Finally we hear the full story about Dembski’s position on Common Descent
For the record: I personally don’t believe in common descent though I think there are lines of evidence that suggest considerable evolutionary change. At the same time, there are lines of evidence that suggest considerable discontinuity among organisms. Check out chapter 5 of my forthcoming book with Jonathan Wells titled THE DESIGN OF LIFE (publication date keeps being delayed, but I think it’ll be out in November).
Wells and Dembski together… Marvelous… I am sure the book will be a hit amongst creationists and will, once again, remain totally irrelevant to science and likely to be detrimental to religious faith. But at least now we know that Dembski does reject much of the evidence supporting common descent. I wonder if he is familiar with St Augustine?
As to “Design of Life”, isn’t this the follow-up to Pandas and People, found to be unconstitutional by the Dover court?
As a side note, does the following statement strike anyone as showing a compassion one would hope to associate with a Christian?
I can’t say I feel sorry for these atheistic scientists in agreeing to interview for EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED. When the BBC interviewed me for their Horizon documentary on ID (Horizon = the UK version of PBS Nova), they gave the ID side no warning that the program would be titled A WAR ON SCIENCE (I wouldn’t have agreed to be interviewed had I known that was going to be its title). What goes around comes around.
Of course, in this case, the scientists were told about a title which later was changed. Nevertheless, I thank Bill for his frank statements.
Even the faithful at UcD seem to be disappointed by Dembski
Others realize how ‘Expelled’ exposes the true nature of ID
Actually, you will find God under his different aliases (“God”, “the lord”, “Jesus”, “holy spirit”) nearly twice as often as the term “designer” when you search UD via google.
“Pandas and People, found to be unconstitutional by the Dover court”
Now, that’s some news! I wonder what it means for a book to be … unconstitutional ;-)
Para, It means that the ideas in such a book affect a given religious worldview, meaninly, naturalism and affiliates.
Darwinist PvM said:
It depends on which religious faith you have in mind. If you are talking about the religious faith called “Darwinism”, then, yes, any book that shows the scientific problems of the magical creative powers of natural selection is bound to be “detrimental to religious faith” (Darwinian religious faith).
Yes, the only way to suppress contrary scientific views is not by showing that such a view has no evidence, but to use the Law to stifle it. Way to go, Darwinists!
Evolution must be the only “scientific” theory that needs the courts to be defended.
As any rational mind should do, since there is no evidence for such.
I am sure he has. Remember that in your citation of his words I bolded the word “uninformed”. Remember that. St Augustine is not saying that we should not use good arguments against nonsensical theories or mindsets. He is saying that we should not use wrong evidence against anything, or that will affect the way the unbeliever sees the faith. If Augustine were alive today, he would endorse the ID view,and be contrary to the notion that living forms are the result of an impersonal natural force. By the way, PvM, since you are a “Christian” (so you say), do you think that living forms are the result of a Mind or the result of the impersonal forces of nature?
You can’t serve two masters at the same time.
I’m impressed that Dembski “can’t say I feel sorry for these atheistic scientists” when the producers of EXPELLED lied to them about the name of the program, the purpose of the interview, and their credentials…because he didn’t know the name of the Horizon program. Did the Horizon team *lie* to Dembski? Did they misrepresent his views? Did he complain to the BBC about it? And even if the Horizon team was wrong, why does that excuse an even greater abuse of trust by another group of journalists?
Reality check, the legal issue at hand in Dover was (in part) the scientific status of your “contrary view.” The decision was that the “contrary view” isn’t science at all but is instead a shameless attempt to shoehorn religious teaching into public schools. You might not like the decision, but I don’t see it being appealed, and I don’t see any other school districts promulgating the same policies in order to get a better result from a different judge. Why is that? Does the Darwinian Conspiracy extend to control of all the hundreds of right-wing christian judges appointed by Bush in the last seven years? Or maybe your “contrary view” just hasn’t done any of the work that would be necessary to rightfully call itself science, and most anyone who knows the law and the science involved accepts that that’s the case.
I’m sure once your intellectual bedfellows the HIV denialists start trying to replace public school science teaching on that subject with christian apologetics thinly disguised as science, immunology will also need the courts to defend it.
Has anyone else noticed that Mats never addresses any of the responses to his comments, and never actually makes any arguments of his own, but just comes in and makes the exact same unsupported assertions (“no evidence for _____”) day after day after day?
Mats, what is the scientific theory of intelligent design? Why do ID proponents constantly refer to it, but can never refer us to it?
“Mats, what is the scientific theory of intelligent design? Why do ID proponents constantly refer to it, but can never refer us to it?”
Yes, what exactly is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, Mats?
(sound of crickets chirping)
Mats?
Hello?
Here we go again …
Mats, we’ve already examined this question in detail. You obviously didn’t read my comment in reply to the last time you called evolutionary theory a religion. Or, if you did, you have chosen not to address my response. Is this, perhaps, because you have no answer to the points I raised?
Repeating yourself does not make what you say any closer to the truth than it was the last time you said it.
That said, here’s where you’re wrong: (1) The new Dembski / Wells book will have no impact on real science. (2) Naturalism is not a religious position.
Mats, you call PvM a “Darwinist”, so I’m obviously in good company. However, I still have absolutely no idea what you mean by the term. I ask you for the second time: please define what you mean by “Darwinist”.
ROFL. You are priceless. I wish I could be that funny, but I only ever remember really bad jokes.
Right, NS has “scientific problems” with its “magical creative process”. Except that, like, everyone who has studied evolution has no problem with the capability of NS to generate new species.
Hey, when are you going to examine the “scientific problems” with the “magical creative process” expounded by creationists? Cos, y’know, it’s only fair to give both “sides” the same treatment, right?
Yay, a deliberate misrepresentation! I knew there’d be one in your post somewhere!
Of course, you know that PvM was referring to the teaching of ID in science class. ID is religion-based because it ignores all the principles of good science. MET is good science, because it is based on a huge body of evidence and logical deductions made from that evidence. Therefore, teaching ID as if it were science is just plain lying. It is unconstitutional because it favours one religious viewpoint above all others. OTOH, MET is independet of religion because it is based on evidence.
It doesn’t. Biological research is not the least bit threatened by ID or any other form of creationism. What is threatened is the education of thousands of youngsters across the US. If they are presented with lies (i.e. ID) in science class instead of being taught the fundamentals of biology (which includes MET), they will leave high-school with an ignorant and confused view of biological science.
You are a prime example of what happens when someone has been taught nonsense instead of science. You wallow in ignorance but cannot acknowledge it. You cannot accept criticism of the position you have adopted. You flounder around trying to support the position you have adopted without understanding why your arguments are so laughably weak. You block out anything that could contradict the model of the world you have built in your head.
Prove me wrong, Mats. Go and learn some actual biology. But from scientists, not from creationist liars.
When PvM points out that Dembski rejects the evidence for common descent:
There is bucket-loads of evidence. Go and read Dr. Theobald’s essay summarising it. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Then, if you can make some reasoned and cogent arguments against that evidence, I will listen to you. But inform yourself what the evidence actually is before you form an opinion about it.
Millions of scientists accept MET based on its firm foundation of evidence. Maybe the evidence is convincing, huh?
Yes, and in rejecting the evidence for common descent, Dembski is opening his faith to ridicule.
No, he would not.
If Augustine were to remain true to his professed belief, he would withhold judgement until he was able to review the evidence. I am sure that he would find the evidence as convincing as I do. He would probably end up adopting a position rather akin to some of the theistic evolutionists, i.e. that evolution happened through natural selection etc., but that NS was a part of God’s plan from day 1.
If God invented electromagnetism and gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces, why couldn’t he also invent natural selection?
What, you question his faith because you disagree over the science? If anything, I would say that PvM’s faith is stronger than that of someone who needs to shore it up with fake evidence and illogical arguments like Dembski.
In what way is this question relevant to anything? What makes you think the forces of nature (such as NS) are impersonal?
What does this have to do with anything? Serving masters has nothing to do with accepting or rejecting a body of evidence.
PvM:
Don’t forget that Dembski chooses his words very carefully. If he appears to contradict himself he is very aware of it and prepared to spin his way out of it if necessary. Recall that Dembski said that Carl Woese rejected common descent, despite being fully aware that Woese only rejects a single ancestor for all prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Recently Dembski added that he didn’t think that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. That does not rule out the “biological continuity, but not evolutionary mechanism” that is Behe’s apparent position. If Dembski truly thought that Behe was wrong, he’d have nothing to lose by challenging him directly. OTOH, if he thought Wells, Nelson, etc. (those who seem to think that humans and other ape lineages are indeed products of separate abiogenesis events) were wrong, he’d probably not challenge them, as that could risk the political support of rank and file Biblical literalists.
Can I be pedantic and point out that WD is wrong in characterising Horizon as the British version of Nova?
The truth is actually the reverse - Nova (launched 1974) is the US version of Horizon (launched 1964). Nova episodes are often Horizon episodes revoiced in US English.
As ben said, evolutionary theory hasn’t gone to the courts to defend itself as science. What has happened is that parents have had to take school boards to court to defend their right to have their children taught good science without religious extremists bollocksing up their education. Meanwhile, a group of Christian schools are suing the University of California to have Bob Jones University’s Young Earth creationist textbook accepted as a worthy text for biology intakes. So, actually Mats, you have it completely the wrong way around. It’s the creationists who try to force their way into scientific institutions by means of legal challenges.
Also, evolution is far from the only scientific theory that has been challenged in court. In Australia we have had a man sentenced today to 9 years jail for knowingly infecting women with HIV. The defence tried to argue the standard HIV denial line, and naturally this meant that virologists and infectious disease specialists had to present their case in court. There have been many other challenges to mainstream science in law courts, from fingerprinting technology to DNA evidence to the “twinkie” defence.
If life on earth has originated more than once, then common descent for all species would not be true.
So Dembski sees evidence against common descent, so what? That doesn’t mean he believes a god person came here and sculpted each species out of mud.
Why isn’t is possible that life on earth originated more than once? According to my own scientific philosophy (neo-vitalism), life would be expected to originate many times.
Have you really examined the evidence for and against common descent?
Yes, obviously there are great similarities between many species and many seem to have evolved from each other. But Dembski is not saying there are no common ancestors or denying that some species appear to have evolved from others.
Do you have conclusive evidence that life on earth originated only once? Or is it just that you are so sure the origin of life must be extremely improbable, and therefore could not happen more than once? It is only according to materialist philosophy that the origin of life is extremely improbable. A living universe would be expected to produce life.
(There is my theory and one of my main predictions, for anyone who says I have none. Although I have said it many times already.)
realpc:
The ID scammers like to bait-and-switch between a caricature of CD whereby every organism is descended from a single cell (presumably excluding horizontal transfer), and the scientific definition, which does not rule out several independent abiogenesis events in the Precambrian (e.g. Woese’s position, and one that Darwin himself made sure not to rule out). No serious scientists, and judging by their routine use of weasel words like “common design,” not even ID activists, specifically deny that humans and other apes at the very least share a line of common ancestors, whether or not they honestly think that evolution (usually caricaturized as “Darwinism” or “naturalistic evolution”) is the proximate cause of species change. They can’t, because they know that there is no evidence whatsoever to support independent abiogenesis for such similar lineages. But with a few exceptions like Behe, they refuse to commit to accepting CD per the scientific definition for fear of alienating their Biblical literalist audience.
Ironically, if they had such evidence, they would have a much less legally risky alternative to teach in public schools. They could teach what happened, when, and how, and show all the research they do to support it. There would be no need to mention design or misrepresent evolution with a phony “critical analysis.” But they don’t have the evidence and they know it.
realpc– As you must know, abiogenesis is not well understood. There is nothing in our current knowledge which would indicate that life did not begin on earth many times.
HOWEVER, the genetic code appears to be universal. Since no one has found any particular reason why the genetic code should be the way it is– why any particular triplet of DNA bases should code for the particular amino acid it does (why, for instance, three adenine bases in a row should code for lysine instead of any other amino acid)– the conclusion scientists have drawn is that all known organisms inherited their genetic code from a common ancestor.
If you can come up with a plausible, TESTABLE hypothesis why the genetic code is the way it is, you will be showered with opportunities to explain it– probably including a gala event in Stockholm. In the mean time, the best hypothesis science has is that the genetic code was put together through a random process by some long-ago ancestor and then passed down to the ancestor’s heirs– who now include all of us.
If you don’t like that conclusion, that’s your perogative. But until somebody comes up with a TESTABLE alternative, it’s the best explanation we’ve got.
We do have a decent idea what that would be. First of all the context of Pim’s quote is in a work where Augustine argues against a literal interpretation of Genesis. Second, we have the example of B.B. Warfield. Warfield is acknowledged as the father of the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy. In my Inerrancy FAQ for soc.religion.christian in 1989 I noted that Warfield’s doctrine is merely a restatement of Augustine on Scripture. Even so, Warfield found theistic evolution as compatible with an inerrant Bible. So does Billy Graham. With respect to Dr. Graham, the Creationist Museum in Kentucky lies about him and portrays him as a YEC when he clearly is not.
In closing, I find it ironic that Dembski sides with Moonie Wells over Catholic Behe and Evangelical Collins. Who is serving two masters here?
Mats really is a terrible troll. He comes in, makes a driveby posting containing the most obvious cliched creationist canards, his complaints get torn to shreds, but he never follows anything up.
Personally I wonder if Mats is not a creationist at all, but just someone who knows what buttons to push to provoke the regulars.
Realpc -
But actually Dembski is quoted above as saying…
I left the weasel words in. However, he clearly says that he does NOT believe in common descent. For whatever that’s worth.
The only appropriate response to this is “BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA”! However, if you remove the word “scientific” the statement becomes quite reasonable.
Of course not, but the reasonable interpretation of all the evidence available about all living things to date is that the life that is now on earth shares common ancestry.
This statement (which is actually, in fairness, a strawman put into the mouths of otheres) is logically and mathematically incorrect on a number of levels.
Improbable things can happen more than once. You meant to make reference to the expected frequency of an improbable or infrequent event. There is a world of difference between “cannot” and “would not be expected to”.
The conditional probability that life originated on earth at least once, given what we can observe today, is “1”, or “100%” if you prefer percent notation.
The a priori probability that life would emerge, as viewed from some hypothetical non-deterministic branching point before the origin of life, is completely unknown. It is a meaningless thing to talk about.
It is only your meaningless strawman that refers to “materialist philosophy” and makes mathematically and logically meaningless statements about “the probability of life”.
By common English usage, part of the universe (the biomass on earth) can be seen to be living, much of it can be seen not to be living (the rest of the earth, for example, or the sun or the moon), and we don’t know whether there is life elsewhere in the universe or not.
It would seem that your “philosophy” consists of using common English words in an eccentric manner.
How is this any different from the ID claim of ‘we can’t explain this, therefore God did it’?
Mats and realpc are perfect examples of how the IDers’ level of “debate” has declined since the Dover ruling, all the way down to the grade-school level. All of their “scientific” arguments have been discredited, the mainstream media are onto them, they were never able to disguise the narrow, ignorant religion that underlay their motives, and now they’re reduced to randomly sniping with stale old talking-points and running away. These losers are probably congratulating themselves just for getting our attention and allowing them to pretend they’re arguing with real scientists.
The fact that only this sort of overgrown child shows up here to “defend” ID only proves how cowardly and self-isolated the IDers really are.
“Venus Mousetrap”
WHAT????????
This is a bizarre nonsequitor even by creationist standards.
To reiterate and paraphrase what was actually said -
1) We don’t know exactly how life began. There are a lot of other things we don’t know.
2) We do have strong evidence that the life that now exists on earth (that has ever been studied) shares common ancestry at some level - the genetic code, yes, but much more than that.
Can you please explain how you came to the odd conclusion that these two statements are somehow equivalent to what you said?
Lucky for me that I’m not a creationist, then. :) My question was genuine (although, apparently incredibly stupid). What I meant is that both positions look like arguments from ignorance. What makes concluding common ancestry based upon an inability to explain the universalness of DNA, different from concluding god did it based on an ability to explain, well, anything?
First, I have asked Mats many times to present some hypotheses, some predictions and some evidence and he has not done so. I suggest that we just keep asking him the same questions and not respond to anything else he cares to write until he does so.
Second, I asked realpc to make some predictions that were different from those made by MET. His response here is that “neo-vitalism” predicts that life is likely to arise, presumably this means that life was likely to arise more than once on earth. Sorry, that is in no way different from what is predicted by MET. MET would certainly allow for life to arise more than once on earth and in many other environments as well. As another poster pointed out, in order to make predictions you need to determine the probabilities associated with the two theories and then examine the evidence to see which is closer to reality. In the case of earth, all extant life forms are demonstrably derived from a single common ancestor. There is plenty of evidence for this in the details of cell structure, DNA replication machinery, transcription machinery, the genetic code, translation machinery, metabolic pathways and many other features that are known in great detail. It is not the mere superficial similarities between these features that allow us to reach this conclusion, but the vast number of minute details that can only be explained reasonably by historical contingency. However, this evidence cannot be interpreted as indicating a single origin of life, only a single common ancestor for all surviving life forms. So once again, MET can account for all of the observations adequately and realpc cannot distinguish between the two possibilities. As for life elsewhere in the universe, if realpc has some evidence that would be nice. However, once again, MET can easily account for the origin of life just about anywhere. At this time all of the avaliable evidence indicates that life is rare, in fact so rare that we have not detected any anywhere else. So get out there realpc, join SETI and find some evidence. It still won’t prove MET wrong, but at least you’ll finally have some evidence for the “living universe”.
Third, Dembski is a weasel. When he tries to talk out of both sides of his mouth we need to pin him dowwn precisely. What common descent exactly does he believe in? How much change does he believe in? Are humans descended from other primates or not? Are cetaceans descended from artiodactyls or not? What is the evidence on which you base these conclusions? Remember, he has admitted that the plagarized error argument is persuasive. All we need to do is to get him in front of a heterogenoous audience where he can’t just pick the one answer he knows everyone present wants to hear.
I meant ‘inability’, by the way. Curse those tiny prefixes.
Venus,
There is vast difference between the argument from ignorance and the conclusion that all extant life forms on earth are descended from a single common ancestor. The first argument is based on lack of knowldege, the second is based on the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of years of study in many different disciplines.
Basically the argument goes like this: are there arbitrary features shared in common between life forms? If so, then the organisms that possess them most likely shared a common ancestor. The conclusion is based on the fact that many other features are theoretically possible and the one that is observed is only arbitrary. But, once that feature has evolved, it might be extremely difficult to make changes that would be viable, hence all descendants would share the feature and it would be extremely unlikely to arise multiple times by chance.
For example, the genetice code, developmental pathways such as those regulated by hox genes, metabolic pathways such as glycolysis, details of DNA sequence, replication, transcription and translation, etc. Each of these process has been studied in exquisite detail. In each case, there are arbitrary features that are best explained as the result of historical contingency and common ancestry. These features have played a critical role in reconstructng the tree of life. Taken together, what they reveal is that all extant life forms were derived from a single common ancestor. There are no major discontinuities in the tree of life. It could have been otherwise, but it just wasn’t.
I have taken your question seriously and have taken the time to respond to it in detail because I believe that you are sincere in your questioning. If that is the case, I hope that I have been of some help. Others are of course free to add to my comments. If that is not the case, then perhaps others may learn something anyway.
Yes, too true. The creos need better trolls. These ones are boring.
They both just repeat the same muddled, wrong fallacies over and over. Evolution is a religion. Huh, a religion that puts the supernatural out of bounds right off the bat but instead only considers objective evidence. Really this is the exact oposite of religion, proof versus faith.
After a few repetitions, I just skip over them most of the time. Their points were answered, answered again, and after a while it isn’t worth the time anymore. They clearly have absolutely no interest in learning how to think or learning some biology.
Just chopping at science with the same rusty, blunt, old axe.
Sadly no, he is an absolutely typical creationist in every way.
There is a big difference between Arguments from Ignorance and Admitting Ignorance.
Science doesn’t know everything. Duh!!! This is good. If science knew everything we would all be out of jobs and going to law school or something.
We understand evolution quite well, abiogenesis not very well. It is inherently hard to study something that happened once 3.6 billion years ago whereas evolution is ongoing around us everyday.
So we have a few theories and some data. The history of science is that eventually it figures out what it looks at. We might know more about abiogenesis in a few decades. Or a few centuries when we sample primordial soup around some other planet.
Rather than having a few 4,000 year old bronze age myths to explain everything, we have an ever receding frontier. This is why we no longer live in caves, watch half our children die before 5, and keep hoping Apollo doesn’t get tired of dragging the sun across the sky in a chariot every day. Deal with it.
What theories? There are no theories. Just ask Mats what the theory of ID is–he won’t answer the question. Whatever ID does consist of, it does not contain anything that even approaches a properly-stated scientific theory. There’s a reason for this.
But you see, it’s the Evil Darwinian Conspiracy. See, not only does the Evolutionist Orthodoxy prohibit ID from publishing any papers, it prohibits them from even submitting any. It prohibits them from doing any research upon which a peer-reviewed paper could be based. In fact, the Conspiracy is so pervasive that it somehow prevents the IDiots of the world from ever discussing, anywhere, even in the most hypothetical terms, what research they might possibly do if they were allowed to. That’s why their most substantial output to date has been a poorly-executed Flash animation superimposing squeaky voices and farting noises over distorted pictures of Judge Jones.
If the “Evolutionist Orthodoxy” prohibits the IDers “from doing any research upon which a peer-reviewed paper could be based,” then surely the IDers have drawers full of grant proposals which they tried and tried and TRIED to get funded (ironically, while the YERers could raise $27 million for a Creation Museum.)
So all the IDers need to do to prove they’re really interested in science is to publish those rejected grant proposals, right?
Funny how they haven’t thought to do that, isn’t it?
If in a reply I need to use the word “ID theory” I make sure to use quotes. It wasn’t always like that. Early on I did occasionally get trapped into using their language. But since being convinced that ID is specifically crafted to bait critics into arguing “on their turf,” I have made sure to avoid the semantic traps. Similarly, I never argue against the existence of a designer, or whether biological systems are designed. But I ask the IDers to state what the designer did, when and how. Most of them just ignore the questions and look for others to bait. Compared to me, most of the “EDC” gives the ID activists just what they want.
If so, I should have recieved some replies to this request. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing but silence. Not even a peep from an “evolutionist” who could have alerted me to an old proposal that the IDer submitter might no longer support.
Hoary,
Good point. If the money was there, why did they choose to build the museum first without doing any research? Why not do the research, publish it in their own journals, then build the museum? Maybe they really do think that “evolutionists” decided on the answer and built the museums first without any evidence. If so, then their ignorance of science is equaled only by thier ignorance of history and they should really visit those museums. The cry of discrimination wears pretty thin when tactics such as these are employed.
David,
I can understand, if not condone, YEC groups’ not submitting proposals or doing R&D, because they occasionally admit that the Bible supersedes any evidence. It’s the IDers who show their true colors by refusing to do research. And refuse to even state what the designer did, when, and how - or if they do state it, refuse to debate their internal differences. YEC leaders’ commitment to the Bible might comparmentalize them into actually believing some alternate biological history, so they see no need for any more evidence. In the case of “don’t ask, don’t tell” IDers the simplest explanation is that they privately know that we’re right.
Frank J,
Agreed. I don’t blame them in the least for that. I have even been quite discouraged with granting agencies from time to time.
However, if that is indeed the case, then they all absolutely know, (or at least have no excuse for not knowing), that creationism and ID are religion and not science. They should be happy to have the freedom to present their views in their tax-free churches. They should not lie to everyone trying to get the government to endorse their religious views in public schools. They should realize that if they are successful, that muslims will soon be doing the exact same thing, and then buddists, hindus, etc.
The point is that, if the money is there already and controlled by those sympathetic to their cause, they are the ones who are choosing not to do science. If they can’t even be bothered to come up with a testable hypothesis, why try to claim otherwise? This is not discrimination, this is their choice. Who can they blame for their own behavior? Maybe they can blame the same people who made them lie in Dover.
They already have religious freedom. They are already free to beleive anything they want. They are already free to try to convince others that they are right. They are already free to believe anything in the absence of evidence. I guess not enough people are going to church for some reason.
Others have addressed this post, but I should also like to wade in with my twopenn’orth:
You are conflating ID as a concept being pushed into science class with ID as a hypothesis being assessed by the scinetific community.
ID was prohibited from being taught in science class because it is (a) religious and (b) not science.
ID is rejected by the scientific community because it makes no positive testable claims; ID “theory” comprises nothing more than ill-informed attacks on science, arguments from ignorance and arguments from personal incredulity; and pro-ID arguments are negative eliminative ones that consider only two possible hypotheses (i.e. they are structured thus: “this structure we observe is not explained by evolutionary theory because of x or y or z, therefore design”).
As it happens, there is no evidence that supports ID in favour of MET. On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence that supports the opposite: ID is not intelligent design, but Incompetent Design.
Additionally, the arguments made in favour of ID actually work better if one considers the “mutliple-designers” hypothesis of ID (MDID). This is still no competitor for MET, but it actually fits more logically with the arguments made in favour of ID. However, we note that none of the main proponents of ID espouses MDID. The only credible explanation for this is that, whatever they claim to the contrary, they have a specific, individual designer in mind.
But I also notice that you did not claim that there is evidence for ID. What is your personal opinion here? Do you consider that there is evidence that supports ID? Or do you consider it merely a useful philosophical or political tool?
What the hell is that supposed to mean??
What “official” origins theory? This is wrong for several reasons, of which the two main ones are:
(1) MET is changing; it is always adjusted to explain new discoveries and to account for new data. All scientific theories do this. A part of science is that every explanation is provisional, and could need to be modified at any time in the light of new evidence. This is a core part of how science works. Admittedly, the more tests a theory withstands, the less likely it is to change, and the smaller the changes become, but there can be no fixed, “official” version of MET.
(2) Who has authority to decide what is “official” in science? The ACS? The NIH? The US president (oh, but doesn’t he support ID actually?). The Royal Society? No. None of the above. There is no body, either within the USA or anywhere else in the world, that has the authority or the power to decide what is or is not “official” science. What is or is not science is decided by the scientists themselves, through the process of peer review.
Clearly, such a proposal is nonsensical.
You have outdone yourself on this one, Mats.
Well, actually, for these reasons and others. Let’s see: (1) MET is supported by the preponderance of evidence; (2) No credible competing theory exists; (3) ID is vacuous, since it makes no testable claims, has no explanatory power, and comprises merely eliminative arguments; (4) ID is creationism in a new suit, and therefore fundamentalist religion; (5) MET explains and unifies many disparate observations in biology, and meshes well with other fields of science, such as geology; (6) All of the arguments made in favour of ID are flawed (strawmen, non-sequiturs, arguments from ignorance, arguments from personal incredulity).
No it wouldn’t. It has no content. It has been fairly considered. It has been shredded by scientific review, which is exactly what it deserves. None of the arguments made in favour of ID withstand even casual logical scrutiny or comparison with reality.
Wrong again. Sometimes, Mats, it amazes me how much wrong you manage to fit into one sentence. ID is excluded from the table because it is nonsense. Perhaps if you took the trouble to inform yourself about the reality of the natural world, you would start to see this.
Here’s a repeat of what some others have challenged you to do: formulate a theory of ID, in detail. What is the evidence that supports this view over others? What predictions does it make that can be tested? What possible falsification does it predict for itself? How satisfying are its explanations about, say, how we find so much similar yet subtly different physiology and anatomy across classes and even phyla? Why is it that all vertebrates seem to have related genes for globins? Why do we look like chimps or gorillas with less hair? Why are ants and wasps so similar? And yet, why do we see so many different behaviours between ants and wasps? Why are there so many species of beetle? And what about the duck-billed platypus?
I think what PvM meant, Mats, was that the forces of nature, being the result of the creator’s Mind, will do whatever He intended them to do, all by themselves (after all, what’s the point of being omniscient if you have to keep going back and tinkering with what you’ve made?).
Actually, you deny there is any evidence to support MET, which is a major theory of modern science. Yet you have proposed no alternative, and you repeatedly deny what appears so obvious to the millions of biological scientists in the world.
But, all that aside, you did not answer PvM’s question. Why does your version of the Mind require gaps in which to hide?
I guess we’re mostly playing with the trolls now, so here goes:
Clearly nothing ever prevents you from lying, Mats. I guess you’ve not bothered in the least to read the Kitzmiller decision, Panda’s Thumb, Pharyngula, Talkorigins, the Wedge Document, you know, everywhere that ID has been painstakingly shown to be religion and not science.
We’ve noticed, which is why this blog exists, along with the others mentioned above. You apparently are far too retarded to understand any intelligent response that is ever made.
Gee, I wonder why it’s the evolutionists who produce practically all of the evidence? And why the IDists only know how to criticize science?
The “alternative” (by the way, cretin, there are many alternatives in the sense that ID is considered to be “alternative”, to anyone with a modicum of sense) is deemed to be religious for many reasons, but probably most crucially because it has no evidence. As you indicate with every one of your posts.
Complete lie, and of course it has been considered, both in the past and in the present. Even you know that, I think, retard.
Tell me the history, please, Mats. I’d like to know how this occurred, for apparently it has escaped all of the histories of science that I have ever studied (you know, I’ve actually learned, unlike anything you’ve ever done, Mats).
Glen D http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
In the tradition of the internet sport of troll-feeding, I decided to tackle “Bond”. It’s split up into several posts:
Well, “Bond” is a tiresome ineducable idiot, but he channels the usual IDist nonsense, so can stand in for IDiocy as a whole:
Yes, using standard science takes a great deal of faith, I mean, if you’re dumb as a fencepost like “Bond” is. Actually, the scientific method arose partly in order to get around the inconvenience of contrasting beliefs, but the believers in the One True Religion don’t have such problems, nor any knowledge of science.
Yeah, right, like you ever accepted science. Tell your lies elsewhere.
Not that you don’t have faith in science. I’m sure that you must, for it is essentially impossible to have a proper understanding of science and its results, technology, while denying biological science. Hence your acceptance of science is nothing other than a faith that takes over where your other faith ends. We just have a consistent epistemology, something you’d never understand.
Since you guys are unconstrained by the evidence in any of the areas discussed on these forums, why can’t you at least come up with something new, rather than chanting the refrains fed to you by the head idiots?
Most don’t (you’re too dumb even to know that your stupidity is in the majority, apparently), though people who know it recognize this to be the case.
Oh yeah, that’s why paleontologists went off to the predicted strata and found Tiktaalik. Crushing defeat, that was. Do you people even read the twaddle coming from your favorite dolts?
My God, yes. We wouldn’t want for all of the phyla coming into the light at that time being related like evolutionary theory predicts, now would we? I mean, an honest ID theory would predict that animal phyla would simply be fitted for their environments, not slavishly utilizing the same developmental pathways in order to evolve differing morphologies, while evolution predicts the latter. Voila, the Cambrian reveals the results predicted by evolution, and we’re just crushed.
IOW, why do you take the name of an intelligent character as your pseudonym, when you couldn’t think your way out of a pup tent?
Which both genetics and morphology tells us are all related. To deny their evolution would be like denying your relatedness to your father and mother, because some completely unevidenced omnipotent deity could have “designed you” to appear related to your parents.
And they’re all related to each other. Gee, I wonder how that could be?
Glen D http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Continuing my post:
Yeah, and guess what, trilobites evolved more rapidly during the Cambrian. Gee, it looks as though there really was some difference then, almost as if the trilobites had come out of a period of relatively large genetic plasticity. I wonder why those evidences sort of go together? It’s almost as if evolution really happened, by Jove!
And for the idiot who quoted the above but missed what the guy (albeit apparently another idiot) actually wrote, here’s an excerpt:
I wonder why it’s extraordinarily fast? Do you just suppose that the Cambrian is, indeed, an unusual period which yielded evolutionary developments unlike the far more gradual changes which happened both before and since? It’s amazing how stupid creos and IDists are, because they love to trot out the exceptional speed of evolution during the Cambrian, when one can only determine that the Cambrian “explosion” was ‘fast’ because the rest of evolutionary change is so much slower than then.
Lovely, a creationist used as if he were a reasonable source (by the way, Bohlin’s also clearly overdramatizing the Cambrian issue, issue though it is).
Dear pinhead, perhaps you should learn a little about evolution, and not from people who are as dishonest as yourself. The variety in life today is much greater than at the end of the Cambrian. The “variety of phyla” is less, due to extinction, but phyla are a fairly arbitrary category. Furthermore, larger changes in developmental pathways, as are thought to have been important in the Cambrian “explosion”, become difficult to effect evolutionarily once these have become well developed.
IOW, new phyla appear very slowly now, if at all. Big deal! Likely the Kingdoms, and possibly even Domains, were less in the Cambrian than during the Precambrian. It is to be expected, due to well-known evolutionary constraints, that the higher order evolutionary changes will become rare to non-existent over time. So once again the expectations of MET are found, and the IDiots claim that this is evidence against MET.
That the ancestor of humans was present at Cambrian times is a prediction of evolution, Bond, dolt Bond. That fact would be completely unnecessary and thus unpredicted by any kind of “design” theory.
Really? Is that what genetics shows? Remember, real science, unlike ID, considers evidence together, and in fact it was the relatedness of all life known today that was part of the convincing evidence presented by Darwin. Taxonomy implied, but genetics demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt, that chordates developed gradually, at least “gradually” by comparison with any reasonable “design” scenario.
Glen D http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Of course it wouldn’t “have us believe” that. Highly successful phyla might very well cut down on the numbers of phyla. Haven’t you idiots even heard about “survival of the fittest,” or do we have to explain everything as if you were very young children?
No, actually the hard facts of science betrays your complete ignorance of science, for the 10,000th time this year.
First of all, much more is being done with genetics today than with fossils, because there is more evidence about proximal causes to be ferreted out from genes than from fossils. Of course you IDiots don’t consider all of the evidence together, both because you don’t understand the science and because your whole view of the world is disjointed by your beliefs in arbitrary creation.
Secondly, quite radical transmutations are not found only by genetics, but also in the fossil record. Archaeopteryx is a superb example of non-designed flight having evolved from tetrapods. Perhaps you need some study, or even to learn how to read the responses you’ve been given but obviously are unable to comprehend.
What’s your point, that you accept MET below the level of the phyla? Is that it? Then you’re going to have to explain what no IDist or creationist has ever explained, which is why all taxonomic designations above the species level are considered to be arbitrary (one reason why cladistics is so heavily used in evolutionary studies today). That is to say, there is nothing at all that indicates that anything but normal, known evolutionary processes operating at any level, with the species level being special only because of the importance of splitting. That is to say, the evidence shows that the phyla split off from each other during speciation events (though perhaps with rather greater developmental differences than occur in today’s speciation events), and ID is unable to come up with anything to suggest otherwise.
Sorry, the soft-body explanation is important, but I know of no informed scientist who claims that nothing evolutionarily unusual happened near the beginning of the Cambrian.
Yes, and when was that found? Only recently, dolt. We’re well-aware of the problems of the paleontological record, which make a blow-by-blow record unattainable, probably for all time. Much more may be found, we don’t know, but we do know that everything about the Cambrian explosion suggests that Cambrian creatures did evolve, apparently at rates that have rarely, if ever, occurred since then.
By the way, why do we see so many extinct phyla, and the sorts of ancestors predicted by MET, in the Cambrian, buffoon? You’re not telling us why Cambrian phyla were “designed” only to be expended by the “designer” as superfluous. More importantly, you’re actually pointing to the Cambrian ancestors of vertebrates and of humanity existing at that time, paying so much attention to the genuine (and the fake) problems existing before these transitionals arose, that you forget that these are exactly the sorts of transitionals that evolution predicts for vertebrates, for humans. Yes, the record before the Cambrian is problematic, but essentially we have all of the transitional fossils expected from very primitive chordates up to humans (and all other modern chordates) that are predicted by evolutionary theory (considering preservation rates).
You bring up just the kinds of chordates predicted by evolutionary theory existing in the Cambrian, and you claim that the problem is not alleviated. Well, granting that the Cambrian is still an issue, the only ones who have dealt with it intelligently are the “naturalists,” and we have in fact found reasons why the Cambrian might exhibit unusually great changes. The environmental reason is that oxygen levels are thought to have jumped dramatically at that time (so that genetic potentials for evolution into much greater users of oxygen could develop then), and as I noted previously, plasticity in developmental genes appears to have been greater then (more or less expected in MET as well).
They are not so unique as to appear to be unrelated to the rest of life, including Cambrian life. The Cambrian has not been fully explained as yet, but everything in the Cambrian appears to have evolved to what today are considered to be “primitive forms” of the phyla potentials. You’re looking at what evolution mostly predicts, relatively primitive forms of life at the start of phyla, and you’re caviling because there are indeed problems with the details. Meanwhile, you have absolutely no explanation for Cambrian life and its relatedness to each other and to all other life.
Gee, you mean that all of life shares the same codes, and archaea, bacteria, and eukarya all have related metabolic pathways, yet we “imagine” that all life descended from a common ancestor? What a leap, what an inferior concept compared with the idea that life all just magically appears to be related!
You stupidly pointed to exactly the kinds of “missing links” expected in evolution with your quotes, and are too dumb even to realize this fact.
Glen D http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Continuing my post:
Every last one is easily related to candidate ancestors. What is more, quite gradual changes in marine organisms are seen in many lineages, such as in mussels and in ammonites.
And they all have apparent evolutionary ancestors, either immediate or more distant.
Many do. No doubt transitionals could often be found, and would be if evolutionary theory were in the least doubt (creos used to point to the lack of transitional fossils for whales, until someone went out and looked for them. But neither ID nor creationism is falsifiable, so they just move on to whatever gaps remain, while mindlessly chanting that the transitionals found aren’t really transitional (a few IDists admit the transitionals, but these IDiots seem to be few, and to have no clue that evolutionary constraints are what make transitionals identifiable, hence they ought not to be identifiable if ID were true)). But in many cases they would never be found, because of the incompleteness of the fossil record, plus the fact that speciation may take place in relatively small areas in most cases.
How so? Do you know the mind of this Creator, that somehow it is addicted to making things look as though they were related, and evolved?
It isn’t all that surprising, though some have thought that it was. Large stable populations seem not to evolve much, and once a mode of locomotion or feeding has evolved to near-optimum, why would it evolve further, other than to produce relatively minor variations?
There you go, whenever you have nothing to say, make it a big lie. Maybe someone will believe you.
Sharks have changed a large amount over time, with many species appearing and disappearing over time. Then again, there isn’t much excuse to bring up sharks, because only their teeth fossilize at all well. Fossil shark teeth are common and cheap, while there are few other shark fossils at all.
More creationist crap. Gee, why don’t you bring in Dembski while you’re at it? They’re all so credible.
Even if it were true that we have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin’s time, that would still leave a good number.
What is more, that is an out-of-context quote mine. Raup wasn’t addressing large transitions, but the smaller species transitions which supposedly are “Darwin’s problem” (one may dispute whether that is an accurate characterization of Darwin’s work). Raup was not denying the growing numbers of larger scale transitionals which have been found between, say, the vertebrate classes, but was addressing the speciation “problem”.
That this would be more mendacity from Bond, dishonest Bond, is not surprising.
Glen D http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7