tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post3393231323963276607..comments2024-03-27T14:50:47.345-04:00Comments on <center>Sandwalk</center>: Michael Behe in Toronto: Part 2Larry Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-90773828866834922092012-12-02T12:52:00.747-05:002012-12-02T12:52:00.747-05:00Atheistoclast: tunneling through a mountain, to ge...Atheistoclast: <i>tunneling through a mountain, to get to the other side of the valley</i><br /><br />Is that how you get to the other side of the valley? I would just walk downhill and then climb up the opposite slope. It saves you a lot of digging.<br /><br /><i>Why can't people appreciate that a monkey on a typewriter is no substitute for an intelligent designer?</i><br /><br />Perhaps they can distinguish a strained rhetorical analogy from a real argument.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-42170316487187940642012-12-01T20:17:50.245-05:002012-12-01T20:17:50.245-05:00Instead of tunneling through a mountain, to get to...<i>Instead of tunneling through a mountain, to get to the other side of the valley, you are just digging a hole in the ground.</i><br /><br />True, in a way. But it is a strained and/or improper metaphor... with evolution there is no attempt to "get to the other side of valley". That is, there is no purpose. But what if that purpose-less hole you are digging happens to yield water, or gold, or some other useful commodity? To carry on with your strained metaphor, would you just fill it in, because it didn't get you to the other side of the valley? Shawnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-29523360818859314082012-11-30T18:16:26.255-05:002012-11-30T18:16:26.255-05:00The idea that slightly deleterious mutations can g...The idea that slightly deleterious mutations can generate non-adaptive innovation is not new. It is central to the evolution of gene duplicates. Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests that an accumulation of slightly harmful mutations just serves to degrade the gene's functionality rather than create anything novel.<br /><br />Instead of tunneling through a mountain, to get to the other side of the valley, you are just digging a hole in the ground. <br /><br />Why can't people appreciate that a monkey on a typewriter is no substitute for an intelligent designer?Atheistoclastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-16629580106165961992012-11-24T22:46:21.203-05:002012-11-24T22:46:21.203-05:00without any testable predictions
This says far mo...<i>without any testable predictions</i><br /><br />This says far more about your vast ignorance of the countless correct predictions of evolutionary theory than it does about evolutionary theory.<br /><br />Judnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-13713539263533387532012-11-23T21:38:20.167-05:002012-11-23T21:38:20.167-05:00I certainly agree there are many examples of scien...I certainly agree there are many examples of scientists stubbornly refusing to be moved from positions they've taken. In this as in many things, I think it is a question of degree. Behe's statement that the 1-foot-high pile of literature next to him could not possibly convince him to change his mind is to me equivalent to announcing his refusal to consider the issue based on evidence, i.e., scientifically.Judnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-50982563696715997422012-11-22T16:01:05.496-05:002012-11-22T16:01:05.496-05:00Anonymous said:
"Just so stories without any...Anonymous said:<br /><br />"Just so stories without any testable predictions is nothing more than a fairy tale.... You lot need to hang your heads in shame for being unscientific and secondly for believing that which can not be confirmed, religious much?"<br /><br />What "lot" are you? What's your 'story'? <br /><br />And as Piotr asked, "What's your more sophisticated science?"<br /><br />The whole truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07219999357041824471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-87180871217277711642012-11-22T06:00:43.721-05:002012-11-22T06:00:43.721-05:00The whole truth says,
Another question that could...The whole truth says,<br /><br /><i>Another question that could be asked of behe in less than '30 seconds' is; Why do you use the term "Darwinism", since you should know that the modern ToE has gone way beyond what Darwin discovered and published?</i><br /><br />I've asked that question many times. I even asked Behe last Thursday afternoon. The answer is always the same; namely, that natural selection is the only mechanism that Darwinists propose for improving species over time. Sometimes they have some prepared quotes handy that show Dawkins and Gould referring to themselves as Darwinists.<br /><br />You can't ask a question like that in front of a large audience of science illiterates because they have no idea what you're talking about. It opens you up to a reply along the lines of, "Yes, I'm aware of the fact that evolutionary theory is in crisis and that there are dozens of other proposals on the table. Scientists are arguing among themselves over things like epigenetics, directed evolution, and neutral evolution but the one thing they all agree on is Darwinian natural selection and I just showed that natural selection and random mutation cannot explain evolution." <br />Larry Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-43453953422909538442012-11-22T04:53:30.637-05:002012-11-22T04:53:30.637-05:00Thank you both for pointing out the validity of yo...<i>Thank you both for pointing out the validity of your just so science you hold onto..</i><br /><br />Yeah, well thanks for putting a bit of effort into your response. Allan Millernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-51054746539752338722012-11-22T00:22:21.781-05:002012-11-22T00:22:21.781-05:00Thank you both for pointing out the validity of yo...<i>Thank you both for pointing out the validity of your just so science you hold onto...</i><br /><br />What's your more sophisticated science? How, according to it, did the ear originate and why does it -- and all the variants of its structure visible in moderm mammals, birds, reptiles and their ancestors (sorry, what am I saying? what ancestors? I mean antediluvial animals) -- look the way they do?Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-73293802468809837032012-11-21T23:34:59.761-05:002012-11-21T23:34:59.761-05:00Thank you both for pointing out the validity of yo...Thank you both for pointing out the validity of your just so science you hold onto...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-38573201529791659482012-11-21T22:34:04.066-05:002012-11-21T22:34:04.066-05:00so why not ask him exactly which 'designer'...<i>so why not ask him exactly which 'designer' he believes in and if he has any POSITIVE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of that alleged 'designer'?</i><br /><br />If I'm not mistaken Behe is a devout Catholic. That tells you who he believes is the designer and like any christian he does not need to provide positive scientific evidence for his belief. He merely states that, regardless of who the designer may be, life is not possible without him/it. This is ID in a nutshell, so there isnt much more he would need to say with regard to your question...and half or more of the audience would have no trouble accepting that.Shawnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-44664849261718323262012-11-21T19:05:57.150-05:002012-11-21T19:05:57.150-05:00Well its impossible to show, yet it must be true?
...<i>Well its impossible to show, yet it must be true?</i><br /><br />For a specific history it is very likely to be impossible to show, because it took place through a long series of now-dead organisms in populations of just-as-dead ones, but that hardly makes it <i>false</i>. If being-impossible-to-show is a reason for doubt, I might offer you that whole Designer nonsense. <br /><br />In the case of the ear, we have a good fossil series, but we don't have the detailed selective advantage of the genes, and never will, because it relies on populations long dead. Why should that compel us to magic up our pet Designer? It can just poof the whole thing up in ... some manner unspecified. And this somehow trumps known, continually operating mechanisms of variation and fixation? What does it bring to the table, in this mental filling-in-of-missing-history exercise, that is absent from mutation-fixation processes? <br /><br />Evolution is not true because it must be, it is apparently true because evidence supports it and no evidence contradicts it. The fact that someone can point to a missing history does not raise the stature of their pet explanation for the result one iota. The series is missing for all explanations. Evolution has the advantage of known mechanisms.<br /><br />As to junk, you are simply parroting something you read on a Creationist site. Evolutionary theory needs neither large nor small amounts of the stuff. Organisms exist right across the apparent-junk spectrum, from hardly any to loads, and no-one bats an eyelid.Allan Millernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-85059556581503952122012-11-21T18:18:03.466-05:002012-11-21T18:18:03.466-05:00Its junk and proves common ancestry yesterday, but...<i>Its junk and proves common ancestry yesterday, but today it has function because Darwinist expected it to have... or so it goes.</i><br /><br />Nah... it's still junk. "Darwinists" got it wrong, and so did you.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-1593794235676355252012-11-21T18:15:26.711-05:002012-11-21T18:15:26.711-05:00Well its impossible to show, yet it must be true? ...<i>Well its impossible to show, yet it must be true? Come now since when has speculation and untestable become science?</i><br /><br />Do you mean the evolution of the mammalian ear? It happens to be one of those structures whose history is beautifully documented in the palaeontological record, with practically every intermediate stage present in fossil taxa. We know exactly how our "irreducibly complex" inner ear developed step by step from the bones of the lower jaw of primitive tetrapods. To choose <i>that</i> as an example of something that can't have evolved is suicidal stupidity. Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-1779539702665597262012-11-21T16:36:36.425-05:002012-11-21T16:36:36.425-05:00Did you know its illogical to expect an explanatio...Did you know its illogical to expect an explanation for the explanation? I bet not what do you know of how logic and reason works if you be live in illogical things like accidents and chance can create anything given enough time...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-58528952607434484972012-11-21T16:32:10.761-05:002012-11-21T16:32:10.761-05:00Well its impossible to show, yet it must be true? ...Well its impossible to show, yet it must be true? Come now since when has speculation and untestable become science? Science's truth lies in its ability to be tested and repeated. Just so stories without any testable predictions is nothing more than a fairy tale.... You lot need to hang your heads in shame for being unscientific and secondly for believing that which can not be confirmed, religious much?<br /><br />You see for a naturalist evolution is not true because it is, its true because it must..... It's all you have because there are no other natural explanations that have the power to spin anything in a way you like, the theory of evolution has a fantastic explanatory power because no matter what it always has a way out.... and because we are in Larry's backyard we can use Junk DNA as a case in point. Its junk and proves common ancestry yesterday, but today it has function because Darwinist expected it to have... or so it goes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-79396593251334490342012-11-21T11:14:12.054-05:002012-11-21T11:14:12.054-05:00heterofacience,heterochronic, and heterotopic chan...heterofacience,heterochronic, and heterotopic changes led to the evolution of the ear.Starbuckhttps://twitter.com/telomericfusionnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-54541085103049645962012-11-21T10:23:11.699-05:002012-11-21T10:23:11.699-05:00Larry, et al., it sounds like behe's assertion...Larry, et al., it sounds like behe's assertions are just the same old 'Darwinism can't do this and can't do that', so why not ask him exactly which 'designer' he believes in and if he has any POSITIVE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of that alleged 'designer'? If he were to answer the first part of the question by saying that he doesn't believe in a particular designer then just ask him for POSITIVE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of any designer, and don't let him get away with any diversionary crap that isn't POSITIVE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of a designer. <br /><br />Another question that could be asked of behe in less than '30 seconds' is; Why do you use the term "Darwinism", since you should know that the modern ToE has gone way beyond what Darwin discovered and published?<br /><br />If nothing else, point out that the modern ToE is not "Darwinism", and that his using the term "Darwinism" shows how far behind the times he is, and that even if the ToE (not "Darwinism") is wrong in some ways, 'design' is not automatically true. The whole truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07219999357041824471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-7645193940200502182012-11-21T10:00:29.129-05:002012-11-21T10:00:29.129-05:00Please show with evidence how the ear evolved in a...<i>Please show with evidence how the ear evolved in a stepwise Darwinian process using NS and RM.</i><br /><br />Please show a cargo cult adherent in New Guinea how to build a TV set using his placatory empty TV cabinet with a fire burning in it as a model.<br /><br />This is analogous to the task faced by evolutionary scientists trying to explain NS & RM to creotards and IDiots.<br />steve oberskinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-62353833591959592242012-11-21T05:33:26.675-05:002012-11-21T05:33:26.675-05:00"Which would be like trying to determine the ..."Which would be like trying to determine the causation underlying your great-grandmother's marrying your great-grandfather when there were so many other people in the world she could have gone for, or there's always spinsterism. Therefore design."<br /><br />Please stop being reasonable.Pedronoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-55277335695649912592012-11-21T05:00:43.901-05:002012-11-21T05:00:43.901-05:00@Robert:
As I said somebody soon is going to be ov...@Robert:<br /><i>As I said somebody soon is going to be overthrown in their confidence.</i><br /><br />That actually already happened some time ago. Even in that bastion of religiosity in the western hemisphere (the U.S.) Republicans like Marco Rubio are ridiculed when they refuse to acknowledge the actual age of the earth (or claim it is still a mystery). <br />This must confuse you to no end.Shawnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-37306003446950129152012-11-21T04:57:46.434-05:002012-11-21T04:57:46.434-05:00One-of-the-many-or-few-anonymouses said: Well show...One-of-the-many-or-few-anonymouses said: <i>Well show us evidence that NS and RM can accomplish this</i><br /><br />Another-or-the-same said:<br /><i>Please show with evidence how the ear evolved in a stepwise Darwinian process using NS and RM.</i><br /><br />The post to which you respond makes specific mention of the caricature of evolution that many attack. Your response is to repeat that caricature, and demand that scientists explain how your caricatured version of evolution did x. <br /><br />Of course, you would be no more impressed by answers that included stochastic factors, because you seem to think that if evolution were true, we should be able to produce a precise analysis of the genetic change and selective advantage of every step on a particular historic pathway. Which would be like trying to determine the causation underlying your great-grandmother's marrying your great-grandfather when there were so many other people in the world she could have gone for, or there's always spinsterism. Therefore design.Allan Millernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-12221942202702689632012-11-21T04:37:47.687-05:002012-11-21T04:37:47.687-05:00As an european, I can pretty much confirm what Lar...As an european, I can pretty much confirm what Larry said. The rare times Iever discussed Creationism/ID with coleagues has been in the context of a US "cultural" phenomenum. It's not something that anyone takes seriously in Europe. There are european ID websites but all they do is to give some short blurb on the issue and then link to US sites. Not a single european scientist I've ever heard of has given a talk on promoting ID here on an academic venue (except for Hoyle, Wickramasingue and Klyce's personal brand of Panspermia that in many ways make use of the same flawed arguments). I suspect that such a talker would be given some serious trashing here, to hell with the 30 seconds comments, if the discussions I've been to are anything to go by, lol. <br /><br />On another note, I think that textbooks on Evolution need to start to take into account things like Random Drift, Neutral Theory and so on much more deeply. Right now they are presented almost like afterthoughts in the last chapters. I understand that introductory textbooks take it too much generaly and focus too much on NS because it's a good way of introducing the subject without going to much into subtleties, but there's a price to pay on the longer run. For example, they should have in-depth examples of how complex molecular machines evolved (not just a few paragraphs in a boxed text), they should contain discussions of probabilities and how they used and when are the assumptions for their use correct, etc. Molecular evolution, neofunctionalization, etc, are dealt with too lightly and too fast. We can't expect that every biologist/student out there is going to read "principles of Molecular Evolution" by Graur et al., not to mention that books like that are few and need new editions. Stuff like this should be part of every major texbook in Evolution and Biochemistry. As it is, if a student is not making a PhD in Molecular Evolution or Evolutionary Theory, they probably won't dig much deeper than what they learned in their basic courses. This is a problem. Even in a PhD in Evolutionary Theory they may be concentrating to much on Macroevolution and the subtleties of genome evolution, molecular evolution, etc may not be touched upon in any real depth. I consider that there should be a concerted effort to make these aspects of Evolutionary Theory a standard aspect of basic texbooks at any level. This would equip students with the necessary knowledge to evaluate some of the flawed assumptions like in Behe's recent nonsense on the Biocomplexity Journal. I believe some people reading that paper won't be abble to catch what the problems are, unfortunately. This is all fodder for the ID movement.Pedronoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-29696451325291603202012-11-21T04:06:51.405-05:002012-11-21T04:06:51.405-05:00"If it can be done there would be no controve..."If it can be done there would be no controversy..."<br /><br />There is no *scientific* controversy. A "well informed" guy like you, who knows the ins and outs of evolutionary theory, should have no problem getting the relevant literature on these matters. Or could it be that you have spent your whole miserable time reading ID websites and books and you actually have no idea whatsoever of what you're talking about?Pedronoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-49087510939909390312012-11-21T03:53:34.553-05:002012-11-21T03:53:34.553-05:00Hei, Laurence, maybe you could add those "My ...Hei, Laurence, maybe you could add those "My Posts on Michael Behe" as an entry on the "Themes" section of your blog. In fact, you could expand that section substantially; it's very useful for searching for blog entries on specific themes and topics.Pedronoreply@blogger.com