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  Topic: ICSID moderation policies< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
ExYECer



Posts: 36
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 13 2003,23:11   

Now that the moderator at ISCID has removed my posting privileges at ISCID for no apparant reason, other than asking him not to attack me in public, I will be posting my response to Nelson on this forum. I hope that this forum will be less hostile to the scientific inquiry.

  
ExYECer



Posts: 36
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 13 2003,23:18   

Was it because I cross reference antievolution.org?

From ISCID

Moderator,

You seem to be confusing me pointing out that Mike's approach is nothing different from what science would do namely methodological naturalism to show that for instance cytosine deamination leads to preferentially hydrophobic coding codons. I am not 'defending. methodological naturalism, since it quite obviously needs no defending.

If Mike wants to argue that his argument of 'front loading' gives some utility then I agree but in the end both the presumption of a utility preloading or a natural preloading leads to the same finding about cytosine deamination.

But Mike went beyond the claim of utility to state that he set out to show why an engineer would use cytosine. His argument however seems to amount to painting the bullseye around the arrow.

I am more than happy to accept that there was a different starting point between Mike and scientific researchers into cytosine deamination but I am merely pointing out that the starting point does not seem to make much difference to the final conclusion.

His framework is indeed completely naturalistic for t>t_0 with one minor variation. At a certain instance t=t_0 there is an initial condition which Mike considers to be designed and science considers to be due to regularity/chance. But the impact of this assumption on the scientific method to determine the impact of the initial conditions uses purely methodological naturalistic approaches. In fact Mike himself has stated that at t>t_0 all the processes are natural.

I am sorry to hear that you believe that these are pre-canned arguments since I have not really dealt with front loading in this detail before other than pointing out Murray's compelling arguments. One may not like the direction the conclusions of this thread seem to have taken but is that not the intention of this forum?

Btw I find your statements to be hovering on argument ad hominem, moderator or not. And since you raised them in public rather than in private I feel compelled to defend myself. Unless you want to open up a discussion which seems to be contrary to the spirit of this forum I suggest that you contact me in the future via private messaging.

[Moderator Note: Archiving what one says is fine, but a line needs to be drawn between links that are useful and links that serve mainly to promote another site. The most important rule one learns in any Moderating 101 class is that you need to cut site-promoting at the knees.]

Emphasis mine.

It seems so, all my references to antievolution.org as an archive have been removed.

If ISCID cannot handle an honest scientific discussion then fine with me. Let's archive and document the behavior of this 'peer reviewed' resource in which the term reviewing seems to forget that actual comments made by peers should be taken into account before publishing ones 'papers'. Could this be related to the recent funding drives by ISCID? I wonder if references to free discussion websites are now to be frowned upon? Especially if such websites are of higher standard in many ways?

Or is it just a false premise to block my access to ISCID since the moderator has not deemed it necessary to remove the similar links in postings made by others. Oh the smell of double standards...

Edited by ExYECer on Jan. 13 2003,23:26

  
ExYECer



Posts: 36
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 14 2003,22:53   

I got an email from the moderator who claimed the following:

Quote

Frances wrongly smeared Nelson Alonso's face in the mud of Creationism by accusing him of referencing a creationist site known as Answers in Genesis.  Nelson was merely referencing Michael Denton.


It may be helpful to check out what I really said in what context though...

Actually Nelson was referencing an incorrect link for his claim and a search on the web showed that this was indeed the case. If Nelson uses a secondary source then he should quote "Land 1998 as quoted in Denton 1994" and not pretend that he has read the primary source.

Additionally it is interesting that I 'smeared Nelson Alonso's face in the mud of Creationism', surely that seems to be an interesting umbrella to hide under...



The moderator then continues to claim that

Quote

second
"mistake" that Frances made was to start promoting a particular website by providing an "Archived" link to a discussion board at which he was keeping an additional record of his posts.


Note the double quotes around "mistake". I find it fascinating how the moderator seems to be unable to do his job in an objective fashion.

It's fascinating to see how the moderators on ISCID seem to be focusing so much on dissenting posters.

In another message the moderator wrote

Quote

We won't deny it, we pay special attention to your postings (as well as about 5 or 6 others).  And for the most part, we let you get by with most of the things you say and even appreciate much of what you have to contribute.


Perhaps the moderator(s) may learn something from the balanced postings :-)

Edited by ExYECer on Jan. 15 2003,00:28

  
RBH



Posts: 49
Joined: Sep. 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 14 2003,23:09   

Francis's email from the ISCID Mod:
Quote
second
"mistake" that Frances made was to start promoting a particular website by providing an "Archived" link to a discussion board at which he was keeping an additional record of his posts.
Uh oh!  I'm in trouble.  I just linked to a whole thread here in a post on ISCID.  :)

RBH

--------------
"There are only two ways we know of to make extremely complicated things, one is by engineering, and the other is evolution. And of the two, evolution will make the more complex." - Danny Hillis.

  
Dr.GH



Posts: 2333
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 15 2003,01:25   

It has long been clear to me that the ID "argument" is unsupportable in an environment of open inquiry.  They must either hide behind "moderation," or abandon any pretence of being scientific and go for purely political.  Baptist YECs are more honest.

That said, it ought to be naively obvious that genetic novelty may be maladaptive under one set of environmental and adaptive under another.  Thus, under conditions of a dynamic environment, the contribution of a genetic novelty to an organism’s fitness will occasionally shift from neutral or even mildly negative to positive or even strongly positive.

I have yet to see any way that the “front loading” argument can be distinguished from the instance of an environmental change resulting in improved fitness for some organism.  The millions of extinction events also demonstrate the reverse condition.  If there was ever any question in my mind as to the possible validity of “front loading” it would perish on the rocks of extinction.

The last time I engaged Nelson Alonso in a discussion (almost a year ago on ARN), I found that he was plagiarizing text from a 7th Day Adventist site.  What locked the case was that the SDA text had miss referenced an original article in Nature, missing identifiying the author's name and making a page number error dutifully copied by Nelson.  Nor did the original Nature article even support the SDA/Alonso argument.  I would not have bothered to run a search engin check if I had not first made an effort to locate the original 1950s Nature article as referenced by the SDA/Alonso argument.  As SDAs are the source of our 20th C YEC affliction, I would deduce from Nelson's parroting of their text as indicative of a YEC perspective.

--------------
"Science is the horse that pulls the cart of philosophy."

L. Susskind, 2004 "SMOLIN VS. SUSSKIND: THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE"

   
charlie d



Posts: 56
Joined: Oct. 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 15 2003,10:40   

Yup.  That seems to be Nelson's modus operandi.  Yesterday on ARN he cut-and-pasted a non-obvious (it wasn't in quotes) but literal quote of Behe: a list of purported IC systems.  One of them was telomere synthesis, for which in fact quite a bit is known evolutionarily (some info even pre-dating DBB, IIRC).  When I asked Nelson for clarifications about telomerase ICness, he huffed he was too busy with other ongoing discussions to respond (turns out, that was his last post for the day).  LOL!

[My bet is, he's still trying to find out what a telomere actually is.] ;)

Edited by charlie d on Jan. 15 2003,10:41

  
pressmydigitator



Posts: 2
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 13 2006,04:37   

I can't believe the abuse this old guy Davison keeps dumping on you fellows over here. Don't you realize that by ignoring him you are giving him all kinds of credibilty? You have to remember he is a published scientist not some fly by night loony tune like so many in cyberspace are. I understand he personally invited all the big guns to present their evolutionary views at his blog and nobody showed. That is some serious stuff and he has been milking it to death whether you like it or not.

Anyway I have been corresponding with him and I am convinced he is on the right track with this PEH business. I realize he is a little eccentric but that doesn't mean he's crazy. I don't think he is half as crazy as Richard Dawkins, but then who is?

One thing I really like about him. He isn't afraid to use his real name. That anonymity crap should never have been allowed in the first place. How did that ever get established anyway?

I am only trying to help some. I think the Bible Bangers and the strict materialist atheists are both full of it myself. Davison has rejected both camps and I agree with at least that much.

  
Ichthyic



Posts: 3325
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 31 2006,17:34   

John, you should log in with your real name so you could argue with yourself.

I'm sure that would clear up the issue for everyone.

--------------
"And the sea will grant each man new hope..."

-CC

  
Wesley R. Elsberry



Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: June 01 2006,14:27   

It reads more like pre-breakup Springer.

--------------
"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

    
Ichthyic



Posts: 3325
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: June 01 2006,20:47   

yeah, yeah, i know i dredged up an oldie, literally, but somehow i felt it needed some sort of punctuation.

--------------
"And the sea will grant each man new hope..."

-CC

  
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