Allen MacNeill: RM & NS: The Creationist and ID Strawman

Also enjoy the comments by Ron Cote a self proclaimed born again creationist.

I'm surprised that that lying twit hasn't tried to bring up how Hitler was, allegedly, a Pagan Evolutionist in order to support his arguments.

As a physicist who follows this debate and is suitably sympathetic to the science side, I've got to say that this is a really stupid counter argument, or at least a really stupid presentation. It comes across as jargon gotcha - of crucifying the layman for misusing some terminology or oversimplifying some point without explaining why whatever subtle distinction is at issue actually matters, as a substitute or evasion for presenting a substantive argument. It's argumentum ad put down.

The problem is that the usual focus on mutations in the narrowest sense, i.e., point mutations, is just a conveniently simple toy model that illustrates a much more general argument: that it's difficult for many people to see how lots of small changes, many of which are destructive, could possibly add up gradually to something complicated and rich. It's a conveniently simple toy model for both sides, biologists have spent a lot of time discussing it in the creation-evolution battle, and that's not unreasonable, because it _does_ illustrate many of the important issues. What _is_ unreasonable is to suddenly revoke the tacit agreement to talk about the toy model without explaining why all the previously glossed-over complexity matters. And it's _not_ obvious. At first sight, the same basic argument seems to apply equally to all these other areas of change: it's hard to see how lots of small changes, many of which are destructive, could possibly add up gradually to something complicated and rich.

Now having done a fair bit of reading in the area, I've been exposed to explanations of how some of these extra mechanisms speed things up, and I think I can guess some others. But I'm not an expert and I can't help reacting very negatively to the apparent suggestion that I'm stupid if it's not obvious to me why all this extra bafflegab is important. How it comes across to someone less well-read and less charitably inclined can only be imagined.

Mark Barton: speaking as someone less qualified in science (Master's in Mechanical Engineering), I have learned a lot from articles like the subject one. I also do not consider myself stupid, but see such articles not as an attack on stupidity, but on ignorance. My formal and informal education up to my mid 20's somehow left me with the impression that mutations are mainly if not solely due to ionizing radiation, such as cosmic rays and the residue of nuclear tests. I now know that mutations often occur chemically during the process of forming gametes, and that a typical person has 200-400 mutations from the genetic material of his or her parents. It seems to me this can make a vast difference in one's comprehension and appreciation of the ToE.

Another good point to bring up is second-order phenomena like the evolution of evolvability, optimization of genetic architecture, etc.

Calling evolutionary biology "Darwinism" is like calling physics "Newtonism."

Please allow me to paraphrase Mike Barton's argument: "As a biologist who follows the Big Bang debate and is suitably sympathetic to the science side, I’ve got to say that the typical physicist's argument is a really stupid counter argument, or at least a really stupid presentation. It comes across as jargon gotcha - of crucifying the layman for misusing some terminology or oversimplifying some point without explaining why whatever subtle distinction is at issue actually matters, as a substitute or evasion for presenting a substantive argument. It’s argumentum ad put down.

The problem is that the usual focus on time in the narrowest sense, i.e., milliseconds, is just a conveniently simple toy model that illustrates a much more general argument: that it’s difficult for many people to see how lots of important things, many of which are destructive, could possibly add up gradually to something complicated and rich. It’s a conveniently simple toy model for both sides, physicists have spent a lot of time discussing it in the creation-evolution battle, and that’s not unreasonable, because it _does_ illustrate many of the important issues. What _is_ unreasonable is to suddenly revoke the tacit agreement to talk about the toy model without explaining why all the previously glossed-over detail matters. And it’s _not_ obvious. At first sight, the same basic argument seems to apply equally to all these other areas of change: it’s hard to see how lots of small changes occurring in less than a second, many of which are destructive, could possibly add up gradually to something complicated and rich.

Now having done a fair bit of reading in the area, I’ve been exposed to explanations of how some of the destructive things work, and I think I can guess some others. But I’m not an expert and I can’t help reacting very negatively to the apparent suggestion that I’m stupid if it’s not obvious to me why all this physical bafflegab is important. How it comes across to someone less well-read and less charitably inclined can only be imagined."

I am a biologist, but I really don't see how MacNeill's list serves as a counter argument to anything. Almost everything on the list, with the very important exception of recombination events, is a consequence of random mutations. And on a gross scale, recombination is close enough to a random event for most evolutionary discussions.

For example, consider the combining of two formerly separate biochemical pathways. How could this occur without a random mutation that would let an enzyme in one pathway now use a product or intermediate from the other?

How could a transcription factor change its affinity for its target site without a random mutation somewhere? The mutation could be in the TF gene itself, or in its target site, or in a gene for a protein that modifies it, but there has to be a mutation somewhere. Even if you postulate epigenetic changes, something, most likely a random mutation, had to have happened to change this pattern.

Combining of two chromosomes, as apparently happened along the way from our ape-like ancestors is not a single point mutation, but it is still a random mutation event.

I agree with the point I think Mark Barton was trying to make. Saying that all random mutations are single point mutations is simply setting up another strawman.

I agree with the point I think Mark Barton was trying to make. Saying that all random mutations are single point mutations is simply setting up another strawman.

Allen's comments may sound like nitpicking but they go to the heart of the controversy. Evolution is not about mutations followed by selection, it is about maintaining variation in the population on which selection (or chance) can act. This is why near-neutral mutations can be of significant relevance as they can be a source of variation without much of a fitness cost.

Another example is gene duplication which helps understand how mutations can lead to new functions while maintaining the original function. It's not just single point mutations that accumulate in a gene. Many of the misunderstandings from creationists about mutations I believe can be tracked back to an adherence to the simplistic models of mutation rather than a focus on variation.

Barton does make a good point. However there is at least one critical problem with it: The ID proponents claim to know what they are talking about. It is hard to give them the benefit of not "crucifying the layman" while at the same time expecting people to take their claim of knowledge seriously. They can't have it both ways. Either they know what they are talking about and are constructing strawmen or they don't know what they are talking about.

wikipedia: In biology, mutations are changes to the base pair sequence of the genetic material of an organism.

The basics are still RM + NS. I’m a real fan of KIS, Keep It Simple when explaining or considering evolution. Many people are intimidated by evolution, considering it some esoteric theory only understandable by effete intellectuals. The reality is that the basics are simple, intuitive and understandable by anyone of normal intelligence.

I think (as a biochemist) that the key points to get across to the lay audience are thus:

(1) that random mutations come in many different varieties (point mutation, frame shift, duplication, insertion, deletion etc.); and

(2) that mutations are occuring all the time at a modest rate, and thus any population of organisms will almost never contain two individuals that are genetically identical (assuming sexual reproduction, since it is quite easy to obtain a colony of bacteria, for example, that are essentially genetically identical).

I agree that needless use of technical jargon should be avoided, but I also firmly believe that those who set themselves up to criticise evolutionary theory should damn well learn all about it first (plus I believe they should criticise it openly and honestly, which is something we very rarely see).

OK, PvM, variation & selection are simpler still. I think we cross-posted, as 'twere.

I think the point that I missed to emphasize is that it is not mutation but variation which is what drives evolution. Anything that increases the variation is relevant.
Mutations in my opinion raise a spector of a response to a need rather than the source of variations. And evolution has a rich source of variations.

Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.

The amazing thing about the minimal definition of biological evolution is that it doesn't carry any baggage concerning the history of life or its future. As soon as we try to define evolution in terms of the historical record, we run into all kinds of problems because we confuse evolution as a process with evolution as a history of life.

I have a challenge for the members of the Panda's Thumb community. Please find a single factual error in Conservapedia's article on the theory of evolution which is very critical of the evolutionary position. The article is located here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_evolution

I don't believe you will be able to find a single factual error in the Conservapedia theory of evolution article.

The theory of evolution posits a process of self-transformation from simple life forms to more complex life, which has never been observed or duplicated in a laboratory forms

Yes, Braxton, that is a good catch. In fact, evolution does not posit a process from simple to complex life. And while many aspects of evolution have been observed in a laboratory, there are many more ways to study evolution.

Karl Popper, a leading philosopher of science and originator of the falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation of science from nonscience, stated that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme

My impression is that the 'lay' view of a major evolutionary change goes like this : you have a bunch of organisms of one species going along their merry way - suddenly one of them has a mutant child with a thousandth of an eye, that child has another mutant with another milli-improvement and a many descendants later... full binocular vision! Stated like this of course it seems quite implausible that a thousand random mutations could string themselves together in a chain.

So maybe we should emphasize that a single mutation can have very subtle effects on a gene via its interactions with other genes and proteins. And plenty of these mutations are always present in a population, and can be acted on by selection.

What struck me about Conservapedia’s article on the theory of evolution is that there is no outline of the theory of evolution. How could they possibly have a web page about the TOE without describing what it is?

The article has no reference to the nested hierarchy of life, probably the strongest evidence and no mention of pseudogenes. In fact, the whole thing reads like a collection of talking points from AnswersinGenesis.

I agree that it is very carefully written to try to avoid actual lies. However, it is full of statements like "Karl Popper, a leading philosopher of science and originator of the falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation of science from nonscience, stated that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme."

It could well be true that Popper said that, however he was wrong to say it is not testable.

Another statement that caught my eye was "The great intellectuals in history such as Archimedes, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Lord Kelvin did not propose an evolutionary process for a species to transform into a more complex version." Again, true. They also did not propose a process for transforming energy from uranium into electricity or a scheme for turning moving pictures of a cartoon mouse into money. So what?

I notice that the article is full of quotes and quotes of quotes, and even quotes of quotes of quotes (Stephen Caesar quoting SJ Gould quoting Michael Richardson who apparently said something off the top of his head). There seems to be a large segment of the population that does not realise that quotes, especially if second and third hand, are not evidence.

The whole piece just reinforces my view that Conservapedia is not to be taken seriously.

Vince: your retooling of my argument is pitch-perfect except for one thing - as far as I can see it doesn't refer to any actual argument being made by physicists in the creation-evolution debate. Thus I don't see the point. If we _are_ doing something comparable - entering into extended discussion of a toy model under an implied understanding that it's sufficiently representative to make key points and then suddenly trashing it as the most ignorant straw man without explaining why the extra complexity is important, then please me know - we should stop.

JimV: I have no problem with the information that the linked article presented. On the contrary, it was very interesting. It's just rather offensive as a counter-argument to a supposed straw man, because the view of evolution that it criticizes is simply not a straw man - biologists do actually talk like that, at least to lay-people. See for example, the #1 go-to site for explaining evolution to non-biologists:

"The theory of evolution includes a number of ideas that some people find difficult to accept intuitively. One of the most difficult seems to be the notion that the intricate and interdependent structures we observe in modern plants and animals arose through random genetic mutations selected over time." ( http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/ )

Now very possibly that wording is being offered in the spirit of a physicist's toy model and all manner of fineprint is implied. But once biologists, collectively, have put it out there in those terms they can't complain about straw men - it's the biologists' formulation. And they can't even complain about ignorance unless they explain why the extra detail matters.

The theory of evolution posits a process of self-transformation from simple life forms to more complex life, which has never been observed or duplicated in a laboratory forms.

The theory of god posits an omniscient being who creates worlds in 6 days. Who occasionally gets upset with his creations and murders almost all of them. Which has never been observed or duplicated in a laboratory forms.

agree that it is very carefully written to try to avoid actual lies. However, it is full of statements like “Karl Popper, a leading philosopher of science and originator of the falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation of science from nonscience, stated that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme.”

Talkorigins.org. Claim CA211.1: According to philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper, a theory must be falsifiable to qualify as scientific. Popper (1976, 151) said, "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme." Source: Kranz, Russell. n.d. Karl Popper's challenge. http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v02n4p20.htm Response: Popper's statement of nonfalsifiability was pretty mild, not as extensive as it is often taken. He applied it only to natural selection, not evolution as a whole, and he allowed that some testing of natural selection was possible, just not a significant amount. Moreover, he said that natural selection is a useful theory. A "metaphysical research programme" was to him not a bad thing; it is an essential part of science, as it guides productive research by suggesting predictions. He said of Darwinism, And yet, the theory is invaluable. I do not see how, without it, our knowledge could have grown as it has done since Darwin. In trying to explain experiments with bacteria which become adapted to, say, penicillin, it is quite clear that we are greatly helped by the theory of natural selection. Although it is metaphysical, it sheds much light upon very concrete and very practical researches. It allows us to study adaptation to a new environment (such as a penicillin-infested environment) in a rational way: it suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation, and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that. (Popper 1976, 171-172) Finally, Popper notes that theism as an explanation of adaptation "was worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation had been reached" (Popper 1976, 172). Popper later changed his mind and recognized that natural selection is testable. Here is an excerpt from a later writing on "Natural Selection and Its Scientific Status" (Miller 1985, 241-243; see also Popper 1978): When speaking here of Darwinism, I shall speak always of today's theory - that is Darwin's own theory of natural selection supported by the Mendelian theory of heredity, by the theory of the mutation and recombination of genes in a gene pool, and by the decoded genetic code. This is an immensely impressive and powerful theory. The claim that it completely explains evolution is of course a bold claim, and very far from being established. All scientific theories are conjectures, even those that have successfully passed many severe and varied tests. The Mendelian underpinning of modern Darwinism has been well tested, and so has the theory of evolution which says that all terrestrial life has evolved from a few primitive unicellular organisms, possibly even from one single organism. However, Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of evolution, his theory of natural selection, is difficult to test. There are some tests, even some experimental tests; and in some cases, such as the famous phenomenon known as 'industrial melanism', we can observe natural selection happening under our very eyes, as it were. Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable theories in physics or chemistry. The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology [see CA500]. A tautology like 'All tables are tables' is not, of course, testable; nor has it any explanatory power. It is therefore most surprising to hear that some of the greatest contemporary Darwinists themselves formulate the theory in such a way that it amounts to the tautology that those organisms that leave most offspring leave most offspring. C. H. Waddington says somewhere (and he defends this view in other places) that 'Natural selection . . . turns out ... to be a tautology' ..4 However, he attributes at the same place to the theory an 'enormous power. ... of explanation'. Since the explanatory power of a tautology is obviously zero, something must be wrong here. Yet similar passages can be found in the works of such great Darwinists as Ronald Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and George Gaylord Simpson; and others. I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the theory as 'almost tautological', and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. It raises detailed problems in many fields, and it tells us what we would expect of an acceptable solution of these problems. I still believe that natural selection works in this way as a research programme. Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. My recantation may, I hope, contribute a little to the understanding of the status of natural selection. Links:

Raven said:

The theory of evolution posits a process of self-transformation from simple life forms to more complex life, which has never been observed or duplicated in a laboratory forms.

....(good discussion of why this is false clipped out).... PS No one has seen god is a lab, or anywhere else for a while either. Nor have they been able to create one. Does this mean he doesn’t exist.

You cannot use the tools of science (if NOMA is correct) to determine the presence or absence of a supernatural being, and you cannot (or should not) use faith to decide whether or not evolution exists.

The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology [see CA500]. A tautology like ‘All tables are tables’ is not, of course, testable; nor has it any explanatory power. It is therefore most surprising to hear that some of the greatest contemporary Darwinists themselves formulate the theory in such a way that it amounts to the tautology that those organisms that leave most offspring leave most offspring. C. H. Waddington says somewhere (and he defends this view in other places) that ‘Natural selection … turns out … to be a tautology’ ..4 However, he attributes at the same place to the theory an ‘enormous power…. of explanation’. Since the explanatory power of a tautology is obviously zero, something must be wrong here.

Mark Barton: although I would like to find excuses for what appears to have been poor introductory wording on Dr. MacNeill's part, I don't disagree with your point, but I wished to register a counterbalancing opinion as to the overall worth of the article.

Raven and others: a similar point occurred to me, which is that we have never seen an act of spontaneous creation in the laboratory or in the field, yet fossils of modern cats, rabbits, etc. are not found in the older strata. The ToE is consistent with the evolutionary rates of change found in labs and in the field; if creationism says that the only way new species can form is by poofing into existence, why don't we see that?

GvlGeologist: "You cannot use the tools of science (if NOMA is correct) to determine the presence or absence of a supernatural being, and you cannot (or should not) use faith to decide whether or not evolution exists."

While I'm in a mood to vent about bad presentation of science and philosophy of science, let me get a few kicks in against NOMA and the supernatural. If you actually read to the end of Gould's NOMA book you discover that the thesis he's actually prepared to defend is something close to that _ethics_ and science are independent. Despite appearances, Gould's NOMA has nothing to do with "religion" more conventionally understood, i.e., as typically theistic or involving the supernatural - Gould's idea of a sensible religion appears to be atheistic Judaism. I have no particular problem with the ethics version - it's just the old truism that you can't get "ought" from "is" - but I do have a problem with the popular misinterpretation. I don't agree that the theology part of theistic religion has some mysterious competence to study the content of some other magisterium, I think it's just bad science.

For related reasons I object to any definition of either science or supernatural that assumes that the supernatural has some magic property that makes it somehow off-limits to science. Of course the dictionary defines the supernatural as in some way the complement of the natural and that accurately captures a certain desire for the way the two categories should relate, but without more detail it's a via negativa and thus gibberish as an operational definition. The supernatural is defined in practice by a incoherent grab-bag of things that various people would like to exist but for which there is no good quality evidence. Period. There's no other common denominator to the canonical examples besides the fact that science has not yet gotten any traction. For example, Yahweh, the Judeo-Christian God, and Poseidon/Neptune, from the Greco-Roman pantheon, are both supernatural, but for at _least_ one of them and _probably_ both, the reason science hasn't gotten any traction isn't because they're supernatural but because they're fictional, and there's nothing to get traction on. Conversely, if a six-inch tall, luminous, superficially anthropomorphic, female creature with aerodynamically preposterous wings flits around my lab and responds cogently to verbal cues like, "Come over here", and if several colleagues see this, then we have scientific evidence for the existence of fairies whether they're canonically supernatural or not. I see no reason to concede the existence of a magisterium consisting of things whose only common denominator is a lack of reliable information about them.

Mark Barton,

My understanding of NOMA admittedly comes from what I've read on PT, I've read other SJG books, but not the one discussing NOMA. After reading your commentary I googled it and found "http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html", which I suppose is the original essay.

For the most part I agree with you (although Gould said he was a Jewish agnostic rather than atheist). Gould meant "area of teaching", not "area of inquiry or explanation", which I think is what most who use the acronym, NOMA, mean (and which I meant).

Having said that, I think that many who are both religious and supporters of science are comfortable with the concept that science cannot prove religion true or false and that religion cannot prove science true or false. (Of course, individual claims, as you point out, can sometimes be tested.) As long as those individuals don't try to deny the facts of science (and by that I mean not only data but accepted scientific theories), I have no problem with that attitude, and would in fact agree with it. Along the lines of your "six-inch tall, luminous, superficially anthropomorphic, female creature with aerodynamically preposterous wings", I've said that the only way I would be able to positively state that I was certain that God existed (rather than a matter of faith) is he/she appeared on Letterman or Leno for an interview, and performed a directly viewable (i.e. in front of me, personally, as well as all other viewers) miracle at the time!

At the same time, in the absence of viewing directly (for instance) fairies, I would state that we can't prove that they don't exist, just that the long-term lack of hard evidence suggests that they don't. I'd say the same thing about the Loch Ness monster (non-religious as far as I know), or living non-avian dinosaurs (strictly a scientific topic).

Hope this makes sense. It's late, and I'll come back tomorrow.

Mark Barton's original post bothered me, and it took me a while to figure out why.

Mark, have you actually gone back and read some of the ID/creationist attacks that Allen MacNeill is responding to? I have read here Realpc's repeated statements that "RM + NS" isn't enough to explain evolution. I don't recall s/he actually defines RM, but the implication is that RM refers some simple process. I've also read Egnor's sneering equation of gene copying with student plagiarism, concluding that it can't possibly add information. Allen MacNeill is responding to that kind of criticism, by pointing out that RM+NS isn't as simple as the IDers are making it sound. That's the strawman he's referring to.

I didn't understand every item on MacNeill's list-- although I did recognize most of them. But there was nothing there that sounded like Dembski in his 'I use big words and I have two PhDs, so accept what I say without question' mode. I'm sure I could research and understand every item on Mac Neill's list.

So, Mark, I feel like you're putting defenders of evolutionary biology between a rock and a hard place. If they simplify the process so that the basics are clear to everyone, creationists take their over-simplifications at face value and trash them. If they explain that, no, a simple slogan (RM+NS) doesn't really capture the decades of research in evolution, you come along and trash them for making it complicated.

What Allen MacNeill wrote may have shaken up your nice, neat-- and apparently basically correct-- view of evolution. But his objective was to show how IDers are dishonestly equating that nice, neat, basically correct package with everything-there-is-to-know-about-evolutionary-biology. He did what he set out to do in that list. It's not fair to attack him for not doing something else entirely.

And furthermore, there's one other important source of evolution, at least for us eukaryotes. That's symbiosis.

So-- variation (from all kinds of mutations, plus recombination); selection, including genetic drift; and symbiosis. It's still pretty simple in concept, if not in detail.

GvlGeologist: The essay you found does appear to be an early (1997) expression of Gould's NOMA idea, but what I was referring to was his (short) book-length treatment, "Rocks of Ages" of 1999. In it he defends it at length against various objections and ends up making so many concessions that, as I said, he ends up whittling "religion" down to little more than ethics.

I'm sure you're right that there are religious people who support science and are comfortable with religion as something independent. I'm sure that that's largely true for their conception of religion, because they've systematically repudiated all falsifiable elements. But there are other conceptions of religion, and while the compatibilist version is commonly much less obnoxious I don't see that it has any better intellectual or historical claim to be the proper conception than any other. In particular while religious moderates will sneer at conservatives for taking an overly literal view of the Bible and cite Augustine as representative of a long-standing tradition of metaphorical readings, this isn't exactly a principled stand. If you actually go and read Augustine, you find his policy was (quoting from memory), "Whatever is prejudicial to God or the Saints you may set aside as figurative." That is, and I'm not being the least bit unfair here, if it's embarrassing it's figurative, never mind what for. Figurativity is an intellectual trashcan for whatever's inconvenient, whether to the idea of the Bible as a coherent story, or to the coherence of whatever theology is constructed on it, or to the relationship with external history and science. That's as much intellectual tennis without a net as the creationists. Moderate religion and science are compatible in the sense that doodling sea-monsters in the blank spaces on ancient maps is compatible with cartography: it's harmless fun if nobody takes it too seriously. But people do take religion seriously, and that's not just not science, it's anti-science. Insisting on falsifiability isn't some arbitrary bonding ritual like handing out diplomas in 14th century Florentine costume - it's in the scientific method because it's a universally good idea. It's a universally good idea because if you traffic in unfalsifiable ideas then your chances of noticing if they're wrong is exactly zero, and because just one wrong idea can totally corrupt an entire theoretical system.

In the same way, I see no reason to endorse or cooperate with the conventional division into theist, agnostic and (strong) atheist. It's not that there aren't three categories, it's just that "agnostic" tends to smuggle in the presumption that, effectively, the Bayesian prior for the issue should be 50%. But that's silly and ought not to be taken seriously. The prior for a complex existential claim should be near zero, and the burden of proof should be on the person making the claim. It should be that way for the trivial reason that most ideas that people dream up are wrong, even those dreamt up in a conscientious effort to explain features of the visible world. People just aren't that good at armchair philosophy. A better division is theist, weak atheist and strong atheist, which reflects the reality that for all practical purposes weak atheism (passive lack of belief) is not different from strong atheism (active disbelief).

HP: "I’ve also read Egnor’s sneering equation of gene copying with student plagiarism, concluding that it can’t possibly add information."

But this is precisely my point. Egnor is crudely, boorishly wrong about this because he knows nothing about information theory and doesn't want to know. The toy model system with only point mutations is perfectly adequate to illustrate this, because, even there, information can increase. Very possibly it can increase faster through all the other mechanisms but there's no point in discussing that when it's not conceded that it can increase at all.

Hoary wrote:

“I’ve also read Egnor’s sneering equation of gene copying with student plagiarism, concluding that it can’t possibly add information.”

Man, I had not heard that one before. I guess this guy has never heard about the sophisticated software that is used to catch plagarism. You see the thing is that anyone can cut and paste segments or even whole papers, but they don't have to stop there. If the paper is not exactly on the right topic, or if they just want to avoid being easily caught, students usually change at least some of the words and add other things to the paper. And of course just finding some similarity between their paper and another is not enough to prove plagarism. So the software can perform a sophisticated statistical analysis in order to determine which parts were copied. The entire point is that changes can be made after the initial copying.

The same is certainly true in biological systems. Gene duplication, followed by divergence is what creates new genes. The new information is not added by the duplication event. The point is that this process removes the selective pressures on the second copy, thus allowing for exploration of the adaptive topography without selective constraint. This provides opportunities for random mutation and natural selection to add information as they have been shown to do.

Arguing that gene duplication produces no new information is like arguing that copying a paper cannot help you write a paper. It is not only worng, but it misses the point entirely.

Leading Darwinist and philosopher of science, Michael Ruse acknowledged regarding Popper's statement and the actions he took after making that statement: "Since making this claim, Popper himself has modified his position somewhat; but, disclaimers aside, I suspect that even now he does not really believe that Darwinism in its modern form is genuinely falsifiable."[6]

Leading Darwinist and philosopher of science, Michael Ruse acknowledged regarding Popper’s statement and the actions he took after making that statement: “Since making this claim, Popper himself has modified his position somewhat; but, disclaimers aside, I suspect that even now he does not really believe that Darwinism in its modern form is genuinely falsifiable.”[6]

Just for fun, here's the section on "Quote mining" from Conservapedia "Quote mining is a meaningless term that expresses objection when a quote is used against person quoted. This term is not recognized by the dictionary, and is used primarily by evolution believers to oppose the use of quotations by evolutionists that tend to discredit their theory.[Citation Needed] The entire legal and political fields use quotes by others against them. There is nothing objectionable about this practice, and the term quote-mining could apply to nearly every legal proceeding and political campaign." See guys? Lawyers and politicians do it! It must be ethical! Posted by: RamblinDude | November 3, 2007 9:31 PM #92Just for fun, here's the section on "Quote mining" from Conservapedia "Quote mining is a meaningless term that expresses objection when a quote is used against person quoted. This term is not recognized by the dictionary, and is used primarily by evolution believers to oppose the use of quotations by evolutionists that tend to discredit their theory.[Citation Needed] In other words, a highly dishonest tactic used to lie and mislead people that no one reputable would use is OK because conservapedia couldn't lie without it. I see. Makes perfect sense. And these liars have the gall to call themselves Xians. Explains why no one takes conservapedia seriously either. Posted by: raven | November 3, 2007 10:33 PM

While browsing through Conservapedia about a year ago I came across this delightful piece about the frog. I commented on it at the time and it has still not been corrected.

In the same way, I see no reason to endorse or cooperate with the conventional division into theist, agnostic and (strong) atheist. It’s not that there aren’t three categories, it’s just that “agnostic” tends to smuggle in the presumption that, effectively, the Bayesian prior for the issue should be 50%. But that’s silly and ought not to be taken seriously. The prior for a complex existential claim should be near zero, and the burden of proof should be on the person making the claim. It should be that way for the trivial reason that most ideas that people dream up are wrong, even those dreamt up in a conscientious effort to explain features of the visible world. People just aren’t that good at armchair philosophy. A better division is theist, weak atheist and strong atheist, which reflects the reality that for all practical purposes weak atheism (passive lack of belief) is not different from strong atheism (active disbelief).

"Could so many people be wrong?"

Of course. Not only can that many people be wrong, but in the case of gods/Gods they obviously _are_ wrong. That's the insight behind Dawkins' barb, "We're all atheists, I just take it one God further." Gods are _normally_ fictional. Theology is _normally_ nonsense. It's taboo to say so, and the taboo is not wholly without merit, but I don't see how the underlying proposition can sensibly be denied.

It’s taboo to say so, and the taboo is not wholly without merit, but I don’t see how the underlying proposition can sensibly be denied.

"It is sometimes taboo to say that science hasn’t delivered on what it has promised, but its limitations at least cause me to pause in saying that religion is normally nonsense."

Note that I was careful to specify that _theology_ is normally nonsense. Religion is typically a bunch of stuff that the ancients thought they knew, from morality to history to cosmology, woven into a story with some theology. And because the ancients were by no means totally clueless or barbaric, religion is by no means totally nonsense. But I stand by the bit about theology, and it's the _strengths_ of science that enable me to say that. After all, it's just ordinary hypothesis testing: if there were a God and people had a God-detector sense or some other reliable means to information about God, people working independently would report the same information about God. But they don't. That's not affirmative evidence against God, but it is affirmative evidence against theology.

I don't think physicists face the same flavor of opposition biologists face. Physically, it would be accurate to say that *in principle* a rocket ship works the same way paddling a log works - something pushing against something else, and an action in one direction implies an equal and opposite action in the other direction.

Now, imagine someone claims that the physicist claims you can get to the moon by paddling with a wooden paddle, and quotes the above "toy" example. And imagine that *thousands* of web sites pick up this accusation and repeat it. Imagine it's also taught as an illustration of how stupid physics is, in churches and Sunday schools nationwide.

So OK, you physicists, how do you counter this? By claiming your toy example is wrong? But it's not wrong. By pulling a bait-and-switch and saying the toy example is insufficient? But why was it presented if it's not good enough? Yes, YOU know, and WE know, that the person making this silly representation ALSO knew that it was bogus. Sure, there are plenty of aspects of rocket technology that are not obvious, such that a detailed presentation would overwhelm the layman with equations and jargon.

But the core insight here isn't that the fundamental principles are different; but rather that *someone is lying*. On purpose. With intent to deceive. So long as explanations are accessible to the layman, they're worth lying about. Explanations requiring more knowledge than the layman possesses can be misrepresented as doubletalk and bafflegab. You're not trying to correct error or inform ignorance here - the liar KNOWS he's lying. Your problem is, too many people want to believe the lies. Your real opponent isn't the liar, it's his audience.

Note that I was careful to specify that _theology_ is normally nonsense.

Sure, there are plenty of aspects of rocket technology that are not obvious, such that a detailed presentation would overwhelm the layman with equations and jargon.

Mike Elzinga to Flint: You picked a good example. The basic principle is conservation of momentum, not “something pushing against something with equal and opposite force”.

Err, I don't think it's as good an example for his point as you make out. Both involve conservation of momentum, but it's critical that the motion of the rocket depends on COM of the rocket-fuel system, whereas progress of the log works by conservation of the log-earth system. Thus the log method of propulsion does not work so well when contact with the earth is prevented. If we as physicists neglect to mention that, you're entitled to chew us out.

Err, I don’t think it’s as good an example for his point as you make out. Both involve conservation of momentum, but it’s critical that the motion of the rocket depends on COM of the rocket-fuel system, whereas progress of the log works by conservation of the log-earth system. Thus the log method of propulsion does not work so well when contact with the earth is prevented. If we as physicists neglect to mention that, you’re entitled to chew us out.

Both involve conservation of momentum, but it’s critical that the motion of the rocket depends on COM of the rocket-fuel system, whereas progress of the log works by conservation of the log-earth system.

Actually I should add one more point that is important from a pedagogical perspective.

Guide the student to discover the basic idea while providing encouraging feedback, hints and analogies if appropriate. That engenders more confidence in the idea and you don’t end up looking too arrogant. Once they learn that understanding is achievable, people come to trust your guidance rather than that of the charlatan. So you don’t want large, discouraging steps in your explanations. This is most important at the more elementary levels. You have more tools to work with as the student progresses.

Flint: And so to correct my deliberate misrepresentation, you found it necessary to ring in jargon (“conservation of momemtum”) and then start building a new context (relevant components of the system, and why this matters).

But as far as I can see the extra components _don't_ matter to the point the creationists are being mendacious about. It's not as if these extra mechanisms are indispensable to information increasing - point mutations can achieve plenty all by themselves, but the creationists are already playing dumb about that most basic point.

Mark Barton:

The point I was trying to make is that we're not dealing with a failure to communicate, but with a refusal to accept. Perhaps there is no possible effective way to support a case someone simply will not credit. When you are confronted with an opponent who is willing to do whatever works to discredit you, and integrity plays no role in this process, you have a somewhat different challenge than the average educator. Someone who does not understand but is willing to try, requires different pedagogical techniques from someone who WILL not understand, and is deliberately attempting to undermine and misdirect your efforts.

And so we come around full circle. OK, so it's bad technique to take something inherently complex and multifaceted (not to mention highly technical), and overwhelm an uninformed audience. But how to deal with someone who takes an accurate but highly limited example illustration, presented because it's easy to grasp, and deliberately misrepresents it BUT does so plausibly (to their target audience)? What you see coming back at you is honest, well-meaning people exposed to the distortions but not the illustration as you presented it, asking misguided questions based on deliberately-planted false assumptions.

So it's pretty natural to go into a bit more depth so as to flesh out and cement the context correctly, and show how the malicious assumptions are false. And all the while, you KNOW the creationists are "playing dumb" about the basics in order to sandbag you into greater depth, from which they will be able to forge more ammunition. You must bear in mind that your true audience isn't the liars, it's those who know no better and trust the liars. Typically, greater clarity of explanation must rest on greater understanding of the underlying principles.

And so you're stuck: repeating without adding is a swearing contest. Repeating with added information is bafflegab. A good explanation of anything implies a good-faith willingness to learn. Creationists operate in bad faith.

Flint: The point I was trying to make is that we’re not dealing with a failure to communicate, but with a refusal to accept.

I agree completely but I still don't see how the extra info helps. The info dump can't possibly be, as claimed, a defence against a creationist straw man, because the claim in question is simply not a straw man. A straw man is an oversimplified or otherwise garbled version of a claim put out by its opponents to make it easy to cut down. The idea that evolution is genetic mutation plus natural selection wasn't put out there by creationists - it's the biologists' own formulation to make it easy to explain, and it's not materially oversimplified or incorrect for the purposes of illustrating that information can increase via simple mechanical processes.

I think the best analogy I can think of comes from what Duane Gish did (he essentially trained a generation of these fraudsters).

Throw garbage all over the place and refuse to pick it up by claming it was thrown all over by someone else. Then if a responsible citizen steps forward to start cleaning up the mess, accuse that person of causing the mess while throwing more garbage all over the place and reporting to everyone that the person cleaning up the mess is the one really responsible for this bad situation and that you are only attempting to point that out by pointing to the garbage.

Sounds pretty stupid when put that way, but it seems to work for the ID/Creationists. They have an audience that can’t distinguish so they go with whom they trust. And they trust the avuncular old guy with the sly sense of humor, quoting scripture, and throwing garbage all over the place.

I agree completely but I still don’t see how the extra info helps.

A straw man is an oversimplified or otherwise garbled version of a claim put out by its opponents to make it easy to cut down. The idea that evolution is genetic mutation plus natural selection wasn’t put out there by creationists - it’s the biologists’ own formulation to make it easy to explain, and it’s not materially oversimplified or incorrect for the purposes of illustrating that information can increase via simple mechanical processes.

Mike, the wrestling pig proverb is from the American South. Virtually all Chinese pig-related proverbs deal with pork, rather than the living animal. Those very few proverbs that deal with live pigs tend to refer to wild pigs, which are much neater animals compared to their domesticated descendants.

Mike, the wrestling pig proverb is from the American South.

That's what you get for trusting someone who got a Tau Ceti eel put into his ear.

That’s what you get for trusting someone who got a Tau Ceti eel put into his ear.

I suspect the strawman aspect of "RM+NS" is that creationists tacitly define a mutation as some kind of Hollywood-style 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' freak. (Did someone mention above that creationists are not honest people?)

Would it clarify this issue if, rather than listing all the different kinds of mutations, scientists made a few simple points?

1.) Most mutations make tiny changes that don't have much effect one way or the other.

2.) Extremely damaging mutations almost always cause a creature to die without descendants, so they don't affect the fitness of a species.

3.) Beneficial mutations are rare-- but because the living things with these mutations often have lots and lots of descendants, rare mutations become common in a species in what geologists consider a very brief period of time.

So-- extremely damaging mutations occur much more often than beneficial mutations. But because of natural selection, our genes carry many of our ancestor's beneficial mutations, and none of their extremely damaging ones. That's why RM+NS works. Does that attack the strawman without unnecessary detail?

Perhaps MacNeill is deploying a suboptimal response to creationist dishonesty. Maybe he’s trying to anticipate the same sort of dishonesty to any mechanism he proposes, and is trying to at least get creationists to tell DIFFERENT lies.

HP: "I suspect the strawman aspect of “RM+NS” is that creationists tacitly define a mutation as some kind of Hollywood-style ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ freak."

I agree that that's much more the root of the problem, and unless it's tackled head-on (much as you suggest) there's no use mentioning all the other types of variation on the list because they're all going to get the same treatment.

HP: “I suspect the strawman aspect of “RM+NS” is that creationists tacitly define a mutation as some kind of Hollywood-style ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ freak.” I agree that that’s much more the root of the problem, and unless it’s tackled head-on (much as you suggest) there’s no use mentioning all the other types of variation on the list because they’re all going to get the same treatment.

— Mark Barton