Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002
|
Sal:
| Quote |
In thinking who I’d pick to duel with Miller: Berlinski, Wells, and Luskin. It would take 3 of our best against Mr. Slick on stage. He’s that good.
|
Uh, it's been done before. Berlinski, Behe, and Johnson against Miller, Scott, Ruse, and Lynn. And the IDC team even got an assist from William F. Buckley, Jr. Result? Let's look at Ken Miller against that IDC Dream Team:
| Quote |
Kenneth Miller vs. Panel
MK: With more props.
KM: Can't live without them. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed Dr. Berlinski's statement, because he focused in on one of the major deficiencies of the four people on the other side of the table who argue against evolution, and that major theoretical deficiency is they have no explanation for natural history. And to me as an experimental biologist I am frustrated if I do not see a theoretical framework into which the past can be explained. We know something about the past, and there are facts about the fossil record, and I'll tell you in a very general way one of those facts. And that is that fossils show a succession of types over time.
Now we know the other side advocates intelligent design as a primary characteristic of the fossil record. Let's explore the primary scientific characteristic of intelligent design when it is squared with the fossil record. The fossil record, and I can give you specific examples, is characterized best by a sequence of appearances and disappearances. Now think what that means. What that means is that the characteristic that best describes the intelligent designer who would have designed this fossil record is incompetence. Because everything the intelligent designer designed, with about 1% exception, has immediately become extinct. Intelligent design has no explanation for the successive character of the fossil record. Evolution has a perfect explanation, and that is the appearance of new forms and the extinction of others. And if you see a scheme for the natural history of intelligent design presented by the other side tonight, you should treasure it, because they've never announced one before.
MK: Thank you Mr. Miller, don't go away. [audience applause] Mr. Behe?
MB: Ken, in my introductory remarks I showed a picture of Haeckel's Embryos, those little drawings of embryos looking the same and gradually turning into --
Haeckel's original embryo drawing from 1874 KM: Indeed you did, and I'm going to give you a hand, because the picture that you have right here, I have brought an enlarged copy just to help you out.
MB: Okay, thanks very much.
KM: Anything, Mike, anything I can do. [audience chuckles]
MB: And, and you'll notice that it says in Science magazine of a couple months ago, "Haeckels Embryos, Fraud Rediscovered."
KM: Absolutely.
MB: And which it says, not only did Haeckel add or omit features, Richardson and his colleagues report, but he also fudged the scale, and the author of the report says, "it looks like it's turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology." Now in your very good biology textbook --
KM: Thank you.
MB: -- for high school, it reproduces Haeckel's drawings, and it uses them in the section of how we know evolution occurred, and it points to them as saying that embryos should be preserved in the early stages. Now my question is --
KM: Embryos should be preserved in the early stages?
MB: Well, embryos -- conserved in the early stages.
KM: Okay, I think we should all be preserved in our early stages.
MB: [chuckles] My question is this, you know, you were victimized by Haeckel's fraud --
KM: Indeed.
MB: -- as was everybody else, but should -- do you think your publisher should notify school districts to have them tell teachers to point this mistake -- or this fraudulent activity out to students?
KM: Oh absolutely. And I will do better than that. First of all, the letters to my publisher changing these figures are already off, and secondly what I have done for the textbook -- and I appreciate the commercial for this, and I'd be glad to give the URL for those of you who are interested -- is Joe Levine and I, my co-author have set up an Internet web site in which we keep scientific updates to our textbook. And this is something which will go up in the web site in a matter of days as a scientific update. I think it's very significant and I appreciate your support on this.
MB: That's great. I just have one more question if I can squeeze it in --
MK: Okay, maybe we'll get back to you. Mr. Berlinski? Professor Johnson?
PJ: In my discussion with Eugenie we talked about the mechanism as the all-important thing, and the creative power of the mutation selection mechanism as to produce all this genetic information.
KM: Indeed.
PJ: What is the most powerful demonstration in your opinion that the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection has this great creative power?
KM: Well, I would give you -- you asked me for the most powerful one, and I will give you two. The first one that I will give you are the repeated observations of random mutation and natural selection as you like to call them in your own terms, producing new species. And I can give you several examples of new species that have emerged within human observation. The best example that I can give you is the butterfly, the genus of butterfly known as Hedylepta. Hedylepta is a genus of butterfly that feeds on various plants, it's endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, which means it's only found there. And there turn out to be two species of Hedylepta with mouthparts that only allow them -- only allow them to feed on bananas. Now why is that significant? It is significant because bananas are not native to the Hawaiian Islands. They were introduced about 1000 years ago by the Polynesians, we know this from the written records of the Hawaiian kingdom. And what that means is, that by mutation and natural selection, these two species have emerged on the Hawaiian Islands within the last 1000 years. And I think that's a very good case in point.
And I'll give you another one if you would indulge me -- but I figured, you only asked for one. Want another?
PJ: Sure, go ahead. [audience chuckles]
KM: Okay, here's another. In the November 7th or November 14th issue of Science magazine, a number of investigators wanted to test the Darwinian hypothesis that you folks say is never tested. And the way in which they did this was to take the receptor protein for the human-growth hormone, it's a receptor to which the human-growth hormone fits in precisely. And they did it a terrible genetic disservice. They mutated -- they cut out an essential amino acid, right in the middle of the receptor called Tryptophan. With that gone, just like that mousetrap, it wouldn't have been expected to work. They then allowed a natural selection process to take place to see whether the cells under their own observation could mutate the receptor gene sufficiently to bind the receptor. And after seven generations, lo and behold, there it was. And it illustrates beautifully the ability of natural selection to respond to mutations and proteins to co-evolve.
MK: Mr. Behe?
MB: I'd like to ask a different question -- I do not find that result impressive, but we can talk about that later --
KM: When you say you don't find it impressive, that's what Richard Dawkins calls, "the argument from personal incredulity" -- which is my evidence --
PJ: But you realize -- No -- [audience chuckles]
KM: -- my evidence against evolution is that I don't believe it.
PJ: Well, it's because -- it's because as far as what it has to do. It has to create this immense amount of genetic information, much more complex than any --
KM: Indeed, sir -- Philip, you're right --
PJ: -- and without recording it in the fossil record. That's why it's not impressive.
KM: -- you know what Phil, I just gave you two examples, and that's still not enough.
MB: May I ask another question related to Haeckel's embryos?
KM: Oh absolutely.
MB: You not only showed these embryos in your book, but like other people, you said that things should be that way. You said in your book, uh -- "mutations that affect early stage of development are likely to be lethal or deadly." And that "mutations that cause less drastic changes would occur at later stages." Again, you're not alone in this. Bruce Alberts, who wrote Molecular Biology of the Cell, says much the same thing. Now we know that is not the case, and that early embryos can in fact change. Because you and Bruce Alberts, the president of the National Academy of Sciences --
MK: Is there a question?
MB: Yes, here it is. [chuckles] Because you two did not -- because you thought Darwinism would produce this result which is now shown to be fraudulent, is it safe to say that no scientist in the world understands how Darwinism could affect embryology?
KM: Oh absolutely not. May I answer even though we are out of time?
MK: Very briefly.
KM: Okay very brief answer is, you read a quote and you pretended it meant something else. The quote that you read was mutations in the early stage are "less likely" to survive, not impossible, and then you pretended to say that it meant that it couldn't survive. The fact that something is less likely --
MB: You pointed to the figure --
KM: -- the fact that something is less likely, I'm answering -- the fact that something is less likely does not rule it out. I agree with that, Alberts would agree with that, and I think everyone in the audience would agree --
MK: Thank you. Thank you Professor Miller. [audience applause]
KM: Thank you.
|
So Sal thinks Wells and Luskin are an improvement over Johnson and Behe? Gotta laugh at that.
Heck, put the whole DI fellowship on a debate stage against Ken alone, and they will lose, and lose badly. It really, really hurts a debate side that has the facts against it when they are up against someone who has the sort of encyclopedic acquaintance with the facts that Ken does. I've been on stage with Ken before; he is simply in a far higher league than any of the DI crew.
--------------
"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
|
I miss the 1970s.
