Best op-ed yet: "The E Word" — The Panda's Thumb (Legacy Archive)

Extra kudos to Ben Fulton of the Salt Lake City Weekly for his perceptive op-ed piece, “The E Word.” Many op-eds have pointed out that “intelligent design” is simply creationism with a new coat of paint, that ID proponents are trying to “cut in line” and get ID into the public schools before it gains scientific acceptance, that there is no ID research program, no “ID theory”, and that it is really all one big misguided exercise in conservative evangelical Christian apologetics.

However, Fulton puts his finger exactly on the point that really drives most of us science fans at PT:

Just imagine that, for every question you presented to someone in power, they answered with the words, “We don’t really know. It’s a mystery.” Now imagine if you or your child asked a question about the origin of the human species in a science class, only to have a learned instructor tell you, “We don’t really know. It’s a mystery.” Would anyone dare call that education?Ben Fulton, “The E Word,” Salt Lake City Weekly

232 Comments

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

I have no problem with teaching evolution in school and am not an advocate of teaching ID (although I always had an optional lecture on cosmological ID when I was a prof.) However, I do not share your enthusiasm for Fulton's journalistic skills. If he were on the other side, he just as easily could have written:

Now imagine if you or your child questioned the prevailing view in science class, only to have a learned instructor tell you, "We're not even going to discuss that, what I am presenting is fact, not theory." Would anyone dare call that education?

Jari Anttila · 10 February 2005

...“We don’t know,” a director of the Intelligent Design-oriented Discovery Institute’s Center for Science recently told Newsweek. “It’s a mystery.” And some people call talk like that “education.”

Just in case FL will come into this thread, don't forget to ask him if he still insists that ID is not mysticism.

Soren K · 10 February 2005

To David:

Now imagine if you or your child questioned the prevailing view in science class, only to have a learned instructor tell you, "We're not even going to discuss that, what I am presenting is fact, not theory." Would anyone dare call that education?

Firstly I cannot see the relevans to the op-ed. As I see it it argues the opposite - that we should try to find answers - and explain those to the children.

If a teacher for no reason refused to discuss a childs questions - it would be a bad teacher.

If the child said for instance - "why are there no intermediate fossils" the teacher should explain that there are - for a fact - plenty of intermediate fossils. That is answer the question - never refuse (unless they are silly og irrelevant).

Jari Anttila · 10 February 2005

“We’re not even going to discuss that, what I am presenting is fact, not theory.”

Maybe too rude. But how about this? : "We’re not going to discuss that here on this level, because what I am presenting is the consensus of experts far more experienced than we are".

jonas · 10 February 2005

Soren,

actually I was the witness of a positive example for a similar situation when I was at high school several decades ago. When a fellow student, who had obviously on the receiving end of a lot of nationalist rhetoric, complained he did not believe some sources on the terror of the Nazi regime we were reading, our teacher did not silence him with 'Wise up, the facts say otherwise!', although he would have been technically correct in doing so. Instead he walked his student through a good part of the evidence contradicting historic revisionism. This took quite some time but has definitely been worth the effort.
I can not imagine a scientist who would not wish for a similar reaction in a biology teacher teaching evolution, as scientists in general do believe that the current theories are the best available and are the accepted ones for good reasons - a view they would surely like to impress on pupils taking science classes. This of course will not spare students fom having pointed out to them that their criticism of a well founded theory is probably ludicrous, and the sources it is founded upon outdated and/or untrustworthy, as doing so just to comfort the children or their parents would be patently dishonset.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

But you know, the "it's a mystery" quip is an unfair shot at IDers. Until recently, in graduate level physics classes, if you asked what happened before the big-bang, you would get essentially the same answer. (Now you get something more sophisticated, but still untestable.) And I have been told several times in this blog that the origin of life is outside the province of evolution, so in effect there is a threshold that is not crossed even in a die-hard evolution course. It seems to me that if I taught evolution I would want to tackle the predictions of ID head-on, rather than dismissing through Fulton's tired caricature. For example, I would guess that ID predicts that the earliest life is already fairly complex. What does evolution say? What is the evidence? (I'm asking pedagogically/rhetorically -- not looking for a debate.) Or the irreducible complexity. What kind of answer is "the majority of respected scientists say it's not so?" Why not charge into the fray? I can tell you, so far, in terms of this debate carried out at the level of intelligent non-experts, the IDers beat you hands down. Behe's arguments, in my estimation, are much more compelling that the counter arguments I have read (again, at the popularized level). For example, on the evolution blog I once read:

The fact that every part in its current form is needed for the machine to function in its present context does not imply that every part has always been necessary in every ancestral organism in which it appeared. In other words, as biologist H. Allen Orr first pointed out, you could have the following scenario: Initially you have a simple system performing some function. Later a part gets added that improves the functioning of the system, but is not necessary. Later still, a change to the original system renders the added part essential. The result will be a system that formed gradually, yet satisfies Behe's definition of irreducible complexity.

Not exactly a rebuttal that reeks of being on firm scientific footing. I guess I am trying to say that you do a disservice to your own cause and to education in general if you demonize your opponent (even as they demonize you.) To me, the best way to respond would be to answer their criticisms about things like irreducible complexity, convergence, insufficient time, the complexity of the earliest life, reemergence of extinct species, etc., rather than making fun of them and then teaching the same-old same-old. After all, you'd be teaching the same science you want to teach anyway, and in a manner that would be engaging, and in a manner that would address the critics.

Charlie Wagner · 10 February 2005

Just imagine that, for every question you presented to someone in power, they answered with the words, "We don't really know. It's a mystery." Now imagine if you or your child asked a question about the origin of the human species in a science class, only to have a learned instructor tell you, "We don't really know. It's a mystery." Would anyone dare call that education?
— Ben Fulton

This touches on what has always been a sore point with me, the reluctance of science to admit that they don't know and the need to make up just-so stories or to offer unsupported explanations to fill in the missing information. When I was a young teacher, I went to visit another school and I was talking to the science teacher. A little girl came up to us and showed the other teacher a rock she had found. "What kind of rock is this, Miss Smith?" the student asked. Miss Smith thought for a second and then replied "it's an igneous rock". The little girl skipped away to tell all her friends. I turned to the teacher and I said "why did you tell her that? You have no idea what kind of rock that is, nor do I". She replied (and I'll never forget this) " I had to tell her something. I'm her teacher and she expected me to have an answer". I also remember when I was a little boy in Catholic school in Brooklyn. I was a "W", so I was always seated in the window row, last seat. I spent hours being fascinated by the pictures of the planets lined up along the walls depoicting what they looked like. And the very last one, right next to my seat, was Pluto, it's surface covered with ice and there in the middle of the picture, a wooly mammoth, with icicles hanging off it's tusks. Obviously, an accurate description of what could be found on a cold planet like Pluto. These experiences shaped my skepticism about the proclamations of scientists. They constantly are making up these stories to explain what they don't know because the public "expects them to have the answers". I posted my very first message on talk.origins on July 26, 2000. Here's what I wrote:

I have been involved with this debate for nearly 40 years and after millions of words read, spoken and written in a variety of books, articles, forums and conversations I have reached the conclusion that the horrible truth of the matter is that we just don't have a clue as to where the universe and the life that's in it came from. It seems to me that it's time to end this ridiculous bickering and be brave enough to admit this simple truth. All we have is speculation, your speculation and my speculation. That's what makes the argument interminable and absurd. It's gotten to the point where I know in advance, every argument that will be made by either side at almost any time. Nothing really new is ever offered because there is nothing new. The proof that we don't really know is proven by the fact that the argument continues on. If either side had convincing evidence, everyone would have packed their bags, folded their tents and gone home long ago. We also have to face the dismal possibility that we will never really know. At least not in the forseeable future. Insofar as I can see, there's not a shred of credible evidence to support the idea that mutation and natural selection are the mechanisms by which life progresses from its beginning (if indeed it had a beginning) to its present state. There's also not a shred of credible evidence that there exists a supernatural being that created the universe and all the life in it. So, we must analyze why the debate goes on. If it's just to generate discussion and thought provoking ideas, then it probably has some value. So, newcomers on both sides come into the discussion fresh and full of piss and vinegar, hoping to convince others of the truthfulness of their thoughts on the matter. But they're surely travelling down roads that have already been traversed by countless others. All of the ideas have been thought of before, all the arguments have been made and almost no one has changed their minds. But those of us who have been over and over and over these matters countless time can clearly see that it will probably never be resolved. That is, until science can clearly and definitively advance a believable mechanism by which life has "evolved" or until God almighty himself comes down from heaven and proclaims authorship. I'm not holding my breath waiting :-) So let's be brave about this and admit (gasp!) the horrible truth. No one alive today has a shred of credible evidence to support either of these two paradigms. And I defy anyone to prove otherwise.

Duane Wysynski · 10 February 2005

David,

But you know, the "it's a mystery" quip is an unfair shot at IDers. Until recently, in graduate level physics classes, if you asked what happened before the big-bang, you would get essentially the same answer.

The big difference is that ID is content to rest on that conclusion, while cosmology is not. In the former case, the real answer is not "it's a mystery" but "a Creator did it." Only the 'hows' are supposed to remain a mystery. In the latter case, the follow up to "we don't know" is "but we are trying to find out." It does not invoke an entity that uses an unknowable process. Maybe, at some point, science may conclude that it simply cannot know certain things. But there is no branch of science content to proclaim "it's magic" and feel satisfied that an answer has found.

Colin · 10 February 2005

This touches on what has always been a sore point with me, the reluctance of science to admit that they don't know and the need to make up just-so stories or to offer unsupported explanations to fill in the missing information.
— Wagner

It shouldn't be a sore point, because it's not true. Scienctists don't need to admit that "they don't know" because they do know many of the things you are ignorant of; when they don't know, the answer isn't to wallow in ignorance but to find the answer. That, again, for the millionth time, is the failure with ID. It cherishes ignorance and denies knowledge for ideological reasons. As for your first post, it seems that you haven't taken the intervening time to educate yourself.

All we have is speculation, your speculation and my speculation. That's what makes the argument interminable and absurd.
— Wagner

That's not true. It's extremely dishonest to pretend that "all we have is speculation." All that creationism has is speculation; science has a massive quantity of evidence, available in almost any library. The evidence of evolution and the theory that explains it is verified constantly by scientists and researchers in both practical and theoretical applications. That evidence is not defeated by your ignorance of it, no matter how stubbornly you cling to it.

Nothing really new is ever offered because there is nothing new.
— Wagner

That is also patently untrue. I learn about new discoveries and theories just from this website alone, not to mention other sites, articles, and books. Even creationists, who cannot make new discoveries, refine their rhetoric and tactics. Something new is happening all the time, whether it's in a laboratory or a Cobb County courtroom or a Kansas schoolboard meeting.

If either side had convincing evidence, everyone would have packed their bags, folded their tents and gone home long ago.
— Wagner

Again, that is untrue and ridiculous. Creationists are not interested in discovering scientific truth; evidence of evolution is at best meaningless to the devout. The point of creationism is to confirm the accepted teleology and theology, not to discover something new. There is no evidence that would convince the religious radicals who comprise the core of creationism. Similarly, since neither YEC nor ID make any attempt to provide actual evidence for their ideas, it would be strange to expect scientists to wallow in ignorance in deference to their rhetoric.

Insofar as I can see, there's not a shred of credible evidence to support the idea that mutation and natural selection are the mechanisms by which life progresses from its beginning (if indeed it had a beginning) to its present state.
— Wagner

This, again, is your failure, and it is no excuse to ask other people to eschew reason or logic or the love of discovery. Your ignorance is not a compelling argument for anything.

That is, until science can clearly and definitively advance a believable mechanism by which life has "evolved" or until God almighty himself comes down from heaven and proclaims authorship.
— Wagner

One of those things has happened. There is no "or"; the fact that science has advanced the mechanism does not preclude God eventually proclaiming his authorship. The dichotomy you suggest simply does not exist. Most evolutionists are religious, in fact; they simply cleave to a less radical form of faith.

No one alive today has a shred of credible evidence to support either of these two paradigms. And I defy anyone to prove otherwise.
— Wagner

It has been proven. Exhaustively proven. Creationists refuse to accept the proof, however, for ideological reasons. I believe that they are the same reasons that lead creationists to insist that there are two seperate and exclusive paradigms. Unfortunately, the effect of this ideological commitment to dogma is to perpetuate ignorance. Insofar as creationists confine that ignorance to themselves, I am critical and disappointed but not about to do anything about it. The problem that exercises so many people here and elsewhere is that the ideology is outwardly-directed; the goal now is to foster ignorance on schoolchildren to perpetuate a narrow dogma. In other words, you aren't defying someone to prove evolution to you, you are trying to prevent teachers from showing evolution to, for instance, Kansas school children. I agree, the debate is tired and draining. It is deeply depressing that so many people so dearly cherish their refusal to learn that they are committed to spreading it; the evangelism of ignorance. What drives the debate on the part of the rest of us is that we believe that education and discovery are important, and we are unwilling to allow zealots and extremists to destroy the values of critical thinking and objectivity that empower those things.

David Margolies · 10 February 2005

David Heddle wrote

"But you know, the "it's a mystery" quip is an unfair shot at IDers. Until recently, in graduate level physics classes, if you asked what happened before the big-bang, you would get essentially the same answer. (Now you get something more sophisticated, but still untestable.)"

The ID people would seem to say "It is a mystery and we have to accept that we can never know". (Perhaps I am wrong about that but I have never heard anything else. I would be happy to see examples that differ -- this is in regard to the nature of the designer, the motives of the designer, and the reason certain design choices were made. Indded, I would be happy to hear exactly what is designed and what not.) Contrast this with "we do not know because we have not figure out how to test hypotheses, but you can look here for speculation on the answer", which seems to me to be the more likely scientific answer.

DH: "And I have been told several times in this blog that the origin of life is outside the province of evolution, so in effect there is a threshold that is not crossed even in a die-hard evolution course."

This is just silly. Assuming this happens, the teacher is not covering material in a course because it is outside the scope of the course. "That is abiogenesis rather than evolution and this is an evolution course where it is assumed life exists and the focus is on how life developed after it can into existence. There is a great deal written about abiogenesis: look here and here etc. But we do not have time to discuss it in this course."

DH: "It seems to me that if I taught evolution I would want to tackle the predictions of ID head-on, rather than dismissing through Fulton's tired caricature. For example, I would guess that ID predicts that the earliest life is already fairly complex. What does evolution say? What is the evidence? (I'm asking pedagogically/rhetorically -- not looking for a debate.)"

Yeah, but where are these exact predictions. You are "guessing" what ID predicts (and I gather there is not a paper by you on this subject 8-). But is there a paper with these predictions spelled out? ID material I am familiar with are either philosophical (how conceptually to recognize design) or how evolution fails, but nothing on "if ID were true, we would see this". It is a bit much to expect the teacher to assume the role of an IDer and come up with predictions just to shoot them down. (We are talking high school here remember.)

DH: "Or the irreducible complexity. What kind of answer is "the majority of respected scientists say it's not so?" Why not charge into the fray? I can tell you, so far, in terms of this debate carried out at the level of intelligent non-experts, the IDers beat you hands down. Behe's arguments, in my estimation, are much more compelling that the counter arguments I have read (again, at the popularized level). For example, on the evolution blog I once read:"

[And a quote with no real link -- the link is to evolution blog, not to a specific article, and I could not find the quote searching on the current display.]

I do think it is unfair to grab something someone once said about something -- in who knows what context -- and present it as the strongest statement available against a soundbite. One can say about IR: Behe asserts structures are IR, but presents no proof and ignores all research trying to answer the question he poses [one reference out of many Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller]. And say "In this high school course, let us start with what mainstream biologists believe. I will present a reading list for people interested in this question and if we have time after the material we need to cover has been done, we can discuss some of these issues..."

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

David Heddle pretends to forget what we are talking about (as he has done before)

But you know, the "it's a mystery" quip is an unfair shot at IDers. Until recently, in graduate level physics classes, if you asked what happened before the big-bang, you would get essentially the same answer. (Now you get something more sophisticated, but still untestable.)

Graduate level physics classes, huh? How ... irrelevant. I thought were talking about middle school and high school biology classes. Are scientists advocating the teaching of pre-Big Bang theories in high school? Are pre-Big Bang theories relevant in any meaningful way to understanding and appreciating physics as its taught at the high school level? We know the answers to my questions, David, and so do you. Based on your comments to this blog in the past, I have zero reason to trust your opinion as to the scientific merits of any theory. My impression is that your religious beliefs (some sect of Christianity that you insist is not fundamentalist) cloud your judgment in this area. You speak as if the existence of your deity is a scientific fact. You have never successfully articulated why "ID theory" is scientific and why it amounts to anything more than an argument from ignorance that invokes mysterious alien beings to explain phenomenon that you and others are "impressed" by (and which many primitive humans were also impressed by, hence their creation mythos, holy books, and "magical" rites, which some modern humans accept as scientific fact!). Are you ready to do that today, David? Have you formulated your argument? And I am betting that you want to avoid this issue (a losing one for you, as we have seen over and over again) and turn down the road and argue instead that theories for the origin of life are untestable. Take my advice: don't waste your time. 100 years of awesome science under the critical eye of (admittedly not too sharp) folks like you, thousands upon thousands of research papers, predictions confirmed in the most profoundly beautiful ways, doesn't lie. Evolution is a fact. Stories about mysterious alien beings with awesome (but undefined) powers belong in comic books, not in public school science classes.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

David Margolies, you completely missed the boat, assuming, I think, that I was being confrontational. Anyway, you wrote:

This is just silly. Assuming this happens, the teacher is not covering material in a course because it is outside the scope of the course. "That is abiogenesis rather than evolution and this is an evolution course where it is assumed life exists and the focus is on how life developed after it can into existence. There is a great deal written about abiogenesis: look here and here etc. But we do not have time to discuss it in this course."

I agree it is not a perfect analogy, but the point stands, and has been made many times, that no matter how much you reject a inexplicable beginning ultimately all present theories encounter one. Why argue with the IDers on their basic premise?

Yeah, but where are these exact predictions. You are "guessing" what ID predicts (and I gather there is not a paper by you on this subject 8-). But is there a paper with these predictions spelled out?

No, no paper by me, I am not a biologist. But I have seen papers, for example, on Hugh Ross's website. One was "Origin-of-Life Predictions Face Off: Evolution vs. Biblical Creation" by a Dr. Fazale Rana. It had a table of ID predictions. I can't provide a link, because then my post gets rejected by some draconian PT filter. But you'll find it via Google. [And a quote with no real link --- the link is to evolution blog, not to a specific article, and I could not find the quote searching on the current display.] You say it as if I am intentionally being disingenuous. But once again, the posting cyber-czar would not allow the permalink---I think because it has underscores. Anyway, it is from a post entitled Discovery Institute Responds to Derbyshire on Wednesday, 12 January, 2005. I want to avoid yet another ID/evolution battle in this thread. My comment is that you can achieve your aims (assuming evolution is correct!) and win the political battle. Instead you choose to stand toe-to-toe with red-state America, a formidable foe.

Mumon · 10 February 2005

The biggest problem is that ID proponents take answered questions, and assert --- usually through laziness or raw ignorance --- that no answers exist, and then substitute their flaky, empty, non-explanation of "Poof, ID did it." The origin of 'information' is one prominent example --- this core ID argument, stretching back to Charles Thaxton in the 1980's, is that evolution can't create new information.

As an comm. systems engineer, I've always been shocked that these guys can repeat this canard.

I mean, I can create the model that refutes them in my sleep.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

GWW,

Today I refuse to be dragged down to your level. I regret the level of sarcasm that I have sometimes used. If you continue to insult me, I will leave and never come back. No because it hurst ny feelings, but because it wastes my time. Do you think you can engage in a discussion without getting personal? Do you have in in you?

Steve Reuland · 10 February 2005

It seems to me that if I taught evolution I would want to tackle the predictions of ID head-on, rather than dismissing through Fulton's tired caricature. For example, I would guess that ID predicts that the earliest life is already fairly complex.
— David Heddel

ID doesn't make any predictions. You cannot predict anything about living organisms or natural history if all you are saying is that "design occurred" without further elaboration. There is no reason to suspect that the earliest life would already be complex. It would be equally consistent with ID if it were simple and the designer added onto it from there. Or if there were no early life and it all appeared recently. Or anything else you can imagine.

What does evolution say? What is the evidence?

The evolutionary view is that complex organisms have arisen from simpler ones. We would therefore expect that simpler life forms occurred first followed by more complex ones. And that's what we see. Prokaryotes appeared first, then about a billion years later the first eukaryotes appeared. Then after a billion or so more years the first multicellular life appeared, and so on. Of course there is some legitimate room for disagreement over what exactly "more complex" means, but the order of apperance fits evolutionary predictions.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Even if there are no predictions (I have referred to at least one paper) why not say, "The IDers say convergence is a problem for us. Let's look at some of the examples they give (the salamander and some fish with the same type of eyes) and discuss how this happened via evolution." You would still be teaching science but would be able to say that, like all good scientists, you are addressing criticisms of the theory. Where is the downside?

David Margolies · 10 February 2005

To David Heddle:

I do not know if you are being confrontational. I did not consider myself to be confrontational. I still think it is silly to suggest that material outside the scope of a course should be discusses in detail within a course.

I do not know how the filter works. Let us see if this one gets through. The "Origin-of-Life Predictions Face Off: Evolution vs. Biblical Creation" by a Dr. Fazale Rana link is on this web site:

www.reasons.org/

at this location:

resources/fff/2001issue06/index.shtml#origin_of_life_predictions_face_off

(i.e. concatenate those two locations.)

the explicitly creationist predictions are:

1. Life appeared early in Earth's history.
2. Life appeared under harsh conditions.
3. Life miraculously persisted under harsh conditions.
4. Life arose quickly.
5. Life in its minimal form is complex.

I am not impressed. 1 seems to be wrong according most dating schemes I am familiar with. 2 is ill posed (harsh = what?). 3 is untestable absent creation of life in a modern lag. 4 is ill-posed (quickly = what, and also Life is well defined? -- that is how if that different from naturalist explanation?). 5 is perhaps ok, though complex = what? and how could this be tested?

So no, considering these questions in a high school course is a waste of time (problems are a lot of knowledge is necessary for the answers to be meaningfully discussed even if the predictions were properly posed.)

David Margolies · 10 February 2005

Okay, now we know that you can add web addresses as text (requiring cutting and pasting to follow a link but that is easy enough) because I just did it (see my previous post).

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

I knew that would happen: (1) There are no predictions (2) Here are some predictions (3) Those predictions suck. It's a cousin of (1) ID is not science because it doesn't publish and (2) ID doesn't publish because it is not science.

So okay, forget predictions, since you'll never agree that what they call predictions are in fact predictions. As per my previous post, what's wrong with putting, say, two weeks in the syllabus where you address criticisms of evolution? Think of the political capital, and, as I said, you'd be teaching science. And equipping the students to answer the criticisms.

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

David Heddle threatens

If you continue to insult me, I will leave and never come back. No because it hurst ny feelings, but because it wastes my time.

Just answer the questions, David. If you can't answer the questions, then just suck it up and ADMIT that I am right about the emptiness and comic book nature of "ID theory" and it's inappropriateness for public school science classrooms. Why can't you admit that, David? Grow up and learn to admit that you are wrong. It's not the end of the world if "ID theory" is unscientific garbage suitable for religious philosophy classes and not public school biology classes. Or do you disagree, David? Is it your view that if you admit that I am right that you are going to hell? I'll stop taking you to task for your dissembling here when you start facing the music. Unlike some trolls around here, I suspect (indeed, I HOPE) that you have the threshold intelligence to know the difference between a scientific fact and fantasy (whether religiously inspired or not).

Do you think you can engage in a discussion without getting personal?

If you want impersonal discussions than stay on your blog and sign all your posts with "STAFF" like the chicken-hearted liars at the Disclaimery Institute. Recall that you wrote the following:

But you know, the "it's a mystery" quip is an unfair shot at IDers.

I can think of very little in the way of responses to the "ID theory" peddlers that is "unfair" and certainly equating the claim that "the designers of all the life on earth are mysterious alien beings" with "it's a mystery" is about as fair as it gets. If humans were spontaneously created out of nothing and the first one looked around at the animals and never saw a single one reproduce, that theory might be compelling. That is not reality, though, is it David? Let me know if you disagree. Let me know if you think that you were spontaneously created, David. I'm guessing you were born, just like I was. And I'm guessing that you didn't get all your DNA from your mom. You talk about "wasting time" but read my previous two paragraphs. How pathetic is it that such things need to be pointed out to you? Is it impossible for you to anticipate these straightforward facile responses? I doubt it. That's why the term "dissembler" is an appropriate one to describe the rhetorical games that you enjoy playing. The sleazy way in which those peddlers have pushed Johnsonite Christianity down the throats of your so-called "red staters" is as despicable as it is exhaustively documented. Or are you willing to deny that fact as well, David? Are you going to stand up for the integrity of the "Staff" at the Discovery Institute and the drones in their robot army (e.g., Casey Luskin)? And if not, then what are you doing, as a self-described intelligent adult, sitting in the dugout with people who are demonstrably ignorant or dishonest? Is it because the peanuts are fresher or what?

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

GWW,

Ask me a question, I don't know what question I am refusing to answer. Go ahead, if you ask (without insulting) I will do my best to answer.

Emanuele Oriano · 10 February 2005

Mr. Heddle:

Once again you show that, by leaving words undefined, one can pretty much make them say whatever one wants.

(1) There are no predictions. (2) Here are some "predictions". (3) Those are NOT predictions. Try again.

Those are NOT predictions because they are chock full o' undefined terms. What does "early" mean? What does "harsh" mean? what does "quickly" mean? What does "complex" mean?

Those sound suspiciosly like Nostradamus "prophecies", which have many merits, including flexibility, but are definitely not science.

RBH · 10 February 2005

The best example I've seen of ID "predictions" was described by Salvador on ARN:

To clarify what "deal breaker" menas, and just so you know where I stand, IDist and creationists have had the following lines of argument: 1. hierarchies do NOT exist in molecular taxonamies therefore ID is true 2. hierarchies DO exist in molecular taxonamies therefore ID is true 3. hierarchies simultaneously DO and do NOT exist in molecular taxonomies therfore ID is true

How's that for covering the territory? RBH

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Emanuele, go read the entire paper. Maybe the terms are defined. That was just one table from the article. I didn't read the paper, just saw that it contained predictions. I just did a quick search for "intelligent design predictions" and found it.

Joe Shelby · 10 February 2005

" I had to tell her something. I'm her teacher and she expected me to have an answer".

I agree that this was a rediculously lousy answer. The right answer would have been to teach the girl a little bit on how to research. Show her a book of rocks, let her describe the rock in terms of color, texture, etc, then flip through the pages with her to find all the ones that seem to come close. finally, start looking at the finer details and rule out option by option until only one answer remains, the right one. *sigh* something so simple, science...

David Margolies · 10 February 2005

David Heddle wrote:

"I knew that would happen: (1) There are no predictions (2) Here are some predictions (3) Those predictions suck. It's a cousin of (1) ID is not science because it doesn't publish and (2) ID doesn't publish because it is not science."

But those prediction DO suck. And they are not ID predictions: they say nothing at all about what we would see in living things today and essentially nothing at all about what the fossil record would show (modulo the meaning of "complex" but isn't any organism with cells "complex", because if so, no prediction about what the fossil record will look like).

Does evolution make predictions? Tons of them, many relating to life living today (how will frogs arrange themselves on the edge of a pond containing a predator, do certain members of a herd sacrifice themselves delibrately for the good of the herd, reproductive organs and behavior change more slowly than other organs and behavior, won't find humans in same strata with dinosaurs, etc. etc.)

I just cannot believe you think the referenced predictions do not SUCK.

And if you read the rest of the referenced paper, well it is just not good biology. Why do we not have predictions about life today and the fossil record from Behe, Dembski, etc.?

DH: "So okay, forget predictions, since you'll never agree that what they call predictions are in fact predictions. As per my previous post, what's wrong with putting, say, two weeks in the syllabus where you address criticisms of evolution? Think of the political capital, and, as I said, you'd be teaching science. And equipping the students to answer the criticisms."

First of all, I wish people would say "The purpose of this high school course is to make students familiar with the current theories of modern biology." That is a worthwhile goal. Would that we did it.

The problem with two weeks on criticism is who would design it and what would it say. Where you have two real competing scientific theories (and just look at geology in the 20th century for a whole bunch of competing theories surviving simultaneously), you have deep, positive papers and deep counterarguments, and eventually one side or the other prevails (in the geology case, at least). In evolution you have deep positive papers, and deep counterarguments about details and aspects, but criticisms (if you mean ID theory) that amount to God of the gaps which do not acknowledge existing research and arguments about theories no longer widely subscribed to and misstated arguments based on misunderstanding (I am thinking of Wells's book -- embryo identity no longer subscribed to, moth coloration misunderstood).

I know this is confrontational and you do not want to get into another ID/evolution argument, but your proposal requires that someone design two weeks of criticism of evolution (more than Here is what we do not yet know variety, which would be a reasonable thing for a couple of days) and that requires the existence of serious criticism which has been fully argued.

Behe in his NYT article said there is no research on the origin of flagella. When confronted later, he admitted that there was but he felt it was inadequate. So why did he say there was none? He has been told about it repeatedly since DBB was published. And you want this guy's ideas taught in High School?

Emanuele Oriano · 10 February 2005

Mr. Heddle:

I DID read the article. Some numbers are given, but no formal definition is there, as far as I can tell. This holds especially true for the "logical" derivation of the "predictions" from the premises.

By the way, said premises are the book of Genesis, not a scientific theory of any kind. Maybe it was written before the IDers decided to pretend ID was not religious in nature.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Actually, even if I were a die-hard IDer, I would rather have good evolution teachers than lousy teachers sympathetic to ID (unlike you guys, I am not worried about indoctrination.) At the moment, my son's science class is horrible -- read this chapter, answer these questions, etc., etc. No wonder so many kids hate science.

plunge · 10 February 2005

David H:

"Behe's arguments, in my estimation, are much more compelling that the counter arguments I have read (again, at the popularized level). For example, on the evolution blog I once read:
The fact that every part in its current form is needed for the machine to function in its present context does not imply that every part has always been necessary in every ancestral organism in which it appeared. In other words, as biologist H. Allen Orr first pointed out, you could have the following scenario: Initially you have a simple system performing some function. Later a part gets added that improves the functioning of the system, but is not necessary. Later still, a change to the original system renders the added part essential. The result will be a system that formed gradually, yet satisfies Behe's definition of irreducible complexity. Not exactly a rebuttal that reeks of being on firm scientific footing. "

Look, I'm trying to take you seriously here, but I'm going to have a hard time if you seriously think that Behe's arguments are as compelling as the responses. Behe makes strong claims like that IC systems by definition cannot have functional intermediaries. Scientists demonstrate over and over that all the structures he complains about do, in fact, have functional intermediaries. So how is that not on good footing? He made a strong claim, one that can be refuted even in pure argument. Scientists do him one better: they refute the argument AND point to all the studies that Behe claims "don't exist" discussing how biochemical systems evolve. How is that not a powerful rebuke of Behe's core claims?

Rupert Goodwins · 10 February 2005

But you know, the "it's a mystery" quip is an unfair shot at IDers. Until recently, in graduate level physics classes, if you asked what happened before the big-bang, you would get essentially the same answer. (Now you get something more sophisticated, but still untestable.) And I have been told several times in this blog that the origin of life is outside the province of evolution, so in effect there is a threshold that is not crossed even in a die-hard evolution course.
— David Heddle

Biogenesis isn't part of evolution, and neither is planetary formation or nuclear synthesis. You have to draw the line somewhere, and since evolution is the study of the nature of living things it makes a certain amount of sense to limit it thusly. As it happens, I don't believe anyone has a problem with discussing naturalistic theories of biogenesis with creationists - just not in the context of defending evolution. "Evolution can't explain the start of life" is a common battlecry. "No. That's chemistry's job" is the proper refrain. "Want to talk about chemistry?". As for the 'it's a mystery' - you can then ask a scientist "how do you propose exploring it?" and expect a cogent answer. Even if it is massively impractical, there will be some approach to handling the problem through standard science that can at least be treated as a thought experiment - and who knows, next year it'll be better than that. I've never, ever seen an ID'er who'll even engage with the question "what does this tell us about the designer? How would you find out?". That lots of people were thinking about the "what happens 'before' the Big Bang" issue is evidenced by the fact that now, there are some plausible ideas floating around. Testable comes later. That's OK. They're thinking about that, too. The ID'ers are not doing science. It is impossible to pretend that they are just for the sake of arguing with them. Imagine you come across a man pouring concrete in a field: you ask him "What are you doing?", to which he replies "Planting wheat to feed my family". How do you explain to him that his family will go hungry if you're not allowed to say that concrete isn't cereal? (Now imagine that this man is in charge of the State Department of Agriculture, and his friends - the ones with the concrete factories - are on the school boards. Still feel like going along with him?) R

DougT · 10 February 2005

David H.: Mind if we don't forget predictions for a moment? Consider your sequence of events:

(1) There are no predictions (2) Here are some predictions (3) Those predictions suck.

Do recall that #1 in your sequence initially referred specifically to ID, that completely secular, neutrally scientific theory that is silent on the nature of the designer(s). The paper presenting the predictions under discussion looks very traditionally creationist to me, and includes lots of references to Genesis. I have seen several references on various threads to the notion that traditional creationism has made predictions (though no vouching for their quality), whereas ID has not. I would suggest that the predictions that you have presented here are not predictions of ID.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Plunge,

Oh, like it or not, Behe's arguments are packaged much more cleverly. The argument you just gave, at least in words, sounds like an ad-hoc house of cards. It may be just that their marketing is better--and of course I have some bias. (Being a Christian, I "want" to see design, and I do in cosmology-- in biology I am ambivalent) But for what it is worth, Behe's description of four-hundred proteins, etc. etc. is, to me, much more compelling.

Even the language renders your example weak, for it is steeped in the passive voice. "Later a part gets added" by what mechanism? "A change renders the added part essential" By what means? What caused the change?

This is independent of who is right.

Look, I have biases, and so do you. I don't know if you can (I'm pretty sure I can't) but try to imagine that you have no opinion and then look at the way Behe presents IR and your explanation--I don't think there is even a contest.

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

As per my previous post, what's wrong with putting, say, two weeks in the syllabus where you address criticisms of evolution?

Can anyone believe that a college-educated adult could sincerely ask such a question in 2005? Remember, folks, David Heddle -- an allegedly college-educated physicist who convinced himself in high school that the world's biologists were deluded -- vehemently claims that he is not a "fundamentalist" (fundamentlists don't like him, he claims, because he's not anti-gay bigot). Isn't that interesting? But I wonder if anyone can tell me how many weeks the Wahabis in the Middle East spend teaching evolutionary biology to their children? And how many weeks do they spend teaching that a awesomely powerful being for whom there is no scientific evidence created all the life on earth? And I wonder why religious people in the United States agree with the Taliban's views on evolutionary biology? Do they find their agreement with the Taliban in this regard comforting and reassuring? Many Christians in this country don't find that agreement comforting. For example, Catholics don't. Many Christians agree with what the experts have found after more than a century of some of the best scientific research ever conducted in the history of mankind. Catholics and many other Christians scoff at the notion that the teaching of evolutionary biology threatens their faith. Some so-called evangelicals also realize that the Johnsonite Christian sect and their followers have strayed far from the teachings of their number one prophet. NEARLY EVERY ADULT HUMAN IN THIS COUNTRY rejects the idea that a myterious group of alien beings has visited the earth repeatedly during the course of the last several billion years and created all the earth's life forms. I would be very skeptical of any position shared by the Taliban and a tiny tiny group of loud-mouthed cranks inspired to play scientist by a sleazy fundamentalist lawyer (even it weren't the case that the vast majority of the world's scientists agreed that a contrary explanation was a scientific fact). Does anyone have the guts to propose a possible explanation why Christian religious fundamentalists (who very rarely blow themselves up intentionally) and Islamic fundamentalists (who very rarely blow themselves up intentionally) might share the same dim view of evolutionary biology? Is it that the same genes which predispose people to be religious fundamentalist also endow them with superior scientific minds? Or did some mysterious alien being just make religious fundamentalists smarter than the vast majority of the world's scientists? Who is willing to step up to the plate? It seems to me that the religious fundamentalists in Kansanistan and other parts of the US have a lot of catching up to do if they want to beat the Middle East education system with respect to biological science.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Rupert wrote:

That lots of people were thinking about the "what happens 'before' the Big Bang" issue is evidenced by the fact that now, there are some plausible ideas floating around. Testable comes later.

That [testablility] is not at all clear, in all the cases I know of one must first toss out General Relativity in order to come up with a possible (let alone practical) experiment. It may be that very sophisticated theories that cannot be falsified are still preferred over "God did it," but they still represent a change in our view of what is science. Doug T,

The paper presenting the predictions under discussion looks very traditionally creationist to me, and includes lots of references to Genesis.

Unlike many IDers on here, I acknowledge that ID is based on religion. To me it is absurd to say otherwise. So I would say they are ID predictions, but that Ross and his minions are more honest in that they don't deny the religious underpinnings. Now, to be sure, Ross (and I'm guessing all his colleagues) are old-earthers, even though they make references to Genesis. Just like Ross (but on a smaller stage) I often do battle with the YEC types.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

GWW,

If the ID position was really such a minority position, as I think you are implying, if I can extract from your nonsense the germ of what you are trying to say, (if anything,) then there would be no political battle. The problem is not that a vocal but tiny minority is against evolution, but rather a sizable fraction of voters and taxpayers.

Don't yell at me about that, that's just the way it is.

Ed Darrell · 10 February 2005

David Heddle said, many posts back:

But you know, the "it's a mystery" quip is an unfair shot at IDers. Until recently, in graduate level physics classes, if you asked what happened before the big-bang, you would get essentially the same answer. (Now you get something more sophisticated, but still untestable.) And I have been told several times in this blog that the origin of life is outside the province of evolution, so in effect there is a threshold that is not crossed even in a die-hard evolution course. It seems to me that if I taught evolution I would want to tackle the predictions of ID head-on, rather than dismissing through Fulton's tired caricature. For example, I would guess that ID predicts that the earliest life is already fairly complex. What does evolution say? What is the evidence? (I'm asking pedagogically/rhetorically -- not looking for a debate.)

No one in ID will make a claim that ID makes such a statement, though, David. That's the problem. When exactly that scenario was laid out for the Texas State Board of Education, the ID press releases squealed that ID was being unfairly slammed, because ID does not predict that early life is already fairly complex. It doesn't predict anything, because there is nothing there. But predicting nothing means that however your debating opponent characterizes your argument, you can claim he's being unfair. You're saying, in effect, that ID DOES make some predictions, and that no ID advocate would be so low as to deny that. You overestimate the ID advocates.

Russell · 10 February 2005

Even the language renders your example weak, for it is steeped in the passive voice. "Later a part gets added" by what mechanism? "A change renders the added part essential" By what means? What caused the change?
— Heddle

I don't think there's any question that Behe has been a masterful salesman of his snake-oil. I concede that his arguments appear to be more persuasive to Joe Sixpack than do the tedious explanations required to debunk them. But the fact that more people read the National Enquirer than, say, Scientific American does not mean that the latter should try to emulate the former. But now, specifically with respect to your example. Let's be specific, if we can. Where is "later a part gets added" in any serious discussion of evolution? Isn't it more typical to see discussion of gene duplication, exaption, that sort of thing? And as opposed to Behe's "later a part gets added... By Magic!"

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Ed,

No one in ID will make a claim that ID makes such a statement, though, David

What do you mean that nobody will make such a statement? It was in the paper I reffered to and is in the table of predictions (from that paper) that David Margolies posted above: 5) Life in its minimal form is complex. I've seen variants on ID sites that do not mention Genesis, such as here: http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1156 where a prediction is "rapid appearance of complexity in the fossil record." another prediction is, more or less, that there is no such thing as "junk" DNA.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Russel wrote:

Where is "later a part gets added" in any serious discussion of evolution?

I didn't pull that phrase out of the air, it was in the blurb used by plunge (comment #15743 above) as an example of a rebuttal of Behe's IC. It comes from your side of the aisle.

I don't think there's any question that Behe has been a masterful salesman of his snake-oil. I concede that his arguments appear to be more persuasive to Joe Sixpack than do the tedious explanations required to debunk them.

If you think it is only Joe Sixpack, meaning uneducated bumpkins, you are mistaken. And that is probably a large part of your PR problem, this assumption that any smart person would automatically agree with you. I would say that Behe's IC is persuasive to many (what percentage, I have no clue) educated non-experts.

Jari Anttila · 10 February 2005

David Heddle:

But you know, the “it’s a mystery” quip is an unfair shot at IDers.

No it isn't because IDers are ignoring the evolutionary explanations according to which the things they still call "mysteries" are not mysteries any longer. Philip E. Johnson: "In science, as in other fields, you can't beat something with nothing". How true. Charlie Wagner:

(a lot of depressing and nihilistic rhetorics against the subject he teaches) ....The proof that we don’t really know is proven by the fact that the argument continues on. If either side had convincing evidence, everyone would have packed their bags, folded their tents and gone home long ago.

That's exactly what the "controversy" -advocates are trying to make the public believe. Raise a controversy by protesting something and then say: "Hey, see how this topic is controversial; it wouldn't be if they had convincing evidence".

..there’s not a shred of credible evidence to ... until science can clearly and definitively advance a believable mechanism by which life has “evolved” or

Remember: never ever tell them what would qualify.

until God almighty himself comes down from heaven and proclaims authorship.

But this would be much easier, wouldn't it? Scientists can never ever present to you any "credible, etc." evidence, because nothing in empirical science is credible enough for a dedicated nihilist, but a divine revelation would close the case conclusively.

Pete Dunkelberg · 10 February 2005

Or the irreducible complexity. What kind of answer is "the majority of respected scientists say it's not so?" Why not charge into the fray? I can tell you, so far, in terms of this debate carried out at the level of intelligent non-experts, the IDers beat you hands down. Behe's arguments, in my estimation, are much more compelling that the counter arguments I have read (again, at the popularized level).
— David Heddle

The Behe nonsense is the prime example of how ID is not just an argument from ignorance, but an argument from manufactured ignorance. Irreducible complexity is a normal expected result of evolution. Behe fails Biology I. Try talkdesign.org for starters. So you find Behe's rhetorical arguments convincing? This is a sound reason not to teach ID in school, except as something to debunk. Understanding that science is not rhetorical argument is a very important part of understanding what science is.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Jari,

You missed the boat too, and just regurgitated the same-old stuff. I have not been defending ID, and you'll never win hard-core IDers. What I have been saying is stop wasting time arguing that their premise of miraculous creation and design is faulty. Don't even argue that they are not science. Simply say (in the curriculum) here are the things that ID says are problems for evolution. Let's take a couple weeks to examine them. You might put the political argument to rest, for the sides are fairly evenly drawn, as far as I can tell. Winning over, via accommodation, a few percentage points of popular opinion, while still teaching science, would seem to be a win-win.

Frank J · 10 February 2005

Nice article, but what we need to do is get rid of is the "D-word," or "Darwinism." Although the late Dr. Mayr is quoted as saying that he found nothing wrong with "Darwinism," his definition is surely "Darwinian evolution." Anti-evolutionists, however, have something else in mind, and are especially fond of the "ism" part because it suggests a philosophy. They use the D-word as a catch-all weasel word to avoid confronting the specifics, be it common descent, speciation, natural selection, even abiogenesis. No other word, not even "theory," is so manipulated by anti-evolutionists. For 6 years now, I have been insisting that we'd be better off if we (all defenders of evolution) just stop using that word entirely. And from what I read, Charles Darwin would agree.

I know that it won't be that simple, especially when dealing with skilled wordsmiths like William Dembski, but every now and then we could simply stop anti-evolutionists in their tracks with: "Say what you want about 'Darwinism,' and come back when you are tired of playing with the strawman and want to discuss evolutionary biology."

RBH · 10 February 2005

David Heddle suggested

Simply say (in the curriculum) here are the things that ID says are problems for evolution. Let's take a couple weeks to examine them.

And which part of the requirements enumerated in state science standards shall they not teach in order to do that? With school districts being graded on how well students perform on standardized tests constructed against those standards (with real and sometimes draconian consequences attached to that performance), the ID BS is a bloody waste of class time. RBH

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

Heddle writes

If the ID position was really such a minority position, as I think you are implying,

Do you believe that most Americans agree that a group of mysterious alien beings have visited earth repeatedly over the last several billion years and dumped all of the earth's life forms, which they designed and created? Is that your belief, David? Don't be as afraid to say yes or no to this as you are to answer all of the other questions I've asked you today. And please, no more weeping today about "insults". We've used up the tissues on some Grade A trolls (who, uncoincidentally, share your views about evolution).

if I can extract from your nonsense the germ of what you are trying to say, (if anything,) then there would be no political battle.

Is this the same David Heddle who wept in his comment up above that he was tired of "wasting time"? And now it would seem that this allegedly college-educated adult is trying to convince me that political controversies only exist when large numbers of people on two sides of an issue have reasonable arguments. Maybe you were created spontaneously, David. Maybe you were born yesterday.

If you think it is only Joe Sixpack, meaning uneducated bumpkins, you are mistaken.

Thanks for the reminder, David. We wouldn't want to forget about all the "intelligent" college-educated religious nutcases who will Lie for Jesus, castrate themselves, and drink cyanide-laced kool-aid if their preachers tell them to do it. Just so we're clear David: is it your position that if a majority of religious people have a critical view about something, then scientists have to pretend that they might be right, or else? That seems to be what you're advocating. Because, for the hundredth time, your arguments that the elementary principles of evolutionary biology are suspect, and your arguments that "ID theory" is scientific have been shown OVER AND OVER AGAIN to be complete baloney. One more time: your arguments have been debunked here over and over and over again. To the extent that you refuse to acknowledge this fact, you are by definition (1) deluded, (2) ignorant or (3) a lying creep who can't admit he's wrong. It's that simple, David, and whether you have 1 million or ten million or a 100 million fundamentalist Christians and Muslims on your side does not change the fact that you are wrong. What if Kansanistan schools decide to teach "ID theory" to children? You're still wrong and "ID theory" is still a bunch of garbage and Behe and Demsbki and Johnson remain dishonest charlatans and you remain one of the disgustingly arrogant rubes who joined them as they wiped their rear ends on their own holy books and a centuries worth of solid scientific research.

I would say that Behe's IC is persuasive to many .. educated non-experts.

As is John Edward's ability to talk with departed loved ones. Just ask Larry King! Of course, none of these people can defend "ID theory" as science without looking like jackasses, just like you can't David.

plunge · 10 February 2005

Heedle
"The argument you just gave, at least in words, sounds like an ad-hoc house of cards. It may be just that their marketing is better---and of course I have some bias. (Being a Christian, I "want" to see design, and I do in cosmology--- in biology I am ambivalent) But for what it is worth, Behe's description of four-hundred proteins, etc. etc. is, to me, much more compelling."

But this is exactly what makes me doubt your sincerity. Behe is making a STRONG case: one that he claims is true, BY DEFINITION. Strong cases are easily undone by simply pointing to single flaws in their reasoning, no matter how general. Even the simple, vague quote does that, and does it in such a way that Behe's point collapses. This is not a matter of opinion, but one of logic.

And the fact is, that vague case has been made specific countless times in every one of the structures Behe claims is IC. What becomes obviously unfair is when you compare a critique of his general idea to one of his specific examples (i.e., whatever "400 proteins" reffers to).

"Even the language renders your example weak, for it is steeped in the passive voice. "Later a part gets added" by what mechanism? "A change renders the added part essential" By what means? What caused the change?"

But this is obvious. Each functional part then is subject to a range of variation. Natural selection weeds out all but those with similar or increased functionality, and so on. It DOESN'T pre-suppose any _particular_ overall goal (which is why Behe and Dembski's probability calculations are so utterly bogus), just various steps of increasing functionality. It's the exact same process everyone is familiar with. And we've watched it happen in the lab countless times. In fact, most papers that describe this happening can't even get published in evolutionary journals because this result is so pedestrian.

Again, the main thing scientists don't get is why anyone finds Behe compelling at all. In the case of blood clotting, for instance, Doolittle has not only worked out plausible ways that the system could have evolved step-by-step, but even done some amazing work in trying to show that it did, in fact, happen via those steps (which is not easy given that there are rarely any simple records of what the intermediate steps were). It's only by totally denying the existence of such work that Behe even has any room to blather on about IC.

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

David Heddle, the master dissembly, talks out of both sides of his mouth again:

I have not been defending ID

and then

Simply say (in the curriculum) here are the things that ID says are problems for evolution.

If ID is pure garbage (which it is and now you claim that you are not even willing to defend it) then why should any time be spent on the "the things ID says are problems"? This makes no sense at all. Again, do sincere humans with college educations write the kind of sentences that David Heddle writes? Or do they look more like the sort of rhetoric you'd see from a dissembling liar trying to push a religious agenda? Does David Heddle have a religious agenda that he's trying to push? Of course we know he's deeply religious and we know he belongs to some sort of ill-defined "Christian" sect which he is very very quick to point out is "not fundamentalist".

Look, I have biases ...

Oh look, he's essentially already admitted that he can't discuss the subject objectively. Could it be because, like all fundamntalist religious types, he considers his deity to be a scientific fact? David, who do you think created and designed all the life forms that ever lived on earth and approximately when did that occur? Can you answer that question honestly for us?

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Pete, You are also missing the boat. This is not a thread about ID v. evolution, but rather, in effect, how terrible you guys are in dealing with the public. Your response is a thinly veiled "we are very smart, and if you don't agree with us, you're an idiot." Not a good way to make your case. Because Behe comes across as smart, while you come across as petulant. You wrote

Irreducible complexity is a normal expected result of evolution.

Who would that convince? That is supposed to counter, to a non-expert, Behe's arguments? You need to do better. You can stomp your heals and say Behe is ignorant, (which only makes it sound as if you have no real argument,) but I see a tenured Ph.D. at a more-than-decent university. I don't see someone who is likely to be stupid.

So you find Behe's rhetorical arguments convincing? This is a sound reason not to teach ID in school, except as something to debunk. Understanding that science is not rhetorical argument is a very important part of understanding what science is.

Yes, I find them more convincing than anything that I have seen, as a scientific non-expert, in the popular literature. Much more convincing than a dogmatic statement "Irreducible complexity is a normal expected result of evolution". RBH

And which part of the requirements enumerated in state science standards shall they not teach in order to do that? With school districts being graded on how well students perform on standardized tests constructed against those standards (with real and sometimes draconian consequences attached to that performance), the ID BS is a bloody waste of class time.

I doubt any modifications would be required. If you started off a class by saying "IDers claim convergence is a problem for evolution" and then proceed (assuming you can) to show why it isn't, you'd be teaching evolution, not ID. And even if it did require slight mods, your point is a red herring. GWW's questions

Do you believe that most Americans agree that a group of mysterious alien beings have visited earth repeatedly over the last several billion years and dumped all of the earth's life forms, which they designed and created?

No, I don't believe that most Americans believe that.

Just so we're clear David: is it your position that if a majority of religious people have a critical view about something, then scientists have to pretend that they might be right, or else?

No, not a majority of "religious" people. But if a large number of taxpayers/voters believe something, then you'd be foolish (actually, you are being foolish) to cop an attitude that we scientists have inalienable rights to do our research with public funding. When I was on staff at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, we had to get up and leave a room if the public outreach people needed it for a demo for middle school kids. Some of the physicists would grumble that physics should come first. They were wrong. The public pays the bills and to treat them as morons is not a good strategy. I think those were the only questions, the rest was just your usual bilge. Plunge wrote

But this [being a Christian] is exactly what makes me doubt your sincerity

I love that argument too, and that will get you far in the red states. Are you saying it is impossible for a Christian to be an objective scientist?

Again, the main thing scientists don't get is why anyone finds Behe compelling at all. In the case of blood clotting, for instance, Doolittle has not only worked out plausible ways that the system could have evolved step-by-step, but even done some amazing work in trying to show that it did, in fact, happen via those steps (which is not easy given that there are rarely any simple records of what the intermediate steps were).

(You need, at least, to say "most scientists" because I am a scientist and one exception disproves your generalization.) Well, okay, why not say, at just a few junctures, "Behe has used IC to argue that blood clotting could not have arisen through evolution, let's see how he is wrong" and then smile and say to the public that you are addressing ID criticisms? No harm no foul. GWW again

David, who do you think created and designed all the life forms that ever lived on earth and approximately when did that occur? Can you answer that question honestly for us?

Yes I can answer that. I believe God is the primary creator. I also believe that God uses secondary causes. For example, He doesn't move the planets around micron by micron. Gravity does that. By why do we have the right law (inverse-square) of gravity? Because the universe has the correct number of expanding dimensions. God made that call. So I believe He created all things, including life, but I am not adverse to evolution as a secondary cause, like gravity. That would be so-called theistic evolution. When? Whenever the fossil record says so---what is it now, a few hundred million years after the earth formed? By the way, GWW, you took my admission of biases as precluding me from being objective. In the strictest sense, that's true. But I'd be amazed if even you were to claim that you bring no presuppositions to the table. One more thing, GWW, a piece of advice I know you'll ignore. Stop using the word "dissembler" and its derivatives in virtually all your posts. I think it must even be boring even your compatriots by now.

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

Here's an article about a nice little editorial in the Washington Times, a Moonie-run paper. Remember Jonathan Wells, the sick liar for the Discovery Institute and notorious "ID theory" peddler? He's a Moonie, too, and has admitted that his Moonie beliefs inspired him to take a dump on biologists.

Feb. 9, 2005 -- Marian Kester Coombs is a woman who believes America has become a "den of iniquity" thanks to "its efforts to accommodate minorities." White men should "run, not walk" to wed "racially conscious" white women and avoid being out-bred by non-whites. Latinos are "rising to take this country away from those who made it," the "Euroamericans." Muslims are "human hyenas" who "smell blood" and are "closing in" on their "weakened prey," meaning "the white race." Blacks, Coombs sneers, are "saintly victims who can do no wrong." Black solidarity and non-white immigration are imposing "racial revolution and decomposition" in America.... Marian Kester Coombs is married to Francis Booth Coombs, managing editor of the hard-right newspaper The Washington Times. Fran Coombs has published at least 35 of his wife's news and opinion pieces for his paper, although his relationship to her is not acknowledged in her Times bylines.

Disgusting lying sickos. There is no other word for them. I guess a creationist might call their theories "controversial." Calling them anything else would by hypocritical. Remember, these are the people whom David Heddle and his fellow evolution-bashers at the Disclaimery Institute suggest we listen to. These are the people whose "scientific" criticism of evolutionary biology we are supposed to take seriously. Why? Because they outnumber us. That's David Heddle's reasoning, not mine. Or perhaps David is referring to some passage in his holy book where his deity said "tell as many lies as possible and they all will be forgiven as long as the number of worshippers is increased." Which is it David? http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?aid=10 And before you reach for your tissues, David, ask yourself: why didn't you post this first? When's the last time you wrote a post deriding the disgusting dissembling of Jonathan Wells on behalf of his irrefutably bigoted Moonie cult? Why are the pro-science folks here more anxious than the deity-worshipping "ID" apologists to leap to defend good Christians from having their messiah smeared by bigoted religious jerks?

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Question for all: Are you guys on the evolution side embarrassed by GWW? If I were on your side, I would suspect him of being a ID plant whose purpose was to make us look bad.

Jari Anttila · 10 February 2005

David:

What I have been saying is stop wasting time arguing that their premise of miraculous creation and design is faulty. Don’t even argue that they are not science. Simply say (in the curriculum) here are the things that ID says are problems for evolution. Let’s take a couple weeks to examine them.

So, in that context everything that has been said about ID's premises, its scientific validity, or anything, is immaterial;

You might put the political argument to rest, for the sides are fairly evenly drawn

the material aspect being that because ID has so much popular (not scientific; sides are definitively not evenly drawn) support, we cannot ignore it. Sorry, but this is nothing but politics.

Russell · 10 February 2005

Russel wrote: Where is "later a part gets added" in any serious discussion of evolution? I didn't pull that phrase out of the air, it was in the blurb used by plunge (comment #15743 above) as an example of a rebuttal of Behe's IC. It comes from your side of the aisle.
— David Heddle

No, I'm not comparing off-hand remarks to a weblog with carefully written and edited books. That's what I meant by "serious". And "my" side of the aisle? Hey, I thought you were on our side: that ID is not science and should not be taught as such.

If you think it is only Joe Sixpack, meaning uneducated bumpkins, you are mistaken.

No, I don't mean uneducated bumpkins. (We nonRepublicans don't think of "Joe Sixpack" as a derogatory term ;) I mean folks who are the victims of bad science education. The push to make science education still worse seems designed (perhaps intelligently?) to accelerate that downward spiral.

Aggie Nostic · 10 February 2005

Just imagine that, for every question you presented to someone in power, they answered with the words, "We don't really know. It's a mystery." Now imagine if you or your child asked a question about the origin of the human species in a science class, only to have a learned instructor tell you, "We don't really know. It's a mystery." Would anyone dare call that education?

That sums up my concern -- namely that by pre-judging whether something is "knowable" apriori, we necessarily pick and choose what to research. If someone believes that our understanding of the cell is complete and that the rest of it is "unknowable," how likely is it that they are going to encourage (or fund) further research in that field? It's one thing to say something is "unknown." That's an observation on the current state of affairs. However, it's an entirely different thing to assert that something is "unknowable." From a philosophical perspective, it's a universal statement that requires all knowledge. From a practical standpoint, it's a recipe for discouraging inquiry.

Aggie Nostic · 10 February 2005

Just imagine that, for every question you presented to someone in power, they answered with the words, "We don't really know. It's a mystery." Now imagine if you or your child asked a question about the origin of the human species in a science class, only to have a learned instructor tell you, "We don't really know. It's a mystery." Would anyone dare call that education?

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Jari:

the material aspect being that because ID has so much popular (not scientific; sides are definitively not evenly drawn) support, we cannot ignore it. Sorry, but this is nothing but politics.

Exactly. And you ignore it at your own risk. It doesn't work to say "we scientists are above all that." Not when you feed from the public trough. Thems the breaks.

PvM · 10 February 2005

Question for all: Are you guys on the evolution side embarrassed by GWW? If I were on your side, I would suspect him of being a ID plant whose purpose was to make us look bad.
— David

Yes I am embarrassed. So is Ed Brayton

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

So David, which of these do you consider scientific facts and which do you consider are statements of your religious faith? 1)I believe God is the primary creator. 2)I also believe that God uses secondary causes. 3) He doesn't move the planets around micron by micron. Gravity does that. 4)the universe has the correct number of expanding dimensions. God made that call. 4)I believe He created all things, including life 5) theistic evolution. 6)When? Whenever the fossil record says so

Stop using the word "dissembler" and its derivatives in virtually all your posts. I think it must even be boring even your compatriots by now.

I'll stop using it when I stop seeing it.

you took my admission of biases as precluding me from being objective

Answer the questions above and we'll see how objective you are. Oh, and my friend Bob wants the microphone for a second, David. He really likes your kind of "thinking" : Hi, my name's Bob. I make my living on selling cigarettes. I don't know how to do anything else. I have heard there is some evidence that smoking causes cancer. But not everyone that smokes get cancer and no one has actually observed a lung cell in a human turning into a cancerous cell just because it was exposed to some inhaled tobacco smoke. SO i'm skeptical about that smoking causes cancer theory. It has nothing to do with me being a cigarette salesman and that being the sole basis for my livelihood. I'm just skeptical, understand? Maybe lung cancer is caused by some mysterious alien being who wants some people to die of lung cancer. What, you think my argument about why I don't believe that smoking causes cancer stinks? Oh, well, that's just your opinion. Me and a million other people who enjoy smoking are going to make sure that the crappy data linking smoking to cancer stinks. Oh, and I have a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering so I know something about science. I'm not just some moron.

Jari Anttila · 10 February 2005

David:

This is not a thread about ID v. evolution, but rather, in effect, how terrible you guys are in dealing with the public.

Of course we are. That's because the really trained part of ID doesn't deal with the origin of life, etc. but with the brainwashing of the public.

Your response is a thinly veiled “we are very smart, and if you don’t agree with us, you’re an idiot.”

No. We are not that smart, which is just the reason why it's fairly safe for us and the kids we teach to trust to the majority of the smart people who devised the current paradigm in the last 140 years.

Russell · 10 February 2005

Question for all: Are you guys on the evolution side embarrassed by GWW? If I were on your side, I would suspect him of being a ID plant whose purpose was to make us look bad.

Yes, that occurred to me. Whether or not that's the intent, if I were a creationist attempting to convince my school board of the Evil nature of the Evilutionists, I might quote GWW.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

GWW asked

So David, which of these do you consider scientific facts and which do you consider are statements of your religious faith? 1)I believe God is the primary creator. 2)I also believe that God uses secondary causes. 3) He doesn't move the planets around micron by micron. Gravity does that. 4)the universe has the correct number of expanding dimensions. God made that call. 4)I believe He created all things, including life 5) theistic evolution. 6)When? Whenever the fossil record says so

1) faith 2) faith 3) science 4) science (correct number of dimensions) faith (God made the call) 4) faith 5) both 6) science Jari:

Of course we are. That's because the really trained part of ID doesn't deal with the origin of life, etc. but with the brainwashing of the public.

I think your answer points to part of the problem. Where is the gain by calling IDers "brainwashers."

No. We are not that smart, which is just the reason why it's fairly safe for us and the kids we teach to trust to the majority of the smart people who devised the current paradigm in the last 140 years.

I am not sure what you mean. But any humility must be weighed against the fact that many of the comments on here do sound like "we are smart, and our opponents are idiots."

Colin · 10 February 2005

I think your answer points to part of the problem. Where is the gain by calling IDers "brainwashers."
— Heddle

It recalls the deceptive and dishonest political and rhetorical tactics of creationists, and highlights the scientific paucity of their arguments. It may be argumentative, but it reminds us that creationists have a political and ideological, rather than scientific, goal, and that their methods reflect this.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Colin,

The point is, being argumentative is precisely what is damaging to your cause. At least in my opinion.

Douglas Theobald · 10 February 2005

Or the irreducible complexity. [....] I can tell you, so far, in terms of this debate carried out at the level of intelligent non-experts, the IDers beat you hands down. Behe's arguments, in my estimation, are much more compelling that the counter arguments I have read (again, at the popularized level). For example, on the evolution blog I once read:
— David Heddle

The fact that every part in its current form is needed for the machine to function in its present context does not imply that every part has always been necessary in every ancestral organism in which it appeared. In other words, as biologist H. Allen Orr first pointed out, you could have the following scenario: Initially you have a simple system performing some function. Later a part gets added that improves the functioning of the system, but is not necessary. Later still, a change to the original system renders the added part essential. The result will be a system that formed gradually, yet satisfies Behe's definition of irreducible complexity.
— evolution blog

Not exactly a rebuttal that reeks of being on firm scientific footing.

Well then, that's disturbing. The problem is, the explanation given above is scientifically correct. In the interest of crafting a more accessible and compelling presentation of the explanation for the evolution of IC structures, why is the above 'evolution blog' text not convincing and "weak"? Could the reason you think IDers "beat [us] hands down" simply be that it's much easier to not understand something than to take the laborious and tedious time necessary to understand it?

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

David Heddle -- who is an apologist for the ID peddlers, in case anyone isn't paying attention -- writes:

Where is the gain by calling IDers "brainwashers."

Let's put it another way David: where is the gain by pretending that "ID theory" is a "controversial new explanation for the origin of life on earth"? Note the question: where is the GAIN? Show me the gain, David. Show me what is to be gained by treating slippery apologists as if you have discovered some serious "problem" with evolutionary biology. Is it the same "gain" that John Kerry achieved in the last election by ducking in August 2004 from the Swift Boat Liars? Is that the "gain" you are referring to, David? Have you done some poll testing, David, to show that there is something to be gained by pretending that "ID theory" isn't pure unadulterated HORSESHITE? If you can't show me the gain, then shove it. And how about you Pim? You seem to sympathize with David Heddle's weeping. What do your polls say about the best strategy for motivating a scientifically illiterate public to recognize when a proposed "scientific" theory is actually pure garbage that is peddled by perpetually lying jerks? And by the way, god forbid that any of those "red-staters" stumble on PZ Myers blog and discover that he's on the "Board of Directors" here. Goodness gracious, then they'll say that there is an atheist anti-religious agenda behind the Panda's Thumb. But wait -- they are saying that anyway and will say it regardless of whether I refer to religious fundamentalists as the scourge of civilization on a daily basis or not. And they will say it even if I smooch David Heddle's lily white (educated guess) behind and tell him that "while I disagree, I appreciate the respectful nature of your comments". Any doubts about this? If so, don't hesitate to articulate the reason for those doubts. I know there are many many many people who appreciate my comments here. How do I know that? Because I see my sentiments and tone echoed throughout the blogosphere on a weekly basis, at least. And my perception is that this confident no-holds-barred pro-science anti-ID anti-redefining-of-science-by-fundies position is being heard and echoed outside the blogosphere as well. And there is no reason not to be confident. When has any group ever been more right about a fact than biologists are about evolution and the bogusness of "ID theory"?????? Finally, if anyone here is willing to defend Rev. Moon, gay bigotry, racism, anti-science, and/or the spread of religious fundamentalism, please speak up! I'd hate to think I was part of something that is different from what I thought it was.

Douglas Theobald · 10 February 2005

Heddle-

Part of the beauty of internet discussion boards is that you can just ignore certain posts and/or posters. You don't have to get mad and respond, just ignore them with "cruel" indifference and selectively address those who are interesting and reasonable.

Colin · 10 February 2005

Mr. Heddle, I understand the value of persuasion. The most important point to make is that science should not be a political process, however; I can't bring myself to care that scientists don't put on a good show because they shouldn't. They should let the evidence do the talking, and if the audience can't or won't comprehend, then the failure is not in the message, but in the audience. Science is not a political process, and this shouldn't be a rhetorical battle.

I also concede what (I assume) will be your next point - that whether or not it should be a rhetorical contest, that is what it actually is today. But we shouldn't let it be fought out on that level. Scientists are constrained by the evidence, which is complex and boring and hard to present to laypersons. Creationists are deeply dishonest and willing to fudge the facts to fit into fun soundbytes ("Goo to you via the zoo!") in order to sway those same laypersons. Science can't win by refining its rhetoric - it has to keep insisting that this is not a battle of soundbytes or debating style, but of evidence and methodology. It's the only way honest science can prevail, and the only way that it should prevail.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

No Douglas, the problem is that the explanation from evolution blog does not sound like science at all. It sounds like "let's throw a few sentences together to counter IC." It may be right, I don't know, but it sure isn't compelling as presented.

I honestly think that you would have to be predisposed to evolution to grant any sort of substance to this explanation.

FL · 10 February 2005

Op-ed writer Fulton wrote,

"Intelligent designers," as they're called, can't explain how their "designer" creates new species. "We don't know," a director of the Intelligent Design-oriented Discovery Institute's Center for Science recently told Newsweek. "It's a mystery." And some people call talk like that "education."

With this paragraph in mind, Jan says,

Just in case FL will come into this thread, don't forget to ask him if he still insists that ID is not mysticism.

Well, ID is not inherently "mysticism", period, just as it was established earlier that ID is not inherently "religion." (1) Compare the above quoted paragraph with a couple statements by evolutionist Massimo Pigliucci in his article "Where Do We Come From" (Skeptical Inquirer, Sept-Oct 1999). Regarding the question of origin-of-life, Pigliucci in the article openly accepts chemical evolution and rejects "special creation" as the explanation by which life originated on Earth. However, in the course of doing so, he also plainly wrote (page 23):

First, it has to be true that we really don't have a clue about how life on Earth (his emphasis) originated by natural means.

and he also wrote:

Consequently, it may be that the only rational position for the time being is simply a provisional and salutary "I don't know."

Now, Jan, compare those "I don't know" evolutionist comments to the quoted "We don't know" comments from the DI. Are you therefore prepared to conclude that evolution is also "mysticism" on this basis of "don't know"? If not, then there's no reason to conclude that ID is mysticism on said basis either. Wouldn't you agree? (2) One can always ask (regarding the issue of "mysticism") the same question that I asked about "religion" concerning Wm. Dembski's simple 3-point ID hypothesis:

1. Specified complexity is well-defined and empirically detectable. 2. Undirected natural causes are incapable of explaining specified complexity. 3. Intelligent causation best explains specified complexity.

That question is, "please show me where any part of this 3-point hypothesis specifically requires or pre-assumes mysticism". (Please also provide a standard dictionary definition of mysticism so we have can have a common ground there). FL

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

Heddle writes

The point is, being argumentative is precisely what is damaging to your cause.

Is that why you troll here? To argue with us and damage our cause? Do you want to damage our cause? If not, then why do you argue here? Honesty is appreciated, as always. I'm also still digesting your claim that you believe in theistic evolution (like several of PT's contributors). It seems odd, to say the least, that you would claim to believe in what scientists have learned about life on earth and simultaneously argue that kids should be taught "two weeks" of "ID criticisms" of evolution, as promoted by folks who clearly do not believe what the scientific community considers established facts. I mean, it's odd in the abstract. It's not that odd that YOU would say such things. It's par for the course for you. But it's just weird. Really really really really weird. Just out of curiosity, do you take the same position with respect to gay bigotry? If parents want their kids taught criticisms of gays in health class in public schools, then so be it? Regardless of what the facts are? Just curious. I take no position on whether gay people are entitled to equal rights in this country. After all, I wouldn't want to offend an someone who read these comments and decided we were a bunch of ivory tower elitists trying to push the gay lifestyle on everybody.

Douglas Theobald · 10 February 2005

No Douglas, the problem is that the explanation from evolution blog does not sound like science at all. It sounds like "let's throw a few sentences together to counter IC." It may be right, I don't know, but it sure isn't compelling as presented.
— Heddle

You didn't really answer my question -- you've simply restated that it doesn't "sound" scientific and that it's not compelling to you. I'll restate: why is the above 'evolution blog' text not convincing and "weak"?

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Douglas wrote:

Part of the beauty of internet discussion boards is that you can just ignore certain posts and/or posters. You don't have to get mad and respond, just ignore them with "cruel" indifference and selectively address those who are interesting and reasonable.

Good advice, but I find it so hard to follow. I think it's my upbringing on the inner city of Pittsburgh-I'm always looking for a good fight. Colin I am mostly in agreement---and I wish it were so---but of course this is not Plato's republic. Science always has to wage a PR battle, as unsavory as that may be. Now, I have been saying what I hoped you guys would do. I feel like I should tell you my agenda. First of all, I think evolution should be taught and am not worried about its effects. The current best theories in everything should be taught. I took evolution, and I didn't end up with a poster of Michael Moore on my bedroom wall. I believe high school students are both, in the right environment, inquisitive and discerning. I'm not worried about them. That's why I also think the sticker is meaningless. I dislike the public debates and wish they would end because I think they make Christians look foolish. Much the same way GWW makes your side look foolish. I don't think Behe makes Christians look foolish, or Hugh Ross. On the contrary. But I think many ID apologists who argue that evolution violates the 2nd law of thermo or that different radiometric methods conspire to give the same wrong answers do make Christians look foolish, as do Christians who argue that homosexuals "choose" to be gay (such an argument is, in fact heretical, but maybe not for the reasons you suspect.) My hope is the entire debate could go away, for I think Christians are fighting an unnecessary battle. And I think the easiest way for it to end is a compromise.

FL · 10 February 2005

Typo error; it's Jari, not Jan. My sincere apologies.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Douglas,

I've just finished a novel. When writing it, and it was being reviewed, I would always get flamed with the "show, don't tell" mantra. I think that applies here. There are no mechanisms discussed, no "dynamics". All we have is that this new component shows up--it helps the organism but obviously it's not necessary because it wasn't there before. Then something changes and all of sudden it's now a vital part of a super component.

It's all tell and no show.

Douglas Theobald · 10 February 2005

David,

So let me interpret, and tell me if I'm correct -- you don't necessarily have a problem with the admittedly bare bones outline of the argument, you just wish it had more detail?

Douglas Theobald · 10 February 2005

David,

So let me interpret, and tell me if I'm correct -- you don't necessarily have a problem with the admittedly bare bones outline of the argument, you just wish it had more detail?

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

GWW, I didn't quite say I believed in theistic evoltion, but rather:

but I am not adverse to evolution as a secondary cause, like gravity. That would be so-called theistic evolution

I am sort of on the fence. Douglas, More detail would help--but what you need is a convincing argument that an educated non expert could follow. Behe's argument is elegant in its simplicity (which doesn't make it right, but it does make it compelling) -- look at this thing, take away any part and it doesn't work. Maybe a substantive argument that counters that, but is still accessible, is not possible. I don't know.

Jeff Low · 10 February 2005

They studiously ignore papers like this one that explain the various processes that give rise to new genes (this paper gives 20-odd examples where the origin of new genes has been reconstructed in detail --- it was cited in the PT critique of Meyer's ID paper, and the Discovery Institute promised they would reply back in October, but they stopped as soon as they got to this section)

They probably didn't respond because there was nothing worth responding to...let's take a look...

Exon shuffling is an essential molecular mechanism for the formation of new genes. Many cases of exon shuffling have been reported in vertebrate genes. These discoveries revealed the importance of exon shuffling in the origin of new genes. However, only a few cases of exon shuffling were reported from plants and invertebrates, which gave rise to the assertion that the intron-mediated recombination mechanism originated very recently. We focused on the origin of new genes by exon shuffling and retroposition. We will first summarize our experimental work, which revealed four new genes in Drosophila, plants, and humans. These genes are 10(6) to 10(8) million years old. The recency of these genes allows us to directly examine the origin and evolution of genes in detail. These observations show firstly the importance of exon shuffling and retroposition in the rapid creation of new gene structures. They also show that the resultant chimerical structures appearing as mosaic proteins or as retroposed coding structures with novel regulatory systems, often confer novel functions. Furthermore, these newly created genes appear to have been governed by positive Darwinian selection throughout their history, with rapid changes of amino acid sequence and gene structure in very short periods of evolution. We further analyzed the distribution of intron phases in three non-vertebrate species, Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, and Arabidosis thaliana, as inferred from their genome sequences. As in the case of vertebrate genes, we found that intron phases in these species are unevenly distributed with an excess of phase zero introns and a significant excess of symmetric exons. Both findings are consistent with the requirements for the molecular process of exon shuffling. Thus, these non-vertebrate genomes may have also been strongly impacted by exon shuffling in general.

Gene fission and fusion, the processes by which a single gene is split into two separate genes and two adjacent genes are fused into a single gene, respectively, are among the primary processes that generate new genes. Despite their seeming reversibility, nothing is known about the mechanism of gene fission. Because the nucleotide sequences of fission genes record little about their origination process, conventional analysis of duplicate genes may not be powerful enough to unravel the underlying mechanism. In a survey for young genes in species of the Drosophila melanogaster subgroup using fluorescence in situ hybridization, we identified a young gene family, monkey king, whose genesis sheds light on the evolutionary process of gene fission. Its members originated 1-2 million years ago as retroposed duplicates and evolved into fission genes that separately encode protein domains from a multidomain ancestor. The mechanism underlying this process is gene duplication with subsequent partial degeneration.

And so on and so on... All we have is speculation but let's just make sure we use the word 'evolution' a whole bunch of times....

Mark Perakh · 10 February 2005

Is Behe's argument indeed so convincing as David Heddle says? To my mind the irreducible complexity argument is a pretty strong argument against ID (of course Behe and Co do not see it this way, but that is their problem). Indeed, if a designed system is IC its designer must be a moron. By definition, if a single part of an IC system is missing the system fails to function. This means a faulty design. A reasonably designed system should have spare parts which replace the missing part, or some other way to compensate for the missing part so the system continue function without a missing part. The reasonably designed system must have some redundancy. Behe insists that protein "machines" in a cell are irreducibly complex. If this is true they hardly can be products of a reasonable design but easily products of blind evolution. Furthermore, intelligently designed systems are expected to be as simple as possible. The staggering complexity of protein "machines" so eloquently described by Behe points to blind evolution as well, since an intelligent designer would find a much simpler way to perform the same function. I have been pointing to this since 1999 but Behe and Friends pretend my critique does not exist. Again, their problem. Cheers!

Douglas Theobald · 10 February 2005

Behe's argument is elegant in its simplicity ... look at this thing, take away any part and it doesn't work.
— Heddle

That's just part of the argument, and it is the definition of IC. That principle is something that geneticists have been using for decades to determine the unknown functions of genes, or to determine which genes are important for a known function-- it's called a knockout mutation. The crucial aspect of Behe's argument is that he claims that an IC structure can't evolve gradually. Surely you don't think the explanation(s) he gives for that crucial part are elegant, simple, and compelling, do you? If so, what is the simple argument for why an IC structure can't evolve gradually? As the evolution blog text explains, there are only two basic evolutionary steps required to evolve an IC structure:

add a part that improves the function

make a change that renders the part essential

Of course, such an explanation lacks detail because it must be general, and that is a strength for a scientific explanation. There are billions of ways to improve the function of a biological structure and there are likewise gazillions of way to change a system so that an inessential part becomes essential. Simple genetic processes can easily do both.

Maybe a substantive argument that counters that, but is still accessible, is not possible. I don't know.

It is always the case that real scientific explanations are more difficult to follow. It takes half a second for a baby to puke all over your sweater, but it takes an hour to clean it up. And maybe I'm being pessimistic here, but I really don't believe you can ever convince someone (esp. a non-scientist) of the validity of a scientific theory that they are dead set against for philosophical or religious reasons. To really understand scientific evidence, and to be able to weigh multiple hypotheses against the evidence, takes expert knowledge. Of course anyone can become an expert with time, will, effort, and patience -- but most people don't and most people can't for practical reasons. Those that do become practicing research scientists, experts in their fields, and if they're biologists there's a 99.9% chance they will think ID is ridiculous, like other biologists.

David Heddle · 10 February 2005

Mark, I am not surprised that your critique gets ignored. There is no compulsion even for an omniscient and omnipotent designer to provide the best possible design, and strong theological arguments in support of the notion that he wouldn't (after all, death is built into the equation.). Just because you say a designer should have/would have made it more fault tolerant does not make it so. Douglas wrote:

If so, what is the simple argument for why an IC structure can't evolve gradually?

Well, I am not anywhere close to knowledgeable on biological ID arguments (on cosmological ID I'd like to think I can hold my own) but isn't that fact that the super component won't work with any component (or maybe a small subset of components) the explanation offered? You called that the definition, but it sounds like the explanation to me. Anyway, I am not the person to ask. I agree that a real explanation is harder than a simplistic (wrong) explanation. However, people on here sort of like to equate IDers with flat earthers. But that is a bad analogy, because there are very few flat earthers and quite a few IDers. Put another way, for the most part the public believes (1) the earth is round (2) It revolves around the sun, not vice versa, (3) gravity is the responsible agent, (4) the speed of light is limiting and even (5) the earth is billions not thousands of years old. I am pretty sure I have even convinced laypeople that an electron, incident on a double slit, can go through both slits. In other words, physics has been highly successful at explaining itself to non-experts. Biology has not. You have to do better.

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

Heddle

I think it's my upbringing on the inner city of Pittsburgh-I'm always looking for a good fight.

And I grew up a Steelers fan.

I dislike the public debates and wish they would end because I think they make Christians look foolish. Much the same way GWW makes your side look foolish.

Oh please. It's not "much the same way" at all. "Much the same way" would be if I didn't know what the heck I was talking about and I lied all the time. And you are ignoring the fact that many of the people on "my side" are Christians. Good Christians. Good honest Christians. Anyone can be a skeptic and say, "I refuse to believe it. I refuse to belive in evolution." No problems. Likewise you can say, "The sun goes around the earth, period. I refuse to believe these scientists." That's fine with me. Stubborn, stupid sounding, but perfectly FINE. Live your life. Don't eat things you can't fit in your mouth. But personal beliefs are not what is at issue here.

I think the easiest way for it to end is a compromise.

What do you mean by "end"???? And let's be honest about something else: this country compromises with religious people like no other officially non-theocratic state. And this country's habit of ignoring reality to keep fundamentalist religious types happy is not a good thing. I'm a white heterosexual and I don't like it. Gay people don't like it. And, based on what I posted up above, blacks shouldn't like it either. That's a lot of people. And now we're supposed to teach kids that some mysterious alien beings might have come to earth and designed all the life forms? Because some think tank of religious propogandists pays a bunch of people to say so? No, I think not! And I'm still confused, David, why you aren't willing to take a stand for honesty and hard work (i.e., the work of the thousands and thousands of biologists, including good church-going Christian biologists, over the past century). It just doesn't add up.

I took evolution, and I didn't end up with a poster of Michael Moore on my bedroom wall

Sounds like a good textbook sticker.

Great White Wonder · 10 February 2005

David writes

In other words, physics has been highly successful at explaining itself to non-experts. Biology has not. You have to do better.

Ah, there is the exact argument that I warned against earlier! It's the same argument that other "compromisers" like Nathan Newman have made. According to David and others like him, it's BIOLOGISTS FAULT that "so many" Americans believe the "ID theory" peddlers. If only we biologists had done a better job at educating the public about evolution, then we wouldn't have this problem. That is absurd. First, Americans are smart enough to appreciate why "ID theory" is a bunch of garbage when it's explained to them HONESTLY. As even Heddle admits, NEARLY EVERY ADULT HUMAN IN THIS COUNTRY rejects the idea that a mysterious group of alien beings has visited the earth repeatedly during the course of the last several billion years in order to create all the earth's life forms. As to "understanding evolution", most Americans will never get it and, thanks to a certain group of religious folks who simply refuse to shut up and stop dumping on scientists, most Americans don't WANT to get it. They want that ol' time religion. Most Americans will never "get" quantum physics and they will never "get" Schroedingers Equation. As to why they don't dissemble and spread lies about physics as eagerly as they spread lies about evolution, you'd have to be living in a cave not to understand why. And you'd have to be pretty dishonest to blame it on biologists.

I am pretty sure I have even convinced laypeople that an electron, incident on a double slit, can go through both slits.

That's nothing. Hovind has convinced thousands of people of concepts that are far more absurd! John Edward makes millions by convincing people -- mostly Christians -- that he can communicate with their dead relatives!!! But when is the last time you saw a network anchor laugh outright at John Edward and say, "Man, you are just a big fraud taking those people for a ride. You can't communicate with dead people." Did you ever wonder why that doesn't happen, David? I wonder why I never hear you discuss this aspect of human nature, David, since you claim to know so much about "the masses" and how they react. We can analogize to the Social Security debate, where propogandists at the White House try to sell the idea that there is a "social security crisis" and that the system will be "bankrupt" in twenty years. Of course, these are lies. And when some of us watchdog types complain, the lazy inept media wakes up and slowly, every so slowly, starts to react. But can you still find these lies being repeated? Of course you can. Is the truth easy to explain to Joe Sixpack? No, it's not. But it is easy to convince Joe Sixpack that the government is lying. Here's how: all the networks and the cable shows and the major print media outlets simply need to tell the truth and point out that the White House and its representatives are lying when they say that social security will be bankrupt and there won't be any money for thirty somethings when they retire. In theory, it's that simple. In reality, we have a problem because -- guess what -- all those folks who own those media outlets really don't give a hoot about social security. They've got their retirement and their kids' kids' retirement taken care of already. Why is it that the media likes to tread very very carefully around the strange claims of people like Michael Behe and Bill Dembski, beliefs that have been shown -- irrefutable shown, over and over again --- to be absolutely vacuous from a scientific point of view? The answer is obvious. And so is the solution. But it will require that some people learn not to be so easily "embarassed."

Wayne Francis · 10 February 2005

David Heddle Says in Comment # 15779

Question for all: Are you guys on the evolution side embarrassed by GWW? If I were on your side, I would suspect him of being a ID plant whose purpose was to make us look bad.

Are you guys on the evolution side embarrassed by GWW? I can't speak for others but I am not embarrassed. I am embarrassed that people like you can make a statement, be shown that it is faulty, then have you make the statement OVER and OVER again ignoring all the evidence that get presented that shows your statement to be false.

If I were on your side, I would suspect him of being a ID plant whose purpose was to make us look bad.
— David Heddle

I'm also embarrassed about how much you post on here expecting everyone to do something you obviously don't do, which is read others comments fully. GWW is NOT a "him". I'm also embarrassed that people like you still use age old sexism and consistently refer to "God" as a masculine figure like you do Comment # 7437

That is, even the most extreme case of God's "absence", that he is no longer creating, is not a theological problem at all. He is simply done with it, and is now doing other things.
— David Heddle

I find it embarrassing that an educated physicist, like you, can say things like

That [testablility] is not at all clear, in all the cases I know of one must first toss out General Relativity in order to come up with a possible (let alone practical) experiment.
— David Heddle

in response to the origin of the universe. Your position that it is stupid to investigate such issues and that they will never be testable it plainly wrong. There are many predictions and test that can be done to test the models that are coming about. We don't know where all the matter in the universe is yet but we are still looking for it using predictions born out by your "untestable theories" and have in fact found some of this missing matter which in turn gives us more information on where some other missing matter may be found. I'm embarrassed by an educated physicist making misleading statements like "one must first toss out General Relativity in order to come up with a possible (let alone practical) experiment" when it is painfully obvious that General Relativity does not apply to the scale which we are looking at. Its like saying we had to throw out Newtonian Physics to get Cassini to Saturn. We don't have to throw them out....they just do not apply to the extent you make it to. I'm embarrassed by someone like you who says that "God" could create the universe using "secondary causes" like you do in Comment # 13710

What moves the planets in their orbits? God doesn't reach down and move the earth around micron by micron. Gravity does the work. Newton's beautiful inverse square law. But where'd that come from? From the fact that the universe has just the right number of expanding dimensions. The one who made that call, he's the prime mover.
— David Heddle

But then argue that "God" could not use natural selection, random mutation, genetic drift, etc as "secondary causes" for life. I feel the pain GWW feels when someone like you, who is obviously well educated, announces that the majority of biologists in the world are just plain stupid in their own field of expertise.

Rupert Goodwins · 10 February 2005

David Heddle said:

That [testablility] is not at all clear, in all the cases I know of one must first toss out General Relativity in order to come up with a possible (let alone practical) experiment. It may be that very sophisticated theories that cannot be falsified are still preferred over "God did it," but they still represent a change in our view of what is science.

That's not the point. This particular strand of physics is at the stage where the hypotheses are new and eminently debatable, and the implications for testing are thoroughly unformed. This doesn't mean that one particular hypothesis won't win out, nor that a way of testing it cannot be found. That's not an unusual position in the history of cosmology, and there's no particular reason to think this particular bit won't continue to develop. It is very hard to imagine Einstein during his annus mirabilis having even the first idea about some of the experiments done subsequently to test his ideas. Here's one that's going on right now: "Gravity Probe B is the relativity gyroscope experiment developed by NASA and Stanford University to test two extraordinary, unverified predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. The experiment will check, very precisely, tiny changes in the direction of spin of four gyroscopes contained in an Earth satellite orbiting at 400-mile altitude directly over the poles. So free are the gyroscopes from disturbance that they will provide an almost perfect space-time reference system. They will measure how space and time are warped by the presence of the Earth, and, more profoundly, how the Earth's rotation drags space-time around with it. These effects, though small for the Earth, have far-reaching implications for the nature of matter and the structure of the Universe. " (GP B is, by any analysis, a truly extraordinary and audacious piece of engineering. It would have been unimaginable a hundred years ago, and I have trouble believing in it now). The point is, there seems to be little willingness and less action on the part of ID'ers embarking on the start of this process. If science were content to stop with 'very sophisticated theories that cannot be falsified', then there may be a faint parallel to be drawn. But it isn't, and there isn't, and my original point -- that it is incorrect and impossible to treat ID as if it were science -- stands.

Douglas Theobald · 10 February 2005

You called that the definition, but it sounds like the explanation to me. Anyway, I am not the person to ask.
— Heddle

The definition of IC, as you stated, is "take away any part and it doesn't work." Now admittedly the IC concept is simple and easy to understand. IC-ness is a property of a system -- either it is IC or it is not. But what does being IC have to do with gradual evolution? Nothing in and of itself -- the definition does not mention evolution or gradualism or invoke any genetic processes or anything. Behe ties IC to evolution by claiming that gradual evolution cannot make an IC system. And that connection and claim is the crux piece of the argument. But, I ask you, what is the simple, elegant, and compelling argument supporting that crux claim?

Anyway, I am not the person to ask.

Hey, you were the one who claimed Behe's argument against evolution was "compelling" and "elegant in its simplicity."

I am pretty sure I have even convinced laypeople that an electron, incident on a double slit, can go through both slits. In other words, physics has been highly successful at explaining itself to non-experts. Biology has not. You have to do better.

Imagine trying to convince your layman that electrons can diffract when they've been told by many people they love and trust that, if you are correct, the world is purposeless and that God does not exist. Then you'll understand what it's like being a biologist in the US.

Wayne Francis · 11 February 2005

Well David Heddle really has me confused once agian. He's answered my statement in Comment # 15831

But then argue that "God" could not use natural selection, random mutation, genetic drift, etc as "secondary causes" for life.
— Wayne Francis

in Comment #15817 before I even posted my comment. note that i composed Comment # 15831 before Comment #15817 was writen I'm going to have to review all of David Heddle's posts to get a clear understanding on what he's on about. So far all I can see is that he likes the politics of ID and thinks scientists should play IDs game. It only took a few hundred posts to get his stand but here is what David Heddle believes 1) The universe is 15+ billion years old. 2) The origin of the universe will never be known 3) Life is ~3500my old 4) Life has got more "complex" as time goes on. 5) All life has a common origin (this includes humans and chimps having a common ancestor) 6) The mechanisms of how life has changed over time is unknown. most people here would agree with 1-5. Most people here would disagree, to varying degrees, about #6. You say you are "sitting on the fence". You ask what is to be gained by fighting the IDers for at each little step they take. I, and others like me, consider it the principle and precedent that would be hurt and set, respectively, if we did not. Lines and I do think, trying to step back here a bit and not be so defensive, that it would be good to, during normal science class, include statements like "Some consider the Cambrian explosion to be a problem with evolution and this is what they claim ... and here is some point that we will be going over to disprove this ..." teach the lesson. But let me look this, once again stepping back. Creationist would look at this as a more direct attack on them instead of just stating the facts you want use to create more fuel for the creationists to say they are being singled out. statements like "The Cambrian layer has virtually every species known to man. Yes, dinosaurs, birds, reptiles, and enormous varieties of each all coexist in this layer. No evolutionary sequence here, they are all coexistent simultaneously" is just out and out and out lie. This is just one of many....do we spend hours and hours listing the false statements made in favour of creationism? I don't know...seems like it won't do much good

Mark Perakh · 11 February 2005

David Heddle: Surely I have heard all those arguments justifying suboptimality of design and find them utterly unconvincing. They usually are ad-hoc references to the designer who either has his own reasons, unknown to us, for making things imperfect (often with a quote from Isaiah about "my ways are not your ways,") or is not necessarily omnipotent etc. The point is not that suboptimal design is not proof that there is no designer. The point rather is that IC does not point to a designer, since both complexity of protein "machines" and their irreducibiity (if such indeed is there) are naturally explained by blind evolution but require assumption of a unintelligent (or malevolent) designer if ID is adopted. However "flexible" ID advocates pretend to be regarding who the designer may be, we all know that in fact they mean the God of the Bible who is supposed to be omnipotent and benevolent, so making systems lacking self-compensatory resources (which a beginning engineer would not do - designing a car without a spare tire) is contrary to such an image of a designer. As to why my critique has not been replied to, it by far was not limited to this point. Regarding Behe, I also pointed to his crude errors in handling probabilities, complexity, etc. I suspect that you are not familiar with my arguments, but it is OK - books like mine are never best sellers.

Jim Harrison · 11 February 2005

It isn't just the imperfections of design that point to the absence of a designer, but also the instances of perfection or near perfection. Natural selection acts like a mathematical approximation technique that uses numerical methods to find maxima and minima. In general, such techniques are more or less efficient depending on what sort of function they are operating on. It is a piece of cake to find the zeroes of a low-order polynomial, for example, but almost nothing works on some functions. Now in certain cases---I'm thinking of the development of the genetic code itself---even small advantages in will have a cumulatively significant effect and the enormous number of trials means that most of the options will be tried out. In other cases---I'm thinking of the the vertebrate eye and the panda's thumb---design constraints and smaller number of trials will make it harder to search the space of possible designs. Because the difficulty of the problems addressed by natural selection differ, we'd expect the quality of nature's solutions to them vary accordingly. And that's exactly what we find. Enzymes, genetic codes, and antibodies are often exceedingly good solutions while other features of living things are essentially kludges because of the intrinsic limitations of the solution method.

David Heddle · 11 February 2005

Wayne Francis

I am embarrassed that people like you can make a statement, be shown that it is faulty, then have you make the statement OVER and OVER again ignoring all the evidence that get presented that shows your statement to be false.

What statement would that be?

I'm also embarrassed about how much you post on here expecting everyone to do something you obviously don't do, which is read others comments fully. GWW is NOT a "him".

If one of GWW's comments revealed that GWW is a woman, then I indeed missed it. Which comment was it, by the way, so I can be sure to reread it carefully. And if you are offended that I attached the incorrect pronoun to a gender neutral username, then you need a thicker skin.

I'm also embarrassed that people like you still use age old sexism and consistently refer to "God" as a masculine figure like you do

Are you fixated on the trivialities of political correctness?

David Heddle wrote: "That is, even the most extreme case of God's "absence", that he is no longer creating, is not a theological problem at all. He is simply done with it, and is now doing other things". I find it embarrassing that an educated physicist, like you, can say things like

Why? What you are really saying is that you find it embarrassing that an educated physicist believes in God. Well, sorry about that.

in response to the origin of the universe. Your position that it is stupid to investigate such issues and that they will never be testable it plainly wrong. There are many predictions and test that can be done to test the models that are coming about. We don't know where all the matter in the universe is yet but we are still looking for it using predictions born out by your "untestable theories" and have in fact found some of this missing matter which in turn gives us more information on where some other missing matter may be found. I'm embarrassed by an educated physicist making misleading statements like "one must first toss out General Relativity in order to come up with a possible (let alone practical) experiment" when it is painfully obvious that General Relativity does not apply to the scale which we are looking at. Its like saying we had to throw out Newtonian Physics to get Cassini to Saturn. We don't have to throw them out . . . .they just do not apply to the extent you make it to.

Get this straight: in spite of you assertion we are not currently looking for something using predictions of "untestable theories." Give me one example. The untestable theories I refer to are parallel universe theories, which postulate universes that, even in principle, are incommunicado. Nor did I say is was stupid to investigate such theories.

But then argue that "God" could not use natural selection, random mutation, genetic drift, etc as "secondary causes" for life. I feel the pain GWW feels when someone like you, who is obviously well educated, announces that the majority of biologists in the world are just plain stupid in their own field of expertise.

Where did I make these statements? Are you actually responding to anything that I wrote? Are you confusing me with someone else? Wayne, of all the comments made to me, even by GWW, I don't think any were as irrelevant and distorting and misrepresenting as yours. Congratulations. Rupert Wrote

That's not the point. This particular strand of physics is at the stage where the hypotheses are new and eminently debatable, and the implications for testing are thoroughly unformed. This doesn't mean that one particular hypothesis won't win out, nor that a way of testing it cannot be found. That's not an unusual position in the history of cosmology, and there's no particular reason to think this particular bit won't continue to develop. It is very hard to imagine Einstein during his annus mirabilis having even the first idea about some of the experiments done subsequently to test his ideas. Here's one that's going on right now: "Gravity Probe B is the relativity gyroscope experiment developed by NASA and Stanford University to test two extraordinary, unverified predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

There is a world of difference between a theory that cannot be tested because the experiments are, at this time, difficult or technologically impossible, and one whose experiments are not even feasible because they require us to look somewhere that we can't see, even in principle. GWW wrote:

According to David and others like him, it's BIOLOGISTS FAULT that "so many" Americans believe the "ID theory" peddlers. If only we biologists had done a better job at educating the public about evolution, then we wouldn't have this problem.

Well, I am not sure I would use the word "fault." But, too bad for you, it's the hand you were dealt. Do with it as you like. Screaming that everyone is stupid may ultimately work. Ah, I see Wayne Francis has cooled down a bit and actually responded to what I wrote.

Creationists would look at this [the accommodations I proposed] as a more direct attack on them instead of just stating the facts you want use to create more fuel for the creationists to say they are being singled out.

That's your mistake. You think your battle is with creationists. It's not. Neither Republicans nor Democrats try to convert the other party's zealots. You need to go after those who side with the IDers but whose primary dislike for you is that they view you as elitists. Mark, At any rate, you are arguing against ID which is not the point here. Jim, Again, this argument is not about the relative merits of ID, but about how to get beyond the incessant bickering over curricula. But, as an aside, I have used GAs in my own research. They are indeed very effective at getting out of local minima, as are some other techniques (simulated annealing comes to mind.) Of course, I would never dream to claim that any of my Gas were actual instances of evolution.

jonas · 11 February 2005

From my point of view as an experimental physicist I do have some reservations about hypotheses like quantum cosmogony (or some aspects of string theory). As long as nobody can propose a way to gain evidence in how far these approaches can explain our universe better, and not just philosophically more satisfying to some, than more established formulations, they are just hypothetical musings - even if highly interesting ones.
Should some factor prevent us in principle to ever gain information on this point, theses hypotheses would drift over into the domain of metaphysics and should in my opinion not be proposed as science any more than some unknowable designer.

But there are two important differences between these concepts of theoretical physics and ID:
- all theoretical physicists I know would dearly love to have their hypotheses in a testable state as quickly as possible. The fact that there is often a decades long lag between proposing a mechanism and the first evidence is a source of some frustration and nothing a physicist would brag about. Most ID proponents on the other hands are keen to tap dance around their lack of description for the design process or the designer, not to mention and evidence that could pin these important factors down. Dembski now even has gone a step further, proclaiming that not offering a mechanism or, heavens forbid, testing it, is the real forte of ID.
- I have yet to hear of a group of physicists and mathematicians providing school boards with teaching aids and propaganda material on the presumed weaknesses of the Standard Model of Particles and the Single Big Bang theory, so they could start 'teaching the controversy' as long as their is not enough positive evidence for their own hypotheses for them to be considered on their own merits.

ts · 11 February 2005

Theological possibilities that science doesn't contradict:

Here are several possibilities that science does not, has not, and cannot disprove:

God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago, with the fossil record and the mountains and the carbon dates and all the rest of it, just as it is.

God created the first replicating organism.

The flagellum didn't evolve, it was designed as is by God, and thus "Intelligent Design" is true.

These are all opinions that some theologians have. Science can't show they are false. But they are religious views, not science, and have no place in science classes, nor in the discipline of science. Anyone promoting any of these views, even if a scientist (as Michael Behe is) are not doing science by doing so, they are doing religion.

If science can't disprove Intelligent Design, then how can it assert that evolution is true? Because science aims to produce predictive theories, theories that make true claims as to what we will observe under various conditions, something that religion cannot do -- "God did it" provides us no way to predict what we will see if we look at the stars or in a microscope or in a fossil bed.

So science carries with it a condition -- the scientific question is, how might this have happened if God didn't do it, if it occurred entirely naturally. Answering that question can be very very hard, but answering it is what scientists are charged with. Thus the answer "God did it" is never the scientific answer -- "If God didn't do it, then it might have happened by ..." can never be filled in with "God doing it". Yet that's exactly what so-called Intelligent Design Theory offers, which is why it's not science. Scientists answer, yeah, sure, God might have done it, but suppose God didn't do it, how then might it have happened?

When you understand that that's what science is about, then you understand what's so terribly wrong with trying to inject ID into science. ID says let's give up on science, and just say God did it. That's fine for people who don't want to do the hard work of science, but it's not science, it's religion, and has no business in science classes, science textbooks, science institions, science forums, etc. -- and it has no business being presented as science in the NYT, even on the op-ed page.

ts · 11 February 2005

If you continue to insult me, I will leave and never come back. No because it hurst ny feelings, but because it wastes my time.

Wastes whose time? If only it were true that this troll who authors every other post would leave and never come back.

I would guess that ID predicts that the earliest life is already fairly complex.

I would guess that you're a moron who has just demonstrated what is so absurd about ID. You have to guess what ID predicts because ID provides no indication whatsoever of what it predicts. ID says "it was designed", but it doesn't say when or how design was injected into biological history. God could have let abiogenesis happen and then evolution run on for ages without producing flagella and then just kind of slip it in -- why not? Are you gonna put constraints on what God can do? Does ID put constraints on what God can do? Of course not -- ID is horsesh*t, not science. Now please leave and never come back, because indeed your wasting your time and the time of many others.

ts · 11 February 2005

Behe's arguments, in my estimation, are much more compelling that the counter arguments I have read (again, at the popularized level).

Only a very stupid person would think so. Let's look at just what the very stupid person finds compelling:

Behe's argument is elegant in its simplicity (which doesn't make it right, but it does make it compelling) --- look at this thing, take away any part and it doesn't work.

Only a very stupid person would fail to notice that this "argument" is only the antecedent of a conditional. Missing is the consequent: "and therefore it couldn't have evolved". Only a very stupid person would fail to notice that such a conditional isn't a compelling argument, it's just an unsupported claim. But the very stupid person has a different view of

The fact that every part in its current form is needed for the machine to function in its present context does not imply that every part has always been necessary in every ancestral organism in which it appeared.

Which is no more than the observation that the consequent of the conditional doesn't follow from the antecedent. And the very stupid person apparently can't grasp an exceedingly simple and straightforward explanation:

In other words, as biologist H. Allen Orr first pointed out, you could have the following scenario: Initially you have a simple system performing some function. Later a part gets added that improves the functioning of the system, but is not necessary. Later still, a change to the original system renders the added part essential. The result will be a system that formed gradually, yet satisfies Behe's definition of irreducible complexity.

In other words, Behe's "elegant" "argument" against evolution isn't an argument against evolution at all. But the very stupid person, rather than recognizing such a simple point, claims without any justification

Not exactly a rebuttal that reeks of being on firm scientific footing.

What the very stupid person is too stupid to grasp is that science isn't needed here, merely basic logic. Specifically, an instance of "Q and P" refutes a general claim of "P implies not Q". In this case, P: X is irreducibly complex Q: X could have evolved Now if only the very stupid person stop wasting peoples' time by leaving and never coming back.

plunge · 11 February 2005

"But this [being a Christian] is exactly what makes me doubt your sincerity"

What the fuck? I wasn't say anything about you being a Christian: you obviously have a MAJOR persecution complex to read it that way, let along insert falsehoods into my words to make me say something I didn't. What I was responding to was you finding Behe's argument more compelling simply because he throws "400 proteins" at you.

"Well, okay, why not say, at just a few junctures, "Behe has used IC to argue that blood clotting could not have arisen through evolution, let's see how he is wrong" and then smile and say to the public that you are addressing ID criticisms? No harm no foul."

Because that's exactly what we DO do! We point to all the research that's been done, eviscertate his core argument... and then next week, Behe comes back and says "well, since no papers have ever been published dealing with the evolution of biological systems..."

Why is he allowed to lie, and be credited with being "more compelling" for it?

That's what I don't find credible in your responses. Behe is clearly lying to make his case. He makes a general case for IC, which is then refuted, logically, but you claim that this is "vague." I don't buy it.

David Margolies · 11 February 2005

David Heddle wrote:

"No Douglas, the problem is that the explanation from evolution blog does not sound like science at all. It sounds like "let's throw a few sentences together to counter IC." It may be right, I don't know, but it sure isn't compelling as presented."

The quote from Evolution blog is (again):

"The fact that every part in its current form is needed for the machine to function in its present context does not imply that every part has always been necessary in every ancestral organism in which it appeared. In other words, as biologist H. Allen Orr first pointed out, you could have the following scenario: Initially you have a simple system performing some function. Later a part gets added that improves the functioning of the system, but is not necessary. Later still, a change to the original system renders the added part essential. The result will be a system that formed gradually, yet satisfies Behe's definition of irreducible complexity."

Would it sound better if it came with an example?

"For example, fish have air sacs (used for depth regulation). Fish breath with gills. Some air sacs have evolved the ability to act like primitive lungs, allowing some absorbtion of oxygen, and this allows the fish to be out of the water for some time. If the air sac evolves into a function lung, the animal would then have both gills and lungs and could breath in water or out. Amimals with both who adopted a land habitat could then lose the gills, using only the lungs for breathing. The lung would certainly be IC (what good is half a lung?) but the evolutionary pathway is clear, and the necessary part for the development of a lung (i.e. gills) were present during development but are later gone."

I am not a biologist, so my desciption is likely incorrect in detail, but I believe the overall thrust is correct and I understand that there are fish today with the ability to absorb oxygen from their air sacs (certain catfish) and fossils that indicate the gill/lung duality actually happened in the transition from water to land habitat. The example is precisely what Orr is talking about (regardless of whether it is right).

Now, I actually think Behe would agree and would say that even though lungs are IC, they could develop in conjunction with an alternating breathing mechanism in the way described. (I am not much of a student of Behe but I believe he does not dispute, at least in DBB, evolution on the scale of lungs and gills -- indeed I believe he does not dispute common ancestors which evolved to today's species.) Behe arguments are at the molecular/cell level.

As to David's complaint about the succintness of Behe's argument compared to the gobbledygook of biologist's response, I have to say after thinking about it overnight, I am less and less impressed. Complicated things are complicated and require thinking and explication. Being disingenuous (I would say being a liar but David would complain that I was being tendentious) is easier than being correct. It is not David who is being disingenuous, it is Behe: time and again he and his disciples say there is no theory at all concerning the evolution of flagella and time and again he is told that this is wrong, but when next up, he ignores what he has been told and, of course, lies -- oops, is disingenuous again.

What I do accuse David of is a willful ignorance. I said above that I cannot find the quote on the evolution blog. David says that the PT rules prevent him from providing a link. But I showed above nothing prevents you from putting a URL in text -- we have to cut and paste rather than clicking but that is not too hard (I apologize if the link is provided; I haven't seen it).

The point is I do not know whether the text came with an example similar too mine (but bologically correct where mine is honestly a pastiche which represents the form of an example but the details are likely incorrect). I suggest David is being willfully ignorant because he seems to have made no attempt to understand the text as written. As many others have pointed out, a claim of IC is a strong statement of logic: it says there can be no evolutionary path because all parts are needed or useless. The quotation explains how something for which all parts are needed could have evolved (the lung being an example), and so many things that are apparently IC are not. This makes identifying IC components much, much more difficult because you must not only show that all parts are necessary, you must also show it could not have developed in the fashion of a lung.

How could what is said be clearer, except by the provision or the example, wheich I have provided and which I recall Orr provided (Orr is being quoted) and, for all I know, the author of the quote provided.

Flint · 11 February 2005

More of the same arguments. Behe points out correctly that some structures are IC. He deduces, incorrectly, that such structures couldn't have evolved. Biologists point out ad nauseum that not only could they have easily evolved, but that evolutionary theory predicts exactly what Behe observes. Behe's supporters dismiss or ignore this unpleasant reality for doctrinal reasons.

Mark Perakh's argument is ignored for one excellent reason: He is attempting to counter with evidence a position not based on evidence. If the design is good, the ID did it. If the design is lousy, the ID ALSO did it. If the design is IC, then the ID did it. If it's redundent, the ID ALSO did it. The claim that the ID did anything is not based on a single observation. It is doctrine. An ID is the answer, the question doesn't really matter.

ID appeals to the majority of the public for the same reason religion does in general: it provides definitive answers to every question, and the answers are so simple even a small child can understand them. Science can never compete in this game, because science's answers are complicated, tentative, and partial. Those demanding both simplistic and absolute will always find science's answers uncompelling and weak. Science survives at all only because correct answers are so damn useful.

Wayne Francis · 11 February 2005

There is a world of difference between a theory that cannot be tested because the experiments are, at this time, difficult or technologically impossible, and one whose experiments are not even feasible because they require us to look somewhere that we can't see, even in principle.
— David Heddle

All bow down to David for he is a prophet and says he knows the limits of our technology now and forever. I for one believe that unless we wipe ourselves out then one day we just may be able to do things like probe other universes. Who can say where things quantum physics may be able to take us in the future. Ask David if someone can go to heaven and come back and that's probably fine. But ask if in a thousand years, a million years, or even in a billion years if the advanced life in our universe may be able to push outside the boundaries of what we consider our current universe and we get a statement of fact from him that it is impossible.

Are you fixated on the trivialities of political correctness?
— David Heddle

Yes, its an obsessive compulsive disorder I have. I get annoyed when people automatically assume gender in other people because it shows a bias that these people generally have. I also find it amusing that religious people feel that "God" would actually have a sex.

Why? What you are really saying is that you find it embarrassing that an educated physicist believes in God. Well, sorry about that
— David Heddle

I have no problem with other peoples religions. I myself am not atheist and if I was I still wouldn't have a problem with other people believing in "God". I was just providing one example of you referring to your "God" in terms of gender. A means by which religions could make women inferior to men.

Where did I make these statements? Are you actually responding to anything that I wrote? Are you confusing me with someone else?
— David Heddle

I'll assume you wrote your post, like I did, before reading the subsequent post I made.

Wayne, of all the comments made to me, even by GWW, I don't think any were as irrelevant and distorting and misrepresenting as yours. Congratulations.
— David Heddle

I'll take much of the blame for the misunderstanding David but you have been asked your position over and over many times and you just seem to trickle it out in small bits. Like I said I'll have to go through all your posts to get a clear understanding of where you are at. At the present time I'll assume your that numbers 1-6 in http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000808.html#c15844Comment # 15844 is your position. Which still leaves you in the position where you think you are smarter and know more about biology then 99% of the biologist in the world.

You need to go after those who side with the IDers but whose primary dislike for you is that they view you as elitists.
— David Heddle

If it was only that easy. The battle is with creationist. They are creationist first and ignorant 2nd and many of them ignorant by choice. I have an ex-girl friend that is a YECer. She is a smart woman but flat out told me she does not want to know anything that upsets her biblical view of the world. One of her friends is trying to get the position of director for the "Family First" party here in Australia (a Christian fundamentalist political group bent on getting things like prayer added to public schools). He to is a smart man but I've watched him give a sermon on Noah's flood and used the age old "Sea shells on mount Everest" proof that there was a global flood when I explained to him that fossil shells were up on the top of mountains because those mountain tops used to be sea beds hundreds of millions of years ago and are now mountain tops because of plate tectonics he replied "That is not true, the earth is only a few thousand years old, things like radiometric dating are not accurate" turn around and walked away. They just don't want to know. David, do you talk to people like this and point out the errors of their ways? Or do you allow them to lie for Jesus's name because you feel it is the politically correct thing for you to do?

Great White Wonder · 11 February 2005

Heddle

But, too bad for you, it's the hand you were dealt. Do with it as you like. Screaming that everyone is stupid may ultimately work.

Who is "screaming that everyone is stupid," David? That is a very strange reading of my posts. It's interesting that you would take that position since you yourself of are incapable of defending "ID theory" as anything more than empty bogus propoganda. And you are also demonstrably incapable of defending the dishonest words and actions of the ID-peddling charlatans. Please defend Jonathan Wells, Heddle. Please defend Bill Dembksi, Heddle. Please defend Casey Luskin, Heddle. Please defend Phil Johnson, Heddle. Please defend Stephen Meyer Those morons are despicable lying creeps with a transparent fundamentalist agenda and these facts have been documented here over and over again. If people choose to believe the garbage of the Discovery Institute and apologize for the "fellows" employed there, but cannot defend that garbage and resort to weeping about insults (like you do, Heddle) when they are shown to be frauds, then guess what: they ARE STUPID. It's okay to call stupid people stupid, Heddle. Should scientists start calling Joe Sixpack and Mrs. McGillicutty stupid idiots? Of course not. But scientists and pro-science representatives should not hesitate to rip new axxholes for the apologists who brag about their "high degrees" and then proceed to (1) lie about the work of genuine scientists (2) lie about the status of evolution among the world's scientists and (3) make arguments on behalf of a bogus "theory" that are pitifully easy to destroy. I know there are people here and elsewhere who cling to this notion that there is some "high ground" to "retreat to" and from which the battle may be won. That is naive. Scientists are inherently on higher ground because, as anyone who takes an hour to look at the facts, we are surely correct. It is impossible for us to stoop down to the level of the pseudoscience peddlers and charlatans who are pushing their garbage on Americans. So STOP WORRYING ABOUT THAT. The irrefutable message simply needs to be repeated over and over: the ID peddlers are frauds. The anti-science jerks are frauds. The creationists are frauds. They are pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans because they want to turn the United States into a Christian version of Iran. It's easy to show these guys are full of garbage. It's easy to show why "ID theory" is just a fancy (even "elite" way of saying "mysterious alien beings with awesome powers have visited earth many times over the past hundred million years to deposit fully created life forms". If, on the other hand, you insist on sticking with the mantra tha "Evolutionary biology really has been studied quite thoroughly and scientists are quite confident that eventually we'll have a more complete picture of the fossil record, blah blah blah," then just write the whole thing off. It's over.

Randy Crum · 11 February 2005

David Heddle said this:

"It seems to me that if I taught evolution I would want to tackle the predictions of ID head-on, rather than dismissing through Fulton's tired caricature. For example, I would guess that ID predicts that the earliest life is already fairly complex. What does evolution say?"

ID doesn't make any predictions. What is "fairly complex"? I haven't seen a convergence of opinion in the ID community on *exactly* what the first life was like. If such a definition was made available it is possible that it could be tested in the sense that if evidence of something even simpler was found ID would be falsified.

In answer to the question posed, evolution - or probably more appropriately paleontology - would predict that the first *fossil* evidence of early life found would also be "fairly complex" because sub-microscopic evidence in rocks billions of years old is extremely difficult to find.

DonkeyKong · 11 February 2005

I have a simple question.

If evolution is a scientific theory that explains what occured on Earth to create intelligent life, can someone please articulate a test that would show that evolution is false.

An example would be that for Newtonian gravity if you showed that a mass (large so as to avoid quantum energy jumps) failed to be attracted to another mass without any other force being the cause then the theory of gravity as we know it would be false. In general, any violation of the F=M1M2G/r^2 would show Newtonian gravity to be false.

It is my understanding that all scientific theories MUST be disprovable by a third party. It is also my understanding that Facts are theories with EXTENSIVE cross checks verifying the UNCHANGING theory.

Failing a satisfactary answer to the above I must insist that you stop calling Evolution either a scientific theory or scientific fact.
Creationism is a religious belief precisely because it DOES NOT meet the above criteria. Is suspect that evolution as practiced today is also a religious belief?

Great WhiteWonder · 11 February 2005

Hey, David Heddle, prove to us that you're not a troll and answer DonkeyKong's question for us.

You should know one of the many many possible answers by now.

Feel free to search the archives here for one of the many previous times I and others have answered (and destroyed) this facile creationist apologist argument.

Rilke's Grand-daughter · 11 February 2005

I have a simple question.

A simple answer: find a modern human fossil in genuine pre-cambrian strata. A slightly more complex answer: no single data point is likely to disprove the theory (there is, after all, a great deal to the theory), but such data points (especially if several came to light) would cause revision of our understanding of common descent, for example. In addition, your example is very poorly chosen: Newton's Law isn't a theory of gravity, it's just an empirical observation; we might have counter-examples without completely eliminating his law. Finally, you appear to have a very naive view of theories: they are (these days, anyway) rarely overturned en toto - rather they are expanded or revised to account for new and otherwise unexplained data.

David Heddle · 11 February 2005

Hmm. So many fun posts to respond to. Jonas: I agree with virtually everything you said. The rest of you continue to argue as if I said: (1) ID is science (2) evolution is hogwash (3) ID should be taught in schools. I have stated none of those things. ts, who graduated from the GWW school of rhetoric, wrote:

I would guess that you're a moron who has just demonstrated what is so absurd about ID. You have to guess what ID predicts because ID provides no indication whatsoever of what it predicts.

See my point above. I have not in the slightest been arguing for ID, so I am not obliged to do any better than guess what they predict. If I were a biological ID proponent, then you could hold my feet to the fire. Plunge wrote:

"But this [being a Christian] is exactly what makes me doubt your sincerity" What the fuck? I wasn't say anything about you being a Christian: you obviously have a MAJOR persecution complex to read it that way,

Your original post was:

Heedle wrote "The argument you just gave, at least in words, sounds like an ad-hoc house of cards. It may be just that their marketing is better---and of course I have some bias. (Being a Christian, I "want" to see design, and I do in cosmology--- in biology I am ambivalent) But for what it is worth, Behe's description of four-hundred proteins, etc. etc. is, to me, much more compelling." But this is exactly what makes me doubt your sincerity.

If it wasn't being a Christian that made you doubt my sincerity, to what were you referring? Douglas Margolies wrote:

I said above that I cannot find the quote on the evolution blog. David says that the PT rules prevent him from providing a link.

David, on comment # 15723 above, addressing your complaint that I didn't provide a link, I wrote:

Anyway, it is from a post entitled Discovery Institute Responds to Derbyshire on Wednesday, 12 January, 2005.

Thinking that surely that was enough info that you could go to evolution blog and find the article. I guess not. I tried once again to paste in the link and got this error: "Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content" (which I totally agree with.) So go to evolution blog, look on the left on at the archives, and find the one which contains 12 Jan 2005, and you'll find the article.

All bow down to David for he is a prophet and says he knows the limits of our technology now and forever.

I know most of you are not physicists so I'll make the point a third time: detecting parallel universes is not impossible because of a technical limitation that we can at least theorize will someday be overcome. It's a physics limitation dealing with event horizons.

I get annoyed when people automatically assume gender in other people because it shows a bias that these people generally have. I also find it amusing that religious people feel that "God" would actually have a sex.

No, its probability. Since Great White Wonder is gender neutral, and since English has no neutral pronoun, and since the majority of scientists are men, it is reasonable to use the male pronoun rather than clumsy "he or she" constructions. Don't you have bigger fish to fry?

David, do you talk to people like this and point out the errors of their ways? Or do you allow them to lie for Jesus's name because you feel it is the politically correct thing for you to do?

I tell every Christian I know that the earth is old. And, with the help of evolution, I sometimes convince them! Here is the (factual) story I tell. The idea that the earth is thousands of years old and created in six days has not, historically, been any sort of test of orthodoxy. In the early church, people had different views ranging from creation took six thousand years (a day is a thousand years thing) to creation was instantaneous (Augustine). Some never brought it up. And nobody thought it was an important issue. With the advent of evolution, everyone recognized that long times are required. So some misguided souls in the church began to press the case that the earth was young, to try to dismiss evolution. Only then did some churches make it a sort of test of orthodoxy. GWW Wrote

Please defend Jonathan Wells, Heddle. Please defend Bill Dembksi, Heddle. Please defend Casey Luskin, Heddle. Please defend Phil Johnson, Heddle. Please defend Stephen Meyer

I am not a biological ID advocate, if so then (a) I might have heard of Wells and Luskin (I haven't). And (b) I might try to defend them. Randy wrote:

ID doesn't make any predictions

Making that point for what seems like the fiftieth time in this thread, all of them irrelevant. Now I see there is once again the question of falsification of evolution. I won't take up GWWs demand that I answer. But I will point out that RGD's first answer:

A simple answer: find a modern human fossil in genuine pre-cambrian strata.

variants of which I have heard many times, are counterproductive. They are essentially: if a miracle occurs, you can falsify evolution. It doesn't at all make the case that evolution is falsifiable. It's like saying: sure, you can falsify gravity, just show that the planets don't revolve around the sun.

David Heddle · 11 February 2005

I would guess that you're a moron who has just demonstrated what is so absurd about ID. You have to guess what ID predicts because ID provides no indication whatsoever of what it predicts.

"But this [being a Christian] is exactly what makes me doubt your sincerity" What the fuck? I wasn't say anything about you being a Christian: you obviously have a MAJOR persecution complex to read it that way,

Your original post was:

Heedle wrote "The argument you just gave, at least in words, sounds like an ad-hoc house of cards. It may be just that their marketing is better---and of course I have some bias. (Being a Christian, I "want" to see design, and I do in cosmology--- in biology I am ambivalent) But for what it is worth, Behe's description of four-hundred proteins, etc. etc. is, to me, much more compelling." But this is exactly what makes me doubt your sincerity.

If it wasn't being a Christian that made you doubt my sincerity, to what were you referring? Douglas Margolies wrote:

I said above that I cannot find the quote on the evolution blog. David says that the PT rules prevent him from providing a link.

David, on comment # 15723 above, addressing your complaint that I didn't provide a link, I wrote:

Anyway, it is from a post entitled Discovery Institute Responds to Derbyshire on Wednesday, 12 January, 2005.

All bow down to David for he is a prophet and says he knows the limits of our technology now and forever.

I get annoyed when people automatically assume gender in other people because it shows a bias that these people generally have. I also find it amusing that religious people feel that "God" would actually have a sex.

David, do you talk to people like this and point out the errors of their ways? Or do you allow them to lie for Jesus's name because you feel it is the politically correct thing for you to do?

Please defend Jonathan Wells, Heddle. Please defend Bill Dembksi, Heddle. Please defend Casey Luskin, Heddle. Please defend Phil Johnson, Heddle. Please defend Stephen Meyer

I am not a biological ID advocate, if so then (a) I might have heard of Wells and Luskin (I haven't). And (b) I might try to defend them. Randy wrote:

ID doesn't make any predictions

A simple answer: find a modern human fossil in genuine pre-cambrian strata.

Great White Wonder · 11 February 2005

Heddle, utterly irredeemably full of garbage, manages to slice himself in two pieces, lengthwise:

They are essentially: if a miracle occurs, you can falsify evolution.

So now there are no such things as miracles, David? The Christian deity can no longer perform miracles. You heard it here first. Gosh, the anti-evolution cult members will say the darndest things about the Christian deity! Anything but admit they are wrong, right David? Just like Jesus taught you: "lie for me, especially when it comes to evolution." The majority of the world's Christians think lying is a sin, David. Are they wrong? Is there some apologetics argument that I haven't heard yet to justify lying about evolution? You would be among the first people who would know, I'm sure.

It's like saying: sure, you can falsify gravity, just show that the planets don't revolve around the sun.

Would showing that not effectively cause the theory of gravity to be reconsidered (assuming the masses of the sun and planets had not changed)? Let's see if David has the brainpower to understand the disgusting contradiction in his argument. And let's also revisit my friend Bob's comments from up thread to see how closely his thinking resembles David's.

Hi, my name's Bob. I make my living on selling cigarettes. I don't know how to do anything else. I have heard there is some evidence that smoking causes cancer. But not everyone that smokes get cancer and no one has actually observed a lung cell in a human turning into a cancerous cell just because it was exposed to some inhaled tobacco smoke. SO i'm skeptical about that smoking causes cancer theory. It has nothing to do with me being a cigarette salesman and that being the sole basis for my livelihood. I'm just skeptical, understand? Maybe lung cancer is caused by some mysterious alien being who wants some people to die of lung cancer. What, you think my argument about why I don't believe that smoking causes cancer stinks? Oh, well, that's just your opinion. Me and a million other people who enjoy smoking are going to make sure that the crappy data linking smoking to cancer stinks. Oh, and I have a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering so I know something about science. I'm not just some moron.

David Heddle · 11 February 2005

GWW, are you actually a scientist?

The point of my complaint about using "A simple answer: find a modern human fossil in genuine pre-cambrian strata" is that it is utterly unscientific. Of course that is not going to happen,so as a test it is useless--and if that were the best you could do it would indeed render evolution unfalsifiable.

Nobody proposes "demonstrate that the planets don't move around the sun" to falsify Newtonian gravitation, because everyone knows that is not going to happen, just like everyone knows you won't find a human fossil in the pre-cambrian strata. To falsify Newtonian gravitation, we looked at, for example, the precession of Mercury's orbit.

Do any of the rational evolutionists on here see my point? Snappy answers like "find a modern human fossil in genuine pre-cambrian strata" weaken evolution's claim of falsifiability, because if the test requires you to prove something manifestly false, then it's not a test at all.

Great White Wonder · 11 February 2005

Heddle

if the test requires you to prove something manifestly false, then it's not a test at all.

Surely you aren't playing a semantic game with the meaning of the word "modern", David. You wouldn't stoop so low. We are talking about a fossil which is identical to a modern human fossil.

Nobody proposes "demonstrate that the planets don't move around the sun" to falsify Newtonian gravitation, because everyone knows that is not going to happen

Really, David? So religious folks know that their deities would never do that? How do they know? Did they ask John Edward?

just like everyone knows you won't find a human fossil in the pre-cambrian strata.

Just making it up as he goes along ... man, that's sad. Why not answer the question I asked you? Are there no such things as miracles, David, how do you know this, and how do you reconcile that with your holy book? I can try to summarize the contradiction in the following way: life could not have arisen and evolved without God's miraculous intervention and evolution is an unfalsifiable theory (and therefore suspect) because you need to invoke a miracle to falsify it. I'm seeing a circular argument here. Consider the possibility David that evolution and gravitational theory are on equally solid footing and that is why falsifying the theory (in its essential aspects) requires equally astounding evidence. Certainly that view is consistent with the fact that the overwhelming majority of scientists in physics and biology accept gravity and evolution as facts, at least at the level of detail taught in public school science classrooms.

frank schmidt · 11 February 2005

David Heddle asks for non-miraculous tests of evolutionary theory. How about so-called "Directed Mutation"? This was a phenomenon that appeared to be teleological and anticipatory, thereby being inconsistent with our ideas of evolution. However, the examination of the phenomenon revealed it to be quite easily accommodated into the variation-selection-reproduction process of biological evolution.

More interestingly, the apparent contradiction to evolutionary theory, because it was based on data, led to new knowledge, e.g., the prevalence of error-prone polymerases. I could be sympathetic to your creationist claims (even if the only point they addressed were abiogenesis) if they had any chance of leading to new scientific knowledge. Sadly, they don't.

David Heddle · 11 February 2005

GWW

Consider the possibility David that evolution and gravitational theory are on equally solid footing and that is why falsifying the theory (in its essential aspects) requires equally astounding evidence.

It didn't require "astounding" evidence at all, that's the point. Just a small deviation in Mercury's orbit. The test we have been discussingasks the impossible: find a fossil of a man from an era before man existed. I can't believe you don't see the difference. I can only conclude that you are not a scientist. Do you have any peer-reviewed publication record?

David Heddle · 11 February 2005

Frank,

Thank you! I gather you at least agree that the test we have been discussing is not a test at all. I'll take you at your word that Directed Mutation (I don't know what it is) is an actual test that can (or has been) conducted.

Aggie Nostic · 11 February 2005

...compare those "I don't know" evolutionist comments to the quoted "We don't know" comments from the DI.

For the evolutionist, "I don't know" is seen as a temporary state of affair that further investigation will hopefully eradicate. For the IDer, "We don't know" means no further investigation is necessary since it's a mystery. The former marks the beginning of the pursuit of KNOWledge. The latter marks the end of the pursuit of KNOWledge.

Great White Wonder · 11 February 2005

David you've kicked so much smoke up into the air by now that we're all choking. Please admit you stepped in it with your strange miracle comments and start over. Or answer my questions without dissembling.

The test we have been discussing asks the impossible: find a fossil of a man from an era before man existed.

Is any human being born before 10,000,000 BC not considered a "man"? I'm confused about why finding a fossil of a man is "impossible" but it is possible for some invisible sky being to design and control the evolution of all life on earth or create universes (indeed, according to you it is more than "possible" -- it's self-evident!!!). I'm afraid you've managed to hoist yourself up on your own retard. Perhaps you'd like to start over and agree that science is useful only when supernatural crud like mysterious alien beings and deities are left out. And maybe you'd like to recognize that just because you and a bunch of propoganda-fed Americans are impressed by bacterial flagella, it doesn't mean that biologists are idiots.

Do you have any peer-reviewed publication record?

Is Science magazine a peer-reviewed journal?

David Heddle · 11 February 2005

GWW, would you mind providing a link to a peer reviewed article that you wrote? Or a cv?

Great White Wonder · 11 February 2005

David

I'll take you at your word that Directed Mutation (I don't know what it is) is an actual test that can (or has been) conducted.

Suffice it to say, David, that "Directed Mutation" is a phenomenon that is observed under certain conditions that, while it was certainly baffling to many scientists at first, ultimately did not require invoking mysterious alien beings to explain. But had one or two scientists invoked mysterious alien beings to explain it, other scientists would have been right to laugh out loud. Those laughing scientists might feel very ashamed if, in fact, the mysteroius alien beings turned out to exist after all. But laughter is good for the soul and easily worth the risk in the case of Directed Mutation. Now, had the one or two scientists who invoked mysterious alien beings tried to peddle their theory to public school boards and claimed that microbiology was "in crisis" and they couldn't get their theory past the laughing editors of peer-reviewed journals who were really just trying to suppress Christianity in the public square the rights of Americans to protect their "beliefs", then those laughing editors and other scientists might stop laughing. They might get sort of pissed at watching their livelihood mocked and all their hard work distorted and smeared by a bunch of cranks. And what would our troll David Heddle say? No big deal. Whatever the public wants.

Great White Wonder · 11 February 2005

David boldly goes where Homer has gone before ...

GWW, would you mind providing a link to a peer reviewed article that you wrote? Or a cv?

Why? Are you going to show that I'm a hypocrite by finding a passage where I claimed that an enzyme's activity might be explaned by mysterious alien beings? You can trust me, David. You have no reason not to. I've been very generous with my time helping you to sharpen your poopy arguments.

Douglas Theobald · 11 February 2005

David, I know there's been a slew of posts, but I still have an unanswered comment up there if you are interested (#15836).

Nobody proposes "demonstrate that the planets don't move around the sun" to falsify Newtonian gravitation, because everyone knows that is not going to happen, just like everyone knows you won't find a human fossil in the pre-cambrian strata. To falsify Newtonian gravitation, we looked at, for example, the precession of Mercury's orbit.
— Heddle

As I response to the claim that evolution is irrefutable in principle, I think it is fine. If somebody claimed that Newtonian gravity was irrefutable, it's perfectly valid to respond "find a bona fide exception to the inverse square law". Why do you think it is so absurd that we could find a mammal in Cambrian strata? It's only absurd in an evoutionary framework. If you think evolution is bunk, like YEC's do, then finding a mammal in Cambrian strata is quite possible; there's no good reason not to. And of course there are YEC's who claim that it has happened or that similar things have happened (like human Cambrian footprints or polystrate trees).

Russell · 11 February 2005

Do any of the rational evolutionists on here see my point? Snappy answers like "find a modern human fossil in genuine pre-cambrian strata" weaken evolution's claim of falsifiability, because if the test requires you to prove something manifestly false, then it's not a test at all.

Honestly, no. I don't see your point. How is this different from my favorite example: 30-40 years ago there were few to no DNA sequences known. One might have proposed: Evolution predicts that DNA sequence homologies will fall into the same nested hierarchies as the family tree deduced from fossils, etc. Let's see if it's true. Well, sure enough, it turned out it was. If the two patterns had turned out to be unreconcilable, that would probably have disproved much of what's generally known as "evolution" - at least to my satisfaction.

Douglas Theobald · 11 February 2005

Russell, how's 40 years ago do?

"It will be determined to what extent the phylogenetic tree, as derived from molecular data in complete independence from the results of organismal biology, coincides with the phylogenetic tree constructed on the basis of organismal biology. If the two phylogenetic trees are mostly in agreement with respect to the topology of branching, the best available single proof of the reality of macro-evolution would be furnished. Indeed, only the theory of evolution, combined with the realization that events at any supramolecular level are consistent with molecular events, could reasonably account for such a congruence between lines of evidence obtained independently, namely amino acid seequences of homologous polypeptide chains on the one hand, and the finds of organismal taxonomy and paleontology on the other hand. Besides offering an intellectual satisfaction to some, the advertising of such evidence would of course amount to beating a dead horse. Some beating of dead horses may be ethical, when here and there they display unexpected twitches that look like life."
— Zuckerkandl and Pauling 1965

Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling, discussing the possibility of the twin nested hierarchy before the first molecular phylogenies had been made. (1965) "Evolutionary Divergence and Convergence in Proteins." in Evolving Genes and Proteins. Eds Vernon Bryson and Henry J. Vogel. New York: Academic Press., p. 101. One of the sweetest evolutionary quotes ever.

Great White Wonder · 11 February 2005

One of the sweetest evolutionary quotes ever.

Damn straight. Beautiful irrefutable stuff. I'm going to drink some OJ right now for my man Linus.

Flint · 11 February 2005

They are essentially: if a miracle occurs, you can falsify evolution.
— David Heddle

Yes, I think this is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go into much detail. 1) Let's get the theological problems out of the way. As GWW pointed out, gods generate miracles. That's what they do. If they don't they are superfluous and unnecessary. Creationists posit that life was created by miracle. If this is the case, then finding a human fossil in the pre-Cambrian should be entirely possible. If David Heddle is saying that his god cannot perform this particular miracle, even when faced with the very serious denial the theory of evolution implies, then David Heddle's faith is pretty damn flimsy. 2) Scientific theories are based on evidence. They are explanations of the evidence. The implications of this seem to get lost fairly often. Finding a human fossil in the pre-Cambrian, while doing not the slightest insult to creationism, would present a truly massive challenge to the theory of evolultion, which would at the very least need to change in fundamental ways to accommodate this observation. But this isn't unheard of. Past theories have faced similar contradictions, and have either succumbed entirely or recovered in nearly unrecognizable form. Observations contradicting theories are not miracles. Calling RGD's proposal "miraculous" only admits that the theory of evolution is fairly comprehensive and such a direct violation is vanishingly unlikely. The fact is that the theory of evolution is by now remarkably extensive and detailed. This in turn means that the predictions it makes are very narrowly defined, and the sheer scope of the "contradiction space" is correspondingly large. This is true of any mature theory -- supporting observations are extremely narrowly constrained. Yet evolution is not contradicted. At random, nearly ANY observation would falsify it.

steve · 11 February 2005

Here's something else which would probably obliterate evolution: Sequence the genome of a mammal which hasn't yet been tested, some unusual species of mole rat or groundhog, and find that its genome has nothing in common with any other mammal. Evolution would be seriously threatened.

Under IDiot 'theory', there's no reason to expect genetic similarity beween different species. For example, Mac and Windows 95 look very similar, they both have desktops, icons, mouse pointer, save files, in 100 ways they look and function similarly. But they were 'intelligently designed', and the underlying code is nearly 100% different. When you find underlying similarities, it's due to some constraint. Nothing in ID 'theory' places any such constraint on the Intelligent Designer. There's no reason the code for an untested reproductively isolated groundhog species should resemble the code for a different groundhog species. All the code can be rewritten from the ground up, no problem.

Finding an Apple mammal in a world of Microsoft mammals would seriously harm evolution. And the author would win a Nobel or two.

Charlie Wagner · 11 February 2005

One of the sweetest evolutionary quotes ever.
— Douglas Theobald

And I agree with every word. This statement allows both evolution and intelligent design, a possibility that is lost on many people who fail to distinguish clearly between the process and the mechanism. Evolution is the process, intelligent design is a possible mechanism. Zuckerkandl and Pauling say nothing about the mechanism responsible, nothing about the role of mutation and natural selection and nothing about random, accidental or unguided processes or intelligently guided processes. I looked through your paper on the t.o archive and a quick perusal leads me to the conclusion that I agree with much of what you have to say. You don't appear to go into any details about the mechanisms involved, barely mention the role of mutation, natural selection or Darwin. Perhaps a closer reading will uncover that. Like you, I accept the fact that all living organisms are closely related and probably had a common origin. But I strongly object to attributing the emergence of highly organized, complex structures, processes and adaptations to random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations. These mechanisms exist but they are trivial, lacking anywhere near the power Darwin and his successors have invested in them. They lack the power of organization, which is essential to organic evolution. They lack the ability to integrate structure, process and function into a working system in which each component relies on the others for its success. Your position seems to easily accomodate any number of possible mechanisms, including intelligent input. I see no irreconcilable barriers to accepting both evolution (common origin, change over time) and the necessity of some kind of intelligent input. Supporting intelligent guidance is not the same thing as being a religious creationist. It falls comfortably within the realm of science as just one more possible mechanism for evolution. This whole argument is not between "evolution" and "intelligent design", its an argument between the scientific method and biblical literalism an argument that has been going on for centuries. Do we get our knowledge about the world from the scientific method, or do we get it from the bible and religion? I come down strongly on the side of science. But religious creationists have hijacked intelligent design and distorted it for their own political agenda. Let's stop being so afraid of these folks and get back to the business of science. And the inclusion of the possibility of intelligent input in organic evolution falls squarely within the realm of science. Finally, perhaps you've seen this. I don't see anyone here rushing to report it to the waiting masses: Science, Vol 307, Issue 5711, 910-914 , 11 February 2005 Independent Origins of Middle Ear Bones in Monotremes and Therians Thomas H. Rich, James A. Hopson, Anne M. Musser, Timothy F. Flannery, Patricia Vickers-Rich Abstract: A dentary of the oldest known monotreme, the Early Cretaceous Teinolophos trusleri, has an internal mandibular trough, which in outgroups to mammals houses accessory jaw bones, and probable contact facets for angular, coronoid, and splenial bones. Certain of these accessory bones were detached from the mandible to become middle ear bones in mammals. Evidence that the angular (homologous with the mammalian ectotympanic) and the articular and prearticular (homologous with the mammalian malleus) bones retained attachment to the lower jaw in a basal monotreme indicates that the definitive mammalian middle ear evolved independently in living monotremes and therians (marsupials and placentals). I'll leave it to you to decide what it means. Regards, Charlie http://www.charliewagner.com http://enigma.charliewagner.com

Buridan · 11 February 2005

Douglas wrote:

"Why do you think it is so absurd that we could find a mammal in Cambrian strata? It's only absurd in an evoutionary framework. If you think evolution is bunk, like YEC's do, then finding a mammal in Cambrian strata is quite possible; there's no good reason not to."

It's also absurd from a YEC perspective because the Cambrian period doesn't exist for them. For a young earther to say: "Yes, it's certainly possible for God to have created a human being 500 million years ago" effectively undermines the YEC position. They would certainly get points for preserving their notion of an omnipotent God but at too high a price.

It would appear that it places them in an sweet little dilemma - Hmmm, do I deny God's omnipotence or deny my belief in a young earth? - but it's really a false dilemma.

By the way, have you stopped beating your dog?

Flint · 11 February 2005

[qoute=Charlie Wagner]These mechanisms exist but they are trivial, lacking anywhere near the power Darwin and his successors have invested in them. They lack the power of organization, which is essential to organic evolution. They lack the ability to integrate structure, process and function into a working system in which each component relies on the others for its success.This seems to be the heart of the issue. There's no apparent disagreement about the nature of the proposed mechanisms, but rather about whether these mechanisms can produce our observations.

How can this disagreement be tested? There's no question that the timespan required vastly exceeds the duration of the human species itself, much less any individual lifespan. The most accurate computer simulations anyone has been able to write indicate very clearly that these mechanisms are NOT trivial, they easily have sufficient power, they produce the observed organization, they integrate structure, process and function, etc. Furthermore, the computer simulations were not written to produce a desired result, they were written to obey the constraints of evolutionary theory, and run to see what these constraints produced.

However, there is also no debate that computer simulations are far from reality. Evolutionary models are quite simple compared to econometric models, yet I don't see anyone saying biology is simpler than economics. And the econometric models (far more mature, far better calibrated) continue to be lousy predictors of future economic trends. Why would biological computer models be superior?

Conversely, the Intelligent Designer proposal cannot make an incorrect prediction because it makes no predictions at all. Its postdiction record is 100%, because *by definition* it postdicts everything no matter what. If anything, the major problem with ID is that, like any universal explanation, it discourages investigation into the actual mechanisms.

I personally don't care to descend to the level of "faith in whether evidence is meaningful". Scientific explanations are useful in the physical world, magical explanations are satisfying in the emotional world. Pick a world.

PvM · 11 February 2005

But I strongly object to attributing the emergence of highly organized, complex structures, processes and adaptations to random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations. These mechanisms exist but they are trivial, lacking anywhere near the power Darwin and his successors have invested in them.
— Charlie

Note how Charlie's arguments are 1) unsupported 2) based on a gap argument. Of course intelligent design has always remained an option in evolution. But then again, science can neither refute nor support the supernatural. If Intelligent Design could formulate a scientific theory beyond the it looks designed or 'Not X thus Y' then we may have some reason to see if there is any supporting evidence for their claims. Since ID however has remained scientifically vacuous, it is hard to expect it to deliver. As far as the monotreme example, how does Charlie explains the observation? How does science explain it? What does it even mean? Charlie likely won't tell because there is no guidance from ID to provide any explanation of such data. Funny how Charlie's example exemplifies the scientific vacuity of ID.

PvM · 11 February 2005

"Why do you think it is so absurd that we could find a mammal in Cambrian strata? It's only absurd in an evoutionary framework. If you think evolution is bunk, like YEC's do, then finding a mammal in Cambrian strata is quite possible; there's no good reason not to." It's also absurd from a YEC perspective because the Cambrian period doesn't exist for them.
— charlie

But the Cambrian strata still do exist. YEC'ers do not deny the Cambrian strata Charlie but rather the dating of the strata. Jeez...

Buridan · 11 February 2005

Charlie,

Let's assume for argument's sake that the evolutionary process does not, as you suggest, involve "adaptations to random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations" as mechanisms, how would this "fact" entail the necessary presence of intelligent design, guidance, or whatever else to want to call it?

The short answer is that P (intelligent design) does not logically follow from the absence of Q (the lack of random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations), which places you in the position of demonstrating the existence of P (intelligent design) without the benefit of referring to the absence of Q (the lack of random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations). Can you do this?

Buridan · 11 February 2005

PvM,

I think you were referring to me. Anyway, I understood the point of the "Cambrian challenge" to be precisely about proper dating. Dating the Cambrian period according to a YEC timetable is like defining bachelors as married males. If you change the dates, you change the whole meaning. It then becomes a whole other animal and makes little sense to discuss the possibility of something existing a time 't' when the other party is operating from a completely different metric. My point was simple one of logic.

Douglas Theobald · 11 February 2005

Zuckerkandl and Pauling say nothing about the mechanism responsible, nothing about the role of mutation and natural selection and nothing about random, accidental or unguided processes or intelligently guided processes.
— Wagner

Nothing in that short quote, no. But the other dozens of pages in that chapter discuss selection, mutation, and probably the earliest form of neutral theory published, all in lengthy detail. I believe its the first paper to model protein evolution as a Poisson process. It's where the "molecular clock" is first proposed and given a likely justification. It's an evolutionary classic. Highly recommended.

I looked through your paper on the t.o archive and a quick perusal leads me to the conclusion that I agree with much of what you have to say. You don't appear to go into any details about the mechanisms involved, barely mention the role of mutation, natural selection or Darwin.

I don't discuss it simply as an exercise to show that the conclusion of common descent can be derived independently of an exact explanatory mechanism(s).

But I strongly object to attributing the emergence of highly organized, complex structures, processes and adaptations to random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations.

Me too. Highly organized, complex biological structures are due to a combination of selection, physical constraints, and self-organization of dissipative processes. Of course randomness also adds to the appearance of complexity.

They lack the power of organization, which is essential to organic evolution. They lack the ability to integrate structure, process and function into a working system in which each component relies on the others for its success.

True, but like I said, that's where selection comes in.

Your position seems to easily accomodate any number of possible mechanisms, including intelligent input. I see no irreconcilable barriers to accepting both evolution (common origin, change over time) and the necessity of some kind of intelligent input.

I grant that it's possible. What is needed is evidence.

Great White Wonder · 11 February 2005

[Faked message from "Evolving Apeman" removed. - WRE]

ts · 12 February 2005

I would guess that you?re a moron who has just demonstrated what is so absurd about ID. You have to guess what ID predicts because ID provides no indication whatsoever of what it predicts. See my point above. I have not in the slightest been arguing for ID, so I am not obliged to do any better than guess what they predict. If I were a biological ID proponent, then you could hold my feet to the fire.

The comment said nothing about your obligation; it's about the fact that neither you nor anyone else can do any better than guess. And in fact you have argued for ID by calling the argument for it compelling. As well, you are an apologist for ID proponents. All of which makes you not only a moron but also a troll, a dissembler, and a practitioner of bad faith. But you could redeem yourself by carrying out your promise to leave and never come back.

Great White Wonder · 12 February 2005

1591 not me.

Obviously. When I'm proved wrong, you won't remember that I apologized. You'll be too busy begging to board the mother ship.

Rupert Goodwins · 12 February 2005

David Heddle wrote:

There is a world of difference between a theory that cannot be tested because the experiments are, at this time, difficult or technologically impossible, and one whose experiments are not even feasible because they require us to look somewhere that we can't see, even in principle.

That's as may be. Which side is ID on? What do its principles say about experimental verification? A theory that is in principle untestable is a philosophy. Were ID to set itself up as a philosophy or even a religion, I think all of the present unpleasantness could be avoided. If it wants to be a science it must MUST have either practical, repeatable experiments, or a path towards them, or the beginnings of a path towards them. (It must be well past all of these stages and be in the world of many peer-reviewed papers and successful research programmes to have a pop at being taught in school. No theory should expect a royal road into the education of our children.) It does and has none of these things. Pretending otherwise - or that these lacunae don't matter - in order to discuss it is about as useful as trying to learn xenobiology at an SF con cos party. If a real alien landed, there'd be intense scientific activity and millions of dollars spent without a murmur: the IDers are acting like a bloke dressing up in tentacles and demanding the same treatment. We must be free to say "This is a man from Idaho in a plush costume his mother made from couch cover offcuts". R

Russell · 12 February 2005

Just a couple of points to summarize and (I hope) clarify some of the foregoing.

First, the question was posed "can someone please articulate a test that would show that evolution is false." . To which the response was offered: " simple answer: find modern human fossil in genuine pre-cambrian strata." Which David Heddle characterized thus: "variants of which I have heard many times, are counterproductive. They are essentially: if a miracle occurs, you can falsify evolution. It doesn't at all make the case that evolution is falsifiable." (An objection I think many of us continue to fail to understand). Douglas Theobald offered this (elegant, IMHO)example of a test that was actually carried out 40 years ago, as a logical parallel to the preCambrian fossil.

But Charlie Wagner (while, I guess, conceding that it pretty well dispatches the Common Descent question) protests that it says nothing about mechanism. Which is true.

Herein lies one of the most annoying tricks in the ID repertoire of legerdemain. Behe contends that he has no problem with common descent, but seems to have no qualms about joining forces with his fellow IDers that do. His encouragement of the general distrust of "evolution" - lumping common descent in with "random mutation and natural selection" strikes me as cynical and dishonest. Questions of mechanism can be and have been addressed.

The moral of the story: "Evolution" is a big theory. Don't fall for the bait (and subsequent switch) of testing "evolution". Demand that the "skeptic" specify a particular aspect.

Charlie Wagner · 12 February 2005

The moral of the story: "Evolution" is a big theory. Don't fall for the bait (and subsequent switch) of testing "evolution". Demand that the "skeptic" specify a particular aspect.
— Russell

Finally, a breakthrough! Perhaps now we can get evolutionists to define what they mean by evolution. They are the ones guilty of bait and switch. They declare that evolution is a fact, when only the process of evolution is a fact. Then they try to slip the darwinian mechanism, which is apocryphal at best into the mix when no one is looking. This is confirmed by the debate itself: evolution or intelligent design? They fail to recognize that it could easily be evolution AND intelligent design, since evolution is a process and intelligent design is a mechanism.

Charlie Wagner · 12 February 2005

Let's assume for argument's sake that the evolutionary process does not, as you suggest, involve "adaptations to random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations" as mechanisms, how would this "fact" entail the necessary presence of intelligent design, guidance, or whatever else to want to call it?
— Buridan

It would not necessitate it, it would suggest it, since there are not too many other alternatives. I don't see any other possibilities beyond "random" or "directed". Do you?

The short answer is that P (intelligent design) does not logically follow from the absence of Q (the lack of random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations), which places you in the position of demonstrating the existence of P (intelligent design) without the benefit of referring to the absence of Q (the lack of random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations). Can you do this?

Science is not about formal logic. Logic is the realm of mathematics. In math, you can prove things or disprove them using logic. In science, the goal is not to prove or disprove, only to say what is most likely. If there are only two possibilities, and one of them is falsified, then the assumption is that the other possibility is most likely correct. My claim for intelligent input is not proven. I'm only claiming that it's highly probable, based on inductive reasoning.

Russell · 12 February 2005

evolutionists ... are the ones guilty of bait and switch. They declare that evolution is a fact, when only the process of evolution is a fact. Then they try to slip the darwinian mechanism, which is apocryphal at best into the mix when no one is looking ... They fail to recognize that it could easily be evolution AND intelligent design, since evolution is a process and intelligent design is a mechanism.
— Charlie Wagner

Well, let's just agree we need to be specific about what we're testing, what we're challenging. I don't think "evolutionists" always know which aspect a "skeptic" is challenging; I think that "skeptics" are also not always clear, and, more often, don't really care. But the "Darwinian mechanism" is, indeed, a mechanism. You say "intelligent design" is another. Excellent! As you say, a breakthrough! What is that mechanism? How did that work?

Rupert Goodwins · 12 February 2005

Charlie sez:

Perhaps now we can get evolutionists to define what they mean by evolution. They are the ones guilty of bait and switch. They declare that evolution is a fact, when only the process of evolution is a fact. Then they try to slip the darwinian mechanism, which is apocryphal at best into the mix when no one is looking. This is confirmed by the debate itself: evolution or intelligent design? They fail to recognize that it could easily be evolution AND intelligent design, since evolution is a process and intelligent design is a mechanism.

Well, without going to town on some dubious semantics there, you have successfuly made a case for ID to be a religion. If you're prepared to believe that evolution could be the mechanism through which intelligent design takes place, then it is entirely plausible that a designer with sufficient powers could arrange matters to effect this without in any way changing the science. After all, what triggers a random mutation? If the designer can manipulate randomness, then ID can settle down to trying to spot resultant patterns by statistical means - and if the designer's really good, then even those will be useless. A cosmic ray a millimetre to the left here, a mutagenic plant grazed just a little too much there... and as for natural selection, the designer can certainly arrange things so that bad things happen to the unwanted and good things to the good. Some will see it as the normal operations of a godless universe, the believers will chortle at such boneheaded literalism and rejoice in their designer's prowess. The logical conclusion is that any designer sufficiently capable will be able to do what they like without any chance of detection. Thus, the IDers can say that evolution is intelligently directed, that the only intelligence powerful enough to do this so subtly must be God (presumably a Protestant God, but maybe statistical analysis can help here too), and so not only have they proved the existence of God but have the copious evidence of all natural science to back it up. Every new detail uncovered by the scientists will prove this all the stronger. This is of course a classic piece of Christian apologia, and so stands justified by tradition as well as logic, revelation and faith. Can't get better than that. And everyone can go back to doing useful work, praying, or carving human footprints in Jurassic rock beds, as they see fit. (I suppose that the current IDers are in fact positing that whatever the designer was, it wasn't powerful enough to escape attention - or, I guess, it has some sort of Clarkean plan to bury the clues so they will only be found at a certain stage in scientific enquiry. Both are heretical concepts, as far as I'm aware, in mainstream Christianity. Is anyone talking about the theological implications of ID?) R

Charlie Wagner · 12 February 2005

What is that mechanism? How did that work?
— Russell

I don't have the foggiest notion. How did mutation, which is random with respect to fitness, and natural selection, which can only work on already existing variation create the highly organized structures, processes and systems we find in living things? Looks like we're both in the same boat. Charlie Wagner http://enigma.charliewagner.com

Charlie Wagner · 12 February 2005

Well, without going to town on some dubious semantics there, you have successfuly made a case for ID to be a religion. If you're prepared to believe that evolution could be the mechanism through which intelligent design takes place, then it is entirely plausible that a designer with sufficient powers could arrange matters to effect this without in any way changing the science. After all, what triggers a random mutation? If the designer can manipulate randomness, then ID can settle down to trying to spot resultant patterns by statistical means - and if the designer's really good, then even those will be useless. A cosmic ray a millimetre to the left here, a mutagenic plant grazed just a little too much there . . . and as for natural selection, the designer can certainly arrange things so that bad things happen to the unwanted and good things to the good. Some will see it as the normal operations of a godless universe, the believers will chortle at such boneheaded literalism and rejoice in their designer's prowess.
— Rupert Goodwins

My intelligent designer is not that proficient. Intelligent design is not a religion just because it has been hijacked by religious creationists and used to promote their religious agenda. It is perfectly scientific to postulate that there are life forms in this universe that are more intelligent than humans and who are capable of designing living organisms without being supernatural, omnipotent or whatever else. It is also scientific to hypothesize that life could not have emerged without intelligent input. Could a highly proficient engineer design and build a machine that could fool people into thinking it was a natural phenomenon?

The logical conclusion is that any designer sufficiently capable will be able to do what they like without any chance of detection. Thus, the IDers can say that evolution is intelligently directed, that the only intelligence powerful enough to do this so subtly must be God (presumably a Protestant God, but maybe statistical analysis can help here too), and so not only have they proved the existence of God but have the copious evidence of all natural science to back it up. Every new detail uncovered by the scientists will prove this all the stronger. This is of course a classic piece of Christian apologia, and so stands justified by tradition as well as logic, revelation and faith. Can't get better than that.

I don't agree, because their IS evidence of intelligent input in living systems and it's not the least bit subtle. Why do you not allow for an intelligent entity that is far above human capability but is not supernatural, omnipotent etc.? Are you locked into the notion that humans are the highest form of intelligence in the universe and anything greater than human intelligence must be a supernatural God? Do you not know of the "Q" continuum or the Borg? ;-)

And everyone can go back to doing useful work, praying, or carving human footprints in Jurassic rock beds, as they see fit. (I suppose that the current IDers are in fact positing that whatever the designer was, it wasn't powerful enough to escape attention - or, I guess, it has some sort of Clarkean plan to bury the clues so they will only be found at a certain stage in scientific enquiry. Both are heretical concepts, as far as I'm aware, in mainstream Christianity. Is anyone talking about the theological implications of ID?)

You're painting everyone with the same brush. You're lumping everyone into the same mold and painting them all as ignorant, bible-thumping religious creationists. Can a scientist not object to the theory of evolution without being so maligned? I admit there are few like me, who are scientists and agnostics who believe that intelligent input is needed for evolution to occur, but that's still no reason to insult me.

Bob Maurus · 12 February 2005

Charlie,

"It is perfectly scientific to postulate that there are life forms in this universe that are more intelligent than humans and who are capable of designing living organisms without being supernatural, omnipotent or whatever else. It is also scientific to hypothesize that life could not have emerged without intelligent input."

Your statement begs the obvious question, Who/what designed the non-supernatural intelligent designers you postulate as the designers of living organisms? If they're not supernatural they too must have been designed - so who, since you insist on intelligent input, designed them? All you seem to be doing is pushing the final reckoning back. At some point you must deal with the original designer.

Russell · 12 February 2005

Charlie:

How did mutation, which is random with respect to fitness, and natural selection, which can only work on already existing variation create the highly organized structures, processes and systems we find in living things?

Huh? What's to prevent them? Look at the Avida example. Given billions of years and innumerable "trials", given the ability to generate "excess" genetic material for optimizing, what's to prevent it?

Looks like we're both in the same boat.

Hardly. I have a mechanism you question, you have no mechanism at all.

PvM · 12 February 2005

Not at all. Your position is that of eternal ignorance while science is learning more and more about how these variation, selection can create highly complex and organized systems. For instance, gene duplication and preferential attachment replicate the scale free network found in protein networks, regularory networks. Science has shown how genes can be promiscuous and maintain original function while adapting to a new function.

What has ID to offer? Hmmmm

Jon H · 12 February 2005

The simple way to do away with ID is to expose it as the Gnostic heresy it truly is.

ID and evolution imply that the designer worked by trial-and-error. God doesn't make errors. Therefore, the world and its creatures must have been created by an inferior, evil, Gnostic Demiurge.

If you can get the ID and Creationist camps arguing, "You got your Gnosticism in my Christianity!", "You got YOUR Christianity in MY Gnosticism!", then I think ID will lose popular support and they'll have to fall back on blatant Christian creationism.

A lot of Christians currently sympathetic to ID will probably lose interest if it's pointed out that it's a pagan heresy dismissed in the early Christian era.

Charlie Wagner · 12 February 2005

All you seem to be doing is pushing the final reckoning back. At some point you must deal with the original designer.
— Bob

Evolutionists say that all new variation came from pre-existing forms...which came from pre-existing foms...which came from pre-existing forms. Where did it all start? Is it turtles all the way down? How is it that I have this problem and you don't? All you seem to be doing is pushing the final reckoning back. At some point you must deal with the original form. Charlie Wagner Read "Backflow" at: http://enigma.charliewagner.com

Russell · 12 February 2005

Evolutionists say that all new variation came from pre-existing forms . . . Where did it all start? ... How is it that I have this problem and you don't?

It's quite simple. "Evolutionists" think that more complex life forms developed from less complex life forms. That's why you have this problem and we don't. I daresay most of us think that ultimately there was chemical abiogenesis. (Yes, the dreaded life-from-nonlife scenario). But that's another story.

Russell · 12 February 2005

Evolutionists say that all new variation came from pre-existing forms . . . Where did it all start? ... How is it that I have this problem and you don't?

al_art · 12 February 2005

Question for all: Are you guys on the evolution side embarrassed by GWW?

Yes. I am just an interested layperson, not a scientist. I'm not sure that my level of knowledge or my questions are radically different from those of anti-evolutionists - but I think evolution is an awesome concept, and I am here for an education, to find out what biologists are up to these days. Straightforward arguments against ID make sense to me, but they are demeaned when insults are flung at people who disagree. I am not familiar with David Heddle, but his comments are civil, and it would seem possible to discuss them without presuming that he is being deliberately obtuse; some people here have. I see from his blog that he considers the statement "It is possible to believe in God and not believe in ID." to be false. I consider the statement to be true - given my understanding of God, which is vaguely panentheistic, and my understanding of Intelligent Design in the context of evolution, which is that it accepts natural explanations as sufficient most of the time and invokes the supernatural only for special cases. He appears to be using the term intelligent design more generally, in a way that could include deism, and asks questions in the context of cosmology (e.g. why is there a universe at all?) that are interesting and worthy of attention. And, I realize, outside the scope of the issue at hand.

Wayne Francis · 12 February 2005

in Comment # 15979

Who/what designed the non-supernatural intelligent designers you postulate as the designers of living organisms? If they're not supernatural they too must have been designed - so who, since you insist on intelligent input, designed them? All you seem to be doing is pushing the final reckoning back. At some point you must deal with the original designer.
— Bob

Charlie Wagners view on this is the following, I'll try to dig up the comments he's made that show this later. 1) The "life" that created and control our development is not supernatural, from this point on referred to as the "advanced life" 2) The "advanced life" has always existed in the form that it exists today. 3) The "advanced life" originated and stays in this universe. 4) The universe is eternally old thus allowing said "advanced life" to exist forever 5) He does not know anything about this "advanced life" beyond the "fact" that this "advanced life" is needed to produce "our life" The main problem I have with this "advanced life" is there is ZERO evidence for such life at the current time and secondly there is a mountain of evidence against this "advanced life" being possible. Note I do not mean that a natural life form far beyond our level couldn't produce what we see on earth today but that a natural "advanced life" that has never needed to evolve could not happen. This is because of Charlies view of #4. There is NO evidence to support his model of an infinitely old universe. By this I mean a universe that is infinitely old AND able to support said "natural" "advanced life" the entire time. Let me show a few pictures to describe what I'm talking about Here we have an old view of the "Big Bang" universe. The blue dot representing where we might be existing today in this type of universe. This model has a definite start and end to the universe. http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/waynefrancis/oldbigbang.gif It did have a number of problems with it. Basically it didn't fit the data. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) for one had a problem with this model because the rapid expansion of the universe in the early big bang did not allow for the uniformity of the CBM that we observe because of the Horizon. Now with more data from multiple sources we have a much different view of the universe. We have see the universe is going through phases. The universe is expanding but we see fluxuations in this expansion. Sometimes its in what you could consider a inflationary phase where the universe is expanding faster then the horizon, shown as the green line below, while other times the horizon may be expanding faster then the universe, shown as the blue line below. Please David Heddle, or any others that understand the current cosmological data better then I, correct me if I'm wrong. http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/waynefrancis/expansion.gif which leads me to why, currently CW's #3 is wrong Below is a bad diagram by my that, no where near to scale, shows the phases of the universe as the data suggests today. http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/waynefrancis/current.gif we have the early universe during the De Sitter Time period where the universe is expanding and cooling but it is all within the horizon needed so that it cools uniformly. This period in itself may extend back in time infinitely but the problem for CW is that it is not conducive to "natural" life because we are in a phase where matter really is not in existence that would be needed for CW's "advanced life" We then have phases of the universe expanding through phases where it is expanding faster and slower then the horizon is expanding. But yet it is still expanding overall this whole time period. From what we see within our horizon the universe has the same physical laws. We see that the matter that makes up galaxies 10 billion light years away is the same type of matter we see in our own solar system. Charlies view that the universe is infinitely old may be true strictly speaking but he'll lead you to believe that the universe was never in a De Sitter phase. Since CW's "advanced life" can not or does not need to be able to be outside of our space time it then they are regulated to having the same properties of our universe. Currently that is our universe, for the purpose of his "advanced life" has beginning. I'll now see if I can track down Comments Charlie has made stating his opinion on the "advanced life" that he has no idea about but is sure that they control our evolution.

steve · 12 February 2005

Question for all: Are you guys on the evolution side embarrassed by GWW?

Not embarrassed, exactly. I don't read his comments, but I usually don't read the comments anyway. The contributor posts are the good thing about this site. If i did read the comments, I'd be as frustrated and angry as GWW is. There's only so many thousand times you can watch smart people waste days and days patiently trying to explain something to a few stubborn fools, who will refuse to get it til the bitter end, without wanting to scream and yell and mock them. Besides. The other side has Charlie Wagner. That's embarrassing.

Buridan · 12 February 2005

I have some catching up to do, but to answer Charlie from post 15972:

Science has everything to do with formal logic as does any form of discourse that uses argumentation as a means of articulating postulates. The last time I looked, science was still using argumentation as a basis for articulating valid postulates and validity is decided through logic. For better or worse, logic cannot be disposed of.

In any event, the "necessity" proviso was yours and not mine -- look back at your original argument (15935: "I see no irreconcilable barriers to accepting both evolution (common origin, change over time) and the necessity of some kind of intelligent input."). I'll grant that you probably didn't mean to assert this strong of a claim. Nevertheless, the question remains unanswered:

Without appealing to the absence of random chance and accidental, fortuitous mutations (something that has yet to be established logically, empirically or otherwise) can you provide convincing evidence for the presence of an intelligent designer. And give us the probabilities for such an entity. In other words, it's not sufficient to simply poke holes in existing explanations, you need to provide a better set of explanations and show why those explanations have more explanatory power.

Note: Charlie is correct to insist that an intelligent designer need not be God, a god, or any other supernatural being, but it remains to be demonstrated what the probabilities of such a being are, and how those probabilities stack up against non-ID explanations.

ts · 13 February 2005

Question for all: Are you guys on the evolution side embarrassed by GWW?

I think those who are embarrassed by GWW should be embarrassed by their immaturity. Adults don't worry about such things.

I am not familiar with David Heddle, but his comments are civil

Bad faith is the enemy of civility. Lying, hypocrisy, and avoiding rhetorical burdens is not civil. Trolling is not civil, and Heddle has no agenda here other than trolling.

ts · 13 February 2005

How is it that I have this problem and you don?t?

Simple (and obvious to the intellectually competent) -- ID claims that irreducible complexity requires a designer -- but this argument demands an infinite regress of designers. Evolution has no infinite regress because the predecessors are less simple, back to the formation of an initial self-replicating molecule from non-self-replicating molecules. Evolution may be wrong, but it isn't question begging the way IDC is.

ts · 13 February 2005

How did mutation, which is random with respect to fitness, and natural selection, which can only work on already existing variation create the highly organized structures, processes and systems we find in living things?

Did you read this in a book and then simply repeat it? It's hard to imagine that you actually thought about it. Mutation, which is random in respect to fitness, produces new variations -- duh. Natural selection can only work on "already existing variation", but that includes new variation due to mutation -- duh. In reality the story is more complex, but your silly question poses no problem.

ts · 13 February 2005

It is perfectly scientific to postulate that there are life forms in this universe that are more intelligent than humans and who are capable of designing living organisms without being supernatural, omnipotent or whatever else.

It's "perfectly scientific" to postulate that you have a massive brain tumor that prevents you from being able to think beyond the level of a 12 year old. Science doesn't end at hypothesis.

It is also scientific to hypothesize that life could not have emerged without intelligent input.

No, that is not scientific at all -- "could not" statements are not empirical. The only way to scientifically support a "could not" statement is to show that it's logically deducible from empirical observation -- for example, "nothing can travel faster than the speed of light" and "quarks cannot be observed" are logically deducible from empirically verified mathematical theories in physics. Behe tried this with "irreducible complexity", but he failed miserably -- not only has he failed to show that irreducibly complex entities cannot evolve, others have shown that they can and in fact have. But this won't stop you from repeating the same silly refuted claims over and over for the rest of your life (perhaps even into eternity).

ts · 13 February 2005

Why do you not allow for an intelligent entity that is far above human capability but is not supernatural, omnipotent etc.?

We allow for it. The burden is on you to demonstrate it. You have utterly failed to meet this burden. Until you meet it, you have just one of an infinity of logically possible speculations about the world, none of which are worth further consideration.

ts · 13 February 2005

I don?t see any other possibilities beyond ?random? or ?directed?. Do you?

Yes; environmentally constrained behavior is another possibility. Water molecules move about randomly, yet water erosion and the resulting formation of rivers etc. does not occur randomly -- but neither is it directed. Evolution is the same. Dawkins treats this third possibility extensively in "The Blind Watchmaker". Until Darwin developed the idea of natural selection, no one saw anything beyond the two possibilities you mention -- Dawkins makes this point forcefully when he says that atheism wasn't intellectually defensible prior to Darwin. But to now only see the two possibilities requires willful ignorance. And we are now seeing possibilities beyond those three, with computation and mathematical constraints such as fractals and cellular automata coming into play. Interestingly, Einstein wrote a paper on why rivers meander; see http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/Einstein/albert.htm One of the most important aspects of Einstein's genius was his ability to see -- and look for -- possibilities.

ts · 13 February 2005

Science is not about formal logic. Logic is the realm of mathematics. In math, you can prove things or disprove them using logic. In science, the goal is not to prove or disprove, only to say what is most likely.

As they say, mathematics is the handmaiden of science. Logic is essential to science.

If there are only two possibilities,

How ironic. "there are only two possibilities" is a statement of logic, not science.

and one of them is falsified, then the assumption is that the other possibility is most likely correct.

If there really were only two possibilities and one was falsified, then the other would be necessarily true. Assumption and likelihood are improperly applied here. However, there aren't only two possibilities and evolution has not been falsified.

My claim for intelligent input is not proven. I?m only claiming that it?s highly probable, based on inductive reasoning.

Your "reasoning" is crypto-deductive, a flawed employment of the law of the excluded middle. You have offered no "inductive reasoning" -- not that it would help if you had, since the only useful sort of "inductive reasoning" is mathematical induction, which is a form of deduction. Science is done via abduction, inference to the best explanation, and Occam's Razor -- which has been proven in information theory to yield optimal accuracy of prediction.

ts · 13 February 2005

Science is not about formal logic. Logic is the realm of mathematics. In math, you can prove things or disprove them using logic. In science, the goal is not to prove or disprove, only to say what is most likely.

As they say, mathematics is the handmaiden of science. Logic is essential to science.

If there are only two possibilities,

How ironic. "there are only two possibilities" is a statement of logic, not science.

and one of them is falsified, then the assumption is that the other possibility is most likely correct.

My claim for intelligent input is not proven. I?m only claiming that it?s highly probable, based on inductive reasoning.

ts · 13 February 2005

159[5]1 not me.
— GWW

Too bad the IP address isn't included in the byline.

Charlie Wagner · 13 February 2005

Science has everything to do with formal logic as does any form of discourse that uses argumentation as a means of articulating postulates. The last time I looked, science was still using argumentation as a basis for articulating valid postulates and validity is decided through logic. For better or worse, logic cannot be disposed of.
— Buridan

And it's logical that a heavy object should fall at a faster rate than a lighter one. That's what Aristotle thought, and his reliance on argumentation and logic resulted in a scientific ignorance that lasted 2000 years. Only when Galileo introduced the idea of experimentation was this misunderstanding corrected. Science today relies on empirical evidence, experimentation, observation and the application of inductive reasoning and analogy. Nothing in science is "proven" as it is in mathematics.

can you provide convincing evidence for the presence of an intelligent designer.

That depends on what you mean by "convincing evidence". If you're asking me if I can prove it, the answer is no. Nothing in science is proven. On the other hand, arguments by inductive reasoning and analogy are as good as their ability to persuade. We believe that an object released in a gravitational field will fall towards the center of mass. Can I prove this? No. But it has happened every time it has been tried. How persuasive is that? Only you can decide. Can I prove that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? No. But it has happened every day of my life. How persuasive is that? Only you can decide. Living organisms are biochemical machines that integrate structure, process and function. No such machine ever created itself using random processes and accidental occurrences. How persuasive is that? Only you can decide.

Flint · 13 February 2005

No such machine ever created itself using random processes and accidental occurrences. How persuasive is that? Only you can decide.

Unfortunately, this is a policy position, not based on any observation, but rather on pure preference. Can we come up with a good explanation (one that makes nothing but accurate predictions) for why the sun rises and live evolves? Indeed we can. We aren't just saying "Gee, it always (or I refuse to believe it) happens, my belief is as good as anyone else's." Science types are tentatively persuaded by such successful explanations. Charlie is persuaded by what he prefers to believe. If the model says otherwise, well, you go to your church and he'll go to his, and everything is equal in his mind. And so when sophisticated, predictive models for what Charlie doesn't prefer are presented to him, his response is basically "Does not! Does not!"

We believe that an object released in a gravitational field will fall towards the center of mass.

I guess this is what the world looks like to someone for whom everything is a belief. Sunrises? Belief. Gravity? Belief. Evolution? Belief. Evidence? Belief. Let us now pray...

Buridan · 13 February 2005

Oh my... I'm finally seeing the incorrigibility that many of you have described.

Alas, I'm left speechless with your last set of comments Charlie. I'm reminded of the Monty Python scene (http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/grail-05.htm) in the Holy Grail where they "deduce" whether the woman with a carrot for a nose is a witch. "Who are you [Charlie] who are so wise in the ways of science?"

Jon H · 13 February 2005

" Living organisms are biochemical machines that integrate structure, process and function. No such machine ever created itself using random processes and accidental occurrences."

What about a cancerous tumor?

Created by random mutation and accidental occurrences.

ts · 13 February 2005

And it's logical that a heavy object should fall at a faster rate than a lighter one.

If you think so, than kindly produce a logical demonstration of it. ... Just as I thought, you have none. You're just a blatherer.

That's what Aristotle thought

"what Aristotle thought" is not the criterion for whether something is logical.

and his reliance on argumentation and logic resulted in a scientific ignorance that lasted 2000 years.

What, Aristotle lived for 2000 years? Scientific ignorance came not doing science, before and after Aristotle -- it's the same thing that makes you scientifically ignorant. It had nothing to do with reliance on argumentation and logic -- that claim is illogical.

Only when Galileo introduced the idea of experimentation was this misunderstanding corrected. Science today relies on empirical evidence, experimentation, observation and the application of inductive reasoning and analogy. Nothing in science is ?proven? as it is in mathematics.

Galileo never dropped anything from the Tower of Pisa -- that's a myth. Rather, according to his notebooks, he reasoned that half an object falls as fast as the whole object, yet weighs half as much. Similarly with tying a heavy object to a light object -- if the lighter one falls slower, it should impede the heavier one, yet the combined system is heavier than either of them. That is logic, requires no experimentation, and is what refuted Aristotle. Galileo made other discoveries through experimentation, but not that one. You have no clue just how illogical and ignorant you are.

Charlie Wagner · 13 February 2005

"Who are you...who are so wise in the ways of science?"
— Bedevere

"Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know." -Arthur to Bedevere at the Bridge of Death HaHaHaHa!

ts · 13 February 2005

We believe that an object released in a gravitational field will fall towards the center of mass. Can I prove this? No. But it has happened every time it has been tried. How persuasive is that?

Not very, but such naive induction is not why we believe that the theory of gravity is a good model. Are you really that ignorant of scientific method and the history of science? I suggest A. F. Chalmers' "What is this thing called Science?", which deals with the inadequacy of induction as scientific methodology, and has good coverage of the Copernican revolution.

Colin · 13 February 2005

You have no clue just how illogical and ignorant you are.
— ts

I disagree. I think that ignorance is the goal of creationism, both to cultivate it oneself and to encourage it in others. Ignorance allows ideology to flourish, when it might die in the face of inconvenient facts. It is crucial to avoid those facts, then, even if it requires bizarre contortions. Mr. Wagner, I suggest, is more than aware of his ignorance; he is proud of it.

ts · 13 February 2005

HaHaHaHa!
— Charlie Wagner

That sums up the ignorant troll well.

ts · 13 February 2005

HaHaHaHa!
— Charlie Wagner

That sums up the ignorant troll well.

Buridan · 13 February 2005

Since this thread is devolving rapidly, here's some more Python. The structure of this exchange seems painfully familiar:

SOLDIER #1:
Where'd you get the coconuts?
ARTHUR:
We found them.
SOLDIER #1:
Found them? In Mercia? The coconut's tropical!
ARTHUR:
What do you mean?
SOLDIER #1:
Well, this is a temperate zone.
ARTHUR:
The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?
SOLDIER #1:
Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
ARTHUR:
Not at all. They could be carried.
SOLDIER #1:
What? A swallow carrying a coconut?
ARTHUR:
It could grip it by the husk!
SOLDIER #1:
It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.
ARTHUR:
Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here?
SOLDIER #1:
Listen. In order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?
ARTHUR:
Please!

ts · 13 February 2005

Since this thread is devolving rapidly,

Actually, I've made some rather substantive posts. I suspect that, for instance, the fact that Galileo reasoned that all objects fall at the same speed, rather than demonstrating it empirically, is news to many people who post here. And the rebuttal of the idea that science is based on induction is substantive. In fact, it is worth noting that the fact that the sun has always risen before hasn't been the sole basis for believing it will tomorrow ever since the Copernican revolution, which may help explain folks like Charlie, who really are pre-scientific thinkers.

Ed Darrell · 13 February 2005

Oh, good grief! Asked about evidence for an intelligent desigmer, Mr. Wagner said:

That depends on what you mean by "convincing evidence". If you're asking me if I can prove it, the answer is no. Nothing in science is proven. On the other hand, arguments by inductive reasoning and analogy are as good as their ability to persuade. We believe that an object released in a gravitational field will fall towards the center of mass. Can I prove this? No. But it has happened every time it has been tried. How persuasive is that? Only you can decide. Can I prove that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? No. But it has happened every day of my life. How persuasive is that? Only you can decide. Living organisms are biochemical machines that integrate structure, process and function. No such machine ever created itself using random processes and accidental occurrences. How persuasive is that? Only you can decide.

So, in other words, you have no evidence at all. By the way, evolution doesn't argue for accidents and random occurrences (Here's a clue whose logic appears to defy creationist/IDists: "Selection" is the opposite of "random." Think about it). No machine ever created itself, period. On the other hand, living things reproduce. Billions of creatures reproduced every day. RNA self-organizes and self-replicates. DNA is a twist away from RNA. In your gut, today, several million cells will recreate themselves. It's really a gut issue, Charlie -- and though you're literally bathed in the evidence, you don't see it, or acknowledge it. Logic is no match for the facts.

Ed Darrell · 13 February 2005

Someone said:

David, who do you think created and designed all the life forms that ever lived on earth and approximately when did that occur? Can you answer that question honestly for us?

Mr. Heddle responded:

Yes I can answer that. I believe God is the primary creator. I also believe that God uses secondary causes. For example, He doesn't move the planets around micron by micron. Gravity does that. By why do we have the right law (inverse-square) of gravity? Because the universe has the correct number of expanding dimensions. God made that call. So I believe He created all things, including life, but I am not adverse to evolution as a secondary cause, like gravity. That would be so-called theistic evolution. When? Whenever the fossil record says so---what is it now, a few hundred million years after the earth formed?

David, does your hypothesis suggest what signs of this deity's intervention we should see? For example, red grapefruit are the result of a sport mutation in the 1940s. Seedless, navel oranges are all descended from one mutated tree which some orange grower had the good sense to select for grafting propagation. According to you, those mutations were divine, no? They are recent -- if there is any evidence that the interventions were divine, the evidence should be available and discernible. What evidence should we be looking for? (And why are no IDists looking? If you claim they are, name them and tell where they work, please.) And if you can posit something, give us an answer to the money question: What is necessary to get that deity to intervene against HIV and anthrax? ID labs should be working furiously on such a solution, since the payoff would be to affirm ID as real science in spectacular fashion. So, what light does ID shed -- or is it not able to shed any light at all? Mr. Heddle continued:

By the way, GWW, you took my admission of biases as precluding me from being objective. In the strictest sense, that's true. But I'd be amazed if even you were to claim that you bring no presuppositions to the table. One more thing, GWW, a piece of advice I know you'll ignore. Stop using the word "dissembler" and its derivatives in virtually all your posts. I think it must even be boring even your compatriots by now.

I'm not GWW, nor can I answer for him; but I'll match my presuppositions against yours any day. For example, I assume, as the Christian I am, that God doesn't tell falsehoods. Therefore, what nature shows us about the functions of evolution must be true. Your presupposition appears not to allow for such an honest deity. I propose that the God of Darwin is more noble than the God of ID, for that reason alone. Honesty is, of course, the best policy. And, while I've not used the word "dissemble," I don't hesitate to do so. 1.) I think IDists should stop dissembling about the strength of their numbers (200 science-related people is not a movement in any branch of science, especially in biology. 2.) No working, research scientist supports any part of Jonathan Wells' bizarre claims against Kettlewell's research, and each person Wells footnotes on the issue has called Wells a dissembler, or worse, for misrepresenting their research and conclusions. 3.) There is not an iota of scientific research being done using an ID paradigm, anywhere. 4.) Santorum's amendment was never enacted into law. Avoid those errors, for starters, and you'll be on the road to avoiding the label "dissembler."

Jari Anttila · 13 February 2005

(allright, it's probably too late, but can't hang around here all the time...)

Flint: If the design is good, the ID did it. If the design is lousy, the ID ALSO did it. If the design is IC, then the ID did it. If it’s redundent, the ID ALSO did it. An ID is the answer, the question doesn’t really matter.

In this case I actually find the creationist dualism more logical: If the design is good, then goddidit. If it's bad, the post-Fall degradation did it.

Randy Crum: evolution - or probably more appropriately paleontology - would predict that the first *fossil* evidence of early life found would also be “fairly complex” because sub-microscopic evidence in rocks billions of years old is extremely difficult to find.

As I see it, evolution would predict an order somewhat like this to appear in the fossil record: 1. single-celled prokaryotes 2. single-celled eukaryotes 3. multicellular eukaryotes Results: 1. Fossils 3.8 - 2.0 Gyrs ago are exclusively prokaryotic: stromatolites built by blue-green algae. 2. First apparently eukaryotic cells 1.8 Gyrs ago. They become more common 1.3 - 0.9 Gyrs ago (Beck Spring Dolomite, California and Bitter Springs, Australia) 3. Oldest traces of multicellular organisms 1.0 - 0.7 Gyrs ago. And after that the Ediacaran jellies and Cambrian critters; failry complex folks. I don't suppose there's any discrepancy about the order of complexity here; no matter what the chronological order might be, would evolution not be true. If the first organisms on Earth were "front-loaded" to evolve, as e.g. Michael Behe has proposed, the cyanobacterial cells don't seem likely candidates for that.

Russel: The moral of the story: “Evolution” is a big theory. Don’t fall for the bait (and subsequent switch) of testing “evolution”. Demand that the “skeptic” specify a particular aspect.

Exactly. A demand to "test evolution", or to prove it, is like a demand to test particle physics; period. What should be tested? How should it be tested, and for what? Answers to these questions will usually lead to a dead end. Either the skeptics don't have a clue of what should actually be detectable were evolution true ("I would believe in evolution if a fish would turn into a frog, etc."), or they categorically reject every test as circumstantial evidence only ("Were you there?"); meaning that historical reconstructions are not testable at all. If that's the case then it's not a problem of evolutionary theory.

Charlie Wagner: (Evolutionists) declare that evolution is a fact, when only the process of evolution is a fact. Then they try to slip the darwinian mechanism, which is apocryphal at best into the mix when no one is looking.

Perhaps this would clear things a bit: 1. The process of evolution (changes in allele frequencies, which lead to changes in lifeforms, and all that) is a fact. 2. Speciation is a fact. 3. Common descent (the "Tree of Life") is a fact; based on facts #1 and #2 and all the circumstantial evidence we have from anatomy, molecular biology, fossils, etc. Now, some people might say that common descent is only a theory, but that boils down to the difference between a fact and a theory, which nobody has defined conclusively either. In this case it has only some philosophical value. 4. Darwinism, i.e. the darwinian mechanism, is a fact. Mutations happen. Natural selection, sexual selection and genetic drift do happen. 5. The Darwinian theory of evolution; that #4 explains why #1-#3 happen, is a theory. Or more precisely: it's a theory to say that #4 explains most, if not everything, that is included in #1-#3. It's a fact that Darwinism causes at least some of it. I see no reason to demand that Darwinism is the only mechanism of evolution, or #1-#3. Because evolution is not a cause but an effect, it's perfectly possible that many independent mechanisms exist. So much for the "dogmatic darwinism". But Darwinism is preferable to any other hypothetical mechanism, because: A. We know the Darwinian mechanisms exist. We just don't know if they explain everything. But we don't know if any intelligent agent has existed when life evolved. B. Darwinian mechanisms are simple. Perhaps they are simplest imaginable explanation even among natural causes, let alone if compared to some intelligent agent. Darwinian mechanisms may be dissented as "trivial" but in fact their triviality is a strength, not a weakness. Compare this to the notion that a very trivial force, gravity, is the only effective agent in the universe, if viewed on a large scale. Or do you see any significant cosmological intelligence in action? When it comes to billions of years or billions of light-years, the important agents have to be simple.

FL: Op-ed writer Fulton wrote, “Intelligent designers,” as they’re called, can’t explain how their “designer” creates new species. “We don’t know,” a director of the Intelligent Design-oriented Discovery Institute’s Center for Science recently told Newsweek. “It’s a mystery.” And some people call talk like that “education.” Well, ID is not inherently “mysticism”, period, just as it was established earlier that ID is not inherently “religion.”

I see that the only basis for you to claim this is that you don't yourself call it a religion or mysticism. As previously explained by me and by many others, it requires an incomprehensible agent that works in mysterious ways and for mysterious purposes, and, unlike any other scientists, the ID-advocates themselves are especially trying to keep these things mysterious. You know, most of the universe is composed by unknown substance called Dark Matter. Wow! That's a mystery if anything. But AFAIK, cosmologists are not trying to suppress its investigation. On the contrary.

Compare the above quoted paragraph with a couple statements by evolutionist Massimo Pigliucci in his article “Where Do We Come From”: Regarding the question of origin-of-life, Pigliucci in the article openly accepts chemical evolution and rejects “special creation” as the explanation by which life originated on Earth.

In this case the “special creation” would involve some prokaryotic cells; a lousy excuse for a "creation".

However, in the course of doing so, he also plainly wrote: First, it has to be true that we really don’t have a clue about how life on Earth originated by natural means.... Now, Jari, compare those “I don’t know” evolutionist comments to the quoted “We don’t know” comments from the DI.

I did. DI says they don't know how their designer creates new species. Pigliucci says they don't know how life on Earth originated by natural means. Do you see the difference here? Intelligent Design -mysteries may be comparable to abiogenesis, but not to biological evolution. I told before that a special creation (or dumbload) -hypothesis is perfectly compatible with evolution. No matter how life originated, and it did somehow, the things we know about evolution depend on evidence from later times. So biological evolution does not rely on any mysteries of abiogenesis. It relies on the existence of life (which is a fact; from 3.8 Gyrs ago to the present day) But obviously there cannot be design without a designer(s), so the mysteries concerning this "designer" directly affect the things that are supposed to have been designed. Abiogenesis didn't produce the flagellum. Darwinian evolution did, and it's not a mysterious entity. But if the IDers are right, a mysterious entity called "designer" made it.

Are you therefore prepared to conclude that evolution is also “mysticism” on this basis of “don’t know”?

No, because you severly missed the point here. And I don't call natural abiogenesis a mysticism either, because it does not rely on unknown agents, but known natural laws. It's quite reasonable why we don't know how life originated naturally, because we don't know the exact conditions on primordial Earth, and because the precellular life left no fossils. It's not mysticism to admit that we don't know something that we have no evidence of.

One can always ask (regarding the issue of “mysticism”) the same question that I asked about “religion” concerning Wm. Dembski’s simple 3-point ID hypothesis: 1. Specified complexity is well-defined and empirically detectable. 2. Undirected natural causes are incapable of explaining specified complexity. 3. Intelligent causation best explains specified complexity. That question is, “please show me where any part of this 3-point hypothesis specifically requires or pre-assumes mysticism”.

That's not a hypothesis but a series of obscure phrases about the "specified complexity", which is Dembski's own invention for his own use. Quite mystical stuff.

(Please also provide a standard dictionary definition of mysticism so we have can have a common ground there).

Well, my offline WordWeb-dictionary says: "Mystical, mysterious: Having an import not apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence; beyond ordinary understanding". Certainly, this Intelligent Designer of yours is "beyond ordinary understanding".

Ed Darrell · 13 February 2005

Mr. Wagner said:

I don't agree, because their IS evidence of intelligent input in living systems and it's not the least bit subtle. Why do you not allow for an intelligent entity that is far above human capability but is not supernatural, omnipotent etc.? Are you locked into the notion that humans are the highest form of intelligence in the universe and anything greater than human intelligence must be a supernatural God? Do you not know of the "Q" continuum or the Borg? ;-)

NOT subtle? What about "completely undetectable" is not subtle? Charlie, there is nothing to which ID advocates can point and say "that is design in a living system that can only come from a superior intelligence." Heck, unless one knows exactly what genes are plugged into e. coli to make it manufacture human insulin, you nor any other ID advocate cannot tell that the genes are spliced in. So, unless you have the blueprints from the Superior Intelligence Intelligent Design Factory Engineering and Design Group, your claims are fatuous that any living thing is in any way designed. Dembski's statistics can't even win the trifecta at the local horse track (where breeding plays a role, after all), let alone explain what is designed and what is not. Science doesn't dismiss supernatural elements, really -- it just insists that one not claim to have found God when the facts demonstrate that one has simply failed to look for other causes. Why are you so anxious to blame deity for the bad designs of living things? What makes you so discouraged about looking for causes of structures and processes in living things that you want to stop looking already?

Bob Maurus · 13 February 2005

Charlie,

How about we temporarilly allow for the possibility of an "intelligent entity that is far above human capability but is not supernatural, omnipotent, etc,", while you compile some evidence to credibly suggest that this entity in fact exists?

Don't get me wrong here - I have no bias against such an entity. Frankly, I'd be absolutely delighted to learn that we're the result of extraterrestrial genetic experiments. Seems to me though, that you're the one in the batter's box.

Until you do that, we're the only intelligence we know about, and if we know anything about ourselves we know, contrary to Nelson's Law, we didn't create the Universe and all that's in it.

Great White Wonder · 13 February 2005

Charlie, how about you do the calculations which Dave Scot doesn't seem able to handle? You know, where you calculate approximately how much time the mysterious alien beings spent designing and creating each of the organisms that ever lived on earth, including all the present organisms. Don't forget to state your assumptions (# of beings, where they did most of their work, how they travelled from place to place on the earth, etc.).

Thanks! Even if you don't end up persuading us, you might have a decent science fiction story. Or you get start a religion, like L. Ron Hubbard did.

Jim Harrison · 13 February 2005

I recently looked under the hood of my Mustang and realized that no natural human intelligence could ever have designed so irreducibly complex a machine as a reciprocating engine. Coming up with the idea of powering a vehicle by controlled explosions of octane vapor? Who could have possibly come up with so loopy a notion? And for all I know Fords aren't the most complicated devices on the planet.

Maybe it's time to put the Christ back in Chrysler and recognize that God is necessary to explain human ingenuity as well as biological evolution. After all, if the ID folks are right that one needs non-natural intervention to contrive a mitochondrium, surely they must believe that it also takes the hand of God to fabricate a carburator.

DonkeyKong · 14 February 2005

Simple question part 2.

Two thoughts.

1) Finding a modern Human in pre cambria strata says nothing about the validity of Evolution except that the understood timeframe is incorrect. Were such a modern human or mammal found evolutionists would merely move their timeline. They would not accept the possibility of evolution being false, to me this is a form of religious belief. Evolution of another flavor would be substituted and the theory would not be disproven just altered.

2) Within the context of the argument as it was understood by the person who replied to me I have a few questions. Since my objection is not to wether evolution occured or wether evolution did not occur I have a relatively unique angle. My point is that as soon as you CLAIM that evolution is a SCIENTIFIC FACT there is a weight of evidence that falls squarely on your shoulders and has not been met.

Were evolution a fact you would know the following:

1) path(s) from atoms to DNA or RNA(pick one) to modern human that follows the calculus of evolution (which is poorly understood at the moment). Not just currently there is a modern human and in the past this appears not to be the case therefore evolution is a fact.

2) A timeline that includes each step on the path and also follows the calculus of evolution (I am picky only in that the timetables must satisfy #3).

3) An enviornment that satisfies the prerequisites of each step on that pathway for at least one of the possible pathways.

4) That there exists no other alternate explaination for modern human existing where it appears that he once did not. It is relatively easy to prove that a man can shoot a gun, it is much more difficult to show who committed a murder caused by gunshot.

As I can see many possible alternate explainations for #4 I think your long term prospects of showing evolution is a fact in any real sense of the word are slim.

Great White Wonder · 14 February 2005

DonkeyKong writes

fact in any real sense of the word

Bwahahahahaahaahah!!! You kill me, Donkster. Really, that's too rich. Stop it.

steve · 14 February 2005

Maybe it's time to put the Christ back in Chrysler

That's hilarious, Jim.

steve · 14 February 2005

Were evolution a fact you would know the following: ... 4) That there exists no other alternate explaination for modern human existing where it appears that he once did not.

Creationist: Fact! Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

ts · 14 February 2005

Were evolution a fact you would know the following:
— DonkeyBrain

And I guess the Holocaust isn't a fact because we don't know the number of human hairs or freckles or hangnails that were incinerated.

I am picky only in that ...

Please show that your exact level of pickiness is a necessary condition for something to be a fact.

Jari Anttila · 14 February 2005

Finding a modern Human in pre cambria strata says nothing about the validity of Evolution except that the understood timeframe is incorrect. Were such a modern human or mammal found evolutionists would merely move their timeline.

They should also discard the whole fossil record as an evidence of evolution. If humans or other mammals were already present in Precambrian times, then we could draw no evolutionary conclusions from the fossil succession in later times. For some reason humans just didn't fossilize between Precambrian and Quaternary periods.

DonkeyKong · 14 February 2005

Ah quality science....

when the "science" argument involves name calling or ridicule as per 16138, 16141, 16147 (donkeybrain oh so cleaver) I am reminded much more of a religion discussion. Which is pretty much what most of you are having.

16151-Were a human found in pre Cambrian it would not eliminate the possibility that humans evolved, or even that humans evolved within the timeframe of current evolution. It would just eliminiate the argument that evolution as currently supposed was the first time complex life evolved. All the data that has been found would not be un-found and would find itself patched into the new theory of evolution.

This new theory would almost certainly be very similiar to the existing evolution theory just moved in time. Were the human form a strange attractor in the sense that all paths lead to a bi-pedial intelligent mammal that is very similiar geneticaly to us then evolution could have happened then died out then happened again.

The current state of evolutionary science is not advanced enough to know the answers to these matters.

DonkeyKong · 14 February 2005

Comment #16147

Please refer to my comments about proving something possible being easier than proving something the only thing that is possible.

An analogy would be to claim that hitler was the only entity responsible for killing jews in the 40s. That no homocides unrelated to nazis killed jews and then being unfamiliar with how many jews were killed in the holocost.

You claim evolution is a scientific fact then you explain it. The problem is you haven't even decided in detail what it is that you would be explaining.

Did it start on Mars or Earth?
Reducing or Oxidizing enviornment?
RNA or DNA or DNA/RNA was the first organism?

Almost the sum total of "evolution" ramains a mystery to its believers yet they claim it is fact. Why? Because we are and it appears we once were not, therefor it MUST be a fact. This is no more sophisticated a faith than a God like being who always has been making us.

That is a RELIGION not science. At least the creationists know they are using faith. Most evolutionists are ignorant that they are in a religion.

You haven't even proven that evolution is POSSIBLE yet, let alone the only POSSIBLE pathway within the constraints of history.

So make your silly little arguments, its like not knowing how many grains of sand are on the beach blah blah blah. Anything that can keep you from facing your own religious beliefs.

Great White Wonder · 14 February 2005

Kong writes

At least the creationists know they are using faith.

What's the difference between a faith-based belief and a scientific fact, DK?

Ken Willis · 14 February 2005

I don't know DonkeyKong so for all I know he is a wonderful guy and may even be the next chairman of the National Academy of Sciences or even the next Pope. But the argument he is making is familiar stuff to me. Not the subject matter, it's the style of arguing to which I refer.

Thirty years of law practice has made me very familiar with this type of argument. I was prepared in law school to expect this sort of thing, and I soon found it be a mainstay of trial lawyers. My old professor called it the "running up another hill" argument. Here is why it is used and how it works. If your opponent has you where you are weak, move the argument to "another hill" where either you are stronger or your opponent is weaker. If your opponent is foolish enough to follow you there, you may beat him. You may win the argument, and the case, even though your case is weak and your opponent's case is strong.

DonkeyKong has skillfully detracted some of you to the other hill of what it would mean to find an intact human skelton in pre-cambrian rocks. Never mind that the scenario is preposterous, by getting you to consider it he has thrown you off your game. In a debate, or in a courtroom, you become vulnerable if you allow yourself to be so distracted. Better to refuse the offer.

Charlie Wagner · 14 February 2005

NOT subtle? What about "completely undetectable" is not subtle? Charlie, there is nothing to which ID advocates can point and say "that is design in a living system that can only come from a superior intelligence."
— Ed Darrell

People ask me why I repeat the same stuff over and over again ad nauseum. The answer is simple: no one pays attention to a word I say. This is beyond frustrating. Have I not explained in excruciating detail the concept of organization and how it is only found in intelligently designed entities? Have I not in explained in excruciating detail how one can detect organization? Have I not explained in excruciating detail why living organisms are analogous to intelligently designed machines? Have you read my paper? (http://www.charliewagner.net/casefor.htm)

Great White Wonder · 14 February 2005

Charlie complains

The answer is simple: no one pays attention to a word I say. This is beyond frustrating.

Are you kidding? DaveScot has obviously been paying very close attention to your posts. You have a genuine disciple. You should be proud of yourself, Charlie!!!

Russell · 14 February 2005

Mr Kong in #16158:

when the "science" argument involves name calling or ridicule ... I am reminded much more of a religion discussion

... and in #16160:

So make your silly little arguments, its like not knowing how many grains of sand are on the beach blah blah blah. Anything that can keep you from facing your own religious beliefs.

If there's anything less helpful than ridiculing your opponent's response, it's ridiculing your opponent's response before it's even offered. Anyone tempted to engage Mr. Kong in dialog clearly has too much time on his/her hands.

Henry J · 14 February 2005

Re "Heck, unless one knows exactly what genes are plugged into e. coli to make it manufacture human insulin, you nor any other ID advocate cannot tell that the genes are spliced in. "

What if a somebody happen to notice that some of the e. coli's dna was almost identical to a piece of dna from another species? Yeah, that's unlikely if the dna involved is only one gene, but not completely impossible.

Maybe if the ID people would spend time searching genomes for coincidences of that sort... (hint hint)

Henry

Ed Darrell · 14 February 2005

I had said:

NOT subtle? What about "completely undetectable" is not subtle? Charlie, there is nothing to which ID advocates can point and say "that is design in a living system that can only come from a superior intelligence."

Mr. Wagner lectured me:

People ask me why I repeat the same stuff over and over again ad nauseum. The answer is simple: no one pays attention to a word I say. This is beyond frustrating. Have I not explained in excruciating detail the concept of organization and how it is only found in intelligently designed entities? Have I not in explained in excruciating detail how one can detect organization? Have I not explained in excruciating detail why living organisms are analogous to intelligently designed machines? Have you read my paper? (http://www.charliewagner.net/casefor.htm . . . )

Yes, you've explained that it is your belief -- unfounded on any laboratory experiment or precedent theory -- that organization is found only in intelligently designed entities, though you've refused to explain why you think God bothers with each crystal of salt that lines the shores of the Great Salt Lake. What I ask is that you use your methodology to tell us the difference between what is designed in e. coli that produce Humulin, and what is not. If what you say in the stuff you repeat endlessly has any real meaning, it's a small challenge to which you can easily respond. If, on the other hand, and as I suspect, your endless explanations are no more than Canute's commands to the oceans, you'll not have a clue where to start, your methodology will offer not a whit of help to you, and you'll complain that no one is paying attention to you. Science is done in experiment. You have to take your stuff to the lab bench and test it. Get thee to a laboratory, and quit whining. Whines irritate the drosophila.

Jari Anttila · 14 February 2005

DonkeyKong: Were a human found in pre Cambrian it would not eliminate the possibility that humans evolved, or even that humans evolved within the timeframe of current evolution. It would just eliminiate the argument that evolution as currently supposed was the first time complex life evolved.

How could we know where this precambrian man came from? I don't suppose it's very likely to have been evolved from stromatolites, or even from Pikaia, in such a brief time that no intermediate fossils were formed. That's a little bit too unbelievable punk-eek to me. Or if it took a relatively long time, as it did later, then where is the entire fossil record from precambrian primitive life to precambrian complex life? It should be comparable to the phanerozoic era (from Cambrian to present). Precambrian fossils do exist but they don't fit into this scheme. It seems to me that this earlier evolution of complex life would be purely speculative. The gap here is wayyyy too huge if compared to any gaps of the latter days. And I don't believe in natural mud-to-man abiogenesis. But supernaturally it's far more likely. As I recall, at least one supernatural mud-to-man hypothesis is already available.

This new theory would almost certainly be very similiar to the existing evolution theory just moved in time. Were the human form a strange attractor in the sense that all paths lead to a bi-pedial intelligent mammal

Sounds like 19th century Lamarckism. No. It would be more likely that the precambrian men and we were close relatives in a same lineage. The present prokaryotic life doesn't differ (from outside) very much from its precambrian relatives, so maybe humans also survived somewhere unaltered and unnoticed? Anyway, because it's obvious that the precambrian man didn't evolve alone, we couldn't know if some of the phanerozoic fossils actually were just relics from the precambrian biota. And there goes the succession.

You claim evolution is a scientific fact then you explain it.

What evolution? What is scientific? What is a fact? What needs explaining?

The problem is you haven’t even decided in detail what it is that you would be explaining. Did it start on Mars or Earth? Reducing or Oxidizing enviornment? RNA or DNA or DNA/RNA was the first organism?

Yes. There are indeed many unanswered questions is science. You may even find more than these. But what about the evolution you mentioned?

This is no more sophisticated a faith than a God like being who always has been making us.

No. In faith there are only unasked questions. You don't ask God how He made you. Creationists have no faith in God, so they're trying to answer on behalf of Him. (I had too much time on my hands).

Jim Harrison · 14 February 2005

When believers complain that Darwinism and related theories are an incomplete explanation of the origin and development of life, they apparently assume that a fuller theory would be more congenial to their theological prejudices. In fact, there's a good chance that new discoveries will be even worse for them than the old ones.

Be careful what you wish for. Who knows what's really lurking in those famous gaps?

steve · 14 February 2005

no one pays attention to a word I say.

Like Charlie's 'science', this too is untrue. PvM pays attention to Charlie all the time. God knows why, but he does.

DonkeyKong · 15 February 2005

Comment 16247

I have no problem with evolution, it is not inconsistent with an all powerful God no matter how you twist it (such is the nature of an all powerful God). What I don't like is calling evolution scientific fact and teaching it in HS as what happened when many of those children believe in 7 day creation.

I would be perfectly happy with limiting the discussion to within the bounds of science evolution is the only supported theory of creation. There is clearly many facts that point in the evolution direction and i wouldn't subtract from that.

But there are also clearly many many issues that are not understood and several of them could elimintate the possibility of evolution as currently understood being true.

As such saying evolution is what happened is not supported by science. Evolutionsists secretly base their belief on the belief that complex intelligent entities now exist and in the past didn't exist and therefore there must have been a proces of going from non-existance to existance (the details of that process are ever changing). It is a religious belief that goes beyond the strength of the scientific basis of evolution.

Almost all the details from my science book from HS detailing how evolution happened have since been proven false so why the rush to 100% domination based on poor facts?

Answer: Evolution Religious Fanatics.

DonkeyKong · 15 February 2005

Simple thought for the day...

Lets suppose for a second that evolutionists are correct. Complex life formed from randomness.

But it happened 1 billion years ago on the other side of the universe. The entity mastered action at a distance via the universal quantom wave funciton, remember it is 1 BILLION years ahead of us.

The entity named itself God.

It created us in 7 days.

Even when you are right it requires religious belief to show that you are not wrong. You disbelieve my hypothesis soley because the concept of a higher power is distasteful. Given the size of the universe any proven evolution pathway will still favor my above explaination over unaided local evolution.

Sorry folks but evolution isn't even internally consistent...

Will you concede now that it isn't a FACT?

jonas · 15 February 2005

Hi folks,

to offer a respite from the apparently fruitless 'human fossil in Cambrian layer' discussion, let me offer some other, hopefully less emotionally loaded ways to potentially falsify evolution (or at least the applicability of current evolutionary theories to the topics in question):

- Find a fossil or recent higher animal exhibiting homologous characteristics from two distinct earlier or contemporary lineages, meaning characteristics that appear only apart from each other in older or contemporary animals. E.g. if the beak of the platypus was actually homologuos to the bird beak and it was covered in feathers this would pose a big problem, as it would combine traits apparently developed within the archosaur lineage with a body consistent with therapsid lineage. Was this to happen rather frequently or without a clearly apparent explanation (like recent gene manipulation by humans) evolution would be in deep trouble.

- Find a fossil or recent organism nearly completely homologous to other well-known organisms from the same or a slightly earlier time period, but exhibiting a completely new multi-part organ or trait with no earlier version or rudiment to be found anywhere. Was this to happen rather frequently or without a clearly apparent explanation (like recent gene manipulation by humans) evolution would be in deep trouble, too.

- (has already been brought up, but never addressed) Find an organism outwarly similar to other organisms exhibiting equivalent but completely different bio-chemistry or genetics.

- Find a characteristic common to most life forms and not yet exactly tested for most organisms and systematically map the likely cladistics of life based on this trait (a lot of bio-chemical systems or ultrastructure of cellular organells come to mind). Should any of the thus reconstructed 'trees of life' be radically differ from the ones already know without a readily apparent explanation (like endosymbiosis), this would pose a real problem.

Unfortunately for creationists and IDlers, if evolution was to fall down it would be replaced by another naturalist approach or, lacking this a period of confusion. Hypotheses which make no predictions, offer no mechanisms and are not testable (three by and large equivalent features), will never make there way to become accepted theories, not because of any prejudice, but because they do not work within empirical science.

Ed Darrell · 15 February 2005

DK,

Where do you suppose the Burbank russet potato came from, if not from another potato?

Red grapefruit? Grapefruit?

Without evolution, you'd not be able to raise your cholesterol to dangerous levels at McDonalds.

What part of "fact" is unclear? Things that are observed, and things that get made into "billions and billions served," exist, and your attempts to pretend they are not facts does not make them go away.

Did you get your flu shot this year? Why? If evolution were nto a fact, you'd never need more than one in your lifetime.

ts · 15 February 2005

when the "science" argument involves name calling or ridicule as per 16138, 16141, 16147 (donkeybrain oh so cleaver) I am reminded much more of a religion discussion.

Who gives a flying f*ck what you're reminded of? The fact is that you're an ignorant arrogant intellectually dishonest troll who knows nothing about evolution but finds that no barrier to pontificating about it. Since you refuse to act in good faith, you lack the basic requisites for engaging in arguments, and thus are good for nothing other than sport -- and not even very good for that. But just to try (and it isn't easy) to take you and your position seriously for a moment -- falsification applies to a given theory, not that theory and any modification of the theory that might occur as a result of falsification. Therefore your complaint that the theory of evolution would be modified into a different theory of evolution were it falsified is no objection at all -- that's how science is supposed to work. It is in fact an acknowledgement of the very thing denied -- that the theory of evolution is a falsifiable theory. So go back to your creationist board and stop trolling this one.

ts · 15 February 2005

Did you get your flu shot this year? Why? If evolution were nto a fact, you?d never need more than one in your lifetime.

That doesn't follow, since antibodies don't necessarily last for life -- consider tetanus boosters.

ts · 15 February 2005

to offer a respite from the apparently fruitless ?human fossil in Cambrian layer? discussion, let me offer some other, hopefully less emotionally loaded ways to potentially falsify evolution

There are much simpler ways in which the theory of evolution might be falsified -- the problem is that people fail to realize that successful theories are successful precisely because none of the obvious falsifications have been observed. There's really no need to invent subtle forms of falsification that might not have yet been observed. If, for instance, a lizard were to hatch from a chicken egg, or a jade carving of an elephant were to turn into an elephant, or we were to wake up in the morning and find the planet populated with thousands of never-before seen life forms, that would falsify the theory of evolution -- and that is more than enough to counter the claim that it isn't falsifiable. OTOH, none of these (nor anything else) would falsify ID.

DonkeyKong · 15 February 2005

Quick points.

1) I asked for examples that would discredit evolution. The specific of pre-cambrian man was your sides argument. Attacking an argument from your own side as though I was the originator of it without stating that my point was how to disprove evolution is very weak debate indeed.

2) For those with the simplistic "scientific arguments" flu, something about McDonalds (wasn't very clear). Do you realize that science tells us that we live in a 12 dimensional space? 3D and time is 4 D, even if you had perfect observation within that 4D out of 12D you are still missing the MAJORITY of the activity. Read FLATLAND if you fail to understand how powerful this argument against you is. Its a childrens book so you can manage it in 30 min at the bookstore and it is a classic.

3) I do appriciate the arguments that are actually rational though. The strongest was the one about most of the proof being stuff you don't think about like the jade elephant becoming an elephant.

4) My point however here is that very very very few evolution fanatics have really looked at the alternatives or even understand the scientific process. Most of you really are clouded by religious belief, Darwinism as religion.

DonkeyKong · 15 February 2005

Evolution is a complex though poorly formed theory with a large about on anacdotal evidence. It owes its universal acceptance among science pilgrams to the fact that it is willing to change to meet the observed facts. If I came along and said life started on Venus and came to Earth by space ship and showed clear proof then evolution would simply change a few details and print new textbooks and ridicule anyone who asked WTF.

Evolutionists have religious beliefs

1) That life and indeed the whole universe once did not exist.

2) That life and the universe now exists.

3) Therefore the transition from 1->2 must have occured and because there are no (massive) acknoledged spontaneous violations of the 3rd law of thermo then it must have been slow (well they take the opposite tact on big bang yet miss the irony).

Where this theory is weak.

1) Cosmological observation of 50 years in detail and maybe another 1000 in very poor detail is nothing relative to Billions of years. Basically a single point in time is available to our Big Bang friends.

2) Colmological observations from a single solar system of a single Galaxy is a single point in space when compared to the whole universe.

3) There is some supporting evidence for evolution as it is currently preached. But there is not enough evidence FOR evolution to enter into claims like evolution occured and created complex life.

A) First you must prove that evolution can occur and create more complex life (haven't done this yet)
B) Second you must prove that the calculus of evolution (which you don't yet understand) fits with the enviornment of Earth. IE did you have time, did you have the right temp at the right time etc etc etc.
C) Third you must prove that evolution is the only theory that fits the enviornment of Earth. Obviously this is the hardest.

You have to do this and THEN test against NEW observed evidence (Its called science BTW).

Barring all that HARD work you can attack those who question why you gave up science to preach Darwinism.

Flint · 15 February 2005

Evolution is not cosmology. Once again, we see an example where if someone believes that some invisible eternal logically impossible magician created life, the universe and everything POOF all at once by magic, he simply can't grasp that real science has divided these things up into different categories. Even recognizing that the origins of the universe, life, and species are different things is disallowed.

For the record, however, cosmology itself assigns fairly low probabilities of correctness to most of their theories, calling most of them speculative. The evidence is admittedly spotty and indirect, and major surprises continue to happen. In this respect, the foundations of cosmology and evolution are as different as the spellings of the words themselves. All of which remains invisible to the Believer, of course.

Another clue: the Believer wants absolute answers. Science keeps changing its theories to fit new facts. Now, in a Believers eyes everything is a religion, and this inconstancy renders science a really lousy religion. If science could only get over this silly fixation with facts and evidence...

Right · 15 February 2005

All scientific theories change when faced with new evidence. Why is this news?

Jim Harrison · 15 February 2005

ID theories are unfalsifiable because they don't make concrete predictions. Evolution makes lots of predictions and is therefore falsifiable in principle. Since it is true, however, it's unfalsifiable in practice. Maybe that's the confusion.

Wayne Francis · 15 February 2005

in Comment # 16321

Do you realize that science tells us that we live in a 12 dimensional space?
— DonkeyKong

Umm DK I think you should leave. Science does not tell us that. M-Theory says there are 10+1 dimensions. But, as David Heddle will point out, these are just mathematical models. It relies on supersymmetry but the problem is we have not found the particles needed yet. Please learn at least the science, theories and hypotheses that you are trying to talk about.

Jari Anttila · 15 February 2005

jonas: - Find a fossil or recent higher animal exhibiting homologous characteristics from two distinct earlier or contemporary lineages, meaning characteristics that appear only apart from each other in older or contemporary animals

In other words: find a fossil that would break the nested hierarchy of lineages. Plenty of intermediates between reptiles (therapsids) and mammals exist and also between dinosaurs and birds, but none between mammals and birds. Those who claim that there are no transitional fossils should search them very eagerly.

ts: the problem is that people fail to realize that successful theories are successful precisely because none of the obvious falsifications have been observed. There’s really no need to invent subtle forms of falsification that might not have yet been observed

But it's good to have those subtle forms in hand too, because the critics here dismissed obvious falsifications as absurd. Nobody has ever seen a lizard hatching from a chicken egg, and I'm quite sure nobody is carrying out a test for it. Were it possible it would certaintly have happened by now, as would other obvious falsifications. But it isn't absurd to wait e.g. a half-bird-half-mammal fossil to emerge from somewhere, because many new fossils are dug up every year. This means that science is actually keeping evolution under a real and constant threat, which cannot be dismissed. and DonkeyKong:

What I don’t like is calling evolution scientific fact and teaching it in HS as what happened when many of those children believe in 7 day creation. I would be perfectly happy with limiting the discussion to within the bounds of science evolution is the only supported theory of creation.

Then don't call it "a scientific fact", if you don't like that phrase, whatever it means to you. I would be perfectly happy to admit that evolution is the only supported theory of creation. Creationism or ID are not supported at all. So, what's the problem of teaching evolution as science?

But there are also clearly many many issues that are not understood and several of them could elimintate the possibility of evolution as currently understood being true.

Yes. Many issues that are not currently understood could eliminate the possibility of many current theories as currently understood being true.

Almost all the details from my science book from HS detailing how evolution happened have since been proven false so why the rush to 100% domination based on poor facts?

Could you tell us briefly what kind of evolution did they teach you in HS and how's the current theory different than that.

The entity mastered action at a distance via the universal quantom wave funciton, remember it is 1 BILLION years ahead of us. The entity named itself God. It created us in 7 days. Even when you are right it requires religious belief to show that you are not wrong. You disbelieve my hypothesis soley because the concept of a higher power is distasteful.

No, but because there's no evidence of any 7-day creation.

I asked for examples that would discredit evolution. The specific of pre-cambrian man was your sides argument.

It would certainly discredit the evolutionary history of Earth as we know it. It would make the fossil record look suspicious. But for a scientific discovery you need much more than a simple phrase. What kind of "man"? Complete skeleton or a single tooth (Nebraska Man)? How many fossils? In which part of Precambrian? Were there any other peculiar fossils nearby? And all this assuming that the dating is correct.

... (Hovind-style blathering) ... 1)Cosmological observation..is nothing relative to Billions of years. Basically a single point in time is available to our Big Bang friends. 2) Colmological observations from a single solar system of a single Galaxy is a single point in space when compared to the whole universe. ... (more Hovind-style blathering) ...

Fine. Either you explore the whole universe and come back (don't hurry) with observations that debunk our current theories, or you do the same thing from the same single point in which we are now. Remember what your friend Phil E. Johnson has said about beating something with nothing.

DonkeyKong · 16 February 2005

Flint

If you look closer you will find that cosomology and evolution share a common attribute they are both events that are in the past and have only component aspects that are verifyable in present day.

Science in general is about the future and the ability to predict the future. When science is used on events of the past without the ability to reproduce them in the future it is a completely different thing.

As such all types of science that speculate about what occured in the past without first showing mastery of the material by predicting events in the future are equally suspect.

I am only aware of evolution and cosmology that do this and claim to be science. Forensic science uses theories that have been EXTENSIVELY verified by predicting future events.

So no I don't see the difference between quasi-science as used in cosomology and quasi-science as used in evolution.

DonkeyKong · 16 February 2005

Correction

"All scientific theories change when faced with new evidence. Why is this news?"

Should read

"All false scientific theories change when faced with new evidence. Why is this news?"

steve · 16 February 2005

Indeed, Jari, you can't beat something with nothing. To displace a theory as powerful as evolution, you'd need an even better theory. That would be one hell of a theory, by the way, at this late date. Which explains why ID is doomed*. They don't even have a wrong scientific theory. ID is not even as good as Lamarckianism, or the Steady State universe. Those were at least theories.

What was it that creati--I mean, Intelligent Design Theorist said? "What you call Intelligent Design, I call religion, or christianity."

Yep.

* I mean scientifically, of course. Politically, it's a tidal wave now, and it could possibly win in several ways. I wouldn't be surprised if ID became part of science ed in half the country, over the next 10 years. Creationist activists are like the insurgents in Iraq--they don't represent the majority of the population, but they're aggressive and crazy, therefore disproportionally influential.

Great White Wonder · 16 February 2005

I'm still laughing at Donkey Kong's claim that a belief that "life exists" is a "religious" belief! Where do these trolls come from? How can I exploit their dumbness to earn additional money for myself?

ts · 16 February 2005

Read FLATLAND if you fail to understand how powerful this argument against you is. Its a childrens book so you can manage it in 30 min at the bookstore and it is a classic.

Edward Abbott's Flatland is not a children's book and science does not tell us that we live in a 12 dimensional space. You KNOW you're not well educated, yet post in a forum where people are, and expect them not to be able to tell. That's arrogance bordering on insanity. BTW, I do not believe there was ever a time when the universe didn't exist. Read Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time". It's under 200 hundred pages, and shouldn't take you more than 30 years to read and comprehend.

DonkeyKong · 16 February 2005

Classic religious belief

Indeed, Jari, you can't beat something with nothing"

That has nothing to do with SCIENCE.

In SCIENCE you do indeed replace falsified theories with nothing.

Sorry but you guys are cultists.

DonkeyKong · 16 February 2005

The (smart) educated folk who disagree with me in this forum have stopped posting in general.

The weaknesses in evolution I am posting about are real. The serious evolution scientists know this.

When I attack the belief many people put into evolution being stronger than the scientific support, your serious guys don't respond because they know there is truth in what I am saying (they may disagree but they see my point).

I have respect for the big bang scientists who UNDERSTAND that there is a good chance that their theory will not hold up over time. I have respect for evolution scientists who understand that their is a good chance that evolution will not hold up over time.

When Einstein said that he believed that only the 3rd law of thermo would survive and all other theories would be shown false it was because he understands how science works.

For theories like gravity there is a large amount of recorded events that behave like our "belief" in gravity. Since these observations are unlikely to be invalid any replacements for gravity will at least look like the gravity we understand within the time and location that those measurements were made. Einsteins replacement of gravity was so similiar to Newton gravity within our Earth and speeds we travel that we haven't even stopped teaching the false Newtonian theory.

With evolution this is not as likely. The evidence for evolution will remain, but each piece of evidence is not taken under a controlled enviorment as the gravity observations are. As such a new theory of what all that evidence means may not be as similar to evolution as would be the case in a replacement to gravity. For example if the Cambrian explosion were caused by external intervention, introducing all the genes used in humans but not in the right combination, it would completely invalidate evolution as it is taught today even though all the observed data would have not changed.

As such there is a very REAL possibility that evolution as you would like to forcibly teach to all HS students is false.

I am not against teaching the aspects of evolution for the purpose of advancing science. I am against teaching it without also being open to the very real possibility that it is false (in the greater sense not just in the details). Einstein understood this because he understood how SCIENCE works.

The kool aid drinkers among you are against this exactly because you are a RELIGIOUS CULT.

Great White Wonder · 16 February 2005

Donkey Kong

I have respect for the big bang scientists who UNDERSTAND that there is a good chance that their theory will not hold up over time. I have respect for evolution scientists who understand that their is a good chance that evolution will not hold up over time.

What about the geologists who understand that there is a good chance that their erosion theory will not hold up over time? Do you have respect for them, DK? I want to hear more about how the claim that "life exists" is a "religious belief." That is so wacky I still can't believe a human being said it. But you did DK!!! And you haven't admitted that you were just being a buffoon and a troll and making up stuff without thinking about it for two seconds!!! Hilarious!!!

ts · 16 February 2005

The kool aid drinkers among you are against this exactly because you are a RELIGIOUS CULT.
— DonkeyKong

Moron.

Jari Anttila · 16 February 2005

DK:

Science in general is about the future and the ability to predict the future.

No. Empirical science is about observations and the ability to predict new observations.

As such all types of science that speculate about what occured in the past without first showing mastery of the material by predicting events in the future are equally suspect.

In other words: if you can't match them in their game, it's a lousy game and nobody should play it.

In SCIENCE you do indeed replace falsified theories with nothing.

No. You replace them with new theories which have not yet been falsified and which have at least some evidential support. Or that's what you should at least try to do, if you were a scientist. And that's why your creationist dreams don't have a chance here, because they have no evidential support at all, no matter what happens to evolution. And that's why you were right when you said that the current theory of evolution, were it falsified, would just be replaced by a new one, because to you "evolution" is everything else but your creationist dreams, which are nothing. Surely everything is "evolution" if creationism is nothing. BTW, you misunderstood the context in which I used the phrase: you can't beat some evidence with no evidence; be as open minded as you please. But it applies to theories as well.

For theories like gravity there is a large amount of recorded events that behave like our “belief” in gravity. Since these observations are unlikely to be invalid any replacements for gravity will at least look like the gravity we understand within the time and location that those measurements were made.

For theories like evolution there is a large amount of evidence, much of it discovered well after Darwin, that match to his and our “belief” in evolution. Since this evidence is unlikely to be invalid any replacements for darwinian evolution will at least look like the darwinian evolution we understand within the timeframe and locations that produced the evidence.

For example if the Cambrian explosion were caused by external intervention, introducing all the genes used in humans but not in the right combination, it would completely invalidate evolution as it is taught today even though all the observed data would have not changed.

Then how would you know anything about this intervention?

I am against teaching it without also being open to the very real possibility that it is false (in the greater sense not just in the details).

Yes. Perhaps evolution should be taught with a possibility that something new emerges and refutes it. We don't have a clue of it, let alone any records, and all we can do is imagine some wild dreams about aliens transplanting human genes into trilobites, or something. But let's be open to the possibility that things of which we know nothing are something after all. Bearing this in mind, I look forward to see how they will teach evolution. Or something.

DonkeyKong · 16 February 2005

Jari.

The reason Science usually restricts its verification to events in the future is because controlling the enviornment is crucial to providing that it is in fact your cause that is making the effect. When you do not controll the enviornment you lose this extream power of simplification and muddy the waters as to wether you are right or not.

Most of science is actually limited to effects that you can cause over and over at will. That is how others know that you have mastery of the cause effect relationship. When you have a theory that is edited to match the data and then some slightly different data matches your theory once or twice its not really all that impressive. Add to it a complete inability to chart the course from amino acid to cell or cell to modern cell or single cell organism to complex organism in DETAIL.

It is the lack of familiarity with evolution that science has that makes it a religion. We remember Newton as the father of gravity, but do you really think 100,000 years worth of modern man didn't realize that apples fall down? Why isn't it named after them? Because they didn't UNDERSTAND it, it was magic to them. You don't understand evolution it is MAGIC to you. Magic==RELIGON

DonkeyKong · 16 February 2005

Jari.

"We don't have a clue of it, let alone any records, and all we can do is imagine some wild dreams about aliens transplanting human genes into trilobites, or something. But let's be open to the possibility that things of which we know nothing
are something after all."

Lets name aliens randomness, and we can call it evolution.

Oh its not silly to you now?

LOL

Jari Anttila · 17 February 2005

Steve: ID is doomed. They don’t even have a wrong scientific theory. ID is not even as good as Lamarckianism, or the Steady State universe. Those were at least theories.

ID is a stripped-down version of creationism. The problem is that ID is too much stripped, and has nothing left but a magic word "design" inserted in places where darwinian processes are allegedly insufficient. Creationism at least was, and still is, a theory, because creationists do know when and how the universe and life were created. Unlike ID, the bible-based creationism does make some testable claims about history, the age of Earth, succession of fossils, homologies, etc. Unfortunately; they all have been falsified. That's why they stripped their theory. I must say I like creationists more than IDers, because the wild tales about fire-breathing dinosaur-dragons or detailed imaginations concerning Noah's Ark are amusing to some extent. But ID is just plain dull. Perhaps I would like creationism even more if not so much of it were dishonest attacks and agitation against science in general and evolution in particular. Creationism is not the only pseudoscience in the world, and not even the most popular or influential (astrology is), but I don't know any other "alternative" science that is so hostile to the mainstream. I'm quite sure that ID will not last long. It's empty religion and empty science, and therefore satisfies nobody. Whereas creationism will have dedicated supporters as long as there are fundamentalist believers, and they will not run out. I don't think that even an increased level of education would change it, because even educated desperate people are willing to believe desperate things, if their deep convictions are threatened. And few things more about what DK said earlier:

Einsteins replacement of gravity was so similiar to Newton gravity within our Earth and speeds we travel that we haven’t even stopped teaching the false Newtonian theory. ... The evidence for evolution will remain, but each piece of evidence is not taken under a controlled enviorment as the gravity observations are. As such a new theory of what all that evidence means may not be as similar to evolution as would be the case in a replacement to gravity.

I don't know what you mean by "controlled enviorment" here. The only controlled environment we have, according to your standards, is the Earth and its near space. Which you said before is just a single point in the universe. Have you heard of the mystery of Pioneer probes slowing down? It has raised speculations that not even the relativistic theory of gravity is accurate in distances no farther than outskirts of the Solar system. Einstein's replacement was not at all so similar to Newton's theory as you imply here. Newton postulated a force that draws masses together over void, and he assumed absolute space and time. Now, Einstein said that absolute space and time don't exist at all, and there's not any gravitational force either, but just the curvature of space-time fooling us to see a "force". The Newtonian and relativistic theories of gravity are in fact more different than creationism and darwinian evolution, because creationism doesn't deny the existence of evolution (microevolution, change of alleles, speciation); it just says that evolution is insignificant when it comes to the origin of life and "completely new" species.

For example if the Cambrian explosion were caused by external intervention, introducing all the genes used in humans but not in the right combination, it would completely invalidate evolution as it is taught today

Given that this were true, what exactly would be invalidated? - Common descent with current phylogeny? Hardly. That's a statistical conclusion drawn from many sources, e.g. anatomy, molecular biology and palaeolontology. Somehow the aliens who introduced the genes respected the illusion of even Metazoans having common ancestry with single-celled life. - That darwinian processes, mutations and selection, produce at least some amount of evolution? Nope. Has been observed directly. So, the aliens left after Cambrian explosion and then, what? 540 million years of evolution using the genetic material they created? Man, you just can't get rid of evolution no matter what you try. It seems to me that the effects of this new "replacement" evolution would be as similar to the current theory of evolution within our own timeframe as the effects of Einstein's theory are similar to the false Newtonian theory. BTW: the Cambrian "explosion", if not purely an illusion due to the emergence of hard shells in already existing lineages (positive evidence exists: see the earlier Ediacaran and Tommotian faunas), was not really so explosive as you still imply here. See this. See also this chart which shows how the phyla appeared roughly in the same order (the aliens staged it, I suppose?) that can be expected by other studies of Metazoan phylogeny. You have tried to convince us, by using extensive rhetorics, that if some new evidence were unearthed that would not be compatible with the current theory of evolution, then the current theory of evolution would have be to changed. Well, what a surprise! I guess nobody here has thought that before. Now, go and find that new evidence. Otherwise this is getting quite boring. I would rather listen to the creationist tales full of dinosaur guts and other wonderful evidence of young Earth and the Flood. The other line in your rhetorics is that evolution, cosmology and possibly also some other historical sciences that just happen to contradict some religious beliefs of some people are not science at all because their events and mechanisms cannot be replicated in detail in a controlled environment. All they have is circumstantial evidence and probabilities and limited experiments of some parts of the processes involved. You call this "religion" or "magic", which is the traditional creationist approach to attack teaching of evolution in US schools (no religion allowed). It may be an efficient piece of propaganda in that context, when you try to brainwash the school boards, but here you can't debunk a successful theory just by calling it names. Call it magic if that soothes you. If you don't like it you are free to go and get some better magic that uses the same poor methodology, is equally poorly testable and explains an equal amount of facts. You know, even in magic some theories are better than others. And recently:

When you have a theory that is edited to match the data and then some slightly different data matches your theory once or twice its not really all that impressive.

What made you cook up this "slightly different once or twice" implication? What theory are you talking about here? You obviously don't know or don't care anything about the multitude of independent data that evolution matches.

in DETAIL

A key phrase here, which guarantees that nothing is ever enough, and you can always move the goal. How much detail do you require e.g. in particle physics to explain what matter is made of?

We remember Newton as the father of gravity, but do you really think 100,000 years worth of modern man didn’t realize that apples fall down? Why isn’t it named after them? Because they didn’t UNDERSTAND it, it was magic to them.

As I recall, astronomers were able to predict fairly accurately the movements of celestial bodies long before they knew anything about Newton's gravity or even the Copernican system. Would you call Ptolemaic astronomy science or magic? To me it was as good science as it was humanly possible to devise in those days.

Lets name aliens randomness, and we can call it evolution.

Fine. You give me some evidence of aliens and I'll give you evidence of mutations, natural selection and randomness. Fair deal? And BTW: it's 2nd law of thermo, not 3rd. Twice is enough to tell how much you think about the baloney you write.

Great White Wonder · 17 February 2005

DonkeyKong writes

Lets name aliens randomness, and we can call it evolution.

Can someone save this quote for the Hall of Shame? This is one of the top two or three stupidest propositions I've seen posted here.

DonkeyKong · 18 February 2005

Jari

Today they discovered a new species of ancient rabbit. Were evolution predictive there would have been a scientist that said I postulate that there will be an ancient rabbit found and that it will look like this and the bones will be like this etc etc etc.

But evolutionists look at the data AFTERWARDS and say oh ya that fits kinda let me just change my assumptions.

If that is science then my digital camera can do science. It changes its picture IN DETAIL to match reality. Evolutionists change their theory to match new discoveries. Woo hoo.

Science isn't about connecting the dots. Science is about predicting where the next dots will be.

Any theory that cannot predict isn't science. By its very nature science is a predictive thing. Any theory that cannot predict IS NOT science.

DonkeyKong · 18 February 2005

Jari

Controlled enviornment means that you can limit the variables that are candidates. so you say take A, B and C shake and you get D independant of E........Z......

For example to show evolution in a lab using amino acids + electrical shock and form a cell would be a scientific test of evolution. A test that has FAILED over and over and over. But evolutionists didn't give up.

For example to take bacteria in a petri dish and add radiation and show that a simple bacteria gene can go from a circle to a line to a similiar shape of some more evolved species. Again consistent failure.

Can you see what I am talking about?

jonas · 18 February 2005

DK,

just some comment on your last two posts. I assume, the rabbit you are talking about does not have features combining the apomorphic structures of two well established lineages, thus contradicting the nested hierarchy predicted by common descent? It does not show traces of a completly alien bio-chemistry, thus contradicting the unity of life predicted by common descent? It does not exhibit an distinct feature not homologeous to anything other rabbits close in place and time show, thus contardicting the gradual change predicted by an extrapolation from evolutionary mechanisms seen in the lab?

If the answer is no, then which basic assumption of evolution - as opposed to a specificapplication of evolution - has to be reassessed? It fits perfectly i.e. all predictions have been confirmed.
To put this in the easy to understand analogy, gravity on astronomic scales can not be tested in the lab and does not really predict the future, as all events beyond the solar system have already happened years before observation - it does not matter anyhow, as we can not influence these events to any meaningful degree. The only thing that matters in terms of prediction is whether data not considered so far fits the theory.
So if I measure the mass and motion of a stellar object, it does not matter for the theory of gravity whether I have predicted it being their or behaving exactly the physical parameters I am measuring now. Maybe it moves in a way already exactly computed in advance, maybe it has properties pointing towards an unknown force of gravity, but the only thing forcing me to change my assumptions concerning gravity would be a behaviour inconsistent with basic principles of gravity. Everything else actually is evidence for gravity or a process looking exactly like gravity.
Likewise with a new fossil or recent organism: maybe it has been predicted in detail (ichthyostega, ambulocetus or seven-gill sharks come to mind), maybe it has unexpected features pointing paleaontology and systematics in a new direction, but as long as it is not inconsistent with basic principles of evolution, there is no need for change, in it is evidence for evolution or a process indistinguible from evolution.
And concerning science not being about concerning old dots: you would probably be pretty shocked how often new scientific finds come from the re-evaluation of data already years or decades old (and I am talking about particle physics here, not exactly an 'origins science').
Your second post posed two challenges that are fallacious on two levels.
- they assume that pretty big steps in abiogenesis and evolution (amino acid to cell and bacterial genes to protozoon-like genes) should (and indeed have to) be demonstarted in experiments running on timescales hundreds of thousand times shorter than the time scales predicted. This smacks of people wanting to have a Big Bang in the lab before they are willing to consider any other astrophysical evidence. There are quite some papers showing small sucesses in creating basic cellular membranes and test the potential of progressive self assembly of amino acids in the lab, as there are on changes on the bacterial genome increasing it in length and complexity. As long as those are only countered with 'I don't believe these changes can add up in the long run' and no mechanism actually preventing them from doing so is at least proposed, they are excellent candidates to fill any gaps in abiogenesis and some specific applications of evolution.
- they assume that scientific theories have to explain everything. There are a lot of very useful and well-founded theories which have well-known limits. E.g. in spite of many efforts it is afaik still unclear how exactly to combine general relativity on large scales with gauge theories of interaction on small scales. Nevertheless, both approaches stand unchallenged in their area of applicability. So, even if you were to find some areas of application in which evolution had to remain inaccurate or contradictory, it still would remain the only game in town for all other problems, as long as no different theory had been proposed, rivalling evolution in detail, testability and usefulness in explaining and predicting phenomena both old and new.

DonkeyKong · 18 February 2005

Jonas

"but as long as it is not inconsistent with basic principles of evolution, there is no need for change, in it is evidence for evolution or a process indistinguible from evolution."

"they assume that scientific theories have to explain everything."

"So, even if you were to find some areas of application in which evolution had to remain inaccurate or contradictory, it still would remain the only game in town for all other problems, as long as no different theory had been proposed, rivalling evolution in detail, testability and usefulness in explaining and predicting phenomena both old and new."

Now change the word evolution to Creation and you can poke holes in your own arguments.

DonkeyKong · 18 February 2005

Jonas

As for the differences between evolution and gravity regarding testibility. NASA predicts the future location(of the light signatures) of the planets and every discovery of planets in far away solar systems obeys the laws as best we can tell. Thats literally 1000s and 10000s and 100000s of confirmations without any counter observations or change in theory (once you explain black holes, quasars etc which have their own predictions which have been confirmed after theory formation).

Evolution on the other hand rests on several things that have never been observed and has massive confirmation only in that the tree of life is genetically similiar and therefore appears similiar physically. In the last week alone the timeline of Human life changed and the timeline of rabbits changed .

Evolution as a theory is evolving to avoid its many flaws. My theory of gravity being attractmion to heat could evolve to explain observed inefficiency. We are attracted to the the Earth, we are attracted to the sun, they are both hot. The basic theory of heat attraction is sound its just the details that need to change. In any other setting you would reject such a weak theory.

Only with the religious belief of Darwinism can you accept such a weak theory.

jonas · 21 February 2005

First post:

If there was a theory of creation presenting a model for the 'process of creation' and providing any level of 'detail, testability and usefulness in explaining and predicting phenomena both old and new' maybe I could. In the absence of this, your point is moot.

Second post:

You apparently agree that all the new fossils did only change the exact timelines of evolution and none of it changed the basic predictions of common descent and evolutionary processes. So unless you can actually tell me, which single short term step necessary for biological evolution has so far not been observed, or in how far in a non-evolutionary theory similar morphology would require similar non-coding DNA or similar enyzmes within a group of enzymes of identical functionality, you are actually saying that evolution is an excellently verified theory.

BTW, heat attraction already breaks down when comparing the moon with the moons of Jupiter - one does not even have to go into cold dark matter. If there was any such showstopper in evolution, I am quite sure somebody had pointed it out. And low and behold - nobody started to bash Newton or Einstein for not knowing in advance about black holes or the galactic halo.
And, yes, if you want to continue this thread, please come up with a testable theory of creation or a case under which the basic prediction of common descent had to be reassessed. Assertions semantic tap dancing and shifting of the discussion will be ignored - at least by me.

DonkeyKong · 21 February 2005

Jonas

You seem to miss my main point.

Science demands that you back off your claims for creation. Science has a long history of saying "I don't know" when we in fact don't know.

"If there was a theory of creation presenting a model for the 'process of creation' and providing any level of 'detail, testability and usefulness in explaining and predicting phenomena both old and new' maybe I could. In the absence of this, your point is moot."

You are very clearly relying on the greater weakness of alternate arguments to gloss over the obvious weaknesses of current evolution theory.

Thats not science. When you teach something about the origins of the universe that isn't science we call it religion.

I am against the religion of evolution being taught in HS.

You and I both know there are large untested portions of evolution or unconfirmed at any rate as most of the holes have been tested such as trying to evolve a cell from amino acid etc. To teach evolution when the main piillars are untested is not science its a Darwinism religion.