Thursday, October 14, 2010

Back to School Part VI

Evolutionists are adamant that science must be free of religion or anything that smacks of religion. And while that sounds good, evolutionists are all-the-while driven by religion. They are sure all of biology is a fluke because of their religious convictions. Religion is both the source of evolution’s certainty and the target of its wrath. When not proclaiming that science must be free of religion, evolutionists make a wide spectrum of religious claims that mandate their theory.

Religious and metaphysical thought pervades the evolution genre. Even the dry textbooks indoctrinate students of evolution’s unobservable truths. Here is a subtle example from George Johnson’s and Jonathan Losos’ popular textbook which portrays the fossil record as decisive evidence for evolution:

If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected. [George Johnson and Jonathan Losos, The Living World, Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008, p. 296.]

Unsuspecting students and instructors will not likely discern the powerful doctrine in this seemingly innocent sentence. There is no mention of a god or holy book, and no appeal to authority. It seems to be an objective, scientific statement about the theory of evolution.

And that makes it all the more dangerous. These powerful non scientific claims are common in the evolution genre, but they can be subtle. Here this insertion of metaphysics is likely to escape detection while laying the groundwork for evolutionary doctrine.

These types of statements make ultimate truth claims. In this case Johnson and Losos claim to know all the possibilities aside from evolution and why none of them predict the orderly change we observe in the fossil record. Evolution, and only evolution, predicts such an outcome. In other words, if-and-only-if evolution is true would we expect to see such orderly change.

Therefore evolution must be true. This is one of the powerful arguments used to prove evolution to be a fact. But it is not from empirical science.

Johnson and Losos did not dream this up on their own. These IF AND ONLY IF statements have a long history in the evolutionary genre. They date back centuries to Enlightenment theology when theists of various persuasions were grappling with how god would have created the world. Their conviction was that creation must have been strictly via natural law, and this laid the groundwork for Charles Darwin’s and Alred Wallace’s theory of evolution.

Yet in seeking legitimacy, evolutionists portray their religiously-motivated, bizarre idea as scientific. And their hypocrisy comes full circle as they insist that science be free of any religious influence. As our textbook authors explain in the very next section:

Explanations that cannot be tested and potentially rejected simply aren’t science. [301]

But how can the explanation that the fossil record’s orderly change is expected only by evolution be tested? How could it be rejected? Evolution fails to qualify as science by the evolutionist’s own definition. The evolutionists are their own judge.

The lie of evolution is not that the species originated via natural law. As scientifically unlikely as that appears to us today, it just may be possible. Let’s not reject ideas just because they appear to be silly.

But evolution claims to be an undeniable scientific fact—a no-brainer. This is the lie of evolution. Evolution excoriates religious influence while insisting on its own religious truths. Though often subtle, evolution is a hypocritical lie. Religion drives science, and it matters.

308 comments:

  1. The claim, that orderly faunal succession in the fossil record is not explained except by evolutionary theory is easy to test: come up with a rival explanation for it. If different species (or genera, or even families) have separate origins that do not involve evolution from more primitive forms, is there any reason to suppose that Tiktaalik was more likely to originate in the Devonian than was, say, an ichythosaur or whale?

    One can posit, of course, that the Designer designed and made them that way, but such a pattern doesn't follow necessarily from design; one would not expect to find that, e.g. recent rocks contain many extant species, whereas somewhat older rocks contain many extant genera but few extant species (and some extinct genera and many extinct species), and still older rocks contain species from extant families but few living species or genera, etc.

    I don't see, either, how evolution without common descent (separate origins of lineages that evolve indefinitely without branching much), as proposed by Lamarck in the early 19th century and Senapathy in the late 20th, explains the pattern either. Is there some possibility I'm missing?

    What you're calling a metaphysical prejudice is in fact an epistemological preference: the view that the best explanations are the ones that actually explain things. A theory of origins in which orderly faunal succession is an expected consequence is thus preferable to theories in which it is possible by coincidence but, indeed, not expected for any reason that follows from the theory itself.

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  2. Hunter:

    But how can the explanation that the fossil record’s orderly change is explained only by evolution be tested?

    Where did the authors say "only"? (I count five "only"s in your post, all of them written by you.) Perhaps they said that the fossil record is "best" explained by evolution. That would be the proper scientific formulation.

    So who is the metaphysician?

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  3. Pedant word gamed again:

    "Where did the authors say "only"? (I count five "only"s in your post, all of them written by you.) Perhaps they said that the fossil record is "best" explained by evolution. That would be the proper scientific formulation.

    So who is the metaphysician?"
    =====

    Off hand I'd say you're a very pronounced Metaphysician, since in almost every thread topic you comment on the best you can come up with is to meticulously, methodically and surgically pick apart some perceived literary mistake or word definition shell game to deflect from intelligently answering questions posed in the actual topic.

    By definitions "ONLY" is always alluded to in most all science journals and from Evolutionist retorts when the hard questions are asked, like, evolution is the "ONLY" fact. Nothing will make sense except, "ONLY" in the light of evolution. Nothing else matters except when evolutionsits speak, you "ONLY" have to believe without question.

    You all need those Agent Mulder bumper snickers that say, "I want to believe" or "The Truth is Out There".

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  4. StevenJ:

    "What you're calling a metaphysical prejudice is in fact an epistemological preference:"
    =====

    Exactly, it always boils down to a "What Is Truth?" arguementation. If what has worked for centuries is not broken, then why fix it ???

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  5. "Evolutionists are adamant that science must be free of religion or anything that smacks of religion."


    "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind"- Albert Einstein

    IOW evos seem to like lame science...

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  6. Cornelius Hunter said...

    In this case Johnson and Losos claim to know all the possibilities aside from evolution and why none of them predict the orderly change we observe in the fossil record. Evolution, and only evolution, predicts such an outcome.


    Please cite the specific passage in which J&L say ONLY evolution can explain the fossil record.

    I strongly suspect you added the term ONLY , and by doing so you are deliberately misrepresenting what the authors actually wrote.

    You are bearing false witness CH. That's a sin

    Have you rejected Christian ethics and now think sinning is OK?

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  7. thorton:
    Please cite the specific passage in which J&L say ONLY evolution can explain the fossil record.

    Well if something else can explain it then it can't be used as evidence for the ToE.

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  8. JoeTard said...

    thorton:
    Please cite the specific passage in which J&L say ONLY evolution can explain the fossil record.

    Well if something else can explain it then it can't be used as evidence for the ToE.


    Sorry JoeTard, alternate explanations aren't given any credence unless they're supported with positive evidence. "The Flying Spaghetti Monster planted the fossils" is an explanation, but it is not supported.

    That's why the Biblical Creationism that you push isn't in science classrooms - no evidence.

    Stick to telling us your beliefs about Adam and Eve.

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  9. JoeG,

    You should be careful whom you quote.

    Describing his early years one scientist says that his deep studies in the sciences led him in new directions. "The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression." The same scientist, a very famous one at that, signed off his entire life and work with this zinger,

    "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

    Guess who?

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  10. Joe, you paste Einstein's quote all over the place, but I doubt that you have ever read it in context.

    Here are Einstein's writings on the subject of science and religion. Go ahead and read them. It is crystal clear that he had a low opinion of an anthropomorphic God. God as a designer is exactly that.

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  11. Cornelius:

    "But how can the explanation that the fossil record’s orderly change is explained only by evolution be tested?"

    It can't. At best, evolution is the only plausible known explanation of the fossil record. If you know of a better explanation, publish it, and maybe you could finally become a real scientist again and quit your job at that pathetic bible propaganda outfit.

    "The lie of evolution is not that the species originated via natural law. As scientifically unlikely as that appears to us today..."

    As opposed to originated via supernatural law? Can you be a bit more specific? And who are these "us" you speak of?

    You've become nothing but a polite version of Joe G.

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  12. olegt:
    Joe, you paste Einstein's quote all over the place, but I doubt that you have ever read it in context.

    I read the entire article that I took it from.

    olegt:
    It is crystal clear that he had a low opinion of an anthropomorphic God.

    Yeah I know- he didn't accpt a personal "God".

    olegt:
    God as a designer is exactly that.

    Unsupported rubbish...

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  13. thorton
    alternate explanations aren't given any credence unless they're supported with positive evidence.

    Yet your position doesn't have any positive evidence.

    Go figure...

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  14. thorton the child molestor:
    That's why the Biblical Creationism that you push isn't in science classrooms - no evidence.

    Strange that biblical Creationism has more positive evidnce for it than your position does.

    It correctly predicted the universe had a beginning and also corretly predicted reproductive isolation.

    Not only that every experiment ever conducted supports baraminology!

    Go figure...

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  15. troy:
    At best, evolution is the only plausible known explanation of the fossil record.

    Equivocation is the best explanation?

    LoL!

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  16. Rubbish, Joe, is what populates your head.

    ID is nothing but a silly attempt to anthropomorphize God. ID theorists point to watchmakers or programmers and declare that God acted more or less in the same way to design living organisms. That's ID in a nutshell.

    Einstein is not alone in criticizing this silliness. The Vatican des not like ID for the same reason. ID is not only bad science, it's bad religion as well.

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  17. oleg:
    Rubbish, Joe, is what populates your head.

    Nice projection.

    oleg:
    ID is nothing but a silly attempt to anthropomorphize God.

    Liar.

    However we know the theory of evolution is a silly way to get atheism into public schools.

    oleg:
    ID theorists point to watchmakers or programmers and declare that God acted more or less in the same way to design living organisms. That's ID in a nutshell.

    Your brain could fit in a small nutshell.

    nd that is why you have to lie about ID and cannot produce any positive evidence for your position.

    oleg:
    ID is not only bad science, it's bad religion as well.

    ID doesn't have anything to do with religion.

    IOW all you can do is make shit up as if that helps support your lame position.

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  18. In other words, religion is compatible with modern evolutionary biology (and indeed all of modern science) if the religion is effectively indistinguishable from atheism.1



    The frequently made assertion that modern biology and the assumptions of the Judaeo-Christian tradition are fully compatible is false.2



    Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.

    Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.3



    As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.4


    ‘Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.’ 5


    Thank you for your honesty Will Provine.



    1- Academe January 1987 pp.51-52 †

    2-Evolutionary Progress (1988) p. 65 †

    3- “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life” 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address 1 2 †

    4- No Free Will (1999) p.123

    5- Provine, W.B., Origins Research 16(1), p.9, 1994.

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  19. Joe G:

    "Not only that every experiment ever conducted supports baraminology!"

    Wow, who knew? Joe must have read the entire scientific literature. Please point us to the experiments that show Adam and Eve were the first humans.

    Or could it be that Joe is lying again?

    Bwahaha!

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  20. JoeG Harrumphs,

    However we know the theory of evolution is a silly way to get atheism into public schools
    ...and universities, research institutions, NSF, NIH, the Nobel committees, the national academies across the world, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and so on...

    So get used to it. When we are done guffawing at you, you can take the next plane to DC and present your hilarity before the National Academies, and then take the plane to Sweden for the Nobel awards ceremony. There will be many scientists gathered there. They need some laughs after the serious work of the day!

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  21. I have to say, having the obscenity spewing Joe G accidentally come out of the closet and expose his YEC stance was my laugh of the week!

    Adam and Eve were the original humans!

    Every experiment supports baraminology!

    Dinosaurs lived with people!

    Joe G, Biblical literalist.

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  22. While not proclaiming that science must be free of religion, evolutionists make a wide spectrum of religious claims that mandate their theory.

    Cornelius, did you mean to say "while proclaiming" rather than "while not proclaiming"?

    With respect to your thesis, I would suggest that all of these so-called religious/metaphysical statements that you cite are really directed at creationists because the battle here is not between evolutionary theory and "all other explanations", it's between evolutionary theory and the claims of special creation. So, when Johnson and Losos state that you wouldn't expect an orderly sequence if evolution were not correct, what they are really saying is that you wouldn't expect such orderly change if the claims of creationists were true (specifically, that God created all creatures essentially at a single point in time).

    Given the frequency and the energy of the attacks on evolution from creationists, I would say that such arguments are not only not surprising but should be expected.

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  23. Joe G said...


    As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.4

    ==========================

    I consider it a form of brain washing. Richard Dawkins himself has claimed he's on a mission to evangelise everyone and turn them into Atheists.

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  24. Joe, your go-to phrase is "you cannot produce any positive evidence for your position."

    This is of course nonsense. There is a massive wealth (mountains!) of consilient research supporting evolution.

    But when you are confronted with this you claim 'common design' also explains this, even for cases such as ERV / LGT which are clearly random and undirected.

    Your 'design' ends up looking exactly like evolution, but without any creation mechanism or designer.

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  25. One of my friend's kids is currently taking biology in a very liberal college. He learned that the previous textbook was removed due to complaints from students about it being openly negative against religion. The new textbook just teaches evolution is an indisputable fact while still teaching about such things as Haeckel's distorted drawings.

    As far as the fossil record, it shows quite a list of fossilized animals from every known group and plants which shows a trend of discontinuity rather than stage by stage process of progressions.

    This prompted the likes of Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge in 1972 to propose their famous reformulation of evolution called "punctuated equilibrium," which held that creatures mostly exist in equilibrium, experiencing no changes in their body forms for eons.

    So the fossil record considered to be one of the most strongest arguments for evolution is nothing more than a weak argument for what they want to see rather than whats really there.

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  26. troy:
    At best, evolution is the only plausible known explanation of the fossil record.

    It all depends on what the definition of "plausible" is.

    I find that the claim that a process, which at its core is random, is quite implausible as an explanation for the information processing systems (among other things) that we find in living things.

    Furthermore, living systems that appear to require top-down design, are claimed to have been built by bottom-up processes.

    As an illustration of what I mean, consider a software program that performs function "A" and you wish to change it to a program that performs a significantly different function "B". You, as a programmer, are required to change that program one byte (or worse, one bit) at a time, such that each change provides a functional program. (This ignores the question of whether each change would result in a useful program.) Even you, as an intelligent programmer, would have an extemely difficult task. Yet, we expect nature to accomplish something similar to this by unintelligent processes.

    Lest you accuse me of making an argument from incredulity, I submit that I am not. I am not concluding anything yet. I am only expressing my strong skepticism. We can point to nothing in our experience that would suggest that the theory of evolution is plausible.

    Maybe its the only plausible theory within the confines of methodological naturalism, but if science is about making truth statements about the natural world, is it possible that our philosophical restrictions on science would shield us from the truth?

    Is so, how would we know this?

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  27. Rich Huges:
    Your 'design' ends up looking exactly like evolution...

    So if the evidence cannot distinguish between design and evolution, where does that leave us?

    I say it leaves us without an adequate explanation for the history of life.

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  28. Joe G replied to Thorton:

    Please cite the specific passage in which J&L say ONLY evolution can explain the fossil record.

    Well if something else can explain it then it can't be used as evidence for the ToE.


    It can't be used as a reason to prefer the ToE over theory X that explains the data as well. It can be used as a reason to prefer either ToE or theory X over any account (e.g. any account, whether "supernatural" or "naturalistic," that posits separate origins for separate "kinds") that can't explain the data as well. And here, of course, is the kicker, and the reason Thorton and Pedant have complained about Hunter inserting "only" into his paraphrase of Johnson and Losos: we don't have theory X yet, and have no reason to suppose we ever will. Until such day as we do, the evidence as it stands is a reason to accept common descent.

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  29. Eocene replied to me:

    "What you're calling a metaphysical prejudice is in fact an epistemological preference:"

    Exactly, it always boils down to a "What Is Truth?" arguementation. If what has worked for centuries is not broken, then why fix it ???


    Strictly speaking, epistemological questions are not directly about "what is truth," but about "how do we decide what is true?"

    Beyond that, I could agree with your reply: assuming that evidence is a reason to accept an idea and lack of evidence a reason to reject it has indeed worked reasonably well for centuries. But I suspect that's not quite what you meant.

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  30. Joe G replied, uncivilly, to Thorton:

    Strange that biblical Creationism has more positive evidnce for it than your position does.

    It correctly predicted the universe had a beginning and also corretly predicted reproductive isolation.


    Two points: first, biblical creationism originally led people (and still leads many of them) to conclude that the origin of the universe must be scant thousands, not billions, of years ago. Quite a few creation myths imply a single origin to the cosmos and life.

    Second, we don't know, yet, that the universe had a unique origin. Reading through Turok and Steinhardt's Endless Universe, in which they argue for a new cyclic model of the universe (big bang followed by big crunch followed by a new big bang), I was struck by the resemblance between their theory (which seems compatible with current data) and Hindu cosmology and its own dying and reborn universes.

    Reproductive isolation exists on one end of a continuum. There are subspecies (geographical races) of European mice (Mus musculus) with different numbers of chromosomes and lower fertility between subspecies than within them. There are recognized separate species (e.g. lions and tigers, or horses and donkeys) which can produce hybrids that are usually sterile but on rare occasions are fertile with one of the parent species. And fruit flies in the lab have evolved the inability to interbreed with their parent species (the transition from Drosophilia melanogaster to D. paulistorum); this has also been observed in plants in cases of polyploidy.

    The actual pattern of reproductive isolation is more compatible with evolution than with biblical creation -- or at least, biblical creation explains it only by borrowing parts from evolutionary theory.

    Not only that every experiment ever conducted supports baraminology!

    I don't think that is true of, e.g. experiments that showed identically-disabled GULO pseudogenes in humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and macacques, arranged in the same nested hierarchy as other biochemical and anatomical differences. Besides, if a key prediction of baraminology is that "kinds" have separate origins and clear differences from one another, doesn't it count against baraminology that different baraminologists can't decide whether, e.g. dogs are the same "kind" as bears, or not?

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  31. Doubledee said:

    "So if the evidence cannot distinguish between design and evolution, where does that leave us?"

    Unfortunately, Doubledee, it is Joe who can't distinguish (due to a priori religious commitments), not the evidence. People *use* evidence to distinguish.

    But here's the thing. Remember when you were a kid and you'd imagine things with your friends ("Well I have a diamond force field so your rockets can't get me!") - religion is like that. Your God is only limited by your imagination. Perhaps because he resides there?

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  32. A few thoughts:

    - The Rescuing Darwin survey, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of ­Species, found that half of the British people don't believe in evolution.

    - Gallop polls put about 13% of the population of Americans who believe in Naturalistic evolution.

    The old saying holds true here.... You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time. 150 years of propaganda and the public still knows how to call a spade when it sees it.

    - The Cambrian explosion was a paradox for Darwin and 150 years later it still is for all honest seekers for truth. It is nonsense and pure hype to believe that evolutionary theory explains the Cambrian explosion.

    - First life in the fossil record was staggerly complex compared to any human device ever invented. Evolutionists do not have an explanation for first life. Yes, I know, they are still working on the details... The guys who are working on a time machine have more going for them.

    On a practical basis there are 30 million species that are well adapted to their environment on planet earth. We can learn from them. Biomimicry is a growing field. Some of the things that have already been done by imitating nature are absolutely cool. Biomimicry is being used in chemistry, space exploration, medicine, robotics, physics, and engineering in many fields. It has the potential to radically change and improve the lives of millions.

    Imitation is the best form of flattery.

    Every invention based on biomimicry research is a slap in the face to all the nonsense from evolutionists about how junky and inferior and inefficient life is.

    Perhaps if evolutionists would stop saying "God wouldn't have done it that way, and zip their lips long enough to look, listen and learn from nature's awesome designs we would all be further ahead. I propose that the federal government take all the taxpayer funding for evolutionary research and switch it to biomimicry research.

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  33. Neal - care to extend your 'argument' to subscription to these beliefs?:

    http://therationalfool.blogspot.com/2010/08/top-ten-weird-american-beliefs.html

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  34. Norm:

    ===
    Cornelius, did you mean to say "while proclaiming" rather than "while not proclaiming"?
    ===

    Thx, that was confusing. Fixed.

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  35. Folks:

    ====
    Pedant: "Where did the authors say "only"? (I count five "only"s in your post, all of them written by you.) "

    Thorton: "Please cite the specific passage in which J&L say ONLY evolution can explain the fossil record."
    ====

    The degree to which evolutionists obfuscate is amazing. What is it about:

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected. "

    that you don't understand?

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  36. Doublee said...

    I find that the claim that a process, which at its core is random, is quite implausible as an explanation for the information processing systems (among other things) that we find in living things.


    Sigh...No Doublee, the process is not random. It's a feedback process with a random component filter by selection which is not random. Just like draw poker, remember? How many times do you need to have that explained to you?

    Furthermore, living systems that appear to require top-down design, are claimed to have been built by bottom-up processes.

    They only appear that way to people who haven't studies the details. Biologists and geneticists who have studied the details see plainly the bottom-up, kluged together from whatever's handy nature of biological systems.

    As an illustration of what I mean, consider a software program that performs function "A" and you wish to change it to a program that performs a significantly different function "B". You, as a programmer, are required to change that program one byte (or worse, one bit) at a time, such that each change provides a functional program. (This ignores the question of whether each change would result in a useful program.) Even you, as an intelligent programmer, would have an extemely difficult task. Yet, we expect nature to accomplish something similar to this by unintelligent processes.

    Evolution does not work like human designed software. Faulty analogy = faulty conclusion.

    Lest you accuse me of making an argument from incredulity, I submit that I am not.

    You've done nothing but argue from personal incredulity.

    We can point to nothing in our experience that would suggest that the theory of evolution is plausible.

    Except the 150+ years of positive evidence from hundreds of different scientific disciplines that shows it is not only plausible but highly probable.

    Maybe its the only plausible theory within the confines of methodological naturalism, but if science is about making truth statements about the natural world, is it possible that our philosophical restrictions on science would shield us from the truth?

    If you posit "truth" = supernatural intervention then science can't help you. Science only deals with naturalistic phenomena.

    Is so, how would we know this?

    We can never know for sure that a supernatural pixie didn't poof everything into existence looking like it evolved. All we can say for sure is that the evidence shows a supernatural poofing is not necessary to explain the observed data.

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  37. Cornelius Hunter said...

    The degree to which evolutionists obfuscate is amazing. What is it about:

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected. "

    that you don't understand?


    I don't understand where you see the word ONLY. Please point it out to us.

    'Not expected' is not the equivalent of 'not possible'. What is it about simple logic that you don't understand?

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  38. Here, I'll simplify this for you CH

    The statement

    "If it is not raining, then a wet street is not possible"

    is logically equivalent to

    "a wet street can be caused by rain only."

    HOWEVER

    The statement

    "If it is not raining, then a wet street is not expected"

    does not preclude other unexpected but still plausible causes for a wet street - a street cleaning truck, the neighbor's garden hose, etc.

    So the second statement is NOT logically equivalent to

    "a wet street can be caused by rain only."

    Do you see where your mistake is now?

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  39. Hunter:

    The degree to which evolutionists obfuscate is amazing. What is it about:

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected.”

    that you don't understand?


    Getting snarky, are we? As Thorton has analyzed so clearly, your zeal to impeach evolutionary thought is leading you to rhetorical extremes. I thought I had gone out in a limb when I thought you were putting words in the mouths of the textbook authors (not having a copy of their book), and it turns out that you were!

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  40. THorton and Pedant,
    it doesn't matter that Hunter's obvious mistake has been pointed out to him. He will not respond and will move on to the next post, then repeat the same error later or refer people to this post, as if it were not in error, when they ask a question. Gish gallop all over again.. or, he could surprise us all..

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  41. ..of course, his actually admitting a serious mistake is not "expected."

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  42. nanobot74:

    I think that it's not a mistake, it's a program.

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  43. Thorton:
    Sigh...No Doublee, the process is not random. It's a feedback process with a random component filter by selection which is not random.

    Sigh... Thornton, how many times do we have to go through this because you misread what I said?

    I said that at its core, evolution is a random process. Is that not correct? The first thing that has to happen -- the core event if you will -- is the random genetic change.

    The fact that I leave out the natural selection part -- even though I know that it is part of the theory -- really bugs you. I still don't understand why.

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  44. Doublee:

    "I said that at its core, evolution is a random process. Is that not correct? The first thing that has to happen -- the core event if you will -- is the random genetic change."

    No, that is not correct. Indeed, you could hardly be more wrong. You should study some mathematical models of evolution. They have the general form

    change = systematic part (selection) + random part (mutation etc)

    If you leave out the systematic part of the equations you get entirely different dynamics. Specifically, adaptation to the environment is a very unlikely outcome.

    Are you with me so far?

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  45. Doublee said...

    Thorton:
    Sigh...No Doublee, the process is not random. It's a feedback process with a random component filter by selection which is not random.

    Sigh... Thornton, how many times do we have to go through this because you misread what I said?

    I said that at its core, evolution is a random process. Is that not correct? The first thing that has to happen -- the core event if you will -- is the random genetic change.


    No. it's not correct. Random mutations are only part of the core, and selection is the other core part. As Troy already explained, you can't just leave out a major component on you whim and expect the same results.

    The fact that I leave out the natural selection part -- even though I know that it is part of the theory -- really bugs you. I still don't understand why.

    It's irritating because I and others have been spending energy for some time now patiently explaining this stuff to you and politely correcting your misunderstandings, and you haven't been paying the slightest bit of attention. Seems like all that info has gone in your one ear and out the other.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Doublee said :"I said that at its core, evolution is a random process. Is that not correct? The first thing that has to happen -- the core event if you will -- is the random genetic change."

    Not to rehash what Troy and Thorton said, but that could not be more incorrect. That's like saying "At its core, a football game is a random process; the first thing that has to happen -- the core event if you will -- is the random flipping of a coin in order to decide who gets the ball."

    "The fact that I leave out the natural selection part -- even though I know that it is part of the theory -- really bugs you. I still don't understand why."

    That's like leaving Bernoulli's Principle out of your explanation as to why heavier-than-air flight is impossible, and not understanding why that would bug an aeronautical engineer.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Good post again.
    It appears to me anyway that your writing out of your reasoning on this is becoming clearer and clearer CH.

    One evolutionists position was stated thus, "The history of organic life is undemonstrable; we cannot prove a whole lot in evolutionary biology, and our findings will always be hypothesis. There is one true evolutionary history of life, and whether we will actually ever know it is not likely. Most importantly, we have to think about questioning underlying assumptions, whether we are dealing with molecules or anything else." Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, February 9, 2007

    Well whadya know! An evolutionary scientist with some honesty!

    ReplyDelete
  48. "If it is not raining, then a wet street is not expected"

    Because we all know that as rainfall produces wet streets, so evolution produces order. Of course if someone decided one day to question whether or not most wet streets are caused by rainfall, his first piece of evidence might not be, "If the theory of [rainfall] is not correct, on the other hand, then such a [wet street] is not expected.”

    That would be question begging.

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected.”

    I don't see how this is not a claim that only evolution is expected to produce orderly change.

    It says if not evolution, then (whatever) = not expected change.

    It's a very simple statement really and it shows the underlying assumption of the author who believes no other mechanism can produce said order. Isn't that an argument from incredulity?

    ReplyDelete
  49. Neal Tedford offered a few thoughts:

    - The Rescuing Darwin survey, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of ­Species, found that half of the British people don't believe in evolution.

    - Gallop polls put about 13% of the population of Americans who believe in Naturalistic evolution.

    The old saying holds true here.... You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time. 150 years of propaganda and the public still knows how to call a spade when it sees it.


    Acceptance of the theory is very strongly correlated with understanding of the theory and familiarity with the evidence: physicians are more likely to accept evolution than the general public, scientists more likely than physicians, and biologists more likely than other scientists. You seem to assume that ignorance is the best security against being fooled.

    - The Cambrian explosion was a paradox for Darwin and 150 years later it still is for all honest seekers for truth. It is nonsense and pure hype to believe that evolutionary theory explains the Cambrian explosion.

    You are aware, are you not, that life does not first appear in the Cambrian explosion? There is evidence of animal life -- fossil trackways of something with multiple legs, borrows, fossils of jellyfish and sponges and the enigmatic "Ediacaran fauna," as well as bilaterians that are hard to interpret but might well be ancestral to later phyla such as arthropods. There are fossils of single-celled eukaryotes (cells with nuclei) going back a billion and a half years, and bacterial fossils two billion years older than that.

    - First life in the fossil record was staggerly complex compared to any human device ever invented. Evolutionists do not have an explanation for first life. Yes, I know, they are still working on the details... The guys who are working on a time machine have more going for them.

    Presumably those bacteria were staggeringly complex, but they were, as you say, still bacteria. It took a long, long time for even cells with nuclei and organelles to appear, and another long, long time for multicellular life to appear. Your hypothetical designer doesn't seem to move faster than one would expect evolution to.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Thorton:


    ======
    "If it is not raining, then a wet street is not possible"

    is logically equivalent to

    "a wet street can be caused by rain only."

    HOWEVER

    The statement

    "If it is not raining, then a wet street is not expected"

    does not preclude other unexpected but still plausible causes for a wet street - a street cleaning truck, the neighbor's garden hose, etc.
    ======

    No, you are missing the point. In this context, the word "expected" is like the word "predicted." Of course they did not say it is not "possible." They said it is not "expected" if evolution is not true. I've changed the text in the blog to accommodate your concern, but it doesn't change the point, which is: By what scientific experiment can I learn that such orderliness in the fossil record is not expected if evolution is not true?

    Answer: there is none. This is a typical non scientific evolutionary claim. If evolutionists were concerned about science they would be all over this kind of thing. Instead, they defend it.

    ReplyDelete
  51. StevenJ:

    Strictly speaking, epistemological questions are not directly about "what is truth," but about "how do we decide what is true?"
    ====

    Ultimately, yes they are. That's what Cornelius' blog is about and that is what even your blog is about. It's debating the subject of what real knowledge is and in so doing two major componants come into play with the first being "BELIEF"(which colours things for both sides) and the second being "TRUTH"(the actual facts of a matter). It's been illustrated by many using the coin toss example to explain what happens between belief & truth.

    Both sides are guilty of this. When evidence is viewed as a sort of flipping a coin and "Heads"(belief) pops up (facts that appear to support that warm and fuzzy belief) it's automatically accepted without question. But if "Tails"(Truth) pops up (facts that that clearly DO NOT support belief, in many cases disproving it) then it's not only rejected, but demonized and visciously argued against passionately.

    At this point a third componant to the so-called theory of knowledge comes into play. This is where imagination, fabrication, manufacturing or story telling to fill in gaps where FACTS to support belief are clearly non-existant and are needed to keep belief alive. This is where everyone is missing the point of Cornelius' posts. I don't doubt he has a twinge of personal bias (he's admitted he is Christian), but for the most part he tries to be neutral and explain/expose where the modern scientific community injects it's own version of religious dogma (metaphysics) and Politics into it's explanation of the research and clearly that is wrong where the facts DO NOT support their conclusions. The science of either side is clearly NOT neutral.

    For a change it would be interesting if Cornelius could provide an example of where Creationists do the very same things.
    ====

    StevenJ:

    "Beyond that, I could agree with your reply: assuming that evidence is a reason to accept an idea and lack of evidence a reason to reject it has indeed worked reasonably well for centuries. But I suspect that's not quite what you meant."
    =====

    The point of the expression "What Is Truth?" arguementation is that it's a lazy way of not wanting to find out the truth of a matter when when the facts clearly do not support the belief, therefore an individual attempts to fuzzy, muddle and cloud any of the facts by using rediculous eastern religious concepts of attaining any ultimate knowledge is really an illusion (Maya) or even resorting to stupid wasteful definition shell games where common sense should be the rule. It excuses one from any sort of accountability for accepting the truthful conclusion. Out of site out of mind, therefore the other's position doesn't really exist.

    Again, both sides are guilty, with neither being willing to admit it.

    ReplyDelete
  52. Hunter:

    By what scientific experiment can I learn that such orderliness in the fossil record is not expected if evolution is not true?

    It helps to get rid of the double negatives. Then the question becomes: How can I learn that orderliness in the fossil record is expected if evolution is true? By examining the fossil record. Evidence is evidence, whether obtained by laboratory experiment or observation. The discovery of Tiktaalik was the result of a scientific experiment in paleontology.

    This is a typical non scientific evolutionary claim. If evolutionists were concerned about science they would be all over this kind of thing. Instead, they defend it.

    Scientists defend science. How quaint.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Pedant snnarked:

    "Scientists defend science. How quaint."
    =====

    No, more like, Evolutionists defending evolution. How predictable.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Eocene, you realize all this "X word-gamed" and "Y snarked" nonsense is not only annoying and not at all clever, but is also pretty much universally considered diagnostic of bad (and usually really bad) writing, right (barring its use for parody purposes)? To wit, TVTropes:

    http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaidBookism

    Not that I think it'll help the quality of your arguments much if you stop doing it, but I just thought you might like to know. Carry on.

    ReplyDelete
  55. There STILL isn't any evidence that an accumulation of genetic accidents- ie blind, undirected chemical processes- can construct a functioning multi-part system.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Andf I see evolutionists are still clinging to natural selection- a result- and thinking it is some kind of magical ratchet.

    Note to evos- natural selection doesn't help you:

    All too often evolutionists say that natural selection is non-random.

    But is it?

    Well let's look at what natural selction is-


    “Natural selection is the result of differences in survival and reproduction among individuals of a population that vary in one or more heritable traits.” Page 11 “Biology: Concepts and Applications” Starr fifth edition


    “Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity—it is mindless and mechanistic.” UBerkley


    “Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view.” Dawkins in “The Blind Watchmaker”?


    “Natural selection is therefore a result of three processes, as first described by Darwin:

    Variation

    Inheritance

    Fecundity

    which together result in non-random, unequal survival and reproduction of individuals, which results in changes in the phenotypes present in populations of organisms over time.”- Allen McNeill prof. introductory biology and evolution at Cornell University


    OK so it is a result of three processes- ie an output.

    What drives the output? The inputs.

    The variation is said to be random, ie genetic accidents/ mistakes.

    With sexually reproducing organisms it is still a crap-shoot as to what gets inherited. For example if a male gets a beneficial variation to his Y chromosome but sires all daughters, that beneficial variation gets lost no matter how many offspring he has.

    Fecundity/ differential reproduction- Don't know until it happens.

    Can't tell what variation will occur. Can't tell if any of the offspring will inherit even the most beneficial variation and the only way to determine differential reproduction is follow the individuals for their entire reproducing age.

    Then there can be competing "beneficial" variations.

    In the end it all boils down to whatever survives to reproduce, survives to reproduce.

    Evolutionists love to pretend that natural selection is some magical ratchet. But when one pulls back the curtain all you have is some dude with a twinkie in each hand and a big fatty standing by.

    That's evolution for ya...

    Next they will be telling us that all the books in the world are descended by modification from the last universal common document.

    Ya see slight copying errors were introduced to the first document, an illiterate population didn't know, so those bad copies were allowed to stay in the population.

    Then those bad copies were copied and more errors introduced- and here we are.

    It was all one author and many copying errors...


    The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics (University of Chicago Press, 1971), reissued in 2001 by William Provine:


    (pp. 199-200)

    Thanks for your honesty Will.

    ReplyDelete
  57. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Joe, your go-to phrase is "you cannot produce any positive evidence for your position."

    Rich:
    This is of course nonsense. There is a massive wealth (mountains!) of consilient research supporting evolution.

    LoL!

    What a jerk- equivocation isn't going to get you anywhere Rich.

    ID is NOT anti-evolution.

    IOW evidence supporting evolution is not evidence for blind, undirected chemical processes.

    Rich:
    But when you are confronted with this you claim 'common design' also explains this, even for cases such as ERV / LGT which are clearly random and undirected.

    Not true.

    And the alleged ERVs may never have been real viruses in the first place!

    ReplyDelete
  59. Richtard with the lie:
    Unfortunately, Doubledee, it is Joe who can't distinguish (due to a priori religious commitments), not the evidence.

    I don't have any religious commitments assface.

    Now what?

    And obviously it is you who can't distinguish as you refuse to provide a testable hypothesis for your position.

    OTOH IDists have provided a methodology to help us distinguish

    ReplyDelete
  60. Not only that every experiment ever conducted supports baraminology!

    Stecven J:
    I don't think that is true of, e.g. experiments that showed identically-disabled GULO pseudogenes in humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and macacques, arranged in the same nested hierarchy as other biochemical and anatomical differences.

    Well one thing is for sure no one but an evotard would think the same mistake would hang around over thousands of generations all the while other changes are occurring.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Answer: there is none. This is a typical non scientific evolutionary claim. If evolutionists were concerned about science they would be all over this kind of thing. Instead, they defend it.

    But you are right on one thing. Evolutionists - that is folks who think evolution is not science but ideology - that is people such as the leading lights of ID-Creationism at the DI or other "research institutions" - would rather churn out reams of paper than do any science. Because we know that this isn't about science. That train left the station >150 years ago.

    JoeG all the evidence we have so far points out undirected processes bounded by certain generally unvarying conditions - what we call laws - leading to us to where we are right now. Of course these processes are neither blind nor endowed with sight - that is a property of certain members of animalia. There is no ghost in the machine. You know as well as I do that there isn't any evidence for the great puppeteer. Because if you had it, we would be arguing over it. Since there isn't any ID-Creo aoids the issue, that is why ID-Creo always talks about design in the passive. That's the only difference between Traditional Creo (of the Creationist Museum variety) and Disc.Inst. Creo.

    Someone did it = It was designed.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Cornelius,
    "No, you are missing the point. In this context, the word "expected" is like the word "predicted."... By what scientific experiment can I learn that such orderliness in the fossil record is not expected if evolution is not true?"

    THe prediction of orderliness in the fossil record is a prediction from evolutionary theory all the way back to Darwin. THis is how science works. Make a hypothesis, make predictions from that hypothesis, test if the predictions are true. It feels strange explaining this to someone with a science Ph.D., but oh well.

    and btw, although you claim to have changed the text, it still repeats your mistaken claim that the authors make an if-and-only-if statement. are you going to fix that anytime soon?

    ReplyDelete
  63. jbeck:
    JoeG all the evidence we have so far points out undirected processes bounded by certain generally unvarying conditionswhat we call laws - leading to us to where we are right now.

    Please put that in a testable hypothesis.

    Ya see I can easily say there isn't any such evidence that we are the result of some accumulation of accidents.

    jbeck:
    Of course these processes are neither blind nor endowed with sight - that is a property of certain members of animalia.

    Then you need to talk to the experts that say otherwise- you do realize that "blind" has more than one meaning.

    jbeck:
    You know as well as I do that there isn't any evidence for the great puppeteer.

    Neither ID nor Creation posit a puppeteer.

    IOW your strawman is meaningless.

    However the greateest scientists that ever graced this planet said there is evidence for a designer.

    Newton wrote about in in Principia.

    But anyway myself and other IDists have provided testable hypiotheses for our claims along with positive evidence.


    I eagerly await for your testable hypothesis...

    ReplyDelete
  64. nanobot74:
    THe prediction of orderliness in the fossil record is a prediction from evolutionary theory all the way back to Darwin.

    Umm Darwin said the fossils did not support him but somewhere down the road (in time) they would.

    ReplyDelete
  65. didymos assumed:

    "Eocene, you realize all this "X word-gamed" and "Y snarked" nonsense is not only annoying and not at all clever, but is also pretty much universally considered diagnostic of bad (and usually really bad) writing, right (barring its use for parody purposes)?"
    =====

    Interesting, so the usual DOUBLE STANDARD is alive and well and kicking ??? Maybe you should call it both ways, Mr Hometown Referee ??? Why don't you point out what you consider annoying and bad writing to some of your compadres here such as "pendant" who champions living up to his username. Here, let's use the Atheist household approved "URBAN DICTIONARY" to define exactly what the meaning of that diliberately chosen word/term actually means:

    pedant:

    1) a dogmatic ergo annoying person

    3) one who acts in the role as teacher/lecturer, often without invitation. Usually considered pejorative.

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pedant

    ------


    BTW, Monte Python's "Arguement Clinic" is a much better illustration of the tact employed by your gang in these threads.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM

    ReplyDelete
  66. Excellent article on the functions of the recurrent laryngeal nerve that Dawkins and evolutionists are fond of bashing as an inefficient relic of evolution...

    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/the_recurrent_laryngeal_nerve_039201.html#more


    Looks like another example of evolutionists PREDICTING inefficiency based on evolution without first exhausting all research to find function. Turns out it is yet another example of them jumping the gun and using their poor prediction and observation as a club to say "God would not have done it that way".

    They are like high school freshmen in art class trying to tell Michelangelo how he should have painted.

    How do these people get away with 150 years of this nonsense?

    ReplyDelete
  67. Well only 13% of Americans fully believe it anyways. About the same approval rating of the current US Congress.

    ReplyDelete
  68. JoeG said: "Well one thing is for sure no one but an evotard would think the same mistake would hang around over thousands of generations all the while other changes are occurring."

    I'm not sure what you're claiming here Joe. Are you saying that the you don't believe nonfunctional genes exist? That you don't believe that mutations/mistakes hang around for generations? It seems to me that everyone who has at least a rudimentary understanding of genetics concedes that mutations do, in fact, stick around for a while, especially if there is no selective pressure to get rid of them.

    It seems that the presence and persistence of mutations isn't even the slightest bit controversial to anyone with even the slightest sliver of knowledge about genetics. (which is perhaps why I'm not surprised why it is news to you)

    To rectify your statement:

    Only someone who was even the least bit informed about genetics would think that the same mistake would hang around over thousands of generations, all the while other changes occurring."

    Why wouldn't a mutated gene stick around? Apparently, you either believe that pseudogenes don't exist, or, you're aware of some previously unknown mechanism that immediately removes noncoding DNA from the genome. Which one of those two is it? If the second one, you've probably got a Nobel Prize waiting on you.

    ReplyDelete
  69. Joe: "ID is NOT anti-evolution."

    ID is purely anti-evolution, as evidenced by the lack of origional search or a testable theory.

    ReplyDelete
  70. didymos sneared and smirked:

    "Not that I think it'll help the quality of your arguments much if you stop doing it, but I just thought you might like to know. Carry on."
    =======

    Yeah, sure you did Tommy. Sure you did.

    I noticed however that you have ZERO intelligent imput on the OP's subject at hand, other than the usual cold and calculated deflection ploy to derail the subject where real world rational and logical answers are sadly lacking. I doubt you or any other self promoting genius here even bothered to read Cornelius' link to his other blog article to actually understand the point he was driving at. Proof of this was the predictable word/term definition shell games that glaringly and undeniably came true and reared their ugly heads as provided from the stupid shell gamed examples presented here above.

    "ONLY" - "EXPECTED" - "PREDICTED"

    Taking the word "ONLY" from the link he gave in the text which is listed as "if and only if",

    http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/02/reverend-jerry-coyne-lanugo-and.html

    Take a look at some of those "ONLY" example comments he was referencing to for his point. Yes definition word/term shell games were all over the map on that one and you all completely(conveniently) missed it.
    -----

    ReplyDelete
  71. Joe: "And the alleged ERVs may never have been real viruses in the first place! "

    You can put the bits back together to make a working Retrovirus. You've been told this before.

    ReplyDelete
  72. Joe,

    Do you have wax in your ears?

    No empirical observations provide positive support for any theory. At best, they fail to falsify a theory. Should more than one theory make the same predictions, then neither theory is falsified.

    Any crank can create a testable theory with predictions that match existing observations. This is why the explanation behind each theory is so important.

    For example, it's logical possible that an army of demons are consistently pushing and pulling on objects according to their mass, which explains the motions of the planets, why things fall down when you drop them, etc. However, we reject such a theory because no explanation is provided as why an army of demons would all agree to push and pull on objects, why they would do so consistently and why the results just so happen to match the mathematical formulas in competing theories.

    At best, one might say "That's just what the demons must have wanted.", which is essentially a non-explanation.

    So, again, this appears to be either ignorance on your part regarding how science works as a whole, or disingenuous hand waving.

    ReplyDelete
  73. Gary said...


    Most importantly, we have to think about questioning underlying assumptions, whether we are dealing with molecules or anything else." Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, February 9, 2007

    Well whadya know! An evolutionary scientist with some honesty

    ==========================

    An extremely rare occurrence.

    ReplyDelete
  74. Rich:
    You can put the bits back together to make a working Retrovirus.

    They can do that with artificial sequences Rich.

    You have been told that before.

    And BTW the following has many papers that put a damper on your premise:

    Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVS)A Case for Common Descent or A Case for Incorrect Presupposition?

    Prediction Rich will not deal with any of the papers he will only scoff at the website.

    ReplyDelete
  75. Neal said: "Well only 13% of Americans fully believe it anyways."

    Yes, but that 13% also happens to be the 13% most highly educated and informed about it. What's your point.

    What if only 13% of Europeans in the 18th century accepted heliocentricity, but that 13% percent just happened to be made up of the most skilled astronomers of the day?

    ReplyDelete
  76. Nanobot74:

    "THe prediction of orderliness in the fossil record is a prediction from evolutionary theory all the way back to Darwin. THis is how science works. Make a hypothesis, make predictions from that hypothesis, test if the predictions are true. It feels strange explaining this to someone with a science Ph.D., but oh well."
    =====

    Evolutionary Theory is about chaos, not orderliness. There is no purpose or intent behind anything involving evolution. Again, evolution denotes underlying disorder, creation denotes underlying order.

    When you look at where science today actually had it's true beginnings, it was the western world of northern and central Europe. Civilizations like the dominant pagan world empires around the mediterranian and mideast, though having remarkable technologies and advances, they eventually failed and went nowhere. This is the similiar experience with the Chinese, Inca, Maya, Aztec etc civilizations who though having amazing advances never went beyond to further progress. Why ???

    Because they had a belief system based on chaos. How scientific is it to believe that a mighty monsoonal thunderstorm is the result of two gods duking it out over a disagreement and throwing lightning bolts at each other ??? Hence they failed. Yet in the western European world, which though horribly imperfect and often hypocritical did anyway have the Bible as a foundation for believing that the natural world is based on underlying orderliness, not chaos. Things then advanced at that point because we see that is exactly how the natural world really works.

    Unfortunately the present sad state of affairs is going directly the other way towards chaos again and look at all the proof of where our natural world is headed as a result of disrespect for not only natural laws(Monsanto, etc), but the traditional moral laws which should govern and motivate in the first place. (Hence Cornelius references to actual lies being perpetuated in the name of science) Our planet is in the toilette as a result and I'll even blame not only the atheistic elements for this, but also the failed religious elements as well.

    Still, evolution = orderliness ??? Whatever happened to their own old biblical fogma of blind undirectedness ???

    ReplyDelete
  77. "ID is NOT anti-evolution."

    Rich:
    ID is purely anti-evolution,

    How are YOU defining "evolution" Rich?

    Ya see I have proven many times that ID is NOT antievolution- even citing evolutionary biologists that support the claim.



    as evidenced by the lack of origional search or a testable theory.

    ID is based on observations and experience- it is completely testable.

    And I have told YOU how to test and possibly refute it.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Derick:
    I'm not sure what you're claiming here Joe. Are you saying that the you don't believe nonfunctional genes exist? That you don't believe that mutations/mistakes hang around for generations? It seems to me that everyone who has at least a rudimentary understanding of genetics concedes that mutations do, in fact, stick around for a while, especially if there is no selective pressure to get rid of them.

    LoL! Derick who thinks being human is a trait is posting!

    Nonfunctional genes can exist.

    But there isn't any reason to think that the same mutation would stay in a non-functional gene, or that gene would remain intact enough to be used for a genetic marker.

    Especially in the presence of the lack of selection.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Scott:
    No empirical observations provide positive support for any theory.

    IOW you don't understand science.

    Scott:
    Any crank can create a testable theory with predictions that match existing observations. This is why the explanation behind each theory is so important.

    Your position's "explanation" is "it just happened".

    And why does Zachriel run around pontificating about testable hypotheses and you never question him about it?

    ReplyDelete
  80. Derick:
    Yes, but that 13% also happens to be the 13% most highly educated and informed about it. What's your point.

    And yet they can't produce any positive evidence for their position.

    All they can do is equivocate and pontificate.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Eocene said: "Interesting, so the usual DOUBLE STANDARD is alive and well and kicking ??? Maybe you should call it both ways, Mr Hometown Referee ??? Why don't you point out what you consider annoying and bad writing to some of your compadres here such as "pendant" who champions living up to his username. Here, let's use the Atheist household approved "URBAN DICTIONARY" to define exactly what the meaning of that diliberately chosen word/term actually means:"

    Uh not that this is really relevant, but pendant ≠ pedant. In English (which, apparently is not your native tongue), individual letters are important. know ≠ now, cat ≠ chat.

    And are you even sure that Pendant is a handle and not a real name?

    Plus, you didn't even make a point. Is pendant guilty of bad writing? (and how would you know.) If not, how in the world is it a 'double standard'?

    Honestly, it seems as if didymous was trying to do you a favor and point out something to you consistently do that makes you come across as not very bright. Do you get this irate when someone tells you you have spinach in your teeth?

    ReplyDelete
  82. Eocene:

    "I noticed however that you have ZERO intelligent imput on the OP's subject at hand, other than the usual cold and calculated deflection ploy to derail the subject where real world rational and logical answers are sadly lacking."

    Yes, I imagine you did notice, considering my post was pretty much completely restricted to pointing out your stylistic issues. And why was that? There was no deflection, Eocene, because I simply wasn't even interested in discussing the OP.

    And yes, I did say I don't find your arguments to be much better than your prose, but I'm not under any obligation to explain why I do not , nor do I expect or require anyone to agree with me on that. I wasn't making an argument, or making an attempt to engage in discussion. I was simply stating my opinion as a (most of the time) lurker.

    BTW, I'm also not obligated to pick on anyone else's prose, no matter which side of the debate they're on. Simple truth is, I just find yours more irksome than others'.

    ReplyDelete
  83. Joe said: "But there isn't any reason to think that the same mutation would stay in a non-functional gene, or that gene would remain intact enough to be used for a genetic marker."

    Yet, you don't bother to mention why there is no reason to think that. Care to elaborate, Joe? Is it research you've done about the longevity of pseudogenes? Experiments you've conducted on how long mutations stay in nonfunctional genes?

    There are plenty of reasons to think that it would. First and foremost, we know that DNA replicates itself This means that everything gets copied, even mutations. If there is no selective pressure against a particular mutation, there is no known reason that it would not stick around until it either does become selected against, or another random mutation removes it. But apparently, you seem to know more about genetics than everyone else in the world, so perhaps you can explain what mechanism quickly removes pseudogenes. Or perhaps you can tell us exactly how long mutations do stick around in pseudogenes? Or how long pseudogenes can remain intact?

    Like I said, it sounds like there may be a Nobel Prize in your future if what you're saying is true.

    ReplyDelete
  84. Derick:
    Yet, you don't bother to mention why there is no reason to think that.

    No selection pressure- means it is free to accumulate away.

    I will look for the paper(s) when I have time

    Derick:
    There are plenty of reasons to think that it would. First and foremost, we know that DNA replicates itself

    Nope DNA does not replicate itself- DNA gets replicated along with the other vital parts of the cell.

    Derick:
    This means that everything gets copied, even mutations. If there is no selective pressure against a particular mutation, there is no known reason that it would not stick around until it either does become selected against, or another random mutation removes it.

    EXACTLY!

    Once selection is removed mutations are free to accumulate at will.

    Derick:
    But apparently, you seem to know more about genetics than everyone else in the world, so perhaps you can explain what mechanism quickly removes pseudogenes.

    Not my claim.

    My claim is once they become pseudo they are free to accumulate mutations at will and thereby making it impossible to use as a marker.

    That said perhaps they are pseudo anything and the similarities are just due to common design.

    OR the similar genes are due to common design and a common mechanism disabled them in a similar way- we do know there are "hot spots" for mutations.

    ReplyDelete
  85. And Derick- as for Nobel Prizes when you "prove" that "human" is a heritable trait I am sure you will get one

    ReplyDelete
  86. Eocene,

    Evolution predicts order and disorder.
    Evolution predicts wonderful life and junk.
    Evolution predicts genetic similarity and dissimilarity.
    Evolution predicts both gradual and rapid change.
    Evolution predicts both direct or indirect "transitionals".

    With such bold predictive powers, is it no wonder that a whole 13% of Americans believe it?

    ReplyDelete
  87. Neal, you ever heard of argumentum ad populum? It's a fallacy, you know. With one particularly important exception: you can validly make that appeal if the majority of experts within a particular field subscribe to the idea you're trying to support.

    Oh, and BTW:

    Physics predicts order and disorder
    Physics predicts symmetries and broken symmetries
    Physics predicts gradual change and rapid change in various systems
    So on, so forth.

    Pick any science you like, Neal, and you can come up with "contradictory" lists all day. It's easy when you refuse to include any context whatsoever about when and where a given theory predicts that we'll find such things. Besides which, a lot of those "contradictory" things are observations
    which the theory accounts for. Like it's supposed to. If it couldn't, then it'd be as worthless as ID.

    ReplyDelete
  88. didymos:
    you can validly make that appeal if the majority of experts within a particular field subscribe to the idea you're trying to support.

    Not if said experts don't have the data to support their claims.

    ReplyDelete
  89. Neal,

    What we're doing is comparing explanations for the path the LRN takes.

    No once claimed that nerve may not cary other information, that the vagus nerve may not serve some other function or that it's logically impossible for a designer to have designed it that way.

    The mantra of many ID theories is that a common design was used to create all of the species we observe. This means that in, each individual case, the designer supposedly exercising forethought and intentionally choosing what parts of the design should be varied for that specific species. As such the designer could have chosen to cause the LRN pathway to branch before the aortic arch, yet still allowing for the vagus nerve to play a supporting role. After all, ID claims that functional changes between species are the result of the designer's intentional choices since nature supposedly cannot account for them.

    In other words, while making species-specific changes to the design, why didn't the designer also specifically route these signals in a different group that takes a more direct path at the same time? Furthermore, why didn't the designer exhibit foresight and route these signals differently in the first place?

    ID has no answer to this question. At best, we get, "That's just what the designer must have wanted"

    On the other hand, the ToE explains this in that this route was chosen earlier by natural selection in a common ancestor. And, since natural selection does not exhibit foresight and only selects designs that are simply good enough, the route remains despite the fact that other structural changes have caused it to travel significantly out of it's way.

    ReplyDelete
  90. Joe wrote;
    Your position's "explanation" is "it just happened".

    No, my position is made up of a chain of hard to vary explanations which explains biological complexity.

    And why does Zachriel run around pontificating about testable hypotheses and you never question him about it?

    Joe,

    Where did I say that testability is not important?

    I'm saying that testability can only falsify theories, rather than provide positive support. This does't mean that testability isn't an important part of the process.

    Please see the following TED talk by David Deutsch.

    bit.ly/2nMixt

    ReplyDelete
  91. But anyway myself and other IDists have provided testable hypiotheses for our claims along with positive evidence.

    JoeG so you do have that hypothesis about the big rabbit in the sky that brings molecules together and runs evolution? Should call call up BillD and PaulN about this interesting development.

    JoeG whines,

    Yes, but that 13% also happens to be the 13% most highly educated and informed about it. What's your point. And yet they can't produce any positive evidence for their position. All they can do is equivocate and pontificate.

    ...and advocate for science, and vote creationists out of school boards, and present expert testimony, and represent parents interested in a sound education, and do research, and publish papers, and staff the national academies, and employ grad students, and recommend tenure, and address scientific conferences, and train future Nobelists, and win Nobels, Dan Davids and so on...

    Well there are few things this 13% doesn't do
    such as hide behind a pseudonym and hammer furiously away on a keyboard and without a single publication to their credit, claim to have established some new theory.

    Well some of this 13%, when they have the time, have a good laugh...

    There are several great scientists who have said all sorts of things. As far as we are concerned all that matters is their evidence, explanation and theory. The rest is pointless. I am waiting for JoeG to start pushing alchemy because Newton did it and astrology because Kepler supplemented his income casting horoscopes.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Derick Childish:

    "Uh not that this is really relevant, but pendant ≠ pedant. In English (which, apparently is not your native tongue), individual letters are important. know ≠ now, cat ≠ chat."
    ====

    Fascinating. It never fails, when lacking for true rational logical answers, an atheist in a panic will suddenly, joyfully and gleefully discover a spelling error on which to capitalize and magnify to the miniscule speck only to insist to all the world that such an individual could not possibly know what he is talking about for no other reason than because he mis-spelled a word.

    Hey genius, did you even notice I correctly had it right in the Atheistic Household Seal of Approval Urban Dictionary definition of the word/term ??? Of course not. That would be logically thinking to far ahead.

    ReplyDelete
  93. didymos:

    "Yes, I imagine you did notice, considering my post was pretty much completely restricted to pointing out your stylistic issues. And why was that? There was no deflection, Eocene, because I simply wasn't even interested in discussing the OP."
    =====

    Understood. You had no imput of value to offer.
    -----

    didymos:

    "And yes, I did say I don't find your arguments to be much better than your prose, but I'm not under any obligation to explain why I do not , nor do I expect or require anyone to agree with me on that."
    =====

    Of course not, that's not your style. Having said that, please cut the self-righteous indignation and phony outrage. It's unbecomming of a true atheist. *eyesrolling*
    -----

    didymos:

    "BTW, I'm also not obligated to pick on anyone else's prose, no matter which side of the debate they're on. Simple truth is, I just find yours more irksome than others'."
    =====

    Which only proves you're a hypocrite. There are vast amounts of the same garbage you accuse me of here (in fact it's actually worse from your team) and yet you refuse to call them on it.

    URBAN DICTIONARY + HYPOCRITE =

    1) "(1) A person who engages in the same behaviors he condemns others for. (2) A person who professes certain ideals, but fails to live up to them. (3) A person who holds other people to higher standards than he holds himself."

    2) "someone who complains about something but finds themselves doing exactly the same thing"

    7) "Someone who says that they would never do something or never be like someone, yet turns around and does the thing that they say that they will never do."

    ReplyDelete
  94. Thought Provoker

    ""to" should have been "too"
    =====

    LOL , funny, do you know I actually thought about that, but was to lazy to change it.

    Well, why should anyone start changing the old tried and true tactics now. lol

    ReplyDelete
  95. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  96. Eocene, I apologize for calling out out on the spelling error. We all make them from time to time, including myself. Again, I am sorry.

    But my question still stands. How is it a 'double standard' to provide writing tips?

    ReplyDelete
  97. Your position's "explanation" is "it just happened".

    Scott:
    No, my position is made up of a chain of hard to vary explanations which explains biological complexity.

    hard to verify- sorry impossible to verify- explanations.

    Scott:
    I'm saying that testability can only falsify theories, rather than provide positive support.

    I say it does both.

    ReplyDelete
  98. jbeck:
    JoeG so you do have that hypothesis about the big rabbit in the sky that brings molecules together and runs evolution?

    Are you saying that because bunnies come out of your ass that proves the ToE?

    ReplyDelete
  99. Scott:
    In other words, while making species-specific changes to the design, why didn't the designer also specifically route these signals in a different group that takes a more direct path at the same time?

    Timing- as in required propagation delays.

    ReplyDelete
  100. JoeG: "And Derick- as for Nobel Prizes when you "prove" that "human" is a heritable trait I am sure you will get one"

    Joe, are you saying phenotype isn't 'heritable'?

    ReplyDelete
  101. Joe G. replied to me:

    I don't think that is true of, e.g. experiments that showed identically-disabled GULO pseudogenes in humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and macacques, arranged in the same nested hierarchy as other biochemical and anatomical differences.

    Well one thing is for sure no one but an evotard would think the same mistake would hang around over thousands of generations all the while other changes are occurring.


    You're extremely charming; the love of Christ shines through every gratuitous insult you issue.

    I think, though, you make a mistake I see very often in creationist discussions of evolution: you treat "the genome" as though it were a unique entity, not something existing in myraid variations throughout a population. A pseudogene arises through one mutation in one individual, and is inherited by some of that individual's offspring, who pass it on to some of their offspring, etc.

    Later mutations that alter that pseudogene happen each to one individual, who may or may not have offspring. These offspring may or may not inherit the new mutation, and may or may not pass it on in turn. Since variations in pseudogenes are likely to be neutral, natural selection won't favor one variation over another; each new change will have to spread through the population by random drift. While, given enough time and enough neutral mutations, some such changes will indeed spread through the population through neutral drift and become fixed (present at loci at both chromosomes in virtually 100% of the population), most will die out (by sheer chance) in a few generations or remain at very low levels. Neutral changes are not likely to accumulate very fast at any given gene or pseuodgene.

    ReplyDelete
  102. Neal Tedford said:

    Excellent
    article
    on the functions of the recurrent laryngeal nerve that Dawkins and evolutionists are fond of bashing as an inefficient relic of evolution...

    Looks like another example of evolutionists PREDICTING inefficiency based on evolution without first exhausting all research to find function. Turns out it is yet another example of them jumping the gun and using their poor prediction and observation as a club to say "God would not have done it that way".


    Not exactly. The point, again, is that common descent explains why the nerve takes this pathway; separate design, even re-using common elements, does not. Again, please note the distinction between "a Designer definitely would not do it that way" and "of all the ways the Designer might do it, He has no obvious reason to prefer this one, whereas common descent (allowing the metaphorical use of "prefer" here) does.

    Luskin, as well as the article he cites, notes that the recurrent laryngeal nerve doesn't just innervate the larynx; it has branches that go to the heart and other organs. He speculates, plausibly, that the shortened form of the nerve seen in about half a percent of individuals is slightly detrimental because the nerve connections to these other organs are impaired.

    But that just raises another question: given the immense number of nerves in the nervous system, why should organs in the chest be innervated by offshoots of a nerve whose terminus is in the neck? As David Hume noted over two centuries ago, if you had a house every feature of which seemed awkward and inconvenient, you would not be moved to praise the architect by noting that any single change would make the house worse; you'd wonder why a more sensible plan (involving multiple, not single, differences from the present design) had not been used at the very start. From an evolutionary point of view, a more sensible plan was used at the start, but it was a plan for a fish (in which the nerve takes a direct route, passing the various structures to which it sends off side branches), which was modified extensively after the pathways were set down and were no longer easy to modify without side effects more inconvenient that a circuitous nerve.

    ReplyDelete
  103. John replied to Thorton:

    "If it is not raining, then a wet street is not expected"

    Because we all know that as rainfall produces wet streets, so evolution produces order. Of course if someone decided one day to question whether or not most wet streets are caused by rainfall, his first piece of evidence might not be, "If the theory of [rainfall] is not correct, on the other hand, then such a [wet street] is not expected.”


    You need to consider the sort of order that is being considered here. The passage cited is apparently discussing the patterns of faunal succession: the fact that we find different sets of species in different layers of rock, and -- this is crucial -- that the older the rock, the less the species resemble modern species, whereas conversely, the species become more like modern species the younger the rock. That is the sort of order we'd expect to see from evolution, automatically: since living species descended from (a smaller number of) extinct species, we'd automatically expect fauna and flora to become more "modern" in appearance over time. Independent origins might as easily "revive past fashions" over time, or come up with independent suites of species based on wholly new body plans when one age succeeds another.

    If we wanted to know whether rain was the usual cause of wet streets, of course, we'd want to gather some data on how often rain was observed, versus how often water mains broke, or firemen hosed down a section of a block, etc. We know that reproduction, inheritance, mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, and speciation occur. Special creation is not observed, so far as I'm aware, and "supernatural design" is not well-enough defined to tell if it occurs or not (human design is observed, but seems an unlikely explanation for most features of biology for various reasons which I should not have to adduce).

    ReplyDelete
  104. JoeG in desperation

    jbeck:
    JoeG so you do have that hypothesis about the big rabbit in the sky that brings molecules together and runs evolution?
    Are you saying that because bunnies come out of your ass that proves the ToE?


    JoeG you disappoint me, we are just getting started today and you are already into insults? Tut, tut! What will you be like when we are done with your bunny today?

    ReplyDelete
  105. didymos,

    I was not arguing against evolution based on its popularity, however, I can see how it could have been taken that way....

    Such an argument is not even necessary...

    Evidence for macro evolution does not rise above speculation based on extrapolation based upon assumptions. That is the bottom line.


    With all the money and effort that has been poured into educating the public by the government, big media and academia, why does naturalistic evolution fail to convince all but 13% of the public? Simply because the evidence for macroevolution is far from compelling.

    Kids all over the world look at the peppered moth pictures and then look at their teacher saying that all of life evolved from a common ancestor and they are like.... moth - common ancestry? Common ancestry - moth? Sorry but the dots don't connect. That's simplifying a bit, but evolutionists are expecting people to trust them rather than some good old fashioned sound evidence.

    But, to turn things around, evolutionists are seriously arguing from authority much of the time. Someone may have a PhD from a famous university, but they are a quack unless they tow the evolutionary line. Beyond this blog, well known evolutionists are famous for insulting the intelligence of those that disagree with them. Like politicians running smear ads, those kinds of responses are sickening.

    ReplyDelete
  106. jbeck:
    JoeG you disappoint me, we are just getting started today and you are already into insults?

    The insults started with you.

    ReplyDelete
  107. Joe, it's a standard creationist website that tries to poke holes in existing research. The author seems not to know that you can make viruses from the fragments.

    http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/07/index-to-common-creationist-claims.html

    ReplyDelete
  108. "And Derick- as for Nobel Prizes when you "prove" that "human" is a heritable trait I am sure you will get one"

    Derick:
    Joe, are you saying phenotype isn't 'heritable'?

    I am saying "human" is not a heritable trait.

    ReplyDelete
  109. Rich:
    Joe, it's a standard creationist website that tries to poke holes in existing research.

    Thanks for fulfilling my prediction.

    Rich:
    The author seems not to know that you can make viruses from the fragments.

    We can make a virus artificially.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Derick childress:

    "But my question still stands. How is it a 'double standard' to provide writing tips?"
    ======

    Show me one example where he reproved just one of the neanderthal posters on your side whose passion for filth, vulgarities and insults that should actually be considered some of the worst examples obscene writing etiquette ???

    I didn't say anything wrong. He simply doesn't like hearing what I said and wants censorship by his own religious rules. He took issues with my bringing up a terminology of "Definition Shell Games" and says he's offended, yet apparently is NOT offended by such words as "*ss" , "sh*t" , etc, etc, etc. He has no problem with such talk. Understandable since most atheists champion such words and speech as a celebrated offense against Christian morality. But then you must already understand that I guess.

    ReplyDelete
  111. didymos:

    "Oh, and BTW:

    Physics predicts order and disorder
    Physics predicts symmetries and broken symmetries
    Physics predicts gradual change and rapid change in various systems
    So on, so forth."
    =====

    Yes of course, but there's one big FAT difference. Evolution is incapable of any type of orderliness. Your own FOGMA dictates and demands this.

    Nice fail. And you thought you were being so clever.
    --------

    ReplyDelete
  112. Why the shared mutations in the Hominidae exon X GULO pseudogene are not evidence for common descent:

    "The GULO X pseudogene has been used for years as evidence for evolutionary theory. Since Hominidae are claimed to have evolved from a rat common ancestor, the modern rat GULO sequence was used as the outgroup in phylogenetic tree building. Our analysis shows that the sophisticated mathematical treatment and the conclusion that differences from the rat sequence fits perfectly with an evolutionionary model for random neutral mutations was never warranted, even had the rat sequence been representative of the intact GULO gene.

    Examination of the nucleotide sequences of an expanded dataset of functional GULO genes revealed that the rat gene has undergone exceedingly rapid mutations (or reflects a separate design). Many papers on exon
    X point out that evolutionary theory predicts mutations on pseudogenes to be far more rapid than on genes since mutations on functionally important genes would often lead to proteins with new undesirable amino acids and therefore be subject to purifying selection. Our expanded dataset contradicts this assumption, since many
    putative nucleotide mutations found only in the rat genome did not lead to new amino acids. In the absence of novel amino acids accelerated positive selection is precluded, leaving no rational evolutionary reason as to why these unique changes should have fixed throughout huge rat populations.

    We examined the expanded dataset from both an evolutionary and a creation science point of view. Since evolutionary theory assumes a common ancestor for all the organisms in this dataset, we used a nucleotide consensus sequence of intact GULO exon X instead of the rat sequence to re-analyse the available data. Much of the data reflects statistical coincidences, and we explain with Bayes’ rule how such artefacts are misleading our evolutionist colleagues. Clusters of separate designs and the presence of informative nucleotide patterns for regulatory purposes provide an alternative to a common identical ancestral GULO gene."

    ReplyDelete
  113. And I am STILL waiting for Rich to support his bullshit claim that:

    Rich:
    ID is purely anti-evolution

    ReplyDelete
  114. JoeG I checked the paper you referred to, it's hilarious...

    We should not even assume that a single male
    and female individual of a specific ‘kind’ surviving the Flood shared 100% identical gene sequences.


    The authors are on their way to winning next year's Nobel!

    ReplyDelete
  115. Joe G: "I am saying "human" is not a heritable trait."

    Really. So there's no reason an organism should give birth to an organism of the same species? It's just coincidence, it's not determined by genetics?

    It's not genetically determined that a 'human' will give birth to another 'human'?

    Is that what you're saying?

    ReplyDelete
  116. Funny how it's "teach the controversy" and "strengths and weaknesses" rather than a dedicated ID curricula, Joe.

    ReplyDelete
  117. "I am saying "human" is not a heritable trait."

    Derick:
    Really.

    Yes really- obviously you STILL don't know what a heritable trait is.

    Derick:
    So there's no reason an organism should give birth to an organism of the same species?

    Umm that doesn't make it a heritable trait.

    It's just coincidence, it's not determined by genetics?

    There isn't any evidence that it is determined by genetics, but that has nothing to do with what I said.

    It's not genetically determined that a 'human' will give birth to another 'human'?

    There isn't any evidence that beinbg a human is determined by genetics.

    That is why geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti wrote the book "Why is a Fly Not a Horse?" because no one knows about the big stuff like what determines form.

    And a recnt paper was publshed saying that body form is taken care of by the egg's membrane

    ReplyDelete
  118. Rich:
    Funny how it's "teach the controversy" and "strengths and weaknesses" rather than a dedicated ID curricula, Joe.

    Now you are reduced to spewing random blurbs?

    ReplyDelete
  119. didymos said,
    "Physics predicts order and disorder
    Physics predicts symmetries and broken symmetries
    Physics predicts gradual change and rapid change in various systems"

    This illustrates my point about evolution. It is a big tent that accurately predicts nothing. See you use "physics" in a general sense. Physics is a big tent of lots of formulas and specific theories that accurately predict many things. So accurate that we can depend on it for everyday devices and technology.

    Evolution is just a big circus tent without the specific theories that can make accuate predictions. It's filled with something, but not anything that has predictive value.

    ReplyDelete
  120. Hey jbeck,

    We are STILL waiting for ONE paper demonstrating that blind, undirected chemical processes can construct a functioning multi-part system.

    All those journals and not one paper supporting your position.

    How can that be?

    ReplyDelete
  121. I said: "So there's no reason an organism should give birth to an organism of the same species? It's just coincidence, it's not determined by genetics?

    Joe said: "There isn't any evidence that it is determined by genetics, but that has nothing to do with what I said.

    There isn't any evidence that beinbg a human is determined by genetics.

    That is why geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti wrote the book "Why is a Fly Not a Horse?" because no one knows about the big stuff like what determines form."


    Thanks Joe, that's all I needed to hear.

    So, what does determine the physical characteristics of a creature's offspring if not its genome? Magic? Midichlorians? Don't leave us hanging Joe, inquiring minds want to know.

    ReplyDelete
  122. Really Derick- that's all you needed to hear?

    I take that to mean you don't accept what I said but cannot offer anything rational in response.

    Derick:
    So, what does determine the physical characteristics of a creature's offspring if not its genome?

    No one knows what makes a human a human, nor a fly a fly other thajn a human comes from the successful mating of two other humans and a fly emerges from a fly larva.

    And as i said there is a recent article that says it is all in the egg's membrane-

    IOW what is wrong with you?

    Do you think you know more than a geneticist?

    But anyway-

    Everyone was so busy looking at genes and genomes for clues to the plans for body form and Dr Pivar found it in the egg's membrane!

    Origin of Vertebrate Skeleton- link to the paper is at the end of the article

    It is all self-organization!

    ReplyDelete
  123. Ya see Derick if we knew what made a human a human and a fly a fly then we could actually test the theory of evolution!

    But we don't so we can't....

    ReplyDelete
  124. Wow, Joe, you've outdone yourself, and that's a hard thing to do.

    I have a prediction. Not one single creationist or IDer, not even Cornelius, will call Joe out on that nonsense.

    Of course, If I'm wrong, and current consensus is that genotype does not determine phenotype, I predict that I will be corrected by Thorton, Troy, Steven J. or anyone else on the science side.

    Either way will be telling

    ReplyDelete
  125. Joe said "Ya see Derick if we knew what made a human a human and a fly a fly then we could actually test the theory of evolution!"

    Now that's a keeper!

    ReplyDelete
  126. Cornelius, Neal, Eocene, Gary, what do you guys think about Joe's position that we have know idea what determines phenotype, that "There isn't any evidence that {the species of an organism's offspring} is determined by genetics," and that "There isn't any evidence that beinbg a human is determined by genetics" or "If we knew what made a human a human and a fly a fly then we could actually test the theory of evolution!"

    You guys agree with any of that?

    ReplyDelete
  127. Joe G: Yes really- obviously you STILL don't know what a heritable trait is.

    What is a heritable trait?

    ReplyDelete
  128. JoeG, you should stop fighting lost battles, nobody will take you seriously. All processes that we study in the raw are undirected, which is why there is a limit to what we can do by directing them. That is why we optimise. There's way too many papers on the subject, entire libraries full. In evolutionary biology alone, every week more literature is produced than the the entire output of the DI to date. Which is why I eagerly look forward to the next "paper" from your side that is publication grade. As for Giuseppe Sermonti he has evoked nothing other guffaws for several years now. Dash it, you guys haven't even won an IgNobel to date! For more info look here http://improbable.com/ig/

    ReplyDelete
  129. jbeck, no one has taken JoeG seriously in a long time. Personally, I only converse with him for amusement. I had no idea I'd actually be able to get him to publicly admit that he doesn't think DNA is the mechanism for inheritance.

    ReplyDelete
  130. Joe wrote:

    hard to verify- sorry impossible to verify- explanations.

    No, hard to vary - as in vary any particular link in the chain of explanations and the theory fails to explain those observations as a whole.

    Take our modern day explanation of the seasons. It depends on a hard to vary chain of explanations that include nuclear fusion, the internal workings and composition and of stars, the theory of the earth's rotation around it's axis, the rotation of the earth around the sun, the theory that a spherical rotating object tends to maintain it's tilt, that the absorption of radiant heat is reduced as a surface becomes more perpendicular to the source, etc.

    If any of these explanations were falsified, our entire explanation of seasons breaks down. The more deep your theory goes, the more likely someone will find a way to falsify any particular link, which breaks the chain and the entire theory fails.

    But if the explanation is shallow / easy to vary, this reduces the likelihood that any particular part of the explanation will be falsified if incorrect.

    Therefore, we tentatively accept theories with good explanations that are hard to vary.

    In regards to ID, you could vary the point in which an abstract designer intervenes in our explanation of biological complexity. You could vary the number of designers along with their abilities and goals in a near infinite number of ways to get the same observations we observe. In doing this makes the theory easy to vary.

    I say it does both.

    Which is precisely why I'm suggesting you do not understand science.

    ReplyDelete
  131. Derick,

    Arguing with JoeG is fun. Reminds me of discussions with Sal Cordova, who would frequently contradict himself, come up with absolutely bizarre schemes (I will scramble my IP address) or holding forth on Information Science (till told "Dear Sal, Information Sc. is what librarians do, we are talking of Information Theory) or harrumphing, "If that happened it would violate Information Theory," only to be told, "If something happens that violates InfoTheory, you revise your theory."

    Right now JoeG is snared in a web of his own and has successfully demolished a few principles of biology. I think he is headed for the next big thing. What a way to wind up a hard week of work!

    ReplyDelete
  132. nanobot74:

    =====
    Me: "No, you are missing the point. In this context, the word "expected" is like the word "predicted."... By what scientific experiment can I learn that such orderliness in the fossil record is not expected if evolution is not true?"

    nanobot: THe prediction of orderliness in the fossil record is a prediction from evolutionary theory all the way back to Darwin. THis is how science works. Make a hypothesis, make predictions from that hypothesis, test if the predictions are true. It feels strange explaining this to someone with a science Ph.D., but oh well. and btw, although you claim to have changed the text, it still repeats your mistaken claim that the authors make an if-and-only-if statement. are you going to fix that anytime soon?
    =====

    You are still not following. The predictions of evolution (vis-a-vis the fossil record in this case), are not the issue here. The issue is predictions of *other* theories. You say: "THis is how science works. Make a hypothesis, make predictions from that hypothesis, test if the predictions are true." Yes, agreed. You are making my point. That is how science works, but it is *not* how evolution works, as exemplified by the textbook, as I'm pointing out in this post.

    You write: "it still repeats your mistaken claim that the authors make an if-and-only-if statement."

    No, the authors *are* making an if-and-only-if statement. The fact that evolutionists fail to recognize this is telling. I'll try to explain this yet again. The textbook states:

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected."

    This is equivalent to: IF-NOT-evolution, then orderliness in the fossil record IS NOT expected.

    And this is equivalent to: IF-AND-ONLY-IF evolution, then orderliness in the fossil record IS expected. Do you see this now?

    This premise is metaphysical because it claims to have knowledge of all explanations. Such knowledge cannot come from science. Make sense?

    ReplyDelete
  133. Eocene said...

    When you look at where science today actually had it's true beginnings, it was the western world of northern and central Europe. Civilizations like the dominant pagan world empires around the mediterranian and mideast, though having remarkable technologies and advances, they eventually failed and went nowhere. This is the similiar experience with the Chinese, Inca, Maya, Aztec etc civilizations who though having amazing advances never went beyond to further progress. Why ???

    ==========================

    Read Joseph Teinter's book,” The Collapse Of Complex Societies”, he gives a good explanation of why civilisations and empires eventually collapse.

    ReplyDelete
  134. Hunter:

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected."

    This is equivalent to: IF-NOT-evolution, then orderliness in the fossil record IS NOT expected.

    And this is equivalent to: IF-AND-ONLY-IF evolution, then orderliness in the fossil record IS expected. Do you see this now?


    You can’t win arguments by putting words in other people’s mouths. That’s even more reprehensible than quote-mining. Why don't you ask the authors what their statement was intended to mean, if you're convinced that they made a metaphysical commitment? That would be exemplary scholarship on your part.

    This premise is metaphysical because it claims to have knowledge of all explanations. Such knowledge cannot come from science. Make sense?

    Only in your mind, Hunter. You have rephrased the statement by the textbook authors to make a trumped-up case. Face it: biology, like all other sciences, is an empirical activity.

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  135. Cornelius,
    "The textbook states:

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected.

    This is equivalent to: IF-NOT-evolution, then orderliness in the fossil record IS NOT expected.

    And this is equivalent to: IF-AND-ONLY-IF evolution, then orderliness in the fossil record IS expected. Do you see this now?"

    Ah, now I see your problem. I'm afraid those two statements aren't equivalent. You are making a logical leap by inserting the "ONLY-IF" clause. There is no "only" or any statement of necessity and sufficiency or anything else indicative of "if and only if" in that statement. You really need to brush up on your logic and correct the post while you're at it..

    ReplyDelete
  136. pedant:

    "You can’t win arguments by putting words in other people’s mouths."

    No, read it again. I'm using their text, from the book.

    ReplyDelete
  137. Joe wrote:

    Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.3


    Joe, what are you smoking?

    1) No God's worth having exist

    I have no idea how to interpret this statement. Why should the existence of anything be dependent on whether or not I think that something is "worth existing", whatever that means?

    2) no life after death exists

    Here, you seem to have unnecessarily bound some form of life after death the existence of some kind of all knowing, all powerful, non-material being.

    While observations lead us to think continued existence is highly unlikely, we simply do not know what happens to us after after we die, let alone that it could only occur God existed to bring it about.

    Furthermore, many Buddhists are atheistic, yet think some part of us surveys in the form of reincarnation. Finally, as Carl Sagen noted, we are made start stuff. You and I consist of raw materials that existed long before we were born and that will continue to exist long after we die.

    3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists;

    Read Sam's Harris' new book, The moral landscape. But, be careful, you might actually learn something in the process.

    4) no ultimate meaning in life exists;

    Of course, when you say "ultimate", you really mean defined by an all knowing, all powerful, non-material being.

    5) human free will is nonexistent.

    And when you say "free", you really mean based on some non-material soul that is magically exempt from your limited understanding of causation.

    Again, these are all very narrow minded conclusions which indicate you cannot think outside your particular theological box.

    ReplyDelete
  138. nanobot74:


    ====
    Ah, now I see your problem. I'm afraid those two statements aren't equivalent. You are making a logical leap by inserting the "ONLY-IF" clause. There is no "only" or any statement of necessity and sufficiency or anything else indicative of "if and only if" in that statement. You really need to brush up on your logic and correct the post while you're at it..
    ====

    Yes, they are equivalent. I'll make is simpler for you. These two statements are equivalent:

    ----
    1. If hypothesis H is TRUE then observable O is expected, and if H is FALSE then observable O is not expected

    2. If and only if H is TRUE, then O is expected.
    ----

    The text makes the Statement 1. It is equivalent to the Statement 2. I'm not the one here who is making the logical error. You need to have the "only" in Statement 2 to be equivalent to Statement 1. That should be quite obvious if you read it more carefully. If not, I can explain it in greater detail.

    ReplyDelete
  139. Hunter:

    These two statements are equivalent:

    ----
    1. If hypothesis H is TRUE then observable O is expected, and if H is FALSE then observable O is not expected

    2. If and only if H is TRUE, then O is expected.


    They don't look equivalent to me, because statement 2 contains the word "only."

    Please explain in greater detail.

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  140. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  141. OP: "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected."

    Cornelius, I see where you're coming from on this. But I think you're misinterpreting what the authors mean.

    I'd say you're right that they're contrasting evolution with intentional creation, or design. Those are really the the only two plausible scenarios offered thus far.

    But let's rearrange the wording for clarity. Let me know if you disagree with my changes. If they are comparing evolution with design, I think it could fairly be rephrased:

    If {design is} correct, on the other hand, then {the patterns we see in the fossil record} are not expected/predicted

    With me so far? Fair enough?

    Now, I'd say that statement is correct.

    If they had said something like "If design is correct, on the other hand, then the patterns of we see in the fossil record are not explained, Then I would disagree with them. (Design can explain anything observed, as we all know.) But you can't say that the pattern we see is predicted by design in any way.

    I don't know of any design proponent, past or present, who would honestly say: "My prediction, based purely on ID and not because I'm hedging my bets, is that God created things in precisely the same order that evolution would have, leaving exactly the same fossil and genetic evidence that evolution would have."

    But no, IDers never go out on a limb to predict anything in advance. All they do is say things like: "Design explains pseudogenes too: God wanted to make it like this for some reason."

    ReplyDelete
  142. Hunter, compare the following:

    1. If I go out in the rain without my galoshes, I am expected to get a cold. If I don’t go out in the rain without my galoshes, I am not expected to get a cold.

    2. If and only if I go out in the rain without my galoshes, am I expected to get a cold.

    Do you see what a difference the "only" makes?

    ReplyDelete
  143. Pedant:

    ====
    1. If hypothesis H is TRUE then observable O is expected, and if H is FALSE then observable O is not expected

    2. If and only if H is TRUE, then O is expected.

    They don't look equivalent to me, because statement 2 contains the word "only."

    Please explain in greater detail.
    ====

    Consider the set of all possible hypotheses, H, known and unknown, that predict whether or not O will be observed. Now divide that set into two subsets: H and ~H (that is, H in one subset, and all the other hypotheses in the second subset).

    Now Statement 1 says that if H is true, then O is expected. But it also says that if H is false, then O is not expected. This means that ~H (ie, all the other hypotheses) does not expect O. This means that there is no other hypothesis, aside from H, that expects O. This means that the only way O is expected is if H is true. Only H predicts O.

    Now the statement "If H is TRUE, then O is expected" is true, given Statement 1, because it is a restatement of the first half of Statement 1. But it doesn't include the second half of Statement 1. To include the second half, we need to say that only with H is O expected.

    ReplyDelete
  144. Cornelius,
    "But it also says that if H is false, then O is not expected. This means that ~H (ie, all the other hypotheses) does not expect O."
    You are still making a logical leap. All statistical tests make the equivalent of your statement 1. FOr example: If H is true, then a relationship between X and Y is expected (i.e. the null hypothesis H0 is not true). If H is not true, then a relationship between X and Y is not expected (i.e. H0 is true.) THe authors are not making a claim about ~H, but simply stating that the null hypothesis of an unorderly arrangement of fossils is not supported. I think you've stated before that statistics are metaphysical, so at least you're being consistent..

    ReplyDelete
  145. Derick:

    ===
    Cornelius, I see where you're coming from on this. But I think you're misinterpreting what the authors mean.
    ===

    Not only is that what they said, but it is one of the staples of the evolution genre. I doubt they had some other meaning in mind which they mistakenly failed to communicate, and the dozens of reviewers all somehow failed to comment on
    .

    ===
    I'd say you're right that they're contrasting evolution with intentional creation, or design. Those are really the the only two plausible scenarios offered thus far.
    ===

    In science, we need to remember that, generally, we do not know the set of all possible H's.


    ===
    If {design is} correct, on the other hand, then {the patterns we see in the fossil record} are not expected/predicted

    With me so far? Fair enough?

    Now, I'd say that statement is correct.
    ===



    ===
    I don't know of any design proponent, past or present, who would honestly say: "My prediction, based purely on ID and not because I'm hedging my bets, is that God created things in precisely the same order that evolution would have, leaving exactly the same fossil and genetic evidence that evolution would have."
    ===

    The fossil record is characterized by rapid appearance of increasingly complex forms followed by stasis.

    ReplyDelete
  146. Cornelius said: "The fossil record is characterized by rapid appearance of increasingly complex forms followed by stasis."

    That's absolutely correct. I'm surprised you would concede that. I'm extremely impressed with your honesty.

    ReplyDelete
  147. Cornelius Hunter said...

    Now Statement 1 says that if H is true, then O is expected. But it also says that if H is false, then O is not expected. This means that ~H (ie, all the other hypotheses) does not expect O.


    NO it doesn't, for the simple fact that there can be more than one hypothesis that expects O.

    1. If hypothesis H is TRUE (it rained) then observable O (the street is wet) is expected, and If hypothesis J is TRUE (a street cleaner drove by) then observable O (the street is wet) is expected, and if H is FALSE (it didn't rain) then observable O (the street is wet) is not expected

    2. If and only if H is TRUE (it rained), then O is expected. (the street is wet)

    2. is an obviously false statement and is not equivalent to 1 when you stick the word ONLY in there. The ONLY drastically changes the meaning, just like the ONLY you are dishonestly attributing to J&L drastically changes their meaning.

    CH, you're still as bad at logic as you are at the biological sciences, even after many people have corrected you.

    ReplyDelete
  148. Hunter wrote:

    No, the authors *are* making an if-and-only-if statement. The fact that evolutionists fail to recognize this is telling. I'll try to explain this yet again. The textbook states:

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected."


    In addition to Penant's comment, note the words, "such orderly change" in that sentence. What is being referred to is the specific kind of orderly change we obesrve, rather than any kind of change.

    For example, an abstract designer is not limited to making changes that follow any specific order because no limits have been defined. Nor could you say that said designer would be motivated to choose the same sort of orderly change or had the ability to actually obtain that order if it wanted to.

    So, at best, it would seem you could claim an unknown designer would result in some unknown design. This is because ID fails to provide an explanation as to why an intelligent designer to choose *this* specific order over another.

    In fact, Joe seems to think that it's not necessary for life to continue to follow this orderly change since the program loaded in the genome could suddenly cause life to diverge from the hierarchy we currently observe. Or, in the case of a designer that intervenes over time, the designer could simply decide to intervene in some different way tomorrow. We simply do not know enough about the designer to know what to expect.

    In other words, while evolution is subject to the problem of induction (like all theories), ID has the additional burden of being subject to the fact that agents are free to make choices based on a wide range of factors. And In the case of an abstract designer, we do not have knowledge of these factors.

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  149. nanobot:

    ===
    THe authors are not making a claim about ~H, but simply stating that the null hypothesis of an unorderly arrangement of fossils is not supported.
    ===

    No, null hypothesis rejection is different. Null hypothesis testing deals with whether or not a cause has a certain effect. Generally the null hypothesis is: "no effect." You know what no effect looks like because you have a control group. So you test for statistically significant deviation from the control group. If such deviation is significant, then the null hypothesis is rejected.

    In the case of evolution and the fossils, you have no control group. You can say "lack of order in the fossils" is my null hypothesis, but you have no basis for it.

    ReplyDelete
  150. Thorton:

    ===
    Cornelius Hunter said: "Now Statement 1 says that if H is true, then O is expected. But it also says that if H is false, then O is not expected. This means that ~H (ie, all the other hypotheses) does not expect O."

    NO it doesn't, for the simple fact that there can be more than one hypothesis that expects O.
    ===

    I'm glad to see you realize that there can be more than one hypothesis that expects O. Unfortunately that doesn't change the fact that the text states that, in this case, only one hypothesis expects O.

    ReplyDelete
  151. Eocene:"Which only proves you're a hypocrite. There are vast amounts of the same garbage you accuse me of here (in fact it's actually worse from your team) and yet you refuse to call them on it."

    OK, if it weren't perfectly obvious, by calling it "bad writing" I meant it's bad for everyone, period (I think the "universally considered" in my first post on the subject ought to have been a clue). I think everyone should avoid doing it whenever possible. You just happen to be the most consistent offender hereabouts. You do it nigh constantly, therefore, I notice it more, and therefore I find your use of the device the most irritating. See how that works? I.e., the complaint, while addressed to you specifically, does not apply only to you specifically. And while you're welcome to complain some more about how unfair and stuff I am, for my part, that's the end of it. I will now stop interrupting the incredibly important discussion of the OP (AKA "Cornelius Arguing That The Absence Of The Word 'Only' Also Means 'Only'").

    ReplyDelete
  152. Cornelius.

    You end most of your posts with this quote: "Religion drives science, and it matters." Are you seriously claiming that religion doesn't drive, say, the catholic church? Are you seriously claiming that religion doesn't drive many charities throughout the world? It's obvious to me that religion drives many things other than science, and yet you have clearly and repeatedly claimed that it only drives science. Will you admit that you were wrong when you made this ridiculous claim? Or will you try and wiggle out of this by pretending that you never said "religion drives only science, and it matters"?

    ReplyDelete
  153. Steven J replied to John:

    "You need to consider the sort of order that is being considered here."

    No I don't. I can evaluate the statement with "order" as "X" and realize that the author of the statement is making a comment on all other possible theories outside his own.

    If not evolution, then not X.

    It doesn't have anything to do with the strength of the argument you are making. If you go back an read what the original disagreement was about, I think you'll realize that.

    ReplyDelete
  154. Cornelius Hunter said...

    I'm glad to see you realize that there can be more than one hypothesis that expects O. Unfortunately that doesn't change the fact that the text states that, in this case, only one hypothesis expects O.


    No CH. the text does not say that. Here are the actual words again

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected."

    The text says only one THEORY expects the observed orderly change. THEORY CH, not hypothesis. Are you so uninformed that you don't understand the difference between a scientific theory and a hypothesis?

    Scientific theory: an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena.

    Hypothesis: a proposed explanation for an observable phenomenon.

    "The Invisible Pink Unicorn poofed all life into existence" is a hypothesis.

    "Life on earth has changed and diversified over the last 3+ billion years through common descent" is a scientific theory.

    Science currently has only one THEORY that explains the observed fossil and genetic evidence.

    Once again, you are dishonestly attributing words and ideas to J&L that they didn't say. As others have pointed out, that's even worse than the already despicable tactic of quote mining.

    Shame shame shame on you again!

    ReplyDelete
  155. "Science currently has only one THEORY that explains the observed fossil and genetic evidence."

    Was that punctuated equilibrium, or gradualism?

    "tested and confirmed"

    Which test confirmed evolution? Was it the independent "emergence" of eyes, flight, or hearing? I heard repeatability is important in the hard sciences. :D

    ReplyDelete
  156. Professor Hunter,

    I have a couple of questions. First, why is an argument that evolutionists mix science and religion relevant to the question of creationists illegitimately mixing science and religion? Second, why should the mixing of science and religion be illegitimate?

    ReplyDelete
  157. John said...

    "Science currently has only one THEORY that explains the observed fossil and genetic evidence."

    Was that punctuated equilibrium, or gradualism?

    "tested and confirmed"

    Which test confirmed evolution? Was it the independent "emergence" of eyes, flight, or hearing? I heard repeatability is important in the hard sciences.


    It wasn't one specific test. It was hundreds of thousands of tests in hundreds of scientific disciplines all providing corroborating and cross-correlating positive evidence for the overarching theory. It's the sum of all the evidence that paints a single logically consistent and consilient picture.

    That's why it's so stupid for Creationists to demand to see THE test for evolution.

    ReplyDelete
  158. TomH:

    ===
    First, why is an argument that evolutionists mix science and religion relevant to the question of creationists illegitimately mixing science and religion? Second, why should the mixing of science and religion be illegitimate?
    ===

    I don't have an answer for either question.

    ReplyDelete
  159. Joe G said:

    No one knows what makes a human a human, nor a fly a fly other thajn a human comes from the successful mating of two other humans and a fly emerges from a fly larva.

    And as i said there is a recent article that says it is all in the egg's membrane-


    Quite a bit of it seems to be in the eggs nucleus. At least, manipulating genes affects development, and HOX genes found in a wide variety of animal species control some details of the expression of other genes.

    IOW what is wrong with you?

    Do you think you know more than a geneticist?

    But anyway-

    Everyone was so busy looking at genes and genomes for clues to the plans for body form and Dr Pivar found it in the egg's membrane!


    Stuart Pivar is not a geneticist. Stuart Pivar is a crank who mistakes embryology for playing with balloon animals. He filled an entire book with sketches of embryonic development that are quite clever and attractive, and have only the minor defect of not resembling anything ever observed in the actual embryos of actual animals. There is no "toroidal bilayer" at any stage of vertebrate embryonic development; therefore, this cannot be the origin of the vertebrate skeleton or any other vertebrate structure.

    Origin of Vertebrate Skeleton- link to the paper is at the end of the article

    It is all self-organization!


    As opposed, you mean, to "information" and "coding" and "design?" You could be right about that, and still wrong about how an egg develops into an insect or tetrapod.

    ReplyDelete
  160. didymos:

    "OK, if it weren't perfectly obvious, by calling it "bad writing" I meant it's bad for everyone, period (I think the "universally considered" in my first post on the subject ought to have been a clue). I think everyone should avoid doing it whenever possible. You just happen to be the most consistent offender hereabouts. You do it nigh constantly, therefore, I notice it more, and therefore I find your use of the device the most irritating. See how that works? I.e., the complaint, while addressed to you specifically, does not apply only to you specifically."
    =======

    Absolutely incredible. You come in hear admitting you're usually nothing more than a lurker, and rather than address the OP, you condescendingly attack me for pointing out the typical word games by those who actually refuse to even address the OP's position.

    Sorry, I don't require your expertise as a self-proclaimed BookSmith. No one insists you have to like anything. All you or any other atheist need do is just answer the hard questions. Show some foundational evidence for your faith (something that is NEVER done, see: Cornelius article on "Serendipity"), then we can go from there. Faith-Based boldened statements in Science text books are not true science. You'd slam a creationist science book at the drop of a hat (and rightly so) if they pulled the same stupid stunt your side has done with injection of your faith in the science text books.

    I highly doubt that even one of you geniuses even read the link Cornelius provided in his OP with reference to the expression, "if and only if" did you ???

    -------

    didymos:

    "And while you're welcome to complain some more about how unfair and stuff I am, for my part, that's the end of it. I will now stop interrupting the incredibly important discussion of the OP (AKA "Cornelius Arguing That The Absence Of The Word 'Only' Also Means 'Only'")."
    =====

    Well addressing the OP would certainly be a refreshing change since you haven't actually done that. Read Cornelius link:

    http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/02/reverend-jerry-coyne-lanugo-and.html

    Then come back and argue and make your excuses at to why Faith-Based statements infecting scientific text books are appropriate and should be considered as FACTS without questioning the author's motivives for doing so.

    ReplyDelete
  161. Hunter:

    Consider the set of all possible hypotheses, H, known and unknown, that predict whether or not O will be observed.

    […]

    To include the second half, we need to say that only with H is O expected.


    Thank you! An outstanding analysis that explains your reasoning. I always have trouble with conditionals and counterfactuals, especially when they are combined in propositions like “If the theory of evolution is not correct, such orderly change is not expected.

    I hope J&L will take note and change their statement in the next edition to make it clear that they are not ruling out all possible alternative theories, but all currently known alternative theories, lest a zealous anti-evolution undergrad attack them (or a teacher using their book) on that point.

    ReplyDelete
  162. Hunter:

    In science, we need to remember that, generally, we do not know the set of all possible H's.

    Can we ever know all possible hypotheses? Wouldn't that require omniscience?

    ReplyDelete
  163. Derick:
    Of course, If I'm wrong, and current consensus is that genotype does not determine phenotype,

    It is very telling that you cannot produce ONE peer-reviewed paper to support your claim Derick.

    And it is very telling that Sean Carroll- of evo-devo fame- hasn't written about that either.

    So perhaps you should stop with your ignorant-laden snide remarks and actually start supporting your claims.

    ReplyDelete
  164. jbeck:
    All processes that we study in the raw are undirected, which is why there is a limit to what we can do by directing them.

    Nice bald assertion.

    jbeck:
    There's way too many papers on the subject, entire libraries full.

    Liar.

    jbeck:
    In evolutionary biology alone, every week more literature is produced than the the entire output of the DI to date.

    And more equivocation.


    jbeck:
    As for Giuseppe Sermonti he has evoked nothing other guffaws for several years now.

    Too bad not one evotard can refute what he says.

    So we have jbeck lying out its ass and thinking that is scientific data.

    ReplyDelete
  165. No one knows what makes a human a human, nor a fly a fly other thajn a human comes from the successful mating of two other humans and a fly emerges from a fly larva.

    And as i said there is a recent article that says it is all in the egg's membrane-


    Steven J:
    Quite a bit of it seems to be in the eggs nucleus. At least, manipulating genes affects development, and HOX genes found in a wide variety of animal species control some details of the expression of other genes.

    There isn't any data which demonstrates that we know what makes an organism what it is.

    If you think I am lying please go ahead and find the paper(s) that refute that.

    ReplyDelete
  166. Derick:
    I had no idea I'd actually be able to get him to publicly admit that he doesn't think DNA is the mechanism for inheritance.

    LoL!!

    What a freak you are Derick- I NEVER said anything of the kind and as a matter of fact I know DNA is a mechanism for heritable traits.

    What I am saying- and biologists support my claim- is that "human" is not a heritable trait.

    And no one knows if "human" is in the DNA.

    IOW you ain't a christian - you are nothing but a punk evotard.

    ReplyDelete
  167. Trait(biology):

    "A trait is a distinct variant of a phenotypic character of an organism that may be inherited, environmentally determined or somewhere in between.[1] For example, eye color is a character or abstraction of an attribute, while blue, brown and hazel are traits."


    human heritable traits

    Notice "human" is not on the list.

    ReplyDelete
  168. Cornelius,

    "No, null hypothesis rejection is different. Null hypothesis testing deals with whether or not a cause has a certain effect. Generally the null hypothesis is: "no effect." You know what no effect looks like because you have a control group. So you test for statistically significant deviation from the control group. If such deviation is significant, then the null hypothesis is rejected."

    As I've explained before, many commonly used statistics do not incorporate a control group. Correlational tests are a broad example. You test for a predicted relationship between variables x and y and the null hypothesis is "no relationship" or a random pattern, with no control group needed or implied. In all of these cases a random distribution is the default null hypothesis. Similarly, we predict a pattern in the fossil record using evolutionary theory, and test that theory against the default null hypothesis of random distribution. If you think that's metaphysical then so are hundreds of thousands of other studies employing correlational tests, regressions, etc. In fact, you use a similar test of some of your own published work.

    "In the case of evolution and the fossils, you have no control group. You can say "lack of order in the fossils" is my null hypothesis, but you have no basis for it. "

    Again, lack of order or a random distribution is the default hypothesis in many statistical tests. You can criticize those all you want, but don't pretend the logic applies exclusively to evolution.

    ReplyDelete
  169. Professor Hunter,

    Well, you raised the issue of the first question in the first statement of your post. I was trying to find out why you linked them. It looks like a tu quoque argument.

    The second question was a question regarding the importance of the evolutionists' objection. If the linking isn't illegitimate, then their objection has no force. This is kind of important as it is the force behind your argument.

    ReplyDelete
  170. Joe G:

    "What I am saying- and biologists support my claim- is that "human" is not a heritable trait."

    Bwahaha. Joe, biblical literalist and IDC posterchild, contradicts the "teachings" of his masters without realizing it: if all descendents of Adam & Eve were/are humans (homo sapiens), then the phenotypic trait "being human" has a heritability of 100% (h^2=VA/VP; in this case VA=VP, ergo h^2=1).

    Nice shot in your own foot!

    ReplyDelete
  171. From the link I provided:

    "The heritable unit that may influence a trait is called a gene."

    So what are the "human" genes?


    "Heritability is the proportion of phenotypic variation in a population that is attributable to genetic variation among individuals."

    ...

    Rather than look at all the traits of an organism, heritability focuses on the differences between multiple organisms for a single trait. Because heritability is concerned with variance, it is necessarily a description of a certain population - not an individual.


    I can find more that supports my claims and refutes you evotards

    ReplyDelete
  172. thorton:
    It wasn't one specific test. It was hundreds of thousands of tests in hundreds of scientific disciplines all providing corroborating and cross-correlating positive evidence for the overarching theory. It's the sum of all the evidence that paints a single logically consistent and consilient picture.

    Strange that there STILL isn't any evidence that an accumulation of genetic accidents can construct a functional multi-part system.

    So what kind of tests is thorton referring to?

    ReplyDelete
  173. JoeG,

    jbeck:
    As for Giuseppe Sermonti he has evoked nothing other guffaws for several years now.
    Too bad not one evotard can refute what he says.


    Dr.Gerardus Bouw, Prof. Emeritus, Dep of Computer Science, Baldwin Wallace College, has published several tracts that the earth is the center of the universe. No one has refuted him. So that means geocentrism is a valid theory. There is a tonne of junk lit out there, Sermonti is only one of the 1000s of junkmeisters churning out their nonsense. We 13% have better things to do, and can't be bothered with every nutcase theory.

    Remember, in Europe, China, Brazil, India, Japan, Australasia etc., good science is legislated. That ensures quackery like creationism/ID is kept out of the educational system. Decades ago it did not matter as the informed citizenry managed this country and other nations had a lot of catching up to do. Today the gap is insignificant, and we don't have the luxury of throwing out creationist-ID on establishment clause grounds. JoeG you owe it your children. Imagine when they graduate from homeschool in 10 years from now tutored on Discovery Institute and Answers In Genesis junk, knowing just one language, they will be asking for a job that pays about $12.50/hour. Across the world, perhaps in Brazil or China or India, there will be candidate who has been tutored at a public school has AP level proficiency in the science, knows 2-3 languages, who will be willing to do the same job for $2.50/hour!

    So you cannot afford to be with the ignorant 55% of Americans who belive Flintstones is a documentary. You can't be with the 65% of the Americans who believe that the evidence for AGW is cooked up by hippy haired Birkenstockers - not when >90% of Chinese, Brazilians, Russians, and Indians think evidence for AGW is beyond doubt. The UFO mania did not affect us as in the 1960s it is just we and Russia who sent rockets into space. Imagine if a kooky Senator like James Inhofe or an AG like Kookinelli of Virginia were to start pushing for UFOs, this when science colleges in China and India are designing their own micro/nanosts. So the same way scientific ignorance today will hurt us very badly.

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  174. jbeck:
    Remember, in Europe, China, Brazil, India, Japan, Australasia etc., good science is legislated.

    What an imbecile!

    You cannot legislate what is and isn't scince!

    And if your position had some positive evidence to support it then neither ID nor Creation would still be around.

    Yes I owe it to my children to get the atheistic bullshit theory of evolution tossed out of public schools- or put into a class that discusses failed ideas.

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  175. And BTW both UFOs and bigfoot have more positive evidence for their existences than your position has.


    Go figure...

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  176. jbeck,

    Strange that there STILL isn't any evidence that an accumulation of genetic accidents can construct a functional multi-part system.

    I take it that bothers you.

    Sweet...

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  177. jbeck:
    So you cannot afford to be with the ignorant 55% of Americans who belive Flintstones is a documentary.

    I definitely can't afford to be with you and your ilk who think that "The Island of Dr Moreau" is scientific fact.

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  178. Keep up the good work Joe - you're doing more to discredit ID creationism than any of us scientists ever could!

    Legal disclaimer: I have not, nor am I aware of anybody else having, bribed or otherwise illegally encouraged Joe G the dumb biblical literalist into making a laughing stock of ID and similar creationist anti-science rubbish.

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  179. troy:
    you're doing more to discredit ID creationism than any of us scientists ever could!

    Seeing that ID creationism only exists in the minds of the willfully ignorant what you said is meaningless babble.

    However it is strange that all you can do is hurl about false accusations and bullshit lies.

    Funny how you can never show that what I say is incorrect.

    And very funny how you can never support your bullshit.

    Keep up the good work - you make all cowards very proud.

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  180. And troy, people like is are why the vast majority of people think your position is nothing but atheistic bullshit.

    Please keep up the good work...

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  181. So the challenge went out to troy:

    Bwahhhaaaahahaha troy doesn't have any clue what a heritable trait is even though I have provided links.

    Come on ignorant troy the momma's boy I challenge you to produce a valid reference that states "human" is a trait.

    Failure to do so will prove that you are an ignorant asshole- as if we need more evidence...


    And as predicted troy boy failed to do so.

    LoL!!!

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  182. Thanks Joe, for another insult-laden content-free pro-IDC post.

    I am a little worried that lurkers might think that your posts are so extremely stupid that you are probably a Loki. Could you please confirm that what you write is your honest to-the-best-of-your-limited-knowledge opinion?

    Thanks!

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  183. troy,

    Observations are not insults.

    And you are proving my point with every one of your posts.

    Thanks.

    BTW strange how you can't produce anything that contradicts what I post...

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  184. And yes, I like all humans, have a limited knowledge.

    However it is obvious that my limited knowledge isn't as limited as troy's, thorton's, zachriel's, jbeck's, Rich's, et al.

    Take troy and thorton- add their knowledge together and they are still more limited than I am...

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  185. troy:
    I am a little worried that lurkers might think that your posts are so extremely stupid

    You should be worried that lurkers will see you as the intellectual coward that you posts make you out to be.

    IOW don't worry about me- I can defend ID against your brand of stupidity every day.

    And I enjoy the fact that you can't support your position.

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  186. TomH:

    ===
    Well, you raised the issue of the first question in the first statement of your post. I was trying to find out why you linked them. It looks like a tu quoque argument.
    ===

    I don't see it there.

    ===
    The second question was a question regarding the importance of the evolutionists' objection. If the linking isn't illegitimate, then their objection has no force. This is kind of important as it is the force behind your argument.
    ===

    It can also have little or no force, even if such linking is legitimate.

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  187. Professor Hunter,

    Looks like I misstated my point. The tu quoque was presented in the first two sentences. I read them as one because of the "And" starting the second sentence.

    Let's analyze your first two statements to see why they're a tu quoque argument.

    "Evolutionists are adamant that science must be free of religion...." It is implied that the linkage is illegitimate. It is further implied that creationism links science and religion. It may also be implied that ID links science and religion, but because of charity I choose to think that this is not the case.

    "And while that sounds good, evolutionists are all-the-while driven by religion." Here you point out that their "science" is linked with their own religion just the same as the statement you attributed to evolutionists implied that creationism (or possibly ID) links science and religion. Hence, it looks like you are offering a tu quoque argument. I guess your point is the evolutionists' hypocrisy, but that still relies on a tu quoque argument.

    Regarding my second point--are you content that if linkage is legitimate, then your argument has no force (is irrelevant)? Of course, the evolutionists' argument of illegitimacy would also have no force. Perhaps that's acceptable to you. Why not argue that the linkage may be legitimate? That seems more interesting and potentially fruitful.

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  188. nanobot74:


    ===
    As I've explained before, many commonly used statistics do not incorporate a control group.
    ===

    Yes, and I guess I failed to disabuse you then of your confusion. More below ...



    ===
    Similarly, we predict a pattern in the fossil record using evolutionary theory, and test that theory against the default null hypothesis of random distribution.
    ===

    Fine.



    ===
    If you think that's metaphysical then so are hundreds of thousands of other studies employing correlational tests, regressions, etc.
    ===

    No, what is metaphysical is to claim that the non randomness in the fossil is expected only by evolution. In therapeutic testing, upon observing a correlation between the treatment and the response (ie, a non random effect), you cannot then conclude that no other treatment could achieve the effect.

    I think what is confusing you is you are conflating the two statements:

    1. "If evolution is false, then we expect randomness in the fossils, molecular sequences, etc"
    2. "If the treatment has no effect, then we expect no correlation (ie, a random response)"

    These are not analogous. The reason why #2 makes sense is that you are not competing with other treatments. You are attempting one treatment at a time. If the treatment doesn't work, then we should not see any change. OK, makes sense. And if there is a response, then the treatment did something. OK, fine. But that doesn't mean no other treatment could have had such an effect.

    In #1, we have only one trial. The result is a non random, orderly, fossil pattern. What does it mean? There is no scientific basis for concluding that if evolution is false, there would be no such order. But such claims go back centuries in the evolution literature.

    Do you see the difference now?

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  189. TomH:

    ===
    "Evolutionists are adamant that science must be free of religion...." It is implied that the linkage is illegitimate.
    ===

    Well I did not imply that, if that is what you mean.



    ===
    Regarding my second point--are you content that if linkage is legitimate, then your argument has no force (is irrelevant)?
    ===

    I don't understand why this is true. Are not evolutionists guilty of bad science that is motivated by metaphysics, regardless? Their hypocrisy seems to be a natural outcome of their position.



    ===
    Of course, the evolutionists' argument of illegitimacy would also have no force. Perhaps that's acceptable to you.
    ===

    I don't view the demarkation problem as very fruitful or interesting. It seems to be mainly an exercise by rationalists to exclude empiricists from science. Beyond that, I don't see any good solutions, or much practical application for such solutions.


    ===
    Why not argue that the linkage may be legitimate? That seems more interesting and potentially fruitful.
    ===

    Two things. First, evolutionists are in no position to seriously contemplate the relationship between metaphysics and science. They are more in debt to their metaphysics than others, yet they are in complete denial. If this is a 12 step program, then we're still in the first step.

    Second, I'm concerned that this linkage you are interested in exploring is too complicated for me, and probably for many others. Right now I'm more concerned with awareness. I think we have plenty of examples of how not to do it (excessive rationalism), and how to do it well (balanced empiricism). With the latter we can do science fruitfully. Unless I get a raise, I'm afraid going beyond this is above my paygrade.

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  190. Pedant:

    ===
    Thank you! An outstanding analysis that explains your reasoning. I always have trouble with conditionals and counterfactuals, especially when they are combined in propositions like “If the theory of evolution is not correct, such orderly change is not expected.
    ===

    Yes, good point, but this type of language is typical in the evolution genre. I guess the confusion arises here because what we are seeing is a sort of tip of the iceberg of a substantial body of thought, going back centuries. I've read so much of this that I have no problem understanding this redacted version, and forget that this boiled down version may be confusing to those not immersed in the genre.


    ===
    I hope J&L will take note and change their statement in the next edition to make it clear that they are not ruling out all possible alternative theories, but all currently known alternative theories, lest a zealous anti-evolution undergrad attack them (or a teacher using their book) on that point.
    ===

    No, I would not expect that. Again, this is not a typo or grammatical error. This is what evolutionists have been saying for centuries. Also ...

    ===
    but all currently known alternative theories
    ===

    This would be an easy concession, but this too is metaphysical. They make such an explicit statement which I'll blog on soon.

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  191. Hunter:

    In #1, we have only one trial. The result is a non random, orderly, fossil pattern. What does it mean? There is no scientific basis for concluding that if evolution is false, there would be no such order.

    Setting aside the issue of statistics for the moment, we are faced with an orderly succession of forms in the fossil record. Does evolution explain that orderly succession? Yes.

    Do any other theories/hypotheses explain that orderly succession? If so, what are those theories?

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  192. Pedant:

    ===
    Setting aside the issue of statistics for the moment, we are faced with an orderly succession of forms in the fossil record. Does evolution explain that orderly succession? Yes.
    ===

    First, we need to be careful with this word "explain." In the case of evolution, it does nto explain the fossils *very well*. The fossil record is characterized by abrupt appearance of increasingly complex forms, followed by long periods of stasis. In many cases there is no known evolutionary pathway, in any sort of detail, leading to these rapidly appearing species.

    But evolutionists do not hold their theory to a very high standard. They routinely claim that evolution explains all this, in spite of the problems. We could also say geocentrism explains what we observe in the sky. But there are problems.

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  193. Evolution is simply a religious belief system hidden behind scholarly scientific terminology. If evolution, with its strong armed guardian, 'survival of the fittest', is so spot on accurate, please explain to a whelp like me why a fish, transforming into a mammal, isn't immediately eaten by stronger swimmers in the water, or better runners on land. Survival of the fittest demands that, because the transforming species would become among the weakest in both venues, water and land, it must necessarily be killed off by stronger predators.
    Now, someone may come up with some creative, scientific psychobabble to explain away this pillar of evolutionary thought, but in the end the answer must be, "you know, I can only explain it in scientific hyperbole, but certainly not in a way that's air tight or even somewhat convincing."
    Well I can; atheistic macro evolution is a theory and a bad one at that. It is nothing more than the hope of the hopeless. And what a hope! Look, If evolution is correct this is what you get: you get to live a meaningless, valueless life that has no way of redeeming the past or hoping for the future. You get to live 70, 80 maybe 90 years, contributing time, sweat and tears creating and investing in endeavors that meant something to you only to have you die and turn into meaningless dust forever. No doubt the purest of top soil.
    Because God didn’t created you -- He won’t receive you back again -- and your life will have been nothing more than an exercise in futility. Isn’t that ultimately the Evolutionary Gospel? No God to tell you what to do; no God to set rules and regulations for your benefit and care; no God to pray to in times of trouble; and no God to sacrifice His own Son to take away the sins you probably never committed anyway. Sounds great! As for me, I'd much rather be an ignorant dope, stupid enough to believe God loves him and has a plan for him both here and in the here-after, then to be an intellectual giant in his own mind who is so prideful that even the stars of heaven or the whirling of the earth aren't convincing enough proof that God exists and created all things. Look, if the human eye, the most complex lens in the entire world, is not enough to convince you there’s a designer behind the design than nothing in life will. As for me, not only do I believe that God created me -- I believe He loves and cares for me. So call me what you want: idiot, ignoramus, moron. In the end it only matters what God calls me and He calls me son.
    I pray this summation has had a positive effect on at least one atheistic evolutionary supporters. If not, that’s okay. I’m only told to give the good news not convince you of it. If your still convinced of atheistic evolution I can only close with this heart felt denouement: enjoy your life, because, for you, it will only end in death.

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  194. Professor Hunter,

    ===
    Well I did not imply that, if that is what you mean.
    ===

    I didn't mean to attribute that implication to you, but to the evolutionists in your statement.

    ======
    ===
    Regarding my second point--are you content that if linkage is legitimate, then your argument has no force (is irrelevant)?
    ===

    I don't understand why this is true. Are not evolutionists guilty of bad science that is motivated by metaphysics, regardless? Their hypocrisy seems to be a natural outcome of their position.
    ======

    If linking is legitimate, then the evolutionists' objection to linking is dismissed, so their hypocrisy is irrelevant and so is your work to expose their hypocrisy. Your assertion of hypocrisy is a defense against the evolutionists' objection to the linkage by creationists of religion and science.

    The fact that evolutionists so often attempt to use demarcation arguments tells us where the battle is. This seems to indicate that we need to thoroughly discuss demarcation, including why the evolutionists' demarcation arguments are invalid.

    Hypocrisy is irrelevant to the discussion of evolutionists' bad science, which is the meaty issue. However, with the frequent appeal to demarcation by the evolutionists, I think that it's worthwhile to be able to answer it in order to get past the demarcation obstacle.


    ===
    I don't view the demarkation problem as very fruitful or interesting. It seems to be mainly an exercise by rationalists to exclude empiricists from science.
    ===

    So, how do you answer appeals to demarcation? By ignoring them?

    ======
    ===
    Why not argue that the linkage may be legitimate? That seems more interesting and potentially fruitful.
    ===

    Two things. First, evolutionists are in no position to seriously contemplate the relationship between metaphysics and science.
    ======

    Maybe some philosophers who are also evolutionists might be--e.g., Bradley Monton. Maybe some philosophers (some of whom might even be evolutionists) might be able to make the points clear. I am certainly willing to participate in such a discussion.

    ===
    "Second, I'm concerned that this linkage you are interested in exploring is too complicated for me, and probably for many others."
    ===

    Or perhaps you think it uninteresting to readers. One might offer hypotheticals that don't automatically produce hypothalamic responses in readers. For instance, suppose that a distant star were to begin blinking in Morse Code by means of intensity changes, "I am sending you this message. God." Couldn't that phenomenon be studied by scientists? Or might we discuss why methodological naturalism is/isn't a ground rule of science?

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  195. Cornelius,
    "No, what is metaphysical is to claim that the non randomness in the fossil is expected only by evolution. In therapeutic testing, upon observing a correlation between the treatment and the response (ie, a non random effect), you cannot then conclude that no other treatment could achieve the effect."

    The problem is that they are not actually saying that. They are reporting the results of an empirical test the same way thousands of others have done so. In your example the authors might say "If our treatment was not effective we would not expect these results." Is this really a metaphysical statement? How in the world would you read into that a statement that no other treatment could achieve the same result?

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  196. Joe G the retard said about a million times...

    Strange that there STILL isn't any evidence that an accumulation of genetic accidents can construct a functional multi-part system.


    Joetard, do you hang out at the airport and scream at the pilots and flight attendants who just deplaned "There STILL isn't any evidence that heavier-than-air flight is possible!!!" too?

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  197. Joe G the retard said...

    Yes I owe it to my children to get the atheistic bullshit theory of evolution tossed out of public schools- or put into a class that discusses failed ideas


    Evolution isn't atheistic JoeTard, it's non-theistic. Just as all scientific theories are non-theistic, and say nothing about any God or Gods. BTW I thought the Intelligent Design Creationism you are pushing to replace ToE with isn't supposed to be about religion.

    I guess since you've come out of the closet and admitted to being a Biblical literalist who believes in Adam and Eve and baraminology, there's no sense carrying on your "I'm not religious" charade.

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  198. CH wrote:

    In #1, we have only one trial. The result is a non random, orderly, fossil pattern. What does it mean? There is no scientific basis for concluding that if evolution is false, there would be no such order. But such claims go back centuries in the evolution literature.

    But we're not talking about just any orderly fossil pattern. Again, the quote is…

    "If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected."

    Note the lack of the word, "any" from that sentence - as in "any orderly change" An intelligent agent can make different choices based on a wide range of situations, goals and many other factors that change over time.

    Again, the problem comes when we attempt to take the theory of ID seriously as an explanation for the concrete biological complexity we observe.

    For example, on one hand, ID supposedly make no claims about who or what the designer is. But on the other hand, ID claims that nature is insufficient to explain the class of life we observe. However, the observations strongly suggest life has been evolving for billions of years. This represents far more than just an abstract class of life. This represents a number of concrete species that appear with concrete features, over a concrete span of time.

    For example, the genus Homo appeared around 2.5 million years ago. If nature cannot account for this concrete change, at this concrete time, then how does ID account for it? It's at this point that an abstract designer is insufficient

    If the designer is represented by a civilization, even our limited recorded history has shown that civilizations can fall in relatively short amount of time. Given that life has been evolving for billions of years, could a single civilization exist that long? If so, could it exist without significant changes that would effect the kind of order that appears from it's designs? Even if it keeps essentially the same goals, the civilization's technology, moral views and leadership would change, which is likely to effect the order of it's designs.

    If the designer is represented by a species, 98% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. Should a species avoid extinction by actively controlling it's evolution, the species is changing itself. Again, these changes could easily impact the sort of order that would appear from that species' design.

    So, unless ID is willing to step up to the plate and move from an abstract designer, which could include these or many other scenarios, then we have no good reason to expect the sort of concrete order we observe.

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  199. Thornton:
    Random mutations are only part of the core, and selection is the other core part.

    Wow! Did I touch a raw nerve. I now recognize that, in retrospect, my describing random variation as the "core" of the theory of evolution was a poor choice of words.

    It did not reflect my thoughts at the time, which was that evolution is a two-step process.

    Step one is the variation, which is the prerequisite for step 2.
    And step two is the selection.

    step 1 + step 2 = core

    I'm still amazed at the religious ferver with which I was corrected. I just wasn't aware that it is written in stone that I must always include the selection part.

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