Is philosophy a waste of time?

John Wilkins tries to show that philosophy is not a waste of time. He describes philosophers who are anti-realists and wonders whether genes actually exist.

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Intelligent Design is Stupid: Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Another stupid "prediction" by Intelligent Design Creationists

The IDiots are claiming to have "predicted" something that's been known for thirty years.

Let's start by reviewing some basic facts about codons.

Look at the standard genetic code (right). Notice that for some amino acids there are several codons. For example, There are four different codons for alanine (A): GCT (GCU), GCC, GCA, and GCG. These are called "synonymous" codons.

A lot of mutations in coding regions will change one codon into another without changing the amino acid encoded by the mRNA. These are presumably neutral mutations, since they occur frequently in populations and in comparisons between species. What this means is that it mostly doesn't matter which codons are being used.

David Klinghoffer recognizes the problems with authorities and quote mining

We all know the drill by now. Intelligent design Creationists attempt to discredit evolution and science by pointing out what they see as flaws in basic theory. They also spend a considerable amount of time attempting to discredit individual scientists using guilt by association or direct character assaults.

One of their favorite tricks is to lift quotations out of context and present them in a way that makes it look like famous scientists are supporting Intelligent Design Creationism—or, at least, supporting the idea that evolution is flawed.

The tactic is so widespread and despicable that it led to formation of The Quote Mine Project
Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines. That project ran out of steam about eight years ago because the authors just couldn't keep up with all the misinformation coming out of books, lectures, and articles from leading members of the Discovery Institute.

Stephen Meyer is a expert at this. Here are a couple of examples from his book Darwin's Doubt (2013).

Understanding Michael Behe

Michael Behe has tried to explain where I'm going wrong and why evolution is highly improbable [Guide of the Perplexed: A Quick Reprise of The Edge of Evolution]. He lists a number of bullet points that are supposed to explain his argument. Let's look at each one ...

• If the development of some particular adaptive biochemical feature requires more than one specific mutation to an organism's genome, and if the intermediate mutations are deleterious (and to a lesser extent even if they are neutral), then the probability of the multiple mutations randomly arising in a population and co-existing in a single individual so as to confer the adaptation will be many orders of magnitude less than for cases in which a single mutation is required.

This is correct. The probability of any single mutation occurring is equal to the mutation rare, which is about 10^-10. The probability of an additional specific mutation occurring is also 10^-10. The combined probability of any two specific mutations occurring is 10^-20.

Does this video have anything to do with the scientific evidence for Intelligent Design Creationism?

In spite of what they say, the Intelligent Design Creationist movement is primarily an anti-science, anti-evolution movement. Something like 99% of their efforts and activities are directed toward discrediting scientists and science. The 1% of their effort devoted to promoting scientific evidence for creationism has been a spectacular failure.

Here's a new video produced by John G. West. In case you don't know who John G. West is, here's what Wikipedia [John G. West] says about him ...

John G. West is a Senior Fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute (DI), and Associate Director and Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs of its Center for Science and Culture (CSC), which serves as the main hub of the Intelligent design movement.

The video was posted to YouTube on Aug. 14, 2014 and it is copyrighted by the Discovery Institute. I learned about the video from a post on Evolution News & Views (sic) [Coming to Grips with the Truth About Social Darwinism].

The video has nothing to do with evolution and evolutionary theory but IDiots believe that it does. That's, of course, why we call them IDiots.

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John Wilkins discusses the "Demarcation Problem"

One of the most fascinating things about philosophy is the fact that philosophers still can't agree on the major issues even after debating them for hundreds of years. For example, they still can't, as a discipline, agree on whether there are good arguments for the existence of gods. Many universities have theologians who masquerade as philosophers and publish in philosophy journals.

Philosophers are still discussing the mind-body problem. In other words, there actually are legitimate philosophers who call themselves dualists and think that the mind is something more than the workings of matter. Some philosophers think there are moral absolutes while others are ethical relativists and some are something else. Apparently, several hundred years of debate hasn't resolved this issue either.

Recently (last century) the discipline of philosophy has spun off a subdiscipline known as the "History and Philosophy of Science." This is now a separate department in many universities.

Student debt in Canada

I got curious about student debt when I saw a YouTube presentation about the "squeeze generation." The point of the talk was to explain how difficult life is for the under 45 group compared to their baby boomer parents.

The video repeated the common claim that average student debt was about $23,000. I've always been puzzled by this claim since most of my friends were able to help their children get a university education just as our parents helped us. Most of our children were able to graduate from university (undergraduate degree) with no debt.

If about half the graduating class got help from their parents, as we did, then the average debt of those students with debt must be about $46,000 and that's unreasonable.

God's Not Dead

I was a little bored yesterday so I watched God's Not Dead.

There's good news and bad news.

The bad news is that I wasted almost two hours.

The good news is that if this is the best Christians can do then rational people are not threatened. On the other hand, unbalanced people—like the Christians in this mover—can be unpredictable, so maybe we should be worried.

The most repulsive scene is when a Christian pastor tries to force a dying atheist (car accident) to accept Jesus. The second most repulsive scene is when the hero's Christian girl friend leaves him because he wants to stand up for his faith. If those people are typical Christians then it's no wonder that people are abandoning Christianity.

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CCC's and the edge of evolution

Let me say, right from the beginning, that Michael Behe's book The Edge of Evolution is very interesting and provocative. Many of my colleagues think that Behe's main argument can be easily dismissed as the work of an uninformed IDiot who is blinded by his religion. There's some truth in that, but only a little.

The main thesis of the book is that there are some combinations of mutations that could theoretically be beyond the reach of evolution during the 3 billion years that life has evolved on Earth. Behe refers to this combination as a double CCC (10⁴⁰). It's his estimate of the probability of a particular combination of four specific mutations arising by chance. Since we know that such combinations have arisen, Behe concludes that god(s) must have been involved.

There are many ways of exploring Behe's calculations in order to see if he has a point. The first problem is that the meaning of his conclusion is very unclear. Let's think about it this way ...

Flunking the Behe challenge!

Apparently I flunked the Behe challenge [Laurence Moran's Sandwalk Evolves Chloroquine Resistance]. Let's review what happened.

In his book, The Edge of Evolution, Michael Behe calculated the odds of a malaria parasite developing resistance to chlorquine by assuming that two separate mutations were necessary. Here's what he said on page 57 ...

How much more difficult is it for malaria to develop resistance to chloroquine than to some other drugs? We can get a good handle on the answer by reversing the logic and counting up the number of malarial cells needed to find one that is immune to the drug. For instance, in the case of atovaquone, a clinical study showed that about one in a trillion cells had spontaneous resistance. In another experiment, it was shown that a single amino acid change at position number 268 in a single protein, was enough to make P. falciparum resistant to the drug. Se we can deduce that the odds of getting that single mutation are roughly one in a trillion.

What do biologists know about human races?

The debate over the existence of human races has heated up recently with the publication of a book by science writer Nicholas Wade. The book is ridiculous, by all accounts (I haven't read it). In fact, it is so wrong that a group of geneticists have written an open letter refuting the claims [see Geneticists decry book on race and evolution].

There are several aspects of this controversy that interest me greatly. One of them has to do with the reputation of science writers. Nicholas Wade was a science writer for Nature (1967-1971), Science (1972-1982), and the New York Times (1982-2012). I've often heard heard him being referred to as one of the best science writers, particularly by other science writers. That's an opinion that I've never shared and I'm glad to see him get his comeuppance.

Science writers aren't doing so well these days.

Who should speak on a university campus?

Micheal Behe came to Toronto a few years ago and gave three talks on the campus of the University of Toronto. One of them was in the big lecture hall in my building (Medical Science Building). I went to all three lectures and enjoyed them immensely even though I disagreed with what he was saying [Michael Behe in Toronto: "What Are the Limits of Darwinism?"] [Michael Behe in Toronto: "Evidence of Design from Biology" ]. It was fun meeting him again and talking to him about his views. You can learn a lot about what people think by attending a lecture and seeing how they respond to questions and debate.

That's what a university is all about. I also greatly enjoyed a lecture by William Dembski a few years ago. I got to meet him and I got to ask a question at his lecture. It was a very valuable experience. Over the years I've heard several creationists speak on my campus, even Hugh Ross. Attending those lectures has put me in touch with many creationist sympathizers in my area and I've formed a number of friendships. Some of them read my blog.

What did Vincent Torley say on Uncommon Descent?

Vincent Joseph Torley (vjtorley) has several degrees listed on his website. Quoting ...

1. Bachelor of Science, completed in 1981, at the Australian National University, Canberra. Major: Pure Mathematics. Other subjects studied: Physics (2 years), Chemistry (2 years), Geology (1 year) and Science German (1 year).
2. Bachelor of Arts, completed in 1986, at the Australian National University, Canberra. Majors: Philosophy and Computing Science.
3. Bachelor of Economics, completed in 1987, at the Australian National University, Canberra. Majors: Economics and Accounting. Other subjects studied: Statistics (2 years).
4. Master of Arts in Philosophy, completed in 1994, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Thesis topic: Laws of Nature (Scientific Laws). Grade: 2A.
5. Ph.D. in philosophy, which I received in August 2007 from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Thesis topic: The Anatomy of a Minimal Mind.

.... end quote.

He hasn't studied much biology and his undergraduate science degree, obtained 26 years ago, was a major in pure mathematics.

That hasn't prevented him from writing extensively about biology and evolution. His latest contribution is a critique of Keith Blanchard's article on Why you should stop believing in evolution: You don't believe in it — you either understand it or you don't. That article has attracted attention from evolution supporters who think he got some things wrong [see Glenn Bransch's Five Quibbles for Blanchard]. I agree with them. Blanchard does not present the best case for evolution and he seems to lack a deep understanding of evolution.

Vince Torley's article is worth reading because it illustrates some of the confusions in the minds of IDiots as they struggle to catch up with 21st century biology [see Why Keith Blanchard really doesn’t understand evolution]. However, that's not the point I want to make today. Instead, I want to quote a paragraph from near the end of Vincent Torley's article ....

I could go on, but I’d like to conclude this article with a final observation: Keith Blanchard doesn’t have a science degree. His LinkedIn profile lists him as having a two year tech degree in Electronic Technology, which he obtained in 1975. Let us freely grant that the man’s skill set looks quite impressive. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a man without a science degree has no place writing an article on evolution in a popular online magazine like The Week. It’s simply presumptuous.

I wonder if there are any prominent Intelligent Design Creationists who don't have real science degrees?

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Refugee camps in Canada (1775-1780)

I love watching "Who Do You Think You Are." The latest episode features Rachel McAdams and her sister Kayleen who search for their Canadian ancestors. They discover a family who settled on the shores of Lake Champlain in the mid-1700s and got caught up in the Revolutionary War. Their ancestors supported the government (Great Britain) against the revolutionaries and when General Burgoyne's invasion from Canada was stopped at the Battles of Saratoga (1777) the loyalists had to flee to Canada with the retreating army.

The McAdams ancestors spent a year or so at a refugee camp near St. Johns in Quebec, near the American border. The sisters visit the site during the show. It looks like one of the young sons of their ancestors died during the stay in the refugee camp—probably because the conditions were pretty horrible.

One of my ancestral families was Isaac Montras and his wife Tamar Betts. They had a farm near Saratoga and they supported the British side during the revolution. They also had to leave their farm and flee to Canada after the Battles of Saragota. They were settled at another refugee camp in Machiche, Quebec where they stayed for a year before moving on to settle in Nova Scotia.

Tens of thousands of United Empire Loyalists came to Canada after the Thirteen Colonies gained their independence from Great Britain. Nobody knows how many of the residents of the Thirteen Colonies remained loyal to the government in Great Britain but it may have been as much as one-third of the total population. Only a small percentage of them left after the war was over.

You can watch a clip from "Who Do You Think You Are" featuring the McAdams sisters at: Rachel McAdams Learns Her Ancestors' Loyalties. If you want to watch an entire show, I recommend the British version that's been around for ten seasons. Here's one on J.K. Rowling.

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