Glen Davidson
Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006
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I didn't know where to put this response to Klinghoffer that I made and that he hasn't yet deigned to approve, although he still could. I thought where another of his articles was linked might be best:
| Quote | What Klinghoffer wrote:
| Quote | | However, conducting the scientific debate per se on evolution is not what I do. I would have thought that was obvious. There are ample resources out there on the subject -- for example, Stephen Meyer's very important new book, published literally yesterday: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. |
If anyone wants to see how "very important" Meyer's rehash of old and useless "ID arguments" is, here's a preview:
http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.a...._061809
Needless to say, it's underwhelming. It's a long dreary story of how he came up with his "new argument" (DNA's complex, so god did it) for ID, complete with the usual false claims about ID, and the false dichotomy that if evolution didn't do it, god did, never mind the lack of any indications for intelligent design. He doesn't even bring up actual evidence for "intelligent design," merely relying on the old anthropocentric fallacy of assuming that functionality is design, or at least that it "looks like" design. From p. 12:
| Quote | | ...Natural selection..., a purely undirected process that nevertheless mimicked the powers of a designing intelligence. |
That is exactly the kind of nonsense that we're always getting from these clowns, mainly because they either are too ignorant to face the rather large differences between design, or they know better than to do so, and wish to simply conflate evolutionary effects with "design effects," the better to ignore the crucial evidence for evolution that design never has explained at all.
Evolution can't possibly mimic what design can do. It can't pick the best materials for a purpose, it can't come up with truly novel characteristics in organisms, it can't make the rational leaps that designers routinely effect, and so it can't produce a steam engine or a decent wheel. Evolution can't smelt metals, use fire, make rockets, or make vertebrate wings out of anything but terrestrial limbs.
Meyer has no interest in dealing with the real issues, in other words. Indeed, most of his polemic is aimed at the origin of life, and of the genetic code. Is the latter a largely unexplained matter in evolution? I believe it is, although there are hints in life of a time in which the code was not so rigidly followed, and in fact it may be that a number of evolutionary events needed a less rigid code. But then does Meyer explain how and why additional (apparently later evolved) amino acids, like pyrrolysine, co-opt a stop codon for coding?
No, apparently not. It's not interesting, he just wants to say that if events happening perhaps billions of years ago are not explained, then evolution falls apart. He needn't explain what evolutionary theory does, goddidit is all the "explanation" that is needed. Evidence for design isn't needed, because life "looks designed," something that even many ancients didn't believe--hence the magical and reproductive myths accounting for what was decidedly unmachinelike.
He writes very misleading junk like this (p. 396--context complicates this, but I don't want to write it all out):
| Quote | | ...[Critics] do not [typically] dispute that DNA contains specified information, or that this type of information always comes from a mind... |
They likely would, if Meyer wasn't simply begging the question by assuming exactly what he needs to prove. And of course many do disagree with it strenuously and with evidence, but he's not going to address those matters, just the "critics" he's blabbing to usually don't know enough to do more than to invoke authorities.
And from the same paragraph (p. 397):
| Quote | | Nor do they even dispute my characterization of the historical scientific method or that I followed it in formulating my case for intelligent design as the best explanation for the evidence. |
Again, of course, he's still writing about critics selected for their lack of addressing the issues minutely and in detail (in talks, not in writing where his egregious claptrap is well demonstrated to be nonsense). But of course he didn't in the slightest follow proper scientific procedure of carefully matching up identifiable cause with identifiable effect, he simply used the false dilemma of "if evolution hasn't explained it, god did it."
By the way, he often uses Dembski as a reliable source, when his pseudoscientific writings have been thoroughly skewered. Most notably, because Dembski doesn't rely upon empirical data for his calculations, and he insists upon very specific targets in evolution. The fact that he calls what is simple, "complexity," obviously is meant to conflate our often simple creations with the very complex and undesign-like structures of life, and is an egregious misuse of language.
As far as I can tell, from the limited text and the index, he does not come up with even the usual ridiculous claims of "falsifiability" of ID that Cornelius Hunter promised (if not with those denotations and connotations). Apparently the naive conflation of functionality and design that many have made is enough "evidence" of design for Meyer, and he doesn't need to do the science needed to actually shore up his claims.
Well, those were the most obvious inanities, fallacies, and unsound reasoning that I saw in the preview. It's the usual bit of nonsense coming from the DI people, barely different from the worthless propaganda that we've already seen.
Glen Davidson |
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http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy
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