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This Week’s Dispute Between Evolutionists Can’t Hide the Religion

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This week’s squabble between evolution professors might seem like great fun, but it is more likely to mislead than to inform. Austin Hughes at the University of South Carolina criticized the University of Chicago’s Jerry Coyne for linking evolution and atheism and Coyne, in turn, wondered aloud if Hughes is in cognitive dissonance and is up to snuff as a scientist. There is plenty there to criticize but it is all a sidetrack. Don’t pay too much attention to such infighting because where it counts, Hughes and Coyne agree.  Read more

Comments
Greg's got a fine brain; no doubt about that, is there? Just his religion is 'off the wall'; so he ends up painting himself into corners.Axel
February 17, 2013
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Mung's lost his GPS coordinates.Axel
February 17, 2013
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Mung's on a 'Layman' stint at the moment, BA. Greg's cast him into the outer darkness, as a ... 'layman'. Has he found his doctoral certificate yet, Mung? I think its driving him more crazy than ever, not being able to lay his hands on it, to email a copy of it to us! Imagine your own students laughing at you behind your back.. That's what they must be doing seeing his constant evasions and sophistries on here. But particularly the evasions.... Stop ORDERING me!Axel
February 17, 2013
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Mung, Perhaps you would like to give him a few hints to include to spice up his videos? I thought the background videos were excellent and seeing that the phylogenetic subject is fairly intense in details, I don't see how he could improve much there. Perhaps you can give some of your cute one liners? But then I don't think he was aiming for being 'cute', just honest to the evidence. Which is something we need far more of!bornagain77
February 17, 2013
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Can he be any more boring?Mung
February 17, 2013
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OT: Bill Smith has another very good video upload in the excellent series he has coming out,, micro-RNA and Non-Falsifiable Phylogenetic Trees - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv-i4pY6_MU&list=PL22eQqszdBpA7pUorVxj3GHhn7gugSY8xbornagain77
February 17, 2013
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Its not true that creationism is from religous people . only a small percentage. In fact it comes from the organic sharp intellect of the American people who demand great evidence for great conclusions. Evolutionism has not made a persuasive case. in fact these evolutionists make this clear. They always invoke leggy whales, genetics, biogeography, etc which are all conclusions unrelated to biological scientific investigation. Pay attention. They don't show mechanisms but only results they say could only be from evolution. Even if true these still would not be scientific proofs.Robert Byers
February 17, 2013
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Evolutionists' rules of evidence: 1. Evolution is a proven fact; therefore all facts prove evolution. 2. Regarding facts that falsify evolution -- please refer to rule #1.sagebrush gardener
February 16, 2013
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the argument from imperfection — i.e., organisms show imperfections of “design” that constitute evidence for evolution — is not a theological argument, but a scientific one. The reason why the recurrent laryngeal nerve, for example, makes a big detour around the aorta before attaching to the larynx is perfectly understandable by evolution (the nerve and artery used to line up, but the artery evolved backwards, constraining the nerve to move with it), but makes no sense under the idea of special creation — unless, that is, you believe that the creator designed things to make them look as if they evolved. No form of creationism/intelligent design can explain these imperfections, but they all, as Dobzhansky said, “make sense in the light of evolution.”
Apart from the point Cornelius makes about the obvious contradiction, so now Coyne believes in the empirical detection of design (at least when there's "imperfect" design)? And it's science? And intelligent design isn't theological.Mung
February 16, 2013
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It takes an amazing amount of hubris for a scientist to claim to know what "biological perfection" would look like, or for anyone to claim to know what god would and would not do, and an equal portion of denial to then claim that their position is not a religious one. Which one is the science stopper? The idea that "eh, that's just the happenstance way that evolution kludged the laryngeal nerve together," or "hmm. I wonder why it's like that? Let's examine this to see what the design ramifications are and why it might be formed like this." Not "how" it "happened to get kludged together by a blind eovlutionary process", but rather "why" it might have been designed that way. Which one is the more useful heuristic going forward? Examining the "why" of designs once thought to be sub-optimal kludges of happenstance evolution has revealed many useful and amazing discoveries. Assuming that biological features are happenstance kludges of evolution has resulted in many things being disregarded as "vestigial' and "junk" and "sub-optimal" which can only serve to dissuade further serious research into the potential benefits of such features and from gleaning useful design information we can apply in our own technological endeavors.William J Murray
February 16, 2013
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OT: Researchers demonstrate Heisenberg uncertainty principle at macro level - February 15, 2013 Excerpt: It was Heisenberg who famously noted that it was impossible to measure the momentum of an object and its position at the same time. As an example, he pointed out that using a microscope to look at a single electron, would require shining light on it. Those photons would cause the electron to move slightly, changing its momentum. Up till now, researchers testing or demonstrating this principle have worked at the micro level because attempting to do so with objects large enough to be seen with the naked eye seemed impossible due to the many variables at play. In this new research, the team in Colorado showed that this not necessarily the case. They started by building a square drum frame out of silicon, with each side 0.5 millimeters long. They then stretched a thin film of silicon nitride over the skin to create the drum head. The drum was placed in a vacuum between two very tiny mirrors and was chilled to just 4 degrees above absolute zero to eliminate extraneous noise. The experiment was conducted by shooting a laser at the drum and measuring how much the head was distended by the photons striking it as they were bounced back and forth between the mirrors. As more photons struck the drum, greater fluctuations occurred in the measurements recorded, distorting the readings, and proving that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle can indeed be demonstrated with objects large enough to be seen with the naked eye. http://phys.org/news/2013-02-heisenberg-uncertainty-principle-macro.htmlbornagain77
February 16, 2013
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After being told many times by Darwinists that the vestigial hind limbs of a whale prove evolution, I was rather amused to find that the vestigial hind limbs of whales are anything but vestigial: An Email Exchange Regarding "Vestigial Legs" Pelvic Bones in Whales by Jim Pamplin Excerpt: The pelvic bones (supposed Vestigial Legs) of whales serve as attachments for the musculature associated with the penis in males and its homologue, the clitoris, in females. The muscle involved is known as the ischiocavernosus and is quite a powerful muscle in males. It serves as a retractor muscle for the penis in copulation and probably provides the base for lateral movements of the penis. The mechanisms of penile motion are not well understood in whales. The penis seems to be capable of a lot of independent motion, much like the trunk of an elephant. How much of this is mediated by the ischiocavernosus is not known. In females the anatomical parts are smaller and more diffuse. I would imagine that there is something homologous to the perineal muscles in man and tetrapods, which affect the entire pelvic area - the clitoris, vagina and anus. The pelvic rudiments also serve as origins for the ischiocaudalis muscle, which is a ventral muscle that inserts on the tips of the chevron bones of the spinal column and acts to flex the tail in normal locomotion. http://www.darwinisdead.com/an_email_exchange_regarding.htm related notes: Whale Evolution Vs. Population Genetics - Richard Sternberg PhD. in Evolutionary Biology - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4165203 Evolution And Probabilities: A Response to Jason Rosenhouse - August 2011 Excerpt: The equations of population genetics predict that – assuming an effective population size of 100,000 individuals per generation, and a generation turnover time of 5 years – according to Richard Sternberg’s calculations and based on equations of population genetics applied in the Durrett and Schmidt paper, that one may reasonably expect two specific co-ordinated mutations to achieve fixation in the timeframe of around 43.3 million years. When one considers the magnitude of the engineering fete, such a scenario is found to be devoid of credibility. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evolution-and-probabilities-a-response-to-jason-rosenhouse/bornagain77
February 16, 2013
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