Here are my responses to a readers questions about religious bias.
You never tire of telling the world that science is driven by religion, and, in some cases there is some truth to that.
Yes, there are several arguments for the fact of evolution. They all entail theological claims (or philosophical claims which ultimately trace back to theological claims) about god.
But it is also true that your continuing rejection of common descent in the face of massive amounts of evidence reveals that you are driven by religion just as much as anyone else.
From a scientific perspective common descent is unlikely. It is true there is evidence for common descent, just as there is plenty of evidence for a flat earth, geocentrism, etc.
My question is, what is your religion?
I am a Christian, which unlike many religions, affords me a wide spectrum of explanations for origins, ranging from secondary (natural) to primary (miracle) causes.
Or, more to the point, exactly what doctrine of your religion is it that drives your deep visceral contempt for evolution …?
There is a long history of empiricism in Christian thought. Rather than imposing a framework or answer on science a priori regardless of which way the evidence points, as evolutionists do, I believe in allowing the evidence to speak for itself.
I’m not saying rationalism has no place or that blindly following the evidence solves all problems. I would agree there is, necessarily, a mix. Nor am I saying that rationalism, itself, is fallacious.
But extreme rationalism, and evolution is a good example of this, is susceptible to confirmation bias and misrepresentation of the empirical evidence. Never let an extreme rationalist represent empirical science. That would be like having a Republican speak for President Obama.
From an empirical science perspective, evolution’s failure is truly epic. There are 27 orders of magnitude between evolution’s expectations and reality. And that is going by the evolutionist’s own reckoning (in reality it is 100+ orders of magnitude). No theory in the history of science comes anywhere close to this epic failure. It is another creation myth that over and over is scientifically ridiculous.
I much prefer empiricism to mythology.
From a religious perspective I can take evolution or leave it. It doesn’t matter to me if the earth is old or young, if God used primary or secondary causes, and so forth. But by the same token, I am against superimposing a religious framework on the evidence as evolution does, and force fitting the evidence into that framework when otherwise it obviously doesn’t fit.
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Cornelius Hunter said...
ReplyDeleteBut extreme rationalism, and evolution is a good example of this, is susceptible to confirmation bias and misrepresentation of the empirical evidence. Never let an extreme rationalist represent empirical science. That would be like having a Republican speak for President Obama
Or like having you criticize evolutionary theory.
Science has a very harsh critical-peer-review system to vet work before publishing and to minimize as much as possible any confirmation bias that a researcher may carry. Certainly not perfect, but way better than no review at all.
Tell us CH, what steps do you take to ensure your confirmation biases aren't present in the attacks on science you continually post?
This manifesto is an excellent summary of Dr Hunter's theology, and it's helpful that he's copied it from a comment in the previous thread and featured it here, for convenient comment.
ReplyDeleteHere's an interesting point:
Rather than imposing a framework or answer on science a priori regardless of which way the evidence points, as evolutionists do, I believe in allowing the evidence to speak for itself.
I wonder how a person perceives what the evidence might be saying. For example, what might the fossilized remains of Tiktaalik tell us? I think they would say different things to different persons, depending on the prior experience of those persons.
A paleontologist would surely get a different message than a theologian would.
CH:
ReplyDelete"Yes, there are several arguments for the fact of evolution. They all entail theological claims (or philosophical claims which ultimately trace back to theological claims) about god."
The only 'claim' (though it hardly deserves the word) is that we must assume naturalism. Which is a categorically scientific thing to assume.
"From a scientific perspective common descent is unlikely."
According to whom? You and other ID-ers? People who, in short, assume there IS a God? THAT is the religious bias. You'd certainly be hard-pressed to find an ACTUAL SCIENTIST who considers common descent unlikely.
"It is true there is evidence for common descent, just as there is plenty of evidence for a flat earth, geocentrism, etc."
Any evidence for a flat Earth or geocentrism is better explained by a spherical Earth and heliocentrism (each of which also explain far more evidence besides). By contrast, there is currently no other scientific theory which explains the evidence that ToE does, let alone more as well.
"Never let an extreme rationalist represent empirical science."
I'm only guessing what you mean by 'extreme rationalist'. I'm guessing you are using it for someone who will never accept any explanation other than a rational one. But scientists are such people. If you have a non-rational explanation, it is, by definition, non-scientific.
"It doesn’t matter to me if the earth is old or young, if God used primary or secondary causes, and so forth. But by the same token, I am against superimposing a religious framework on the evidence..."
HAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh the irony!
This one's the killer blow to your argument - the whole hypocrisy of your position wrapped up in two brief sentences.
You claim to be against imposing a religious framework yet in the preceding sentence you lay out your religious framework! If a natural explanation is found it's 'God using secondary causes' and if one is not it is 'God using primary causes'. Either way, it's God at work - an assumption for which you have absolutely no evidence or reasonable justification for assuming. Nothing but faith - religious faith.
No matter how often you say otherwise, it is you, not 'science'/ToE which holds the religious bias. As you've just shown, you believe there is a God who can and does affect the world through natural and/or miraculous means. That is a religious assumption, and one which colours your scientific understanding.
Religion drives your efforts, Cornelius. Whether it matters is more open to debate.
From a scientific perspective common descent is unlikely. It is true there is evidence for common descent, just as there is plenty of evidence for a flat earth, geocentrism, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to imagine that someone can say this with a straight face, Cornelius. If common descent is unlikely scientifically, there should scientists who hold that perspective. Who are they? I am not aware of any.
oleg said, "If common descent is unlikely scientifically, there should scientists who hold that perspective. Who are they? I am not aware of any."
ReplyDelete---
You really need to get out more. But what you mean is that a scientist who disagrees with you is not a real scientist, but a quack. It doesn't matter what their education or experience is, they are relegated by default to a "non-scientist" label simply by reason of their skeptism over evolution. True?
Neal,
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you start by pointing out a few actual biologists who deny common descent?
Dispite the large gaps in transitionals evolutionists have been able to make a case for common descent based on morphology. Based on morphology life can be roughly organized into a hierarchical pattern. Their imagination fills in the gaps. Imagination = evidence in the evolutionists mind.
ReplyDeleteEvolutionists expected genetic sequencing to yield results that confirmed their "tree of life". Such is not the case.
They built their tree of life, held it up with great confidence as confirmation of common descent, poked it into the faces of creationists and could not see how anyone could question it (other than relatively minor issues).
Then came DNA research. Genetic sequencing often yield different results. The smooth branching lines of the tree of life based on morphology was an illusion.
You guys have been strangely quiet about responding to this very serious challenge to evolutionary expectations. Evolutionists were clearly wrong by their illusion of what they thought morphology and homology was showing them.
oleg said, "Why don't you start by pointing out a few actual biologists who deny common descent?"
ReplyDelete--
LOL What is your definition of a biologist?
Neal,
ReplyDeleteIn my book, a biologist is someone who has a PhD in biology, is getting paid for doing research in biology, and has articles published in biological journals. Is that unreasonable?
Oleg, you'll argue using the "No True Scottsman" fallacy, so what's the point of continuing this?
ReplyDeleteThen came DNA research. Genetic sequencing often yield different results. The smooth branching lines of the tree of life based on morphology was an illusion.
ReplyDeleteNeal,
Have a look at Doolittle's PNAS article. As in read it. Pay attention to what he writes about the tree of life for animals.
Neal,
ReplyDeleteI have given you my definition of a biologist. If you disagree with it, say so and give us your own.
Cornelius,
ReplyDeleteYou don't seem to remember it, but this is actually a continuation of a discussion we had years ago on the old ASA list about the massive parallelism of transposon insertions in mammalian genomes. I never could understand the reason (or motives) for your position then, and I guess that's what I'm trying to understand now.
You say:
"Yes, there are several arguments for the fact of evolution. They all entail theological claims (or philosophical claims which ultimately trace back to theological claims) about god."
I can see how an atheist is driven to accept common descent - it's a necessary part of the only possible solution to the problem of biology for them. But please explain what part of Francis Collins' religion drives him or any other Christian to accept common descent. Maybe your answer will help me understand your position.
"I believe in allowing the evidence to speak for itself."
As someone else pointed out, this is an incredibly naive statement for someone who has read as much philosophy of science as I would guess you have. Evidence doesn't speak for itself. It is interpreted within some framework of experience and belief which allows certain possibilities (sometimes there's only one possibility, as noted above} and rules out others, or at least finds them so distasteful that some reason will be found to reject them. No one is objective (except me, of course. :) )
"There are 27 orders of magnitude between evolution’s expectations and reality. And that is going by the evolutionist’s own reckoning (in reality it is 100+ orders of magnitude)."
I think this tack is revealing. I'm guessing that this is your way of saying that random mutation and natural selection won't get the job done. But we weren't talking about the neo-Darwinian mechanism - we were talking about common descent (and, from many years ago, about millions of complex mutations, transposon insertions, exactly reproduced in parallel in multiple species.) This is evidence for common descent that doesn't depend on any assumptions about whether mutations are really random or whether natural selection/neutral drift is sufficient.
It seems that for you and most other IDists common descent and the neo-Darwinian mechanism are all one thing, even though at some level you know that they aren't. (You know Behe, I assume.) When pressed about common descent you all retreat quickly to some argument about design (really about the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian story.) What I'm trying to figure out is why.
In regard to the transposon evidence, you told me years ago that you thought that all those transposition events occurred in different species in parallel, but you never told me if you think that that happened by a miraculous or natural mechanism. Care to comment on that now?
PNG:
ReplyDeleteWhen pressed about common descent you all retreat quickly to some argument about design (really about the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian story.) What I'm trying to figure out is why.
I'll tell you why:
Human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism and speciesism.
PNG said, "But we weren't talking about the neo-Darwinian mechanism - we were talking about common descent (and, from many years ago, about millions of complex mutations, transposon insertions, exactly reproduced in parallel in multiple species.) "
ReplyDelete--
Please go into more detail as to why you are confident about universal common descent. I promise not to retreat.
Dear Mr. Cornelius Hunter,
ReplyDeleteI am simply an anonymous person to you since you haven't met me. However, I am a Christian like yourself, and I am in favor of the belief in a Creator. I believe that God is exactly as He is mentioned in the Bible, and I believe that His awesome Creation is a direct clue to His awesome creativity as an awesome and incomparable God.
I also believe in man's God-permitted liberty of choice. I believe that no matter how well I can make my side of the coin seem more favorable than the opposite side, it still holds true that when we toss the coin, it has a mind of its own. It's like that, I think, with us humans. If I decide to disbelieve in a Creator God and just believe in a complex universe birthed out of complex processes which simply remain undiscovered, then I will indeed end up an atheist even if I lived in a neighborhood of clergymen.
If, however, I chose to believe in Christianity, then the reasoning faculties of my mind and the emotional attachment of my heart would go with that direction which I decide for them. My deep burden goes out to pro-evolution, anti-God readers who read my comment and may perhaps wish to react. I am not a man who dives into intellectual brawls. But I am intent on standing on the Christian perspective on things since I am a Christian. I personally think Christianity is the only thing that gives life the best, most rich and sound mindset and lifestyle.
I can only comment with the hope that a reader who may be totally at war with God in his heart would realize His realness. If we don't believe that God is real, we would not think of giving the seat of the throne of our lives over to Him since only living deities deserve attention and servitude. Moreover, if we don't think that God is real, we won't have moral laws. Anyone can kill, and that's OK. Of course, we know, by the moral laws that exist as realistically as the natural laws, that there is no such thing as grey when we have a mind that weighs things with humility.
If we don't believe that God is sovereign over the moral system of the universe as much as He is sovereign over the material system, then we won't feel accountable to His holy standards. If we don't feel accountable to His holy standards, we won't realize that we have fallen short of those standards and are in need of salvation - pardon, restoration, rescue, salvation. And if we don't realize that we need salvation, we won't go to God for it. And if we don't go to God for it, we will never realize that God has provided a way for us to be saved - His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. If we refuse to believe on Christ as the Son of God Who died on the cross to pay the penalty of death for our sins and is raised from the dead as supreme Lord, we are actually choosing Hell. The Gospel forces no one - it simply presents God's offer of salvation to us in the Person of His Son, and the choice is whether we choose Jesus or reject Him. That's the basis for whether we enter God's Kingdom of Heaven or not (which means to go to that eternal place of damnation, separation and torment called Hell).
The Holy Spirit was also given by God to the church after Christ's ascension. The Holy Spirit is working today as He did in Acts 2:4, empowering witnesses to be bold for Jesus. I myself have been filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues as the evidence of His infilling. The Holy Spirit works today and will manifest the reality of God to anybody who believes.
So, in the end, the choice is always handed over to us. Thanks for taking time to read. God bless you Sir despite your discouragements from those opposing your pro-God views on science.
Sincerely,
Alvin Daluz, 19 years old, Philippines
CH: Yes, there are several arguments for the fact of evolution. They all entail theological claims (or philosophical claims which ultimately trace back to theological claims) about god.
ReplyDeleteWhat we empirical observe is that evolutionary conclusions happen to intersect and conflict with specific theological claims, which still happen to persist today.
What you've failed to provide is a clear and comprehensive criteria as to how one determines if a theory actually entails a theological claim and if it's the primary underlying justification for that conclusion.
For example, lighting was thought represent the wrath of gods or God. Does meteorology *not* entail theological claims since God is no longer thought to be the cause of lighting and there is no current conflict? Does gravitational theory *not* entail theological claims merely because science explains the phenomena we attribute to gravity with a natural cause and most theists think God created gravity as a secondary cause?
in other words, your claims of relgious bias appear arbitrary.
Furthermore, you're confusing criticizing a theory with actually holding a belief in that theory. If the terms 'intelligent', 'design' and 'goodness', when applied to God, cannot tell us what God would or would not do, then it's unclear how you can use these claims elsewhere in a consistent manor.
Theistic claims do not exist in an vacuum.
CH: From a scientific perspective common descent is unlikely.
And how do you define "scientific perspective"? How is a "scientific perspective" even possible without theory?
Bertand Russell's story of the chicken and the farmer not only shows that one cannot induce truth from past experience, but that it's a myth that one can extrapolate observations to form new theories.
For Russell's chicken to reach a false prediction via induction, it must have first interpreted the farmer's actions (feeding it every day) using a false explanation, such as the farmer had benevolent feelings towards chickens. However, had the chicken first guessed a different explanation, such as the farmer was feeding the chicken so it would fetch a good price when slaughtered, then it would have extrapolated the farmer's actions differently.
As such, it's unclear how one can extrapolate observations without first putting them into a explanatory framework.
For example, the likelihood of evolution as an explanation for the biological complexity we observe would be significantly different should one assume that specific outcomes were pre-selected goals, rather than good enough solutions. Nor is the likelihood of a specific concrete outcome the same as the likelihood of evolution representing an increasingly more accurate explanation for what we observe. As such, this borders on disingenuous equivocation.
CH: It is true there is evidence for common descent, just as there is plenty of evidence for a flat earth, geocentrism, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut you fail to realize (or refuse to admit) that some explanations are objectively better than others.
Popper pointed out that science is based on conjecture, collaboration and falsifications. But Deutsch takes the next step in that not all explications for the same observations are equal.
We explain the relatively recent and massive increase in our creation of new knowledge with an explication as to how things *are*, in reality. Specifically, starting out with objectively better explanations rapidly leads to a significantly more accurate pictures of reality. And we do so tentatively, rather than via induction, as some better explanation for this accelerated growth could be found in the future.
And, by objectively better, I mean explanations that are harder to vary.
To quote Deutsch: "That the truth consists of hard to vary assertions about reality is the most important fact about the physical world. It's a fact that is, itself, unseen, yet impossible to vary."
So, it's not that one couldn't interpret observations as "evidence" of for a flat earth or geocentrism, It's that the underlying explanations one would need to give for them to be true is either is easy to vary or isn't really an explanation.
For example, what explanation must one implore to extrapolate a flat earth or geocentrism from current observations? What existing chain of hard to vary explanations must we first discard? Would the end results actually end up "explaining" what we observed, rather than merely appealing to the possibility that it only appears that the earth is round or that we merely appear to exist in a heliocentric solar system?
CH: I’m not saying rationalism has no place or that blindly following the evidence solves all problems. I would agree there is, necessarily, a mix. Nor am I saying that rationalism, itself, is fallacious.
ReplyDeleteAgain, the fallacy I'm referring to here is the assumption that it's actually possible to "blindly follow evidence" in the first place, or that one can extrapolate observations to form new theories. Supposedly, we don't realize we're theologicaly biased when, in reality, you don't realize you're argument represents naive empiricism.
CH: But extreme rationalism, and evolution is a good example of this, is susceptible to confirmation bias and misrepresentation of the empirical evidence.
And your definition of what is or is not extreme rationalism is free from confirmation bias and misrepresentation of the empirical evidence?
Again, you're objections to evolutionary theory are essentially a variant of solipsism. Rather than drawing the boundary at our minds, you merely chosen to draw it at biological complexity we observe. Choosing to draw the line here, rather than there, is arbitrary and irrational.
CH: I much prefer empiricism to mythology.
Why is this the case? After all, one could claim there are significant number of observations that could "support" mythology as well. We reject myths because they are easy to vary. This is in contrast to hard to vary chains of explanations.
For example, take our current explanation of the seasons, which includes explanations for star light, the behavior of a spinning sphere, the absorption of radiant heat at different angles. just to name a few. However, the cast of characters for mythological explanations for the seasons are only related to the phenomena in question via the myth itself. Furthermore, they could be easily varied to account for different observations, such as the observation of seasons out of phase in different hemispheres.
But should we not observe seasons out of phase, our current theory of the seasons would have nowhere to go. No variation to this chain can be easily introduced to account for this discrepancy. It's a good explanation.
As with mythology, ID's abstract intelligent designer is only related to the phenomena in question by the abstract claim of design itself. As a supposed designer of all life on or planet, the entire chain of explanations behind human design are not applicable. At best one might claim that some ancient, highly technical advanced alien race designed us, but this would exclude the same designer having designed the universe as a whole. Furthermore, it would concede that the deigned was part of nature, which can be explained.
These concessions and exclusions are simply unacceptable for reasons that are obvious.
Cornelius Hunter,
ReplyDeleteI don't want to be overly confrontational, but you claim to be an empiricist. On the other hand you make statements like "From a scientific perspective common descent is unlikely." On what empirical basis do you make this statement? Isn't it true that by claiming that you are in fact being a rationalist because you cannot support it with empirical evidence?
Cornelius,
ReplyDeleteEarlier, I asked you what your hypothesis is about how a large number of transposon insertions happened in precise parallel in different species. (That was the gist of it, anyway.) I haven't lurked here very much, but I have the impression that you aren't willing to discuss your own hypotheses, at least not is this forum (more like a scrum in the mud sometimes.)
I am curious how you think about this. If you are willing to discuss it privately, my e-mail is 257848atATTdotNET
For the moment I would like to point out that, if you still believe TEs spread in each species independently, that you are in fact accepting quite a lot of evolution, albeit without speciation. The human genome has 3 million TE insertion sites which make up 45% of the genome. If even a small portion of them have function (the ID trend now seems to be to assert that they all have function), that has to be a lot of evolution functionally and would seem to require a lot of time, since the insertions have to come in successive waves of subfamilies to match the observed order of insertion in TE cluster. Have humans been around for 50 milion years? How do you think about this?
Alvin Daluz:
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the kind note.
PNG:
ReplyDeleteI can see how an atheist is driven to accept common descent - it's a necessary part of the only possible solution to the problem of biology for them. But please explain what part of Francis Collins' religion drives him or any other Christian to accept common descent. Maybe your answer will help me understand your position.
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/10/open-letter-to-karl-giberson.html
"I believe in allowing the evidence to speak for itself."
As someone else pointed out, this is an incredibly naive statement for someone who has read as much philosophy of science as I would guess you have. Evidence doesn't speak for itself. It is interpreted within some framework of experience and belief which allows certain possibilities (sometimes there's only one possibility, as noted above} and rules out others, or at least finds them so distasteful that some reason will be found to reject them.
Perhaps it would sound less naïve if you included the next couple sentences: “I’m not saying rationalism has no place or that blindly following the evidence solves all problems. I would agree there is, necessarily, a mix. Nor am I saying that rationalism, itself, is fallacious.”
Or perhaps it would sound less naïve if you considered the context, which is evolutionary thought which argues god wouldn’t have created those pseudogenes, etc, etc, so evolution must be true, in spite of the obvious evidence.
No one is objective.
So rationalism is OK?
"There are 27 orders of magnitude between evolution’s expectations and reality. And that is going by the evolutionist’s own reckoning (in reality it is 100+ orders of magnitude)."
I think this tack is revealing. I'm guessing that this is your way of saying that random mutation and natural selection won't get the job done. But we weren't talking about the neo-Darwinian mechanism
Non local mechanisms don’t help. They just start the search over again. Sorry, but there are no tricks to get around fundamental search problems. Proteins don’t automagically arise.
It seems that for you and most other IDists common descent and the neo-Darwinian mechanism are all one thing, even though at some level you know that they aren't.
Can you name an IDist who holds that view?
When pressed about common descent you all retreat quickly to some argument about design (really about the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian story.) What I'm trying to figure out is why.
Well I can’t answer without specifics. I don’t know to whom you are referring.
The human genome has 3 million TE insertion sites which make up 45% of the genome. If even a small portion of them have function (the ID trend now seems to be to assert that they all have function), that has to be a lot of evolution functionally and would seem to require a lot of time, since the insertions have to come in successive waves of subfamilies to match the observed order of insertion in TE cluster. Have humans been around for 50 milion years? How do you think about this?
So how do you explain homologous transposable elements which don’t fit the common descent pattern. Evolutionists explain them as independent insertion events. Do you agree?
This is evidence for common descent that doesn't depend on any assumptions about whether mutations are really random or whether natural selection/neutral drift is sufficient.
So do you agree that evolution is unlikely and does not qualify as a fact?
Second, how do you handle the patterns that do not fit common descent? There are patterns that fit, and patterns that do not fit. You seem to be focusing on those that fit, or am I misunderstanding?
second opinion:
ReplyDeleteI don't want to be overly confrontational, but you claim to be an empiricist. On the other hand you make statements like "From a scientific perspective common descent is unlikely." On what empirical basis do you make this statement? Isn't it true that by claiming that you are in fact being a rationalist because you cannot support it with empirical evidence?
No, the empirical evidence is against common descent. This is not to say there isn’t plenty of evidence that supports common descent. The sun rising this morning support geocentrism, but we need to look at all the evidence.
Evolutionists like to point to various patterns of similarities and differences between the species as evidence for CD. But, again, while there are many patterns that do support CD, there are many that do not. Similar species have otherwise profound differences. Different species have otherwise profound similarities. The common descent pattern is violated all throughout the evolutionary tree. And so forth.
If we’re to follow the evidence, wouldn’t you agree CD would be rejected. Imagine you have a theory that makes a prediction. You do some experiments to test your theory and find that sometimes it fails. Do you conclude the theory is a fact?
How can you be certain that your confirmation biases, consciously or unconsciously do not impact your scientific views? How does that work?
ReplyDeleteIt's all very well saying that Christianity affords you a wide spectrum of explanations, but because of your religious beliefs, the one constant is that you believe God is somehow entangled in one of those explanations (you have said as much in previous posts). Tell me then why I should not think that you have confirmation biases at work?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCH: "If we’re to follow the evidence, wouldn’t you agree CD would be rejected."
ReplyDeleteWhat does this really mean to "follow" the evidence? How exactly do you do this CH? Can you walk us through your thought processes and the steps you take in "following the evidence" that lead you to reject CD (and of course without any presupposed ideas or rationalism...).
You've already made an assumption here that the evidence leads somewhere, but to where and how?
CH: Perhaps it would sound less naïve if you included the next couple sentences: “I’m not saying rationalism has no place or that blindly following the evidence solves all problems. I would agree there is, necessarily, a mix. Nor am I saying that rationalism, itself, is fallacious.”
ReplyDeleteNo, it wouldn't. I've already pointed out the fallacy here, which you have yet to address. Specially, it's unclear how one can "blindly follow evidence."
Perhaps you can provide outline how this might occur?
For example, this wouldn't include the assumption that new scientific theories created by generalizing empirical observations, would it? Or perhaps using induction to justify theories?
Again, Russell (and then Deutsch) pointed out the problem with this line of thinking, as referenced above.
CH: Or perhaps it would sound less naïve if you considered the context, which is evolutionary thought which argues god wouldn’t have created those pseudogenes, etc, etc, so evolution must be true, in spite of the obvious evidence.
This doesn't help either.
Again, what we empirically observe is that evolutionary conclusions happen to intersect and conflict with specific theological claims, which still happen to persist today. What you've failed to provide is a clear and comprehensive criteria as to how one determines if a theory actually entails a theological claim and if it's the primary underlying justification for that conclusion.
Furthermore, is God merely a "intentional arranger" or an perfectly good, all knowing and all powerful designer?
Apparently, the terms 'design', 'intelligent' and 'perfectly good' are rendered completely meaningless when applied to God - that is - unless divine revelation has revealed otherwise.
In other words, It's OK to assume that a perfectly good, all knowing and all powerful God would do X, but only when justified by your particular interpretation of your particular holy text.
"Pedant said...
ReplyDeletePNG:
When pressed about common descent you all retreat quickly to some argument about design (really about the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian story.) What I'm trying to figure out is why.
I'll tell you why:
Human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism and speciesism."
Exactly.
Hunter:
ReplyDeleteSecond, how do you handle the patterns that do not fit common descent? There are patterns that fit, and patterns that do not fit. You seem to be focusing on those that fit, or am I misunderstanding?
This might be the start of a productive discussion if Dr Hunter would provide some specifics. Preferably supported by primary sources and not self-references.
If patterns that fit outnumber patterns that do not, it might be premature to reject the theory. Baby, bathwater, you know...
Pedant,
ReplyDeleteI don't think Hunter will engage in a productive discussion. He quote-mined the Doolittle-Bapteste paper and did so on purpose.
I know, Oleg, but I'm thinking of the children.
ReplyDeleteCornelius,
ReplyDeleteYou quote F. Collins:
"A claim that the human genome was created by God independently rather than being part of descent from a common ancestor would mean God intentionally inserted a nonfunctioning piece of DNA into our genomes to test our faith. Unless you are willing to contemplate the idea of God as a deceiver, this is not a comfortable explanation."
Collins is doing a reductio ad absurdum on one possible alternate hypothesis that some believers have proposed, and, yes, he is doing it on theological grounds. I agree with him on the theology - I don't think God would perpetrate a general deception by rigging the physical evidence, but for me this is not a general argument for evolution. It is just an attempt to preserve the possibility of doing or talking about science at all. If someone is determined to assume that God would deceive in such a general manner, then the whole discussion is really over before it begins. There's no point in talking about physical evidence at all.
"...evolutionary thought which argues god wouldn’t have created those pseudogenes, etc, etc, so evolution must be true, in spite of the obvious evidence."
I wouldn't bother with the theological argument about pseudogenes. I would just point out when their are countless examples in the genomes of the same complex mutation having happened in the orthologous location (whether in a pseudogene or elsewhere) in different species, then, if parsimony counts for anything, common descent becomes the better hypothesis over independent origins of species. The idea that millions of transposable element (TE) insertions were exactly repeated in overlapping sets of species completely independently must be the most anti-parsimonious hypothesis in the history of science. (I'm still not sure that that is your hypothesis now, since you haven't told me. I'm working with what I've got.)
And, I think that if one is familiar with the details of the large literature on transposons, then it is clear that there is no natural enzymatic mechanism that is capable of reproducing the complex pattern of insertions in different species. There is also a very complex pattern of varying amounts of sequence divergence in different families of transposons and in the TEs at orthologous sites in different species. In addition, there is a massive record of the time sequence of activity of different TE families and subfamilies in the 306,000 TE clusters in the human genome where there are 636,000 events of one TE inserting into another TE. Comparison of the parallel analysis in other species, especially chimp, is a formidible body of evidence.
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You can get a feel for it by opening 2 windows in the UCSC genome browser. Find a region in the human genome where the corresponding chimp sequence is good, and look at the alignment. Then open the chimp coordinates in the second window. Now open the RepeatMasker tracks (or Transposon Cluster Finder) in both, including the tracks that link separated fragments of the same TE. You will be looking at independent runs of the RepeatMasker software on the 2 genomes. The software finds known repeats, most of which are TEs. You can mouse over each TE to see what subtype it is. The degree of correspondence is extensive. What you see will not be completely identical - they are 2 different species, the degree of match is striking. If anyone wants to see a screen shot of a 50,000 bp comparison, e-mail me at 257848atATTdotCOM.
ReplyDeleteThis whole mass of evidence is nicely accounted for by a combination of common descent and what is known about the mechanisms of transposition, including the master gene hypothesis of transposon subfamilies. I repeat from above, there is no natural enzymatic mechanism that is capable of reproducing the complex pattern of insertions in different species. The only way to do it, other than common descent, is lots and lots of miracles. I'm in the process of writing an essay on this topic to point out more details.
Finally, in regard to pseudogenes, I do think that it is reasonable to ask why there should be degraded fragments of an egg yolk protein (vitellogenin) in the human genome when no species closer to us than platypus has any evident use for it. You can call this theological if you want, but to me it seems more like common sense. And finally, what "obvious evidence" are you referring to?
Me: "No one is objective."
CH: So rationalism is OK?
Evolutionary theory is, like almost all science, the result of a loop from empirical observations to hypothesis to (imperfect) rational deduction of predictions of the hypothesis, followed by more experiment-observation and so on. There are other sub-loops as well. No one is perfectly objective in carrying out this process, but objectivity is a useful goal, and it helps to know what your biases are. I think I pretty good idea what mine are. You claim that your only bias is against pure rationalism, but, evolutionary science is obviously not pure rationalism. (Indeed, I doubt that such a thing is possible for human beings, who all have experiences.) To be frank, I suspect you don't fully understand your own biases, but I don't know you well enough to have the right to speculate about it, so I won't.
Me: "But we weren't talking about the neo-Darwinian mechanism."
CH: "Non local mechanisms don’t help. They just start the search over again. Sorry, but there are no tricks to get around fundamental search problems. Proteins don’t automagically arise."
I don't know exactly what you are talking about, but it seems to just illustrate my point that you can't or won't discuss the evidence for common descent apart from the Darwinian mechanism. Would it help if I were to propose for the purpose of argument that not all the mutations are random?
Me: "It seems that for you and most other IDists common descent and the neo-Darwinian mechanism are all one thing, even though at some level you know that they aren't."
ReplyDeleteCH: "Can you name an IDist who holds that view?"
Apparently, you. To state what I said above slightly differently, I know that at some level you know that design and common descent are not mutually exclusive (they even have it so stated on the UD website, which would seem to contradict the name of the site, but I'll leave that for the terminally bored to ponder), but when I try to focus on common descent, you usually jump to questions of mechanism. I have been having similar discussions with another DI fellow with similar results, although he jumps reflexively to "design." But since the main evidence for design seems to be assertions about mechanism, the difference doesn't seem to amount to much. The other guy, and I gather Wells and Meyer, also jump to the assertion that "we now know" that the whole genome has function, a totally unjustified extrapolation which, even if true would not change the evidence from transposons, but since you haven't done that I won't get into it.
I said: Have humans been around for 50 milion years? How do you think about this?
CH: "So how do you explain homologous transposable elements which don’t fit the common descent pattern. Evolutionists explain them as independent insertion events. Do you agree?"
I'll respond to this in another comment - this is getting awfully long. But I want a quid pro quo. I want your hypothesis about the origin of species.
A big part of science is proposing a new hypothesis and how to test it, and after some more experiments, assessing which hypothesis is better. I think I can answer your objections about transposons, but fair is fair. Play the whole game, not just part of it. Propose what you think is a better hypothesis and let it be criticized and tested. I know that you propose design, but design is not in itself a hypothesis about biological history, unless you use "design" to mean something other than the usual meaning of the word. If you mean something ideosyncratic or technical by "design," then tell us how you are using it.
Me: "This is evidence for common descent that doesn't depend on any assumptions about whether mutations are really random or whether natural selection/neutral drift is sufficient."
CH: "So do you agree that evolution is unlikely and does not qualify as a fact?"
I don't know how you got that from what I said. I think common descent is overwhelming likely. I think the mechanism is a much more subtle and difficult problem. I always did the easy test questions first in school. That's what I'm doing now. Whether something is a "fact" seems to me a semantic discussion about a word that has no precise meaning. It doesn't much interest me.
Correction, I left out the word gene:
ReplyDeletedegraded fragments of an egg yolk protein (vitellogenin) [gene] in the human genome
PNG:
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. I will respond. But you didn't respond to this question of mine:
Second, how do you handle the patterns that do not fit common descent? There are patterns that fit, and patterns that do not fit. You seem to be focusing on those that fit, or am I misunderstanding?
Cornelius,
ReplyDeleteLike I said, I want a quid pro quo. I want a hypothesis. My offer stands to do it privately if you prefer, and, although I'm not a priest (or even High Church!), I will obey their vow of confidentiality if you want. I'm working on a list of things that can confuse the results with TEs, but I have to do some other chores now (and possibly sleep.)
P.
PNG,
ReplyDeleteI tried contacting you at the email address you gave above, substituting @ for "at" and a "." for dot, and it was returned because the address was invalid.
I used to have at att.com account, but it has been transformed into a yahoo.com account. Could that be the problem?
PNG:
ReplyDeleteYou quote F. Collins:
"A claim that the human genome was created by God independently rather than being part of descent from a common ancestor would mean God intentionally inserted a nonfunctioning piece of DNA into our genomes to test our faith. Unless you are willing to contemplate the idea of God as a deceiver, this is not a comfortable explanation."
Collins is doing a reductio ad absurdum on one possible alternate hypothesis that some believers have proposed, and, yes, he is doing it on theological grounds. I agree with him on the theology - I don't think God would perpetrate a general deception by rigging the physical evidence, but for me this is not a general argument for evolution.
Whether or not it is “general,” it is determinative. Evolutionary thought, as exemplified here, makes theological claims that mandate an origin by natural means (secondary causes). For you, the human genome must have arisen via common descent, otherwise god has deceived as we don’t want that.
It is just an attempt to preserve the possibility of doing or talking about science at all. If someone is determined to assume that God would deceive in such a general manner, then the whole discussion is really over before it begins. There's no point in talking about physical evidence at all.
Notice how in evolutionary thought the dogma is transplanted to the other guy. IOW, the evolutionist makes a determinative theological claim, and then points the finger at the other guy for being “determined” to make theological claims, thus making evidential discussion impossible.
It is precisely the opposite. Evidential discussion impossible because the evolutionist has made determinative theological claims. Common descent, one way or another, must be true from the outset. Now let’s have a look at the evidence.
Evolutionary thought, as exemplified here, makes theological claims that mandate an origin by natural means (secondary causes).
ReplyDeletePardon my intrusion, but all sciences, as Aquinas knew, mandate secondary causes. If every event were caused directly (primarily) by a supernatural agent, there would be no motivation to search for secondary causes, which are the purview of the sciences.
And when secondary causes are the focus of attention, theology is banned from the laboratory.
Has Dr Hunter ever explained why he thinks that biological origins must be exempt from a laser-like focus on secondary causes?
Cornelius,
ReplyDelete"Notice how in evolutionary thought the dogma is transplanted to the other guy. IOW, the evolutionist makes a determinative theological claim, and then points the finger at the other guy for being “determined” to make theological claims, thus making evidential discussion impossible."
This is completely tendentious reasoning. My statement is simple a conditional statement. If one believes that God arranges the world to deceive anyone who looks at the physical evidence (as opposed to perhaps allowing an individual who is way into evil to be subjectively deceived), then any discussion based on evidence is pointless.
There is no assumption here that common descent is true, only that if you don't assume that the physical evidence reflects what really happened, then examining it or talking about it is pointless.
Is that your hypothesis, that God has fabricated the physical evidence? If so, I've got better things to do.
P.
Pedant,
ReplyDeleteI checked the number in the address, and it is correct, and I am receiving mail at that address at ATT.NET. Perhaps you miss-typed it?
P.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEek, I'm getting senile. Att.net it was...
ReplyDeletePNG:
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't bother with the theological argument about pseudogenes. I would just point out when their are countless examples in the genomes of the same complex mutation having happened in the orthologous location (whether in a pseudogene or elsewhere) in different species, then, if parsimony counts for anything, common descent becomes the better hypothesis over independent origins of species. The idea that millions of transposable element (TE) insertions were exactly repeated in overlapping sets of species completely independently must be the most anti-parsimonious hypothesis in the history of science.
But you must invoke the “independent origins” explanation for those transposable elements that don’t fit common descent. So the parsimony argument carries less force. Furthermore, common descent becomes unparsimonious when you consider other data, that don’t fit common descent.
And, I think that if one is familiar with the details of the large literature on transposons, then it is clear that there is no natural enzymatic mechanism that is capable of reproducing the complex pattern of insertions in different species.
So you lower the standards for your theory while maintaining high standards for the opposing idea. For common descent, the lack of mechanism doesn’t matter, but for common mechanism, lack of mechanism is a problem.
PNG:
ReplyDeleteThis is completely tendentious reasoning. My statement is simple a conditional statement. If one believes that God arranges the world to deceive anyone who looks at the physical evidence (as opposed to perhaps allowing an individual who is way into evil to be subjectively deceived), then any discussion based on evidence is pointless.
Can you name a single, influential, person in the origins debate who holds to that view?
PNG:
ReplyDeleteI repeat from above, there is no natural enzymatic mechanism that is capable of reproducing the complex pattern of insertions in different species. The only way to do it, other than common descent, is lots and lots of miracles.
Again, this is the double standard fallacy.
And finally, what "obvious evidence" are you referring to?
Unfortunately it is typical for evolutionists to ask this question. They so often sweep inconvenient evidence under the rug that they literally believe there is no contrary evidence. Meanwhile, evolution has no scientific explanation for their “fact.” How did life arise from a pond, or ocean vent? How did proteins evolve? How did thousands of other designs evolve? Evolutionists only have vague speculation in the face of empirical evidence showing evolution to be unlikely.
As for common descent, biology provides abundant examples that contradict CD’s expectations. Similar species have significant differences and distant species have significant similarities. Are there designs that line up with CD? Yes, but taken as a whole, the patterns do not fit CD. So I asked:
How do you handle the patterns that do not fit common descent? There are patterns that fit, and patterns that do not fit. You seem to be focusing on those that fit, or am I misunderstanding?
To which I received no answer. What if you believed in geocentrism. You pointed to successful predictions, saying geocentrism was by far the most parsimonious explanation and compelling. Then someone asks about all the failed predictions and you give no answer. You can’t just focus in on the convenient data and put blinders on otherwise.
Cornelius,
ReplyDelete"But you must invoke the “independent origins” explanation for those transposable elements that don’t fit common descent."
"For common descent, the lack of mechanism doesn’t matter, but for common mechanism, lack of mechanism is a problem."
I'm sure you know that are several well characterized mechanisms for transposition of L1s, Alus and SVAs. DNA transposon mechanisms are well characterized in non-mammalian species where they are more active. Why do you say that there are no mechanisms?
Please don't tell me what mechanism I must invoke, when I'm the one digging around in the literature on it and you refuse to. As I pointed out above, there are enzymatic and genetic mechanisms with independent support that can account for most of the anomalies. You have no mechanism at all to account for any parallel insertions.
Is it not better to have a very plausible mechanism for 99.9% of the events than to have a mechanism for 0.0% of the events? And as long as you refuse to tell me or anyone else what your relevant assumptions and hypotheses are, that is where you will remain, with 0% of the events accounted for.
You insist that you must see all of everyone else's cards, and no one else can see any of yours. (Are you annoyed that I remembered a comment that you made years ago, and thus had a hint what you might believe? I still don't know what you think now, or if you have any hypothesis at all.) And then you accuse other people of rigging the game. It's you who insist on rigging the game in your own favor.
PNG:
ReplyDeleteMe: "It seems that for you and most other IDists common descent and the neo-Darwinian mechanism are all one thing, even though at some level you know that they aren't."
CH: "Can you name an IDist who holds that view?"
Apparently, you.
No, I don’t hold that view. I understand you are arguing for CD without specifying the mechanism.
PNG:
ReplyDeleteWhy do you say that there are no mechanisms?
I was simply echoing your double standard (ie, lack of mechanism for CD doesn’t matter, but lack of mechanism for homologous TEs is a problem for common mechanism explanation).
Is it not better to have a very plausible mechanism for 99.9% of the events than to have a mechanism for 0.0% of the events?
Yes, certainly. But we don’t have a plausible mechanism for 99.9%. You propose CD but you focus on TEs.
Cornelius,
ReplyDelete"Yes, certainly. But we don’t have a plausible mechanism for 99.9%. You propose CD but you focus on TEs."
CD _is_ a hypothesis that works very well to account for the parallel TEs. That is true no matter what mechanism accounts for the CD. Can you really not see that what you have done is exactly what I described above -you jumped back from the discussion of TEs as evidence of CD to the question of the mechanism of CD? You said above that it is not your position to link CD and the mechanism of CD and then you immediately do it again.
Would you concede for the purposes of argument that if CD happened because of divinely directly mutations and whatever else would be required of God to make it work, that CD then would be a parsimonious way to account for a large majority of parallel TEs?
Cornelius,
ReplyDeleteI can't stay in this strange loop any longer-I have other things to do- but I do want to respond to your accusation that I simply assume that common descent is true. As a matter of personal history it ain't so. I went to med school for 2 years, then switched to grad school in biochem and got a Ph.D. I studied nucleotides and enzymes for my whole career, but I knew I was not any kind of expert on evolutionary theory or evidence, and as such, I remained agnostic on the subject for a long time. For some reason I never found evolution threatening to my faith-it was interesting but I had more important fish to fry to keep a grant funded.
Because of personal connections, Charles Thaxton sent me an early draft of some of the book that he did with Olson and Bradley, and I made a few general comments (which I don't remember), which he politely rejected. I thought the OOL and later evolution were interesting topics, but for a number of years I didn't have the time to acquire any expertise and remained agnostic.
I was present at some meetings in the '80s (again as a result of personal connections) where ideas of ID were discussed in the pre-Phillip Johnson days. I remember being surprised that well into book-writing projects on the subject, one of the ID advocates told me that he had just heard at a meeting session about gene duplication for the first time. Even in my state of relative ignorance, I was aware of that, and I wondered if they weren't just looking for their car keys under the lamp post that they felt most comfortable with.
Incidentally, years later I heard by some grapevine that Steve Meyer was present at the same meeting, and it figured largely in his getting interested in ID. I don't remember meeting him, and I haven't had a chance to discuss it with him.
Sometime in the late 80s or early 90s I became aware of mammalian TEs as a result of a new young faculty member who worked on mouse L1s. At first I thought it was as boring a topic as I could imagine, but I gradually got interested and at some point read a news article in a journal that pointed out that orthologous TE insertions were powerful evidence for common descent. I kicked myself for not having recognized that.
After that I followed the literature off and on when I had time and eventually became convinced that it was powerful evidence indeed, simply because of the unlikelihood of exactly reproduced insertions and that there are such a huge number of them.
So, no, I do not simply assume the truth of common descent. I ask myself regularly if there is any other hypothesis that could account for the data, and the only one I can think of is miracles, lots of them. If a believer wants to take that route, of course I can't falsify it, but I can ask why are there transposases and endonucleases and reverse transcriptases coded by the elements if God was just going to miraculously target them? What's the point? Yes, this is theology, sort of, but it's also just common sense.
Cornelius,
ReplyDelete"No, I don’t hold that view. I understand you are arguing for CD without specifying the mechanism."
Yes, that is what I am doing. Griffith observed that an extract from virulent Pneumococcus could transform avirulent Pneum. to virulent and hypothesized that there something in the extract that coded for the virulence. He knew nothing about the molecular mechanism. Was he doing bad science?
And again when faced with TEs as evidence for CD, you jump to talking about the mechanism of CD. And once again it is true, regardless of what you claim to believe, that you regard CD and the mechanism of CD as inseparable.
You demand a hypothesis that accounts completely, now, for all of the billions of bits of evidence, refuse to consider any hypothesis that merely accounts for a very large majority of the evidence at the moment, and absolutely refuse to give or defend any hypothesis whatsoever of your own. And you accuse other people, the people spending their careers gathering the evidence, of being unempirical, while you get paid to read the literature and assassinate other people's work daily.
It is in fact you who, like the madman in Chesterton's Orthodoxy, is completely rational. You know, somehow, in advance that evolution must be false. Everything else you say follows from that.
I have spent as much time in the asylum as I can stand.
If you ever decide to present a hypothesis and defend it, send me an e-mail. I might come back.
PNG said...
ReplyDeleteAnd again when faced with TEs as evidence for CD, you jump to talking about the mechanism of CD. And once again it is true, regardless of what you claim to believe, that you regard CD and the mechanism of CD as inseparable.
You demand a hypothesis that accounts completely, now, for all of the billions of bits of evidence, refuse to consider any hypothesis that merely accounts for a very large majority of the evidence at the moment, and absolutely refuse to give or defend any hypothesis whatsoever of your own. And you accuse other people, the people spending their careers gathering the evidence, of being unempirical, while you get paid to read the literature and assassinate other people's work daily.
It is in fact you who, like the madman in Chesterton's Orthodoxy, is completely rational. You know, somehow, in advance that evolution must be false. Everything else you say follows from that.
It's not like CH hasn't had this pointed out to him dozens of time too. Cornelius Hunter has one of the worst cases of religiously based confirmation bias on the web but refuses to even consider the possibility. As Richard Feynman aptly noted about the most important aspect of science:
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
CH revels in the fool's paradise of his own making.
PNG:
ReplyDeleteI’m sorry I couldn’t give you answers more to your liking. Unfortuntely this exchange is not unusual with evolutionists. I responded to you, and you became upset by my just trying to address your points. Consider this exchange:
PNG: And, I think that if one is familiar with the details of the large literature on transposons, then it is clear that there is no natural enzymatic mechanism that is capable of reproducing the complex pattern of insertions in different species.
CH: So you lower the standards for your theory while maintaining high standards for the opposing idea. For common descent, the lack of mechanism doesn’t matter, but for common mechanism, lack of mechanism is a problem.
PNG: I'm sure you know that are several well characterized mechanisms for transposition of L1s, Alus and SVAs. DNA transposon mechanisms are well characterized in non-mammalian species where they are more active. Why do you say that there are no mechanisms?
CH: I was simply echoing your double standard (ie, lack of mechanism for CD doesn’t matter, but lack of mechanism for homologous TEs is a problem for common mechanism explanation).
PNG: Is it not better to have a very plausible mechanism for 99.9% of the events than to have a mechanism for 0.0% of the events?
CH: Yes, certainly. But we don’t have a plausible mechanism for 99.9%. You propose CD but you focus on TEs.
PNG: CD _is_ a hypothesis that works very well to account for the parallel TEs. That is true no matter what mechanism accounts for the CD. Can you really not see that what you have done is exactly what I described above -you jumped back from the discussion of TEs as evidence of CD to the question of the mechanism of CD? You said above that it is not your position to link CD and the mechanism of CD and then you immediately do it again.
To recap, you criticized the “common mechanism” explanation for transposable elements because it lacks a known mechanism (a valid criticism but a double standard), I pointed out your double standard, you argued that having a plausible mechanism for 99.9% of the evidence is the better way to go, I agreed but pointed out you don’t have such a mechanism, and you incredibly castigated me for pointing out the lack of mechanism for CD. After all, you reminded me that the “common descent” explanation says nothing about mechanism. So why am I criticizing it for lack of mechanism?
But of course it was you who brought up the issue of mechanism, more than once. I was simply responding to your point, pointing out your fallacy, and you blame me for mentioning mechanism. You can’t win for losing.
PNG:
ReplyDeleteWould you concede for the purposes of argument that if CD happened because of divinely directly mutations and whatever else would be required of God to make it work, that CD then would be a parsimonious way to account for a large majority of parallel TEs?
Of course.
I can't stay in this strange loop any longer-I have other things to do- but I do want to respond to your accusation that I simply assume that common descent is true.
Well I did not accuse you of simply assuming common descent to be true. My point was that you made metaphysical claims which mandate common descent. For instance, you approve of Francis Collins claim that if the human genome did not arise via common descent then that means that “God intentionally inserted a nonfunctioning piece of DNA into our genomes to test our faith.”
You agreed and wrote: “I don't think God would perpetrate a general deception by rigging the physical evidence.” Now you may think you have better arguments for evolution, but this one is determinative. You believe that without evolution biology’s evidence constitutes a deception, and that god wouldn’t create such a deception. Those are metaphysical claims that mandate evolution, regardless of how badly the theory is on the evidence.
You then make the strawman argument that science is not possible with someone who “is determined to assume that God would deceive in such a general manner.” Not surprisingly when I asked you for a single influential person who holds such a view you ignored the question.
Finally you concluded: “Is that your hypothesis, that God has fabricated the physical evidence? If so, I've got better things to do.” Obviously there are some strong metaphysics at work here. You then explain the transposable elements evidence and conclude:
So, no, I do not simply assume the truth of common descent. I ask myself regularly if there is any other hypothesis that could account for the data, and the only one I can think of is miracles, lots of them. If a believer wants to take that route, of course I can't falsify it, but I can ask why are there transposases and endonucleases and reverse transcriptases coded by the elements if God was just going to miraculously target them? What's the point? Yes, this is theology, sort of, but it's also just common sense.
The strongest metaphysics are those that seem so obvious and in no need of justification. It seems terribly obvious to you that (i) you know all the conceivable explanations of which there are two, and (ii) god obviously wouldn’t do the second one, so that leaves only common descent. These are very powerful, non scientific, metaphysical arguments and conclusions which leave one with high confidence and immune from the facts. You are oblivious to the massive evidence against common descent. You ignored my questions of how you deal with it, and finally asked what I was referring to.
PNG:
ReplyDeleteYou demand a hypothesis that accounts completely, now, for all of the billions of bits of evidence, refuse to consider any hypothesis that merely accounts for a very large majority of the evidence at the moment, and absolutely refuse to give or defend any hypothesis whatsoever of your own.
Common descent does not account “for a very large majority of the evidence at the moment.” That is absurd. You seem to be immune to this scientific fact. You are focused on transposable elements and are ignoring massive problems. I’ve asked you about this several times to no avail. This is typical of evolutionists because they have the metaphysical certainty I discussed above.
And you accuse other people, the people spending their careers gathering the evidence, of being unempirical, while you get paid to read the literature and assassinate other people's work daily.
And who is it that is paying me to read the literature?
It is in fact you who, like the madman in Chesterton's Orthodoxy, is completely rational. You know, somehow, in advance that evolution must be false. Everything else you say follows from that.
I have spent as much time in the asylum as I can stand.
If you ever decide to present a hypothesis and defend it, send me an e-mail. I might come back.
This is where the metaphysics leads. Unfounded accusations, ridicule and certainty in the face of daunting contradictory evidence. Of course I do not know “in advance that evolution must be false.” I could care less if evolution or common descent happened or did not happen.
But I won’t make a mockery of science. I completely agree with you that transposable elements are good evidence for common descent. But transposable elements are not the only pattern evidence. Sadly you demonstrate little sign of having considered the other evidence. Instead, my suggestions and questions to you about this are met with a combination of ignorance and ridicule.
We are nowhere remotely close to being in a position to evaluate various hypotheses. Evolutionists are always asking for hypotheses while demonstrating a complete inability to dispassionately consider and evaluate the evidence. How can you consider alternate hypotheses with such a biased and incomplete evaluation of the evidence?
Cornelius Hunter:
ReplyDelete"This is where the metaphysics leads. Unfounded accusations, ridicule and certainty in the face of daunting contradictory evidence.
Sadly you demonstrate little sign of having considered the other evidence. Instead, my suggestions and questions to you about this are met with a combination of ignorance and ridicule."
====
Though he started out innocent enough and genuinely inquisitive, you no doubt understood where this exchange was going to lead to, given the fanatical nature of most true believers of this religious dogma.
********
On another note: I've noticed over the past few months that at the bottom of your pages where someone has linked religious sites to your posts. I haven't noticed this before. Is it just me who sees it or anyone else ???
Perhaps there is something I'm not familiar with as far as blogspot's set up.
Cornelius Hunter said...
ReplyDeleteBut I won’t make a mockery of science.
Too late. That ship's already sailed.
Hunter:
ReplyDeleteEvolutionists are always asking for hypotheses while demonstrating a complete inability to dispassionately consider and evaluate the evidence. How can you consider alternate hypotheses with such a biased and incomplete evaluation of the evidence?
How can a person dispassionately consider and evaluate any kind of evidence in the absence of a conceptual framework of some kind? A case in point: evidence = my air conditioner just stopped working. How should I dispassionately, without at least one hypothesis, evaluate that evidence? How much weight should I give to the possibility that it was an act of God?
Please describe your method.
Cornelius said:
ReplyDelete"I could care less if evolution or common descent happened or did not happen."
In other words, you care. And since you constantly bash common descent, you obviously care a lot.
WHY are you so against science, evolution, and evolutionary theory? Of course I already know the answer but I'd like to hear your answer anyway.
The whole truth said...
ReplyDeleteCornelius said:
"I could care less if evolution or common descent happened or did not happen."
In other words, you care. And since you constantly bash common descent, you obviously care a lot.
WHY are you so against science, evolution, and evolutionary theory? Of course I already know the answer but I'd like to hear your answer anyway.
My hypothesis for Cornelius' Wile-E-Coyote like failed attacks on science's Roadrunner is that CH is just protecting his job at Biola. CH saw how Dembski almost got fired at Southern Baptist Seminary after Dembski made the mistake of saying he accepted common descent. The Southern Baptist leadership made Dembski grovel and retract his statement in favor of a YEC one.
CH is just doing some good old fashioned preventative CYA so the same thing doesn't happen to him.
I don't agree, Thorton. I believe that Dr Hunter is 100% sincere.
ReplyDeleteEocene:
ReplyDeleteOn another note: I've noticed over the past few months that at the bottom of your pages where someone has linked religious sites to your posts. I haven't noticed this before. Is it just me who sees it or anyone else ???
I believe what you are seeing are sites that have linked to the post.
OK, now can we get some specifics about those homologous transposable elements which don’t fit the common descent pattern and why that's such a problem for evolution?
ReplyDelete