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  Topic: AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis, Creation/Evolution Debate< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,06:25   

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,08:59)
I searched TalkOrigins for a refutation of Meyer's "God Hypothesis"

Meyer doesn't warrant special attention in a search term because his arguments are stolen from old and moldy arguments that were refuted before he made them.

Try searching for "Big Bang Argument for the Existence of God," "Teleology," "Prime Mover."

You think the Big Bang theory provides a scientific description of creatio ex nihilo, Creation out of nothing but that's not quite true -- define "nothing."

Spacetime, the fabric of the universe isn't really nothing. Look up the term "Casimir effect."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
http://focus.aps.org/story/v2/st28

There is no such thing as "nothing."

The metaphysical question is really "what is the primordial stuff of the universe?" What had to exist for that big bang to happen.

You propose "an intelligent being" but there is no evidence that an intelligent being could do such a  thing (you have to make up your major claim out of whole cloth -- "God could speak things into existance") And besides, an intelligent being that can speak things into existance isn't nothing.

Nothing is explained by proposing an unknown entity with unknown powers. You're explaining the known in terms  of the unknown.

What killed those old arguments was the death of dualism. Back in history people used to think that intelligence itself was a primordial thing, souls existing forever and all.

Religions, at least those of Judeo-Christian family, must start with a core metaphysical assumption about mind (of an entity with will, planning, intention, foresight and understanding) being the primordial stuff and cause of the universe. This is implied in Judeo-Christian creation myths when God makes a universe out of nothing, a void: Mind was first — a mind and soul as primordial stuff.

Creation myths are teleological and naturalism undermines teleology by finding non-mind, (rules of material interaction without any mind stuff like choice, will or intention coming into play), as an explanation. But when naturalism begins to explain the only organ of teleological action we know, the brain, in naturalistic terms then teleological explanations are undermined more completely.

The core assumptions of our religions were made in ignorance of such science and now neuroscience has begun to undermine this core teleological and metaphysical assumption that Christianity is rooted in.

  
Faid



Posts: 1143
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,06:25   

It's only you who sees the paradox here, Dave. If, in your mind, "not made by pure chance" = "designed by god" that is only your inability to understand that evolution is NOT a purely random process- far from it. THAT is what Dawkins says, and you should KNOW that before you served his butchered words to us as admittance of design. And you should know that this would NOT "convince" us, even in the slightest.

As for your other arguments: The anthropic principle is examined thoroughly in the very talkorigins page you quoted; again, did you read past the quote? Because if you did, you'd see that the author does not use multiple universes as the sole support for his arguments.
As for your "biological machines" argument, this has been demonstrated repeatedly to be based on loaded terms: Labelling living things "machines" to argue that they are designed, presupposes that they are designed.
It's a "dog=table" argument, basically, interwined with speculations of a cause: With the same logic, we should argue that those round volcanic rocks were the marbles of giants, because they look like big stone marbles. Now, the reasons those rocks are round are pretty much the same (as far as the fundamental laws of physics are concerned) with the reasons marbles are made round- but that is no proof that they are, in fact, marbles -as I'm sure you agree.

--------------
A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:

"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"

"...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

  
afdave



Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,06:32   

Quote
We just don't care about all of the blather that you gather up to defend your prejudices, trying to pass them off as science.
Would you care to show me specifically WHY it's blather, since you obviously are smarter than me?  Or will you keep filling my thread with psycho-analysis?

--------------
A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

  
afdave



Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,06:37   

AF Dave said ...
Quote
Would you care to show me specifically WHY it's blather, since you obviously are smarter than me?  Or will you keep filling my thread with psycho-analysis?


One more thing, Glen.  Talk really slow and refute my points one by one in simple layman's terms so that my "religion darkened brain" can understand.

Thanks!

--------------
A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,06:54   

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,06:19)
I understand that our BODIES are very much like other animals ... VERY, VERY much like chimps as we are seeing on the other thread (I've got a lot more for that thread by the way), but I will be showing you that there are many fundamental differences between a chimp and a human--differences so great that when you see them, you realize it is not sensible to call a human an animal any more.  He should be called a human.

Actually, Dave, the differences between humans and chimps, compared to e.g. the differences between humans and bacteria, are practically invisible. Humans are basically taller, balder, weaker, and smarter chimps. I fail to understand why this presents a problem for you.

If you want to say there are spiritual differences between a human and chimp that amount to some sort of unbridgeable gulf, that's fine, but you're not talking about science anymore (to the extent you ever were).

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,06:58   

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,06:23)
Quote
Dave, are you going to read up on the Vitamin C thing or not? If so, check some other sources too, not just AiG BS.
Sure.  What is it exactly that I am looking for?

Vitamin C is a useful therapy in the treatment of Creationism, Dave. Strange but true.

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
Glen Davidson



Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,07:03   

Quote
 
True.  But this is my point exactly.  Science attempts to explain things in terms of current understanding.  Then as new understanding comes, science modifies its descriptions.


Metaphors do not fundamentally change the practice of science.  Of course the descriptions change, but they are also understood as relatively fluid descriptions, not as statements about reality.  Unfortunately you do not know this, either, about science, or you'd know that "biological machines" is a convenient tag used for what used not to be called "machines".  IDists have made a great deal out of the metaphor of "machine" to indicate biological "objects", but they fundamentally misunderstand what science has identific, vs. the words it uses to understand what has been identified.  

Naturally, you are too ignorant and unintelligent to understand this, Dave, but just because you don't understand anything doesn't mean that it isn't true.

Quote
This is what I do.  I see bio machines.  I know how non-bio machines come into existence, so I have nothing better from my experience to explain the bio-machines than "Bio-Machine Design."


"Machine" is just a name.  Learn some philosophy, if you ever learn any science.  

And of course you have nothing better to "explain it", because you know nothing about biology.  Before "biological machines" were even called that, biologists already had a better explanation.  Your ignorance is no excuse to say Goddidit.

Quote
I would be happy to adopt "Evo Did It" if I had ever seen an instance of this happening, but so far I have not.


We have lizards losing their legs right now, Dave.  The only reason you haven't seen evolution happening is that you haven't looked, and apparently are unwilling to use the vast evidence for past evolution to question your ignorance.

Quote
When I ask for examples of, for instance, a fruit-fly "evolving" into a house fly type insect, I am told that this type of change would take many millions of years, so "we cannot possibly observe the process."


Yet you believe the Bible as a credible source for history throughout, when you have never seen any of the miracles mentioned.  

You do not have the same standard for evolution that you have for other historical and supposedly historical occurrences, but make an exception here.  You aren't even intellectually honest, among your other tremendous intellectual faults.


Quote
This would leave me in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain a process that I can only wildly speculate about, but have never even seen, even by analogy.


You haven't, but you could, using evolutionary programs.  You only close your eyes to the evidence.

By the way, did languages evolve?  No one has seen the evolution of English out of Indo-European, or its equivalent, but we have clear evidence that it did.  Cretinists and IDiots don't generally fault that evidence, only the evidence that they find inconvenient.

Many creationists, and most IDists, accept that Darwin's finches evolved, substantially through natural selection.  Yet we have never "observed" that sort of speciation (other than what is happening at present, but its a tiny sliver of the whole).  So of course there is no real problem with past evidence in their philosophy, only with past evidence which points to considerable evolutionary changes.

Crack a book for once, Dave, and quit relying upon what you don't know to "analyze evolution".

Quote
So to me, my ANALOGY, while it may be weak, appears to be far stronger than your COMPLETE LACK OF AN ANALOGY.


Of course we have a number of analogies, you just ignore them when they are presented.  We have evolved stories, evolved languages, computer simulations, and observed smaller scale evolutions that we have observed.  

We use phylogenetic evidence to identify strains of HIV, even though we don't "directly observe" HIV evolution.  Sometimes this phylogenetic evidence is used in court in relation to deliberate AIDS infection.  There is actually little "categorical" difference in the sorts of information being used to track HIV evolution and the use of information to track primate evolution.  Crack a book, open your mind, and you might learn this, too.

Quote
In other words ... at least I have SOMETHING ... I have my analogy.  You have NOTHING that I can see.


No, you have precisely nothing, because there has never been an observed designer who has designed to produce the "nested hierarchies" that we see in life.  We have several analogous derivative evolutions to compare and contrast with biological evolution, though we have to recognize that language and narrative evolution occur significantly differently than does RM + NS (which doesn't change the fact that similar (but not identical) patterns are seen).  

What is more, we back up our mechanism with evidence.  You only argue words like "machine", without even understanding how paltry your knowledge of the relationship of science to words is.

Quote
Oh, yes ... I know ... moths changing color and finch beaks, etc.  But this is well understood already WITHIN the Creationist model and has NOTHING AT ALL to say about "Feet to Flippers" type Evolution.


Tell me why creationists didn't come up with "microevolution".  Also, tell us how it is that microevolution cannot add up to macroevolution (I know that some differences can be defined as "macroevolutionary", but even using this definition would not prevent microevolutionary changes alone from adding up to "macroevolution").  Bring up some evidence that "microevolution" is separate from "macroevolution" to show for once that you have even a slight regard for evidence.

Quote
Oh and I know .. the fossil record.  But again, we have a handful of equivocal examples of "transitional forms."


They aren't equivocal, and your lies do not make them so.  See, this is the actual evidence you've been given, the sort of thing that you lack in all of your posts.  It is more than a handful of intermediates that we have as well, though I recognize that you wouldn't know that or any other intellectually sound fact.

--------------
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy

   
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,07:17   

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,08:59)
OK, back to my evidence ...

I have already given evidence for the existence of an Intelligent Entity of some sort.  The two lines of evidence given so far are (1) Cosmic Fine Tuning and (2) Biological Machines.  To me this says loud and clear ... "Someone purposely set the 'dials' in the 'universe control room'" and "Someone is a fantastically brilliant Engineer."  Obviously, that's ALL these two lines of evidence suggest.  They say nothing about the Bible or genetics or morality or any of the other myriad issues that I am interested in.  But to me they do speak very loudly to the two statements above.  Some here say that this is not evidence and I would have to ask specifically WHY is this not evidence?

Dave, you have not given evidence for a cosmic "Intelligent Entity" through the "cosmic fine tuning" and "biological machines argument." You're still unclear on the meaning of the term "evidence." At best, "cosmic fine tuning" and "biological machines" are conjectures, or arguments. They're certainly not "evidence," and both conjectures have been reviewed here and you've been shown why they're not persuasive.

I don't want to leave you with the impression that you've "established" anything by presenting "cosmic fine tuning" or "biological machines" "evidence."

If you'd shown some physical parameters that are indeed finely tuned (the cosmological constant, to pick an obvious example), that would be one thing, but you haven't done that, and even if you had, we've already shown you why that argument is unpersuasive.

Quote
Thank you Richard Dawkins.  Case closed.  It's been great debating all of you.


Dave, this same quote-mining was used over a century ago with Charles Darwin. Darwin made the same point (that biological organisms are awe-inspiring in their complexity), and then went on to explain exactly how that complexity could have come about through unguided processes. Dawkins is saying exactly the same thing here, and you're making the same mistake of misinterpreting where Dawkins is going with this.


Quote
Alberts notes that molecular machines strongly resemble machines designed by human engineers, although as an orthodox neo-Darwinist he denies any role for actual, as opposed to apparent, design in the origin of these systems.


Dave, this is argument by analogy. It's not evidence of anything. Behe made the statement at Dover and in "Darwin's Black Box" that life looks designed, therefore it was designed. I'm sure you can see how weak this argument really is.

Quote
Say what you want about Behe and his wisdom in court (and I probably agree), but in my opinion, Behe has done an excellent job of pointing out the complete absence of any gradualistic explanations for the origin of the systems and motors he discusses.


No he hasn't. Every single example Behe used (the flagellum, the clotting sequence, the complementary immune system) has been shown over and over again to be evolvable. This area of biological research is extremely fertile, Dave, and if you don't read the current research, you're always going to be way behind. "Darwin's Black Box" was written ten years ago.

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,07:19   

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,11:37)
Talk really slow and refute my points one by one in simple layman's terms so that my "religion darkened brain" can understand.

Compare Meyer's argument to this argument:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/bigbang.html

It is from 1992, by Quentin Smith, and it was written before Meyer wrote his argument and yet it refutes Meyer's claims.

How do you explain that?

  
edmund



Posts: 37
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,07:31   

From afdave:
Quote
in my opinion, Behe has done an excellent job of pointing out the complete absence of any gradualistic explanations for the origin of the systems and motors he discusses.


In his book "Darwin's Black Box", Behe claimed that there was a certain kind of biological system that was "irreducibly complex". He claimed that a gradual, stepwise path leading to an IC system could not exist. He emphasized the complexity of biological systems by describing six especially complicated systems in detail.

Since then, biologists have proposed gradual, stepwise pathways for all six of those systems. Remember that Behe's claim was not just that we don't know exactly how these systems evolved. Behe's claim was that no possible pathway existed for these IC systems.

That claim was dead wrong. IC systems can evolve. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

If you believe that there is a "complete absence of any gradualistic explanations" for these complex systems, somebody really hasn't been honest with you. I can definitely sympathize. As a Christian, I naively assumed that anti-evolutionists would be very honest with their audience. Once I started digging in to the claims of creationists and intelligent-design proponents, I was horrified by how many falsehoods that I encountered.

After about ten years of studying all sides of the debate over evolution, I've found that the scientists defending evolution are more honest than the Christians who are attacking it. Not just a little bit more honest-- a lot more honest. Even the agnostics and atheists defending evolution are behaving far more honestly than most of the Christians who lead the "creation science" and ID movements. It's scandalous.

  
Chris Hyland



Posts: 705
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,07:35   

Quote
I would be happy to adopt "Evo Did It" if I had ever seen an instance of this happening, but so far I have not.
Just so I understand, this is an important point. You will think that design is a better scientific explanation until you actually see some kind of large scale change take place naturally, with your own eyes?

  
Glen Davidson



Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,07:40   

Quote
Would you care to show me specifically WHY it's blather, since you obviously are smarter than me?


I already did.  You lacked the courtesy and knowledge to respond to what I had written, preferring to tell lies instead.

What is it about so many of the religious?  Why do lies about others come out so readily into their posts?  

Quote
Or will you keep filling my thread with psycho-analysis?


It's not "your thread", greedy businessman, rather it is a thread in which all may discuss.  And it's hardly psychoanalysis, though you wouldn't know that either.  It's more of an analysis based on social psychology, if more on the lines of Nietzsche than on Pareto, Weber, or Durkheim.

And since you have no evidence, or convincing arguments, there is little really to do except to point out the failings of you and many of your fellow believers.  I do so in part because "our side" tends to argue with you guys as if you might soon begin to understand things sensibly, when it is clear that you will not.  

While many are not really going to understand just why  it is that you "think" your herd thoughts and how thoroughly entrenched your very patterns of cognition actually are, at least one might drive home the fact that worldviews are not easily changed.  Particularly not in the self-satisfied bourgeoisie.

Quote
One more thing, Glen.  Talk really slow and refute my points one by one in simple layman's terms so that my "religion darkened brain" can understand.


Don't imply that I consider religious brains to necessarily be "darkened".  Norm Doering strikes at religion, I do not, except when religion has decided to make exceptions in accepted thought to accommodate their dogmas.  Not even then, if they don't spread their nonsense onto the web and attempt to force it into schools.

And if you understood what I have written, you would recognize that I know that I can hardly get through to you.  I have refuted any number of your points, and what I got in return were sneering lies from you.  

What is more, I do not believe in trying to dumb things down enough for those who refuse to study.  I might try to get through to someone who was curious and teachable, but not someone who really only wants to defend the nonsense that he got from pseudoscientific sites.

If you don't know that all of your points have either been refuted or explained to be without merit (but not "refutable" exactly), you're clearly not listening or unable to comprehend.  That is why I think it more profitable to discuss the why of your failings, rather than try again and again to get you to see what you not only have not learned to see, but rather have learned to avoid seeing.

Quite honestly, and without malice, I can only recommend that you do some serious study into biology, and into the history of evolutionary thought.  If you were to simply read, not react, and follow the thought processes of biological/evolutionary thinkers, you might begin to understand how the evidence is used scientifically to indicate that life was derived from other life.  

And if you still did not accept evolution, at least you would not be using such faulty lines of "reasoning" and denial of evidence to "make your points".  Then we might still disagree, but we could discuss things on an equal footing.  It will not do to demand that we see things your way, when we have learned how and why the kinds of thinking that we were taught early on are not adequate.

I do know how to see the evidence like you do, I merely have to think back to when I was 14 and earlier.  You need to learn, and it is not simple or easy, how scientists and/or philosophers think, if you want to have some traction on science forums.

--------------
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy

   
afdave



Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,07:42   

Quote
Since then, biologists have proposed gradual, stepwise pathways for all six of those systems.
Is there an online source you could point me to so that I can see this?

--------------
A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,07:50   

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,12:42)
Quote
Since then, biologists have proposed gradual, stepwise pathways for all six of those systems.
Is there an online source you could point me to so that I can see this?

Yes, try here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

The links should lead to refutations of most of Behe's claims.

Panda's did one on the Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/evolution_of_ic_1.html

  
improvius



Posts: 807
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,08:15   

[quote=afdave,May 05 2006,11:24][/quote]
Dave, try to stop lying.  You are trying to come across as being impartial when it is clear that you are not.  You cannot reconcile statements like this:
Quote
I would be happy to adopt "Evo Did It" if I had ever seen an instance of this happening, but so far I have not.

With statements like this:
Quote
There is really one really big thing I resent.  And that is the idea that humans are nothing more than highly evolved animals.

Your objections stem from an emotional reaction, not from rational thought.  There is NO WAY we can reasonably convince you because your objections are not based in reason to begin with.

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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late.
Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.

  
Glen Davidson



Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,08:56   

What Afdave fails to recognize in the area of origins is the importance of establishing proximate causes, of showing how one event causes another one.  

In this matter he thinks like the ancients did, by using sweeping analogies which led to anthropomorphic "hypotheses".  While few of the ancients made the mistake of thinking that animals and humans were designed machines (they don't act like machines, they aren't "designed" like machines, and they are produced in a wholly different way.  The evidence for derivation came later, of course), they did view "creation" as occurring via reproductive means, spirit transfers, and speech.

But what we need for any ID hypothesis is a designer who has been shown to design items similar to organisms.  We don't mind inferring design of simple and complex objects so long as they conform to human capabilities, because we have this known "proximate cause" for pots and spacecraft.  Undoubtedly we would also infer intelligent humanoid designers if we found early alien spacecraft, again because we know how some evolved "intelligences" act.  Yet we totally lack any credible designer who has made organisms like those we see.

Thus a designer is not a reasonable explanation.  As IDists have noted, we do indeed think that we could detect the results of "intelligent beings" in radio signals and in machines.  Yet virtually no one has seriously proposed that aliens made the animals (aliens are brought up to confuse the issue, but only for that reason).  This is because animals are very different from machines, even at a cursory glance.  And more so when we study organisms thoroughly.

What is more, we aren't even satisfied with "intelligence" as a "reason" for human-made machines and art, rather we typically appeal to psychology, evolution, and social causation to explain why and how art is made (as in all historical sciences, we can't fully explain Sumerian art, but we can explain important aspects of it).  Ideally we will at some point have good neurological explanations for artistic creation, which will rely on evolution for part of the complete explanation.

This brings up an important fact:  triumphant IDists would likely impede investigation into what intelligence is and why it is the way that we find it to be--even if only by suggesting that intelligence is some kind of "universal constant" or "law".  We don't even explain design, today, without resort to causal factors beyond the former black box of the brain.  IDists analogize wildly to God, but then they fail utterly to be able to identify factors, like evolution, that would constrain God's designs.  So while we are unwilling to stop with "design" as an explanation anywhere, IDists insist that this is the end of the matter, that God designs in a certain way because of his will, or some such thing.

Anyway, I became sidetracked in these issues, but the important point is that Afdave thinks of "Cause" in the pre-scientific analogical sense, while we insist on at least tentative causes throughout.  We are not going to know every cause, of course, but if we could not find causes of evolution in the genome/environment, we would have to abandon evolution as an explanation.

We know how many mutations are caused, and we know a good deal about natural selection.  We have dealt with the causes, we have connected them, and we have shown how evolution proceeds, at least in considerable part.  It would not do to just invoke "RM + NS" as some grand "Cause", rather science has worked out how it happens, if questions remain.  Science extends these conclusions to fossils and "genomic fossils", but only because both fossils and genomes fit the pattern expected from RM + NS, the patterns observed in HIV evolution.  Thus it is a very reasonable extrapolation.

Dave doesn't like macroevolution, claiming that it has not "been seen".  Since, however, macroevolution is predicted to be produced by largely known mechanisms, therefore to produce the sorts of fossils, nested hierarchies, and genomes that we see, it is fair to say that we have observed it, since we are surrounded by it and are a part of it.

What he wants is some sort of "evidence" for macroevolution beyond the proximate causes that we know.  But science wants proximal causes for evolution, including "macroevolution", and this is what it finds.  This is all that it can be expected to find, since it insists on using proximally linked causes in its evidence, as opposed to the philosophizing about the "Grand Cause".  We have found the mechanisms of evolution, and the patterns to be expected from "RM + NS" (plus other mechanisms of "selection" and bottlenecking).

The genetic material we found is what was needed for evolution, and what would seem unlikely for a perfect creation to have in it.  That is to say, we have found the proximate causes of "macroevolution" operating.  This was needful, but evolution passed this test.  

Dave wants something like God to explain "macroevolution", otoh, because he equates evolution with his origins myth.  No, we do not accept Causes that are not seen to be acting, we accept the mutations and selections of those mutations as the sort of mechanism that evolution demands and requires, both as a science of proximal causes, and as a theory peculiar to biology.

Could something be intervening in the course of evolution?  See, here is where it is appropriate to demand evidence for "macroevolution".  We don't know what might have intervened in the past, but we know that something could have.  Hence, evidence is required for past "macroevolution" if it is going to be properly accepted.  Since we've found such evidence in abundance, some through predictive (and other) paleontology, and much more in the genomes of organisms, we have high confidence that the proximal causes necessary for evolution that we have identified happening, also happened in the past (or at least any other mechanisms left essentially the same pattern of derivation).

We have our proximate causes, then.  The IDists/creationists have no cause at all, but only an analogy that on the face of it appears flawed, and which more tellingly cannot be backed up through evidence for active proximal causes.  Evolution is active today, while any number of IDists and creationists claim that the proximal causes of "type creation" are lost to the past.  We can and do demonstrate how changes occur, but the IDist cannot demonstrate how anything was "caused by the designer".

--------------
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy

   
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 05 2006,10:02   

Quote (normdoering @ May 05 2006,11:25)
Try searching for "Big Bang Argument for the Existence of God," "Teleology," "Prime Mover."

If this news turns out to be true, even the shaky foundation Meyer built his argument on is shot down:

'Cyclic universe' can explain cosmological constant
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn9114&print=true

  
afdave



Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,04:55   

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If you learned that a car company puts all their money in advertising and publicity, to show how cool their cars are, and NOTHING in research to make them better and safer -in fact, they don't have an R&D department at all- would you buy a car from them?
No, I would not buy the car.  And I do realize that ICR has a limited research department and I think AIG and DI probably have none at all ... doesn't matter because the fact is that THE DATA IS THE DATA, regardless of the source.  Creationists really don't care a hoot about the beliefs of the guy digging up the fossil or mapping the genome or what have you.  What we are interested in is the INTERPRETATION of the data.  And we do realize that you need qualified experts in many fields to be able to INTELLIGENTLY analyze the data.  At this point in my study of the whole origins debate, it is too early for me to be able to say with strong assurance that ICR and AIG and DI have well qualified experts in many fields.  I have assumed they did in past years without drilling into them in great detail.  Now that I have begun this very detailed investigation, I have found one major goof (or lie, not sure which yet) by Carl Wieland (the chimp chromosome thing).  If I find a lot of these types of wrong information, obviously I will begin to question the reliability of the whole organization, question their motives, etc.  This has not yet occurred, but I'm sure you will help me on this quest.  That is one reason I am here and not debating over at DI (as someone has suggested).

AF Dave said ...
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It's meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system.  I'm sure its quite meaningful at explaining HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WORKS.

Faid responded ...
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Um Dave, I dunno what AIG says, but the research presented in the trial was about the evolution of the immune system.

So let us look at the relevant testimony because this is very important that there be no misunderstanding ...
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Q. We'll get back to that. Now, these articles rebut your assertion that scientific literature has no answers on the origin of the vertebrate immune system?
A. No, they certainly do not. My answer, or my argument is that the literature has no detailed rigorous explanations for how complex biochemical systems could arise by a random mutation and natural selection and these articles do not address that.
Q. So these are not good enough?
A. They're wonderful articles. They're very interesting. They simply just don't address the question that I pose.
Q. And these are not the only articles on the evolution of vertebrate immune system?
A. There are many articles.
Q. Okay. So there's at least fifty more articles discussing the evolution of the immune system?
A. And midpoint I am, I certainly haven't had time to look through these fifty articles, but I still am unaware of any that address my point that the immune system could arise or that present in a detailed rigorous fashion a scenario for the evolution by random mutation and natural selection of the immune system.
Q. Is that your position today that these articles aren't good enough, you need to see a step-by-step description?
A. These articles are excellent articles I assume. However, they do not address the question that I am posing. So it's not that they aren't good enough. It's simply that they are addressed to a different subject.
Q. And I'm correct when I asked you, you would need to see a step-by-step description of how the immune system, vertebrate immune system developed?
A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions.
Q. And you haven't undertaken to try and figure out those?
A. I am not confident that the immune system arose through Darwinian processes, and so I do not think that such a study would be fruitful.
Q. Origin and Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System, by Pasquier. Evolution and Vertebrate Immunity, by Kelso. The Primordial Vrm System and the Evolution of Vertebrate Immunity, by Stewart. The Phylogenesis of Immune Functions, by Warr. The Evolutionary Mechanisms of Defense Reactions, by Vetvicka. Immunity and Evolution, Marchalonias. Immunology of Animals, by Vetvicka. You need some room here. Can you confirm these are books about the evolution of the immune system?
A. Most of them have evolution or related words in the title, so I can confirm that, but what I strongly doubt is that any of these address the question in a rigorous detailed fashion of how the immune system or irreducibly complex components of it could have arisen by random mutation and natural selection.
Q. And the fifty-eight articles, some yes, some no?
A. Well, the nice thing about science is that often times when you read the latest articles, or a sampling of the latest articles, they certainly include earlier results. So you get up to speed pretty quickly. You don't have to go back and read every article on a particular topic for the last fifty years or so.
Q. And you conclude from them that certain structures are irreducibly complex that could not have evolved through natural selection, and therefore are intelligently designed?
A. I conclude from them that we see very detailed molecular machinery in the cell, that it strongly looks like a purposeful arrangement of parts, that in fact a purposeful arrangement of parts is a hallmark of intelligent design. I surveyed the literature and I see no Darwinian explanations for such things. And when one applies one's own reasoning to see how such things would be addressed within a Darwinian framework it's very difficult to see how they would, and so one concludes that one explanation, Darwinian processes, doesn't seem to have a good answer, but that another explanation, intelligent design, does seem to fit better.

After reading through this, I think my statement above is valid, but could be stronger and more clear, so let me add to it.

The stack of 50+ books are meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system.  I'm sure they quite meaningful at explaining how the immune system works and I'm sure they are quite full of SINCERE ATTEMPTS to explain the origin of the immune system.

There ... is that better?  If you read the testimony above, this is what Behe is saying and I strongly agree with him.  Again, let's reiterate what Behe (and I) (and all Creationists) are looking for ...

A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions.

Notice also that Behe (and I) think that spending one's time to search for this is, to put it politely as Behe did, UNFRUITFUL.  I can think of many other, less polite adjectives to describe the wisdom of attempting such a search, but I'm trying to practice what I preach and be nice, so I will refrain, but you get the idea.

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PS. the question mark in "ID?Creos" was supposed to be a slash, but I like it better that way. "ID? Nah, Creos".
Cute.  And I happen to agree with you on this point.  And I do have my own version:  Evos? Nah, Flat-earthers. :-) Just kidding here.  I know everyone here is very intelligent even though I disagree with some of your interpretations.

Renier--  Thanks for the analysis of the Vitamin C issue.  You are correct that this requires careful analysis.  I will be taking some time to do just that starting with what you have written.
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The reason, Dave is that most people are stupid.  Yes, that's right.  Stupid.
I would agree that the advent of government involvement in education in Western society has, in fact been a colossal failure.    I might take this opportunity to point out, though, that even with private schools, self study, excellent colleges and the like, it appears that much learning does not always yield smarts, unfortunately.  Or maybe the better term would be wisdom instead of smarts. There have been many people down through history who had much learning, but did incredibly unwise things or made incredibly unwise statements--  Galileo's opponents being a case in point. I believe--but have not proven yet to my satisfaction (it's still a hypothesis)--that this exact situation exists today with Neo-Darwinists.  They have much learning and know many facts and possess much knowledge, but in my opinion are making incredibly unwise statements when they assert that "flippers came from feet" and "we see life because of abiogenesis millions of years ago", etc.  This by itself is very unwise, but then to go further and not only assert things which don't make sense to a lot of people, but also vilify others who try to propose alternatives that they honestly feel DO make sense, is INCREDIBLY UNWISE to me. In my opinion, there are hordes of Neo-Darwinists sitting on a very thin branch, with the "saw" of scientific evidence slowly cutting through it, the ID/Creo people are offering an escape ladder, and the ND's are spitting on them.  


RICHARD DAWKINS MISIDENTIFIES "DUCKS"

I will repeat my quote of Richard Dawkins because (a) I am NOT "quote mining" (maybe I should just quote the whole chapter?) and (b) it is worth repeating because it drives home my point so well.  Dawkins spends an entire chapter on bat echolation in The Blind Watchmaker and then says
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I hope the reader is as awestruck as I am, and as William Paley would have been, by these bat stories.  My aim has been in one respect identical to Paley's aim.  I do not want the reader to underestimate the prodigious works of nature and the problems we face explaining them. (p. 37)

then he says
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We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance. (p. 43)

This is HUGE and I do not want my readers to miss this. Here is one of "world's most brilliant minds) (according to some vote) spending AN ENTIRE CHAPTER  ON A SINGLE WONDER OF NATURE -- Bat Echolocation and admitting that he is "awestruck" and does not underestimate the "prodigious work of nature" and "the problems we face explaining them."  After standing in awe of this stuff, he then spends the next 9 chapters telling us why this is not ACTUAL design, but APPARENT DESIGN ... i.e. "It LOOKS like a duck, WALKS like a duck, QUACKS like a duck, but let me spend the next NINE CHAPTERS trying to convince you that it's NOT a duck **cough**   **retch**   **die**

This is HUGE, folks, and we are just getting started.  I will make this prediciton ... there will come a day soon when the name of Darwin and all his disciples, like Richard Dawkins will be relegated to the ashheap of scientists whose theories were wrong and whose name people remember, not for the good they did, but for the prodigious blunder they made.

Glen Davidson ...
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We're herd animals, and we are intelligent herd animals for the most part.
Afdave **cough** (I meant to say the Neo-Darwinist) illustrates this fact over and over again.


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Look at Afdave's argument.  Clearly it is fallacious by any standard, but it is also carefully drawn (though it was hardly invented by Afdave) to avoid the fact that the only explanation for current and fossil forms of life that has managed to cross borders, religions, ethnic groups, politics, and intellectual inheritances, is evolutionary theory.  Russian atheists, American Catholics and mainline Protestants, scientists, intellectuals, Japanese Shintoists (initially, anyhow, though I don't know if Shinto holds up well alongside modern science), Muslim thinkers, Hindus, Jainists, and traditional religionists like native Americans, have all been able to comprehend and accept the evidence for evolution.
Herd thought?[YES]
You guessed it, Glen.  My thought exactly. (Attention Quote Mine Police:  Glen really said "No" -- I'm putting words in his mouth)
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Evolutionary theory is extraordinarily successful by the standards of any startup of a new religion.
Yes.  And so was Islam.  And your point is?  Possibly that this means AF Dave should accept it as true?  I see.
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The only universally-acceptable origins-of-life idea is evolutionary theory
never mind the small detail that no one has the slightest idea how it arose.  Francis Crick was so perplexed that he proposed "Panspermia".  

Chris Hyland ...
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Biological systems only trivially appear to be designed.
Trivial?  How does this mesh with the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote an ENTIRE BOOK trying to tell people that this stuff IS NOT designed.  Answer: A LOT of people think this stuff at least APPEARS designed.  To me, this is in no way trivial.

Glen Davidson ...
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Well, you're too stupid and ignorant even to respond to my authoritative analysis, moron ... If you ever can make an intelligent remark, please do so, cretin ... There is virtually no chance that you will ever be anything except a stupid and ignorant little ape, Dave.  The biggest reason of all is that you only sneer at expertise of all kinds, while clinging to your tiny collection of knowledge as if it were Eternal Truth, as do all bigots.
Wow Glen, if words could kill! Have you found this debating technique to be effective for you?
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However, real scientists do not care a fig about Dawkins' incorrect notions about life "appearing designed", for on the face of it, life does not appear designed.  I will grant that it may appear "miraculous" or "spiritual", depending on definitions and contexts, but it does not appear designed.
Are you telling me that Richard Dawkins is not a real scientist?
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The most truly embarrassing thing is that religious apologists like Afdave think that life looks designed like machines.
Why don't you call Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences and tell him he is an embarrasment to you.  Here is his quote again ...
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We have always underestimated cells . . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein [ba]machines?[/b] Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts (Alberts, Bruce. 1998. The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the NextGeneration of Molecular Biologists. Cell 92 (8 February): 291-94).

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Do you want medical testing to be done on our relatives, the apes, or would you prefer that it be done on birds?  And can you think through the implications of why medical testing is done on monkeys and apes just prior to humans, or are you going to just drivel on in your ignorance and prejudice?
If you read what I wrote, you will see that I acknowledge that human BODIES are very similar to the apes.  I even acknowledge that Chromosome 2 in humans does in fact appear to be fused from 2 chromosomes in chimps.  But to me it is a different matter  then to say definitively that they did in fact fuse.  Also, let me reiterate what I have said before that my hypothesis regarding humans and apes is that humans have something additional, something invisible, that is very different from the apes, and that this difference is quite crucial. I will be presenting evidence for this soon.

Norm Doering ...
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Meyer doesn't warrant special attention in a search term because his arguments are stolen from old and moldy arguments that were refuted before he made them. Try searching for "Big Bang Argument for the Existence of God," "Teleology," "Prime Mover."
Or maybe the reason is because no one HAS BEEN ABLE to refute him?  I searched the archive below and found nothing that refutes Meyer's "Cosmic Fine Tuning" argument.  In fact, the article from Talk Origins that I posted does not in any way attempt to refute it.  Don't you think this would be the FIRST thing they do if it could be refuted?

Talk Origins Index to Creationist Claims
CE400: Cosmology
(see also CI300: Anthropic principle)
CE401. There are too few supernova remnants for an old universe.
CE410. Physical constants are only assumed constant.
CE411. The speed of light has changed.
CE411.1. Physicists found that the speed of light was once faster.
CE412. Gravitational time dilation made distant clocks run faster.
(see also CF210: Radiometric dating assumes constant rates.)
CE420. The big bang theory is wrong.
CE421. The cosmos has an axis, contrary to big bang models.
CE425. Red shift comes from light aging, not expansion of the universe.
CE440. Where did space, time, energy, and laws of physics come from?
CE441. Explosions such as the big bang do not produce order or information.

You are going to have to better than send me off on a Google hunt if you want me to believe that "Cosmic Fine Tuning" has been refuted.  Try refuting me point by point with linked support.
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Spacetime, the fabric of the universe isn't really nothing. Look up the term "Casimir effect."
I agree.  The term is used by Creationists out of convenience and the need to use SOME word.  Maybe we should say "apparent nothing."
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Nothing is explained by proposing an unknown entity with unknown powers. You're explaining the known in terms  of the unknown.
Yes, actually it is ... quite well.  Remember my example of the native who has never seen an airplane  before?  He proposes an unknown (the Cessna factory) to explain the new phenomenon (the airplane) in terms THAT HE ALREADY KNOWS (canoes), hence his fairly accurate statement considering his limited observation and experience, "A brilliant sky-canoe maker must have built this!"  Would you like more examples?
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Religions, at least those of Judeo-Christian family, must start with a core metaphysical assumption about mind (of an entity with will, planning, intention, foresight and understanding) being the primordial stuff and cause of the universe.
My discussion has nothing to do with religion and I do not consider myself to be religious.  I am trying to explain the phenomena in the universe by the most sensible explanations.  Religion to me is man made stuffy ritual ... robes, candles, homina-hominas and the like.  Would it surprise you to know that I don't think God is religious?  Or Jesus either?  Well ... that's my opinion.
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Creation myths are teleological and naturalism undermines teleology by finding non-mind, (rules of material interaction without any mind stuff like choice, will or intention coming into play), as an explanation.
There are in fact many creation myths.  But my opinion is that there is only one true, earliest, eyewitness account from which all the myths were then derived with various levels of deletions, modifications and embellishments.  

Secondly, naturalism only undermines teleology if it explains the evidence BETTER.  It is my goal of this exercise to show you that Teleology is in fact the better, more sensible explanation.

Faid said ...
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The anthropic principle is examined thoroughly in the very talkorigins page you quoted
Really?  Where?  Could you cut and paste the section?  I looked and did not find it.  Also, why would not the author have refuted the section I quoted if he thought he could have?
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As for your "biological machines" argument, this has been demonstrated repeatedly to be based on loaded terms: Labelling living things "machines" to argue that they are designed, presupposes that they are designed.
I propose that the labeling is complained about only by those who have no other way to complain that their view might be questioned, i.e. they don't have anything sensible to counter with, so they have to say crazy things like "your terms are loaded."  As for my calling them machines, talk to Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences.  He is more of an authority than I.  Also, let me correct you ... I do not PRE-suppose design.  I PROPOSE design, then test the validity to see if it is the best among competing hypotheses.  There is a BIG difference.
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With the same logic, we should argue that those round volcanic rocks were the marbles of giants, because they look like big stone marbles. Now, the reasons those rocks are round are pretty much the same (as far as the fundamental laws of physics are concerned) with the reasons marbles are made round- but that is no proof that they are, in fact, marbles -as I'm sure you agree.
I do agree.  But have ever studied the differences between marble/round rocks and biological machines?  I don't think you need to study this b/c this is obvious.  This is not a valid refutation of my argument.

Eric Murphy ...
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Actually, Dave, the differences between humans and chimps, compared to e.g. the differences between humans and bacteria, are practically invisible. Humans are basically taller, balder, weaker, and smarter chimps. I fail to understand why this presents a problem for you.If you want to say there are spiritual differences between a human and chimp that amount to some sort of unbridgeable gulf, that's fine, but you're not talking about science anymore (to the extent you ever were).
The proper definition of science should include trying to explain the phenomena in the universe, where ever that may lead.  If it leads us to invisible entities, why is that a problem?  Are not quarks invisible and rather abstract and hard to define?  Ditto for multiple universes, the Casimir Effect and a host of other things?

Norm quoted someone who said ...
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Since then, biologists have proposed gradual, stepwise pathways for all six of those systems. (Behe's supposedly irreducibly complex systems)
Yes. After Behe's book they tried.  But even if there were a few before, they were unconvincing attempts.  See discussion above RE: Dover testimony.  Here's an example of a failed (in my opinion) attempt.  You see if YOU think the attempt was successful.
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One plausible path for the evolution of flagella goes through the following basic stages (keep in mind that this is a summary, and that each major co-option event would be followed by long periods of gradual optimization of function):

a. A passive, nonspecific pore evolves into a more specific passive pore by addition of gating protein(s). [How?  In detail please.  By magic?  By what selective pressure?  What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?] Passive transport converts to active transport by addition of an ATPase [Ditto above questions]that couples ATP hydrolysis to improved export capability. This complex forms a primitive type-III export system.

b. The type-III export system is converted to a type-III secretion system (T3SS) by addition of outer membrane pore proteins (secretin and secretin chaperone) from the type-II secretion system. These eventually form the P- and L-rings, respectively, of modern flagella. The modern type-III secretory system forms a structure strikingly similar to the rod and ring structure of the flagellum (Hueck 1998; Blocker et al. 2003).

[How?  In detail please.  By magic?  By what selective pressure?  What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?]

c. The T3SS secretes several proteins, one of which is an adhesin (a protein that sticks the cell to other cells or to a substrate). Polymerization of this adhesin forms a primitive pilus, an extension that gives the cell improved adhesive capability. After the evolution of the T3SS pilus, the pilus diversifies for various more specialized tasks by duplication and subfunctionalization of the pilus proteins (pilins).

[How?  In detail please.  By magic?  By what selective pressure?  What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?]

d. An ion pump complex with another function in the cell fortuitously becomes associated with the base of the secretion system structure, converting the pilus into a primitive protoflagellum. The initial function of the protoflagellum is improved dispersal. Homologs of the motor proteins MotA and MotB are known to function in diverse prokaryotes independent of the flagellum.

[How?  In detail please.  By magic?  By what selective pressure?  What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?]

e. The binding of a signal transduction protein to the base of the secretion system regulates the speed of rotation depending on the metabolic health of the cell. This imposes a drift toward favorable regions and away from nutrient-poor regions, such as those found in overcrowded habitats. This is the beginning of chemotactic motility.

[How?  In detail please.  By magic?  By what selective pressure?  What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?]

f. Numerous improvements follow the origin of the crudely functioning flagellum. Notably, many of the different axial proteins (rod, hook, linkers, filament, caps) originate by duplication and subfunctionalization of pilins or the primitive flagellar axial structure. These proteins end up forming the axial protein family.


Do I make my point clear?  This is the point Behe was trying to make in the trial.   Let me repeat his statement from above ...
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A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions...Q. And you haven't undertaken to try and figure out those?
A. I am not confident that the immune system arose through Darwinian processes, and so I do not think that such a study would be fruitful.


improvius quote mined me ...
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There is really one really big thing I resent.  And that is the idea that humans are nothing more than highly evolved animals.
and left out the last part that said I also believe this to be a factual error.  It is true that I get somewhat emotional, but the emotion is generated BECAUSE I believe there is some great error in ND thinking.  I've notice some of this emotion going the other direction on this thread as well, have you not?  It is understandable on both sides of the debate ... we are human, not rocks, thus we have emotions.

Glen said ...
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What Afdave fails to recognize in the area of origins is the importance of establishing proximate causes, of showing how one event causes another one.
What I am doing, Glen, is showing everyone why MY proposed proximate cause makes more sense than YOUR proposed proximate cause for explaining the phenomena in the universe.
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But what we need for any ID hypothesis is a designer who has been shown to design items similar to organisms.
Well, I cannot show Him to you any more than you can show me a fruitfly evolving into a "housefly type insect" or a "foot becoming a flipper."
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This is because animals are very different from machines, even at a cursory glance.
Yes, but the key difference is that they are SO SO SO SO much more sophisticated.  Ask Bill Gates ...
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DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we ve ever created (The Road Ahead,1996: 228).

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What is more, we aren't even satisfied with "intelligence" as a "reason" for human-made machines and art, rather we typically appeal to psychology, evolution, and social causation to explain why and how art is made (as in all historical sciences, we can't fully explain Sumerian art, but we can explain important aspects of it).
You're kidding, right?  I will let you take this one back if you want to and I won't even bring it up again.
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This brings up an important fact:  triumphant IDists would likely impede investigation into what intelligence is and why it is the way that we find it to be--even if only by suggesting that intelligence is some kind of "universal constant" or "law".  
Your implication that IDists are not progressive in science?  What about Galileo, Newton, Hooke, Brahe, Copernicus and Huygens?  They all believed in Design.  Were they anti-progressive?
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IDists analogize wildly to God, but then they fail utterly to be able to identify factors, like evolution, that would constrain God's designs.
 What?  Constrain God's design?  Creationists accept Designed Adaptation that you call evolution.  Maybe I'm not following you.
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but if we could not find causes of evolution in the genome/environment, we would have to abandon evolution as an explanation.
Yes. I predict this will happen soon.  
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Dave doesn't like macroevolution, claiming that it has not "been seen".  Since, however, macroevolution is predicted to be produced by largely known mechanisms, therefore to produce the sorts of fossils, nested hierarchies, and genomes that we see, it is fair to say that we have observed it, since we are surrounded by it and are a part of it.
No.  You have NOT observed it. You have observed what you THINK is evidence for it, but I will show you in time why this fails.
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No, we do not accept Causes that are not seen to be acting, we accept the mutations and selections of those mutations as the sort of mechanism that evolution demands and requires, both as a science of proximal causes, and as a theory peculiar to biology.
Yes.  You DO accept Causes that are not seen to be acting.  Again, no one has seen feet evolve into flippers, etc.
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We have our proximate causes, then.  The IDists/creationists have no cause at all, but only an analogy that on the face of it appears flawed, and which more tellingly cannot be backed up through evidence for active proximal causes.
No.  You don't have your proximate causes, then.  You don't even have an analogy.  We at least have an analogy from our experience.  To me, this is far more scientific.
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If this news turns out to be true, even the shaky foundation Meyer built his argument on is shot down:

'Cyclic universe' can explain cosmological constant
[URL=http://www.newscientistspace.com/article....ue]http

Thanks.  I'll check it out.

And with that, I'll leave you with this parting nugget from Talk Origins ...

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Furthermore, we are beginning to understand the possible physical mechanisms for the appearance of matter from nothing [hmmm... seems like Creationists have said something about this before], and for organization without design.

[url="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html"]

May God bless all of you (including Glen)!  And have a great weekend!

--------------
A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

  
Occam's Aftershave



Posts: 5287
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,05:32   

AFDave says

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I welcome your intelligent comments.  I qualify comments with the modifier 'intelligent' because I have now pretty much heard everything un-intelligent that there is to hear including but not limited to Glen Davidson's detailed and authoritative "Psychoanalysis of AF Dave" (thankyou, Glen ... I have to pay $300/hr for those here in Kansas City),


What you really mean is "I welcome all those comments that I can spin and/or tap dance around.  The other 95% are tough questions that show me to be mind-numbingly naive and ignorant.  Those I'll just ignore".

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Aftershave's continual attempts to supposedly "Look out for a poor-deluded fellow EE and help him avoid 'getting his ass handed to him'".  


Hasn't worked though, has it.  Every day we see another steaming plate of deef fried AFDave cheeks being delivered. :)

Oh well, don't take it personally Dave.  You're not the first arrogant but hopelessly ignorant YEC to come through here, and you won't be the last.  Isn't this a great country where even an ex AF pilot can make himself look like a total idiot on a public forum!

Strike three Dave, you're out.

--------------
"CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way"
"All the evidence supports Creation baraminology"
"If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic."
"Jews and Christians are Muslims."

- Joke "Sharon" Gallien, world's dumbest YEC.

  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,06:23   

Quote (afdave @ May 06 2006,09:55)
If I find a lot of these types of wrong information, obviously I will begin to question the reliability of the whole organization, question their motives, etc.  This has not yet occurred, but I'm sure you will help me on this quest.

Go ahead and dig up more.

Find some more articles on those sites that you find convincing and we'll dig out the lies and show them to you.

That appears to be the only thing you understand in your current state of ignorance.

  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,06:44   

Quote (afdave @ May 06 2006,09:55)
The stack of 50+ books are meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system.  I'm sure they quite meaningful at explaining how the immune system works and I'm sure they are quite full of SINCERE ATTEMPTS to explain the origin of the immune system.

There ... is that better?

Nope. It's worse than before and shows you haven't comprehended the first thing about how science actually works.

Check out this article, it gives a summary of the immune system evolution articles Behe dismissed:
http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd....ib.html

Behe is dependent on a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution. A step-by-step, mutation by mutation, analysis is hardly necessary to establish the evolution of the system when you have comparative immunology, some observed point mutations, known mechanisms for immunological diseases and more.

  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,07:59   

Quote (afdave @ May 06 2006,09:55)
Or maybe the reason is because no one HAS BEEN ABLE to refute him?

You seem to have missed the link where I showed Quentin Smith refuting Meyer in 1992, before Meyer wrote his article.

Smith credits the old argument to Richard Swinburne, John Leslie and William Lane Craig -- not Meyers.

Here it is again:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/bigbang.html

  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,08:12   

Quote (afdave @ May 06 2006,09:55)
My discussion has nothing to do with religion and I do not consider myself to be religious.  I am trying to explain the phenomena in the universe by the most sensible explanations.

Riiighhht, that's why you include Noah's flood in your origins hypothesis.

That's why you go to Answers in Genesis for your arguments.

That's why you call the "Intelligent Designer" God.

Have you ever though about what intelligence is? Have you ever thought about what your intelligence is? Do you know what "design" is?

Maybe evolution is intelligent. How do you define intelligence? How can you say evolution isn't intelligent? What is  it lacking?

Did you know there are mathematical relationships  between neural net models and evolutionary programming?

Do you even know what a neural net is?

Do you know what you're talking about when you talk about "intelligence" or "design"? If you don't, then you are using the unknown (to you) to explain the known.

  
Glen Davidson



Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,09:10   

Quote
We're herd animals, and we are intelligent herd animals for the most part.

AF
Afdave **cough** (I meant to say the Neo-Darwinist) illustrates this fact over and over again.


You think that's witty, or an intelligent response?

Quote
Look at Afdave's argument.  Clearly it is fallacious by any standard, but it is also carefully drawn (though it was hardly invented by Afdave) to avoid the fact that the only explanation for current and fossil forms of life that has managed to cross borders, religions, ethnic groups, politics, and intellectual inheritances, is evolutionary theory.  Russian atheists, American Catholics and mainline Protestants, scientists, intellectuals, Japanese Shintoists (initially, anyhow, though I don't know if Shinto holds up well alongside modern science), Muslim thinkers, Hindus, Jainists, and traditional religionists like native Americans, have all been able to comprehend and accept the evidence for evolution.
Herd thought?

AF
[YES]

AF
You guessed it, Glen.  My thought exactly. (Attention Quote Mine Police:  Glen really said "No" -- I'm putting words in his mouth)


Wow, you can take a statement and turn the accusation around.  All the while not supporting your dishonest claims.  Of course you have supported virtually no non-trivial claim heretofore.

Quote
Evolutionary theory is extraordinarily successful by the standards of any startup of a new religion.  

AF
Yes.  And so was Islam.  And your point is?  



I made my point, which is that evolutionary theory is successful in a universal sense.  Too bad you can't read anything above high school level, and have to conflate the biased myths that I clearly differentiated, remaining in your ignorance and bigotry.

Quote
AF
Possibly that this means AF Dave should accept it as true?  I see.


You are just about that stupid, aren't you?  I, of course, would never argue so stupidly, but then you can hardly understand a discussion about ideas and how and why some are successful, and how and why other ideas are successful.  I laid it all out, and you completely missed the point.  It's the difference between understanding and not understanding, and you have an immensely long way to go to begin to understand the dynamics of evidence-based systems of thought vs. the dynamics of the mythic beliefs of a religion.

I'll try once more (really more for the benefit of other readers, though):  Why do you suppose that a number of Muslims accept evolution, while they do not accept your beliefs?  And for once think, don't just react.

Quote
The only universally-acceptable origins-of-life idea is evolutionary theory

AF
never mind the small detail that no one has the slightest idea how it arose.  Francis Crick was so perplexed that he proposed "Panspermia".  


Take a remedial reading course, Dave.  In that context I was obviously referring to evolution as the "origins-of-life idea", not to abiogenesis.  There is not enough to abiogenesis to claim that there is a theory that is "universally-acceptable".

The reason "origins-of-life" can refer to evolution is that a term like "life's origins" is ambiguous.  "Origins-of-life" may refer to either the origins of life in the beginning, or to the origins of the various forms of life.

I never know whether it is your incompetence or your intellectual dishonesty that leads you to such distortions of what another has written.  I'm guessing that the two failings sort of merge within your incomprehension.

Quote
[Chris]Biological systems only trivially appear to be designed.

AF
Trivial?  How does this mesh with the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote an ENTIRE BOOK trying to tell people that this stuff IS NOT designed.  Answer: A LOT of people think this stuff at least APPEARS designed.  To me, this is in no way trivial.


Dawkins makes the mistake of writing that life appears designed, but he competently and extensively shows how it is not, based upon evidence.  You know, Dave, evidence, that concept which remains foreign to you after all of the times that it has been requested and discussed.

So you utilize the fallacies that you know to use, argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad verecundiam.  Thus revealing your inability to discuss anything non-trivial yet again.

Quote
Well, you're too stupid and ignorant even to respond to my authoritative analysis, moron ... If you ever can make an intelligent remark, please do so, cretin ... There is virtually no chance that you will ever be anything except a stupid and ignorant little ape, Dave.  The biggest reason of all is that you only sneer at expertise of all kinds, while clinging to your tiny collection of knowledge as if it were Eternal Truth, as do all bigots.

AF
Wow Glen, if words could kill! Have you found this debating technique to be effective for you?


It is the only thing that does work with bigots who pretend to discuss matters that they don't begin to understand.  Unfortunately, it only jolts a few mules into giving up their obstinate prejudices long enough to consider the evidence.

Quote
However, real scientists do not care a fig about Dawkins' incorrect notions about life "appearing designed", for on the face of it, life does not appear designed.  I will grant that it may appear "miraculous" or "spiritual", depending on definitions and contexts, but it does not appear designed.  

AF
Are you telling me that Richard Dawkins is not a real scientist?


Was Physics Today telling us that Einstein was not a real scientist when it discussed several of Einstein's errors?  And, can you even understand an intelligent string of material without coming to some unwarranted conclusion, or unwarranted tentative conclusion?

One thing that you so desperately lack is any comprehension that arguments from authority are essentially meaningless.  This is not always the case, because of course we rely on competent "authorities" even to relate empirical evidence to us.  However, in the matter of Dawkins discussing "appearance of design", he is no expert on this matter, for he knows science, not the history of ideas, nor the phenomenological viewpoint (for instance).

Quote
Why don't you call Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences and tell him he is an embarrasment to you.
 

Why don't you learn to read Bruce Alberts properly, instead of getting this tidbit, coupled with ID prejudices, from the tendentious and dishonest creationist/ID sources?  You have, quite evidently incorrectly, claimed to be skeptical, while you swallow false implications and misrepresentations of people like Alberts, then repeat the pseudoscientists' dishonesty.  Many Xians believe these false claims to be against the 9th commandment.

Quote
Here is his quote again ... Quote  
We have always underestimated cells . . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein [ba]machines?[/b] Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts (Alberts, Bruce. 1998. The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the NextGeneration of Molecular Biologists. Cell 92 (8 February): 291-94).


How can I even discuss things with you, when you don't even know how Alberts is using those words?  You simply repeat the mistake you've made all along, confusing biological machines with human-made machines.  That the word is the same is the only thing you have going for you, and it doesn't even occur to you that the differences in the "machines" are considerable--not even when you are told this (you're too intellectually dishonest to give proper weight to an intelligent response).

I have not denied that biological machines are "machines" under reasonable definitions.  Your ignorance and intellectual dishonesty are not shared by more educated and understanding people, and it behooves you to become curious as to why this is the case.

Can't you even notice that his argument for calling them "machines" is a functional and coordination argument, and not one that mistakes biological machines as being designed?  Are you completely without the capacity to comprehend a new thought, or in any case, one not fed to you by liars?

I was recently reading in Science or Nature about teasing information out of cells.  One of the important issues brought up is that cells are not designed, meaning that it is not wise to presuppose that cellular automata will be like the machines we design.  

And indeed they are not.  Cellular parts are not compartmentalized or specialized to the degree that our designed machines are.  And crucially, cellular machines are derived (ultimately through genes), utilizing non-obvious solutions for the problems and opportunities that have arisen throughout evolution.  Cellular functions are also often redundant.  Guess, what, these things that I have mentioned in this paragraph are predicted (in context) by evolutionary theory, and they significantly deviate from designed structures.

Now explain that, for once.  I have mentioned this in various ways and places, but you stupidly use same semantic arguments again and again, as if we are as ignorant as you.  We, many of us, know the differences between biological machines and designed machines, and all of your incomprehension of how language is used, let alone your ignorance of science, only reinforces our sense of your profound ignorance.  

I read stuff somewhat like Alberts' bit all of the time.  There is nothing surprising in it, nor in your distortion of what Alberts was actually discussing.  It comes from your ignorant herd, and it repels us from your herd again and again.

Quote
Do you want medical testing to be done on our relatives, the apes, or would you prefer that it be done on birds?  And can you think through the implications of why medical testing is done on monkeys and apes just prior to humans, or are you going to just drivel on in your ignorance and prejudice?

AF
If you read what I wrote, you will see that I acknowledge that human BODIES are very similar to the apes.  


I read what you wrote.  Ninth commandment again.  Do you have any conscience at all?

If you comprehended what I wrote, you would deal with the implications of the similarity of ape and human bodies, rather than drivelling along ignorantly.  I asked a largely rhetorical question to set up the next one, then challenged you to think about the evidence intelligently, essentially predicting that you wouldn't.  And you didn't.


Quote
I even acknowledge that Chromosome 2 in humans does in fact appear to be fused from 2 chromosomes in chimps.


Yet you think that the claim that organisms "appear designed" has traction, when you admit that chromosome 2 appears to be fused.  IOW, life does not appear to be designed, certainly not in some of its parts, but you don't care about that, you simply repeat the claim.  

And even though chromosome 2 appears to have undergone an evolutionary change, you don't care about that side of the coin either.  "Appearances" matter in one case, even when appearances go against your claim about "design appearances", yet appearances are "meaningless" when they go against your prejudices.  You probably have sufficient native intelligence to do better than that, but your cognitive framework and unwillingness to question your a priori beliefs prevent you from using the standards that you (however poorly) tell us that we should use.

It may very well be that chromosome 2's fusion led to a speciation event.  That is to say, it is evidence consistent with theoretical macroevolutionary causation.  Which means that not only is it derived, it is one of those proximate causes that is necessary to effect RM + NS that we find in the genome(s).  Unlike your inability to show evidence of causal processes, we present causal processes to you.  You only deny them.

Quote
But to me it is a different matter  then to say definitively that they did in fact fuse.  Also, let me reiterate what I have said before that my hypothesis regarding humans and apes is that humans have something additional, something invisible, that is very different from the apes, and that this difference is quite crucial. I will be presenting evidence for this soon.


If you do present actual evidence, I'll be shocked.

And of course you're uninterested in what the evidence shows.  You have some great "hypothesis" (no doubt borrowed creationist/IDist tripe) that humans have something additional and invisible over the apes.  With the promised evidence that has proven so disappointing in the past.

You needn't bother to present your "evidence".  Like all of your "evidence", it is no doubt an unoriginal PRATT, one that we have seen too many times, and which is unconvincing even in more competent hands than your own.

Naturally, it'll be some magic that is "evidenced" by arguments that haven't been sound for over two centuries.  A soul, or some such claptrap.  Something that can be claimed without any real evidence, and thus is not exactly refutable in the way that empirical claims are.  At least you seem to be drifting away from scientific claims, as they have never proven to be your friends.

Do you think that we have gone to grad school for nothing, that an engineer is going to use assumptions from useless old philosophies and these tired old arguments are going to trump Nietzsche and other profound thinkers?  Or even if we did not know philosophy at all, that we would abandon the use of evidence to follow unevidenced claims and meaningless analogies to proclaim the old prejudices to be correct?

Btw, I see that you did not counter my post on the observed mechanisms of "macroevolution" with a post on the observed mechanisms of design.  I don't wonder why.

--------------
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy

   
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,09:59   

Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 06 2006,14:10)
Quote

Trivial?  How does this mesh with the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote an ENTIRE BOOK trying to tell people that this stuff IS NOT designed.  Answer: A LOT of people think this stuff at least APPEARS designed.  To me, this is in no way trivial.


Dawkins makes the mistake of writing that life appears designed,...

Is that a mistake?

What makes something appear designed or not appear designed?

What is design? What does it mean to design something?

If I use a genetic algorithm to "design" a radar system am I designing a radar system?

I would suggest the problem here is the vagueness of our language. I don't think Dawkins made a mistake.

It's not Dawkins' fault that afdave is a moron who just doesn't get it.

  
Glen Davidson



Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,10:24   

Well it does appear that you responded to my post on proximate causes.  I thought you might have, but without any fear of being wrong I could post that you didn't counter with a post on the observed mechanisms of design.  Instead, the same tedious BS is put out, with you never comprehending how you appear more and more inept and prejudiced with every incompetent statement.

Quote
What Afdave fails to recognize in the area of origins is the importance of establishing proximate causes, of showing how one event causes another one.

AF
What I am doing, Glen, is showing everyone why MY proposed proximate cause makes more sense than YOUR proposed proximate cause for explaining the phenomena in the universe.


What proximate cause?  You simply tell your little lie.

Quote
But what we need for any ID hypothesis is a designer who has been shown to design items similar to organisms.

AF
Well, I cannot show Him to you any more than you can show me a fruitfly evolving into a "housefly type insect" or a "foot becoming a flipper."


I can show you a dinosaur becoming a bird.  That you won't recognize the evidence as evidence is part of your ineptitude.  Also, that it is evidence from the past is hardly important--all evidence inevitably comes from the past.  Your problem with past evidence is another thing that sets you apart from science.

I don't know whether we can precisely show a foot turning into a flipper.  Smaller bones don't fossilize well. Hardly matters, though.  Tiktaalik was found in a targeted search, not to find intermediates between fish and amphibians (we already had some of those) .per se, but to find an intermediate showing the evolution of legs from fins.  Deal with the evidence.

Again you show your ignorance in supposing that a fruitfly is supposed to be able to evolve into a housefly.  Perhaps it could (though not identical in genetic material), but it would probably be very difficult for any number of reasons.  

And it has been established that you don't care about the evidence that evolution has occurred, so you don't care that fruitflies and houseflies share many genes, and that they fit nicely into cladistic schemes.

Most importantly, yes, you cannot show "Him" to me, but you aren't interested in proximate causes.  That was my point.  And that you admit that you can't show "Him" to me belies your prior false claim of a proposed proximate cause.  Perhaps you are so dull or ignorant as to believe that an invisible and unobserved "entity" counts as a proximate cause in science, but that's your problem.

Quote
This is because animals are very different from machines, even at a cursory glance.

AF
Yes, but the key difference is that they are SO SO SO SO much more sophisticated.  Ask Bill Gates ...


See, this is one of the problems with creationism/ID.  Never an original thought, an old PRATT from Bill Gates who is not well educated in biology.  I don't disagree with him as he meant it, true, but "sophisticated" has an anthropomorphic ring to it, and the term also belies the fact that much of adaptation isn't sophisticated in the design sense at all.

And of course you only consider your PRATT to be key, when biologists pay a good deal of attention to other aspects of the differences between life and designed objects.  Mere prejudice again, based in your incomprehension and gee whiz "facts" approach to "science".  That marks you as a functional dullard.

What is more, go ahead and consider the fact that life is so much more complicated, and realize that never ever have we observed a designer create anything like this.  So you have no observed designer, as I pointed out previously.  And you have the facts, though not the intelligence (at least not the educated intelligence) to deal with them sensibly, in order to conclude that no proximate "design" cause for life is known.

I have in many cases pointed out that, among other life aspects, the complexity of life is something that we have never observed intelligent agents to make.  It sort of knocks out your analogy, although we have yet to see you abandon an argument just because you have been shown to be wrong.

I suppose I should note that aliens may in fact make machines as complex as life, for all I know.  Even then we would likely be able to distinguish between those machines and life, for we have no expectation of aliens producing in ways that mimic the predictions of evolution (unless, of course, they mean to re-create life to see if they can, in which case we'd still probably do best calling it life (since it wasn't designed originally, but was only "designed" to mimic an evolved organism)).

Quote
What is more, we aren't even satisfied with "intelligence" as a "reason" for human-made machines and art, rather we typically appeal to psychology, evolution, and social causation to explain why and how art is made (as in all historical sciences, we can't fully explain Sumerian art, but we can explain important aspects of it).  

AF
You're kidding, right?  I will let you take this one back if you want to and I won't even bring it up again.


It's interesting that you are so ignorant that sophisticated argumentation seems ridiculous to you.  Again you sneer at expertise, in order to support your ignorant prejudices, your fragile, pathetic ego.  

Crack a book, go back to school, or at least learn how not to act like a fool among the knowledgeable.

Quote
This brings up an important fact:  triumphant IDists would likely impede investigation into what intelligence is and why it is the way that we find it to be--even if only by suggesting that intelligence is some kind of "universal constant" or "law".  


AF
Your implication that IDists are not progressive in science?  What about Galileo, Newton, Hooke, Brahe, Copernicus and Huygens?  They all believed in Design.  Were they anti-progressive?


Another PRATT.  I'm sure you've heard the appropriate arguments, and are just trolling here.  What is more, I seriously doubt that all of them believed in "design" in the ID sense, though I'll leave it at that since it would be hard to demonstrate (Galileo isn't likely to refute mechanistic notions of creation which weren't current then).

Again the argumentum ad verecundiam, and your total incapacity to counter my own argument.  You are one superficial "thinker".

Quote
IDists analogize wildly to God, but then they fail utterly to be able to identify factors, like evolution, that would constrain God's designs.

AF
What?  Constrain God's design?  Creationists accept Designed Adaptation that you call evolution.  Maybe I'm not following you.


Of course you're not following me, because you have no concept of the necessity of identifying proximate constrained causation via science.  You took this out of a context, which no doubt you did not understand, a context which explained how humans can be considered "proximate causes", namely, because they are constrained (by evolution, physics, etc.).

And no, I can't discuss science on your level, because you know virtually nothing about science.  I made a good series of arguments regarding the identification of "design", and you uncomprehendingly settle back into your fog of incomprehension.  For those with a modicum of comprehension, I repeat, we cannot identify design because we do not know of any proximate cause which would actually "design" the derivative structures we see in organisms.

Quote
but if we could not find causes of evolution in the genome/environment, we would have to abandon evolution as an explanation.

AF
Yes. I predict this will happen soon.  


Of course you predict what you cannot demonstrate.  It's an old dodge, kind of the old tribal/herd belief that future battles will vindicate the claims of the "authorities".  Once again, you fail even to comprehend what is needed to make a compelling argument.

Quote
Dave doesn't like macroevolution, claiming that it has not "been seen".  Since, however, macroevolution is predicted to be produced by largely known mechanisms, therefore to produce the sorts of fossils, nested hierarchies, and genomes that we see, it is fair to say that we have observed it, since we are surrounded by it and are a part of it.

AF
No.  You have NOT observed it. You have observed what you THINK is evidence for it, but I will show you in time why this fails.


You couldn't show anyone the way out a tepee.

You also miss the fact that we are observing macroevolution all around us, and of course you simply deny excellent evidence any time it is brought up.

You're becoming so redundant, boring, and useless even as a foil to demonstrate the IDiocy of ID and creationism.

Quote
No, we do not accept Causes that are not seen to be acting, we accept the mutations and selections of those mutations as the sort of mechanism that evolution demands and requires, both as a science of proximal causes, and as a theory peculiar to biology.

Yes.  You DO accept Causes that are not seen to be acting.  Again, no one has seen feet evolve into flippers, etc.


You're too lame even to know the difference between cause and accumulated effects (we may not have seen all of the mechanisms of macroevolution acting "in nature", but we've seen virtually all in the lab, at least).  Perhaps some day you will know the difference between cause and effect, but today I simply shake my head at how low your intellectual capacity is.

Quote
We have our proximate causes, then.  The IDists/creationists have no cause at all, but only an analogy that on the face of it appears flawed, and which more tellingly cannot be backed up through evidence for active proximal causes.  

AF
No.  You don't have your proximate causes, then.  You don't even have an analogy.


So you can only deny the proximate causes, and cannot show that your denial has any basis in fact.  I also mentioned several analogies, from languages to "microevolution", but you're too incapable of intellectual discussion even to throw out some tendentious lies about the specific analogies.  Just blank denial, which in fact is your modus operandi.

Quote
We at least have an analogy from our experience.  To me, this is far more scientific.


Why yes, you have no notion of the necessity or means of backing up analogy.  You don't begin to comprehend scientific justification.  You have your stupidity, and want to keep it.  Then keep it, just don't go lying and showing your ignorance for the rest of your life.

I knew from your first post on PT that you were too intellectually dishonest for me to have a meaningful discussion with you.  I have argued this here and at PT, giving probable explanations for it.  

But I have still responded to you as if you could read properly, and as if there were an inkling of curiosity, objectivity, and honesty in there somewhere.  Primarily as a foil, yes, yet I often enough gave you the benefit of the doubt.  

All that you have done is to disgust me.  Whether they be the PRATTs, the fallacies, the outright lies, or the inability to comprehend even reasonably intellectual discussion, you are unworthy to engage in further discussion.  

I made a number of good arguments, mainly for the sake of lurkers who might be suckered into the blatant nonsense that you spout.  They're done, and remain available even to Dave if there is yet a speck of intellectual honesty in him.  I can't step into the intellectual sewer he lives in any more, and am done with responding to him for a while (the only likely exception would be if he responded quickly to my previous post), perhaps forever.  It's an intention, not a promise, but it is probable.  There hasn't been much science here, other than that aimed at the uncomprehending cretinist in our midst, so I may not bother with the rest of "After the Bar Closes" for a while either

--------------
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy

   
cak



Posts: 4
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,10:27   

<THE DATA IS THE DATA, regardless of the source.  Creationists really don't care a hoot about the beliefs of the guy digging up the fossil or mapping the genome or what have you.  What we are interested in is the INTERPRETATION of the data. >

Dave,

I had to comment on this - New interpretations of existing data are generated every day in labs around the world (like mine).  Such ideas are a dime-a-dozen.  But these ideas only gain scientific significance after they are used to generate testable hypotheses and those hypotheses are evaluated and confirmed by the scientific method.  ID/creationists DO NOT DO THIS.  Until they do their "interpretations" will not be taken seriously by real scientists.

And as others have pointed out, it is clear that your knowledge of basic biology is very limited.  So your criticisms are way off the mark.

  
Glen Davidson



Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,10:35   

Quote
Is that a mistake?

What makes something appear designed or not appear designed?

What is design? What does it mean to design something?

If I use a genetic algorithm to "design" a radar system am I designing a radar system?


Oh c'mon, I've argued several times that the IDist God is "obviously only able to design using evolutionary algorithms" (genetic algorithms, whatever).  Of course "what design is" is in question, which is what I was discussing in one post with respect to the fact that we don't actually stop with "design" as an explanation even when humans do it.  Dave wrote, "duh, I don't get it," or its equivalent, but that's Dave for you.

I was, certainly, saying that "organisms don't appear designed" in the sense that the Nature article I mentioned noted that cell parts are "not designed".  That is to say, in the sense that we should not be looking for what we might expect from an engineer, but rather we should be looking for co-option and derivation.

It is not beyond the range of possible meanings of the word "design" to say that "evolution designed the flagellum".  Occasionally journals will discuss such "designs of evolution", though most of us don't prefer that language--especially not us Americans who are beset by morons.

Still, your points are reasonable in the broader sense, and not a bad addition to the total context.

--------------
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy

   
Faid



Posts: 1143
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,12:03   

Oh boy where to begin?
Oh well, most of what you said has been covered by others... Just a few pointers:

First of all, please drop the Dawkins issue. If you are actually trying to make a point, it does not help you, and only makes us irritated. Like I said in my previous post (and you obviously missed it), there is no "paradox" here. Dawkins does not admit the plausibility of design; he refers to the improbability of emergence of life in it's present complexity. Those two things are connected only in your mind, that disregards evolution and thinks they were created in the first place. However, everyone agrees with what Dawkins says (well, except those medieval physiologists that believed in spontaneous generation of flies and worms and rats- and those were also good christians, you know), and that is because evolution is not a purely random process. Maybe I should say that again: Evolution is not a purely random process.
I can't say whether you understand it or not, but, to use your old catchy example: Dawkins does not try to show that, although it walks and quacks like a duck, it's not- he shows that it neither walks nor quacks like a duck. Because it's not one.  :) I dunno if you laughed and theatrically tossed his book away after reading the part you quoted, but I think maybe you should have spent some more time on it... Maybe then you'd know what I mean.

About Behe: Do you even begin to understand that, what you quoted is the very testimony that made him look like a fool in court? Probably not... OK, from the beginning:
All that literature was about the evolution of the immune system. Period. Now, what Behe says in his IC theory is this: That a system is irreducibly complex when there is no possible evolutionary pathway to produce it. Not that there is "not enough evidence", or that "nothing's proved". That any attempt to come up with a scnario of origin fails a priori, because it is a scientific and logical impossibility.
Well, that is what all the literature presented was about.  :p  Research that shouldn't exist. When faced with it, Behe said he didn't believe in it (although he never read it- after all, it wasn't supposed to exist)- and, when pressed, he completely forgot the "principle" of his theory and started to demand ridiculous amounts of evidence that, if they were to be demanded all the time, all of genetics and biology would be rendered useless- "unfruitful", if you like.
It's like my favorite Pyramids example:

-The pyramids had to be made by aliens- saying that the egyptians made them, with the means of the time, is just impossible. I mean, look at them! Can YOU think of a way to make them?

-Well, they could have used this and this and that method, in fact the findings show...

-Look, don't bother me with all that. If you wanna prove it, you'll have to show beyond doubt exactly how many the workers were, how many hours they worked a day, how much they ate and drank each day, and also how tall they were and how much they weighed... Oh, and their names. All of them.

-...

-Hah! So, you see, My "Alien" theory remains the only possible scenario!


Dave, what Behe involuntarily demonstrated in court is that his "theory" actually says: "A system is irreducibly complex when you cannot convince me that it's not, and you can't convince me because, well, because".
Dishonesty at its best- and IDers still wonder why they lost...

About the "biological machines" thing: Actually, It is your answer, the one I was expecting, that refutes your claims. You say that there are many differences between my rocks example and biological systems. That is true, of course, but there are also major, fundamental differences between living organisms and actual machines: Differences your logic dismisses, to focus on the apparent simillarities- simillarities you try to distinguish and interpret that way in the first place. That is why your logic is loaded, and that is why it is essentialy as flawed as my "volcanic rocks=marbles" example. You want your rocks to be marbles; everything will be examined under that perception.

As for quoting the part I mentioned, about the talkorigins article, I'm once again wondering: Did you actually read this past the part you quoted? Or did you quote it from somewhere else? Anyway, here you go:
Quote
Note that my thesis does not require more than one universe to exist, although some cosmological theories propose this. Even if ours is the only universe, and that universe happened by chance, we have no basis to conclude that a universe without some form of life was so unlikely as to have required a miracle.

It's the argument from probability, Dave. One paragraph down.

--------------
A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:

"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"

"...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 06 2006,14:18   

I'd also like to add, Dave (not to make you feel persecuted or anything) that you started this thread with the claim that you would provide evidence for (at minimum) three contentions:

1. The Bible is literally inerrant;
2. The earth is not billions of years old, but only thousands of years old; and
3. Evolution cannot explain the origin of species.

So far, I can only point out the obvious: you have presented no, as in none, as in nada, as in the big goose egg, evidence to support any of these contentions. You've presented several thousand words arguing that the evidence showing that none of your contentions is true is not credible, but your arguments haven't held water. So it looks to me like you've set out trying to run a marathon with your shoes tied together. You haven't presented any evidence supporting even one of your contentions, let alone proving any one of them.

So. With all that in mind, would you like to start out with an easy one? Can you present evidence that the earth is only thousands of years old?

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
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