Why Were So Many Darwin Defenders No-Shows at the World’s Premier Evolutionary Conference?

_{Thomas Cudworth
July 9, 2011

Intelligent Design

6}_{Categories
Intelligent Design}

Share: Facebook; Twitter/X; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

I have often wondered whether the loudness and aggressiveness of many culture-war defenders of neo-Darwinian evolution bears any relationship at all to the actual scientific contributions of those defenders to the field of evolutionary biology. As it happens, we have at hand some evidence, albeit of a rough and ready kind, relevant to that question.

From June 17 to June 21, 2011, at the University of Oklahoma (Norman) campus, the conference “Evolution 2011” was in session. It was co-sponsored by three scientific societies – The Society for the Study of Evolution, The Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society of Naturalists. It was billed by its promoters as “the premier annual international conference of evolutionary biologists on the planet.”

That billing may be somewhat hyperbolic, yet two things are clear: the conference was huge, with an expected turnout of 1400-1500 people; and many of the big names of evolutionary biology were to be there. Jerry Coyne was to give an address; H. Allen Orr was to chair a session; and Gunter Wagner and Sergey Gavrilets, cutting-edge biologists from the famed 2008 Altenberg conference, were to be there as well. Hundreds of papers were scheduled, and the research contributors to the various papers and presentations, according to the index for the conference, numbered something like 2,000.

It is interesting to make a mental list of the Darwin-defenders who have been most active in the culture wars, whether by publishing popular books defending Darwin, by appearing as witnesses against school boards in court cases, by working for the NCSE, by running pro-Darwinian blog sites, or by attacking Darwin critics throughout cyberspace, and to see which of them either read papers or at least contributed to the research and writing of papers for this premier conference.

Let’s start with those Darwin defenders who are actively anti-religious or show contempt for religion in their writings and internet remarks. Conspicuously absent from the list of conference contributors were evolutionary champions Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, Larry Moran, and Eugenie Scott.

Among those who have not attacked religious belief, but have violently bashed ID and/or passionately upheld neo-Darwinian theory, Paul Gross (co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse) and plant scientist Arthur Hunt (who has debated ID people live and on the internet) were not listed as contributors to any of the papers.

Among those who were active in the Dover ID trial, as witnesses for the plaintiffs, the no-shows include Kevin Padian, Robert Pennock, and Brian Alters.

Among the prominent Christian Darwinists, i.e., theistic evolutionists/evolutionary creationists, only Ken Miller was going to be there, and not to read a scientific paper, but to issue a cultural manifesto on why evolution matters in America today. The leading figures of Biologos – Darrel Falk, Dennis Venema, Kathryn Applegate, David Ussery, David Kerk, Denis Lamoureux – who have so often been presented, explicitly or implicitly, as experts on evolutionary biology – produced no papers for this conference. British scientists Oliver Barclay and Denis Alexander, who have posted several guest columns on Biologos, are not mentioned. The frequent UD commenter and Quaker TE Allan MacNeill, who has penned hundreds of thousands of words on UD and on his own blogs, apparently couldn’t manage 5,000 or so words for an original research paper for the conference, nor could the belligerent Calvinist TE and almost as prolific anti-ID blogger Steve Matheson.

Now of course statistics of this sort don’t prove anything about the competence or incompetence of any particular individual. There are all kinds of good reasons why a competent evolutionary theorist might not contribute to a particular evolutionary conference. Maybe some of these people elected to attend another evolutionary conference later this year, or early next year, or maybe their travel budget was exhausted. Maybe personal matters prevented them from going. Maybe some of them attended the conference, to keep up with the field, even though they contributed no paper. But one wonders why such a large number of rabid pro-Darwinists would be non-contributors at the premier evolution conference in the world, if they are as competent in the field of evolutionary biology as they make out. Could it be that most of these people, though possessing degrees in the life sciences, are in fact not trained specifically in evolutionary biology, and therefore had no original work to contribute?

I would be interested in hearing from readers about this. Of the people I’ve named, how many have read a paper at, or at least co-written a technical paper for, any secular conference on evolutionary biology in the past ten years? Or published a peer-reviewed paper specifically on evolutionary biology in a secular scientific journal in the past ten years? Are many of the loudest defenders of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy in fact unqualified to talk at an expert level about the latest theoretical and experimental work in evolutionary biology? And if so, why do they set themselves up as the world’s teachers when it comes to evolution? Why do they write so many blogs, post so many comments, put up so many nasty book reviews on Amazon, participate in so many anti-ID debates on the Darwinist side, if they aren’t experts in the field? Why don’t they let the real experts in evolutionary biology – the Coynes and Orrs and Sean Carrolls – do the public cheerleading and debating for evolutionary biology, and stick quietly to their own specialties of cell biology, genetics, developmental biology, etc.?

In most scientific areas, non-experts don’t pretend to stand in for experts. You don’t see solid-state physicists rushing onto the blogosphere to defend the latest view on black holes from Stephen Hawking. They leave the defense of cosmology to the cosmologists. But for some reason every medical geneticist, soil scientist, biochemist, developmental biologist, cell biologist, anthropologist, part-time first-year biology instructor, undergrad biology teacher at a Christian college, etc., thinks himself or herself an expert on evolutionary theory, and competent to debate it with anyone, any time. Normal professional humility goes out the window when defending Darwinian theory is concerned. That’s why I think it’s important to ask the question: how many of the self-appointed defenders of Darwinian evolution have demonstrated competence, proved by research and publication, in the field of evolutionary biology?

Comments

Now let's stop discussing victory and start discussing truth. The truth is that you are misrepresenting the normal usage of "creationism" in American discourse. "Creationism" in common usage refers to a view, based on a literal or near-literal reading of Genesis, that the world and all living species in it were created directly by God, without any evolutionary process. To be sure, there are variants on creationism such as "old earth" creationism, which allow for limited microevolution within basic created kinds (cat kind, dog kind, horse kind, etc.) , but overall creationism denies the existence of macroevolution.
That's what ID was initially conceived as -- basically a compromise where the young-earth creationists and old-earth creationists would stop arguing about the age of the earth and instead focus on bashing "Darwinism". Young-earth creationism + old-earth creationism = still creationism.
This is not true of ID. ID *as such* takes *no position whatever* on macroevolution.
Even if this were completely true, it wouldn't reflect well on ID. It's a ridiculous position for a "scientific movement" to take, just as ridiculous as the previous idea of being agnostic about the age of the earth. What if the people who originated plate tectonics had proclaimed they were agnostic about the roundness of the Earth? Second, (a) the vast majority of ID guys constantly dispute macroevolution, on this blog and elsewhere; (b) disputing common ancestry is so scientifically ridiculous and in the face of so much scientific evidence that even being agnostic on macroevolution indicates massive problems with the scientific capacity of anyone who holds those positions, and (c) many, many ID publications, from Pandas on, put the question as design vs. common ancestry. Those that say ID is OK common ancestry only became somewhat common relatively recently, after the sting of the Kitzmiller trial and the revelations of the massive historical connections between ID and creationism, and nevertheless they are still a minority. At the very least, ID is dominated by creationists, majority old-earth creationists but with a young-earth creationist contingent, and a very small subset of random contrarians of various sorts, some of who are sometimes claimed as ID proponents even though at other times they have explicitly denied it (e.g. David Berlinski).NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
04:06 PM
4
04
06
PM
PDT}

And what do Creationists say- John Morris, the president of the Institute for Creation Research: === "The differences between Biblical creationism and the IDM should become clear. As an unashamedly Christian/creationist organization, ICR is concerned with the reputation of our God and desires to point all men back to Him. We are not in this work merely to do good science, although this is of great importance to us. We care that students and society are brainwashed away from a relationship with their Creator/Savior. While all creationists necessarily believe in intelligent design, not all ID proponents believe in God. ID is strictly a non-Christian movement, and while ICR values and supports their work, we cannot join them." === Hmmm... Strange how the people who understand Creation and ID the best know there is a difference and only the people with a warped agenda try to conflate the two.
I'll see your John Morris and raise you a Henry Morris. Yes, that Henry Morris, the grand old man himself, father of John, and of the ICR, and of the "scientific creationism" movement in general:
Our other hesitation to get on this bandwagon is their use of the same arguments and evidences we Biblical creationists have used for years, while simultaneously trying to distance themselves from us. Our adherence to Biblical literalism is ridiculed by evolutionists, and the ID advocates would be embarrassed to be tarred with the same brush. In fact, Dembski goes so far as to say belief in evolution itself is okay, as long as it's not naturalistic. He opens his chapter 23 with the following: Intelligent design does not require organisms to emerge suddenly or to be specially created from scratch by the intervention of a designing intelligence. . . . What separates intelligent design from naturalistic evolution is not whether organisms evolved or the extent to which they evolved but what was responsible for their evolution.2 It is not even necessary that the designing intelligence be God. Intelligent design is a strictly scientific theory devoid of religious commitments. Whereas the creator underlying scientific creationism conforms to a strict, literalist interpretation of the Bible, the designer underlying intelligent design need not even be a deity.3 Dembski himself may not believe such nonsense, but he is trying to build a very large tent, allowing anyone except pure materialists to take refuge there. These well-meaning folks did not really invent the idea of intelligent design, of course. Dembski often refers, for example, to the bacterial flagellum as a strong evidence for design (and indeed it is); but one of our ICR scientists (the late Dr. Dick Bliss) was using this example in his talks on creation a generation ago. And what about our monographs on the monarch butterfly, the bombardier beetle, and many other testimonies to divine design? Creationists have been documenting design for many years, going back to Paley's watchmaker and beyond. Dembski uses the term "specified complexity" as the main criterion for recognizing design. This has essentially the same meaning as "organized complexity," which is more meaningful and which I have often used myself. He refers to the Borel number (1 in 1050) as what he calls a "universal probability bound," below which chance is precluded. He himself calculates the total conceivable number of specified events throughout cosmic history to be 10150 with one chance out of that number as being the limit of chance. In a book4 written a quarter of a century ago, I had estimated this number to be 10110, and had also referred to the Borel number for comparison. His treatment did add the term "universal probability bound" to the rhetoric.
http://www.icr.org/article/design-revelation/NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
04:04 PM
4
04
04
PM
PDT}

I don't have all the quotes handy, but here are some others from Pandas:
"This view proposes that only the long-held expectations of Darwinian theory cause us to refer to the inbetween areas as gaps. If this is so, the major different groups of living organisms do not have a common ancestry. Such a conclusion is more consistent with currently known fossil data than any of the evolutionary models." "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact: Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings." "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly." "Of Pandas and People is not intended to be a balanced treatment by itself. We have given a favorable case for intelligent design and raised reasonable doubt about natural descent." "The theories of intelligent design and natural descent both have an explanation for why living things share common structures." "Design proponents have a realistic and more cautious approach to the use of homologies. They regard organisms which show great structural differences, such as starfish and chimpanzees, as having no common ancestry." "This is precisely why a book that questions the Darwinian notion of common descent is so necessary."
...as quoted in the Kitzmiller case, when Behe tried to make the ID-ain't-about-common-ancestry point: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11pm2.html#day11pm558NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
04:02 PM
4
04
02
PM
PDT}

PS Well, I disagree with some of it, but it's still a good post :DElizabeth Liddle_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
03:56 PM
3
03
56
PM
PDT}

Yes, good post, junkdnaforlife :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
03:53 PM
3
03
53
PM
PDT}

Liz:
Darwinists stop calling ID proponents Creationists. ID proponents stop calling abiogenesis theories Darwinist.
Absolutely, but you will have a hard time trying to sell that to your colleagues. But you bring up another important point. And that is that ID, from what I understand about it, encompasses origins and evolution. Darwinism draws a line between the two. ID is strongest when both are incorporated, and Darwinism's strength comes when they are separated. So you have two narratives that start at different points in time but overlap.junkdnaforlife_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
03:37 PM
3
03
37
PM
PDT}

"Okay, thanks for your elaboration. Given that the common ancestor of extant flagella would be older than the common ancestor of extant T3SS, that would seem to prove the contention that the T3SS is younger than the flagellum, would it not?" Yeah, but: (a) that by itself provides no evidence the T3SS *descends* from the flagellum, which was the original contention. (b) Also, the "age to the last common ancestor of (currently living, sampled) flagella" is not going to be the same as the "age to the first thing that we would describe as a flagellum." Ditto for the T3SS. It's much like this situation: the age of the common ancestor of the *living* members of the genus Homo (Homo sapiens) is ~200,000 years. The age of the oldest fossil Homo, though, is something like 2.5 million years. The technical way of saying it is that molecular phylogenies provide the ages only of "crown groups", thus giving you only the minimum age of a feature of interest, not the actual age of the feature, which evolved somewhere on the stem group (although the actual age can be bracketed with certain phylogenetic techniques).NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
03:31 PM
3
03
31
PM
PDT}

But I wasn't being sarcastic! I just meant that I was no longer teasing (as I had been, mea culpa). My point was a serious one (hence the word): I'm not sure why IDists so hate it, or rather, given that they do (and I accept that they do) I'm not sure why the Pandas book was written with ID support (and authorship). It's not just that the word "creationism" and "intelligent design" seemed interchangeable to the authors, according to the released drafts, it's that the ideas ultimately described as ID ideas are much closer to creationist ideas (like that one about fish with scales and birds with feathers being created as is by an intelligent creator) than ID ideas. But I do understand that what you describe in your second paragraph must be intensely irritating, so I guess I should rephrase. It's not so much that I'm surprised that ID proponents mind being called creationist, is that I'm surprised that IDists endorsed the creationist ideas expressed in Pandas. And I'm glad you note that Darwin appealed to a Creator! Yes, indeed he did, and his theory did not account for abiogenesis. He did speculate about a "warm little pond" but made it very clear that it was speculation. So here's a treaty: Darwinists stop calling ID proponents Creationists. ID proponents stop calling abiogenesis theories Darwinist. Deal? Well, deal or no deal, it doesn't matter! It's much more interesting to discuss ID :) Cheers LizzieElizabeth Liddle_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
03:07 PM
3
03
07
PM
PDT}

Liz: "Seriously: I don’t see why ID proponents get so hot under the collar about being allied with creationists." When someone writes "seriously" before they say something it generally means they are being sarcastic. A little condescending as well. The beloved strawmen of Neo-Darwinists is the creationist tag. I understand Liz you have to lawyer up like a good soldier but c'mon. You know it's a cheap tactic used to avoid being pressed on legitimate biological issues. Which you yourself are not afraid to engage in, so why use it? (Especially, when apparently, Darwin himself appealed to a Creator at one point.) Dialogue similar to this is common throughout the debate: How did the first self-replicating cell originate? Creationist! What biological mechanism can be attributed to the vast diversity of life in the Cambrian? Creationist! Has field observation of mut/selection show sufficient horsepower to explain the diversity of life on earth? Creationist!junkdnaforlife_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
02:49 PM
2
02
49
PM
PDT}

Hi Thomas, A few random points (what do you expect?): You said:
I do not know how to assess a claim that a paper on polyadenylation has “a decided evolutionary flavor”.
I left a link on my blog so you could read the paper (or at least the title and abstract) for yourself. I should think that the evolutionary implications of a difference between animals and plants in so fundamental a process as polyadenylation would be obvious.
Is Dr. Hunt saying that his paper’s primary purpose was to discuss evolutionary mechanisms? And that it was presented for critical approval to scientists whose main work is to assess evolutionary mechanisms? If so, then obviously it counts as the sort of research that I was asking for.
Um, frankly, the scientists you are mentioning here can probably grouped into two classes - those who wouldn't know a poly(A) tail from a prehensile one, and those who would appreciate the fundamental evolutionary implications of a finding that a fundamental step in gene expression can vary over evolutionary time as we have come to learn. The first group has no business reviewing research papers on the subject, and the second would be most welcome to offer opinions.
As for Dr. Hunt’s claims that he knows more about this or that subject than Behe, Sternberg, Wells, etc., they are not relevant to our discussion here. I never claimed that ID proponents were better scientists than their critics.
But you are questioning whether ID critics are knowledgable enough, and if they are active researchers in the field, so that they can provide accurate and informed criticisms of ID advocates. I am saying that, in no uncertain terms, when it comes to Wells, Sternberg, alternative splicing, and junk DNA, I most certainly am in a position to point out their many errors.
For example, if I mentioned Dr. Hunt’s name to any of the Altenberg 16 – some of the world’s cutting-edge evolutionary theorists — would they have heard of him? Would Lynn Margulis recognize him as an evolutionary biologist?
Would Margulis even know what the term "polyadenylation" means? I am skeptical that she would. Which would make any further commentary from her about my statements and research on the evolution of the polyadenylation complex quite pointless. As for the Altenberg 16, any of the group who can Google or Pubmed would, I expect, be glad to correct your misconceptions about my research. I invite you to poke around my blog - I like to think that a lay person can pick up some of the basics there, and start to grasp the multifaceted nature of my research and interests. And please, ask questions.Arthur Hunt_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
02:30 PM
2
02
30
PM
PDT}

Thomas Cudworth:
Elizabeth: I thank you for your comments, and for their dialogical tone (a pleasant change from the belligerent tone of most ID critics).
oops, I may have blotted my copybook since :) Please take it as a tease. I actually snickered at that animation when it first appeared. We all need to feed our inner child from time to time :)
In fact I can agree with much of what you have said. I will clarify my position on some points: You wrote: “you don’t have to be an original researcher in a domain to have the competence to spot flawed science. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. I am not an evolutionary biologist at all, yet I consider myself competent to evaluate scientific arguments, on logic, if not on factual minutiae.” I agree. It is often possible for a non-specialist to spot difficulties in the theory favored by the specialists. This happened at the 1966 Wistar Conference, where some of the most high-powered, mathematically-trained nuclear physicists and engineers in the USA pointed out serious flaws in the mathematical models of the neo-Darwinian account of evolution. But the anti-ID people of whom I am speaking rarely grant the possibility of intelligent non-specialist criticism of Darwinian theory. When a non-biologist who is very well read in evolutionary theory points out problems in the sheer logic of a neo-Darwinian argument, he is routinely told that logic is not enough, and that he is “not competent” to criticize the views of a biologist unless he too is a biologist. I have even hear people say that Behe is “not competent” to talk about evolution because he is a biochemist and not a biologist! (But the same people never argue the same thing in relation to Larry Moran, also a biochemist – again the double standard.)
Yes, I'm with you there.
What I am arguing for is consistency. If we are going to play the “qualifications” game, then let’s play it consistently. I believe (am not sure, but believe) that most of the biologists at Biologos have never published a peer-reviewed paper in evolutionary biology in any secular journal. So if they are going to trot out the “peer-review” mantra, they had better be ready to apply it to themselves. Alternately, if they are going to say, no, such things don’t matter, all that matters is the quality of the argument, then fine; but then they have to withdraw a number of statements made about ID people not being formally competent, and start to address ID arguments.
Again, I agree, except that I'd say that having peer-review publications isn't much of a qualification, although it's a start. A very low bar though. Formal peer-review is just the first stage (well maybe the second, for multi-authored work) of the peer-review process, and many a paper that passes peer-review gets torn to ribbons at journal clubs around the world! What matters is good work - sound arguments well supported by good, rigorously collected, data.
Now, you make a distinction between having produced research papers in a field and being competent to criticize work in that field. I agree with you that the two are not identical. But they often overlap. Think of the specific context here. I read, e.g, on Biologos, columnists promoting a gene-centered vision of neo-Darwinian evolution which is essentially the view of Mayr and Dobhzhansky, a view that is now decades old. Then I read people whose specialty is evolutionary biology – the Altenberg group, for example – and many of them severely criticize the gene-centered model of evolution as inadequate to account for novel biological form. And where on Biologos I find column after column in praise of “randomness”, I read in Lynn Margulis, one of the most celebrated evolutionary biologists in the world, that random mutation is not at all the origin of novel biological form, and that she agrees with ID people — *on that point*. Now if the Biologos people were *active* in writing papers in evolutionary biology, going to evolutionary biology conferences, reading evolutionary biology journals, etc., they would be aware of the major shifts in evolutionary thinking which have in some quarters put traditional neo-Darwinian, population-genetics approaches on the firing line. They would at least provide footnotes or parenthetical references to indicate that they had read this material, even if they disagreed with it. The fact that they seem completely unaware of these developments – never mention them – raises the question whether they spend enough time in the field to have any competence of judgment. Would we trust someone who seemed completely unaware of the career of Stephen Hawking, and whose thought was doctrinaire Einsteinian, to make judgments in the field of cosmology?
Well, no, but I'm not sure I accept your premise. I'm not sure who "they" are - these dinosaurs who forget that natural selection operates at the level of the phenotype! Of course genes are vital, and of course "random" is a rather meaningless lay word. We know much more about the origins of genetic variance now, and once you know the mechanisms of variance "random" seems a much less good word to describe it. And yes, Dawkins, for one, seems very out of date. I wouldn't say the same for Myers. As for most people in the field - well, they have to keep up, or they end up writing poor papers that don't get published! Poor scholarship is a sound reason for rejecting a paper.So I'm not quite sure which windmill exactly you are tilting at, but it does seem to me that they are windmills! Margulis is a hero to many young scientists, and the discovery of hox genes and the whole science of "evo-devo" has revolutionised the field. So has computational biology, and, I'd say, non-linear modeling. I certainly find it a very exciting time to be in the life-sciences. I don't find support for ID in what I discover there :)
The same can be said of the exposition of evolution given in the writings of Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins. It is dated, formulaic neo-Darwinism of the crudest kind. There is no evidence that these authors have kept up on the specialist literature. Are they, then, competent to articulate evolutionary theory for 2011? Or would it be better if they remained silent, and let younger people, who keep up with the field, take on that job?
I agree with you to some extent about Dawkins. I enjoyed "Finding Darwin's God" though. But getting active researchers to write good books for lay people isn't that straightforward. Only a few people can do it. One I do recommend (and keep recommending!) is very short - an extended essay really: Denis Noble's "The Music of Life". If you don't know it, have a taster in this lecture: http://videolectures.net/eccs07_noble_psb/ It's a response to Dawkins' notion of The Selfish Gene. It's not actually about evolution at all, but it's highly relevant. I keep linking to it, because I think the ID proponents would love it! Not that Noble is an ID proponent, but if we are looking for truth - he's got a big chunk of it there, IMO.
Thus, my point is not so much that people have not published papers or attended conferences on evolutionary biology, as that they don’t keep up with evolutionary biology, yet pretend to expertise in it. The lack of publications and conference attendance is merely one measure of the degree to which these people have failed to keep up. It is not, I concede, an infallible measure. But it is not an irrelevant measure, either. Anyone really keen on understanding evolution, as opposed to merely defending it with culture-war fury, *will* keep up, out of natural scientific curiosity. And anyone who has voluntarily chosen *not* to keep up would perhaps do more good for the world by remaining silent than by blogging and expressing off-the-cuff opinions.
Well, maybe. But the great thing about the internet is that you can respond :) May the truth win.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
02:30 PM
2
02
30
PM
PDT}

Thomas Cudworth:
Nick Matzke (57): This comment: “OK then, it looks like I win … because … ” is puerile, and betrays a locker-room mentality that has no place in science or scholarship. Science and scholarship are not about “winning” but at getting at the truth. The problem with the lobby you belong to, Nick – the angry, vitriolic Darwin-defenders who hate the very idea of design and have dedicated their lives to making sure it never gets a foothold in science – is that it is not concerned with truth, but only with institutional and social victory.
I have to protest! Both "sides" are perfectly capable of puerility in this debate. The parody I alluded to in my post at 36 was, IIRC, an animation of several leading ID opponents, plus Judge Jones himself, um, farting. I believe the farts were provided by Dr Dembski. Dr Dr Dembski, in fact, so I guess at one PhD certificate per puerile incident, he still may have one to spare :) More seriously: you are wrong. We are all concerned with the truth. Nobody goes into science (or very few, and the only ones I know of are creationists) with a view to supporting an a priori view rather than finding out the truth. It would be so boring apart from anything else. Oddly enough, I'd say the prime motivator of scientists is curiosity. It's a most under-rated drive IMO.
Now let’s stop discussing victory and start discussing truth. The truth is that you are misrepresenting the normal usage of “creationism” in American discourse. “Creationism” in common usage refers to a view, based on a literal or near-literal reading of Genesis, that the world and all living species in it were created directly by God, without any evolutionary process. To be sure, there are variants on creationism such as “old earth” creationism, which allow for limited microevolution within basic created kinds (cat kind, dog kind, horse kind, etc.) , but overall creationism denies the existence of macroevolution. This is not true of ID. ID *as such* takes *no position whatever* on macroevolution. Many leading ID theorists or ID allies support macroevolution – Behe, Denton, Sternberg. Many others are open to it, and think it can be reconciled to ID insights. Dembski, for example, is not a macroevolutionist, nor is Meyer, but both have indicated that it is theoretically possible to view macroevolution through ID lenses. So ID is not creationism, and the deliberate manipulation of the truth by such phrases as “intelligent design creationism” (promoted by that culture-war organization you once worked for, the NCSE), is a conscious attempt to associate some very thoughtful scientific work with stereotyped images of dumb fundamentalists living in shacks in the Ozarks.
All this would be more persuasive if two Pandas drafts had not contained the following:
Creation means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc

Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc
This description (and note the straight substitution of "Intelligent design" for "Creationism") is not a description of the ID you give here:
ID *as such* takes *no position whatever* on macroevolution. Many leading ID theorists or ID allies support macroevolution – Behe, Denton, Sternberg. Many others are open to it, and think it can be reconciled to ID insights. Dembski, for example, is not a macroevolutionist, nor is Meyer, but both have indicated that it is theoretically possible to view macroevolution through ID lenses.
On the contrary, it is a clear statement that ID, is, like creationism (as the earlier draft had it) is a theory that holds that various forms of life, including fish with scales and fish with feathers, were created by an intelligent agent, in other words that fish and birds do not have a common ancestor and scales were features of the original ancestral birds and fish. And yet Behe was an author, apparently.
The “creationism” charge should be eschewed by all participants in the ID/Darwinist debates.
Well, I'm glad to hear it. While I think ID arguments are fundamentally unsound, I do accept that they are less obviously unsound than most creationist arguments.
You should know all this, Nick, since you claim to be an expert on the ID movement, and claim to have studied its writings. But apparently either you do not read those writings carefully, or you suppress what you have read, for partisan purposes.
It sounds as though he read Of Pandas and People. If that gives a false impression of ID, then perhaps ID proponents ought to point that out.
In the first case, you are not competent to speak about ID; in the second case, your behavior is academically dishonorable, and you should turn in your Ph.D. (if you have completed it yet) as one unworthy to hold it.
Perhaps he'd better get a spare :) Seriously: I don't see why ID proponents get so hot under the collar about being allied with creationists. It's not even as though all creationists think alike. Indeed not even a single creationist seems to think much like he did in the argument he was previously making! (they do seem to be all "he"s in my experience). Todd Wood is a notable and honorable exception. And I have met many honorable IDists here - nonetheless they frequently disagree, on things like the nature of information, common descent, and what exactly CSI is. *ducks for cover* But I do agree: let's aim for the truth :) The truth will set [us all] free :) In peace, LizzieElizabeth Liddle_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
02:10 PM
2
02
10
PM
PDT}

Elizabeth: I thank you for your comments, and for their dialogical tone (a pleasant change from the belligerent tone of most ID critics). In fact I can agree with much of what you have said. I will clarify my position on some points: You wrote: “you don’t have to be an original researcher in a domain to have the competence to spot flawed science. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. I am not an evolutionary biologist at all, yet I consider myself competent to evaluate scientific arguments, on logic, if not on factual minutiae.” I agree. It is often possible for a non-specialist to spot difficulties in the theory favored by the specialists. This happened at the 1966 Wistar Conference, where some of the most high-powered, mathematically-trained nuclear physicists and engineers in the USA pointed out serious flaws in the mathematical models of the neo-Darwinian account of evolution. But the anti-ID people of whom I am speaking rarely grant the possibility of intelligent non-specialist criticism of Darwinian theory. When a non-biologist who is very well read in evolutionary theory points out problems in the sheer logic of a neo-Darwinian argument, he is routinely told that logic is not enough, and that he is “not competent” to criticize the views of a biologist unless he too is a biologist. I have even hear people say that Behe is “not competent” to talk about evolution because he is a biochemist and not a biologist! (But the same people never argue the same thing in relation to Larry Moran, also a biochemist – again the double standard.) What I am arguing for is consistency. If we are going to play the “qualifications” game, then let’s play it consistently. I believe (am not sure, but believe) that most of the biologists at Biologos have never published a peer-reviewed paper in evolutionary biology in any secular journal. So if they are going to trot out the “peer-review” mantra, they had better be ready to apply it to themselves. Alternately, if they are going to say, no, such things don’t matter, all that matters is the quality of the argument, then fine; but then they have to withdraw a number of statements made about ID people not being formally competent, and start to address ID arguments. Now, you make a distinction between having produced research papers in a field and being competent to criticize work in that field. I agree with you that the two are not identical. But they often overlap. Think of the specific context here. I read, e.g, on Biologos, columnists promoting a gene-centered vision of neo-Darwinian evolution which is essentially the view of Mayr and Dobhzhansky, a view that is now decades old. Then I read people whose specialty is evolutionary biology – the Altenberg group, for example – and many of them severely criticize the gene-centered model of evolution as inadequate to account for novel biological form. And where on Biologos I find column after column in praise of “randomness”, I read in Lynn Margulis, one of the most celebrated evolutionary biologists in the world, that random mutation is not at all the origin of novel biological form, and that she agrees with ID people -- *on that point*. Now if the Biologos people were *active* in writing papers in evolutionary biology, going to evolutionary biology conferences, reading evolutionary biology journals, etc., they would be aware of the major shifts in evolutionary thinking which have in some quarters put traditional neo-Darwinian, population-genetics approaches on the firing line. They would at least provide footnotes or parenthetical references to indicate that they had read this material, even if they disagreed with it. The fact that they seem completely unaware of these developments – never mention them – raises the question whether they spend enough time in the field to have any competence of judgment. Would we trust someone who seemed completely unaware of the career of Stephen Hawking, and whose thought was doctrinaire Einsteinian, to make judgments in the field of cosmology? The same can be said of the exposition of evolution given in the writings of Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins. It is dated, formulaic neo-Darwinism of the crudest kind. There is no evidence that these authors have kept up on the specialist literature. Are they, then, competent to articulate evolutionary theory for 2011? Or would it be better if they remained silent, and let younger people, who keep up with the field, take on that job? Thus, my point is not so much that people have not published papers or attended conferences on evolutionary biology, as that they don’t keep up with evolutionary biology, yet pretend to expertise in it. The lack of publications and conference attendance is merely one measure of the degree to which these people have failed to keep up. It is not, I concede, an infallible measure. But it is not an irrelevant measure, either. Anyone really keen on understanding evolution, as opposed to merely defending it with culture-war fury, *will* keep up, out of natural scientific curiosity. And anyone who has voluntarily chosen *not* to keep up would perhaps do more good for the world by remaining silent than by blogging and expressing off-the-cuff opinions.Thomas Cudworth_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
01:46 PM
1
01
46
PM
PDT}

…under this phylogenetic hypothesis, the common ancestor of the extant flagella is older than the common ancestor of the extant T3SSs, and thus is more diverse in sequence, but they are sister groups nonetheless. Okay, thanks for your elaboration. Given that the common ancestor of extant flagella would be older than the common ancestor of extant T3SS, that would seem to prove the contention that the T3SS is younger than the flagellum, would it not?LivingstoneMorford_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
01:43 PM
1
01
43
PM
PDT}

hmm, it took the spaces out of my text graphic so it looks silly, oopsNickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
01:30 PM
1
01
30
PM
PDT}

Incidentally Nick Matzke, in molecular evolution class we are taught that populations with less genetic diversity are generally younger than those populations with more genetic diversity. I don’t think you ever elaborated on the point you were trying to make with regards to monotreme mammals, placental mammals, and all that good stuff.
That logic is correct, but it only applies within interbreeding populations. Both mammalian species and the gene lineages of flagella/T3SS are separate populations. Really I need to draw this to make it clear, but I'll try with text. |------------ |--------|T3SS has lower diversity | |------------ -| | |------------------ |--|flag has higher diversity |------------------ ...under this phylogenetic hypothesis, the common ancestor of the extant flagella is older than the common ancestor of the extant T3SSs, and thus is more diverse in sequence, but they are sister groups nonetheless. (All of the above assumes something like a molecular clock to be valid; modern phylogenetic techniques don't require molecular clocks anymore, however.) You could replace "T3SS" with "monotremes" and "flag" with "marsupials+placentals" to get the mammal version of the analogy. (Although, this depends on the timing of the common ancestor of platypus + echidna, vs. placentals+marsupials, which I can't remember at the moment.)NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
01:28 PM
1
01
28
PM
PDT}

LivingstoneMorford and Nick, thank you both for your contributions: It seems Nick that LivingstoneMorford has made his point quite well in that both machines (T3SS and Flagellum) are exceedingly complex and that if any machine came from another machine, then the Flagellum first view is, by far, the most parsimonious explanation. Nick you seem to, grudgingly, accept LivingstoneMorford's analysis, as for you had two objections, both of which are curious. First you stated: 'Where was this amazing hidden information for a dozen or so additional novel proteins, and 10+ highly modified flagellar proteins, stored for all of those billions of years, I wonder?' Now this is very curious, for you seem to recognize that finding specific novel proteins is certainly no easy task for highly competent scientists, much less for neo-Darwinian processes, But the curious thing in all this, in you making this objection, is that it is you, yourself, that is trying to say it is impossible for the flagellum to 'devolve' into the T3SS, thus highlighting the much more absurd unlikelihood of the reverse position, of T3SS to flagellum, which you would prefer to hold. Thus Nick, not to sound mean, but thanks for making our argument for us! ,,,the second 'curious' thing you state is,,,; So Someone intelligently designed the flagellum so that it could later evolve into the T3SS and cause things like bubonic plague? What an mean guy! ,,, Now Nick this, as I'm sure you are well aware, is a theological objection, which has no bearing on the primary question at hand of whether design is present or not,,,, but just to call your attention to a recent, peer-reviewed, paper, It turns out that Darwin's book 'Origin of Species' was primarily a theological book; Charles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin's Use of Theology in the Origin of Species - May 2011 Excerpt: "In the Origin," Dilley writes, "Darwin used a specific theological view of God's relationship to natural laws in order to argue for evolution and against special creation." The Origin supplies abundant evidence of theology in action; http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/charles_darwin_theologian_majo046391.html Now Nick if you want to argue the Theology instead of the science to make your case, as Darwin did, exactly what does this tell me of the actual empirical strength of your position??? It tells me that you have no real scientific evidence to support your position and thus resort to, excuse my frankness, 'extremely bad theology' to make your case!!! But again, if it is theology you want to argue,,, Is Your Bod Flawed by God? - Feb. 2010 Excerpt: Theodicy (the discipline in Theism of reconciling natural evil with a good God) might be a problem for 19th-century deism and simplistic natural theology, but not for Biblical theology. It was not a problem for Jesus Christ, who was certainly not oblivious to the blind, the deaf, the lepers and the lame around him. It was not a problem for Paul, who spoke of the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain till the coming redemption of all things (Romans 8). http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201002.htm#20100214a etc.. etc.. ======================= Brooke Fraser- "C S Lewis Song" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHpuTGGRCbYbornagain77_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
01:16 PM
1
01
16
PM
PDT}

Typo. I meant: "The evolution of a novel outer membrane ring protein that is homologous..." Incidentally Nick Matzke, in molecular evolution class we are taught that populations with less genetic diversity are generally younger than those populations with more genetic diversity. I don't think you ever elaborated on the point you were trying to make with regards to monotreme mammals, placental mammals, and all that good stuff.LivingstoneMorford_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
01:08 PM
1
01
08
PM
PDT}

"Well then, there goes Stephen Meyer’s book and 95%+ of the ID movement’s arguments and indignant protest against evolution." I believe that Stephen Meyer argues in his book that the first biological information could not have arisen from mindless processes, not that information cannot arise from the already-existing genomic information.LivingstoneMorford_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
01:05 PM
1
01
05
PM
PDT}

Minimally, the T3SS (if it evolved from the flagellum) would need a novel outer membrane ring protein (homologous to outer membrane secretins), new pilus proteins, and new secreted effector proteins, sometimes including a complex that binds to the targeted eukaryotic cell IIRC. And all the interactions between those (and whatever proteins in the target cell are targetted). I guess I was referring just to the origin of the 10 proteins in T3SS that are homologous to flagellar proteins. The evolution of a novel outer ring membrane that is homologous to 'outer membrane secretins' could, again, evolve from those homologues -- in theory, unless the outer membrane ring protein happens to require more functional specificity than its homologues. As per the rest of the proteins that need to evolve, I would answer with the above argument.LivingstoneMorford_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
01:03 PM
1
01
03
PM
PDT}

Nick Matzke: “According to the evidence posted in the thread, they are a *little bit* more tolerant than the flagellar proteins. They are still comparable to lots and lots of standard proteins, which as a general rule can (a) accept many random mutations and function, and (b) can exhibit 70+ sequence divergence and maintain the same basic structure and function, but (c) nevertheless have highly conserved functional regions and binding sites and which (d) ID advocates say are just the kind of high-information gene/protein sequence thing that could never, ever, no way, evolve.” Firstly, I think I’ve already sufficiently demonstrated exactly why it’s plausible for the T3SS proteins to evolve from their flagellar homologues, but it is less plausible for flagellar proteins to evolve from their T3SS counterparts. While a single truncating mutation would be sufficient for YscJ to evolve from FliF, a fairly large number of very specific mutations would have to occur for FliF to evolve from YscJ. Indeed, it certainly seems like there is no real obstacle to a flagellum à T3SS evolution, and just some truncating mutations would be needed for the T3SS proteins to evolve from their flagellar homologues (and, of course, some mutations would follow that would improve the overall T3SS structure, stabilizing it, etc.). That said, I will now point out where I think your argument is lacking in rigor: Do T3SS have highly conserved functional regions and binding sites? Yes, but here’s why it’s perfectly plausible for those features of T3SS to evolve, while it is not quite so plausible for those features to evolve in the flagellum. If the T3SS evolved from the flagellum, it would evolve with the binding sites that were in the flagellar proteins (unless a function evolved from the flagellum that did not require binding sites). In other words, the T3SS didn’t evolve any new binding sites – it just ‘inherited’ the binding sites that were present in the flagellum. The same argument is true, of course, for highly conserved functional regions et al. The conclusion? To my knowledge, no new binding sites or highly conserved functional regions would have to evolve in order for the T3SS to evolve from the flagellum.LivingstoneMorford_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:54 PM
12
12
54
PM
PDT}

Nick Matzke (57): This comment: “OK then, it looks like I win … because … ” is puerile, and betrays a locker-room mentality that has no place in science or scholarship. Science and scholarship are not about “winning” but at getting at the truth. The problem with the lobby you belong to, Nick – the angry, vitriolic Darwin-defenders who hate the very idea of design and have dedicated their lives to making sure it never gets a foothold in science – is that it is not concerned with truth, but only with institutional and social victory. Now let’s stop discussing victory and start discussing truth. The truth is that you are misrepresenting the normal usage of “creationism” in American discourse. “Creationism” in common usage refers to a view, based on a literal or near-literal reading of Genesis, that the world and all living species in it were created directly by God, without any evolutionary process. To be sure, there are variants on creationism such as “old earth” creationism, which allow for limited microevolution within basic created kinds (cat kind, dog kind, horse kind, etc.) , but overall creationism denies the existence of macroevolution. This is not true of ID. ID *as such* takes *no position whatever* on macroevolution. Many leading ID theorists or ID allies support macroevolution – Behe, Denton, Sternberg. Many others are open to it, and think it can be reconciled to ID insights. Dembski, for example, is not a macroevolutionist, nor is Meyer, but both have indicated that it is theoretically possible to view macroevolution through ID lenses. So ID is not creationism, and the deliberate manipulation of the truth by such phrases as “intelligent design creationism” (promoted by that culture-war organization you once worked for, the NCSE), is a conscious attempt to associate some very thoughtful scientific work with stereotyped images of dumb fundamentalists living in shacks in the Ozarks. The “creationism” charge should be eschewed by all participants in the ID/Darwinist debates. You should know all this, Nick, since you claim to be an expert on the ID movement, and claim to have studied its writings. But apparently either you do not read those writings carefully, or you suppress what you have read, for partisan purposes. In the first case, you are not competent to speak about ID; in the second case, your behavior is academically dishonorable, and you should turn in your Ph.D. (if you have completed it yet) as one unworthy to hold it.Thomas Cudworth_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:50 PM
12
12
50
PM
PDT}

Nick matzke:
if they were their arguments about information, no-new-genes, no-cooption etc. would seem even less credible than they do at present.
Why do you erect so many strawmen? ID does not say "no new genes". ID does not say "no-cooption"- as a matter of fact those only make sense in a design scenario. And that is why your arguments are not credible- you are tilting at windmills.Joseph_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:43 PM
12
12
43
PM
PDT}

Nick Matzke:
Behe was an (unlisted) coauthor on Pandas, and a (officially listed on the front page) reviewer of the book. Why didn’t he fix the allegedly bad definition of ID back when he was “reviewing” the book?
The definition of ID in the GLOSSARY is OK. The quote-mine you are referring to pertains to the fossil record. Nick matzke:
Also, there are like 10 places where Pandas explicitly says that ID challenges common ancestry. Why didn’t Behe object to these?
How do you know he didn't? Also seeing that common ancestry is untestable everyone should challenge it. Besides that old book has been superseded by "The Design of Life". And taht says that ID does not argue against common ancestry.Joseph_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:41 PM
12
12
41
PM
PDT}

Not if they were designed to evolve Nick matzke:
Where was this amazing hidden information for a dozen or so additional novel proteins, and 10+ highly modified flagellar proteins, stored for all of those billions of years, I wonder?
I take it you don't understand evolutionary algorithms very well. Nick matzke:
So Someone intelligently designed the flagellum so that it could later evolve into the T3SS and cause things like bubonic plague? What an mean guy!
Not necessarily. But do keep the strawmen coming...Joseph_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:37 PM
12
12
37
PM
PDT}

"But anyway Dr Behe weighed in on that quote also:" Behe was an (unlisted) coauthor on Pandas, and a (officially listed on the front page) reviewer of the book. Why didn't he fix the allegedly bad definition of ID back when he was "reviewing" the book? Also, there are like 10 places where Pandas explicitly says that ID challenges common ancestry. Why didn't Behe object to these? All of this was brought up in the cross-examination of Behe, and Behe had no good answers. No wonder ID lost so big in Kitzmiller...NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:36 PM
12
12
36
PM
PDT}

Incidentally, I should like to know what new binding sites would have to evolve in order to get from flagellum to T3SS — I do not deny that new binding sites can evolve, I am just curious about this.
Minimally, the T3SS (if it evolved from the flagellum) would need a novel outer membrane ring protein (homologous to outer membrane secretins), new pilus proteins, and new secreted effector proteins, sometimes including a complex that binds to the targeted eukaryotic cell IIRC. And all the interactions between those (and whatever proteins in the target cell are targetted). It gets simpler if you assume that some of these proteins are homologous to flagellum proteins, but have changed so much that the evolutionary relationship is no longer statistically detectable, but (a) ID advocates are never, ever so generous, because (b) if they were their arguments about information, no-new-genes, no-cooption etc. would seem even less credible than they do at present.NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:31 PM
12
12
31
PM
PDT}

I thank Arthur Hunt for his reply, even though it came here only indirectly. I must first say that, while Arthur Hunt has been a critic of ID, he has not (to my knowledge) uttered the kind of below-the-belt criticisms that many others have. He has stuck to scientific discussion. For that, I salute him. I do not know how to assess a claim that a paper on polyadenylation has “a decided evolutionary flavor”. Probably half of the papers in biological journals make some direct or indirect reference to evolution – a phrase here, a sentence there, a footnote here, an allusion there. That does not make them papers in the field of evolutionary biology, any more than a passing reference to quantum theory in a paper on general relativity makes the general relativity paper a quantum theory paper, or the general relativity theorist an expert on quantum theory. Is Dr. Hunt saying that his paper’s primary purpose was to discuss evolutionary mechanisms? And that it was presented for critical approval to scientists whose main work is to assess evolutionary mechanisms? If so, then obviously it counts as the sort of research that I was asking for. Dr. Hunt mentions some of his work that is critical of ID. But papers that are critical of ID are not necessarily papers that are primarily concerned with evolutionary mechanisms. For example, one could criticize the notion of “information” in DNA without discussing evolution at all. As for Dr. Hunt’s claims that he knows more about this or that subject than Behe, Sternberg, Wells, etc., they are not relevant to our discussion here. I never claimed that ID proponents were better scientists than their critics. I said nothing about ID science at all. The discussion here is about whether Dr. Hunt would be recognized as a peer in the field of evolutionary biology by the professional evolutionary biologists, or whether he is a plant scientist who has unilaterally declared himself to be competent in evolutionary biology. For example, if I mentioned Dr. Hunt’s name to any of the Altenberg 16 – some of the world’s cutting-edge evolutionary theorists -- would they have heard of him? Would Lynn Margulis recognize him as an evolutionary biologist? “I’m a plant biologist, and from time to time I say something pertaining to evolution” doesn’t make one an evolutionary biologist, any more than “I’m an ancient Greek historian, and I’ve spotted a few interesting parallels between ancient Greek revolutions and the French Revolution”, makes one a historian of the French Revolution. What I am looking for are publications (oral or written) aimed at the professional body of evolutionary biologists – people like Coyne and Carroll and Orr and Margulis and Lima de Faria and Newman etc. -- and therefore submitting themselves to the professional judgment of such biologists. This means the papers must be primarily, not glancingly, about evolution. Their purpose must be to discuss evolutionary mechanisms, either to suggest such mechanisms, or to criticize already-proposed mechanisms on theoretical or empirical grounds. Has Dr. Hunt published any papers of this nature? If so, I will gladly retract his name from my list, with apologies for including him in a group to which he does not belong.Thomas Cudworth_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:26 PM
12
12
26
PM
PDT}

This is not true of T3SS proteins: T3SS proteins seem to be capable of tolerating more amino acid substitutions than flagellar proteins.
According to the evidence posted in the thread, they are a *little bit* more tolerant than the flagellar proteins. They are still comparable to lots and lots of standard proteins, which as a general rule can (a) accept many random mutations and function, and (b) can exhibit 70+ sequence divergence and maintain the same basic structure and function, but (c) nevertheless have highly conserved functional regions and binding sites and which (d) ID advocates say are just the kind of high-information gene/protein sequence thing that could never, ever, no way, evolve.
Incidentally, I should like to know what new binding sites would have to evolve in order to get from flagellum to T3SS — I do not deny that new binding sites can evolve, I am just curious about this. And, of course, I accept the idea that new information can arise through mindless processes.
Well then, there goes Stephen Meyer's book and 95%+ of the ID movement's arguments and indignant protest against evolution.NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:25 PM
12
12
25
PM
PDT}

Not if they were designed to evolve
Where was this amazing hidden information for a dozen or so additional novel proteins, and 10+ highly modified flagellar proteins, stored for all of those billions of years, I wonder?
Not if they were designed to evolve, Nick- you know like Dawkins “weasel” program. Heck even Mike Gene’s front-loaded evolution covers that.
So Someone intelligently designed the flagellum so that it could later evolve into the T3SS and cause things like bubonic plague? What an mean guy!NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
July
07
Jul
11
11
2011
12:19 PM
12
12
19
PM
PDT}

Prev 1 … 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply