Saturday Fun: Adapa’s DDS on Display

_{Barry Arrington

November 22, 2014

Intelligent Design}

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Sometimes an example of Darwinist Derangement Syndrome (see UD’s glossary) is just too delicious to allow it to languish deep in a comment thread. Here’s an exchange between Adapa and WJM in the Way Forward thread:

First, Adapa claims that science has “conclusively demonstrated” that unguided evolution can produce observed diversity of life:

Adapa @99:

. . . science has already conclusively demonstrated that the observed natural process of random genetic variations filtered by selection and retaining heritable traits is sufficient to produce the biological life variations we see today . . .

@ 587 William J Murray disagrees and says unless a P(T|H) calculation can be made for a naturally occurring biological phenomenon “evolution cannot be vetted as ‘unguided.’”

@ 590 Adapa then says it is “idiotic” to demand that science prove that unguided forces are sufficent:

This bit of idiocy seems to be WJM’s latest favorite – the demand that science prove evolution isn’t guided.

And that it is dumb to ask science to prove a negative:

Why an armchair philosopher would be dumb enough to demand science prove a negative is anyone’s guess.

But, in the first quote, that’s exactly what Adapa claims science has done – proven the very negative he claims is stupid and dumb to expect science to do! Adapa claims science has proven that evolution is unguided, and when WJM asked him to show him where, Adapa says that it is stupid and dumb to expect science to prove evolution is unguided!!

Comments

Keith: And note that William doesn’t merely complain about the assumption that macroevolution is unguided. He even makes that complaint about microevolution:
And rightly so. Take for instance this very well known example of microevoltion: Darwin's Finches.
excerpt: "What it shows is that the variations in beak shapes are far from random -- the birds are using these specific geometric transformations to produce morphological diversity," Abzhanov said. "With just two mathematical transformations, we can show how all the diversity across these species can be related." - “What this study suggests is that for songbirds which use a conical-shaped beak … even though they show amazing adaptive diversity, they all generate their beaks using the same developmental mechanism, and that puts constraints on the kind of variation they are able to produce,” said Abzhanov. Ultimately, it shows how efficiently nature can work, because these birds have been able to squeeze as much as they can from the level of variation they can actually produce.”
If the variation in beak shapes in Darwin's Finches is "far from random" for what reason should anyone assume that microevolution is unguided in general?Box_{November 23, 2014
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Learned Hand to WJM:
But you’re complaining that scientists aren’t trying to prove the negative regardless of ID’s claims. Which, despite your complaints about analogies, puts you exactly in the position of an Intelligent Faller or Intelligent Radiator complaining that scientists just assume, without “scientifically, conclusively demonstrating,” that gravity and atomic decay are unguided.
It's astounding, isn't it? William has been repeating that error for almost two weeks after it was pointed out to him:
William, You’re repeating the nullasalus error again:
Science isn’t about proof, nullasalus. Surely you’ve heard that somewhere along the way. Sure, microevolution might be guided. The grains falling out of my salt shaker might be guided by invisible leprechauns to their final resting place on my french fries. Raindrops might be gathered, shaped, and dropped by the Rain Fairy in a precise pattern. The swirl of water in your toilet bowl might be guided by Shamu, the invisible Toilet Whale. But anyone insisting on these things would be justly regarded as a loony. There is no evidence that these things are guided, so intelligent people rightly regard them as unguided.
What’s especially hilarious about this is that you had just written this in the immediately preceding comment:
It is indeed the ID position that in any case where natural forces are a plausible explanation, natural forces is the better explanation because design would be an unnecessary added causal entity.
Natural forces are a plausible explanation for microevolution. Try to be consistent from one comment to the very next one, William.
And note that William doesn't merely complain about the assumption that macroevolution is unguided. He even makes that complaint about microevolution:
When challenged on this assumption, Keith makes statements such as “even YECs agree that microevolution is unguided”, or that some particular ID proponent has made that concession; please note that because others elect not to challenge an assumption doesn’t mean that everyone else is required to concede the point.
The reason other IDers don't challenge this assumption is because they're smarter than William. They don't want ID to live or die by the same logic as Shamu, the Invisible Toilet Whale. They want it to be scientifically respectable.keith s_{November 23, 2014
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KS: Three points, 1: continued enabling, 2: there's a tree you continue refusing to bark up, 3: continued drumbeat repetition of falsehood cannot transform it into truth. G'day. KFkairosfocus_{November 23, 2014
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Barry @ 102, What really frosts their powdered little bottoms is the fact that some very smart people challenge their ideology. And most of the challengers and skeptics of blind watchmaker evoluation are not Bible Thumping Fundamentalists. They Don't Like That. For Some Reason.Vishnu_{November 23, 2014
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Learned Hand @ 91 [cont’d]:
His [WJM’s] position, which I think you tried to defend until it became obviously too silly even for UD to stand up for, is that regardless of the positive claims ID makes, materialists should be justifying their assumption that natural selection and random mutation are unguided.
It is staggering that you’ve been participating in this exchange for two days now and you haven’t grasped WJM’s position (far less refuted it). WJM was responding to Adapa, who asserted that science has falsified ID by conclusively demonstrating that natural forces behind evolution are unguided. I think you understand that Adapa’s assertion was sheer nonsense. A few times you have affirmatively stated that scientists assume that the natural forces behind evolution are unguided. Indeed, you’ve said it would be impossible to prove the negative. You and WJM are in basic agreement about the substance of the issue. He just goes one step further and says, “therefore Adapa was wrong when he said that science has conclusively demonstrating that natural forces behind evolution are unguided.” Surely you agree that science has not conclusively demonstrating that natural forces behind evolution are unguided. So why is it so hard for you to take that last step with WJM?Barry Arrington_{November 23, 2014
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Learned Hand @ 91:
ID and its ideas are by and large ignored by biologists, [blah blah blah]
This is probably the most stunning example of “appeal to authority” I have ever encountered. Nearly pristine in its lack of substance, it goes on as if making a substantive argument hardly even matters. Good work LH. I guess if no one can disagree until everyone agrees, there goes any hope for revolutionary progress. What you fail to realize, of course, is that this sort of blatant status quo power down is a replay of the Church/Galileo affair. And you are playing the role of a prince of the church. The irony is that you almost certainly think of yourself as an open-minded skeptic.Barry Arrington_{November 23, 2014
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Light Bulb Fairies Haha Good one :DVishnu_{November 23, 2014
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Learned Hand: When a light bulb burns out in my house, I assume that no one made that happen to force me to sit in the dark.
Are you suggesting the burning out of a light bulb is somehow an apt comparison with the coming into existence of all the fancy stuff we see in life? Of course you are well aware of the fact that unguided processes cannot even account for one single protein, but still you dare to present such a nonsensical comparison! Why not add some light bulb fairies to the mix as well? How do you ppl do it? Really! I would like to know.Box_{November 23, 2014
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Barry, Box, HeKS, KF, "Was it really necessary to end the other thread on account of Adapa’s nonsense"? "I wasn’t done". "Seconded. I wasn’t done either. Can the thread be reopened or even better can we have a new “Keith’s damp squib” (HeKS?, WJM?) thread"? Thirded, i was about to respond to zachriel and I spent a whole day writing out my objective nested hierarchy test, to come back to a closed thread, my OCD needs me to post my stuff somewhere lol.logically_speaking_{November 23, 2014
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KF:
HeKS, I regret that the problem of trollish misbehaviour intervened. KF
KF, You should be apologizing for your own behavior. I repeat: Your personal incompetence is no reason for you to ban people or to terminate entire threads. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Step aside and let the competent people have a grown-up discussion.keith s_{November 23, 2014
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Box:
And then there are people who are a disgrace to the whole of humanity. Everything they say is hollow. They are vaguely aware of this fact but don’t care about truth because they are rotten to the core.
Ah, so Box cares about truth. His buddy WJM doesn't:
As it doesn’t matter to me if my beliefs are true or not, doubt of any kind is a non-issue. I guess you could say that I’m the ultimate pragmatist; I don’t care if my beliefs are true; I only care that they work (or at least appear to). If they stopped working, I’d believe something else. Doubt, in my system, is a non-sequitur.
Is WJM "rotten to the core", Box?keith s_{November 23, 2014
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Learned Hand- The point is how was it determined that mutations are unguided? Are the 1's and 0's on a computer buss unguided? BTW ID doesn't generate positive evidence- that isn't what science does. Science assesses the evidence and the evidence wrt biology, astronomy, cosmology, physics and chemistry all point to an intelligent design. Materialism has proven to be a failed philosophy. It is time to move on towards a reality-based framework.Joe_{November 23, 2014
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HeKS, I regret that the problem of trollish misbehaviour intervened. KFkairosfocus_{November 23, 2014
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WJM,
All you really have to do is simply admit it’s an assumption that cannot be scientifically, conclusively demonstrated as claimed. It’s taken as a matter of faith. It may be a widespread assumption, but that’s still all it is. You may find it ridiculous for anyone to challenge the assumption, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is just an assumption, not a scientifically demonstrated, conclusive fact. At the end of the day, regardless of how appropriate or common it is to assert the unguided nature of evolution, it is in fact nothing more than an ideololgicval assumption which has never been scientifically vetted and which most Darwinists insist cannot be scientifically vetted.
This has become beyond bizarre. The assertion that random mutation and natural selection are unguided is an assumption--proving it would be proving a negative. We use these null hypotheses all the time. When a light bulb burns out in my house, I assume that no one made that happen to force me to sit in the dark. You can complain that I'm taking that position "as a matter of faith," and that it "cannot be scientifically, conclusively demosntrated as claimed," and I guess that's true. But how on earth does anyone ever do anything if they have a positive obligation to "scientifically, conclusively demonstrate" that every possible hypothesis isn't true? That's why the logical and practical convention is not to make extravagant assumptions, such as that an unseen designer designed everything using unknown methods and materials for an unknown cause, unless there's a reason to make that assumption. For some people, religion is such a reason. Others claim that math or empirical evidence give them a reason to make that assumption (although the rest of us think religion is still at the root of their position). But you're complaining that scientists aren't trying to prove the negative regardless of ID's claims. Which, despite your complaints about analogies, puts you exactly in the position of an Intelligent Faller or Intelligent Radiator complaining that scientists just assume, without "scientifically, conclusively demonstrating," that gravity and atomic decay are unguided. Yes, scientists assume that decay and gravity--like natural selection and random mutation--are unguided. Those should be provisional assumptions, but they are assumptions. The idea that those assumptions are "ideological" is a little strange. But bold, in a way. Given the extravagant scope of ID's failure to generate positive evidence, I suppose attacking the concept of a null hypothesis is another avenue towards annihilating materialism. I suspect it won't be very successful, but everyone needs a hobby. Knock yourself out.Learned Hand_{November 23, 2014
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KS, I see you are hoping to drag this thread into a downspiral of personalities, innuendos and accusations all too familiar to those who have waded through various feverish attack-sites, which I have zero interest in doing. As for the incident you would make so much of, it apparently is not registering that (1) Adapa indulged patent slander, (2) was corrected on it by me as thread owner then (3) insistently reiterated the slander in an obvious threadjacking -- on a thread BTW which was not going favourably to him and ilk. That he was banned for cause by those who have that power for his insistent disruptive and slanderous behaviour (backed up by the presumption of a right to use UD's facilities to brazenly slander UD . . . ) is obvious, save to those who support or enable these smears. And as for your conspiracy theorising, no, I see no good reason why the disruptive and slanderous should have a free for all platform at the expense of their targetted victims. Civil disagreement is one thing, abuse and irresponsible slander utterly another. If you, KS, choose to be an enabler of such, that is your choice and reasonable people will see what you are doing for what it is -- and will draw appropriate conclusions. Especially, in a context where if you and your ilk genuinely had the warrant for claims regarding the tree of life, you would have long since taken up the offer to host an essay on the merits that would have utterly shattered the design case regarding the world of life. As you full well know, that offer has been on the table for two full years and you yourself have publicly refused to take it up, reverting to preferred rhetorical sniping. And, on fair comment I will say that the case you have tried to put up at UD for several weeks now fails, fails patently and on many levels, so if that is the case you would make to counter design thought it speaks for itself. I trust that at minimum, in future you will refrain from rain fairy, planet-pushing angels and the like strawmannish caricatures of the design inference process and will recognise that the tree of life picture you have championed is inconsistent with the actual situation with molecular and related evidence. Bottomline, for record: the tree the dog will not bark up, clearly has a bear in it the dog wants nothing to do with. That, is a case where silence speaks loudly indeed. KFkairosfocus_{November 23, 2014
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And then there are people who are a disgrace to the whole of humanity. Everything they say is hollow. They are vaguely aware of this fact but don't care about truth because they are rotten to the core. The only thing they do care about is to disperse their religion of meaninglessness and death - everything is allowed. Why do they care so much? Because they are depraved psychopaths who don't have the guts to face their inevitable destruction on their own.Box_{November 23, 2014
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Barry Arrington,
It does not. Random Mutations (RM), Natural Selection (NS), and Deep Time (DT) cannot explain many features of the living world . . . . I could go on and on.
Of course you could—you're reading out of the ID manual, chapter and verse. It's a particularly ineffectual argument, having utterly failed to make progress with the experts in any of the relevant fields. ID and its ideas are by and large ignored by biologists, chemists, mathematicians, computer scientists, philosophers, engineers, statisticians, anthropologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, doctors, lawyers, investigators, physicists, astronomers, linguists, epidemiologists—actually, pretty much everyone at pretty much every university around the world. The small minority of people who take the ID movement seriously love it to death, but have a peculiar difficulty actually using it to do anything, even produce ideas that are taken seriously by anyone outside the ideology. (Maybe that would change if Intelligent Design experts could actually detect design in the real world, the one thing they claim to have done?) But that's the standard conversation. You've got your take, I've got mine, and we both think the other person is an ideologue. But that's not the conversation WJM started. His position, which I think you tried to defend until it became obviously too silly even for UD to stand up for, is that regardless of the positive claims ID makes, materialists should be justifying their assumption that natural selection and random mutation are unguided. Which, obviously, puts him in an absurd position: should materialist physicists defend their assumption that atomic decay is unguided? Should materialist astronomers defend their assumption that the patters of sunspots are unguided? He's incredulous—incensed!—that science somehow proceeds without proving a negative first. Why don't we go back to the usual ID conversation? WJM's version is a little too through-the-looking-glass for me. It's distinctly odd trying to have a conversation with someone who admittedly doesn't hold anything in particular as true and is primarily interested in "whether or not I enjoy the experience as a good man" as opposed to whether a proposition is true. It's ironic that, despite all your flailing hostility towards people you accuse of perverse moral relativism, WJM may come closer to your stereotype of that position than any actual ID critics.Learned Hand_{November 23, 2014
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Adapa spewed enough ignorance and was proven to be an insipid troll. At least you are entertaining.Joe_{November 23, 2014
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HeKS:
If I have time, I will start a new OP to resume our discussion.
Good. I look forward to it.
Also, please keep in mind that this new OP, when it goes up, will not be another or different attempt to respond to your argument. It will merely be a continuation of what I started before but which got cut off.
Understood, although others may wish to propose new criticisms of my argument.
P.S. KF has told me independently that he has no ability to ban users, so if Adapa is banned then it was probably someone else who did it.
Adapa says:
Minutes after that exchange where KF went into and drastically changed my post and I called him on it I was silently banned. My account wasn’t killed but all my attempts to posts are immediately deleted.
Even if KF were not directly involved -- which I find hard to believe, since the banning happened minutes after KF started editing Adapa's comments -- you will notice that he has not protested the banning or requested Adapa's reinstatement. He also closed the entire thread in a fit of pique. KF is a disgrace to UD and to himself.keith s_{November 23, 2014
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No keith s, you are unable to defend yourself. You are forced to ignore and/ or misrepresent your opponents as if your ignorance and dishonesty mean something. You and your ilk's personal incompetence is the reason for bannings and thread closings. If you had the intestinal fortitude to honestly and openly address the refutations the threads would have been ended long before they were closed.Joe_{November 23, 2014
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KF, It's well known among folks on both sides of the ID debate that you fare poorly in open discussion. You know it too, which is why you so frequently abuse your moderator privileges: annotating, editing and censoring posts; banning commenters; and posting your endless FYI-FTR threads with comments disabled. The rest of us are able to defend ourselves without moderator privileges. You can't, so you ~~use~~ abuse them as a crutch. Your personal incompetence is no reason for you to ban people or to terminate entire threads. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Step aside and let the competent people have a grown-up discussion.keith s_{November 23, 2014
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Correction: "Also, people keep in mind..." should have been "Also, please keep in mind..."HeKS_{November 23, 2014
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Keith, If I have time, I will start a new OP to resume our discussion. I have a mountain of other things I really should be doing, but I also don't like leaving a discussion hanging in the middle of it. Also, people keep in mind that this new OP, when it goes up, will not be another or different attempt to respond to your argument. It will merely be a continuation of what I started before but which got cut off. P.S. KF has told me independently that he has no ability to ban users, so if Adapa is banned then it was probably someone else who did it. It's also possible that he has been put on moderated status. I have posting privileges here, but I'm not involved in any of the background moderation/management stuff so I wouldn't know.HeKS_{November 23, 2014
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kairosfocus:
KS, I shut down a thread and removed repetition of a set of false accusations in the face of insistent slander after a very clear warning, as an atmosphere poisoning tactic.
You threw a temper tantrum, annotating, editing, and deleting the comments of another poster, and then shutting down the entire thread when others were in the midst of a vigorous discussion. You took your ball and went home. It was selfish and childish, and even your fellow IDers HeKS and Box are questioning the shutdown.
As you full well know, further, I do not hold power of banning.
Immediately after you started censoring Adapa, he found that he was no longer able to post comments. What would you call that, if not a banning, Mr. Honesty?keith s_{November 23, 2014
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The differing coloration of moths already existed. Only the variation frequency changed. The same goes for beak size. The nylon episodes are most likely due to built-in responses to environmental cues. As for this alleged theory of evolution, no one seems to be able to find it. Why is that?Joe_{November 23, 2014
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Seversky: If we didn’t see peppered moths changing color in response to environmental changes caused by industrial pollution or finches beaks changing form or micro-organisms developing the ability to digest some of the waste by-products of nylon manufacture then it would be much harder to make a case for the theory of evolution.
Well, the pepper moths are bogus, and the other two examples are not about the evolution of novel traits. Check this out: Peppered moth myth, 'Darwin's Finches Show Rule-Constrained Variation in Beak Shape' and '"evolution" of nylonase'.Box_{November 23, 2014
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"Survival of the fittest" would be an empty tautology unless it encapsulated processes we observe in the natural world. If we didn't see peppered moths changing color in response to environmental changes caused by industrial pollution or finches beaks changing form or micro-organisms developing the ability to digest some of the waste by-products of nylon manufacture then it would be much harder to make a case for the theory of evolution. Survival of the fittest is not a tautology if it describes observed behavior.Seversky_{November 23, 2014
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Joe said:
Natural selection predicts- wait for it- the fittest will survive and reproduce.
Or: Natural selection predicts that those which have a better chance at survival and reproduction will survive and reproduce better. Now there's a prediction you can sink your teeth into!William J Murray_{November 23, 2014
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Adapa was probably just engineering his escape strategy. Better to go out in self-manufactured martyrdom to the cause (which Keith has already started the narrative for) than to endure the indignity of having no means of supporting his own assertions.William J Murray_{November 23, 2014
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LH @64, The problem, LH, is that I haven't advanced any ID proposals. The only thing I've done is challenge those who have made assertions in their arguments (such as they were) to support their assertions. Here is what you, Adapa, and Keith have done when challenged to support your assertions: 1) Insist you don't have to. 2) Ridicule and negatively characterize those who have challenged the assertion. 3) Reiterate the assertion over and over with analogies/examples that assume what is being challenged 4) Point at other scientists who make similar assumptions about things that were not part of the challenge. 5) Insist that others prove the assertions false. 6) Claim it would be really, really hard to support the assertions. 7) Insist that someone else support some other assertion about some other hypothesis/theory. 8) Insist that while it's really just an assumption, it's an assumption you have a right to assert unchallenged. IOW, you've done everything except support the assertion. All you really have to do is simply admit it's an assumption that cannot be scientifically, conclusively demonstrated as claimed. It's taken as a matter of faith. It may be a widespread assumption, but that's still all it is. You may find it ridiculous for anyone to challenge the assumption, but that doesn't change the fact that it is just an assumption, not a scientifically demonstrated, conclusive fact. At the end of the day, regardless of how appropriate or common it is to assert the unguided nature of evolution, it is in fact nothing more than an ideololgicval assumption which has never been scientifically vetted and which most Darwinists insist cannot be scientifically vetted.William J Murray_{November 23, 2014
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