Robert Asher on Stephen Meyer's "uniformitarianism" argument in Darwin's Doubt

Who believes in that sort of uniformitarianism anyway, now?

Of course it's a bizarre resort to what once was a reasonably good principle (assume uniformity in geology at a time when doing otherwise was dicey at best) but isn't really anything today, because it's so clear that if we actually apply it properly to life, we'd expect reproduction with variation, inevitably being subject to natural selection. And the evidence just happens to be consistent with unintelligent evolution, not technological evolution with its easy transference of designs (which is why we accept evolution, not because of uniformitarianism).

In order to pretend that life had to be designed he has to reduce everything to information, then apply a defunct "principle" under the pretense that it's really all just the same. It's nothing like the same, and he knows it.

Glen Davidson

Uniformitarianism in geology posits that the slow, gradual, excruciatingly incremental changes we see caused by weathering and erosion can explain the difference between a butte and a canyon, a flat plain or a jagged mountain range, a karstic landscape from a glacial moraine. In short, it posits that perfectly observable process make very small changes that accumulated over very long periods of time to end up with extremely large changes that explain the diversity of geological forms.

Kind of like the process of evolution we see going on today being extended backwards over time to explain the diversity of life forms, from pandas to paramecia.

Far from being persecuted for a discovery that raises the issue of design, anyone finding genuine “plastic spikes” in deep time, corresponding temporally to one or more evolutionary events, would be assured of a successful, mainstream academic career (to say the least). While such artifacts wouldn’t tell us how biodiversity actually came about, they would indicate that something out there served as an agent behind life on Earth.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/JxVN0eQFqtmgoY7wC1cZM44ET_iAanxHQmLgYgX_Zhn8#57cad said: Who believes in that sort of uniformitarianism anyway, now? Of course it's a bizarre resort to what once was a reasonably good principle (assume uniformity in geology at a time when doing otherwise was dicey at best) but isn't really anything today, because it's so clear that if we actually apply it properly to life, we'd expect reproduction with variation, inevitably being subject to natural selection. And the evidence just happens to be consistent with unintelligent evolution, not technological evolution with its easy transference of designs (which is why we accept evolution, not because of uniformitarianism). In order to pretend that life had to be designed he has to reduce everything to information, then apply a defunct "principle" under the pretense that it's really all just the same. It's nothing like the same, and he knows it. Glen Davidson

Henry J said:

Far from being persecuted for a discovery that raises the issue of design, anyone finding genuine “plastic spikes” in deep time, corresponding temporally to one or more evolutionary events, would be assured of a successful, mainstream academic career (to say the least). While such artifacts wouldn’t tell us how biodiversity actually came about, they would indicate that something out there served as an agent behind life on Earth.

It sounds like it would indicate that something with technology had been around, but wouldn't by itself tell us whether that something was doing genetic engineering. It might have just been exploring or something.

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

BREAKING NEWS!

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

AFTER 42 YEARS OF A CONSTANT STRUGGLE BETWEEN REALITY AND MYTH; FACT V.
FICTION, GREED V. TRUTH, THE SMITHSONIAN FINALLY DROPPED IT`S ASININE
RELIGION. AFTER HEARING THAT MAN IS OLDER THAN COAL, AND THE SMITHSONIAN
IS NOTHING BUT A SCAM TO SILENCE THE TRUTH.

SMITHSONIAN SPOKESMAN RICHARD DAWKINS HAD THIS TO SAY, WHILE FILING FOR
BANKRUPTCY:

Dammit. I never thought this will happen. Burn the books everybody.

THRINAXODON HAS RECENTLY FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE SMITHSONIAN FOR
YEARS OF SUPPRESSION OF VALID RESEARCH.

RICHARD LEAKEY IS BURSTING IN TEARS AS ALL HIS "SPECIMENS" ARE TURNING
INTO RUBBLE. HE SAID, "This brings me great money!!!"

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Words fail me. Put it out of its misery, somebody.

Dave Luckett said: Words fail me. Put it out of its misery, somebody.

I did remark at one point that there are people out there that make FL look reasonable. Clearly, I have led a sheltered life.

Well there is one guy who is a dumb as coal apparently. But that doesn't really count.

( see my reviews of Meyer: Meyer’s Hopeless Monster, Part II and Luskin’s Hopeless Monster; and Meyer on Medved: the blind leading the blind)

Starbuck said: This line confuses me

( see my reviews of Meyer: Meyer’s Hopeless Monster, Part II and Luskin’s Hopeless Monster; and Meyer on Medved: the blind leading the blind)

Those reviews were written by Nick Matzke.

Dave Luckett said: Words fail me. Put it out of its misery, somebody.

SWT said:

Dave Luckett said: Words fail me. Put it out of its misery, somebody.

Did Mabus get out of jail?

If creation follows uniformitarianism, then we should be able to detect ongoing design and creation right now. Of course, there is absolutely no reason why any intelligence would have to act in any uniformitarian manner. So I guess this is just one more example of creationists parroting what they perceive to be a highly successful scientific idea and trying to say that creationism works the same way. They have heard the words, they just don't understand what they mean. If they did, they could choose to be real scientists instead of mindlessly parroting sciencey sounding words.

I have commented on the topic of the OP in a more broad way: Meyer and all IDiots, indeed much of Christian apologetics, employ an invalid inductive step when they claim that information always traces back to "intelligence." It is invalid because:

a. Natural processes produce information

b. Human language/grammar always traces back to humans with material bodies interacting by material means, but never to spirits, deities or immaterial spooks.

This post is mostly relevant to (b). Intelligent Design and Christian apologetics employ pathological induction because (amongst other problems) they glom together two very different entities, one valid and one invalid. Here the valid category is "human intelligence embodied in material bodies interacting via material means", the invalid category is "immaterial spooks with no bodies."

I call this pathological induction, based on combining a valid and an invalid categorization, a Glom. One element of the glommed category may be real, but the other gives a false probability to the deduction that the Christian apologist is trying to make from his alleged inductive rule.

IDiots assert that in our uniform past experience, "Information" always traces back to "an intelligence". This is false; but that alleged rule, even if it were true, would still be no more valid that than the rule that in our uniform past experience, information never traces back to an immaterial spook or spirit.

Consider the following two rules:

1. Information is always traced back to an intelligence (a human or a spook).

2. Information is never tracked back to an immaterial spook.

The ID proponent alleges that, in our uniform past experience, (1) is true, but they ignore that, in the very same uniform past experience, (2) is as probable or more probable than (1). (And (1) is not true anyway, because natural processes produce information.)

So the "Glom" performed here is a trick used by defining "intelligence" as meaning "human OR spook." In the syllogism (1) above, "caused by intelligence" is the consequent. The Christian apologist is combining two very different consequents:

(Y) Caused by a human made of matter interacting by material means

(Z) Caused by an immaterial spook by supernatural means

Then they use "intelligence" to mean "Y OR Z." The problem is that in our uniform past experience, it's sometimes Y, and NEVER Z. (In addition, it's sometimes a natural process that creates information, but that's another problem.)

Thus syllogism (1) has the form

All (X) are (Y or Z)

Where X = information created. In reality, if we were to ignore all natural processes that create information, we would at best arrive at:

All (X) are (Y)

But by Glomming together two different consequents, the Christian apologist arrives at:

1. All (X) are (Y or Z)

Which is technically correct, since (Y or Z) is a superset of Y; but it is irrelevant for the purposes of the ID creationist, because

2. All (X) are NEVER Z

The problem for the creationist is that (2) is known with equal or greater certainty from the exact same set of observations that the ID creationist alleged to use to arrive at his "universal" rule (1).

Thus, if we combine (1), which the ID creationist alleges is correct (ignoring natural processes that create information), with (2), which is derived from the exact same "uniform past experience" and is known with equal or greater confidence to be true, then we arrive at:

3. All (X) are (Y AND NOT Z)

Or to put it more succinctly,

We have never seen any immaterial spook make information, complexity, or any mutation in any genome of any species anywhere. Thus, they are hypocritical in their invocation of uniformitarianism.

Whenever I try to analyze the "argument from design" I am frustrated by the fact that it goes wrong in so many ways that it's hard to know where to start. A reasoned analysis seems to grant it a status, as if it were actually an appeal to reason, rather than nothing more than a slogan in an advertising campaign, not really meant to be taken seriously.

Thrinaxodon is an odd sort who has appeared previously in sci.bio.paleontology and talk.origins. He has two personalities, one a fairly knowledeable and reasonable discussant of paleontology and the other the wacko Ed wannabe you see here. (Or will until he's banished, which I expect soon.) I can't explain the reason for this second personality.

"ID" is just an incoherent collection of a limited number of logical fallacies, strung out into vast verbosity.

Whether something is information or not is decided by the observer.

If a volcano "creates" a rock formation by spewing out lava, selected features of the rock formation become information if someone studies them.

ID/creationists pretend to get it backwards. It's a fair paraphrase of their ideas to note that they make a claim equivalent to saying that if the rock formation is information now, the volcano must have been "intelligent" to create it.

TomS,

The best short response to the Argument from Design I've seen is this:

When William Paley described finding a watch on a beach, he argued that it was clearly not a natural object as compared to the beach, the trees, and the other natural objects around, and obviously the product of design. He then goes on to argue that the natural world is even more complex than the watch and therefore must have been designed. This means Paley used the argument that the natural world is designed *because* it is so obviously not like a designed object.

(I can't remember where I first ran across this little snippet, so please don't attribute it to me.)

The other approach that works (for me, I've never tried it as a persuasive technique) is to show some examples of pareidolia from nature.

Chris Lawson said: TomS, The best short response to the Argument from Design I've seen is this: When William Paley described finding a watch on a beach, he argued that it was clearly not a natural object as compared to the beach, the trees, and the other natural objects around, and obviously the product of design. He then goes on to argue that the natural world is even more complex than the watch and therefore must have been designed. This means Paley used the argument that the natural world is designed *because* it is so obviously not like a designed object. (I can't remember where I first ran across this little snippet, so please don't attribute it to me.) The other approach that works (for me, I've never tried it as a persuasive technique) is to show some examples of pareidolia from nature.

harold said: "ID" is just an incoherent collection of a limited number of logical fallacies, strung out into vast verbosity.

Chris Lawson said: TomS, The best short response to the Argument from Design I've seen is this: When William Paley described finding a watch on a beach, he argued that it was clearly not a natural object as compared to the beach, the trees, and the other natural objects around, and obviously the product of design. He then goes on to argue that the natural world is even more complex than the watch and therefore must have been designed. This means Paley used the argument that the natural world is designed *because* it is so obviously not like a designed object. (I can't remember where I first ran across this little snippet, so please don't attribute it to me.) The other approach that works (for me, I've never tried it as a persuasive technique) is to show some examples of pareidolia from nature.

If Mr Asher is really smart then it shows such a person being needed to take on Meyer means meyer must be a smart scientist!
A line of reasoning.

Plastics? What film? why is that a good point. Surely the glory of deisn in anything is better then in plastics!

Chris Lawson said: TomS, The best short response to the Argument from Design I've seen is this: When William Paley described finding a watch on a beach, he argued that it was clearly not a natural object as compared to the beach, the trees, and the other natural objects around, and obviously the product of design. He then goes on to argue that the natural world is even more complex than the watch and therefore must have been designed. This means Paley used the argument that the natural world is designed *because* it is so obviously not like a designed object. (I can't remember where I first ran across this little snippet, so please don't attribute it to me.) The other approach that works (for me, I've never tried it as a persuasive technique) is to show some examples of pareidolia from nature.

eddie said:

Chris Lawson said: TomS, The best short response to the Argument from Design I've seen is this: When William Paley described finding a watch on a beach, he argued that it was clearly not a natural object as compared to the beach, the trees, and the other natural objects around, and obviously the product of design. He then goes on to argue that the natural world is even more complex than the watch and therefore must have been designed. This means Paley used the argument that the natural world is designed *because* it is so obviously not like a designed object. (I can't remember where I first ran across this little snippet, so please don't attribute it to me.) The other approach that works (for me, I've never tried it as a persuasive technique) is to show some examples of pareidolia from nature.

Amazing demolition of an argument Paley never made. He compared a rock (not a beach; not a tree) to a watch on a heath (not a beach). And the rest of your amazing refutation doesn't even come close to Paley's argument. But, heh, why bother reading someone's work when you already know they're wrong?

eddie said:

Chris Lawson said: TomS, The best short response to the Argument from Design I've seen is this: When William Paley described finding a watch on a beach, he argued that it was clearly not a natural object as compared to the beach, the trees, and the other natural objects around, and obviously the product of design. He then goes on to argue that the natural world is even more complex than the watch and therefore must have been designed. This means Paley used the argument that the natural world is designed *because* it is so obviously not like a designed object. (I can't remember where I first ran across this little snippet, so please don't attribute it to me.) The other approach that works (for me, I've never tried it as a persuasive technique) is to show some examples of pareidolia from nature.

Amazing demolition of an argument Paley never made. He compared a rock (not a beach; not a tree) to a watch on a heath (not a beach). And the rest of your amazing refutation doesn't even come close to Paley's argument. But, heh, why bother reading someone's work when you already know they're wrong?

TomS said:

harold said: "ID" is just an incoherent collection of a limited number of logical fallacies, strung out into vast verbosity.

Although is it beyond their capacity to find fallacies without limit, to fit the needs of the moment for obscurantism?

harold said: Lastly, what is a[n undesigned] “rock”? How can we distinguish "rocks" from "boulders", "pebbles", or "grains of sand", for example.

Robert Byers said: If Mr Asher is really smart then it shows such a person being needed to take on Meyer means meyer must be a smart scientist!

For 15+ years, whenever I read either a defense or criticism of ID, I tune out most references to designers, Creators, God, religion, supernatural, etc. In the late 90s, even before the “Wedge” document was leaked, IDers made it clear to me that they were conducting a “big tent” scam, thus giving tacit approval to every origins account from Flat-Earth-Last-Thursdayism to “virtual evolution.” So I really only needed to read once that ID promotes “supernatural” (non)explanations. And yet in all these years I have never read a criticism that doesn’t dwell on that issue.

Unfortunately I have never found to words to convey my meaning (and this comment almost certainly won’t either), but I find the case against ID even more devastating when I do tune out all the “design” language. For example, Nick Matzke notes above that Meyer: “thinks there were millions of miraculous interventions in the history of life, but he’s a bit coy about admitting this up front.” What I read “between the lines” is that Meyer “thinks there were millions of events involving processes other than normal ‘RM+NS’ in the history of life...” Put that way, the first thing that ought to come to everyone’s mind is “Why on earth isn’t he at least stating and testing ‘what, where, when, how’ hypotheses, about those events if not outright conclusions?”

The answer is, of course, that, as long as no one forces him to do that, or explain why he avoids it, he can comfortably stay on “square one” and keep recycling and rephrasing the same old bogus “weaknesses” of evolution that fool most nonscientists. One can endlessly speculate on whether he truly believes those “other processes” occurred, but a safe bet is that, even if he does, he has no confidence that it can be supported on its own evidence, i.e., not perceived “weaknesses” of anything else. Another safe bet is that he is well aware that real science supports claims on their own evidence, not bogus “weaknesses,” and that, if he could do that with his alternate “theory” he’d have no problem teaching it in public school science class.

Another thing that forces him to be coy is that his own DI colleague Michael Behe, despite his own coyness regarding the “wheres and whens” of those “other processes,” has been consistently clear that they are not new origin-of-life events, but mere in-vivo molecular rearrangements. That implies that Cambrian fauna – and H. sapiens – are descendants of Precambrian life. Meyer and most other ID peddlers are more sensitive than Behe to what their rank-and-file fans want to hear, and it’s certainly not that we are descended from aquatic organisms that lived on the order of a billion years ago. So as long as they are allowed to keep the “debate” on “weaknesses” of evolution, and be as vague as possible about the “whats, whens, wheres, hows” of their “theory,” will hear only what they want to hear and fill-in the rest, and fence-sitters will find an excuse to feed their unwarranted suspicion of science and scientists.
The irony is that, resorting to “design,” even indirectly via bogus “weaknesses” of evolution, is what gives them trouble getting it taught in public school science class. But that’s a small price to pay, given that the same evasion allows them to fool a majority of people during the ~99.9% of their waking hours that they’re not sitting in class learning evolution.

“Why on earth isn’t he at least stating and testing ‘what, where, when, how’ hypotheses, about those events if not outright conclusions?” The answer is, of course, that, as long as no one forces him to do that

They apparently think only as far as the one-line slogan, without ever thinking about what the words MEAN.

harold said: Just Bob said -

They apparently think only as far as the one-line slogan, without ever thinking about what the words MEAN.

There is a term for this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_terminating_cliche#Thought-terminating_clich.C3.A9

We're all agreeing that the big problem with the anti-evolutionary actionism is just what it is not. It is not an alternative to evolution. It is just a big whine about something-or-other-wrong with evolution. It can temporarily disguise itself with sciencey-sounding language which presents a temptation to people who do know something about science to try to teach about what science really does say. Evolution, after all, is an interesting subject.

No-one can force him to do that, and that’s probably a good thing.

— Harold

Frank J said:

No-one can force him to do that, and that’s probably a good thing.

— Harold

You know what I mean, but since virtually every word I wrote online in 15+ years has been misconstrued by someone, by "force" I merely mean "put them on the spot by publicly asking the questions they'd rather evade."

harold said: successful DI fellows do not put themselves in positions where they can be exposed to informed critique, publicly.

TomS said:

harold said: successful DI fellows do not put themselves in positions where they can be exposed to informed critique, publicly.

A new aspect on the "controversy". Deserves thought, rather than an immediate response. (But if I gave one, it would be enthusiastic.)

Case in point, over the years in my life outside of these boards (yes I have one), a few people have innocently repeated DI sound bites. Rather that accuse the DI of "lying for Jesus" (Medved and Kinghoffer love that one) I calmly showed the misled person the word games that the DI plays, and how, as Harold noted, they keep themselves out of "positions where they can be exposed to informed critique, publicly." I not only show that the accusation of "Darwinist censorship" is a blatant lie, but also show who the real effective censors are. If the parroted sound bite originated from Behe, I always say "You do know he accepts common descent, right?" Invariably they don't.

That said, I recently overheard a committed Biblical literalist parroting a Behe line. I was very tempted to ask the same question. But over the years I have learned to not waste my time with either committed "true believers" or those in-on-the-scam. But for every one of them, there's at least one "fence sitter" who could go either way.

Exactly, Brother Harold, right on!

Meyer earns his bread from the Disco Tute. The Disco Tute gathers its bread from donations and, they hope, some large donors. Check out their finances and you'll see that almost all of their money goes to salaries, administrative costs, travel and publicity with a few coins trickling down to the fake "Biologic Institute."

So, how does the Disco Tute attract donors. Well, they have to hold up their books and say, "Lookie at this, a book! We wroted a book that will smash the Materialistic Empire!" "Lookie, we have a lab and published an entire PDF in our very own on-line publication!" "Lookie here on our blog, All Hitler, All the Time!"

Hitler, books and labs - oh, my! The Darwinists are fleeing! The entire Materialist Empire is crumbling! All we need is one more year of funding!

Yeah, right.

harold said: How many ID books are purchased and read by private individuals I can't say.

Paul Burnett said:

harold said: How many ID books are purchased and read by private individuals I can't say.

If you go Amazon's page on Meyer's "Doubt", the first item under "Amazon Best Sellers Rank" is "#1 in Books - Christian Books and Bibles - Theology - Creationism". The number one gateway through which purchasers purchase "Doubt" is creationism. That says a lot, doesn't it?

Paul Burnett said:

harold said: How many ID books are purchased and read by private individuals I can't say.

If you go Amazon's page on Meyer's "Doubt", the first item under "Amazon Best Sellers Rank" is "#1 in Books - Christian Books and Bibles - Theology - Creationism". The number one gateway through which purchasers purchase "Doubt" is creationism. That says a lot, doesn't it?

ID is not even false. It is meaningless, without substantive content, and only a whine about evolutionary biology.

Most people other than long-time critics in fact define “creationism” as something that is demonstrably false, and has substantive content (testable claims of when key events in the history of life occurred, which “kinds” are related to which others, etc.).

Frank J said: You probably noticed that when a fan of ID calls ID "creationism" the DI bites its tongue, but when a critic does so they throw a tantrum. But as I have been saying for 10+ years, calling ID creationism without unequivocally defining both terms gives ID an undeserved compliment in the eyes of most potential fans. As TomS wrote on the Curmudgeon's blog:

The problem that the ID advocates face is the demise of Old-Earth Creationism. If there were a marginally reasonable version of creationism available, one that wasn't tied to wacky ideas like the literal historicity of Noah's Ark and 6000 years of life on Earth and baraminology, then they might be able to cope. But all of the preachers are insisting on the so-called inerrancy of the Bible. So the best they can do is obfuscate and hope that you don't notice that they aren't saying anything.

The ID/creationist movement started out as “Scientific” Creationism; and it morphed in the light of court decisions going against it.

— Mike Elzinga

The problem that the ID advocates face is the demise of Old-Earth Creationism.

— TomS

Frank J -

I would say that there are different ways of critiquing ID, each of which has its best uses.

1) You can act as if ID is a serious response to perceived problems in biology, and critique its face value claims. Since all major ID claims are either false analogy, false dichotomy, non sequitur constructions, or attacks on straw man targets, that's fairly easy to do, and done effectively all the time.

2) You can point out that ID actually, "mysteriously", offers no positive claims, as I rhetorically did above. Who is the designer, what did the designer do, and so on. That's also effective.

3) Lastly, you can point out that ID morphed rather suddenly from creation science, and Edwards (or anticipation of Edwards) was the clear cause of this. This approach is absolutely required in court cases where First Amendment issues are being considered.

Each of these three approaches has its role, but I want to emphasize that they are not unrelated. Issue "3)", the fact that ID is disguised "creation science", is the root issue.

The reason ID makes no discernable positive claims, the reason ID is a cobbled together ad hoc collection of pompously stated logical fallacies, the reason ID is evasive, the reason for all of this is that ID is disguised creation science. It's because of feature "3)" that the other features exist.

You may well find that people who are culturally defensive respond best to approach "1" or "2", and if so, use those approaches with those people.

But ID is really just "creation science" trying to take the Fifth every time it's asked a straight question, and that is important.

Frank J said: As TomS often notes, what's most important to the person-on-the-street is not "evidence" that Goddidit, but that they're not related to "monkeys" (though I suspect that not nearly as many would mind being related to dogs and cats). ID offers them none of that. Neither do OEC or YEC, of course, but they at least claim it.

Amazing demolition of an argument Paley never made. He compared a rock (not a beach; not a tree) to a watch on a heath (not a beach). And the rest of your amazing refutation doesn’t even come close to Paley’s argument. But, heh, why bother reading someone’s work when you already know they’re wrong?

But ID is really just "creation science" trying to take the Fifth every time it's asked a straight question, and that is important.

— harold

As usual, well said.

I just have a few random comments.

One is that, while I generally am willing to back off from ordinary meanings of words because they are dog-whistles to others, I am somewhat at a loss for a convenient term to replace "creationism" to designate the "clade" including YEC and ID and others related to them.

As far as the lack of substance, that was not an innovation of the ID-ers. Even before Darwin, Herbert Spencer was complaining about that in his 1852 essay "The Development Hypothesis". ID is forever striving to perfect upon that.

WRT geocentrism, the thought just occurred to me that it may suffer from association with the Flat Earth Theory. To be sure, not many people can come up with an obvious reason for accepting heliocentrism.

It remains a puzzle to me how YEC took off in the 1960s. Your suggestion of "death before the Fall" just doesn't seem plausible to me - I'd say that that is a bit too obscure for most folks. Maybe "original sin", but it isn't immediately convincing to me. Everybody does know about the great ages of the patriarchs, though - but they knew that just as well before 1960.

Frank J said: Another reason I consider that extremely important, and wished that everyone could, is that it is illustrates why there even is such a thing as pseudoscience. It's unfortunately counterintuitive to most people, but the same thing that makes it increasingly hard to support a specific pseudoscientific alternative (e.g. OEC, YEC or geocentrism) makes it easier to promote unreasonable doubt of the established science. The more evidence for evolution, the more opportunity to take some out of context to make it look dead, dying, falsified or unfalsifiable.

TomS said: It remains a puzzle to me how YEC took off in the 1960s. Your suggestion of "death before the Fall" just doesn't seem plausible to me - I'd say that that is a bit too obscure for most folks. Maybe "original sin", but it isn't immediately convincing to me. Everybody does know about the great ages of the patriarchs, though - but they knew that just as well before 1960.

TomS said: As usual, well said. I just have a few random comments. One is that, while I generally am willing to back off from ordinary meanings of words because they are dog-whistles to others, I am somewhat at a loss for a convenient term to replace "creationism" to designate the "clade" including YEC and ID and others related to them. As far as the lack of substance, that was not an innovation of the ID-ers. Even before Darwin, Herbert Spencer was complaining about that in his 1852 essay "The Development Hypothesis". ID is forever striving to perfect upon that. WRT geocentrism, the thought just occurred to me that it may suffer from association with the Flat Earth Theory. To be sure, not many people can come up with an obvious reason for accepting heliocentrism. It remains a puzzle to me how YEC took off in the 1960s. Your suggestion of "death before the Fall" just doesn't seem plausible to me - I'd say that that is a bit too obscure for most folks. Maybe "original sin", but it isn't immediately convincing to me. Everybody does know about the great ages of the patriarchs, though - but they knew that just as well before 1960.

Mike Elzinga said:

Frank J said: Another reason I consider that extremely important, and wished that everyone could, is that it is illustrates why there even is such a thing as pseudoscience. It's unfortunately counterintuitive to most people, but the same thing that makes it increasingly hard to support a specific pseudoscientific alternative (e.g. OEC, YEC or geocentrism) makes it easier to promote unreasonable doubt of the established science. The more evidence for evolution, the more opportunity to take some out of context to make it look dead, dying, falsified or unfalsifiable.

Back in the late 1970s and in the 1980s I was giving talks fairly regularly to church groups about the problems with what was at the time called Creation “Science.” These talks were to moderate Christians; I didn’t go into any fundamentalist churches with the talks. Most of the content of my talks were comparisons between what the “Scientific” Creationists were presenting as science and what the science really was; in other words, I was presenting the misconceptions and misrepresentations of the “Scientific” Creationists. That seemed to be sufficient. Most of the folks in these Sunday school classes were concerned about the state of education and greeted these misconceptions and misrepresentations by the “Scientific” Creationists with considerable consternation. They hadn’t realized just how bad the creation “science” was; and that in turn led to their understanding that “Scientific” Creationism was sectarian socio/politics. A pastor and campus minister once said to me that the emphasis in “fundamentalism” should be on “mental.”

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said: It remains a puzzle to me how YEC took off in the 1960s. Your suggestion of "death before the Fall" just doesn't seem plausible to me - I'd say that that is a bit too obscure for most folks. Maybe "original sin", but it isn't immediately convincing to me. Everybody does know about the great ages of the patriarchs, though - but they knew that just as well before 1960.

It was due to Sputnik and the subsequent pushes for curriculum reforms in the US that included putting more emphasis on evolution in high school biology. That resulted in a tremendous backlash from the fundamentalists. A. E. Wilder-Smith was already popular among fundamentalists; but then came the Morris and Whitcomb book about the Genesis Flood and the decision by Morris to start the Institute for Creation Research. Duane Gish was already harassing biology teachers in the Kalamazoo, Michigan area.

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said: It remains a puzzle to me how YEC took off in the 1960s. Your suggestion of "death before the Fall" just doesn't seem plausible to me - I'd say that that is a bit too obscure for most folks. Maybe "original sin", but it isn't immediately convincing to me. Everybody does know about the great ages of the patriarchs, though - but they knew that just as well before 1960.

It was due to Sputnik and the subsequent pushes for curriculum reforms in the US that included putting more emphasis on evolution in high school biology. That resulted in a tremendous backlash from the fundamentalists. A. E. Wilder-Smith was already popular among fundamentalists; but then came the Morris and Whitcomb book about the Genesis Flood and the decision by Morris to start the Institute for Creation Research. Duane Gish was already harassing biology teachers in the Kalamazoo, Michigan area.

I just wanted to give a reference for that essay of Spencer's:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Development_Hypothesis

If we really apply uniformitarianism to determine if intelligent agents influenced the course of our evolutionary history, we’d expect those agents to have left behind the same kinds of traces as other such agents. Humanity is the best example we’ve got so far, and we make an exponentially greater amount of garbage than we do functional designs. One of the most obvious kinds of material evidence that a human-like intelligence in Earth’s distant past would have left behind was spelled out with one of the most famous lines, indeed one of the most famous words, ever uttered in twentieth-century film: Plastics.

Sometime or other, some intelligent agent or agents designed some biological process or structure, and then somehow manufactured that process or structure in matter and energy, all the while leaving no independent evidence of the design process, no independent evidence of the manufacturing process, and no independent evidence of the presence, or even the existence, of the designing and manufacturing entities.

Richard B. Hoppe said: Asher wrote

If we really apply uniformitarianism to determine if intelligent agents influenced the course of our evolutionary history, we’d expect those agents to have left behind the same kinds of traces as other such agents. Humanity is the best example we’ve got so far, and we make an exponentially greater amount of garbage than we do functional designs. One of the most obvious kinds of material evidence that a human-like intelligence in Earth’s distant past would have left behind was spelled out with one of the most famous lines, indeed one of the most famous words, ever uttered in twentieth-century film: Plastics.

I've been making that argument for years in my summary of intelligent design "theory":

Sometime or other, some intelligent agent or agents designed some biological process or structure, and then somehow manufactured that process or structure in matter and energy, all the while leaving no independent evidence of the design process, no independent evidence of the manufacturing process, and no independent evidence of the presence, or even the existence, of the designing and manufacturing entities.

We find the debitage left by the manufacturers of stone implements (I once spent several days mapping the locations of a whole bunch of flint flakes), but we see nothing of the sort from the alleged intelligent designers.

And maybe even finally getting around to doing what detectors of human design do - determining what the designer(s) did, when, where and how. :-)

Frank J said: With a solid majority thinking that it's fair to "teach both sides"...

Paul Burnett said:

Frank J said: With a solid majority thinking that it's fair to "teach both sides"...

I have likened this to making firefighters get the fire's side of the story before they start to fight the fire. Folks who don't think the intelligent design creationism hoax is a "fire"-level emergency for America aren't paying enough attention.

We find the debitage left by the manufacturers of stone implements (I once spent several days mapping the locations of a whole bunch of flint flakes), but we see nothing of the sort from the alleged intelligent designers.

You do realize that the the intelligent designer has legions of magic elves tasked with removing all traces of his activities?

Actual election results show precious little evidence that the public wants sectarian science denial propaganda pushed in taxpayer funded public schools.

— Harold

Frank J said:

Actual election results show precious little evidence that the public wants sectarian science denial propaganda pushed in taxpayer funded public schools.

— Harold

Apologies for going even more off-topic, but I have been increasingly intrigued at how ~70% of adult Americans are at least partly sympathetic to the anti-evolution movement (including those who have no problem with evolution but have been fooled into thinking it's fair to "teach both sides" in science class), yet most still listen to their conscience in the election booth. Note that even in the last 2 presidential elections the most vocal anti-science candidates (Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, Huckabee) were weeded out in the primaries (Palin got through as VP candidate in 08, but probably would have had a hard time in 12). IOW, when it counts, apparently only committed evolution-deniers (and activists of course), which are a minority, albeit an uncomfortably large one, go with the anti-evolution candidates, and the huge "swing vote" does not. I realize that there are other "hot" social issues unfortunately tangled with evolution, and that (even more unfortunately) the aforementioned ~70% and more are horrendously misinformed of science. But I'd be curious what the rest of you think explains the "cognitive dissonance" of the "swing vote."

@ Harold:

I was expecting something more complicated, e.g. the entangled social issues, but it may be just that simple as you mention. If so, it would be nice if it didn't always have to take a local incident, or a politician putting his foot in his mouth, to make people see how they have been misled.

Frank J said: @ Harold: I was expecting something more complicated, e.g. the entangled social issues, but it may be just that simple as you mention. If so, it would be nice if it didn't always have to take a local incident, or a politician putting his foot in his mouth, to make people see how they have been misled.

I actually got a 'poll' call during the primary season that asked, among other crap, "Would you support John McCain if you knew that he had an illegitimate black child?"

And surprise, surprise! It wasn't from the Democratic campaign, but from the Tea Party Patriots or some iteration thereof.

Just Bob said: I actually got a 'poll' call during the primary season that asked, among other crap, "Would you support John McCain if you knew that he had an illegitimate black child?" And surprise, surprise! It wasn't from the Democratic campaign, but from the Tea Party Patriots or some iteration thereof.

harold said:

Just Bob said: I actually got a 'poll' call during the primary season that asked, among other crap, "Would you support John McCain if you knew that he had an illegitimate black child?" And surprise, surprise! It wasn't from the Democratic campaign, but from the Tea Party Patriots or some iteration thereof.

Wow. An actual recipient of that infamous push poll call, which is pretty much as extreme an example as my imaginary example. Were you in South Carolina? That's where that call was mainly targeted.