…the obstinate reminder continues to recur: only the supernaturalist has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a stepmother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.”
-”Orthodoxy”, chapter 7 by G.K. Chesterton
Weekly apologetics cartoons for the faithful, the faithless, and the full-of-its.
“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.””
Very true. To think that nature somehow rules over us is an unhealthy mindset. A mindset that a lot of evolutionists seem to have.
To think that nature somehow rules over us is an unhealthy mindset.
Unhealthy? What a strange word to use here. We operate entirely within nature’s prerogative. An extreme weather event kills people indiscriminately and I wouldn’t consider it ‘healthy’ to ignore the flooding, fires, shaking, blowing, freezing, frying aspects of our local climate. Or are you one of these people who think a golf course in the desert is a rational exercise in dominion?
But tildeb, surely you’re aware that you’re setting up a strawman? For all synapticcohesion said was “To think that nature somehow rules over us is an unhealthy mindset,”, and nothing about us ruling over nature. And yet, your rhetoric reads:
“Or are you one of these people who think a golf course in the desert is a rational exercise in dominion?”
If I were you, I’d address synapticcohesion’s point directly. So, do you believe nature does, in fact, rule over us?
P.S.: A warm welcome, synapticcohesion. Nice site you have going on there, I especially like the Ron and Andy series. See you around! =)
It’s not surprising that a non-scientist who died almost 80 years ago (and 15 years before the discovery of DNA) talks little sense on the subject of evolution. If there was still in Chesterton’s lifetime any argument for a literal reading of the biblical account of the Garden of Eden, it is long gone now with modern scientific discoveries.
“The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. ”
There is no such sentimental anthropomorphism in biology.
Well, I don’t know how much you know about Chesterton and his lengthy interactions with people on the topic of evolution. How much of his work on evolution have you read, apart from this quotation?
Josh, he died in the 1930s. Do you realise how much biological science has advanced since then? He didn’t even know about DNA!
Andy, the point is that I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that Chesterton would’ve been “converted” to believe in the theory of evolution by the discovery of a highly sophisticated code system within the cell. That and the scientism that pervades culture (even more now than when he pointed it out in his lifetime) both would have gone to put exclamation points to his points. But that would be something that a person who had read a few of his works touching on the theory of evolution would easily see.
Joshua
Thank you, Getic.Apolo. You too.
Andrew Ryan writes this:
“It’s not surprising that a non-scientist who died almost 80 years ago (and 15 years before the discovery of DNA) talks little sense on the subject of evolution.”
And yet, he has no qualms accepting the theory put forward by a non-scientist (Charles Darwin was in fact trained as a clergyman, not as a scientist, and his ‘Origin Of Species’ was actually published not in a peer-reviewed paper, but in a book) who died almost 130 years ago (and 65 years before the discovery of DNA). Any reason for the double standards?
And on the topic of DNA, the discovery of DNA is rather problematic for neo-Darwinism. I don’t think Darwin could have imagined in his wildest dreams how fantastically complex the cell is. Viewed through the primitive microscopes of the day, the cell appeared to be but a simple blob of jelly or uncomplicated protoplasm. Now, almost 150 years later, that view has changed dramatically as science has discovered a virtual universe inside the cell.
‘Peer-Reviewed Paper in Medical Journal Challenges Evolutionary Science and Inaccurate Evolution-Education’ – January 2012 (http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/01/peer-reviewed_p055221.html)
Excerpt:
“A new article by Dr. Joseph Kuhn of the Department of Surgery at Baylor University Medical Center, appearing in the peer-reviewed journal Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, poses a number of challenges to both chemical and biological evolution. Titled “Dissecting Darwinism,” the paper begins by recounting some of the arguments raised during the Texas State Board of Education debate that challenged chemical and biological evolution. Those challenges include:
1. Limitations of the chemical origin of life data to explain the origin of DNA…..
(Joseph A. Kuhn, “Dissecting Darwinism,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Vol. 25(1): 41-47 (2012).)”
‘DNA: The Tiny Code That’s Toppling Evolution’ – November 2011 (http://www.ucg.org/science/dna-tiny-code-thats-toppling-evolution/)
Excerpts:
“In fact, there has not been found in nature any example of one information system inside the cell gradually evolving into another functional information program.
Michael Behe, a biochemist and professor at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, explains that genetic information is primarily an instruction manual and gives some examples.
He writes: “Consider a step-by-step list of [genetic] instructions. A mutation is a change in one of the lines of instructions. So instead of saying, “Take a 1/4-inch nut,” a mutation might say, “Take a 3/8-inch nut.” Or instead of “Place the round peg in the round hole,” we might get “Place the round peg in the square hole” . . . What a mutation cannot do is change all the instructions in one step—say, [providing instructions] to build a fax machine instead of a radio” ( Darwin’s Black Box , 1996, p. 41).
We therefore have in the genetic code an immensely complex instruction manual that has been majestically designed by a more intelligent source than human beings.”
“Dr. Meyer considers the recent discoveries about DNA as the Achilles” heel of evolutionary theory. He observes: “Evolutionists are still trying to apply Darwin’s nineteenth-century thinking to a twenty-first century reality, and it’s not working … I think the information revolution taking place in biology is sounding the death knell for Darwinism and chemical evolutionary theories” (quoted by Strobel, p. 243).
Dr. Meyer’s conclusion? “I believe that the testimony of science supports theism. While there will always be points of tension or unresolved conflict, the major developments in science in the past five decades have been running in a strongly theistic direction” (ibid., p. 77).
Dean Kenyon, a biology professor who repudiated his earlier book on Darwinian evolution—mostly due to the discoveries of the information found in DNA—states: “This new realm of molecular genetics (is) where we see the most compelling evidence of design on the Earth” (ibid., p. 221).
Just recently, one of the world’s most famous atheists, Professor Antony Flew, admitted he couldn’t explain how DNA was created and developed through evolution. He now accepts the need for an intelligent source to have been involved in the making of the DNA code.
“What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinary diverse elements together,” he said (quoted by Richard Ostling, “Leading Atheist Now Believes in God,” Associated Press report, Dec. 9, 2004).”
Josh:
Even as Andrew Ryan says this,
“If there was still in Chesterton’s lifetime any argument for a literal reading of the biblical account of the Garden of Eden, it is long gone now with modern scientific discoveries.”
it should be clear – to anyone who appreciates proper science – that scientific knowledge is inescapably provisional and that inductive reasoning – especially on matters from the past – is only capable of a weak form warrant, not certainty beyond correction. And, it is fair comment to note that different scientific claims come with differing degrees of corroboration and differing degrees of openness to empirical testing.
So any statement that gives an imprimatur of practical certainty to theories – for instance, ruling out altogether the possibility of a literal Adam and Eve – is, in my opinion, highly questionable.
Furthermore, while Andrew Ryan claims this notion “is long gone now with modern scientific discoveries”, it appears the idea is very much alive. As recently as last month, development biologist Ann Gauger published an exciting new book, ‘Science And Human Origins’ (http://www.amazon.com/Science-Human-Origins-Ann-Gauger/dp/193659904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340146969&sr=8-1&keywords=science+and+human+origins), where she concludes in Chapter 5 that we cannot rule out the scientific possibility that the human race could have had two first parents. Although I haven’t gotten the book yet, I have read excerpts of Chapter 5 (they can be found online). Here are a couple of paragraphs:
” ‘The Challenge to the Challenge’
Let’s step back and examine how Ayala’s analysis was done. His claims against a literal Adam and Eve are based on population genetics models for how gene frequencies change in populations over time, and how ancestral gene lineages tend to coalesce. The equations used to reconstruct these trees, and to calculate ancestral population sizes, depend on simplifications and assumptions to make the mathematics tractable, as I said before. These explicit assumptions include a constant background mutation rate over time, lack of selection for genetic change on
the DNA sequences being studied, random breeding among individuals, no migrations in or out of the breeding population, and a constant population size . If any of these assumptions turn out to be unrealistic, the results of a model may be seriously flawed.
There are also hidden assumptions buried in population genetics models, assumptions that rely upon the very thing they are meant to demonstrate. For example, tree-drawing algorithms assume that a tree of common descent exists. The population genetics equations also assume that random processes are the only causes of genetic change over time, an assumption drawn from naturalism. What if non-natural causes, or even unknown natural causes that do not act randomly, have intervened to produce genetic change?
It turns out that the particular DNA sequence from HLA-DRB1 that Ayala used in his analysis was guaranteed to give an overestimate, because he inadequately controlled for two of the above assumptions—the assumption that there is a lack of selection for genetic change on the DNA sequence being studied, and the assumption of a constant background mutation rate over time. (Pp. 111-12)”
Other references for your kind attention, Josh:
‘Breaking: Adam and Eve are scientifically possible’ – June 2012 (http://www.uncommondescent.com/human-evolution/breaking-adam-and-eve-are-scientifically-possible/)
‘The Non Mythical Adam and Eve by Dr Robert Carter, Ph.D. marine biology (video) – August 2011 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftwf0owpzQ)
‘Human Evolution? – The Compelling Genetic & Fossil Evidence For Adam and Eve – Dr. Fazale Rana’ (video) (http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4284482/human_evolution_the_compelling_genetic_fossil_evidence_for_adam_and_eve_dr_fazale_rana/)
‘Were They Real? The Scientific Case for Adam and Eve by Fazale Rana’ – November 2010 (http://www.reasons.org/articles/were-they-real-the-scientific-case-for-adam-and-eve)
And so, Josh, even as Andrew Ryan is welcome to form his own opinion on the origin of the human race, I hope we can all agree, at the very least, that the possibility of a literal Adam and Eve cannot be ruled out altogether. =)
“Andy, the point is that I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that Chesterton would’ve been “converted” to believe in the theory of evolution by the discovery of a highly sophisticated code system within the cell”
Sure, there’s no convincing some – but it makes his words even more ill-informed.
We do not need to posit the existence of a god who intervenes in the process of evolution to explain how living things come to appear to be designed, and to be adapted so intimately to their environments. The process of random mutation, inheritance of variation, struggle for existence, and natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent design of living organisms. The process even works with inorganic things like planets and solar systems, or any other system where an algorithmic sorting process takes place.
So to assign a ‘father’ to this process while pretending our environment (Nature) is only a sibling is really quite a silly model, one that ignores the facts, that inserts religious belief to take their place, a belief contrary to the facts of reality that simply does not align with the reality from which we come and a reality in which we now live. That’s why if Chesterton lived today and continued to maintain this model in spite of overwhelming evidence from multiple lines of inquiry from reality to the contrary, his words would be – as Andrew politely states – not just ill-informed but entirely within the realm of perpetual ignorance in the service of maintaining a delusion.
To say that everything stemmed from the “first self-replicating organism” epitomizes silliness. Why not simply admit that you don’t know how life came to be instead of making a story up and labeling it as “science?” At least that would be worthy of respect in my eyes.
To say that everything stemmed from the “first self-replicating organism” …
I didn’t write that. And about abiogenesis, we don’t know. We suspect, and we have compelling reasons to suspect, that life began naturally without any need for a divine jump start, but I don;t know and you don’t either. So your accusation here is an empty one… unless you wish to compare and contrast different possibilities: I think life developed from very simple chemical interactions whereas you probably think some supernatural agency POOF!ed it into existence.
And in that comparison you call the chemical hypothesis one that ‘epitomizes silliness’ whereas POOF!ism is much less silly. Care to explain why?
The difference is that those claiming that something is “science” has the burden of proof–not those who are religious. So it doesn’t matter if I claim that there is a “flying spaghetti monster” that created everything–unless I’m working in the name of “science.” There’s a lot off “unknowns” and the scientific establishment should not attempt to fill in the blanks with religious pseudoscience.
No, synapticcohesion, the burden of proof lies with whomever makes a truth claim. That’s why evolution is now a scientific theory (meaning an explanation that has passed all challenges, that works to inform practical applications, therapies, and technologies that work for everyone everywhere all the time). In comparison, your POOF!ism is an empty claim. Not only is it empty, but the claim furthers no new research, no means to test, no practical applications, and nothing that differentiates the claim from a delusion. Yet you prefer this explanation of magical tinkering to actual knowledge and call the knowledge stimulator the epitome of silliness… which clearly shows me that you don’t care one whit for what’s true in reality; you only care about maintaining your religious beliefs even if they are contrary and in conflict with reality.
Even evolutionists admit none of these claims are known. They say “probably.” Probably? Is that what passes or scientific fact? Probably?!
Yes, I say that we are all proof of a designer and I need not prove this scientifically because I am not making a scientific claim. Sorry, but even “poof” makes much more sense than abiogenesis. How could all of our complex, INTERDEPENDENT lifeforms exist from as Dawkins put it “the first self-replicating molecule?” He even admits to having no idea where this presumed molecule came from!
Obviously, synapticcohesion, you don’t understand how science works: you must have the ability to falsify an hypothesis so there is no such state as ‘certainty’ about anything; there are simply degrees of confidence and levels of probability. Evolution – compared to, say, germs or atomic theory or gravity – has a much higher degree of confidence than these and the highest level of probability in all of science. So yes, we speak of evolution as if it were a fact because it is as factual as anything else we can compare. Denying evolution is to deny the method of science that underlies all your technologies and all your applications that work reliably and consistently well. You do not have the luxury of relying on your cell phone to work while claiming evolution is false because the same method that informs our knowledge of how to utilize frequencies to transmit and receive signals is exactly the same method that produces images on your monitor which is the same method that informs the chemical composition of fossil residue that helps to date them which is exactly the same method that tells us that Adam and Eve is a fiction. You can’t pick and choose which scientific results to believe or not believe while assuming that your cell phone should work whenever you use it, that you should fall down rather than up, that satellites should achieve geosynchronous orbit if travelling the same rotational speed as the earth, without being a hypocrite. Your excuse is that your knowledge of science is lacking. That’s not a problem for science but your own. The good news is that this ignorance – one we have all shared at one time or another – is entirely reversible if you choose to correct it. Hiding behind religious belief to protect this ignorance is not a solution to altering it.
Really. Funny how a scientist can develop penicillin and still reject evolution without it affecting his accomplishments. You can pretend that evolution is proved by adaptation and organisms developing resistance, but it is not. These organisms adapt and adjust to changing environments but when they adjust in a certain way to resist one change, they are left more VULNERABLE in another way. They did not evolve into something stronger or more complex, rather what they already had was rearranged (within homeostatic limits). I could be wrong, but I think I know more about what you choose to call “evolution” than you do.
synapticcohesion:
“I could be wrong, but I think I know more about what you choose to call “evolution” than you do.”
You might not be wrong. =D
I agree!
It seems so odd to me that a group of people have convinced themselves that although they have no idea how life originated, they know that God had nothing to do with it. But I think Sir Francis Bacon’s words regarding atheism are showing to be more obvious:
And let’s not forget the embarrassing fact that Francis Bacon standardized the scientific method. I wonder what information he and the others before him had to let them understand that their sensory organs were reliable enough to use when they set about investigating the natural world…
Joshua
Great points. Great quote. :)
Well, I see that you and Andrew would disagree about Nature’s position: Andy would say evolutionists aren’t sentimental and wouldn’t consider Nature “Mother”, but you seem to disagree, saying that it ignores to fact “pretending our environment is only a sibling”. I find it amusing that for a theory that most would say doesn’t touch on origins, evolutionists have no trouble using it to explain the origin of everything, even non-organic things and information! But your comments and the words and behavior of many evolutionist today, again, just put an exclamation mark on scientism that Chesterton noticed and wrote on in his lifetime.
Regardless, how much of Chesterton’s work on evolution have you actually read?
I suggest you at least read The Everlasting Man before coming to a definitive conclusion about Chesterton’s knowledge (or lack of) regarding evolution. It may just be that he understood the theory better than either of you and that’s why he rejected it.
Joshua
So, does natural selection start before or after the appearance of the first complete, working cell?
And I’m not sure if you’ve answered how much of Chesterton’s work you’ve read before assuming you know how well he understand the theory of evolution. (It can’t be done from reading a single quote.) Did you? As I’ve said before, I’m not trying to be intentionally insulting, but maybe he actually understood evolution better than you and that’s one reason why he rejected. Did you ever consider that?
Joshua
Josh, I used the phrase not out of sentimentality but because the original post places us beside rather than a part of nature. I sincerely doubt Andrew would disagree with that placement. People who understand evolution do not use it as an explanation for origins; it is the explanation that makes sense of biology. Without evolution, biology makes no sense nor do any of the technologies, therapies, and applications we now use based on it. Remember, evolution is a natural process much like an understanding of erosion explains why we find the landscapes the way we do. Because it helps us to understand biological changes over time, we see the same kind of predictable and testable change over time of inorganic materials, too. This is not scientism but straight forward scientific understanding of explanations that work, that stimulate new avenues of research and discovery, that continues to propel our knowledge we can rely on. Your contrary beliefs offer nothing equivalent except imagined meanings and purposes that stunt useful inquiry into the reality we share with intellectual pablum that explains nothing. Also remember, please, that modern evolutionary biology is based on the Synthesis of Darwinian evolution with genetics that provides any informed biologist with mountainous support for the theory we find in action all around us, whereas in Chesterton’s day all he had was common ancestry by natural selection. That genetics supports the theory in every facet at every turn cannot be blustered aside with appeals to Poof!ism in its stead by anyone who claims to have an understanding of modern evolutionary theory; rather, this unequivocal genetic support that didn’t have to be this way puts aside any doubt as to the theory’s incredible insight. Those who continue to deny the theory do so not for good scientific reasons but in spite of them, revealing an agenda that has nothing whatsoever to do with finding out how reality actually operates.
Tildeb: ” I sincerely doubt Andrew would disagree with that placement.”
Indeed. Agree with all you say there.
” I’m not trying to be intentionally insulting, but maybe he actually understood evolution better than you”
Only someone who didn’t understand evolution much would make that suggestion! No insult intended, of course. Have you ever considered the reason Tildeb and I are atheists is because we understand the bible much more than you?
But seriously, no, as pointed out several times already, Chesterton died before great paradigm shifts in our understanding of the subject. It’s no boast to say I am able to ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’ in my own understanding.
Andy, well, you have assumed you know more than Chesterton based on… what? A single quote? You haven’t answered how much of Chesterton’s work on the topic you’ve read before concluding he was foolish and unlearned (he was at the top of the list of intellectuals in his time). How much? Of course if you’re going to measure his (lack of) understanding on a single quote, you’ll have to admit your conclusion is, at the very least, an uninformed one. Please re-read my previous post. I mentioned that I would find it very difficult to believe that the discovery of a code system as the basis of biology would have done anything but put an exclamation mark on Chesterton’s conclusions. This is especially true in light of the fact that matter can’t produce information.
Well, I study the Bible on a daily basis in multiple languages. That’s just a fact of life for me. That doesn’t mean that I can claim to know everything about every subject and every name mentioned in detail or in passing in the Bible, nor have I ever tried to insinuate it. But that thing I can say is that, as anyone who has read your comments on the Bible here would know, your knowledge of the Bible is superficial at least and intentionally self-deceptive at worst. You enjoy putting out objections and asking questions that have been dealt with by past and present Christian apologists. Trying to get me to answer in a long, drawn-out essay is not going to happen. There are already people doing that. But I just beg you, don’t be like Pilate who asked a question about truth, but didn’t hang around long enough to hear the answer.
Joshua
Josh:
” But that thing I can say is that, as anyone who has read your comments on the Bible here would know, your knowledge of the Bible is superficial at least and intentionally self-deceptive at worst.”
Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the first time:
‘Atheist Andrew’s Misreading of Exodus 21:20-21 On Beating Slaves’ (http://www.choosinghats.com/2012/03/atheist-andrews-misreading-of-exodus-2120-21-on-beating-slaves/)
But of course, to be fair, Andrew Ryan is not at all representative of the thousands of fantastic and civil atheists and agnostics out there (including, perhaps, tildeb) who are interested in reasonable, unbiased discourse.
“Andy, well, you have assumed you know more than Chesterton based on…”
Based on the fact that he died 15 years before the discovery of DNA! I’ve said this several times already Josh. Likewise, it’s not hard for a junior physics student to know more about physics than Isaac Newton, because he died centuries before Einstein gave us a whole lot of extra knowledge.
I would find it very difficult to believe that the discovery of a code system as the basis of biology would have done anything but put an exclamation mark on Chesterton’s conclusions. This is especially true in light of the fact that matter can’t produce information.
The claim in bold is flat out wrong in fact.
Lenski et al has run a remarkable experiment for decades showing the progression of genetic information gains in 12 lines of bacteria. But it gets better: at generation 33,100 the Ara-3 genetically altered itself to feed on citrate as well as the glucose rich mixture all the other lines continued to feed on. This occurred because of a mutation around generation 20,000 that ‘primed’ Ara-3 to take full advantage of another genetic change at generation 33,100. This clearly demonstrates how random mutation followed by natural selection can cause later genetic adaptations that improve fitness and increase heritable genetic information that promotes reproductive success. No designer agency is needed, no ‘irreducible complexity’ supported. Once again, for the elebenty bazillionth time, natural selection through common decent is a biological, agency-less and unguided natural process.
If Chesterton were to review our modern understanding (and the compelling evidence for it from multiple lines of unrelated inquiry) of evolution, he would have the means of successfully answering his own questions he presents as arguments against evolution. One does not need to read a host of Chesterton’s books to appreciate why our current understanding successfully addresses exactly the kinds of problems Chesterton raised in defense of a creator agency. People are allowed to change their minds if better reasons outweigh the old and can let go holding fast to outdated and archaic reasons successfully addressed. I would sincerely hope a man of Chesterton’s intellectual capabilities would be so moved.
I’ll check out the work of Lenski et al. You might think I’m lazy for asking you for a link to this information, but I’ll do it anyway: Can you throw out a link?
The thing I’m curious about is to see if this mutation is a duplication or loss of information. Pardon me for not taking your word for it.
And let me ask a third time: How much of Chesterton’s work on evolution have you read? What about Eugenics and Other Evils for a start?
He was a prodigious author, so I’m not asking you to read everything he wrote. But maybe one of his writings might show you that his opinions are little bit harder to dismiss.
Joshua
Sorry to be slow to get back to you, Josh.
My source is The Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins who patiently explains why this is such a powerful and exacting experiment.
As for Chesterton, I’ve read none of his books. I have read many excerpts from those who use his writings both to support his criticisms as well as biologists who dismantle them.
I have come across no biologist other than the few creationist biologists employed by the Discotute who think his many criticisms remain viable today. I have no problem with people who remain sceptical if they have good reasons; at the time of Chesterton’s writings we didn’t have the complete support of genetics which, if you keep in mind, did not have to agree so thoroughly with the theory. Yet it does. And on this basis and this basis alone, therapies and technologies have been directly born that work for everyone everywhere all the time. Again, it doesn’t have to be this way but it is. Faced with such overwhelming evidence that the theory always works and produces so many practical applications, I sincerely doubt Chesterton would have steadfastly maintained his criticisms when they were directly answered by compelling evidence..
Thanks for the reply, tildeb.
Could you list a few of the “many practical applications” born out of the theory of evolution?
I’m not lazy, it’s just that the Internet is huge and I’d like to see a few of these instead of merely a claim about them.
Thanks!
Joshua
Sure, Josh. Check this out. There’s pretty heavy emphasis on medicine and our understanding of how to identify and treat pathogens and the actual applications number in the thousands. They work. For everyone. Everywhere. All the time.
Sorry, tildeb. Could you post that link again? I was trying to fix a formatting problem and when I updated the reply, it deleted the link for some unknown reason.
“It seems so odd to me that a group of people have convinced themselves that although they have no idea how life originated, they know that God had nothing to do with it”
Whoever made a claim that they KNOW this? And who is this group who has “no idea” how life originated? And how come you’ve now moved from evolution to abiogenesis, two completely different subjects?
Your assertion above reminds me of a certain Douglas Adams quote. On the other thread you gave a link where a creationist gave his complaints about the answers people had supplied to him to his evolution questions. His responses reminded me of the same quote:
“A man didn’t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. “But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren’t there?”
You are that man – “So you think you can explain it, but how do you KNOW there aren’t also a few little men in there – prove it!”.
“You are that man – “So you think you can explain it, but how do you KNOW there aren’t also a few little men in there – prove it!”.”
That’s a faulty analogy, Andy. We’re not man-made machines like televisions–we’re highly developed, complex lifeforms that man has never been able to duplicate. And your TV set had a designer and a maker. Wouldn’t it make sense that something much more complex (lifeforms) would also require a designer and a maker?
“That’s a faulty analogy, Andy.”
No, it’s a great analogy, synapt. Your objection to it has nothing to do with the point being made.
“Wouldn’t it make sense that something much more complex (lifeforms) would also require a designer and a maker?”
A rock is more complex than a rubber ball.
Of course, if you’re just going to claim God made everything, then it’s pointless comparing the complexity of any object to any other object, as you’re saying God made all of them.
(Josh, I’m interested in Andrew Ryan’s responses on a few matters pertaining to his online behaviour, and I wouldn’t want him to say that he didn’t come across my post because it is in an earlier thread, so if you don’t mind, I’m gonna put up the exact same post here, so that he can choose where to reply, and we can all hear what he has to say. Thanks brother!)
Andrew Ryan:
Pardon the directness, but you’re sounding increasingly obtuse and daft. And the signs of desperation are so cringingly obvious that your false accusation doesn’t even warrant a response. So why am I bothering with a reply? Simply because yours is the sort of dishonest, militant atheism that should be weeded out from this site to make way for the thousands of wonderful, honest, civil, truth-seeking atheists and agnostics out there who are not being fairly represented by your terrible example, and who deserve much more of our time and dialogue than you and your display of overweening ignorance and dishonesty.
Ladies and gentlemen, having already accused Josh (the owner of this site) of “the height of dishonesty” in an earlier thread, Andrew Ryan has now decided to try his luck at putting the ‘dishonest’ tag on me as well, in a desperately ill-informed attempt at one-upping me before I expose his many dishonest online debating tactics.
And what’s this ‘great, unforgiveable crime’ of mine, you may ask? Apparently, as Andrew Ryan puts it, on two past threads I told him that “I’m leaving the country now, but will take this up again on my return”, and didn’t post again on those threads.
Yes, that is it, people. I’m sorry if you were looking for more.
And of course, since my conscience is clean and I have nothing to hide, let us indeed go directly to those two threads in question, after which we’ll find that Andrew Ryan’s accusations (or should I say, attempts at distraction) can be dismissed with absolute ease, and further highlight his dishonesty.
(1) The first thread in question was one where a couple of us, including Andrew Ryan, were discussing matters on morality (http://noapologiesallowed.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/an-analysis-of-another-asinine-atheist-ad/#comments), and I was heading overseas for work. After witnessing multiple rounds of discussions back and forth between Josh, tildeb and Andrew Ryan (there were 16 whole posts during which I played NO PART apart from reading the exchanges), all I wrote was this:
“Excellent discussion all round fellas! =)
May I add that I am overseas and will be back home (and at my workspace) in a matter of 2 days, and when I’m back, I’ll make sure to formulate my response to a few matters. In the meantime, have a great week! =D ”
Note that all I did was commend the conversation and state that I will write something in general pertaining to the topic (morality). I certainly DID NOT say I would write anything directly to Andrew Ryan, and to highlight that, let me put up his accusation word-for-word for comparison:
” I’ve engaged you in discussion and after a few posts you’ve said “I’m leaving the country now, but will take this up again on my return”, only for you never to post again on that thread.”
Spotted the lie yet? Yes, Andrew Ryan had you believe I owed him some kind of reply, which we now know is untrue. And I have indeed since gone on to write a lot more pertaining to morality, many times directly engaging Andrew Ryan himself! So there you go, that’s one thread down. Now let’s look at the second thread that’s the subject of Andrew Ryan’s reference, one that makes him look even worse than the first!
(2) The second thread pertains to a discussion on abortion (http://noapologiesallowed.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/really-recommended-reading-apple-inc-and-abortion/#comments), a period during which I uncovered some troubling things about Andrew Ryan’s dishonest online debating tactics, and was ready to expose him, specifically stating that I was going to highlight “some of the non-arguments and dishonesty that… Andrew Ryan… resorted to in engaging Josh and I in dialogue…”
Of course, not wanting his cover to be blown, Andrew Ryan constantly – almost embarrassingly – pleaded with and appealed to the wonderful side of Josh, in making himself look like some victim and attempting to censor me before I could shed light on his dishonesty. And even then, I was steadfast in wanting to expose him, writing:
“I will be back home in 4 days, my post should be up in 6. Watch this space. ;) ”
And guess what? This, was the gist of Andrew Ryan’s reply to me:
“No thanks, I’m unsubscribing from this site, so won’t receive any more post notifications… Adios.”
So the question is, who’s running away from whom? Andrew Ryan scoots off out of fear that his cover will be blown, and also prompts the wonderful Josh to send me an email asking me not to do it, which is why I stopped posting in the first place. AND YET, he would again have you believe that it was ME who left the discussion. In fact, I even pointed all this out to Andrew Ryan in a subsequent discussion:
“…if you noticed, I chose not to write about it after you quickly disappeared and after Josh got in touch with me.”
So, readers, as you can tell by now, Andrew Ryan’s statements are nothing but baseless accusations without substance. I have never been afraid to engage him in conversations (even as he avoids questions posed by Josh and myself), I make sure that even if I drop out of a thread that gets too long, I am ever ready to engage that topic the next time it comes round (it is worth noting that Andrew Ryan has dropped out of online discussions many times before himself), and I certainly intend to pursue honest dialogue, even as Andrew Ryan might prefer otherwise. There, quite easily done. =)
And so, now that Andrew Ryan’s convenient and dishonest distractors have been dismissed with ease, I bet some of you must be wondering, what EXACTLY it is about Andrew Ryan that I intended to share with other readers. Well guess what, Andrew Ryan? Your luck finally ran out. Josh too, it seems, is finally on to your dishonest ways, and he has given me the go-ahead to share what I’ve uncovered. And since I’ve defended myself against your accusation, I believe you have a responsibility to all the people visiting this site to explain what seems to be questionable behaviour on your part. So here it goes.
1) Let me bring your attention to a discussion Andrew Ryan, Josh and I had on a previous thread on morality, where Andrew Ryan brought up the Euthyphro Dilemma and made some audacious claims:
” If you want, try to work out your response to Euthryphro’s Dilemma. In other words, work out what difference positing a God makes to your morality question. If you’re making your morality subject to God’s existence then by definition it isn’t objective.”
And here comes the audacious claim:
“I’ve had this conversation with several well-known apologists, and none had a decent response.”
Naturally, I had my doubts, given he didn’t show much understanding of the dilemma to begin with. So I called his bluff:
” You claim that “I’ve had this conversation with several well-known apologists, and none had a decent response.” May I know who these “well-known apologists” are?”
Andrew Ryan’s response?:
“The “well-known apologists” include Frank Turek, author of “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist’. He debated Christopher Hitchens.”
I still tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, did some Googling on my own to determine if he ever had a proper lengthy conversation with Frank Turek on the Euthyphro Dilemma, let alone not get a decent response, and, upon not finding anything, got back to Andrew Ryan:
“By the way, it so happens I Googled all round and in many ways, with both ‘Andrew Ryan’ and ‘Frank Turek’, and couldn’t find anything pertaining to any direct discussion between you and Mr. Turek regarding either the dilemma or the moral argument. Do you have any references, links or details of the discussion that I can look up online? Also, you mentioned SEVERAL well-known apologists, care to mention who else is part of that group of several? =) ”
Andrew Ryan’s response?:
“I’ll save you the bother, anyway. Here’s one particular discussion specifically on the Euthyphro Dilemma. Frank’s guest poster Neil Mammen is the main protagonist (that’s another apologist for you).
http://www.crossexamined.org/blog/?p=161”
So let’s take stock of things: Andrew Ryan first claimed he had conversed with SEVERAL well-known apologists, I’ve asked him 2 or 3 times who these SEVERAL are, he couldn’t come up with names, then he retreated and claimed a conversation on the Euthryphro Dilemma with Frank Turek, and when his bluff was further called, he referred me, not to a conversation between him and Turek on the subject, but between him and some other Neil Mammen (someone who, by the way, more than adequately handled Andrew’s queries). Sense something fishy here, people?
And it gets worse! For I uncovered more, even as Andrew Ryan kept insisting that he had not got a satisfactory answer to some of his philosophical questions on the dilemma and the associated nature of God. I happened to visit the blog of J. W. Wartick, a regular contributor here who has some fantastic philosophical insights that he shares on his blog. And I quickly realised, to my surprise, that Andrew Ryan has been peddling the same question-begging arguments since as early as 2009! So his claim that no one offered him a decent response is an exaggerated lie. Here, I’m even happy to cite the original link for anyone and everyone to view:
http://jwwartick.com/2009/08/05/counter-counter-apologetics-2-gross-misunderstandings-of-the-ontological-argument/
Anyone reading this might quickly gather that Wartick patiently and expertly explained the various philosophical misconceptions Andrew Ryan was (and in fact, still remains) guilty of. From correcting statements that “reflect an utter misunderstanding of what a Maximally Great Being entails” to methodologically explaining why God is THE standard of goodness, Wartick patiently explained, like an adult to an confused child, the many areas pertaining to Euthyphro’s Dilemma that Andrew Ryan was ignorant about. So it seems that even as Andrew Ryan speaks derisively of God’s Nature through the Euthyphro Dilemma, he does not interact with my or any other person or philosopher’s articulation and defense of those issues, and much rather prefers peddling the same faulty arguments. In fact, I urge everyone to go to the above link, you’ll quickly find that not only is Andrew Ryan emitting hot air with the claim that he got “no decent response”, but it seems he should get a basic philosophy textbook!
And yet, why would Andrew Ryan conveniently omit this fact, that someone had already given him a more-than-decent (in fact, brilliant) response as early as 2009? And in spite of that, why would he carry on peddling the same questions and exhibit the same ignorance across numerous sites across the Web? I sense someone who is not willing to humble himself and accept the faults in his thinking no matter how many times he’s educated.
Andrew Ryan, did you SERIOUSLY think you could get away with your dishonesty? Well it’s now time for you to face up to the awkward truth! You LIED when you said you have spoken to several well-known apologists about the Euthyphro Dilemma, and even as your terribly misinformed ideas were corrected in 2009, you carry on perpetuating the same faulty questions in 2012. I challenge you: prove – as per your claim – that you have spoken to “several well-known apologists” about the matter, including Frank Turek, or just admit to the awkward fact that you were being utterly dishonest. Here, I am even happy to provide you a list of 100 of the best apologists around (http://www.apologetics315.com/2009/06/100-christian-apologists.html) show us what you’re worth and let us know which one of them you’ve ever held that so-called conversation with. I’m even happy to write to William Lane Craig with your question-begging queries if you’d like, so that he can make it his Question Of The Week and answer you comprehensively, would you like that?
You’ve got one last chance to prove your honesty, and I’ll gladly retract my statement if you do. Take your time, I’ll wait. I’m not holding my breath though.
Next…
2) Andrew Ryan, in trying to appeal to Josh’s emotions so that I wouldn’t expose his online dishonesty, said this:
“I’ve got two kids, but post with my real name as a courtesy to you.”
Which, of course, was a veiled, irresponsibly insensitive dig at people like tildeb and myself, who post under usernames for personal reasons. That, of course, might imply Andrew Ryan does not resort to the ‘discourtesy’ of using fake names. But guess what? Andrew Ryan DOES use fake names, and many of them at that! And yet, even that hypocrisy might be forgiveable. What highlights his dishonesty most is that he is even guilty of having DELIBERATELY and WILFULLY posted under a fake name so as to trick someone into responding to him. And I have the evidence to prove it!
I quote from the following thread, where Andrew Ryan was having a discussion with another user called Rhology, and made some false claims yet again (http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2012/02/22/episode-98-presuppositional-apologetics-part-2/):
Andrew Ryan: “CL Bolt, I have now addressed Rhology’s questions on his own website. He gave up before I did. He’s welcome to do that, but you can no longer claim I was running from his questions.”
Rhology: “You did? Where? When? Neither Google nor I remember you.”
Andrew Ryan: “Under the name Stephen B. Yes, that was me. If you’re going to use a pseudonym, I reserve the right to as well!”
So, as anyone can plainly see, Andrew Ryan (if that’s even his real name) declared a victory for himself, claiming his debating partner “gave up before I did”, on the basis of arguments he had made while knowingly, wilfully, deceiving Rhology into furthering conversation with him by posting under a false name. What kind of defence could you possibly have for tricking your opponent with such dishonest tactics, Andrew Ryan? And now that you’ve been found out, it’s crystal clear that you engaged in dishonest behaviour here, how’re you gonna run from this finding, Stephen B (and Nathan Barley, and whatever else you call yourself)? My take is you can’t!
Next…
3) Lo and behold, would you know? It seems I am not the first one calling Andrew Ryan dishonest! Andrew Ryan might dismiss the fact that Josh and I find him dishonest in various ways, including his poor biblical hermeneutics, but when there are this many people online questioning his debating tactics and his understanding of the Bible, we know we’re on to something. Let me give a brief (and not exhaustive) list of comments pertaining to Andrew Ryan:
(i) J. W. Wartick, during the dialogue already cited above (http://jwwartick.com/2009/08/05/counter-counter-apologetics-2-gross-misunderstandings-of-the-ontological-argument/):
“To even suggest that these things are simply arbitrarily attached is to ignore the terms involved and be dishonest with what the argument is stating.”
“To put this in perspective, you state “…projecting values you think are important to a [sic] all-powerful being.” This is at best false and at worst dishonest. ”
(ii) C. L. Bolt, in an interesting post that is actually dedicated to Andrew Ryan, titled ‘Atheist Andrew’s Misreading of Exodus 21:20-21 On Beating Slaves’, starts his post with this (http://www.choosinghats.com/2012/03/atheist-andrews-misreading-of-exodus-2120-21-on-beating-slaves/):
“A visiting atheist fanboy of Richard Dawkins named Andrew wrote:
‘Oh dear – have you not actually read the bible? It clearly says you can beat your slave to death as long as they take longer than three days to die.’
Rather than addressing some difficult questions posed to him by Rhology, Andrew jumps immediately into a passage that is typically touted by Internet atheists who want to pretend as though they know the Bible better than most believers by virtue of their having read, say, the Skeptics Bible or visited Evil Bible. Now let’s address Andrew’s misreading of the text.”
(iii) Cornell, had this to say about Andrew Ryan (http://sententias.org/2011/11/08/new-atheisms-cancer-and-eventual-cause-of-death-monologue/):
“Right now all you’ve shown me is emotion. I also never said I accepted WLC’s right to refuse Loftus, so right there you show your dishonesty… So try to look at exactly what I’m saying next time. Now I see you like to play games so next time you switch around my words, just remember I’m onto you.”
(iv) And the coup de grace – this user, Ggodat, seems to have the knack of getting right to the point (http://freethoughtblogs.com/hallq/2012/03/15/dont-say-im-one-of-the-good-atheists/):
“If you are the same Andrew Ryan that posts on Tough Questions Answered, you are full of crap. You are incapable of having a normal conversation.”
There you go. There’s really a lot more where that came from. And that’s just based on ONE of his usernames. Goodness knows what else he has going on under ‘Nathan Barley’ and ‘Stephen B’! I’m not in the least bit interested to find out. So, right now, it seems we have a minimum of 6 people who have questioned Andrew Ryan’s online debating tactics, a sure sign of a militant atheist who is blindly committed to a worldview with no real interest in correcting or shaping it. What possible defence could you have for all these, Andrew Ryan? No really, please tell us, I for one would love to hear what you have to say.
So, to sum up Andrew Ryan’s online debating tactics:
1) He made a dishonest claim that he has spoken to “several well-known apologists” about a philosophical topic, and has yet to come up with a single proper reference despite repeated asking. Worse, he has been peddling the same cringingly bad arguments since as early as 2009, no matter how many times various people have answered him succintly on the matter.
2) He tried to appeal to Josh’s emotions in saying he uses his real name, and has been found guilty of deliberately using a fake name to trick someone online into a conversation.
3) There are others out there who question his dishonest online debating tactics.
There are other peripheral issues as well, such as:
(i) Andrew Ryan’s lack of appreciation of certain scientific matters – Josh and I once wasted an entire week trying to get him to wrap his head around the understanding that no well-informed embryologist, biologist, or fetologist disputes the scientific fact that an unborn in a woman’s womb is a human being (you can see the entire discussion here – http://noapologiesallowed.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/really-recommended-reading-apple-inc-and-abortion/#comments). And while quoting nothing from actual scientific papers or books, his key counter-argument was to quote P Z Myers, an atheist blogger and non-expert on the topic who doesn’t even consider a newborn baby as a human being! See, it’s exactly non-arguments like this that make it hard for me (perhaps even Josh) to take Andrew Ryan seriously.
(ii) Andrew Ryan is often guilty of avoiding questions, even when asked 3 or 4 times (he has been guilty of that with Josh as well as myself), when the much easier option would be to answer to allow a conversation to advance.
Hmm, let’s see: Andrew Ryan doesn’t take scientific matters seriously, he doesn’t take philosophical arguments seriously, he doesn’t take biblical reading seriously, he doesn’t take discussions seriously, and yet he wonders why we don’t take him seriously.
As Andrew Ryan would say, the ironing is REALLY delicious! =D
And you call my comments long!
(continued from my previous entry):
That is all I have to share for now, folks. I hope it is clear, to atheists, agnostics and theists alike, why this kind of dishonest, militant atheism should not be allowed to spread and undermine the excellent discussions that this site has the potential of attracting. As I’ve stated before, I have a duty of care to objectivity and truth, I believe we all do.
As for Andrew Ryan, a little word of advice: As far as I’m concerned, when visiting Josh’s site, I’m a guest in someone’s house here. I’ve no “right” to be here. It’s not a free speech issue. I’ve no right to act in any dishonest way that suits me, nor protest too much if I’m asked to leave due to ritual impertinence. If you find the honest atmosphere here less than amiable, you are free, even encouraged, to move along. This isn’t a public park. For those who enjoy endlessly and militantly debating theists, there are probably millions of other places to have flame wars and troll hunts on the internet. For my part, I’m glad this site isn’t degrading into another one of those. Because once intentionally devious discussion tactics enter the fray, intellectually illuminating conversations go out the window, and any attempt at reasonable discourse risks being in vain. At some point, good conversations depend on participants who can agree about foundational things, or who have a willingness to learn. It’s then that differences in opinion or outlook become illuminating.
So just as Jesus was not afraid to call out the religious hypocrites of his day. it becomes all the more important that we – calmly and yet responsibly – expose these ill-willed attempts at obfuscation from time to time. Even if the only reason for doing that is so that agnostic lurkers or other serious seekers who were otherwise intimidated from posting here show up over time, engage in serious, honest, intellectual discourse, and perhaps come to experience God’s unfailing grace, love and salvation, it becomes a really worthwhile reason for our efforts.
Finally, I would like to assure Andrew Ryan that not all is lost, there is still hope, ALWAYS, and I still do keep you in prayer. For the Bible says that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, even me. I can relate to some of your militant atheism because truth be told (and my life story is proof), I too once mocked Christianity and wilfully rejected my Saviour, engaging in all kinds of sinful activity. But I have since learnt that Jesus of Nazareth was truly God and truly man, so that by his death he might reconcile us to God. God knew from before the foundations of the world that He would do this to rectify man’s falling freely into sin. It is amazing, I agree, but God has given evidence for the efficacy of Christ’s atoning death by raising him from the dead, an event for which we have surprisingly good evidence. And ever since I got to experience Him in my life, I am slowly, but surely, being transformed from within. And I very much wish for you to experience that transformation as well.
It’s all up to you, and Him. =)
Getic, thanks for posting that talkinghats link so all can see how bad CL Bolt’s arguments were there. I don’t see how it helps your case though – it just shows how apologists can use dishonest arguments. I can only imagine that Bolt doesn’t actually understand what the word ‘condone’ means. If no punishment is provided for an action, then yes, it is being condoned! Did your googling turn up anything else – it’s always fun to read old threads.
“As for Andrew Ryan, a little word of advice: As far as I’m concerned, when visiting Josh’s site, I’m a guest in someone’s house here. I’ve no “right” to be here. It’s not a free speech issue. I’ve no right to act in any dishonest way that suits me, nor protest too much if I’m asked to leave due to ritual impertinence.”
I’m glad that you appreciate that. I don’t see why it’s advice to me though, given that I’ve done none of the things you warn against.
“So just as Jesus was not afraid to call out the religious hypocrites of his day…”
All the more reason to appreciate me, Getic, for I endeavour to do exactly the same! not that I’m calling myself Jesus… that is for other people to say.
[joke]
Gotta appreciate that sense of humour, though I’d be happy to see it intact once the very long post I wrote to you here – asking for clarification on certain matters – clears moderation (try searching for “2012/07/19 at 7:45 AM” on this thread in a few days). Should make for an interesting read.
Look out for it. =D
“But that thing I can say is that, as anyone who has read your comments on the Bible here would know, your knowledge of the Bible is superficial at least and intentionally self-deceptive at worst.”
No, I don’t accept that at all. If you don’t like the conclusions of your own holy book, so be it, but I’m afraid you can’t blame a third party for pointing them out to you.
An uninformed complaint is not a conclusion.
Indeed not. A case in point: “your knowledge of the Bible is superficial at least and intentionally self-deceptive at worst”
That was an observation based on previous comments, not a complaint.
“I mentioned that I would find it very difficult to believe that the discovery of a code system as the basis of biology would have done anything but put an exclamation mark on Chesterton’s conclusions.”
Back to my previous comment: “Only someone who didn’t understand evolution much would make that suggestion! No insult intended, of course.”
The problem here is that you see no greater significance in DNA than it being a code system. The evangelical Christian Dr Francis Collins said:
“Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”
And yes there are reasons why DNA provides this strong evidence (Collins calls it ‘proof’), reasons that Chesterton never lived to see. If you don’t know them, you should either research them, or stop declaring that you can’t see what difference it would have made to Chesterton’s knowledge.
“This is especially true in light of the fact that matter can’t produce information.”
Can you define what you mean by ‘information’? It’s kind of a nebulous term. There’s ‘information’ in the rings on a tree stump, produced by wholly unthinking natural processes. The way stones are arranged on a beach gives us ‘information’ about the movements of the tides.
tildeb:
“The claim in bold is flat out wrong in fact (in response to Josh’s suggestion that “matter can’t produce information”).”
I’m afraid Josh is right. And just so I am not guilty of being vague, we are, here, talking about functionally specific, compex information, or FSCI, as identified by several prominent origins of life (OOL) researchers in the 1970′s – 80′s, in distinguishing between (a) the highly informational, highly contingent functional macromolecules of life and (b) crystals formed through forces of mechanical necessity, or (c) random polymer strings. And there is zero empirical evidence for matter creating the kind of information – or FSCI – that is contained within (a).
“Lenski et al has run a remarkable experiment for decades showing the progression of genetic information gains in 12 lines of bacteria….. This clearly demonstrates how random mutation followed by natural selection can cause later genetic adaptations that improve fitness and increase heritable genetic information that promotes reproductive success.”
Let us indeed take a closer look: What “genetic information gains” were made? What new function was gained? Where did natural selection and random mutation “increase heritable genetic information” as you mentioned, and produce functional, information-rich genes and proteins? The claim to the production of so-called ‘information’ is vague.
It is at this juncture that I bring to your attention – if you aren’t already aware of it – a 2010 peer-reviewed scientific paper written by prominent biochemist Michael Behe – and published in a biology journal – extensively critiquing Lenski’s Long Term Evolution Experiments (LTEE). By contrast to the above, in critiquing claims that the LTEE have produced something new, Behe’s 2010 Quarterly Review of Biology paper (in its entirety here – http://www.lehigh.edu/bio/pdf/Behe/QRB_paper.pdf) was anything but vague:
“By examining the DNA sequence of the E. coli in the neighborhood surrounding the IS [insertion sequence] elements, the investigators saw that several genes involved in central metabolism were knocked out, as well as some cell wall synthesis genes and several others. In subsequent work, Cooper et al. (2001) discovered that twelve of twelve cell lines showed adaptive IS-mediated deletions of their rbs operon, which is involved in making the sugar ribose. Thus, the adaptive mutations that were initially tracked down all involved loss-of-FCT.
Several years later, when the cultures had surpassed their 20,000th generation, Lenski’s group at Michigan State brought more advanced techniques to bear on the problem of identifying the molecular changes underlying the adaptation of the E. coli cultures. Using DNA expression profiles, they were able to reliably track down changes in the expression of 1300 genes of the bacterium, and determined that 59 genes had changed their expression levels from the ancestor, 47 of which were expressed at lower levels (Cooper et al. 2003). The authors stated that “The expression levels of many of these 59 genes are known to be regulated by specific effectors including guanosine tetraphosphate (ppGpp) and cAMP-cAMP receptor protein (CRP)” (Cooper et al. 2003:1074). They also noted that the cellular concentration of ppGpp is controlled by several genes including spoT. After sequencing, they discovered a nonsynonymous point mutation in the spoT gene.
When the researchers examined ten other populations that had evolved under the same conditions for 20,000 generations, they found that seven others also had fixed nonsynonymous point mutations in spoT, but with different substitutions than the first one that had been identified, thus suggesting that the mutations were decreasing the protein’s activity.
The group then decided to concentrate on candidate genes suggested by the physiological adaptations that the cells had made over 20,000 generations. One such adaptation was a change in supercoiling density; therefore, genes affecting DNA topology were investigated (Crozat et al. 2005). Two of these genes, topA and fis, had sustained point mutations. In the case of topA, the mutation coded an amino acid substitution, whereas, with fis, a transversion had occurred at the fourth nucleotide before the starting ATG codon. The topA mutation decreased the activity of the enzyme, while the fis mutation decreased the amount of fis gene product produced.”
(Michael J. Behe, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution’,” Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 85(4) (December, 2010).)
It took me a while to get used to the technical language, but here is what’s going on: For the first 20,000 generations of Lenski’s LTEE, very little happened. There were some molecular adaptations observed, but they involved the knocking out of genes, or decreasing protein activity – in essence, a DECREASE in specificity. Behe summarises:
“The fact that multiple point mutations in each gene could serve an adaptive role – and that disruption by IS insertion was beneficial – suggests that the point mutations were decreasing or eliminating the protein’s function.”
(Michael J. Behe, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution’,” Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 85(4) (December, 2010) (emphasis added).)
So, it appears Lenski’s LTEE do not demonstrate that “complex, specified information can indeed arise through natural mechanisms,” and in fact, “mutations were decreasing or eliminating the protein’s function”. Do let me know what might prompt you to think otherwise.
“But it gets better: at generation 33,100 the Ara-3 genetically altered itself to feed on citrate as well as the glucose rich mixture all the other lines continued to feed on. This occurred because of a mutation around generation 20,000 that ‘primed’ Ara-3 to take full advantage of another genetic change at generation 33,100.”
This, too, is an inaccurate impression. As scientists would readily admit, and as Behe explains extensively in the above-mentioned paper, the biochemical pathway for E. coli to uptake and metabolize citrate ALREADY existed in these bacteria, and isn’t something entirely new. They just can’t normally uptake it under oxic conditions; Lenski’s bacteria evolved the ability to uptake it under oxic conditions used in the experiment. So the general fact that Lenski’s bacteria showed this ability is really quite unremarkable.
In fact, Behe goes one step further and points out that previous investigations suggest that the ability of the E. coli to uptake citrate under oxic conditions might have resulted from molecular LOSS-of-function:
“As Blount et al. (2008) discussed, several other laboratories had, in the past, also identified mutant E. coli strains with such a phenotype. In one such case, the underlying mutation was not identified (Hall 1982); however, in another case, high-level constitutive expression on a multicopy plasmid of a citrate transporter gene, citT, which normally transports citrate in the absence of oxygen, was responsible for eliciting the phenotype (Pos et al. 1998). If the phenotype of the Lenski Cit+ strain is caused by the loss of the activity of a normal genetic regulatory element, such as a repressor binding site or other FCT, it will, of course, be a loss-of-FCT mutation, despite its highly adaptive effects in the presence of citrate. If the phenotype is due to one or more mutations that result in, for example, the addition of a novel genetic regulatory element, gene-duplication with sequence divergence, or the gain of a new binding site, then it will be a noteworthy gain-of-FCT mutation.”
(Michael J. Behe, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution’,” Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 85(4) (December, 2010).)
Thus, previous research suggests that the adaptation which allowed these E. coli to uptake citrate under oxic conditions might be caused “by the loss of the activity of a normal genetic regulatory element.” In other words, the machinery for both transporting and metabolizing citrate was already present, but a series of knockout mutations broke the regulation of pre-existing citrate transport mechanisms, causing over-expression of a citrate transport gene, allowing citrate to be transported under both oxic and anaerobic conditions. If this is the case, then clearly this example of Darwinian “evolution” entails the LOSS of a molecular function, not the gain of a new one. This and other issues that have surfaced as a direct result of Lenski’s LTEE – which, mind you, equals 50,000 generations, equivalent to somewhere around 1,000,000 years of human evolution – spells big trouble for neo-Darwinism.
“No designer agency is needed, no ‘irreducible complexity’ supported. Once again, for the elebenty bazillionth time, natural selection through common decent is a biological, agency-less and unguided natural process.”
That would just be your philosophical position on the matter, though, and not necessarily supported by empirical evidence or inferences to the best explanation. Still, I am willing to respect your beliefs.
Thanks, Getic.Apolo. I just saw that you addressed the Lenski et al material and I can extract references from it!
Joshua
Getic, there’s a reason why Behe’s paper is published the Discovery Institute proxy, why it has been cited by almost no one, and why he speaks not at biology conferences but churches. He is widely known to play word games to always support the central tenets of ID rather than deal honestly with good science. And the results show a bacteria that – through natural adaptation – was able to genetically alter over time to eat a new source of food. This is why Lenski has produced very good science cited in over 500 additional peer-reviewed journal papers. This critique by Behe, cited 5 times, and the other Dicoveroid Fellows at the Discotute is entirely expected (after all, one must either believe in Intelligent Design or accept Lenski’s results like the other 99.99% of biologists) and is utterly worthless except to offer some pseudo-support to creationist quote miners who wish to pretend that there exists some scientifically acceptable magical barrier to adaptive and beneficial and multistage genetic change. Sorry to disappoint, Getic, but the belief you mention lies entirely on the side of creationists and IDiots like Behe..
Andrew Ryan:
“There are many questions that can only be answered once one accepts evolution as a fact.”
That is not science. That is an a priori commitment to evolutionism, which makes it a philosophy, which is somewhat similar to Lewontin’s infamous words in 1997 calling for an a priori commitment to materialism, “that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” That is why Philip Johnson, in response to Lewontin’s statements, provided these words of caution:
“For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them “materialists employing science.” And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
. . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses.” [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]
Whereas as a Christian theist (as Josh and I are), I am able to not reject evolutionary theory outright, and am, in fact, able to accept certain parts of the theory as fact (microevolution, for instance), while not accepting the tenets of the theory with zero or little empirical support (such as abiogenesis and macroevolution). Science is really about following the evidence where it leads.
“Evolution through natural selection… says nothing about how life began (that’s biogenesis)”
I’m happy to agree with you there, though truth be told, many famous evolutionists (including Dawkins, that person you seem to think so highly of) would disagree with that view. It seems evolutionists really have a hard time tying down a single definition of ‘evolution’. I’m genuinely curious, why do you suppose that is the case?
“Meanwhile, you’ve got that link I gave you before for Talk Origins.”
I suppose you mean the one on ’29 evidences for macroevolution’, is that right? And yet, we find that we would be hard pressed to point to one evidence that makes the case, for all 29 seem to fall apart upon scrutiny!
‘A Critique of Douglas Theobald’s – “29 Evidences for Macroevolution” by Ashby Camp’ (http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1b.asp)
Indeed, macroevolutionary theory involves a enormous extrapolation from evidence of very limited ranges (microevolution) to conclusions far beyond the evidence, and anyone serious about exploring the limits of evolutionary theory would do well to recognise that. =)
Getic, you were certainly busy googling me online. Again, I am flattered – it’s obvious I got under your skin. That aside – is that it: your grand reveal?
You’ve posted links to several blogs but I don’t quite get your point – I was right on all those blogs! You say I ‘didn’t want me cover blown’, but I was quite happy to point you in the direction of the blogs I’ve posted on, and I’m pretty sure I even told you other names that I’d posted under! Hardly signs of a man with something to hide. I only asked Josh to stop you posting anything personal about me. You made some threatening post and I seem to remember posting something like “What, you’ve googled me and found other sites I posted on?”. If you’d said “Yes, that’s right”, I have said “Go ahead and post, I’ve nothing to be ashamed of!”.* When you didn’t reply anything like that, I wondered if you’d been looking for my address, or pictures of my kids online or something. Feel free to say that’s melodramatic, but I don’t know you from Adam. I’ve often seen apologists posting a video called ‘Cruel Logic’, where an atheist is tortured by a man saying “If you don’t believe in God, you can’t say I’m doing anything wrong!”. The enthusiasm that apologists greets this video has in the past given me pause.
*[I can't find the thread in question, so forgive me if I'm mis-remembering, but I think that's how it went.]
That you agree with the people I was arguing with, and disagree with me, is hardly surprising or proof of anything, least of all that I’ve been dishonest at any point.
I already told you this back in May:
“Again, I don’t expect you to read these discussions and declare me the ‘winner’. The people I debated (most likely) figured they were right, so why should I think you’ll disagree with them?”
And what smart, witty, erudite examples do you post?
“If you are the same Andrew Ryan that posts on Tough Questions Answered, you are full of crap”
Well, case closed then – I must be a dishonest debater! I also notice that on a few of the threads you posted, there were other counter-apologists pointing out that whoever I was debating was talking nonsense. I don’t offer this as proof that I’m right, merely that it’s no victory for you to be able to find other examples online of people disagreeing with me.
“I still tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, did some Googling on my own to determine if he ever had a proper lengthy conversation with Frank Turek on the Euthyphro Dilemma”
Feel free to email Frank directly, Getic. He’ll tell you that he disagrees with me, but he certainly spent a long time engaging me in discussion. He also thought highly enough of my input to befriend me on Facebook, send me a signed copy of his book, and even get Christopher Hitchens to sign a copy of his own book for me, which Frank then posted to me. Both he and Max Andrews on Sentias invited me to contribute to their blogs, so they can’t have seen me as that dishonest.
As for your claim that I lied about discussing morality with Frank, it seems to be based on shoddy google-fu – I’ve just googled crossexamined frank turek andrew ryan morality. I got results pretty easily:
http://www.crossexamined.org/blog/?p=71
http://www.crossexamined.org/blog/?p=96
” He tried to appeal to Josh’s emotions in saying he uses his real name, and has been found guilty of deliberately using a fake name to trick someone online into a conversation.”
Sorry, who have I tried to trick and how? I didn’t ‘trick Rhoblogy into continuing a conversation with me. He ASKED me to continue the conversation with him. He asked me on Bolt’s site, I then went over Rhoblogy’s site and continued the conversation with him. And I announced on Bolt’s site that I was posting under that name, a site that Rhoblogy contributes to. So hardly a deception.
“And yet, why would Andrew Ryan conveniently omit this fact, that someone had already given him a more-than-decent (in fact, brilliant) response as early as 2009?”
Please supply me with a ‘brilliant’ response? You have not done so so far.
“… get him to wrap his head around the understanding that no well-informed embryologist, biologist, or fetologist disputes the scientific fact that an unborn in a woman’s womb is a human being … quote P Z Myers, an atheist blogger and non-expert on the topic who doesn’t even consider a newborn baby as a human being”
Sorry, how does me quoting a tenured biologist who disagrees with a notion NOT count as disproving your claim that NO biologist disagrees with that notion?
So in short – fail on your part.
Getic: “Here, I am even happy to provide you a list of 100 of the best apologists around … show us what you’re worth and let us know which one of them you’ve ever held that so-called conversation with.”
Well Franks on the list Getic! And I notice that many on the list are, er, dead. So apologies for not having had a conversation with GK Chesterton or CS Lewis, ‘so-called’ or otherwise.
I’ve addressed your other points on a post awaiting moderation. Well, I attempted to address most of them – your post was… long. Looks like you’ve been very busy on it!
Who knew that disagreeing with Getic.Apolo’s creationist arguments classified one as a ‘militant’ atheist! Such hurtful words as ‘dishonest’ and ‘disingenuous’ typically earns us the labels of being strident and shrill. Imagine what we might be called if we went even so militantly far as to use CAPITAL LETTERS! Baby eaters, no doubt.
I’m just astonished by how much effort he evidently went to, just on my behalf! He genuinely thought he had some big ‘gotcha’ too. What a waste of his time.
Andy Ryan:
“Getic, you were certainly busy googling me online. Again, I am flattered”
Please, do not be. I really don’t mean to disappoint, but finding out about your dishonest online tactics took all of 15 minutes, and certainly less time than I take to formulate all the other more important scientific and philosophical arguments on this site.
“Sorry, how does me quoting a tenured biologist who disagrees with a notion NOT count as disproving your claim that NO biologist disagrees with that notion?
So in short – fail on your part.”
I’m having concerns about your comprehension problem. As per my quote – which you put up yourself – I said “no well-informed embryologist, biologist, or fetologist disputes the scientific fact that an unborn in a woman’s womb is a human being”, and certainly not that NO biologist disagrees with the notion (why would you think I would make that absolute statement?).
I’ll wait for you to admit to your strawman.
“I’ve addressed your other points on a post awaiting moderation. Well, I attempted to address most of them – your post was… long. Looks like you’ve been very busy on it!”
Like I’ve said, it hardly took me much time. You certainly made it easy with your penchant for dishonest online behaviour. But hey, I’m sure you’ve got explanations for all of these. And I AM indeed looking forward to what you have to say to explain your behaviour.
I’m not holding my breath though. ;)
” I said “no well-informed embryologist, biologist, or fetologist disputes the scientific fact that an unborn in a woman’s womb is a human being”, and certainly not that NO biologist disagrees with the notion (why would you think I would make that absolute statement?).”
You gave me a list that includes “biologists”, qualified only by saying they had to be “well-informed”. Who’s judging that latter qualification? If by that you mean only that they agree with you, then you’re basically saying that all biologists who agree with you, agree with you.
PZ Myers is a tenured Professor with a PhD in Biology – he’s ‘well-informed’ by any reckoning and he is a biologist. Where is my reading comprehension at fault?
Andrew Ryan:
What a really strange attempt at explaining away your strawman. The fact remains that I did not say NO biologist is in disagreement. P Z Myers, for instance, a man who does not even consider newborn babies to be human being, would be one.
So the fact remains that you’re lying that I said NO biologist disputes the fact. Are you ready to retract your strawman yet, or not?
tildeb:
“Such hurtful words as ‘dishonest’ and ‘disingenuous’…”
Before you get too carried away with your appeal to emotions, it is worth pointing out to you that it was Andy Ryan who first called me “a dishonest poster” and cited false evidence that I had to defend myself against. So do you have anything to say at all to him, or is this about having double standards?
“Who knew that disagreeing with Getic.Apolo’s creationist arguments classified one as a ‘militant’ atheist!”
Hmm, let’s see – on this thread alone:
1) I’ve not heard a single response from you or Andy Ryan on my detailed post (complete with references and quotations) highlighting why the discovery of DNA is problematic for neo-Darwinism,
2) I’ve seen no reply to my post (again with references) highlighting the scientific argument for why we cannot rule out the possibility that the human race could have had two first parents, and
3) The only thing you’ve had to offer so far in response to my referencing a 2010 peer-reviewed scientific paper – written by a prominent biochemist and published in a biology journal – that extensively critiques Lenski’s Long Term Evolution Experiments and refutes your points is aptly summed up by your final statement: that apparently, “the belief you mention lies entirely on the side of creationists and IDiots like Behe.”
I’d be happy to hear you express the ways you disagree with what you label as my “creationist arguments”. That is, when you actually get down to it.
But no worries, it’s okay if you wanna believe what you wanna believe. I can respect that. =)
Getic.Apolo,:
1) You’re simply quoting other creationists. If you don’t care about what’s true and are determined to remain steadfast against it if it inconveniences your religious beliefs – and evolution is as true as any scientific model we have as a species – why should I care who you quote? Neo-Darwinism is the synthesis of evolution, meaning common ancestry by natural selection, with genetics. You continue to show that you don’t even understand basic biology yet know it cannot be true. The little emoticons are just weird.
2) You don’t care about the science of genetics or how we know it shows conclusively that we have no bottleneck of two in our genetic history. You just know it can’t be true because inconveniences your religious beliefs, which you then busily go about quote mining to try to present what appears to be some support for your prior conclusion that has nothing to do with reality.
3) Behe is not a prominent biologist but a thorough discredited ID hack. His science is awful. That’s your source. It’s laughably poor quality. But you don’t understand that or why your liberal use of him as a source is self-immolating. But you don’t care because it seems to support an anti-evolution stance you’ve taken not out of respect for what’s true but out of service to religious beliefs that are contrary to it.
Because you don’t seem to care about what’s true and have demonstrably gone off the rails of reasonable internet exchanges with Andrew Ryan who has raised excellent points you should consider if you did, I don’t think I gain anything of value by responding to you.
Yeah, particularly funny that he’s quoting Ggodat, Mr ‘where are the transitional fossils’ himself, as an authority on dishonest debating!
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding! Ggodat is the most repetitively obtuse commenter on the intertubes. Second law! Second law!
tildeb, thanks for plugging the posts. I figure that a complaint by a dogmatic neo-Darwinist materialist atheist like you, for the so-called ‘creationist arguments’ I listed, is worth more than a recommendation by a theist or creationist, since reasonable people will wonder why this dogmatic neo-Darwinist is so upset, and yet, not handling the substance of my posts, perhaps even destroying my so-called non-scientific “creationist arguments” with his fantastic grasp of science. Here are a couple more responses to your various points for you to complain about, if you don’t mind giving me another helping hand! =D
1) For starters, I think you should get some of that grey matter round to the fact that people like Josh and I do not reject evolutionary theory outright, and actually accept certain tenets of the theory. Secondly, what an odd description of a theory, when you said “evolution is as true as any scientific model we have as a species”. Anyone who truly understands science knows that all scientific knowledge is provisional and is subject to change as and when new findings are made. So it seems it is you who seems dogmatically committed to the theory even if there is evidence contrary to what the theory claims. All I ever hear from you on most matters, no matter how many peer-reviewed papers I cite, no matter how many studies I reference from the scientific field, no matter how many experts in the field I quote, is along the lines of “oh they are creationists me don’t wanna buy that me wanna hug onto evolution theory long time” (I’m not sure if you’ve even noticed, in the midst of your rants, that a number of them are not theists at all, but agnostics) So no disrespect intended, but you’ll probably understand why your non-arguments don’t work. But of course, you are always welcome to show me how I “don’t even understand basic biology.
2) But tildeb, I DO care about the science of genetics. It was Andrew Ryan (and perhaps, you agree with him) who made the unscientific claim that the possibility of two first parents had been ruled out absolutely, even as it should be clear – to anyone who appreciates proper science – that scientific knowledge is inescapably provisional and that inductive reasoning – especially on matters from the past – is only capable of a weak form warrant, not certainty beyond correction. And, it is fair comment to note that different scientific claims come with differing degrees of corroboration and differing degrees of openness to empirical testing.
So any statement that gives an imprimatur of practical certainty to theories – for instance, ruling out altogether the possibility of a literal Adam and Eve – is, in my opinion, highly questionable.
Furthermore, as I pointed out, as recently as last month, development biologist Ann Gauger published an exciting new book, ‘Science And Human Origins’ (http://www.amazon.com/Science-Human-Origins-Ann-Gauger/dp/193659904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340146969&sr=8-1&keywords=science+and+human+origins), where she concludes in Chapter 5 that we cannot rule out the scientific possibility that the human race could have had two first parents. Although I haven’t gotten the book yet, I have read excerpts of Chapter 5 (they can be found online). Here are a couple of paragraphs:
” ‘The Challenge to the Challenge’
Let’s step back and examine how Ayala’s analysis was done. His claims against a literal Adam and Eve are based on population genetics models for how gene frequencies change in populations over time, and how ancestral gene lineages tend to coalesce. The equations used to reconstruct these trees, and to calculate ancestral population sizes, depend on simplifications and assumptions to make the mathematics tractable, as I said before. These explicit assumptions include a constant background mutation rate over time, lack of selection for genetic change on
the DNA sequences being studied, random breeding among individuals, no migrations in or out of the breeding population, and a constant population size . If any of these assumptions turn out to be unrealistic, the results of a model may be seriously flawed.
There are also hidden assumptions buried in population genetics models, assumptions that rely upon the very thing they are meant to demonstrate. For example, tree-drawing algorithms assume that a tree of common descent exists. The population genetics equations also assume that random processes are the only causes of genetic change over time, an assumption drawn from naturalism. What if non-natural causes, or even unknown natural causes that do not act randomly, have intervened to produce genetic change?
It turns out that the particular DNA sequence from HLA-DRB1 that Ayala used in his analysis was guaranteed to give an overestimate, because he inadequately controlled for two of the above assumptions—the assumption that there is a lack of selection for genetic change on the DNA sequence being studied, and the assumption of a constant background mutation rate over time. (Pp. 111-12)”
Here’s more:
‘Breaking: Adam and Eve are scientifically possible’ – June 2012 (http://www.uncommondescent.com/human-evolution/breaking-adam-and-eve-are-scientifically-possible/)
But of course, you are welcome to avoid dealing with the substance of the book (have you read ONE chapter online yet?) and to label it “creationist stuff”.
3) I can see it clearly grinds your gear that a prominent biochemist produced a peer-reviewed scientific paper – written by a and published in a biology journal – that extensively critiques Lenski’s Long Term Evolution Experiments and comprehensively refutes your points, as is nicely captured by your ‘scientific’ rebuttal: “the belief you mention lies entirely on the side of creationists and IDiots like Behe.” I sincerely doubt you are ready to deal with the substance of my post, and the references cited. But I’d appreciate some sort of an effort, really.
Finally, I can understand that it must also equally frustrate you that people like Josh and I are not strictly anti-evolution, it would probably have made it easier for you to deal with us. Unfortunately for you, we accept certain parts of the theory, but are just more discerning than you when it comes to noticing which tenets of the theory are proven and which are nonsense. I can only pray that you set your pride aside and adopt that same kind of discernment, so that you can separate fact from fiction. Cheers! =)
Here’s an article with references to a peer-reviewed paper on why the human bottle-neck with two patents theory doesn’t work. I already posted one, but Josh rejected it for not having references. This one does:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/how-big-was-the-human-population-bottleneck-not-anything-close-to-2/
I can’t remember your post on why DNA’s discovery is a problem us; as before, I can’t address every point you make.
Andrew Ryan:
Your reference is from 2011. And as I’ve already highlighted, in June 2012, development biologist Ann Gauger published an exciting new book, ‘Science And Human Origins’ (http://www.amazon.com/Science-Human-Origins-Ann-Gauger/dp/193659904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340146969&sr=8-1&keywords=science+and+human+origins), where she concludes in Chapter 5 that we cannot rule out the scientific possibility that the human race could have had two first parents. Although I haven’t gotten the book yet, I have read excerpts of Chapter 5 (they can be found online).
Have you read ANY part of the book online yet? If not, here are a couple of paragraphs:
” ‘The Challenge to the Challenge’
Let’s step back and examine how Ayala’s analysis was done. His claims against a literal Adam and Eve are based on population genetics models for how gene frequencies change in populations over time, and how ancestral gene lineages tend to coalesce. The equations used to reconstruct these trees, and to calculate ancestral population sizes, depend on simplifications and assumptions to make the mathematics tractable, as I said before. These explicit assumptions include a constant background mutation rate over time, lack of selection for genetic change on
the DNA sequences being studied, random breeding among individuals, no migrations in or out of the breeding population, and a constant population size . If any of these assumptions turn out to be unrealistic, the results of a model may be seriously flawed.
There are also hidden assumptions buried in population genetics models, assumptions that rely upon the very thing they are meant to demonstrate. For example, tree-drawing algorithms assume that a tree of common descent exists. The population genetics equations also assume that random processes are the only causes of genetic change over time, an assumption drawn from naturalism. What if non-natural causes, or even unknown natural causes that do not act randomly, have intervened to produce genetic change?
It turns out that the particular DNA sequence from HLA-DRB1 that Ayala used in his analysis was guaranteed to give an overestimate, because he inadequately controlled for two of the above assumptions—the assumption that there is a lack of selection for genetic change on the DNA sequence being studied, and the assumption of a constant background mutation rate over time. (Pp. 111-12)”
Other references for your attention:
‘Breaking: Adam and Eve are scientifically possible’ – June 2012 (http://www.uncommondescent.com/human-evolution/breaking-adam-and-eve-are-scientifically-possible/)
‘The Non Mythical Adam and Eve by Dr Robert Carter, Ph.D. marine biology (video) – August 2011 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftwf0owpzQ)
‘Human Evolution? – The Compelling Genetic & Fossil Evidence For Adam and Eve – Dr. Fazale Rana’ (video) (http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4284482/human_evolution_the_compelling_genetic_fossil_evidence_for_adam_and_eve_dr_fazale_rana/)
‘Were They Real? The Scientific Case for Adam and Eve by Fazale Rana’ – November 2010 (http://www.reasons.org/articles/were-they-real-the-scientific-case-for-adam-and-eve)
As I’ve mentioned before, it should be clear that scientific knowledge is inescapably provisional and that inductive reasoning – especially on matters from the past – is only capable of a weak form warrant, not certainty beyond correction. And, it is fair comment to note that different scientific claims come with differing degrees of corroboration and differing degrees of openness to empirical testing.
So any statement that gives an imprimatur of practical certainty to theories – for instance, ruling out altogether the possibility of a literal Adam and Eve – is, in my opinion, highly questionable.
And so, even as you are welcome to form your own opinion on the origin of the human race, anyone can see, at the very least, that the possibility of a literal Adam and Eve cannot be ruled out absolutely.
Sorry, Andy. I don’t think I wrote out the reason why I see DNA as a problem for the evolutionist. Of all the reasons I could think of, the biggest one is: it is a chemical code system. Can you name one code system that has every appeared spontaneously?
I dabbled in computer programming (majored in Internet technologies; computer programming tied me to a computer too long to be interesting) and code is not a simple thing (I know you know that), even something as simple as a CGI script for a Web page. In fact, I once spent two hours troubleshooting a script only to find out I had a single extra space in it that prevented the entire thing from executing! (Got some new gray hairs then.)
Now, how do you get a complex code system that has built-in error correcting mechanisms through a completely blind process?
Joshua
“The fact remains that I did not say NO biologist is in disagreement.”
I provided a quote from you that appears to make exactly that claim. Could you explain what that quote DOES mean.
“no well-informed embryologist, biologist, or fetologist disputes the scientific fact that an unborn in a woman’s womb is a human being”
I already gave you that quote and asked you to explain it; in response you completely ignored my question and simply restated that you never made the claim. So please, again, explain what that quote from you DOES mean if it is not making that claim. I’m just asking for clarification.
Andy Ryan:
“I provided a quote from you that appears to make exactly that claim.”
But it does NOT make exactly that claim, and you know that. Your smokescreen is obvious. Just as you have a right to decide who you feel is an informed biologist or not (for instance, you feel P Z Myers, a person who doesn’t even consider babies to be human beings, is an informed biologist), so do I. Again, I did not say NO biologist disputes my point of view. I would never think of making such a far-fetched assertion, and you probably know that.
So now that I’ve given the clarification you asked for, are you ready to admit to your strawman and retract it?
“Again, I did not say NO biologist disputes my point of view”
I’ve asked you several times to clarify what you DID mean, instead you keep telling me what you didn’t say. And I’ve explained why Myers is an informed biologist; saying that you don’t agree with him isn’t a rebuttal. Go ahead – what was your claim?
Andrew Ryan:
Your attempts at distracting from the topic are irrelevant here, they do not make your strawman any less obvious. Simple question, did I specifically say “NO biologist disputes my point of view”, or did I not? Let’s see you answer that, or not.
“finding out about your dishonest online tactics took all of 15 minutes”
And finding a couple of conversations between me and Frank Turek – one of the living apologists on your list – online discussing morality took me 20 seconds, and yet you still make the serious allegation that I’m lying to claim it happened.
Yes, I suppose it IS a serious matter if you were being dishonest with your claim that you had discussed the Euthyphro Dilemma and “had this conversation with several well-known apologists, and none had a decent response.” So given you haven’t backed up that claim till now, I’d get down to it if I were you (the same way I had to prove my innocence in the face of your false accusation).
Good luck.
Getic, you’ve completely departed from reality, and given up attempting to make any kind of argument. I think it’s you who needs the good luck.
Andrew Ryan:
Pardon, but, your just above sounds like subject switching to move tangentially from red herring to strawman laced with ad hominem to poisoned atmosphere.
“Getic, you’ve completely departed from reality…”
Um, not really. I think it’s pretty clear to any passing reader that I’ve calmly – and without much anger, ranting or fanfare – put forth a case highlighting the various ways in which you’ve exhibited dishonesty online, for the sake of improving the quality of comments at this site. And given you had no qualms about accusing me of being “a dishonest poster” (a false accusation that I have since addressed and dismissed), far be it from you to complain when your behaviour is called into question.
Like I’ve said before, even as you’ve yet to satisfactorily explain your dishonest debating tactics, life really goes on for me. It’s not like I intend to bring up your bad behaviour again and again, although I had a responsibility to highlight it at least once. But sure, if it allows you to feel better, yes, Josh, myself, J. W. Wartick, Rhology, Cornell and others must be “completely departed from reality” to be calling you dishonest, that does make sense.
“… and given up attempting to make any kind of argument.”
Hmm, just this thread alone would indicate that I am making all kinds of relevant arguments to the topic at hand. I think the casual passing reader can discern for themselves, as to who makes proper arguments on this site, and who avoids them (do let Josh and I know when you’re eventually ready to answer all the questions we repeated asked you pertaining to your understanding of the Bible and questions on morality, here – http://noapologiesallowed.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/there-are-no-heroes-or-villains-in-a-moral-relativist-universe/#comments).
Moving along now, till the next fruitful discussion.
” Simple question, did I specifically say “NO biologist disputes my point of view”
You gave a list of people of whom you claimed none disputed your view. Among that list was ‘biologists’. I’ve asked you several times to clarify what you meant, giving you the opportunity to explain how I misread the sentence. You’ve not done so – you’ve never actually said what you DID mean. And I’ve pointed that out several times too. Again – go ahead and parse the meaning of the sentenc for me. If the difference between what you said and it being ‘all biologists’ is that they have to be ‘well-informed’, then I’ve already addressed that.
And I’ve already addressed your other claims too, even providing links directly refuting you, eg me discussing morality with Turek.
Have you anything else to offer, or are you just going to repeat your failed claims and denials again? If so, see my previous few posts for the answer…
“I’ve asked you several times to clarify what you meant, giving you the opportunity to explain how I misread the sentence. You’ve not done so – you’ve never actually said what you DID mean.”
Which would be a lie, of course, because I already provided that clarification earlier:
“Just as you have a right to decide who you feel is an informed biologist or not (for instance, you feel P Z Myers, a person who doesn’t even consider babies to be human beings, is an informed biologist), so do I. Again, I did not say NO biologist disputes my point of view. I would never think of making such a far-fetched assertion, and you probably know that.
So now that I’ve given the clarification you asked for, are you ready to admit to your strawman and retract it?”
That was the clarification, in case it wasn’t clear. So, back to my simple question: did I specifically say “NO biologist disputes my point of view, or did I not? Yes, or no?
“And I’ve already addressed your other claims too, even providing links directly refuting you, eg me discussing morality with Turek.”
Even that is not true, once we look at your original claim that I asked you to back up: that you’ve discussed the Euthyphro Dilemma “with several well-known apologists, and none had a decent response.” That you could’ve easily vindicated yourself by throwing those SEVERAL names and references into all your replies since then – and that you still haven’t – just makes it more telling.
Look, I do not intend to make this more awkward for you than it already is. Like I said, life really goes on for me, and hereafter I don’t wish to bring up your online debating tactics again. I just hope you think about the following questions. I do not need an answer from you at all, but I do hope you reflect on them:
1) Did you, or did you not lie when you said that you’ve spoken about the Euthyphro Dilemma pertaining to morality “with several well-known apologists, and none had a decent response”, and are you able to come up with the names of those “several”?
2) Did you, or did you not wilfully trick Rhology by using a fake username that even he was totally unaware about (as highlighted by his comment “You did? Where? When? Neither Google nor I remember you.”) just so you could further conversation with him?
3) Have you, or have you not been deemed dishonest on more than one occasion before this by more than one person?
Again, I am not interested in your answers. I’m moving along now, till the next fruitful discussion.
So your statement rests on the assertion that a tenured professor with a PhD in biology is not ‘well-informed on biology’? Major fail Getic. Please tell me your credentials to justify your ability to make that judgment.
I can find you a number of people who will call Michael Behe dishonest – many of them fellow biologists. I can point you to many people who call WL Craig dishonest, or who point out CL Bolt dishonesty. And a whole bunch of Pharisees didn’t think much of Jesus either – all of whom were just as convinced of their righteousness as Rhology, Ggodat et el. Again, not that I’m saying I’m Jesus – modesty forbids of course.
So yeah, well done on finding people online who refuse to listen to someone offering them learning. Not surprising – one cannot expect dwarves to queue for the rack.
On the subject of Behe, you quoted him and yet he accepts that man and apes share a common ancestor. By your reckoning doesn’t that make him ‘uninformed’? And by your own logic, couldn’t I make a claim like “no well informed chemist denies one can turn lead to gold” by the foolishly simple expedient of dismissing any chemist who disagrees with me?
Epic fail again, Getic.
“just so you could further conversation with him?”
I already answered this. The answer, again, is no. I didn’t post under a different name to ‘trick him into continuing conversation’. He had ASKED me to continue a conversation. In fact he had made fun of me previously for NOT answering his questions! I hardly needed to trick him into continuing a conversation.
This is what happens when you ‘pick up the fag ends of a conversation’, as we say in the UK, and in this case it’s a months old conversation.
” Did you, or did you not lie when you said that you’ve spoken about…”
No, I leave the lies to others. The truth works fine for me thanks. You can’t even acknowledge that I’ve talked to ONE well-known apologist on the subject after I’ve provided you with more than one direct link demonstrating it, so why should I start naming others?!
Really don’t see what you think any of this is gaining you. It’s like you realise you can’t beat any of my arguments, so have to dredge the Internet for other arguments I’ve given up to several years’ old. And oh dear you can’t beat those either!
Andrew Ryan:
“So yeah, well done on finding people online who refuse to listen to someone offering them learning. Not surprising – one cannot expect dwarves to queue for the rack.”
” It’s like you realise you can’t beat any of my arguments…”
Hmm, it’s pretty interesting how you (not for the first time, I remember you doing something similar with Josh) so ‘modestly’ claim to be offering others “learning”, and proclaim ‘victory’ for yourself over others and myself, when any passing reader can see for themselves that you have made a frequent habit of avoiding the questions and argument Josh and I pose.
But sure, if it does help you feel better, you’re the champion of arguments. There you go.
P.S.: I believe it’s called pigeon chess. Count me out though, not my type of game. ;)
“That you could’ve easily vindicated yourself by throwing those SEVERAL names and references into all your replies since then”
Most of them have come up already, so I don’t understand your complaint. Turek was on your list. Mammen writes on Turek’s blog and is a published apologist – you can find him in your local Christian bookshop. Rhology may not be well-known by his colleague CL Bolt is certainly discussed as a pre-suppositionist on counter-apologetic radio shows, podcasts and and the freethought blogs network.
The rest of them I guess comes down to what you consider ‘well-known’. Certainly Wintery Knight will trumpet his millions of page views. I don’t know if JW Wartick is well known, but I have at any rate already provided ‘several’ names.
Sorry – ‘Rhology may not be well-known BUT his colleague CL Bolt… Etc’
‘by’ should have read ‘but’, which completely changed the sense of the sentence.
Getic: ” As recently as last month, development biologist Ann Gauger published an exciting new book, ‘Science And Human Origins’ ”
Yes, apparently it’s Discovery Institute nonsense:
http://apomorph.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/science-and-human-origins-chapter-5.html
“Because up to four haplotypes could be inherited from two people, the existence of only three leaves the door open for an Adam-and-Eve bottleneck. Unfortunately for Gauger, even if we accept all parts of her argument up to here, we are forced to conclude that this final step is wrong if the book is to be internally consistent.
The other two major haplotypes might not be “ancient”, but they are still 4 to 6 million years old (Gauger agrees with this). While this does mean they originated in the hominoids, Gauger takes this as evidence they could have come from Adam and Eve. Why is this wrong? Well, if we recall Luskin’s chapter, he argued that Homo habilis was seriously non-human. No self-contemplation for the habilines. Yet, H. habilis originated about 2.3 million years ago, and H. erectus did not arrive until about 1.8 million years ago, marking what Luskin accepts to be the start of humanness. Back at 4 million years ago when the last of the HLA-DR haplotypes originated, our closest relatives were Australopithecus. Anatomically modern humans were a long way away. So we can be sure that the five major haplotypes of HLA-DR all pre-date the genus Homo, and contradict the claim made by Gauger that:
The argument from population genetics has been that there is too much genetic diversity to pass through a bottleneck of two individuals, as would be the case for Adam and Eve. But that turns out not to be true.
Instead, the argument from population genetics still definitively rules out the possibility of Adam and Eve, if Adam and Eve were human. ”
Also…
“In the case of this book, it has left them needing to make all kinds of awkward criticisms of fields in which the authors clearly lack expertise. A lawyer is not the right guy to challenge the world’s palaeoanthropologists, nor the world’s geneticists. Certainly, he shouldn’t be trying to take them all on at once. It will end with him trying to smear the reputation of scientists rather than engaging with their ideas. Accusations that the entire field of palaeoanthropology is driven by personal disputes and that Francis Collins is a bad Christian are simply not compelling reading in a book that is putatively about scientific argument.”
Andrew Ryan:
“Yes, apparently it’s Discovery Institute nonsense:
http://apomorph.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/science-and-human-origins-chapter-5.html”
No surprises there, you just exemplified what the authors of the book mentioned on their site:
“Our recent book “Science and Human Origins” has caught the attention of a number of evolutionary bloggers.. But most have chosen to recycle a review by a graduate student named Paul McBride, so as to avoid reading the book itself, and dealing with its arguments.”
That would be you, I believe.
And while you call their book “Discovery Institute nonsense”, it’s more like your response is nonsense from a graduate student who doesn’t quite understand the science in the book.
“Paul McBride, a PhD student studying vertebrate evolution in New Zealand, is concerned that religion may be driving the research that Ann Gauger and I are doing, or perhaps that we’ve been driving under its influence. As you might guess, there’s some irony in this. His criticisms of my chapter in Science and Human Origins suggest that he may actually be the one whose scientific reasoning is being impaired by his beliefs.”
After which, of course, the authors proceed to discuss and completely dismantle much of McBride’s critique in great detail (in an ever-expanding list of articles in response to and refuting his points).
On the subject of haplotypes (‘Humanly Speaking…Part 2′
By Ann Gauger – http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/26577072991/humanly-speaking-part-2):
“There seems to be an idea on the part of some critics that my analysis in “Science and Human Origins” means that humans arose four million years ago. That is not the case.
In the book I said that we share four haplotypes with chimps, and between three and five haplotypes predate the putative split between our lineage and chimps, assuming common descent is true. How many haplotypes depends on how the tree is drawn, and where the estimated divergence time is placed.
Some have said mistakenly that this means the first humans must have appeared at four million years. I never said that and the data do not show that. The haplotypes show a mean age of 26 million years based on divergence between introns (three are very old, but two are recent—close to the time of our supposed split from chimps—thus the average age of 26 million). However, comparisons within lineages (or haplotypes) show that over 90% of the allelic diversity within lineages arose within the last 180,000-320,000 years. This could be due to another bottleneck at the time of the emergence of Homo sapiens. Here is an quote from Bergstrom et al. with emphasis added.
‘Our intron analysis shows that most of the DRBI allelic lineages [haplotypes] predate the separation of hominoid species, consistent with previous analyses of coding and intron sequences. Within such ancestral lineages, however, the intron sequences are highly similar, implying that the HLA-DRBl alleles within lineages have been generated recently. The topology of the phylogenetic tree for intron sequences indicates that most of the alleles within lineages have been generated after the separation of Homo and Pan. The mean sequence difference among alleles within a lineage corresponds to an average age of 180,000-320,000 years (range based on the standard error). This implies that the vast majority (greater than 90%) of the more than 135 contemporary HLA-DRBl alleles have a very recent origin. The age of DRBl alleles estimated from intron sequences is quite different from the estimates based on exon-2 sequences, which proposed that a minority of the DRBl alleles have been generated after the separation of Homo and Pan.’
To our critics, check the original data if you have doubts. There is further clarification as to why they think the low intra-allelic diversity is not due to selective sweeps or homogenization by recombination. Fascinating, isn’t it?”
“Your reference is from 2011. And as I’ve already highlighted, in June 2012, development biologist Ann Gauger published an exciting new book, ‘Science And Human Origins”
Does she discuss the 2011 paper at all?
Andrew Ryan:
“Does she discuss the 2011 paper at all?”
I can’t claim to know, because I only have access to a few chapters, and not the whole book.
Have you read the book at all?
“I can’t claim to know, because I only have access to a few chapters, and not the whole book.”
Well, you suggested that the 2011 paper I referenced was trumped by the 2012 book, because the latter was newer. If the book doesn’t reference the paper at all, makes no attempt to respond to the actual science there, then I don’t see what value it has as a rebuttal. And reviews I’ve read of the book clearly state that the author completely ignores the paper. If even YOU have not read the whole book, and the book makes no attempt to respond to the actual peer-reviewed science that I’ve already referenced, I don’t see why I should waste my time on it.
When Ann Gauger publishes a peer-reviewed response to [Li, H. and R. Durbin. 2011. Inference of human population history from individual whole-genome sequences. Nature 475:493-497], then we can talk.
And sure, all science is provisional, but that doesn’t mean that everything is up for grabs at all times. You might as well dispute the Heliocentric view of the solar system on the basis that ‘all science is provisional’. Provisional or not, you’ve shown no reason to dispute the 2011 paper that I referenced, which therefore remains the best evidence we have on that ‘DNA bottle-neck’ subject.
So my point stands rejecting Chesterton’s view that Adam and Eve etc are the ‘only sane view’. Isaac Newton passionately believed in alchemy. We can say now that he was wrong on that subject, and that if he lived now, he’d almost certainly reject alchemy. You could respond that even modern chemistry’s rejection of alchemy is ‘only provisional’ but you’d be making a pretty weak point.
Andrew Ryan:
“And sure, all science is provisional…”
Listen, YOU are the one lacking understanding of what scientific knowledge claims entail by suggesting that the possibility of the human race originating from two first parents has been ruled out absolutely, and yet claiming that all science is provisional.
So until you have something of substance to say in response to Gauger and Axe’s showing that that possibility cannot be ruled out absolutely, please move along.
Which brings me to the question that you’ve conveniently avoided answering: Have you read the book at all? Even one chapter?
I doubt it.
Andrew Ryan:
Since you’re such a big fan of peer-review, you might enjoy this sharing from the authors, the peer-reviewed literature that directly inspired their inference that the possibility of two first parents cannot be ruled out absolutely [from ‘On Enzymes and Teleology’ By Ann Gauger (http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/27516628899/on-enzymes-and-teleology)%5D:
“In fact, we have published a number of peer-reviewed articles and one of them in particular, called “The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway,” contributed to the the argument we made in the new book published by Discovery Institute Press, “Science and Human Origins.”
So you refuse to look at their peer-reviewed INFERENCE of human origins, but have no worries swallowing what you yourself admit to being “INFERENCE of human population history from individual whole-genome sequences” from Li, H. and R. Durbin. Double standards, perhaps?
Which brings me back to that question: Have you read the book yet? Perhaps it’s not worth furthering this conversation until you have at least ventured a chapter or two.
Andrew Ryan:
Here are further responses from the authors of the book to graduate student Paul McBride’s critique, and they have promised more articles addressing his posts. It appears most of his falls apart upon scrutiny!
‘On Phylogenies and Analogies’ By Ann Gauger (http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/27464917244/on-phylogenies-and-analogies)
Excerpts:
“To begin I will discuss his critique that deals with phylogeny…
… Of course, intelligent design does not necessarily rule out common descent, merely unguided common descent. A biological designer could choose to use descent with modification, and direct the mutational events necessary to produce evolutionary change. But the designer could also add completely new features, or modify and insert previously implemented features from unrelated organisms…
… Listen to this one from the foremost proponent of convergent evolution, Simon Conway Morris, on the subject of the receptor proteins responsible for olfaction in insects. These molecules seem at first to resemble opsins, G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) that span the membrane seven times. But on closer inspection they don’t. Even Conway Morris seems puzzled:
‘At first glance, complete with their seven helices spanning the sensory membrane, they [the insect olfactory receptors] look reassuringly like the ever-reliable GPCRs. Except they aren’t! Blink twice and then notice that these proteins are back to front so that the amino-terminal is cytoplasmic and the carboxy-terminal extracellular. This is completely opposite to the GPCRs, but surely it represents a trivial difference? On the contrary. Lurking in the insect ‘nose’ is a ligand-gated cation channel that at first sight looks practically identical to a GPCR but is completely unrelated.
Maybe I am a bear of little brain, but is this not all a little peculiar? Why throw away a perfectly acceptable GPCR —which after all other ecdysozoans such as nematodes use—and install what is effectively a near perfect mimic? A little trick to keep us on our Darwinian toes? Maybe a clue comes from the choanoflagellates. Central to their life is nitrogen metabolism, but rather oddly, the genes they employ have been recruited from algae. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, except that Aurora Nedelcu and colleagues [7] suggest these imports turned out to be a notch better than the incumbent machinery. Spitfire versus Messerschmitt if you like; both superb aircraft, but the former had the edge.’
So here we have an account of two unique ways accomplishing the same remarkable task (olfactory reception), but in a completely unrelated ways. Similarly, choanoflagellates have borrowed their nitrogen metabolism from algae. Even more remarkably, protists from opposite sides of the phylogenetic tree share unusual organelle ultrastructural features, genome structure, and methods of RNA editing and processing. Are these things the result of selection and convergent evolution, or something else entirely? No one has a satisfactory answer as yet.
Some argue that there are only a few paths open that can produce particular biological functions (more on that later). That might explain patchy distribution, but not common function with different topologies, like the GPCRs. Rather, proteins that have a common function but different topology, or complex biologic problems that are solved independently but arrive at similar outcomes, suggest the reapplication of existing ideas in new contexts. This of course, is precisely the kind of thing that designers do, whether for cars or for creatures.”
‘Thou Shalt Not Put Evolutionary Theory to a Test’ By Doug Axe (http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/27534838759/thou-shalt-not-put-evolutionary-theory-to-a-test)
Excerpts:
“We all agree that evolutionists are crediting remarkable things to an unguided material process. McBride also agrees with us that this process has significant limitations. In his words:
‘Evolution is not a process that is capable of producing anything and everything, at all times in all species. It is, conversely, a greatly constrained process.’
This being so, surely McBride ought to agree with us that the claims of evolutionists need to be evaluated in light of these constraints. It seems to me that to disagree with this would be to adopt a decidedly unscientific stance…
“… In particular, shouldn’t we pay some attention to the fact that evolution has to explain invention on a much larger scale than we examined—not just single new enzyme functions, but the suites of these needed for new metabolism, often requiring completely new protein architectures… and not just new architectures at that molecular level, but also at the level of cells, and tissues, and body plans? If evolution is hit-and-miss at the very bottom level of this hierarchy, how would it ever succeed at the top level, which depends so critically on the lower levels? That would be like struggling with simple words in Japanese but being fluent when it comes to high-level conversation. It’s not just unlikely. It’s incoherent.
The importance of step 2—reconciling what we know evolution can do with what we claim it did do—was precisely my intended point near the end of the second chapter of Science and Human Origins. There I laid out the experimental evidence that would be needed to show that an evolutionary transition from apes to humans is indeed feasible. McBride misconstrues my challenge in his haste to dismiss it:
‘Axe is suggesting that until the day that each single mutation leading from a common ancestor with chimpanzees to man is predicted in order, with each mutation individually investigated for its fitness effects, there is still room to argue about holes in evolutionary theory and leave room for the calm, guiding hand of the Intelligent Designer.’
Again, he’s focusing exclusively on the past, whereas I’m asking evolutionists to do what other scientists do when they aim to say something credible about the distant past. They do the work of connecting it in a credible way to the present. They base their claims about what did happen on their understanding of what does happen. Before scientists claim that a natural process produced humans from apes, they ought to spend some time reflecting on what would have to be true in order for this really to happen within the constraints that McBride has acknowledged.
For example, McBride criticizes me for not mentioning genetic drift in my discussion of human origins, apparently without realizing that the result of Durrett and Schmidt rules drift out. Each and every specific genetic change needed to produce humans from apes would have to have conferred a significant selective advantage in order for humans to have appeared in the available time. Any aspect of the transition that requires two or more mutations to act in combination in order to increase fitness would take way too long (>100 million years).
My challenge to McBride, and everyone else who believes the evolutionary story of human origins, is not to provide the list of mutations that did trick, but rather a list of mutations that can do it. Otherwise they’re in the position of insisting that something is a scientific fact without having the faintest idea how it even could be. That’s just not what scientists should be doing.”
I’ve not read the book, and I’ve already explained why you’ve given me no reason to think it would be worth my time. I can find you books putting forward every crackpot theory under the sun. I can’t use your failure to waste your time reading said books as evidence that said theories have any validity.
“YOU are the one lacking understanding of what scientific knowledge claims entail by suggesting that the possibility of the human race originating from two first parents has been ruled out absolutely, and yet claiming that all science is provisional.”
No Getic, and I’ve already addressed that too. You might as well say this:
“YOU are the one lacking understanding of what scientific knowledge claims entail by suggesting that the possibility that the earth is flat/is made of swiss cheese/is two foot wide etc has been ruled out absolutely, and yet claiming that all science is provisional.”
Yes, all science is provisional, no that doesn’t mean that at a certain point certain theories have withstood enough testing and questioning such that it is viewed as perverse to see them as anything bar fact.
Andrew Ryan:
A few things that might’ve skipped your mind:
It is not about having no scientific credentials and yet shouting labels from the sidelines without actually engaging with what Gauger, a respectable researcher, is saying.
It is not about your retreat to rhetoric pertaining to swiss cheese to mask the poverty of your argument.
How about I directly quote Ann Gauger’s challenge to people like you?:
“Have you read the book yet?
We argue that intelligent design is a better explanation for human origins than neo-Darwinism, by showing some kind of guidance or information is required to get sufficient anatomical change in the time allowed. But that’s not necessarily special creation.
We show why Ayala’s population genetics arguments area flawed, and cannot rule out a two person bottleneck. We also discuss some surprising gene trees that are hard to explain by common descent alone. But we draw no final conclusion and do not argue for special creation. We don’t know enough yet to say one way or another based on the science.
So, would you care to address our scientific arguments?”
Since you cling to the illogical, unscientific position that “yes, all science is provisional” but still, the possibilty of an Adam and Eve has been ruled out absolutely, and refuse to read even one chapter of the book you choose to criticize (I’d recommend the chapter I’ve read, Chapter 5, for it focuses squarely on the Adam and Eve issue), there is no point in furthering this discussion.
I will read your comments with interest when you have read the book, or at least Chapter 5.
Andrew Ryan (continued):
Here is yet another article from the authors dismantling Paul McBride’s critique:
‘On Enzymes and Teleology’ By Ann Gauger (http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/27516628899/on-enzymes-and-teleology)
Excerpts:
“What Paul McBride and others claim is that because we didn’t start from an “ancestral” enzyme, our results meant nothing. They say something like, ‘Of course transitions to new chemistries between modern enzymes are difficult. What you should have done is to reconstruct the ancestral form and use it as a starting point .’
Have you noticed the assumption underlying this critique? The assumption is that genuine conversions can be achieved only if you start from just the right ancestral protein. Why is that? Because conversions are hard…
… The problem then becomes, where did the diverse families of enzymes come from, if transitions are so hard, evolution is so constrained, and selection is so weak? Were the ur-proteins from which present families sprang so different from modern ones, so elastic that they could be easily molded to perform multiple functions? If so, how did they accomplish the specific necessary tasks for metabolism, transcription, and replication?
More than that, how did the proteins necessary for replication, transcription, translation, and metabolism arrive at all, if evolution is so constrained? Those processes are much more complicated that a cellulase enzyme. We have ribosomes, spliceosomes, photosynthesis, and respiration. We have hummingbirds and carnivorous plants and even cows who make use of cellulose-degrading symbionts. The things that have not arrived or arrived very rarely, like cellulases, seem trivial by comparison to the things we see around us.
Our results argue that only guided evolution, or intelligent design, can produce genuine innovations from a starting point of zero target activity. But McBride argues that we are the product of happenstance.
‘Evolution is a process without teleology and long-term targets or goals. Natural selection can provide relatively short-term direction along ‘local’ fitness gradients, which may be helpful or unhelpful; escapes from selection are also predicted to be important in many evolutionary paths. This could be a problem to neofunctionalisation where teleology is invoked, except that no particular enzymes were ever mandated to evolve. Life would have been different if particular enzymes that do exist had not arisen, but some other suite of enzymes would undoubtedly exist instead had the dice been rolled differently. Life would very much go on. It is a fairly safe conjecture that only a small number out of all the possible enzymes exist, and many of these exist only in small clades in the tree of life.’
McBride argues against teleology and opts for chance. He is more sanguine than I about a new ‘suite of enzymes’ evolving, given the apparent difficulty with which they evolve. Life is inherently teleological, and the needs of an organism cannot be met by whatever happens to show up. I would say, rather, that his faith in the unending creativity of evolution, in spite of the limitations of natural selection, the rarity of paths, and the functional needs of organisms, is itself a form of religion.
This is an interesting turn in evolutionary thinking. People have been saying for years, “Of course evolution isn’t random, it’s directed by natural selection. It’s not chance, it’s chance and necessity.” But in recent years the rhetoric has changed. Now evolution is constrained. Not all options are open, and natural selection is not the major player, it’s the happenstance of genetic drift that drives change. But somehow it all happens anyway.
All around us we see marvelous examples of successful, even optimal design. If evolution is constrained to just a few paths, and you have to start with the right ancestral form to get anywhere, and fixation of useful new traits happens by accident, how did anything ever happen at all? Were the paths of adaptation “preordained”? Paul’s choice of words, not mine. If there are only a few ways to solve any problem set by the needs of the organism, then either the deck was stacked in our favor, or the process was guided, or we are incredibly lucky. That might be called preordained, I suppose.”
The authors of the book have promised future articles dealing with the few remaining issues that Paul McBride raised. I suggest you read the book, or at least a few chapters, instead of just heading straight to Paul McBride’s critique, so that you get a balanced perspective on the book. That would be appreciated.
Andrew Ryan:
It appears an earlier, much longer post (also dealing with responses dismantling Paul McBride’s critique) has not cleared moderation yet. I’d suggest you watch for it, in addition to this one.
Well, if Ann would have done her homework, she would have realized there is already a very good explanation for what she assumes is too ‘hard’ to have come about. There’s a reason why she’s another shill for the Discotute. Don’t you ever grasp a pattern, Getic? The Discovery Institute’s reason for being is to insert creation into the science classroom and will do whatever it takes to accomplish this goal. Anyone professionally related to these IDiots have doomed their own careers in honest science… presumably in exchange for Templeton money. The stated goal here is NOT to reveal what’s true in nature but to muddy the waters enough to get people like you to think they have a legitimate voice in ‘controversial’ evolutionary biology. Theydon’t. They have a very clear <i.religious agenda that has nothing to do with producing good science. That’s why they peer review their own submissions. You are gullible, Getic.Apolo, and very foolish to continue this quest to help those who don’t care about what’s demonstrably true.
Quite so. By the way, if Getic finding threads where a collection of presuppositionalists and creationists call me dishonest is some kind of argument against me, is you and I agreeing with each other a counter-argument? Yesterday I randomly came across an article on DagoodS’s blog that introduced a quote from me with the line “As Andrew Ryan wisely responded…”.
http://sandwichesforsale.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/strawpeoplestrawpeople-everywhere.html
In Getic’s ad hominem world does that cancel out Ggodat eruditely asserting that I’m full of crap?
How’s about this: “But sure, if it allows you to feel better, yes, me, DagoodS, Tildeb, the Reasonable Doubts podcast and others must be “completely departed from reality” to be calling me a wise and polite debater.”
tildeb:
“Don’t you ever grasp a pattern, Getic?”
Sometimes. For instance, I’ve noticed a pattern whereby you haven’t added anything of real substance from your previous post on this thread to this one, another pattern whereby you use strawmen caricature to describing the Intelligent Design movement, and a third pattern whereby you often refer to evolution as TRUE, betraying your ill-informed understanding of how science operates.
P.S.: Is Discotute a university offering dance classes? And are Discoveroids asteroids that’ve recently been discovered? ;)
Andrew Ryan:
Listen. You don’t have to try so hard to get me to think you’re an honest commenter. Like I’ve told you, I don’t intend to make it any more awkward for you. Do try to move on.
“Just recently, one of the world’s most famous atheists, Professor Antony Flew, admitted he couldn’t explain how DNA was created and developed through evolution. He now accepts the need for an intelligent source to have been involved in the making of the DNA code.”
Are you cutting and pasting this stuff? Flew’s been dead for two years now. Further, he was a philosopher, not a scientist. His announced conversion to deism in a book written while he was in his eighties, in collaboration with another author, remains controversial, as described in this NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04Flew-t.html?_r=1
In an interview with him, Flew barely seems aware of the people he quoted extensively in his book. To put it mildly, it appears that an elderly man in his dotage was exploited by others, aware of the publicity value of publishing a book apparently co-written by him that rejected his earlier atheistic stance.
Interestingly, Flew developed the ‘no true Scotsman fallacy’. He said the following:
“Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again.” Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing.” The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.”
See also:
“No biologist disagrees with me”
“But here’s one who disagrees with you”
“Ah, but no INFORMED biologist agrees with me”.
Andrew Ryan:
“Are you cutting and pasting this stuff?”
Not quite. I formulate my arguments, often providing plenty of references. Cut and paste would describe that drivel you blindly put up from a graduate student who was criticising a book (and has since been well responded to), a book that you haven’t had the sense to read even ONE chapter in.
“Further, he was a philosopher, not a scientist. His announced conversion to deism in a book written while he was in his eighties, in collaboration with another author, remains controversial…
… To put it mildly, it appears that an elderly man in his dotage was exploited by others, aware of the publicity value of publishing a book apparently co-written by him that rejected his earlier atheistic stance.”
It’s nice to know your attempt at a defence involves some ridiculous conspiracy theory. You probably understand why I’m not moved.
And so what if Professor Flew was a philosopher? He has the right (and the capacity) to form his own informed opinion on matters. Imagine I said I’m not bothered with your scientific and philosophical arguments, given you have – as per your own admission – no scientific credentials, and you certainly don’t strike me as a philosopher. That would be kind of arrogant now, wouldn’t it? Cue your attacks on Professor Flew.
And it seems you’ve conveniently avoided the various other things I posted on the problem DNA poses for neo-Darwinism. Here, let me show you:
‘Peer-Reviewed Paper in Medical Journal Challenges Evolutionary Science and Inaccurate Evolution-Education’ – January 2012 (http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/01/peer-reviewed_p055221.html)
Excerpt:
“A new article by Dr. Joseph Kuhn of the Department of Surgery at Baylor University Medical Center, appearing in the peer-reviewed journal Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, poses a number of challenges to both chemical and biological evolution. Titled “Dissecting Darwinism,” the paper begins by recounting some of the arguments raised during the Texas State Board of Education debate that challenged chemical and biological evolution. Those challenges include:
1. Limitations of the chemical origin of life data to explain the origin of DNA…..
(Joseph A. Kuhn, “Dissecting Darwinism,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Vol. 25(1): 41-47 (2012).)”
‘DNA: The Tiny Code That’s Toppling Evolution’ – November 2011 (http://www.ucg.org/science/dna-tiny-code-thats-toppling-evolution/)
Excerpts:
“In fact, there has not been found in nature any example of one information system inside the cell gradually evolving into another functional information program.
Michael Behe, a biochemist and professor at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, explains that genetic information is primarily an instruction manual and gives some examples.
He writes: “Consider a step-by-step list of [genetic] instructions. A mutation is a change in one of the lines of instructions. So instead of saying, “Take a 1/4-inch nut,” a mutation might say, “Take a 3/8-inch nut.” Or instead of “Place the round peg in the round hole,” we might get “Place the round peg in the square hole” . . . What a mutation cannot do is change all the instructions in one step—say, [providing instructions] to build a fax machine instead of a radio” ( Darwin’s Black Box , 1996, p. 41).
We therefore have in the genetic code an immensely complex instruction manual that has been majestically designed by a more intelligent source than human beings.”
“Dr. Meyer considers the recent discoveries about DNA as the Achilles” heel of evolutionary theory. He observes: “Evolutionists are still trying to apply Darwin’s nineteenth-century thinking to a twenty-first century reality, and it’s not working … I think the information revolution taking place in biology is sounding the death knell for Darwinism and chemical evolutionary theories” (quoted by Strobel, p. 243).
Dr. Meyer’s conclusion? “I believe that the testimony of science supports theism. While there will always be points of tension or unresolved conflict, the major developments in science in the past five decades have been running in a strongly theistic direction” (ibid., p. 77).
Dean Kenyon, a biology professor who repudiated his earlier book on Darwinian evolution—mostly due to the discoveries of the information found in DNA—states: “This new realm of molecular genetics (is) where we see the most compelling evidence of design on the Earth” (ibid., p. 221).
And now for a little bit more:
‘New technique reveals unseen information in DNA code’ – May 2012 (http://phys.org/news/2012-05-technique-reveals-unseen-dna-code.html)
Excerpt:
“Imagine reading an entire book, but then realizing that your glasses did not allow you to distinguish “g” from “q.” What details did you miss? Geneticists faced a similar problem with the recent discovery of a “sixth nucleotide” in the DNA alphabet. ,,, Two modifications of cytosine, one of the four bases that make up DNA, look almost the same but mean different things.,,,”
While this discovery in itself is impressive, it fails to convey just how wide the gulf is from what is actually going on in the cell, information-wise, to what we actually understand of it.
Here is a glimpse of what we DON’T understand of what’s going on within the cell:
‘Systems biology: Untangling the protein web’ (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7253/full/460415a.html)
Excerpt:
“Vidal thinks that technological improvements — especially in nanotechnology, to generate more data, and microscopy, to explore interaction inside cells, along with increased computer power — are required to push systems biology forward. “Combine all this and you can start to think that maybe some of the information flow can be captured,” he says. But when it comes to figuring out the best way to explore information flow in cells, Tyers jokes that it is like comparing different degrees of infinity. “The interesting point coming out of all these studies is how complex these systems are — the different feedback loops and how they cross-regulate each other and adapt to perturbations are only just becoming apparent,” he says. “The simple pathway models are a gross oversimplification of what is actually happening.”
Something else discovered recently. Dancing cells, anyone?
‘DNA Caught Rock ‘N Rollin’: On Rare Occasions DNA Dances Itself Into a Different Shape’ – January 2011 (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110128104244.htm)
Excerpt:
“Al-Hashimi’s group was able to observe transient, alternative forms in which some steps on the stairway come apart and reassemble into stable structures other than the typical Watson-Crick base pairs.,,, Because critical interactions between DNA and proteins are thought to be directed by both the sequence of bases and the flexing of the molecule, these excited states represent a whole new level of information contained in the genetic code,”
‘Francis Collins on Making Life’ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/collins-genome.html)
Excerpt:
“We are so woefully ignorant about how biology really works. We still don’t understand how a particular DNA sequence—when we just stare at it—codes for a protein that has a particular function. We can’t even figure out how that protein would fold—into what kind of three-dimensional shape. And I would defy anybody who is going to tell me that they could, from first principles, predict not only the shape of the protein but also what it does.’ – Francis Collins – Former Director of the Human Genome Project”
Very thoughtful quotations there, Getic.Apolo. That the former head of the NHGRI and a highly educated geneticist would so honestly admit that “we are so woefully ignorant about how biology really works” is definitely something to think about.
The more we learn, the more we find out that we don’t know a whole lot.
Joshua
Josh:
Thanks, my friend. And I’m glad you like the references to Lenski et al. There’s more where that came from, will fill you in in due course.
“The more we learn, the more we find out that we don’t know a whole lot.”
You are not wrong. =D
“It is not about your retreat to rhetoric pertaining to swiss cheese to mask the poverty of your argument.”
In other words, you’re unable to address the reductio ad absurdem. Come back when you are, or drop the notion that because science is provisional, that means one cannot rule out anything. By the way, do you ever read ‘science’ books that AREN’T published by the Discovery Institute?
Andrew Ryan:
“In other words, you’re unable to address the reductio ad absurdem.”
Rather, I’m unable to address an absurd reduction.
“Come back when you are, or drop the notion that because science is provisional, that means one cannot rule out anything.”
I really don’t have the time to explain to you why your sentence “drop the notion that because science is provisional, that means one cannot rule out anything” doesn’t make sense. So how about YOU come back when you understand how proper science operates?
“I really don’t have the time to explain to you why your sentence “drop the notion that because science is provisional, that means one cannot rule out anything” doesn’t make sense.”
You come back to me when you have the time then, or when you work out why saying ‘All science is provisional’ doesn’t mean ‘it is never possible to say ‘science has ruled out x’.
Getic: ““In fact, we have published a number of peer-reviewed articles and one of them in particular, called “The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway,” contributed to the the argument we made in the new book published by Discovery Institute Press, “Science and Human Origins.””
Yeah, a good response to that here:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2012/07/still-more-fun.html
I guess we can trade these all day, right?
“As has been shown the research that Axe cites, The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzymes Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway, does not test an evolutionary hypothesis. By studying whether one extant enzyme in a family of enzymes could have evolved from another extant enzyme in the same family, when the evolutionary account is actually that both evolved from a common ancestor, Gauger and Axe are making precisely the same error that Comfort and Cameron made: the notion that “common descent” means that related extant populations evolved from each other, rather than from a common ancestral population. That about equivalent to claiming that common descent means that I am descended from my cousin Keith.
Even young-earth creationist biochemist Todd Wood rebutted that particular claim more than a year ago. Wood wrote
“Instead of ancestral reconstruction, Gauger and Axe focused directly on converting an existing enzyme into another existing enzyme. That left me scratching my head, since no evolutionary biologist would propose that an extant enzyme evolved directly into another extant enzyme. So they’re testing a model that no one would take seriously? Hmmm…”
Axe and Gauger quite simply didn’t test an evolutionary hypothesis in the paper Axe cited, but Axe continues to claim that it says something about the limits of evolution. But when even an honest young-earth creationist sees the error, persisting in it is no more than perverse. Axe is doing the equivalent of waving Ray Comfort’s crocoduck over his head, hollering “Evolution couldn’t do it!” Maybe Ray will have an opening in his ministry for Axe when the BioLogic Institute sinks beneath the waves.”"
Andrew Ryan:
I see you still haven’t read the book. Splendid.
Since you have conveniently glossed over my important point, I will re-post it to aid your memory.
Like I’ve mentioned:
It is not about having no scientific credentials and yet shouting labels from the sidelines without actually engaging with what Gauger, a respectable researcher, is saying.
It is not about your retreat to rhetoric pertaining to swiss cheese to mask the poverty of your argument.
How about I directly quote Ann Gauger’s challenge to people like you?:
“Have you read the book yet?
We argue that intelligent design is a better explanation for human origins than neo-Darwinism, by showing some kind of guidance or information is required to get sufficient anatomical change in the time allowed. But that’s not necessarily special creation.
We show why Ayala’s population genetics arguments area flawed, and cannot rule out a two person bottleneck. We also discuss some surprising gene trees that are hard to explain by common descent alone. But we draw no final conclusion and do not argue for special creation. We don’t know enough yet to say one way or another based on the science.
So, would you care to address our scientific arguments?”
Since you cling to the illogical, unscientific position that “yes, all science is provisional” but still, the possibilty of an Adam and Eve has been ruled out absolutely, and refuse to read even one chapter of the book you choose to criticise, there is no point in furthering this discussion.
I will read your comments with interest when you have read the book, or at least the chapter in question.
I love this!
Here, let me play the part of Getic:
Look at all this complexity; your science produces reliable knowledge that translates directly into application, technologies, and therapies that work for everyone everywhere, sure, but… look at the complexity! The only possible answer must be Jebus (special creation via POOF!ism). Clearly, if not Jebus (special creation via POOF!ism) then your science must be dubious for you to be reasonable.
What’s that? You have a problem with this? Then, see? You’re not very reasonable AND you don’t understand science! Now, let’s get back to Jebus (special creation via POOF!ism).
Still have a problem with Jebus (special creation via POOF!ism) as an alternative scientific explanation? Well, in spite of my worldly travels, I am willing to help: have you read this book and that book and these other books about Oogity Boogity and how Oogity Boogity makes things Poof!? No? Well, then, I rest my case! Jebus (special creation via POOF!ism)) is as likely true a scientific explanation as you’re over-inflated science that refutes the need for Oogity Boogity. And if you have a problem with that honest description of YOUR shortcomings then it’s obvious that YOU refuse to see how reasonable I am because you have a religious faith that it can’t be Jebus.
(How’d I do?)
tildeb:
“How’d I do?”
If by “do”, you meant “prove Getic.Apolo’s earlier point that tildeb often plugs the posts with the rants and name-calling of a dogmatic neo-Darwinist materialist atheist, without actually handling the substance of the arguments that people put up here”, I’d say, you did fantastically well actually.
What you continue to do for my cause and Josh’s is certainly worth more than a recommendation by any theist or creationist. Thanks for the helping hand, tildeb, good on you! =D
Josh: “That the former head of the NHGRI and a highly educated geneticist would so honestly admit that “we are so woefully ignorant about how biology really works” is definitely something to think about.”
Yup, the same Francis Collins who said: “Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”
Definitely something to think about there too – the ‘strongest POSSIBLE proof’. That seems to say that Collins, an Evangelical Christian, cannot even CONCEIVE of stronger evidence that man is related to every other living thing on earth.
We see quotes from Behe above. Something ‘definitely to think about’ regarding Behe too: the man testified under oath in court that “There are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred”.
Andy, well, thinking about something doesn’t necessarily imply that a person must come to the same conclusion. It means you think about it. Pretty simple, I thought. And the quote seemed to be emphasizing the provisional — and I add that it entails “incomplete” — nature of science, that even you agree with. Before ruling out something entirely (that is: we know where everything came from and the stuff we don’t know about, we know, at the very least, God had nothing to do with it), maybe we should all just take a wait and see attitude, since we know so relatively little? So, maybe istead of coming here and trying to convince me that 1) things look designed but aren’t and 2) that a complex, relatively new (just over 100 years old) theory with many interpretations are both true assertions, maybe you, too, might want to take a wait and see attitude? If science is provisional in nature, doesn’t that mean that evolution could be wrong eventually? Is that an idea that you have ever entertained?
Evolution doesn’t touch origins, as you yourself know. So, to point out a quote by Behe saying that no one has written a peer-reviewed article how biological systems occurred is kind of confusing. After all, if we knew the mechanics of how it occurred, would we need to appeal to an Entity outside of the space / time dimension? If we could observe it happening, would we need to appeal to it? But the fact that we don’t see dead things coming to life now and we don’t see matter producing new information kind of limits our options, either life is the product of an intelligence or we’re living in a dream world where things look designed and we merely imagine the reliability of our senses. You may say, “Well, we know how it happened!” But, again, evolution doesn’t touch on origins. You know this. However, if evolution were true and “true science”, then you might be able to extrapolate that life / biology (it and its laws and principles) originated by chance through a blind process. But for it to qualify as “science”, it’ll need to be “supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how [evolutionary origin] of any biological system occurred”. As far as I know, the most well-known “scientific” attempt to touch on origins of life from an evolution perspective, the Miller-Urey experiment, has not held up under the scrutiny of people who know how to make other scientists wake up and smell the coffee.
Of course, evidence for the existence of God is not something that you yourself are incapable of observing and knowing. There are so many things within your own body that point to His genius. Look at blood and the circulatory system, for example. Now how would an evolutionist explain the origin of blood and the circulatory system? Which was first, the blood or the heart? If you have both, that’s fine, but then you need veins and arteries. If you’ve got those, that’s fine, but then you need a clotting mechanism or the entire thing is in vain (play on words intentional). We could do this with every feature of your body. The interaction of muscles, bones, and tendons. Without bones, you’ve got nothing for the tendons to anchor on to. Without tendons, muscles are useless. Without muscles, tendons are useless.
I like what Francis Bacon, one partially responsible for standardizing the scientific method, said about atheism, saying: “atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man” (from his essay On Atheism).
Joshua
The obvious a present danger with your position, Josh, is that honest inquiry comes to a crashing halt. This is why ID has produced ZERO new knowledge in over 25 years of supposed ‘research’. This is not some side issue or some legitimate philosophical debate. Evolution is true because it WORKS. It PRODUCES new knowledge. It FURTHERS our understanding of the mechanisms of biology. It YIELDS new avenues of inquiry that then go on to produce new technologies, therapies, and applications that WORK.
In any honest comparison between evolution and belief in special creationism, only one is a hands down winner in creating knowledge and it’s not Oogity Boogity.
This fact was also plainly revealed in the Dover trial. Intelligent Design was shown to not further our inquiries into reality; furthermore, it was clearly shown to do absolutely nothing but substitute a pseudo-answer. It is this pseudo-answer on which various faith claims are made to allow the religious to feel empowered to just make stuff up. This is not a compelling argument that the results of good science is lip service when you know perfectly well that it – not faith – produces knowledge to which you turn in order to survive, function, and thrive.
tildeb, your position that honest inquiry comes to halt ignores the history of science. Your reply is also disingenuous — using one of your favorite phrases “oogity boogity” — and uninformed — thinking that scientific issues are settled in law courts.
So, I won’t participate in these type of disingenuous bates. Your replies are written to start not a discussion but an argument, where your only goal isn’t to honestly discuss issues with anyone, but to provide a forum for yourself to insult anyone who disagrees with you.
Enjoy yourself!
Joshua
So show me the error of my statement: what knowledge has ID produced? Name me something deduced from creationism that works for everyone everywhere all the time. Tell me what technologies, applications, and therapies the pseudo-answers about supernatural abiogenesis has brought into use?
Now compare those (non)answers and (non)examples with what evolution and all the science it informs has done and tell me again how I’m being ‘disingenuous’.
Yeah, right.
You’re very quick to assign blame to others, Josh, but the disingenuous tactics are all on one side here. You’ve got nothing but empty claims and trivial complaints, eager to blame, oblivious to your incredulity about supernatural causation for natural effect, all without so much as an ounce of honest reasons that are compelling on their own merit outside of your belief in them. Intelligent Design is a fairytale without some evidence. That’s it: That’s the sum total of Intelligent Design impelled only by faith-based belief. And that’s why it is empty of good science.
Thanks for proving my point.
Josh:
Excellently handled, brother! When furthering discussion on a topic requires us to lower our standards of civility and engage in behaviour that is not God honouring, then the glory of God necessarily comes first, and it’s wise to calmly say “no thanks”. Good on you for exemplifying that! =D
As for tildeb, sadly, he exemplifies something too, something Peter Kreeft once said:
“We can’t avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.”
Getic: “It’s nice to know your attempt at a defence involves some ridiculous conspiracy theory. You probably understand why I’m not moved.”
Er… because you’re incapable of looking at the evidence? The interview I linked detailed interviews with Flew where he claimed to be completely unaware of men he had supposedly extensively quoted in the book. It is hardly a ‘ridiculous conspiracy theory’ to suggest that the co-author of the book did most or all of the actual writing.
Meanwhile we’re left with you responding to me asking if you’re ‘cut and pasting’ with the claim: “Not quite. I formulate my arguments, often providing plenty of references.”
Right, that’s how we got you claiming “[Flew] now accepts the need for an intelligent source to have been involved in the making of the DNA code” about a man who has been dead since April 2010! See also you asking me how many people I’d spoken to from a list that contained many people who’d died decades before I was born!
And now you’re backing up the notion that Chesterton’s belief in Eden over evolution by quoting Behe and Collins, both of whom accept man descended from other species, which is incompatible with the idea of Adam and Even in Eden.
Andrew Ryan:
“Er… because you’re incapable of looking at the evidence? The interview I linked detailed interviews with Flew where he claimed to be completely unaware of men he had supposedly extensively quoted in the book. It is hardly a ‘ridiculous conspiracy theory’ to suggest that the co-author of the book did most or all of the actual writing…”
“…we got you claiming “[Flew] now accepts the need for an intelligent source to have been involved in the making of the DNA code” about a man who has been dead since April 2010! ”
I think you have to, at some point, come out of this fantasy world and – instead of resorting to unverifiable conspiracy theories – accept the awkward fact that Professor Flew, formerly one of the world’s most influential philosophical atheist and ardent defender of atheism, gave it all up eventually due to what he saw as compelling evidence from the world of DNA. And since you said I’m “incapable of looking at the evidence”, sure, let’s delve deeper into the evidence to see why your position is untenable.
In a letter to Philosophy Now magazine (Issue 47, August/September 2004, p. 22, cf. http://www.philosophynow.org/issue47/47flew.htm), Flew noted that the theory of evolution by natural selection does not account for the origin of life, and observed that: “Probably Darwin himself believed that life was miraculously breathed into that primordial form of not always consistently reproducing life by God…”, going on further to add:
“… the evidential situation of natural (as opposed to revealed) theology has been transformed in the more than fifty years since Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.”
Got that? Good. Next, we have this news article, and the excerpt I extracted focuses on Professor Flew’s speech at a 2004 symposium ‘Has Science Discovered God’, organised by The Institute for Metascientific Research.
‘Former Atheist Says God Exists’ by Cliff Kinkaid (Editor of the AIM Report), Insight On The News – December 21, 2004
Excerpt:
“At a symposium sponsored by the Institute for Metascientific Research, Flew said he has come to believe in God based on developments in DNA research. Flew, author of the book, Darwinian Evolution, declared, ‘What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together. The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved look to me like the work of intelligence.’ ”
I’m not done. Here’s more news from me, more bad news for you, Andrew!
‘An Atheist’s Apostasy’ by Editorial Board, Dallas Morning News – December 15, 2004
Excerpt:
“He (Professor Flew) says evidence from DNA research convinces him that the genetic structure of biological life is too complex to have evolved entirely on its own.”
‘Former leading atheist argues for the existence of God’ (http://creation.com/review-there-is-a-god-by-antony-flew)
Excerpt:
“At the most recent debate in 2004, at New York University, he (Professor Flew) declared that he ‘now accepted the existence of a God’. In that debate, he said that he believed that the origin of life points to a creative Intelligence,
‘almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together. It’s the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence.’ ”
‘One Flew out of the atheists’ nest: How DNA investigations led a philosopher to affirm a ‘creative intelligence’ at the origin of life’ (http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/one_flew_out_of_the_atheists_nest/)
‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?’ by Rich Deem (http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/flew.html)
Excerpt:
“In a recent interview, Flew stated, ‘It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.’ Flew also renounced naturalistic theories of evolution:
‘It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.’ ”
If you still remain selectively hyperskeptical after all this, would seeing and hearing the words coming out of Professor Flew’s own mouth jolt you to your senses, Andrew Ryan?
Here’s a brief excerpt of Professor Flew’s interview with Lee Strobel, sometime in 2005, where he says the same thing you are having trouble wrapping your head around: that he found the complexity of DNA compelling enough to believe in an Intelligent Designer:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4209283/world_famous_atheist_anthony_flew_converts_to_theism/
Or if even that doesn’t bring you back to reality, how about the coup de grace – quoting from a pro-atheist website. Is that good enough for you? Surely you’d appreciate that, no? =D
Richard Carrier, at http://www.infidels.org, writes:
“Flew has now given me permission to quote him directly. I asked him point blank what he would mean if he ever asserted that “probably God exists,” to which he responded (in a letter in his own hand, dated 19 October 2004)…”
“…Flew took great care to emphasize repeatedly to me that:
‘My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species … [In fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.’ ”
The other peripheral argument/distraction about Professor Flew dying in 2010 doesn’t even warrant a response (Darwin died in 1882, that didn’t stop you from clinging on to Darwinism, did it? And I can’t help the wording of my reference. Past, present or future tense, it still focuses on what Professor Flew actually said, and I’ve now backed it up further with other references).
Suffice to say, I’ve shown that my quote from Professor Flew was very relevant to the fact that I was pointing out why the discovery of DNA is VERY problematic for neo-Darwinism. And your fanciful theories are, admittedly, fun to read and kind of cute, but don’t have much basis in reality. I’d suggest you face up to the fact that Professor Flew recognised the complexity of DNA. To think otherwise, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is – to put it mildly – somewhat foolish.
Andrew Ryan (part 2, part 1 is awaiting moderation and should appear above this post, look out for it):
“And now you’re backing up the notion that Chesterton’s belief in Eden over evolution by quoting Behe and Collins…”
Either you have a comprehension problem, or you’re being dishonest. Which is it?
I very clearly demarcated a whole line of reasoning and references as indicating why DNA evidence is rather problematic for neo-Darwinism, and my quotes from Behe and Collins were obviously focusing on that issue. And yet, you somehow contrived to confuse yourself into thinking I was making an argument for Chesterton’s belief in Eden. Here, let me re-post those quotes from Behe and Collins to clear your confusion. First, Behe:
‘DNA: The Tiny Code That’s Toppling Evolution’ – November 2011 (http://www.ucg.org/science/dna-tiny-code-thats-toppling-evolution/)
Excerpts:
“In fact, there has not been found in nature any example of one information system inside the cell gradually evolving into another functional information program.
Michael Behe, a biochemist and professor at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, explains that genetic information is primarily an instruction manual and gives some examples.
He writes: “Consider a step-by-step list of [genetic] instructions. A mutation is a change in one of the lines of instructions. So instead of saying, “Take a 1/4-inch nut,” a mutation might say, “Take a 3/8-inch nut.” Or instead of “Place the round peg in the round hole,” we might get “Place the round peg in the square hole” . . . What a mutation cannot do is change all the instructions in one step—say, [providing instructions] to build a fax machine instead of a radio” ( Darwin’s Black Box , 1996, p. 41).
We therefore have in the genetic code an immensely complex instruction manual that has been majestically designed by a more intelligent source than human beings.”
Next, Collins:
‘Francis Collins on Making Life’ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/collins-genome.html)
Excerpt:
“We are so woefully ignorant about how biology really works. We still don’t understand how a particular DNA sequence—when we just stare at it—codes for a protein that has a particular function. We can’t even figure out how that protein would fold—into what kind of three-dimensional shape. And I would defy anybody who is going to tell me that they could, from first principles, predict not only the shape of the protein but also what it does.’ – Francis Collins – Former Director of the Human Genome Project”
I don’t think I could have been much clearer, as anyone could tell. So, do you finally get how my quotes pertain to the complexity of DNA, or would you like me to explain a little bit more?
Andrew Ryan (part 3, part 1 and 2 are awaiting moderation, and should appear above this post soon, look out for them):
“See also you asking me how many people I’d spoken to from a list that contained many people who’d died decades before I was born!”
Man, I feel like this is getting awkward for you. You’re REALLY caught up on trying to explain away your dishonest debating tactics, aren’t you? Of course I know there are people on that list of 100 great apologists who passed away. And yet, both of us know there are many, many people out of that 100 who are still alive. 50, 60, 70? Seriously, what’s the difference? The fact that you have to really struggle to come up with a few names of well-known apologists you’ve spoken specifically about the Euthyphro Dilemma to, let alone the “several well-known apologists” you claimed to have spoken to without a decent response, is getting increasingly obvious, and increasingly highlighting your attempts to distract from your dishonest claim. And it’s all due to your bending over backwards with all sorts of excuses and focusing on an issue I have long moved on from. In fact, I never said you’re incapable of being honest in the future now, did I?
So I’d suggest you do what I’ve already done: move on. Really, spare yourself the awkwardness, and focus on the discussions here. Life goes on. =)
“or we’re living in a dream world where things look designed”
Who says things look designed? What would you expect non-designed life forms to look like?
“maybe we should all just take a wait and see attitude, since we know so relatively little?”
We don’t know nothing, Josh. Take it up with Francis Collins – you accept his expertise, no? What do you think you know about DNA that he doesn’t?
“If science is provisional in nature, doesn’t that mean that evolution could be wrong eventually? Is that an idea that you have ever entertained?”
Would you be happy to replace evolution with anything else in science?
“If science is provisional in nature, doesn’t that mean that the heliocentric system could be wrong eventually? Is that an idea that you have ever entertained?”
Evolution is one of the most evidentially supported ideas in science. It has reached the stage where it is treated as fact by virtually all biologists. It has been observed. It is backed up by evidence in multiple disciplines. Suggesting that it ‘might be wrong’ eventually is like suggesting we might some day find out that Jupiter is an optical illusion – science is provisional, no, so why not?
“What would you expect non-designed life forms to look like?”
Incomprehensible, illogical, irrational, non-functioning, useless, and undesigned. The same way a non-designed painting looks. Compare a Jackson Pollock to a Dali.
“We don’t know nothing, Josh.”
I said “we know so relatively little” referring to human knowledge as a whole, Andy, not to DNA specifically.
Joshua
Josh:
Since we’re on the topic of DNA (which has fascinated me for a long while), this might interest you. Dr. Stephen Meyer, philosopher of science and author of ‘Signature in the Cell’ (http://www.signatureinthecell.com/), a fascinatingly compelling book that offers the first comprehensive DNA-based argument for intelligent design, gave an interview in Biola magazine. In it, he expanded a little on why the discovery of DNA is a major headache for neo-Darwinism.
‘Can DNA Prove the Existence of an Intelligent Designer?’ – Interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer (http://magazine.biola.edu/article/10-summer/can-dna-prove-the-existence-of-an-intelligent-desi/):
“(Interviewer) One of the big unanswered questions you see in the theory of evolution concerns the origin of the information needed to build the first living thing. How do the Darwinists answer that question?
(Dr. Meyer) Many people don’t realize it, but Darwin did not solve, or even attempt to solve, the question of the origin of the first life. He was trying to explain how you got new forms of life from simpler forms. In the 19th century, this was a question very few scientists addressed. The standard theory in the 20th century was proposed by a Russian scientist named Alexander Oparin who envisioned a complex series of chemical reactions that gradually increased the complexity of the chemistry involved, eventually producing life as we know it. That was the standard theory, but it started to unravel in 1953 with the discovery of the structure of DNA and its information-bearing properties, and with everything we were learning about proteins and what I call the “information processing centers” in the cell, the way the proteins were processing the information on the DNA. Oparin tried to adjust his theory to account for these new discoveries, but by the mid-60s it was pretty much a spent force. Ever since, people have been trying to come up with something to replace it, and there really has been nothing that has been satisfactory. That’s one of the things the book does. It surveys the various attempts and shows that in each case, the theories have a common problem: They can’t explain the origin of the information in DNA and RNA. There are other problems as well, but that’s the main problem.
(Interviewer) What would be your main argument for the evidence of intelligent design in the cell?
(Dr. Meyer) Well, the main argument is fairly straightforward. We now know that what runs the show in biology is what we call digital information or digital code. This was first discovered by [James] Watson and [Francis] Crick. In 1957, Crick had an insight which he called “The Sequence Hypothesis,” and it was the idea that along the spine of the DNA molecule there were four chemicals that functioned just like alphabetic characters in a written language or digital characters in a machine code. The DNA molecule is literally encoding information into alphabetic or digital form. And that’s a hugely significant discovery, because what we know from experience is that information always comes from an intelligence, whether we’re talking about hieroglyphic inscription or a paragraph in a book or a headline in a newspaper. If we trace information back to its source, we always come to a mind, not a material process. So the discovery that DNA codes information in a digital form points decisively back to a prior intelligence. That’s the main argument of the book.
(Interviewer) Your book talks a lot about information and you find parallels between a software program and our DNA. Do you think the ideas in your book about programming and programmers would even have been conceivable to readers trying to understand intelligent design a generation ago?
(Dr. Meyer) That’s a great question. I think the digital revolution in computing has made it much easier to understand what’s happening in biology. We know from experience that not only software but the information processing system and design strategies that software engineers use to process and store and utilize information are not only being used in digital computing but they’re being used in the cell. It’s the same basic design logic, but it’s executed with an 8.0, 9.0, 10.0 efficiency. It’s an elegance that far surpasses our own. It’s a new day in biology. It’s a digital revolution. We have digital nanotechnology running the show inside cells. It’s exquisitely executed and suggests a preeminent mind.”
I highly recommend this book, Josh, it makes for a great read. =)
Interestingly, I was listening to an interview with Stephen on his book just last night. :) I’m really interested in his book, but I’ve just got so much to read at this point I can’t get it. But your recommendation does make me that much more interested in it.
Thanks!
Joshua
No worries! Oh, and I can totally relate to that ” I’ve just got so much to read at this point” bit – my current work-related training requires me to keep up with a ton of manuals, and I’ve been putting much of my recreational reading on hold, except for the Bible. You see, I’m a fan of C.S. Lewis’s words:
“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
And frankly, they don’t get much older and sweeter than the Word. ;)
Bill Nye is too polite:
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