution du vivant” (1973)
Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (Harper, 1983)
L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities (1984)
Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985)
Soren Lovtrup Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (1987)
Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past: The Memory of Nature (1988)
R. F. Baum, Doctors of Modernity: Darwin, Marx & Freud (1988)
Robert Wesson, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT (1991)
Dorothy Kurth Boberg, Evolution and Reason – Beyond Darwin (1993)
Remy Chauvin: “Le darwinism où le fin d´un mythe” (1997)
Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Life: A New Look at Evolution (1998)
Stuart Newman and Gerd Muller (eds.), Origination of Organismal Form” (2002)
David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales (2006)
Etienne Gilson, From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again : A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution (2009)
Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, What Darwin God Wrong (2010)
Gerd Muller and Massimo Pigliucci, Evolution: the Extended Synthesis” (2010)
George McGhee, Convergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most Beautiful, MIT (2011)
Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos (2012)
A Lima-de-Faria, Evolution without Selection: Form and Function by Autoevolution (2013)
Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (2015 [updated from 1985])
Suzan Mazur’s:
The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry (2009)
Paradigm Shifters (2015) and
Public Evolution Summit (2016).
http://www.uncommondescent.com…..cientists/
Even though neo-Darwinists still like to complain that Intelligent Design advocates don’t have that many published peer-reviewed papers, it turns out that if one looks at the peer-reviewed papers coming from neo-Darwinists themselves, the evidence will many times directly, and overwhelmingly, support the Intelligent Design position (such as ENCODE research), while their explanation for the evidence is found to be, many times, highly contrived, and twisted, just to support their presupposed philosophical conclusion of neo-Darwinism.
Darwinian ‘science’ in a nutshell:
Jonathan Wells on pop science boilerplate – April 20, 2015
Excerpt: Based on my reading of thousands of Peer-Reviewed Articles in the professional literature, I’ve distilled (the) template for writing scientific articles that deal with evolution:
1. (Presuppose that) Darwinian evolution is a fact.
2. We used [technique(s)] to study [feature(s)] in [name of species], and we unexpectedly found [results inconsistent with Darwinian evolution].
3. We propose [clever speculations], which might explain why the results appear to conflict with evolutionary theory.
4. We conclude that Darwinian evolution is a fact.
http://www.uncommondescent.com…..ilerplate/
153 Responses to Review of Darwin’s Doubt slams ID theorists for not publishing in Darwinist-run journals
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Sounds a bit hypocritical as there isn’t anything in peer-review that supports evolutionism. For example nothing supports the claim that ATP synthase evolved via natural selection, drift or any blind/ mindless process. There isn’t even a methodology to test such a claim
Or perhaps he’s taken an evidence-based approach and seen that “good ID research” has been published in “Darwinist-run journals” (e.g. Sanford & Basener’s recent paper).
as to this quote from the article:
Besides Muth being completely wrong about ID not being falsifiable, he erroneously believes Darwinian evolution IS falsifiable???
What a crock. Lack of a rigorous falsification criteria is the precise reason why Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a unfalsifiable pseudoscience rather than a testable science.
The primary reason why Darwinian evolution lacks any of the rigor that is usually associated with the hard sciences is because Darwinian evolution has no mathematical model to test against. As Dr. Robert Marks states “Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. ,,, there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,”
And the primary reason why nobody has ever been able to build a realistic mathematical model for Darwinian evolution to test against is simply because there is no ‘law of evolution’ within the known physical universe for mathematicians and physicists to ever build a realistic mathematical model upon:,,,
,,, And whereas Darwinian evolution has no known law of nature to appeal to so as to establish itself as a proper, testable, science, Intelligent Design does not suffer from such an embarrassing disconnect from physical reality. In other words, Intelligent Design can appeal directly to ‘the laws of conservation of information’ (Dembski, Marks, etc..) in order to establish itself as a proper, testable, and rigorous science.
And since Intelligent Design is mathematically based on the ‘law of conservation of information’, that makes Intelligent Design very much testable and potentially falsifiable, and thus makes Intelligent Design, unlike Darwinism, a rigorous science instead of a unfalsifiable pseudoscience.
In fact there is currently up to a 5 million dollar prize being offered for the first person that can “Show an example of Information that doesn’t come from a mind. All you need is one.”
Verse and Quote:
Bob O’H:
Or perhaps “Sanford & Basener’s” paper was published because it criticized Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem, something that had already been done by evolutionists.
After all, evolutionists tell us that the “modern synthesis” is dead; of which, Fisher’s theorem is part and parcel.
I, for one, admit to being “bellicose” at times; but only because you need a 2 x 4 to knock some sense into Darwinists (or is it “evolutionary biologists”) for whom only a stake through the heart will disabuse them of the failings and weaknesses of this theory.
PaV as to,
Since Darwinists believe in reductive materialism, and are therefore to be regarded as ‘neuronal illusions’ instead of real persons, I would hold that Darwinists should more properly be classified as mindless/soulless Zombies instead of as Vampires.
Therefore a stake through the heart, though good enough to stop a Vampire, is not enough to take out a Darwinian zombie.
And since, with Darwinists, we are in fact more realistically dealing with mindless/soulless zombies instead of vampires, then the prescribed methods of killing a Darwinian zombie are as such,,,
🙂
On the more serious side,, Dr Jonathan Wells has a book entitled ‘Zombie Science’
BA77:
Now you’ve gone and done it!
They will accuse you of inciting violence against them.
Not only do they have no free will, they have no sense of humor “;^)
Darwinists generally hate theism (especially Christianity) and anything that can be used to support it, including ID. They are hopelessly biased against ID and their journals reflect that bias… even hostility.
Darwinist idealogues are a/mat religious zealots who think they are smarter than they really are. And they never seem to consider that their chosen faith may be wrong.
To be honest, I don’t really like a/mats and could care less what happens to them. Blowhard a/mat haters like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Bill Maher, etc. are my enemies… not my friends.
Just being honest.
Correction: “couldn’t” care less… but I’m sure you got the point.
I often here this claim but I have never seen any concrete examples. It would be of great interest to post a rejected paper here along with the reviewers comments and reason for rejection.
PaV @ 4 –
Do you really think such violent rhetoric is appropriate? Aren’t you worried that your words could be used to advocate for assault and murder?
BA77, PAV:
And the prediction comes true! See@6
From the Muth review:
Paul Nelson in Touchstone magazine, Jul-Aug 2004:
It still is.
PaV @ 4
You might win a fight using a 2 x 4, you don’t win an argument. Unless you believe might is right.
Seversky is clueless. Where’s the scientific theory of evolution? Where are the testable hypotheses tat are supposed to precede it?
How do evolutionists “win” arguments. Seversky? It definitely is not via evidence and science.
You can’t lead by example. At least ID has a scientific methodology to test its claims. You don’t even have that
Latemarch @ 11 – Everybody’s different, but I don’t find the prospect of being murdered terribly amusing.
Sev– You might win a fight using a 2 x 4, you don’t win an argument.
OTOH, metaphors work well and are especially effective when the opponent takes them as literal when they are obviously not meant as such 🙂
Bob O’H:
No. I don’t. It is obvious metaphor.
Severesky:
But I use a 2 x 4 because the argument can’t be won. Fundamentalism is at work.
It is a sad state of affairs. And great harm comes from it, both to science and society. There are not indifferent realities.
My hope is that science will accumulate such a massive amount of contra-indicators to the materialist view (tip of the hat to BA77) that science will be forced to return to its senses.
My guess: at least 20 years.
I was just working with some grade-schoolers, and I used the example of the Adriatic wall lizards, and how quickly they changed their morphologies. I pointed out to them that I had asked tha an experiment be performed where the diet of the lizards was changed and the results observed. What did they find? 20 lizards with ‘cecal valves’ taken from the island they were transplanted to 30 something years ago were placed in the lab and fed arthropods (insects) for 15 weeks, and then examined. ALL 20 of them LOST their cecal valves.
This was something you could predict. It is a non-Darwinian prediction, and it turned out phenomenally right. Then there’s “junk-DNA,” and again the Darwinian view turned out wrong.
None of this slows down Darwinism. Why? Because there’s no other theory out there. Really? Why not use ID?
But it’s not that easy. Why? Well, let me state what Darwin’s friend Hooker stated right after the publication of OoS: “We should accept this theory because it’s the only one that can give us something to test.” (a paraphrase).
160 years later, they’re saying the same thing. We’re stuck in the 1850’s.
Has anyone ever been murdered in virtual reality and it turned out to be true in actual reality? That said, talk of violence and murder is bad for business around here.
I don’t believe any method works for zombies except not believing in them. They are mortally offended because their existence depends on at least one person believing in them.
Seversky, an automaton with no free will, who champions ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking, states:
Really??? Exactly why is it irrational on the Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ worldview to not win an argument with a 2 x 4 ?
Besides Darwinists having no free will in which to have a rational argument in the first place, (not to mention having no transcendent immaterial truth to argue for), if Darwinian evolution were actually true then there would be no transcendent objective morals to say hitting someone upside the head with a 2 x 4 to win a argument is wrong?
Stalin, Mao and Hitler, all avid Darwinists, certainly had no moral compunctions to prevent them from using force to win arguments against all those who disagreed with them.
Again, Seversky, just why is it irrational on the atheist’s ‘survival of the fittest’ worldview to not use force to win arguments?
You guys really need to come to grips with what your materialistic worldview actually entails and quit stealing from Judeo-Christian presuppositions.
PaV @ 17 – I certainly didn’t read it as a metaphor, I’m afraid. Also, your “No. I don’t.” response only makes grammatical sense as a response to my “Do you really think such violent rhetoric is appropriate?”, which raises the question of why you used such rhetoric.
An atheist morally offended against violence? Really???
Please do tell me more about this illusory morality against violence that you, an atheist, are having?
BA77 @ 21: “An atheist morally offended against violence?”
It’s called selective outrage. A/mats don’t really care about violence, especially violence against theists of the Christian variety. They actually like that sort of violence.
People, could we get back to the OP topic? Otherwise, I shall feel forced to shut off the flow of free virtual beer.
Let’s apply that to Provine himself, since, as so many a/mats, he seems to forget doing that.
Here goes: whatever Provine says, or does, does not serve the purpose of telling the truth — or any other purpose. When Provine speaks he just starts talking for no reason whatsoever, without any goal, very much like a total lunatic.
Hope that helps.
at post 9 Allan Keith states this in regards to Darwinian journals not allowing ID friendly papers:
Well, here are a few examples of Darwinists publicly suppressing dissent from their views:
Richard Sternberg
Douglas Axe:
Granville Sewell
Guillermo Gonzalez
Günter Bechly
William Dembski and Robert Marks:
Michael Behe
Stephen Meyer
The attempted censorship of the book “Biological Information: New Perspectives”
James Tour and anyone he knew who signed the “Dissent from Darwinism” list
If silencing by intimidation, or censorship, does not work, Darwinists simply ‘EXPEL’ anyone who disagrees with them:
Here are some of the peer reviewed papers supporting ID that have been published in spite of the systematic bias against ID:
Of related note:
Even though neo-Darwinists still like to complain that Intelligent Design advocates don’t have that many published peer-reviewed papers, it turns out that if one looks at the peer-reviewed papers coming from neo-Darwinists themselves, the evidence will many times directly, and overwhelmingly, support the Intelligent Design position (such as ENCODE research), while their explanation for the evidence is found to be, many times, highly contrived, and twisted, just to support their presupposed philosophical conclusion of neo-Darwinism.
Bob O’H:
Let’s not be childish.
BA77 @ 25-27: Well done. Thank you.
Truth @ 7
“Darwinists generally hate theism (especially Christianity) and anything that can be used to support it, including ID.”
Can you cite even ONE article that condemns Islam or Buddhism or Judaism or even shamanism because they require a belief in God?
The Leftist establishment is really only anti-Christian, and most specifically anti-Roman Catholic (the other Catholic communities are simply unknown to American readers). There is some appropriate quote in one of GK Chesterton’s stories about the Left fearing and hating Catholicism because they recognize Catholicism as the only serious INTELLECTUAL threat to atheistic socialism. But it has been lo! these many decades since I read Chesterton.
vmahuna – do you realise that the last but one UK Labour Prime Minister (surely the epitome of “Leftist establishment”) converted to Roman Catholocism? I think there was a Democratic US President who was a Catholic, too (albeit a few years ago).
FWIW the more unpleasant parts of the left are anti-semitic, not anti-Catholic.
PaCV @ 28 – OK then. I’m afraid I’m mystified by what the metaphor in 4 is meant to be about, so can you explain it?
BO’H: anti-Christian bias is palpable among ideologically activist secularists. Targetting Catholicism (as the largest single branch of the Christian faith) follows. I should add that the toll of people of Christian faith murdered under one pretext or another by leftist regimes and movements in the past 100 years easily exceeds the total for the previous 19 centuries; a horrible record. BTW, I agree on antisemitism, noting that the National Socialist German Worker’s Party was clearly of the left, despite propaganda by Stalin et al and popular perceptions. Nominal Catholicism is entirely compatible with being part of that agenda, and serious Catholics may well not have a coherent, thought-through position. This holds for the broader context of Christian faith and even more for the trends in a civilisation once called Christendom, but now rapidly advancing to civilisational suicide as apostasy (and yes, that is the right term) becomes a driving force. A circumstance where globally 800+ million of living posterity has been killed in the womb in 40+ years, mounting at about a million more PER WEEK tied to the ideological corruption that protects this worldwide holocaust in progress is a capital example. Sadly, there are many others. KF
Democrats Boo God (at Democratic National Convention)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3CRsnMf1xQ
The Democrats’ God Gap By DAVID FRENCH – May 2, 2018
Excerpt: There’s a big “God gap” between Republicans and Democrats — 70 percent of Republicans believe in the God of the Bible compared with 45 percent of Democrats — but there’s an even larger God gap within the Democratic party. Only 32 percent of white Democrats believe in the God of the Bible, compared with 61 percent of nonwhite Democrats — an almost 30-point gap:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/democrats-god-religion-gap/
Folks, on the topical issue, I think it is clear that our intellectual culture has become increasingly morally and consequently intellectually bankrupt as radical secularism and ideological activism more and more come to rule the roost. In the case of ID, which is not a specifically Christian but rather a significant scientific movement on cosmological as well as world of life fronts, the prejudice, slander and go with the tide patterns are clear. Despite that, significant research has been done and has been published on both fronts. More than enough to make the point, for those who have enough intellectual integrity left to pay attention — and yes, at this point, that is a material issue. (Our minds and intellectual life are morally governed by duties to truth, right, reasonableness, sound reasoning, fair-mindedness and much more; if you think you can play with ideologies that utterly corrupt such governance without being tainted, think again.) And, if you think researchers working in the secularist ideological materialist frame of thought with similar background and publication records would have been treated as scientists and thinkers supportive of ID have been, there is fine Caribbean beach front property in Montana for sale at excellent prices. KF
BA, 26 (attn, AK et al), Let’s clip his first linked, regarding Nick Matzke:
Springer is a major scientific publisher. Note the comment from article 1 in the series, citing a blurb:
Note, what that 1st article goes on to say:
Science works on the celebrity system, and behind the scenes suppression therefore effects a lock-out.
We need to instead actually look at the merits.
Again, what is the only observed known effective cause of functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information (FSCO/I)? Ans: intelligently directed configuration, backed up by a trillion observed cases and the needle in haystack config space search challenge.
Observe how that will be side-stepped and/or dismissed and how what has never been seen to create FSCO/I and has no credible answer to search challenge will be put in its place.
Then, observe the ideologies at work.
KF
Seversky:
This is a jaw-dropping statement. Or it would be if it wasn’t so common.
First I’ll beat the dead horse. ID is not a theory of how anything was designed. Understanding this requires a child’s level of reading comprehension.
Evolution, on the other hand, is supposedly a theory of “how”, and yet carefully skates above offering specifics of how anything evolved. It cloaks itself in science while substituting vague narratives like “it acquired,” “it evolved,” and “was adapted.” The standards are so relaxed that there are none. Without exception any research which claims to explain evolution in any detail simply explain the differences and tack on the detail-starved narrative that those differences arose by some unobserved mechanism of change.
Mainstream science has finally gone to the extreme of making up preposterous, unverifiable speculations about physics to support anything that might exclude design.
Sorry, you can’t be a restaurant critic and eat from a dumpster.
OldAndrew –
Indeed, isn’t that Paul Nelson’s point? It’s ID’s biggest failing.
Or perhaps that’s ID’s biggest failing – it doesn’t have any theory of its own, so it just consists of criticising other theories.
I would genuinely like to see ID develop its own theory – even if I thought it was wrong, I think it would be fascinating to see how it could develop. The nearest you’ve come to is front-loading, but that doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere.
Darwinian evolution is not a science. It is a pseudoscience.
Lack of a rigorous falsification criteria is the precise reason why Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a unfalsifiable pseudoscience rather than a testable science.
The primary reason why Darwinian evolution lacks any of the rigor that is usually associated with the hard sciences is because Darwinian evolution has no mathematical model to test against. As Dr. Robert Marks states “Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. ,,, there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,”
And the primary reason why nobody has ever been able to build a realistic mathematical model for Darwinian evolution to test against is simply because there is no ‘law of evolution’ within the known physical universe for mathematicians and physicists to ever build a realistic mathematical model upon:,,,
,,, And whereas Darwinian evolution has no known law of nature to appeal to so as to establish itself as a proper, testable, science, Intelligent Design does not suffer from such an embarrassing disconnect from physical reality. In other words, Intelligent Design can appeal directly to ‘the laws of conservation of information’ (Dembski, Marks, etc..) (and can even appeal to conservation of Quantum information),,, in order to establish itself as a proper, testable, and rigorous science.
And since Intelligent Design is mathematically based on the ‘law of conservation of information’, that makes Intelligent Design very much testable and potentially falsifiable, and thus makes Intelligent Design, unlike Darwinism, a rigorous science instead of a unfalsifiable pseudoscience.
In fact there is currently up to a 5 million dollar prize being offered for the first person that can “Show an example of Information that doesn’t come from a mind. All you need is one.”
Verse:
Of supplemental note as to the ‘mechanism’ of Design.,,, Design DOES HAVE a viable mechanism with Agent Causality! ID, in their appeal to Agency (which is something each of us directly experience first hand), IS NOT appealing to some grossly inadequate or unknown mechanism as atheists are currently doing within neo-Darwinian theory:
Bob O’H is just confused or scientifically illiterate. There isn’t a scientific theory of evolution. There aren’t any testable hypotheses borne from the proposed mechanisms. It is a total non-starter.
And that means ID does NOT criticize any theories.
ALL design centric venues are mandated to eliminate other causes first. Newton’s four rules of scientific reasoning tell us why that is.
Is there a theory of archaeology? Is forensic science a theory? But I digress.
ID is based on three premises and the inference that follows (DeWolf et al., Darwinism, Design and Public Education, pg. 92):
1) High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design.
2) Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity.
3) Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity.
4) Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.
There you have it- to falsify Intelligent Design all one has to do is demonstrate that natural selection can produce irreducibly complex biological systems.
The criteria for inferring design in biology is, as Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin ‘ s Black Box: “Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.” That is the positive case.
That little bit is still by far more than evolutionism has. Focus on your lame position, Bob. Lead by example or shut up.
Bob O’H: perhaps that’s ID’s biggest failing – it doesn’t have any theory of its own, so it just consists of criticising other theories.
Maybe Darwinists are an anomaly, but I’ve always understood that real scientists try to falsify their own theories. Darwinist, if they are real scientists with a real theory, or set of theories, should welcome ID theorists with open arms.
TWSYF @ 7:
Jesus died even for murderers. Christianity is a hard road.
They are arguably among the Pharisees (Sadducees?) of our day, and we see Jesus verbally slapping them in the face on numerous occasions. That being said, I agree with Nietzsche on a few things, including his pointer on fighting with monsters.
Bob O’H:
From Merriam Webster:
B O’H:
After all these years it is astonishing that it is still so difficult for objectors to acknowledge that simply being able to credibly identify design as a key causal factor due to its observable characteristic traces is highly significant in this generation’s intellectual climate.
Indeed, revolutionary.
KF
PaV @ 43 – yes, I know what a metaphor is. But I can’t work out where the metaphor is @ 4, still less what the metaphorical meaning is. Can you explain it to me?
BO’H, see number 5 on the un-dead. KF
kf – PaV made no mention of the undead, so I’m afraid that doesn’t help. Unless the undead are a continuation of the metaphor, but then that still doesn’t help me understand what the metaphor is.
Bob O’H,
Bob O:
Maybe you just don’t know the parable.
Copied from the web.
So dense that it requires a 2X4 to the head to get your attention….metaphor.
“PaV made no mention of the undead,”
No that would be Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Alex Rosenberg, Brian Farrell, Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, Daniel Dennett, Francis Crick, Steven Pinker, Matthew Lieberman, and Thomas Nagel, who, among other leading atheists, made mention of atheists being “undead” neuronal illusions if Darwinian evolution were actually true! 🙂
Allan:
You mean your quote-mine of 77′ response? Yes, I see the flaw in that
Allan Keith, unlike you and other Darwinists, I provided proof for my claim that Darwinian evolution is a unfalsifiable pseudoscience and for Intelligent Design being a testable, potentially falsifiable, science.
Only someone with an personal bias and prior agenda would so blatantly ignore that huge “falsifiable” elephant in the room that I pointed out.
But please do go on. I’m certain the unbiased readers can see just how disingenuous Darwinists really are as to the evidence in hand.
BA77,
Then you obviously did not see the flaw in your response to Bob O’H.
Bob (and weave), as to the “undead” I almost forgot this gem of a quote from Dennett:
And there you have it folks, absolute proof that when you deny the reality of your own immaterial mind you have in fact lost your mind!
Allan Keith, please do tell me the “flaw” in Intelligent Design being found to be a testable/falsifiable science and Darwinian evolution being found to be a unfalsifiable pseudoscience.
Are you seriously trying to maintain that Darwinian evolution should be immune from criticism???
Please do tell,,,
This will be interesting. I’ll go get popcorn and a coke.
ET,
I’m not sure that you understand what a quote mine is. A quote mine is quoting something out of context to infer a different meaning.
Let’s re-cap.
Bob O’H said,
BA77 responded to this with,
Followed by a criticism of evolution.
To summarize, he responded to the claim that ID consists of criticizing other theories by criticizing other theories.
BA77,
No.
Allan:
What flaw? Science mandates all design inferences eliminate non-telic processes. So even if Darwin never posited anything about natural selection such a scenario would have to be invented, considered and then eliminated to satisfy that mandate.
Thankfully we already have 150+ years of evolutionary failures at fulfilling Darwin’s main concept of natural selection being able to produce the appearance of design. In effect evolutionists have eliminated their position as a viable alternative to ID.
ba77 also provided support for ID.
Allan:
And that part was followed by support for ID.
BTW evolutionism- we argue against evolutionism, ie evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. ID is not anti-evolution.
Allan Keith, One of the primary failings of Darwinian Theory is its failure to be experimentally criticized (i.e. testability).
Other theories in science, such as Quantum Theory and General Relativity, (and even Intelligent Design), have become robust theories of science precisely from their ability to withstand repeated testing and/or criticism of their claims. Darwinism simply offers no such criteria to experimentally criticize and/or test against.
That Darwinists would be the ones to complain about criticism of their theory, when other theories in science thrive on surviving experimental criticism and/or testing, is rich indeed.
BA77,
So, you have read all of the research papers in here?
And amongst these thousands of papers that you have read (and these are only the Springer journals), you are claiming that none of them have tested various aspects of evolutionary theory? Forgive me if I find this hard to believe. Especially considering the hundreds of papers that News posts on this web site that are critical of various aspects of evolutionary theory.
LateMarch @ 49 – Thank you. I wasn’t aware of that parable (it doesn’t seem particularly Biblical, and in the UK “two by four” doesn’t have any particular cultural significance, so I’m afraid that was lost on me. Now can you explain the stake through the heart metaphor. It seems to refer to killing people, but apparently not.
Allan Keith, apparently you are familiar with the Darwinian technique/art of literature bluffing made famous by Nick Matzke and others.
Instead of just literature bluffing and blustering with inaccessible journals, Perhaps you have actual experimental results, for all the readers here to see, showing, I don’t know, perhaps Darwinian processes producing a single molecular machine?
Also of note, Dr. James Tour, a top ten rated synthetic chemist in the world, who, in my honest opinion, currently builds the most sophisticated man-made molecular machines in the world, will buy lunch for anyone who can explain to him exactly how Darwinian evolution works:
After commenting on the failure of ANY atheist to ever respond to his request for lunch for 8 or 10 years in order to explain how Darwinian processes can produce molecular machines, i.e. ‘macro-evolution, Dr Tour comments:
BA77,
As opposed to the ID technique that you excel at called the Gish Gallop, made famous by Duane Gish and others.
The peer reviewed literature is full of evolutionary hypothesis testing. That you would attempt to deny this fact says more about you than me. Some of these have resulted in modification of the theory. Others have supported the tested hypothesis.
The difference between ID and evolution is that evolution is brave enough to propose possible mechanisms, test them, and refine the overall model in response to the results of these tests. This has led to the current understanding which includes sources of variation (mutatation, meiosis, inversions, insertions, etc), drift, HGT, epigenetics, natural selection (including sexual selection), and many other factors. The arguments in science now centre around the relative importance of each of these, not their existance.
So far, ID has some nebulous metrics for identifying design, none of which have actually been effectively used, and with no way of extrapolating these to biology. As has been mentioned, for ID to get out of this rut will require the development and testing of hypotheses about the mechanisms the designer (who does not have to be god) used to realize these designs. Were they front loaded? Are they ongoing? Must they follow physical laws? Start with any or all of these and start doing the work.
Bob
There’s no arguing with determined, willful ignorance. ID doesn’t have a theory. It is a theory. It makes a claim and supports it with evidence. If anyone is intellectually courageous, let him or her refute that claim and argue against its evidence.
Understanding that a thing was designed is not the same as understanding how it was designed. Let me repeat that for the sake of utter futility, because I realize that the cognitive dissonance will erase these words from many people’s perception. Understanding that a thing was designed is not the same as understanding how it was designed.
Living things are artifacts of designed technology. The alternative requires an appeal to supernatural miracles by which chemicals are empowered to encode copies of themselves with symbols, decode the symbols to reproduce themselves, all while creating walls to protect the process and mechanisms to collect energy to as to further it, all without intent.
That is an appeal to magic, and to take it seriously is irrational.
Inferring that a thing is a designed artifact is a rational, reasonable conclusion, whether or not one knows who or what the designer was. Will we understand more? We already do. It will likely take some time, but without exception every discovery reveals more intricate systems of self-repair, self-regulation, and different ways in which the details of living things are encoded.
The greatest obstacle is that most scientific research of biological origins is dogmatically restricted to alchemy and 21st-century sorcery, endlessly seeking to prove that maggots spawn from meat and that cells spawn from chemicals and lightning, or whatever the most popular variation is, because the clergy of Miller-Urey demand to see their prophecies fulfilled and seek to ban the apocryphal heresy of ID from their sacred clergy-reviewed journals. We’ve got so many people looking for it that it must exist! The search itself is progress!
It’s a mixed blessing. The sorcery and dark-ages ignorance pervades an area where its dogma is untestable. The rest of science, where observations are tested and results are valued over myths is mostly spared.
Bob O:
No, nothing biblical about it but it is a very well known parable here in the US. A 2X4 is a very common bit of lumber used to build houses.
I’m reminded about a visit to my sister in Canada several years back. This acquaintance said that we would meet at Tim Horton’s. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to know where this individual lived so that I could meet the following day. It was then explained to me that Tim Horton’s was a doughnut shop there in the middle of the small burgh where I was staying. They are all over Canada. A cultural icon. Who knew?
The stake in the heart is a similar thing. It is one of the few ways of killing a vampire. Thus if one refers to driving a stake thru the heart it means the sure killing of the idea or concept. No physical violence intended.
The current cultural climate people will often accuse someone of intending physical violence in order to denigrate or distract from the underlying argument. Much like the accusation of racism stops all communication. Thus my post @11
Clear as mud? Or do I have to explain that saying as well?
The peer reviewed literature is full of all sorts of testing of biological hypotheses. Then it’s sprinkled with language that asserts the existence of some neo-Darwinian explanation without providing it. Over. And over. And over. They cite other research which does more of the same. It’s scientific check-kiting, turtles all the way down. One simply has to read carefully to see the distinction between the actual science and the valueless narrative gloss applied over it.
OldAndrew,
How many scientifically based criticisms of these papers have you submitted to these journals. BA77? KairosFocus? You do realize that they publish commentary, don’t you? Or are you going to respond with “there is a conspiracy to prevent such criticism”? The Boy Who Cried Wolf Comes to mind.
That’s a dodge. But it’s not logical. It’s essentially an ad-hominem. You’ve chosen to address something other than the point I made. That’s understandable.
OldAndrew, sorry, but I disagree. I have read all sorts of criticisms here about bad research. But nothing about attempts to rebut this work. There is a process for that. If it is not working properly, present the evidence.
Allan Keith. I noticed that in all your bluff and bluster you did not cite a single example of Darwinian processes producing a single molecular machine.
Funny how that is always the case with Darwinists. They are all talk, but when it comes to backing up their grandiose claims that unguided processes can produce machines that greatly outclass our best man-made machines, in terms of engineering parameters, Darwinists are always found to be full of hot air! You guys are pathetic!
Of related interest to falsifying Intelligent Design:
Also of interest:
That’s exactly the sleight of hand. The research itself and the conclusions drawn aren’t the concern. It’s the injection of throwaway sentences and clauses asserting an evolutionary explanation which is assumed but never offered.
I’m not rebutting the research. Claiming that I am is misdirection. I’m rebutting this statement:
The peer reviewed literature is full of biological hypothesis testing which is only connected to evolution by its irrelevant verbal appeals to evolution.
As to falsifying Darwinian evolution instead of beating around the bushes:
Another specific prediction of the reductive materialistic framework that undergirds Darwinian thought is that the information in life is merely ’emergent’ from a material basis. (Darwinists use to claim that the information in life was merely a ‘metaphor’, and that life was just, basically, ‘complicated chemistry’ but now, since information is found to be far more integral to life than they had originally presupposed, Darwinists backed off and now mainly claim that information is merely ’emergent’ from a material basis.)
Yet, as this following video shows, directly contrary to that core Darwinian presupposition, immaterial information is now shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is separate from matter and energy.
A distinct immaterial entity, separate from matter and energy, that has, of all things, a ‘thermodynamic content’
The coup de grace for demonstrating that immaterial information is its own distinct physical entity, separate from matter and energy, is Quantum Teleportation:
In fact, as this following video shows, quantum information, of which classical information is a subset, is now found in molecular biology in every DNA, protein, etc,, molecule of life.
Quantum information simply is not reducible to any reductive materialistic explanation. Period! (i.e. ‘non-locality’ confirmed to almost unbelievable levels of accuracy!) As the following articles state, “entangled objects (i.e. material particles) do not cause each other to behave the way they do.” and “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Thus Darwinism is now experimentally falsified in one of its core claims that information is somehow ’emergent’ from a material basis.
Of supplemental note:
Classical ‘digital’ information is found to be a subset of ‘non-local’ (i.e. beyond space and time) quantum entanglement/information by the following method:
Verse:
Allan Keith:
Pure equivocation.
Clueless. Evolutionism is all about the how, ie the mechanisms. Yet peer-review is absent any testing of them that would demonstrate they are up to the task at hand.
ID has the methodology that tests whether or not there is intentional design present
None of which supports unguided evolution
ID’s metrics are better than those used by evolutionists.
That just proves that you are scientifically illiterate. We don’t even ask about the who nor how until after design has been determined. And even then it is only important to those who are scientifically illiterate. The important questions to be answered are how does it all work together, how can we maintain and repair it.
We may never find out who and we are in that position with artifacts. But by studying the design and all relevant evidence we can put some sort of profile together.
The science of ID is in the detection of the design. And we don’t care if you are too willfully ignorant to understand that.
Allan Keith,
Please wake up as you are dreaming. You don’t have a mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes so stop linking to articles about developmental biology. As if blind and mindless processes can produce regulatory networks and the genetic toolkit required for developmental biology.
Natural selection is not magic even though you need it to be.
And on top of that you don’t have any idea what is actually being debated even though it has been spelled out for you many times under all of your socks. Your willful ignorance is why PaV talks about the 2×4. You are so dense you are a walking black hole.
PaV @ 17
Because ID is a theory of who not how. So, even if it were a fully-fledged theory it addresses a different question and can’t be a direct alternative to evolution.
Hooker was right. Science has to work with whatever it has until something better comes along. Physicist were well aware of problems with Newtonian mechanics long before relativity came along but they had nothing better to work with until Einstein provided it.
Bob O’H:
Sorry, I thought you were being obtuse. I didn’t realize you were unfamiliar with the metaphors.
I duly note they’ve been explained.
As to ID, the central “claim” of ID is that the information found within the genome cannot be explained via random, impersonal processes; nor can the level of information/genomic distances even between species that more taxonomically separated be so explained. Only intelligence can bridge such gaps.
The central “claim” of Darwin is based on NS, but actually revolves around the principle of divergence, wherein, via Malthusian “survival of the fittest”, and hence ultimately extinction, a ‘variety’ (what we know as a ‘subspecies’), which is really an “incipient species” (per Darwin) gradually mutates until the more ‘fit’ descendant of some dominant species is eventually displaced and replaced by this ‘fitter’ variety, which is now on its way to becoming a ‘genus.’
This is what Wallace claimed to see in Malaysia, and was the principal discovery contained in the letter he wrote to Darwin in 1858/59.
The Principle of Divergence claims that these incremental changes and displacements, with sufficient time, will lead to what we would call ‘macroevolution.’
To the best of my knowledge, no such ‘macroevolution’ event has been documented. So Darwin’s central ‘claim’ remains in doubt.
Meanwhile, we know that if you compare the amount of information in the software running primitive PC’s to those running modern-day PC’s, Windows 10, e.g., we know what that the explanation for this tremendous growth in information is human intelligence,and human intelligence alone. This should certainly be considered as giving some level of support to ID’s central claim.
In the end, all Darwinism really does is provide a way for persons looking at a variety of separate species to develop some kind of gradation from less to more of any particular trait or chemical make-up found within the species; IOW, it leads to ‘cladistics.’
Now, if ‘evolutionary trees’ actually worked, that is, if you could construct one that doesn’t fall apart at some point in its branching structure, this would lend support to Darwin’s central ‘claim’; however, since ‘cladistics’ never consistently account for known species using the notion of common descent, this rather undermines Darwin’s ‘claim’ instead.
So, what scientific view should we be supporting now?
The switch to ID from Darwinian ‘gradualism’ and ‘common descent’ would only mean different questions need to be asked in the lab and out in the field. Instead of asking, “Which of these two species is the descendant of the other?,” you would ask, “How does this structure/system/behavior ‘work’ in these different species, and what is the basis for these differences?”
But we see this already happening as scientists are looking into how various biological systems work as they seek to imitate the ‘genius’ solutions to problems found there. Or is this kind of ‘reverse-engineering’ not really science?
bornagain77 @ 19
As far as I’m aware, there are few if any atheists who base a moral worldview on the principle of “survival of the fittest”. Most are well aware that such would commit the naturalistic fallacy.
And, as I said before, violence wins fights not arguments. Use of a 2 x 4 might bring an argument to an abrupt halt but it doesn’t win it.
Seversky:
No, ID is not about the who nor how. It is about the what
Evolution by design is an alternative to evolution by means of blind and mindless processes
Seversky, quit stealing from Christian Theism. There is nothing irrational or immoral in the atheist’s worldview with using force to win an argument, as is amply demonstrated by the Communist regimes of the last century and by the present concerted censorship and intimidation of anyone who supports ID in academia in America.
Once again, reality itself betrays your delusion that morality and reason can be grounded in reductive materialism.
Reductive materialism simply implodes on itself Sev.
Thus, although the Darwinist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
BA77,
Atheists didn’t propose “an eye for an eye”.
Allan:
They advocate the use brass knuckles and steel-toed boots
Allan Keith, besides you ignoring the fact that atheism is completely amoral, you do realize that ‘an eye for an eye’ is old testament do you not?
And yes it is a exceedingly high moral standard that I regularly fail to meet.
To which I can only remark, thank God for the grace that is found in Jesus Christ.
BA77,
If, by amoral, you mean that we don’t believe that morality is objective, you are correct. If you mean that we don’t have any morals then you are out to lunch.
Which is part of the Christian bible, did you not know? Or are you one of these christians who believes that the New Testament absolves your god of all the atrocities and sadistic acts he was responsible for?
Allan Keith,
The illusory immaterial morals of atheists are no morals at all. They are self admittedly made-up subjective fictions. Believing a subjective moral fiction represents a objective moral reality is called being delusional and/or being ‘out to lunch’.
Moreover, whereas atheists have no evidence that Darwinian evolution can create immaterial morality, (nor any evidence that Darwinian evolution can create anything else for that matter), Christian Theists, on the other hand, can appeal directly to science to support their belief that immaterial morality is objectively real.
The following study shows that ‘Moral evaluations of harm are ‘instant and emotional’:
The following study is interesting in that, since Darwinian evolution can’t even explain the origin of a single gene/protein by unguided material processes, (much less can it explain the regulatory networks of genes working in concert), it shows that objective morality is even built/designed, in a very nuanced fashion, into the way our bodies differentiate between ‘hedonic’ and ‘noble’ moral happiness:
And although a ‘instantaneous moral compass’, and the nuanced genetic response between noble vs. hedonic happiness, are pretty good for establishing that “there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws” (Martin Luther King), the following studies go one step further and shows that our moral intuition transcends space and time:
Of related note: Immanuel Kant’s empirical requirement for the ‘moral argument for God’ to be validated, (i.e. influences arising from outside space-time), has now been met in quantum mechanics:
The materialist/atheist simply has no beyond space and time cause to appeal to to explain why this ‘moral’ phenomena should happen! Whereas for a Theist, especially for a Christian Theist who believes that the Lord Jesus Christ died and rose again to pay for our sins, it would be fully expected that ‘objective’ morality would have such a deep, ‘spooky’, beyond space and time, effect.
Video:
As to you ranting against “all the atrocities and sadistic acts he (God) was responsible for”,,,,
And again, I ask you just where are you getting this sense of good and evil, i.e. morality, from?
You seem to unquestionably believe that everyone should just accept the objective reality of this morality you are talking about, all the while forgetting that your very own atheistic worldview resolutely denies the very objective reality of good and evil, i.e. morality, that you seem to so adamantly believe to be real. ,,, You can’t have it both ways. It is called the Law of Non-Contradiction!
Moreover, you are also completely forgetting that God, besides being the author of morality, is also the ultimate and sole judge against the moral transgressions of man.
You are conflating God’s punishment against man’s sin and with sin itself.
Huge difference!
Of related interest to this fallacious and self-refuting ‘argument from evil’ that atheists constantly try to use against God is this quote from Dr. Michael Egnor
Quote:
BA77,
You are free to believe this fiction if you would like. That doesn’t make it true.
And neither do IDists or theists. However, we do know that there is no evidence for a mind existing without the physical brain.
No it doesn’t. 180 milliseconds is far from instantaneous.
The article also says that the brain is hardwired for this, suggesting a material cause.
Wishful thinking but it still boils down to pure unsupported supposition. If there were universal moral laws, why do we see such great variation in societal morality over time and between cultures. If the moral laws are objective, they are so difficult to ascertain that they might as well not exist.
Early teaching, indoctrination (brainwashing), reasoning, peer influences, etc. Most of our moral values can be reasoned from first principles and the desire to live in a community. Some commonly held morals, however, cannot be arrived at by these methods. It is these morals that we should be questioning and, if it makes sense, discarding. These would include things like moral stances on birth control, homosexuality, premarital sex, etc.
No. I expect that I would have to convince others of the value and validity of my moral stances. That is how society works.
Evil? Yes, I deny its existence as, for the most part, it is a religious fabrication. However, I can argue that my moral stances are either good or bad for the continued thriving of society.
That is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. I disagree with you on this.
How is it possible to conflate two things that do not exist?
How do we know that?
No, it isn’t. It’s pretty stupid to suggest that it is especially given that humans couldn’t tell how short the time was that had elapsed.
What? That is really dumb. Evil is a religious fabrication- wow.
What we’re really looking for is process signatures.
RM+NS travels along genetic routes in a bottom up approach. It works between genetic adjacencies, and can only check immediate structural and functional results. It lacks operational memory or processing apart from the result space and the current environment, and its time step is from mutation to mutation. It can’t chase a functional feature or gradient over holes in the genetic->structural->functional mapping.
Designers can take a top down approach. They have independent operational memory and processing that can be used in recursive heuristics in analysis that can freely travel between disconnected neighborhoods of genetic expression.
The signature of a designer is consistent and optimal structure and functionality. Convergent and global design patterns and methodologies reused in separate genetic contexts.
The signature of a Darwinian process is one of traveling between genetic adjacencies, and unnecessary structure or useless structure resulting from the need to get from point A to point B. If Darwin was right, we shouldn’t simply have vestigial organs in the sense he used it; we should be a patchwork of no longer useful vestigial organs, never useful pseudo-organs; and even the working bits should have functionally inexplicable parts.
If Darwinian processes produced IC systems by kludging and reducing previously independent systems of different function, we’d be producing more irreducible neutral experiments attached to useful or vital structures than successes. Also, the successes would often be recognizable as kludges.
Even in non-IC structures, RM+NS doesn’t know what a clean house looks like. It’s not looking for mess. If it makes an edit that produces a neutral reduction, it may stick. But it’s also just as ready to spend its mutational budget in making mess; and if it makes a neutral mess, that too, can stick. Messy remnants of exploratory experimentation is something even a designer has to work to keep on top of.
Clean, optimal structure is also the signature of a meticulous designer.
Which sounds more like biology?
ET,
Yet the 180 milliseconds is well within the range of measured reflex speeds. Reactions that are purely physical in nature. Reflexes are not instantaneous, as BA77 suggested was the case for the brain’s reaction to harm. It sounds like a reflex response to me.
Allan Keith, the point of the first and second articles that I cited was to show that morality is designed into us, even all the way down into the biological level. The point of the third, fourth, and fifth articles that I cited was to establish that morality cannot be reduced to any possible materialistic explanation. But you apparently completely skipped the later articles to focus on the “milliseconds” response time in the first article.
But even if I only referred to ‘biological morality’, then even then, (seeing as Darwinists cannot even explain the origin of a single neuron, much less the origin of the entire “beyond belief” human brain), even then that biological evidence for morality, contrary to what you desperately want to believe, is further scientific proof that humans are INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED to be moral creatures.
Moreover, you seem to be hung up on the millisecond responses of the first article as if that delay helps alleviate the insurmountable problems you face as a Darwinian materialist,,, (I guess disillusioned, defeated, people grab onto any hope they can from wherever they can, no matter how faint that hope may be),,, and although I know, (since you are a Darwinist), evidence does not really ever matter to you in the least, then it might interest unbiased readers to know that,,, evidence that quantum mechanisms are at play on the macro level of the human brain is revealed by the following. In the following article it is noted that Multielectrode recordings have revealed zero time lag synchronization among remote cerebral cortical areas.
As well, evidence suggesting that quantum mechanisms are at play on the macro level of the human body itself is also revealed in the following article where it is revealed that a subject perceives a sensory stimulus on the skin at the moment the skin is touched, before the stimulus reaches the brain and before full deliberative consciousness occurs.
Thus AK, as if evidence ever really mattered to you in the first place, you should hold these instantaneous “quantum” actions that are now found to be at play in the brain and the body, (and every molecule of the body), to be further experimental falsification of your Darwinian worldview.
But alas, why I do I know that you will just ignore this falsification of your reductive materialistic worldview just like you do all the rest of the falsifications that are brought against your delusional worldview??
The rest of your post trying to answer my questions on your supposed ‘materialistic morality’, is, in my personal opinion, and to put it nicely, complete nonsense and rubbish.
I am confident the unbiased reader will agree with me and clearly see who is blowing smoke and who is being forthright!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/instantaneous
done, occurring, or acting without any perceptible duration of time
180 milliseconds meets that definition.
F/N: Just saw this in passing. FYI, the eye for eye principle is a LIMITATION by which the punishment must be proportional to the crime — not wildly disproportionate. As, was all too commonly applied to people of low status who offended those of high status all around the world. KF
ET,
Actually it doesn’t. Humans can detect perceptible duration of time in the range of 100 milliseconds.
99.999999999999999999% of the time anything under .5 seconds in imperceptible to 99.999999% of the people.
ET,
Yet computer response times of more than 100 milliseconds are percepatable by everyone.
Allan Keith, in the Old Testament, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’, was actually more like a counsel of perfection for the time, since it was normal – and I can understand this, alas – to take out both eyes or even kill the person responsible for your monocularity.
Axel,
I understand this. But how do you reconcile this with the other punishments commanded in the OT? Thinks like killing homosexuals, wives who aren’t virgins on their wedding night, and children who disrespect their parents? That seems to far exceed the “eye for an eye” instruction.
I am not trying to vilify Christianity, but if people are going to justify there actions on scriptures, they have to deal with these horrific ones.
Allan Keith, you keep pretending that your materialistic Darwinian worldview can provide you a basis for objective morality.
It can’t.
You continue to act as if it is readily apparent for everyone to see that, on Atheistic materialism, everyone should intuitively know that “killing homosexuals, wives who aren’t virgins on their wedding night, and children who disrespect their parents” is objectively morally wrong.
Atheistic materialism simply provides you no basis for judging whether ANYTHING is good or evil! PERIOD!
Morality, like “personhood”, free will, mathematics, beauty, justice, logic, etc.. etc.., is basically a immaterial, transcendent, entity.
Objective Morality, since it is immaterial, simply finds no place for rigid grounding within Atheistic materialism. To repeat what Dr. Egnor stated: “Even to raise the problem of evil is to tacitly acknowledge transcendent standards, and thus to acknowledge God’s existence. From that starting point, theodicy begins. Theists have explored it profoundly. Atheists lack the standing even to ask the question.,,,”
The inability of atheistic materialism to deal with the all too real reality of the immaterial realm is, in fact, the primary weakness of their worldview that renders their worldview completely insane.
As Adam Sedgwick warned Charles Darwin, “There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly”
As much as you may deny it AK, you simply have no grounding for the objective reality of ‘immaterial morality’ within your materialistic worldview. And as Dr Egnor also pointed out, once you honestly acknowledge the necessity of God in order to ground the transcendent reality of objective morality, then, and only then, a robust discussion about Theodicy i.e. reconciling God with the existence of evil) can begin.
Until then, as Dr. Egnor also pointed out, “Atheists lack the standing even to ask the question.”
Morality and/or the ‘argument from evil”, as the following quote makes clear, are far deeper issues than you apparently realize in your shallow, baseless, and self-defeating, attempts to, basically, judge God as morally evil. (all while having no true moral basis to do so),,
A few more notes along this line of the reality of the immaterial realm:
BA77,
You obviously haven’t been paying attention.
Since I can reason, I don’t need some moldy god to tell me what is good and bad. Are you so incapable of being able to reason that you need a mythical being to tell you what is right and what is wrong? That is sad.
You can repeat Egnor all you want. But since evil is a concept fabricated by religion, his argument is circular.
Further unsupported rhetoric.
I also have no grounding for the existance of Santa Clause or unicorns. I don’t see this as a weakness. I see this as being grounded in reality.
Again, why do I need to reconcile a non existent god with the fabricated concept of evil? Seems like a waste of time to me.
What is your obsession with Egnor? He is on record as saying that all murders are caused by Democrats. Anyone who makes stupid claims like this are really not worth listening to.
AK @ 100: “Since I can reason, I don’t need some moldy god to tell me what is good and bad. Are you so incapable of being able to reason that you need a mythical being to tell you what is right and what is wrong? That is sad.”
Actually, what is sad is that you would spend so much of your life contributing to a website that you almost completely disagree with. I will never understand why some a/mats spend so much time – a really lot of time – engaged in arguments and exchanging insults on theist websites.
Also, BA77 is very capable of reasoning… you just don’t like the results of his reasoning. Do you not see this obvious blunder?
Allan Keith, states:
The only thing that is truly ‘fabricated”, mythical, and imaginary in the Atheist’s worldview is not God but the Atheist himself who denies God.
In what I consider to be a shining example of poetic justice, in their claim that God does not really exist as a real person but is merely an illusion, the Atheistic naturalist also ends up claiming that he himself does not really exist as a real person but that he is merely a neuronal illusion. Here are a few references that drive this point home,,,
Besides their sense of self, many other things become imaginary and illusory when the atheist denies the reality of God:
Thus, although the Darwinist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Bottom line, if God is not real then nothing can be real.
As mentioned in post 99, the main failing of the Atheist’s materialistic worldview is the denial of the reality of the unseen immaterial realm.
This problem of denying the reality of the unseen immaterial realm comes back to bite the Darwinist in a particularly hard way in mathematics.
Although every rigorous theory of science requires verification from mathematics, and experimentation, in order to be considered scientific in the first place,
,, as mentioned previously, the reductive materialism that Darwinian evolution is based upon denies the existence of anything beyond the material realm.
There simply is no place for the immaterial realm of mathematics to find grounding for its reality in the reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought.
As David Berlinski states, “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time….”
Therefore, besides Darwinian evolution already being shown to be mathematically impossible (by Sanford, Dembski, Marks, Axe, Behe, Durston etc.. etc..),,,
,,,, Darwinian evolution is further falsified by mathematics as being a scientific theory since Darwinism denies the very reality of one the thing it most needs, i.e. mathematics, in order to be considered scientific in the first place.
Moreover, this ‘unseen’ immaterial mathematical realm gives us further compelling evidence that all of reality was created and is sustained by God.
Whereas atheists have no compelling evidence for all the various parallel universe and/or multiverse scenarios that they have put forth. In fact, there is fairly strong evidence that can be mustered against their claims for parallel universes and/or multiverses,,
Christians, on the other hand, can appeal directly to the higher dimensional mathematics behind Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity and General Relativity to support their belief that God upholds this universe in its continual existence, as well as to support their belief in a heavenly dimension and in a hellish dimension.
In the following video, the discovery of the higher dimensional nature of the square root of negative one, which is integral to quantum mechanics, and the discovery of higher dimensional geometry, which is integral to General Relativity, are discussed:
The history of the square root of negative one is particularly interesting to look at. Descartes had rejected complex roots and coined the derogatory term “imaginary” to describe the square root of negative one. Whereas, Gauss, who was the mathematician who finally clearly explained the higher dimensional nature behind the square root of negative one, suggested that complex magnitudes be called “lateral” instead of “imaginary” magnitudes since they represent a dimensional extension of the continuum. Gauss also proposed that complex magnitudes be awarded “full civil rights.”
The author further comments, in the language of Plato’s allegory of the cave, complex numbers represent “forms” from a higher dimension casting “shadows” on the real number line.
And in quantum mechanics, we find that the square root of negative one is necessary for describing the wave packet prior to measurement.
What was not mentioned in the preceding video, or in the article, is that the wave function is also represented as being in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space:
Here is an interesting quote about the infinite dimensional Hilbert Spaces in quantum mechanics:
Moreover, we find it is an infinite dimensional Hilbert space that takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly.
As should be needless to say, the preceding findings are very comforting to overall Christian concerns. Here is a video that goes over the preceding findings, and how they relate to Christian presuppositions, in a bit more detail
Four dimensional space was also mentioned in ‘The Mathematics Of Higher Dimensionality’ video. As was the necessity for Four-dimensional space in the formulation General Relativity also mentioned in the video:
What was not mentioned in the ‘The Mathematics Of Higher Dimensionality’ video is that special relativity is itself also based on a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space. In fact, the higher dimensional nature of special relativity was a discovery that was made by one of Einstein math professors in 1908 prior to Einstein’s elucidation of General Relativity in 1915.
Moreover, these four dimensional spacetimes that undergird both special relativity and general relativity are also comforting to overall Christian concerns in that they reveal two very different eternities to us. One eternity is found for a hypothetical observer who is going the speed of light, and the another eternity is found for a hypothetical observer falling to the event horizon of a black hole.
As was mentioned, the eternity for special relativity is found when a hypothetical observer approaches the speed of light. In this scenario, time, as we understand it, would come to a complete stop for that hypothetical observer as he reached the speed of light.
To grasp the whole concept of time coming to a complete stop at the speed at the speed of light a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as you moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the very same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into special relativity. Here is a short clip from a video that gives us a look into Einstein’s breakthrough insight.
That time, as we understand it comes to a complete stop at the speed of light, and yet light moves from point A to point B in our universe, and thus light is obviously not ‘frozen within time, has some fairly profound implications.
In the following audio clip, Michael Strauss, who has a PhD. in particle physics, reflects on one of those profound implications:
The only way it is possible for time not to pass for light, and yet for light to move from point A to point B in our universe, is if light is of a higher dimensional value of time than the temporal time we are currently living in. Otherwise light would simply be ‘frozen within time’ to our temporal frame of reference.
One way for us to more easily understand this higher dimensional framework for time that light exist in is to visualize what would happen if a hypothetical observer approached the speed of light.
In the following video clip, which was made by two Australian University Physics Professors, we find that the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer approaches the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light.
To give us a better understanding as to what it would be like to exist in a higher dimension, this following video, Dr. Quantum in Flatland, also gives us a small insight as to what it would be like to exist in an “unseen” higher dimension:
Besides the tunnel curvature to a higher eternal dimension found in special relativity, we also have tunnel curvature to a very different eternal dimension in general relativity. The following video clip is very good for illustrating that tunnel curvature that is found in general relativity.
The following video is also very good for illustrating the tunnel curvature that is found for the space-time of gravity in general relativity. Specifically, it is good for visualizing the tunnel curvature that is found at black holes
What makes the eternity of General Relativity profoundly different than the eternity found at Special Relativity, is that entropy, which is the primary reason why our material bodies grow old and eventually die in this universe,,,
,,, is found to be greatest at black holes. As the following article stated,, ‘supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to the observable universe’s entropy.’
In the following quote, Kip Thorne describes what will happen to a hypothetical astronaut as he reaches the singularity of a black-hole. He stated: “Einstein’s equation predicts that, as the astronaut reaches the singularity (of the black-hole), the tidal forces grow infinitely strong, and their chaotic oscillations become infinitely rapid. The astronaut dies and the atoms which his body is made become infinitely and chaotically distorted and mixed-and then, at the moment when everything becomes infinite (the tidal strengths, the oscillation frequencies, the distortions, and the mixing), spacetime ceases to exist.”
Or related interest is the extreme temperature that is found at black-holes:
Thus the ‘eternity’ that is found at a black hole can rightly be called an ‘eternity of decay and destruction’.
Needless to say, to those of us who are of, shall we say, a spiritually minded persuasion, this finding of a eternity of destruction should be fairly sobering.
Of related interest, in his resurrection from the dead, and as witnessed by the Shroud of Turin, Jesus Christ bridged this seemingly ‘infinite gap’ between these two very different entropies that are associated with Special Relativity and General Relativity respectfully. The following video gives an overview of that evidence:
Moreover, besides the overall structure of the universe, as revealed by the higher dimensional nature of the mathematics behind special and general relativity giving comfort to overall Christian concerns, we also find, in “quarter power scaling”, that higher dimensional mathematics are ubiquitous in life itself and offers further comfort to the Christian’s belief that he has a soul.
In particular, Quarter power scaling reveals that “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional.’
In fact, unseen ‘immaterial’ quantum information is now found to be ‘holding all the molecules of our material bodies together’.
Thus, besides quantum information providing direct empirical falsification of neo-Darwinian claims that say information is emergent from a material basis, the implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, or course, being the fact that we now have direct physical evidence strongly indicating that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies.
As Stuart Hameroff notes in this following video, “the quantum information,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
In conclusion, whereas the atheist denies the reality of the unseen immaterial realm, it is found that, number 1, the atheist scientifically cuts his own throat in that he, unwittingly, denies the reality of mathematics, and, number 2, this unseen immaterial realm of mathematics reveals that the universe itself was created and is sustained from a higher unseen dimension and also reveals that we ourselves have a higher dimensional component to our material bodies.
The Atheistic materialist simply has no explanation for any of this. In fact the Atheistic materialist, a-priori, denies the ‘unseen’ reality of any of this.
Video and verse:
Correction, this following post should come immediately after post 102,,,
The history of the square root of negative one is particularly interesting to look at. Descartes had rejected complex roots and coined the derogatory term “imaginary” to describe the square root of negative one. Whereas, Gauss, who was the mathematician who finally clearly explained the higher dimensional nature behind the square root of negative one, suggested that complex magnitudes be called “lateral” instead of “imaginary” magnitudes since they represent a dimensional extension of the continuum. Gauss also proposed that complex magnitudes be awarded “full civil rights.”
The author further comments, in the language of Plato’s allegory of the cave, complex numbers represent “forms” from a higher dimension casting “shadows” on the real number line.
And in quantum mechanics, we find that the square root of negative one is necessary for describing the wave packet prior to measurement.
What was not mentioned in the preceding video, or in the article, is that the wave function is also represented as being in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space:
Here is an interesting quote about the infinite dimensional Hilbert Spaces in quantum mechanics:
Moreover, we find it is an infinite dimensional Hilbert space that takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly.
As should be needless to say, the preceding findings are very comforting to overall Christian concerns. Here is a video that goes over the preceding findings, and how they relate to Christian presuppositions, in a bit more detail
Allan:
Only in NYC. But then again 100 milliseconds of green is an eternity for them.
That is unsupported trope
BA77@102 – 108, seven comments comprising over 6000 words to respond to a single comment. This must be a record. 🙂
AK, anyone who uses the phrase gish gallop here or elsewhere instantly disqualifies himself from serious consideration, pending a straight out apology and pledge never to resort to such slanderous nonsense again. FYI, I personally met the late Dr Duane Gish and found him to be a decent Christian gentleman. Start there, then multiply by the fact that he won 300+:0 public debates on the evidence for evolution by repeatedly documenting what say Gould has conceded in his last book: the gaps of the fossil record are systematic and should not be there were darwinist gradualism even close to a true account, not with 250,000+ fossil observations on the record from all around the world and across the eras in museums etc and billions more fossils seen in the ground. This was a spectacularly failed prediction of Darwin in Origin. Then, if someone were to pile up reams of lies, distortions and misrepresentations, then to simply pick several key cases and show the true facts would discredit the case. That never happened, instead word was spread to not debate and now the live donkeys delight to kick the dead lions. and if you think that’s offensive as a metaphor, kindly read Rational wiki or the like on that claimed fallacy. All such do is show they have no integrity or civility. You, sir, owe an apology bigtime. KF
AK, 100:
You here put your amorality on public display for all to see.
The wise will take due heed, and it is appropriate to cite Plato’s warning in The Laws Bk X.
To follow.
KF
PS: Plato’s warning, as is just shown highly relevant by AK at 100:
F/N: re 111, kindly note 64 above. KF
AK, your ad hom on have YOU published in darwinoist journals is duly noted. FYI, there are several dozen and growing technical, ID supportive articles regarding biology. On cosmology, likely the number is 1 – 2 orders of magnitude higher, given the fine tuning issue. Besides, the argument is the trifecta fallacy in action: red herring led away to a strawman caricature duly set alight to cloud, poison, polarise and frustrate the atmosphere for discussion. The core issue that you obviously have no answer to, is that on a trillion observation base, functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information is a reliable sign that intelligently directed configuration is a material causal factor. You have ZERO cases of reliably, actually observed cases where blind chance and/or mechanical necessity have created such FSCO/I. You have no plausible answer to the implied repeated discovery of islands of function in ultra-large config spaces by blind needle in haystack search. That is, you are championing statistical miracles. This is often done by ideological lock-out of the otherwise well warranted candidate: design. When you can answer the core case on its merits, then you may have something of substance to say otherwise. In the meanwhile you are simply showing just how bankrupt the blind watchmaker case is. KF
PS: I won’t indulge a long list of articles, I simply point to Abel on the plausibility metric, which I urge you to read before further digging in deeper: https://tbiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4682-6-27
AK, are you aware of the discipline and movement known by the Russian Acronym, TRIZ? I suggest you look it up before suggesting that no frame of addressing how designs are done is on the table. FYI, this has been specifically pointed to by WmAD, years ago. We also have the ongoing work of Venter et al and genetic engineering. Even the gene knockout research technique is relevant. In short, the whole line of your objections is without serious merit. Not to mention, thattwerdun is prior to howtweredun. KF
AK, are you aware that eye for eye is in effect a statement of the key jurisprudential principle that punishments should be proportionate to crimes? As in, not wildly disproportionate and vindictive? KF
Kairosfocus:
With respect, I think that you are blowing this way out of proportion. As the President of Canada Christian College, I had the pleasure of meeting Duane on several occasions. He would not have been offended by this phrase. In fact, he would have viewed it as a sign that those who disagree with his arguments are clutching at straws.
CM, I must disagree. Kindly, see the Rational Wiki to see what I am speaking about. This is slander to the man and to the current target. The intent is to smear without good cause, brand as intellectually dishonest, poison against and dismiss. While I am sure Dr Gish would indeed be gracious, the fundamental incivility and disrespect for truth in a context that is heavily freighted with consequences are also clear. That destruction of the civil space for serious discussion on the merits, cumulatively, is part of the suicide of our civilisation. I say suicide as those indulging in sawing off the branch are also sitting on it. KF
KairosFocus
Of course this is an attempt to slander and smear. My point is that it fails. Rather than chastising people for doing this, we should allow them. It only makes them look bad. Demanding g that they apologize only gives credence to their views.
CM, were this merely personal insult, I would agree. Unfortunately, it is agit-prop and takes its place in the branch-sawing that is currently undermining our civilisation. The intent is Laodicean: to lock out the unwelcome, so that truth knocks politely at the door of the alleged temple of truth, but in vain. Beyond a certain point we must reckon with why Jesus as prophet TWICE drove the money-changers from the Court of the Gentiles (the second time, sparking the plot that judicially murdered him — and that Sunday was coming does not change the terrible dynamic of corruption thus set loose). I suggest, if you look above, I did not demand an apology but rather pointed out that this is a key step on the road to return to civility. Notice: “anyone who uses the phrase gish gallop here or elsewhere instantly disqualifies himself from serious consideration, pending a straight out apology and pledge never to resort to such slanderous nonsense again.” Self-exile from civility requires self-correction, and the manifestation of such correction of oneself is a signal to others that there is a genuine turn. That does not mean that I have demanded, it means I have described, then pointed the correction. Nor, does it mean that I am holding my breath, waiting on the sort of turn that too often requires a crash into reality at rock bottom as it is said. And unfortunately, the cumulative impact of that spreading evil in its many forms is cumulatively suicidal. Sometimes, inadvertent enabling has to be eliminated. KF
PS, I am prompted to suggest that we take a look at sawdust: tiny little shavings. That proves that each tooth of a zipping saw isn’t doing a lot at any given time. But there are a lot of teeth and the saw is going back and forth, zip, zip, zip. If one extrapolates from oh that’s not a lot, to imagine there is not a large cumulative impact, s/he will be sadly mistaken. In this case, the branch that is being sawed away it bearing the load of our civilisation, apparently largely under-recognised. At some critical point, crack propagation takes over at the stress concentration caused by the indent created. Bang, catastrophic failure. Suicidal agit prop can come to a point of cumulative effect hitting a critical threshold, at which point rapid failure of civilisation ensues. Maybe, it is time to stop sawing away at our future.
Kairosfocus,
Civilization is going to come crashing down because I used the term “Gish gallop” juxtaposed against a nonsense accusation that BA77 made against me? Don’t you think that your hyperbole is over-the-top?
Most measurable indicators show that we are less violent and more tolerant than we have ever been. Largely because we make the effort to understand our differences and accept them as long as they are not doing harm to others. We have better health care and a better social safety net than we have ever had. Our children are better educated. And they are now being provided with comprehensive and factual information about sex, such that rates of unwanted pregnancies and abortions are lower than they were since Roe v. Wade. People are no longer prosecuted,and the level of persecution is lower, for simply being homosexual. Do we face challenges? Of course we do. But I am very optimistic about the future ahead of us. Young people are less hampered by the puritanical edicts of their ancestors; retaining the sensible and logical teachings and discarding the more intolerant ones. We have a lot to learn from our youth.
Allan @ 123, I have never heard anything more nonsensical in my life. Babies are still being killer in the womb. Even one abortion is too many. And why is accepting homosexuality a good thing? Homosexuality is a sin and a destructive practice, leading to disease and early death. These people don’t need tolerance and acceptance, they need help.
Let me tell you what radical sex education is doing in Canada. Children as young as eight are being taught how to have anal sex, and how to use condoms to reduce the risk of disease during anal sex. And they are being forced to question what gender they are. This radical sex education is just leading to a generation of perversion.
AK,
let us go back to your context from 64 above: “the ID technique [–> that’s already a Big Lie agit prop tactic and slander] that you excel at called the Gish Gallop [–> diagnostic, terrible sign], made famous by Duane Gish and others [–> root-slander]” and again at 100 above: “evil is a concept fabricated by religion.”
Before anything else, I note this is an attempt to relativise and dismiss the reality of evil and to side-step two significant developments. First, that while up to the 50’s – 70’s the appeal to the problem of evils was a favourite tactic of atheists to try to dismiss the reality of God. But after Plantinga’s highly successful free will defense was put on the table the deductive form collapsed and the inductive one was broken in its impact. But of course, some of us are old enough to remember and to bear witness.
In short, deep inside the dismissal is resentment that a favourite rhetorical appeal of atheism has collapsed decisively, and that at the hands of a Christian theist and leading philosopher.
The second matter turns on recognising what evil is, as a secondary phenomenon: the frustration, twisting, perversion or privation of what is good in itself that prevents or hampers it from attaining its proper end. A proper end that is often naturally evident. Such as, that our minds are properly aimed at and governed by truth and linked correct, cogent reasoning and duties to the just, the good, the prudent, the wise, etc.
As WmAD famously highlighted from Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, that issue is the problem of good:
I doubt that you would as cavalierly assert through the confident manner fallacy:
evil[–> GOOD] is a concept fabricated by religion . . .But the two are inextricably intertwined, indeed evil parasites off the good and much of its repugnance when its destructive effects are manifest for all to see comes from its patent violation and frustration of what is a manifest proper end.
And so, we can hardly but observe that you are forced to appeal to our sense of duty to truth, justice and more, even as you work as a saw-tooth cutting away at our connexion to the root of such things.
Now, Rational Wiki (and no I will not link the source, do your own search):
Now, too, before I speak more specifically, remember my metaphor just above on the cumulative impact of corrosive polarising slander and cutting off the roots of our civilisation — noting, the dismissive genetic fallacy on evil also made by you, AK: one tooth of a zipping saw does not do much, it seems, from how tiny a sawdust shaving is. But once we see many teeth in action, the cumulative effect is huge as the sawdust pile grows and grows and grows zip-zip-zip, especially if the branch we are sitting on is under strain and has to bear all of us.
Then, beyond a certain unpredictable point, a critical threshold is hit and CRAACK, SNAP, COLLAPSE.
Too late, bitterly too late.
Where, we are dealing with a civilisation that — having nukes — is far too dangerous to fail safely.
In that light, AK’s strawman tactic of twisting my words into:
. . . only manages to show the sort of destructive blindness caused by evil and in accumulation, the zipping saw at suicidal work in our civilisation may well precipitate the unthinkable.
FYI, AK, you sheared off one little curlicue of sawdust from the branch on which we are all sitting. You did this by a doubly slanderous reference. Which, I called you on, and which you show no signs of due responsiveness and responsibility over. And indeed, making that particular reference is a serious sign of how far the rot has progressed in a particular case.
I don’t know if we can wake up from the stupor of a Plato’s Cave suicidal horror show already in progress, but that will take a miracle of mass repentance.
This I do know, our civilisation is in self-induced mortal peril, and the saws are busily zipping away with destructive agit prop cutting us off from the root and support that are vital for our civilisation to thrive.
Not that the blinded, benumbed and polarised will be particularly inclined to wake up to, face and do something about our common peril.
Now, here is my longstanding response to the Gish-smear slander, here at UD (and no it is not a threat to ban, in answer to yet another twister of facts and issues out there):
Nobody wins 300+:0 public debates, inducing opponents to find excuses to dodge further debates and to smear the debater unless he stands on solid facts and cogent reasoning. In this case, were [neo-] darwinist evolutionary theory even roughly true, 250+k fossil species in museums and the billions of further readily seen fossils in the field [e.g. Barbados, where I have lived, is literally built out of layers of fossil limestone, often in the form of corals] would overwhelm us with gradualism of body form transformation as a dominant, obvious pattern. Instead, as Gould et al inadvertently highlighted by championing Punctuated Equilibria, the actual pattern is one of systematic gaps and persistent absence of the roots of the tree of life icon — OoL by blind watchmaker mechanisms. That’s why we see so many evolutionary just so stories in the textbooks, the museums, the documentaries and the literature.
By utter contrast, we may answer the slanders against ID simply and directly.
On a trillion directly observed cases [including your objecting comments above, which are meaningful text strings], functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information — FSCO/I for handy short — is a highly reliable sign of intelligently directed configuration [= design] as relevant cause. This is backed up by the search challenge posed by blind chance and mechanical necessity driven needle in haystack search for configuration spaces that start at the 500 to 1,000 bit threshold of complexity. That is, such a search challenge overwhelms sol system or observed cosmos scale resources, given 3.27*10-150 to 1.07*10^301 and sharply up possibilities, overwhemingly non-functional gibberish.
The only empirically warranted, analytically plausible cause of FSCO/I is design.
The issue is not evidence and analysis, but that design is repugnant to a culturally dominant ideology, evolutionary materialistic scientism. Which, on closer inspection, is readily seen to be self-referentially incoherent and thus irretrievably self-falsifying.
KF
Headlined: https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/answering-aks-claims-a-the-so-called-gish-gallop-is-an-id-technique-and-b-evil-is-a-concept-fabricated-by-religion/
CM, zip-zip-zip, as the sawdust piles up and as the branch begins to groan. KF
Charles,
This level of intentional misrepresentation doesn’t warrant a response. It’s inanity speaks for itself.
Gish Gallop:
This was coined for the debating style of Duane Gish, a creationist proponent. Whether it accurately describes Gish’s debating style is immaterial. We have terms in the English language that are commonly used that don’t necessarily accurately reflect the person they are named for.
But to argue that it is not a technique often used by ID proponents would be wrong, although to be fair it is also used by others. I used it in reference to BA77’s comments. And anyone who has read BA77’s comments would be hard pressed to find relevance or validity to the points being made. And, with respect, the same could be made for some of KF’s comments. Of what relevance is sawdust and cutting the branch to the use of a certain phrase or a statement about evil? Or lemmings going over a cliff? Or abortion being the greatest holocaust ever? Or Plato’s cave? KF uses these metaphors in the strangest associations.
This is all to say that terms like Gish gallop are no more slander than Platonic or Machiavellian are slanderous towards Plato and Machiavelli. However,
With regard to evil being a fabrication of religion, I was obliously exaggerating. The term “evil” is used in many fashions in the English language. In its simplest form it is just a qualifier on the good/bad spectrum. However, in the religious frame of reference, it is used to imply something much more. That is the use of evil that is a fabrication of religion. And anyone who watches religious programming will know what I mean.
But thank you for posting an OP about something I sai. It is good for the ego. But to be serious, I enjoy these discussions, especially when something I say stimulates further discussion, even when it is in opposition to me those are the most constructive discussions.
AK:
What part of slander do you not recognise?
This further doubling down is sadly telling.
Now, on your second assertion, I see:
My reply stands, “fabrication” is an obviously loaded term and your insinuations and suggestions about “religious programming” are yet further doubling down.
You have tried to circumvent the issue of gross error regarding the nature of evil by suggesting “The term “evil” is used in many fashions . . . In its simplest form it is just a qualifier on the good/bad spectrum.” Good vs bad only manages to use a synonym for evil. Fail.
There is a substantial conceptualisation of evil on the table:
KF
KairosFocus,
Gish’s debates are there for all to see. I think that the definition of Gish Gallop describes his debating style quite accurately. You disagree. The fact that you think it is slander doesn’t make it so. But you will also note that I almost never use the term, even though the definition aptly describes the debating style of two frequent commenters on this site.
All I will say about this is Google Charles McVety, a recent commenter here, and watch a few of his videos.
So AK, let me see if I got this straight. Disingnuous Darwinian debating tactic #449, or is that tactic #448?, is that if someone presents ample evidence against Darwinian claims, instead of addressing any of the evidence forthrightly, you just issue a ad hominem with what is termed a “Gish Gallop” and then you claim victory and walk away???
Golly gee whiz you just got to luv this Darwinian stuff, no messy research or backing up your claims with actual real time evidence, just attack the man, ignore the research, and call it a day.
Of course, those who are not so enamored with all things Darwinian, as you are, might not find your tactics so compelling. But hey, who am I to say anything. All the evidence I presented, and me included, are rendered pointless and moot by your magic two words “Gish Gallop”! 🙂
satire off!
AK, you are simply wrong. For reasons long since laid out. Further to this, you seem indifferent to the basic discourtesy of a double-slander [which beyond a certain threshold is an outright tort]: Gish to begin with and those you wish to smear, tag and dismiss today. Remember, you are by DIRECT implication accusing people of trying to win debates by wholesale lying; seldom a wise thing to suggest, especially when you deal with those who have put careers and lives on the line on issues of conscience and truth. Blend in the indication that you have caught the bad habit of selective hyperskepticism and we can see the hint of a perfect storm of mutually reinforcing fallacies. KF
KairosFocus,
I am willing to admit the possibility. Are you?
No. The “Gish gallop” style does not make any implications of lying.
AK, an actual half truth would be a whole lie, and as was already cited, there is an explicit assertion of piling up reams of lies — Rational Wiki (so-called): ” the debating technique of drowning the opponent in . . . a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments . . . “ That is the context in which I am pointing out that this term was born in slander and lives in slander to this day; unless you are in a position to demonstrate piled up lies, kindly do not use language with that implied accusation. As for matters epistemological, your attempt to project the fallacy of the closed mind to me by snide suggestion obviously reflects your failure to seriously read and reckon with the already linked 101 on worldviews here on. I will note, some things are self-evident (on pain of instant absurdity on the attempted denial; I used error exists and consciousness as cases in point), other things are warranted to lesser degrees. I also think you failed to see why I normally use a weak form understanding of knowledge: warranted, credibly true (and reliable) belief, which for instance applies to many scientific, managerial or historical claims. And so forth. KF
Allan Keith:
Thank God for that!
But what’s wrong with lying?
Kairosfocus,
Thank you for demonstrating the fine art of the quote-mine. The actual definition from RatialWiki is:
The part about “torrent of lies…”, follows on from this sentence:
This explains that the Gish gallop is often used in conjunction with other questionable debating tactics, including lies, red herrings and straw man erecting. It does not say that the Gish gallop itself involves lies.
Gish’s debating style often involved bombarding the opponent with mountains of arguments, some weak, some strong. In a timed debate, this dos not allow the opponent time to respond adequately to all of them. My criticism is not with Gish. He employed a tactic for which his opponents could not adequately respond to. That is what debaters try to do. My criticism is with the moderators and his opponents for not calling him on it.
Gish gallop does not pertain to blogs and forums such as UD.
Allan Keiths:
As if someone ought not quote-mine. Why all the moral judgmentalism Mr. Keith?
AK, I highlighted a relevant part of a citation which I gave in more extensive form earlier [including in a headlined OP]. In so doing, I directly demonstrated that — contrary to your assertions — the term DOES directly assert half truths and lies in wholesale quantities. You then failed to acknowledge that I had obviously made my point and proceeded to double down with the further accusation of misleading out of context citation. You have thus shown your own utter lack of seriousness, responsibility and reasonableness. Duly noted. KF
PS: This latest episode also shows the suicidal nature of the alleged tactic. For, AK has here given enough of a performance that — were there any remaining doubt — we know the irresponsible, un-serious, unreasonable rhetorical habits we are dealing with in this case. At this point, we can only correct for record.
KF@140, I went back to comment 125 and to your dedicated OP. In both you have written:
The only problem is that the quote you say is from RationalWiki does not appear anywhere on that page.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
The actual definition from RationalWiki is:
Although not flattering, it does not say that it is “ the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments…”, as you implied.
Possibly you were mistaken about where you obtained the definition you posted. But I must say that on the face of it, it appears that you picked and chose parts of different sentences from the RationalWiki page and assembled them to suggest a definition that RationalWiki, no fan of ID, never intended. It is possible that your quote comes from a different RationalWiki page, or another site. If you can provide a link to this, I will certainly apologize.
Actually the quote appears exactly as KF gave it between October 2012 and February 2014 – and maybe at others times too. You can see it on the ‘Fossil Record’ tab.
Steve_h,
Thank you for pointing this out. KF was not fabricating a false quote, just using a quote that was corrected four years ago. I sincerelyapologize to KF for suggesting an intentional quote mine.
AK,
I clipped the definition from Rational Wiki verbatim, as described. You suggest that they have amended the definition, and it seems this is done without explanation or apology, it is just pushed into an archived version.
Now, the same definition continues, eg:
>> https://speakingofresearch.com/2012/09/11/gish-gallop/
Gish Gallop is a technique, named after the creationist Duane Gish who employed it, whereby someone argues a cause by hurling as many different half-truths and no-truths into a very short space of time so that their opponent cannot hope to combat each point in real time. This leaves some points unanswered and allows the original speaker to try and claim his opponent lacks the counter-arguments.>>
The source for this is obvious, given close resemblance.
Next, we see Wiki as of just now:
>>”Gish gallop” is a technique used during debating that focuses on overwhelming one’s opponent with as many arguments as possible, without regard for accuracy or strength of the arguments.
The term was coined by Eugenie C. Scott and named after the creationist Duane T. Gish, who used the technique frequently against science-based opponents on the topic of evolution.
During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. In practice, each point raised by the “Gish galloper” takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place.>>
The slanders and insinuations of being a liar continue, in short.
And no, my citation is not out of date as is in your latest suggestion.
Finally, the “weak arguments” subtle-form, dog whistle wink-wink, nod-nod version of the claim fails, as it does not responsibly acknowledge how evidence can mutually support and reinforce. ESPECIALLY IN AN INDUCTIVE CONTEXT.
A useful contrast is deductive argument chains which snap at a single weak link vs inductive, cumulative ones that are like twisted strands and fibres in a rope. The fibres and strands mutually reinforce, leading to a case where an individually weak and short fibre, joined to others will form a long, strong rope. This is a classic system effect where the whole is greater than the mere sum of parts. (And BTW, I discuss exactly this in my 101.)
A capital example is Babbage in the 9th Bridgewater thesis. One familiar witness to the risen Christ may be given say a 1 in 1,000 chance of being mistaken. But when the number of witnesses, variety of relationships, views and circumstances begin to multiply, the odds of all being wrong drop exponentially. That is, we here see the probability meat in the classic saying that in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a word be established.
What happened with Gish is that he did in fact survey the range of cases and correctly identified the systematic gaps, in a context where there are 250+k fossil species with billions of observed cases across the span of the fossiliferous rocks and around the world. Such a sample is not likely to be wrong in such a dominant pattern, Darwin’s hope has been dashed. That’s why Punctuated equilibria was put on the table, to find another way around the “trade secret” of paleontology. But that too has fizzled.
More foundationally, the issue of the origin of the FSCO/I in body plans from OoL up is a separate line of evidence and it highlights the only empirically warranted source: intelligently directed configuration.
As I have pointed out, there is a reason why Gish scored 300+:0 in debates, and the slanderous, character assassination pseudofallacy explanation simply does not hold water. Period.
Going forward, the use of the same pseudofallacy to accuse us today is slander, false accusation of being a gross liar, and those who resort to it will by that behaviour identify themselves as poisonous slanderers. Period.
KF
PS: On further thought, I point out that you should examine why you so quickly jumped to a loaded, slanderous conclusion of systematic deceit on my part. I am a man who has put his life on the line on issues of truth.
KairosFocus,
Since you are unwilling to accept an apology, I retract it.
You obviously “clipped” it at least four years ago and never checked to see if it had been updated.
Yes. It continued two years before RationalWiki corrected their definition. I didn’t know that time travel was one of your super powers.
So, you are just going to arbitrarily redefine “Gish Gallop”. From now on I will refer to it as the Kairisfocus Canter.
You used a quote that was corrected four years ago and can only be found by going through the audit trail. I asked you if it was from a different site and offered to apologize if it was. Someone else pointed out where you probably found the quote and I promptly apologized. But rather than acknowledge this and move on, you attack. And then you go all self righteous on me.
Obviously you are incapable of following the Christian teachings that you preach about. I think that our conversation has come to an end.
AK, your continued rhetoric is utterly unimpressive. The explicit and hinted at meaning of the pseudo-fallacy slander tactic are one and the same, and the just now Wiki reference underscores the fact. The term is irretrievably tainted by its usage across time and it should never be used by a sincere, responsible and civil commenter. In a day and age where “microagressions,” so-called, are loudly denounced on far slenderer grounds, the point should not require belabouring. KF
KairosFocus,
My continued rhetoric? I wasn’t the one who doubled down and went on the attack after an apology was given. If you can’t accept an apology, the problem lies with you, not me.
AK, really? Attack? I asked for a responsible resolution of a very serious conclusion-jumping game directly relevant to the point at stake; recall, you just called a man who has put his life on the line on matters of truth, a deliberate, calculated liar who willfully composed a deceitful construct as a sham definition, to base a meritless complaint. Yes, on Steve-h’s direct correction, you pulled back, which is indeed a good first step towards a return to civility. However, in all fairness, an explanation — as opposed to grovelling — is reasonable, in the context of that return to civility — which is the point of an apology; which I am willing to acknowledge. I in turn apologise for not explicitly acknowledging that apology as offered earlier. I trust the voltage can now be turned down to sub-lethal levels. G’night. KF
F/N: I took time out to track down the essay where the ideas are introduced by Ms Scott. The taint I pointed out is there from the outset. Ms Scott complains on citing Gould on the trade secret of paleontology, then says:
There is much that is utterly wrong with this essay, for reasons already highlighted and in part noted in-quote.
In particular, a torrent of half-truths is a thinly veiled way of saying reams of lies. For, a half-truth is a whole lie. Including twisted quotation — as I was accused of above. I here substantiate that my concern was there from the beginning, though Ms Scott is a bit more genteel than the raw statement in Rational Wiki which I found years ago on first encountering this pseudo-fallacy.
Where spewing reams of half-truths, lies, distorted dishonest quotes etc is an actual problem, any half-decent lawyer knows that if you pick out several points of error, and properly expose falsity and deceit or even just incompetence, the credibility of the other side is shattered.
So, the rhetorical premise Scott offers is fundamentally false.
Her claims about Creationists dodging narrow formats is also misleading, as in fact the claimed gradualism is a matter of a wide array of evidence relative to 150 years of fossils, with a broad pattern that should be there but is not. That’s Gould’s famous trade secret. And no it’s not just rates, the rates issue was put up to explain the gaps. The systematic gaps.
So, the core point is there, right from the beginning. The term is tainted, it insinuates deceitful insincerity and manipulation of the public. Even, going so far as to suggest that a format that gives time to make the case is calculated to get away with in effect public education fraud.
I am reminded of the what, six year old offer here at UD that we would publish an up to 6,000 word or so (the limit is generous and flexible, where at 120 WPM that is 50 minutes of speech, about the times in question) essay that would outline and substantiate the core blind watchmaker thesis case for ooL and tree of life. Links can go elsewhere but the case as a summary must be made in the essay. After a year of pursuing it, no satisfactory submission was received from the penumbra of objector sites.
That is relevant to the credibility of the argument Ms Scott made. No, I do not buy the claim, for cause.
Coming back to the core point, it is clear that “Gish gallop” is loaded to the point of slander and should not be used. it boils down to saying that if one puts up a sustained, lecture length or magazine feature article length argument with many sources, using expert testimony against interest one is a liar and misquoter, pretty automatically.
That is patently false and unjustifiably accusatory.
It is time this was set aside.
And, web searches show the term is now being migrated into making even more loaded political points in what is in effect a policy opinion verbal war that is deeply poisoning the atmosphere for discussion.
Something is wrong here, seriously wrong.
Something connected to the obvious ongoing suicide of our civilisation.
It is time to turn back before the crumbling cliff’s edge collapses underfoot.
KF
Allan Keith:
It’s not like quote-mining is morally wrong.
F/N: As a relevant example, let the objectors reflect on Loennig on the claimed rise of the giraffe: http://ad-multimedia.de/evo/lo.....ffe_mU.pdf Is this a tissue of misleading citations, half-truths and reams of outright lies as the rhetorical club “Gish gallop” would imply? On what basis would such a claim stand? (I note, this essay is of monograph length, but is typical of literature I have seen that documents the gap between oh there is a path to the body plan and admissions against interest that show the reality of serious and too often papered over gaps.) KF