Talk.origins and Berlinski
Paul J. Gans
David Berlinski has sent me considerable e-mail to the effect
that he deeply resents my characterizing him as having fled
talk.origins. Those may not have been my exact words, but
they are close enough.
He claims that he was always and is now available to answer
any *substantive* (his word) responses to his article in
_Commentary_.
From his e-mail to me I gather that he does, in fact, monitor
talk.origins (else how would he have known of my posting). Thus
anyone wishing to raise any issues with him should do so in this
venue.
Why he did not simply post directly to talk.origins is beyond me.
------ Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
William H. Jefferys
In article <52p5tp$8...@news.nyu.edu>,
Paul J. Gans <ga...@scholar.nyu.edu> wrote:
#
#David Berlinski has sent me considerable e-mail to the effect
#that he deeply resents my characterizing him as having fled
#talk.origins. Those may not have been my exact words, but
#they are close enough.
#
#He claims that he was always and is now available to answer
#any *substantive* (his word) responses to his article in
#_Commentary_.
#
#From his e-mail to me I gather that he does, in fact, monitor
#talk.origins (else how would he have known of my posting). Thus
#anyone wishing to raise any issues with him should do so in this
#venue.
#
#Why he did not simply post directly to talk.origins is beyond me.
Maybe it is because he has fled talk.origins.
Bill
--
Bill Jefferys/Department of Astronomy/University of Texas/Austin, TX 78712
E-mail: bi...@clyde.as.utexas.edu | URL: http://quasar.as.utexas.edu
Finger for PGP Key: F7 11 FB 82 C6 21 D8 95 2E BD F7 6E 99 89 E1 82
Unlawful to use this email address for unsolicited ads: USC Title 47 Sec 227
Pierre Stromberg
In article <52p5tp$8...@news.nyu.edu>, ga...@scholar.nyu.edu says...
>David Berlinski has sent me considerable e-mail to the effect
>
>He claims that he was always and is now available to answer
>
>From his e-mail to me I gather that he does, in fact, monitor
>
>Why he did not simply post directly to talk.origins is beyond me.
>
I guess if talk.origins regulars are going to consistently clean
his clock, he'd rather have it done in private, away from the laughter
of public scrutiny.
P
--
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views
and do not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.
bob puharic
ga...@scholar.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans) wrote:
>David Berlinski has sent me considerable e-mail to the effect
>that he deeply resents my characterizing him as having fled
>talk.origins. Those may not have been my exact words, but
>they are close enough.
I HOPE he fled...it would be the sane thing to do for having committed
an insane act of writing a trivial piece. I heard the creationist
street walker Phillip Johnson recently on the far right wing xtian
program "focus on the family" waxing ecstatically about how the "jews
are picking up the xtian message about evolution".
These ideological prostitutes willing to sacrifice truth on the altar
of medieval scholasticism SHOULD hide their heads in shame.
Tim Broderick
> David Berlinski has sent me considerable e-mail to the effect
> that he deeply resents my characterizing him as having fled
> talk.origins. Those may not have been my exact words, but
> they are close enough.
<snip>
>
> ------ Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
Actually, the guy fled twice. He refused for one weekend to reply to any
messages until enough people harassed him. He came back a short while and
that's when people really started to get through his math arguements
(especially one TO regular, who was that?) to show that - aside from all
the usual creationist strawmen - his theories had no application to the
real world.
It's too bad there's no way to publicize this. Send a press release with
some good Deja News quotes and a list of contacts, so maybe he doesn't get
a free pass when people interview him.
--
TJBroder | How come when "Everyone says so"
arteest & | it's usually only you?
rational anarchist
><DARWIN>
L L
Paul J. Gans
Tim Broderick (TJBr...@Tezcat.com) wrote:
: In article <52p5tp$8...@news.nyu.edu>, ga...@scholar.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans) wrote:
:
: > David Berlinski has sent me considerable e-mail to the effect
: > that he deeply resents my characterizing him as having fled
: > talk.origins. Those may not have been my exact words, but
: > they are close enough.
: <snip>
: >
: > ------ Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
:
: Actually, the guy fled twice. He refused for one weekend to reply to any
: messages until enough people harassed him. He came back a short while and
: that's when people really started to get through his math arguements
: (especially one TO regular, who was that?) to show that - aside from all
: the usual creationist strawmen - his theories had no application to the
: real world.
:
: It's too bad there's no way to publicize this. Send a press release with
: some good Deja News quotes and a list of contacts, so maybe he doesn't get
: a free pass when people interview him.
I assume that he monitors talk.origins. He was certainly quick
enough to e-mail me after my original posting.
-------- Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
L.A. Moran
In article <TJBroder-011...@tjbroder.tezcat.com>,
Tim Broderick <TJBr...@Tezcat.com> wrote:
>In article <52p5tp$8...@news.nyu.edu>, ga...@scholar.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans)
>wrote:
>
>> David Berlinski has sent me considerable e-mail to the effect
>> that he deeply resents my characterizing him as having fled
>> talk.origins. Those may not have been my exact words, but
>> they are close enough.
><snip>
>>
>> ------ Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
>
>Actually, the guy fled twice. He refused for one weekend to reply to any
>messages until enough people harassed him. He came back a short while and
>that's when people really started to get through his math arguements
>(especially one TO regular, who was that?) to show that - aside from all
>the usual creationist strawmen - his theories had no application to the
>real world.
Nobody "got through" to Berlinski. Steve LaBonne was the only one to
really understand what Berlinski was trying to say and their discussion
was quite interesting - and basically a draw.
Berlinski is not a creationist. I can understand why he is so upset with
the talk.origins crowd for misrepresenting his opinions.
>It's too bad there's no way to publicize this. Send a press release with
>some good Deja News quotes and a list of contacts, so maybe he doesn't get
>a free pass when people interview him.
I for one would not want this incident to be widely publicized. It made us
look pretty silly.
Larry Moran
Mark D. Kluge
In article <Dynww...@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>, lam...@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca™
says...
>Nobody "got through" to Berlinski. Steve LaBonne was the only one to
>really understand what Berlinski was trying to say and their discussion
>was quite interesting - and basically a draw.
>Berlinski is not a creationist. I can understand why he is so upset with
>the talk.origins crowd for misrepresenting his opinions.
No, he's not. But it's really his own fault that he never clearly distanced
himself from creationism. His article tried to do too many things at
once--ridicule the Dqwkins-line "just-so stories", refute our ideas of
abiogenesis, and throw in a little misinformation on thermodynamics &
evolution besides.It's not hard to understand his unease at what he perceives
as the scientific consensus on these matters, (or at least the first two of
them), but that was all his article and postings conveyed. No reasonable
direction for future research, nor even a compelling argument why what he
objected to couldn't be (as opposed to his being uncomfortable with it.)
>>It's too bad there's no way to publicize this. Send a press release with
>>some good Deja News quotes and a list of contacts, so maybe he doesn't get
>>a free pass when people interview him.
>I for one would not want this incident to be widely publicized. It made us
>look pretty silly.
Some people did look pretty silly in their criticisms, but that's par for the
newssgroup.
Mkluge
Wade Hines
mkl...@wizard.net (Mark D. Kluge) writes:
>In article <Dynww...@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>, lam...@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca™
>says...
>>Nobody "got through" to Berlinski. Steve LaBonne was the only one to
>>really understand what Berlinski was trying to say and their discussion
>>was quite interesting - and basically a draw.
>>Berlinski is not a creationist. I can understand why he is so upset with
>>the talk.origins crowd for misrepresenting his opinions.
>No, he's not. But it's really his own fault that he never clearly distanced
>himself from creationism. His article tried to do too many things at
>once--ridicule the Dqwkins-line "just-so stories", refute our ideas of
>abiogenesis, and throw in a little misinformation on thermodynamics &
>evolution besides.It's not hard to understand his unease at what he perceives
I had some email with Berlinski where I concluded he was sincere but way
off base regards thermo. He was rather lucid nevertheless and a continued
dialog could have clarrified his differences and distances from either
"side" however I don't think talk.origings in a productive place for
patient debate and had no desire to convert the man.
He was not merely shaking up the overly confident pseudoscientists who
consider all of evolutionary biology a pat science, he was pandering to
creationists and misrepresenting thermodynamics which he understands far
better than a casual reading of this pieces would suggest.
A well informed provocater can do far more damange than hundreds of our
typical pamplet thumping miscreants.
--Wade
Mark T. Cameron
Mark D. Kluge (mkl...@wizard.net) writes:
> In article <Dynww...@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>, lam...@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca™
> says...
>
>>Nobody "got through" to Berlinski. Steve LaBonne was the only one to
>>really understand what Berlinski was trying to say and their discussion
>>was quite interesting - and basically a draw.
>
>>Berlinski is not a creationist. I can understand why he is so upset with
>>the talk.origins crowd for misrepresenting his opinions.
>
> No, he's not. But it's really his own fault that he never clearly distanced
> himself from creationism. His article tried to do too many things at
> once-
>>>It's too bad there's no way to publicize this. Send a press release with
>>>some good Deja News quotes and a list of contacts, so maybe he doesn't get
>>>a free pass when people interview him.
>
>>I for one would not want this incident to be widely publicized. It made us
>>look pretty silly.
>
> Some people did look pretty silly in their criticisms, but that's par for the
> newssgroup.
>
> Mkluge
>
I have never posted here before, although I do follow t.o. from time to
time. Having only recently read Berlinski's article (and his responses to
critics, including Dawkins, Dennett, and Shapiro, in September's
_Commentary_), I went to see if there was any discussion of it on t.o.
I was amazed that Berlinski had actually braved the Newsgroup in person,
and was not surprised that he gave up on it quickly. This is simply not a
forum for civilized discussion.
I think in many ways this Newsgroup is a tragic wasted opportunity. There
is a fascinating intellectual debate out there between orthodox Darwinists
(Dawkins, Dennett, Maynard Smith), moderate or critical Darwinists (Gould,
Kauffman, Shapiro) and Darwin deniers or design advocates (Berlinski,
Behe, Johnson). Why people here insist on polarizing the debate between
hardcore Dawkins-esque Darwinism and Biblical literalist young earth
creationism is beyond me. I guess it just proves the economists are right
that bad currency drives out good.
A lot of the fault here belongs to Christians (I am a conservative
Catholic, and am from an evangelical background) who believe that
pseudo-scientific literalist creationism is the only way to be faithful to
the Bible. There is a valid theological debate as to whether a purely
naturalistic theory of evolution is compatible with faith, but even if the
answer is no, that doesn't mean one should commit intellectual suicide by
embracing Duane Gish style creationism. If Darwin made it possible,
according to Dawkins, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheists, then
perhaps some of the Christians around here should read Johnson, Berlinski,
Behe, or the _Creation Hypothesis_ edited by Moreland so that they can
become intellectually fulfilled Christians.
Given the sorry state of intellectual repartee on this Newsgroup, you would
think then that when given a really serious opponent with valid
arguments, that Darwinian evolutionists would rejoice in the opportunity
to engage in a stimulating discussion. Instead, you drive Berlinski out
with inanities and misinterpretations so you can go back to demonstrating
that increasing order on earth doesn't violate the Second Law or that
fossils weren't laid down by Noah's flood.
I am trying to work through some of these questions myself, and find
myself somewhere between the search for new evolutionary laws other than
natural selection with the likes of Stuart Kauffman or some version of
direct intelligent design, and I would love to see these kinds of
questions addressed here. Too bad you won't have somebody like David
Berlinski to interract with.
--
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? - T.S. Eliot
Thomas Scharle
[e-mailed and posted]
In article <52vrt2$d...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
...
|> embracing Duane Gish style creationism. If Darwin made it possible,
|> according to Dawkins, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheists, then
|> perhaps some of the Christians around here should read Johnson, Berlinski,
|> Behe, or the _Creation Hypothesis_ edited by Moreland so that they can
|> become intellectually fulfilled Christians.
There are people, regulars in this newsgroup, who *have* read
Johnson, Berlinksi, Behe and "The Creation Hypothesis". And found
them greatly wanting.
If you want to read a *thoughtful* book, from a Christian
perspective, on matters related to this group, try:
Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little
Rock, Winston Press, 1985
--
Tom Scharle scha...@nd.edu "standard disclaimer"
Nicholas Plummer
In article <52vrt2$d...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
(snip)
> A lot of the fault here belongs to Christians (I am a conservative
> Catholic, and am from an evangelical background) who believe that
> pseudo-scientific literalist creationism is the only way to be faithful to
> the Bible. There is a valid theological debate as to whether a purely
> naturalistic theory of evolution is compatible with faith, but even if the
> answer is no, that doesn't mean one should commit intellectual suicide by
> embracing Duane Gish style creationism. If Darwin made it possible,
> according to Dawkins, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheists, then
> perhaps some of the Christians around here should read Johnson, Berlinski,
> Behe, or the _Creation Hypothesis_ edited by Moreland so that they can
> become intellectually fulfilled Christians.
Well, I'm a fairly conservative Protestant from an evangelical background,
and I tend to agree with Berlinski's detractors. His responses to
criticism on t.o left me far from impressed with his grasp of biology. I
have not read Behe yet, but I may do so when I finish Gould's latest. I
have read Johnson, and I was disgusted by _Darwin on Trial_. It was a
hodge podge of lawyer's rhetoric, liberally interspersed with pathetic
misunderstanding of biology. The chapter on molecular evidence for
evolution, my particular interest, was especially bad. Johnson certainly
will not help one become an "intellectually fulfilled Christian."
And I disagree with the Dawkins' statement which you paraphrase. If you
are interested in biology, Darwin can help you become an intellectually
fulfilled _person_. Darwin's work neither contradicts Christianity nor
implies atheism. You will obtain much more intellectual fulfillment
reading Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, or even Jonathan Weiner's "Beak of the
Finch," than you will by wasting your time with Johnson.
Nick
----------------------
Nicholas Plummer
nplu...@umich.edu
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nplummer/homepage.html
Paul J. Gans
L.A. Moran (lam...@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca) wrote:
: In article <TJBroder-011...@tjbroder.tezcat.com>,
: Tim Broderick <TJBr...@Tezcat.com> wrote:
: >In article <52p5tp$8...@news.nyu.edu>, ga...@scholar.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans)
: >wrote:
: >
: >> David Berlinski has sent me considerable e-mail to the effect
: >> that he deeply resents my characterizing him as having fled
: >> talk.origins. Those may not have been my exact words, but
: >> they are close enough.
: ><snip>
: >>
: >> ------ Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
: >
: >Actually, the guy fled twice. He refused for one weekend to reply to any
: >messages until enough people harassed him. He came back a short while and
: >that's when people really started to get through his math arguements
: >(especially one TO regular, who was that?) to show that - aside from all
: >the usual creationist strawmen - his theories had no application to the
: >real world.
:
: Nobody "got through" to Berlinski. Steve LaBonne was the only one to
: really understand what Berlinski was trying to say and their discussion
: was quite interesting - and basically a draw.
:
: Berlinski is not a creationist. I can understand why he is so upset with
: the talk.origins crowd for misrepresenting his opinions.
:
: >It's too bad there's no way to publicize this. Send a press release with
: >some good Deja News quotes and a list of contacts, so maybe he doesn't get
: >a free pass when people interview him.
:
: I for one would not want this incident to be widely publicized. It made us
: look pretty silly.
Well Larry, we'll just have to differ on this one. Berlinski has
indeed said that he is not a creationist, yet any intelligent reading
of his _Commentary_ article will find that he repeats a fair number
of creationist ideas in his attack on Darwinism. His method of
argument varies from ridicule on the basis of personal incredulity
to actually misrepresenting scientific results. When hard-pressed
he will tell you that he is attacking *DARWINISM* and not evolution
itself.
Nevertheless, much in his article is simply wrong. For instance
his use of the hoary old entropy and order arguments to show that
complexity could not have arisen in living things, besides being
just plain wrong, is an example in point. There are many others.
As you may recall, I posted a sizeable number of articles taking
Berlinski to task, item by item. I'd only gotten half-way through
his _Commentary_ article when he announced that posting was too
difficult and that he no longer could do it. I, and I assume
others, were told that we could post his e-mailed responses, a
responsibility I was unwilling to assume. Why? Because in posting
e-mail attributions become lost. I would have had to manually
insert appropriate indentations and attributions. Since I do, in
fact, have a real life complete with time constraints, I did not
wish to undertake this.
Mr. Berlinski is not a stupid person. Quite to the contrary. I
quickly decided that his main purpose in dealing with me by e-mail
was to keep our exchange OFF the net. I never had any hope of
convincing Berlinski that he was wrong. My intent was to reach
lurkers who might be taken in by a well-written and wittily
argued article. Berlinski's aim, was, and seems to be still to
be, to keep that from happening.
Let me give you an example. Mr. Berlinski does, indeed, have net
access and can post to talk.origins if he so chooses. He has
essentially told me that in (recent) private e-mail. When someone
posted a question to talk.origins about Berlinski's article, I
answered. Berlinski saw my answer. Rather than post to talk.origins
and claiming IN PUBLIC that he had not disappeared, he chose to
send me private e-mail *claiming* he had not disappeared. He
is doubtless following this exchange with some satisfaction.
----- Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
Mark T. Cameron
Thomas Scharle (sch...@ubiquity.cc.nd.edu) writes:
> [e-mailed and posted]
> In article <52vrt2$d...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
> ...
> |> embracing Duane Gish style creationism. If Darwin made it possible,
> |> according to Dawkins, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheists, then
> |> perhaps some of the Christians around here should read Johnson, Berlinski,
> |> Behe, or the _Creation Hypothesis_ edited by Moreland so that they can
> |> become intellectually fulfilled Christians.
> ...
>
> There are people, regulars in this newsgroup, who *have* read
> Johnson, Berlinksi, Behe and "The Creation Hypothesis". And found
> them greatly wanting.
Great. That's what I want: a clear, well reasoned debate about the
most sophisticated and knowledgeable anti-Darwinists. If they can be
convincingly refuted, then I will accept that Darwinism remains the best
theory of origins.
> If you want to read a *thoughtful* book, from a Christian
>perspective, on matters related to this group, try:
>
> Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little
>Rock, Winston Press, 1985
I have read Gilkey and several other Christian "theistic evolutionists."
For a long time I was satisfied with this position. Although biogenesis and
human language struck me as highly improbable events to occur on a purely
naturalistic basis, and seem to require additional explanation, I had no
trouble with the concept of all the various species between eukaryte and homo
sapiens developing via natural selection.
Today, I am inclined to think that theistic evolution is a bit too facile
as an attempt to reconcile the anti-theological implications of
neo-Darwinism with Christian belief. The ideological and metaphysical
assumptions of naturalism and Darwinisn cannot be easily combined with the
Judeo-Christian concept of a personal creator. If Darwinism is true, then
God probably doesn't exist, and if God exists, then Darwinism probably
isn't true.
Mark T. Cameron
Nicholas Plummer (nplu...@umich.edu) writes:
>Well, I'm a fairly conservative Protestant from an evangelical background,
>and I tend to agree with Berlinski's detractors. His responses to
>criticism on t.o left me far from impressed with his grasp of biology. I
>have not read Behe yet, but I may do so when I finish Gould's latest. I
>have read Johnson, and I was disgusted by _Darwin on Trial_. It was a
>hodge podge of lawyer's rhetoric, liberally interspersed with pathetic
>misunderstanding of biology. The chapter on molecular evidence for
>evolution, my particular interest, was especially bad. Johnson certainly
>will not help one become an "intellectually fulfilled Christian."
First, I thought Berlinski's responses on t.o. were quite good, given the
nature of the forum. Given the amount of sheer abuse and misunderstanding
of his position that was directed at him, I was amazed that he persevered
for as long as he did with the view serious interlocutors he had. As I
said before, it is t.o.'s loss that an intelligent voice like that was
hounded from the Newsgroup. I'm not saying he is necessarily right in all
particulars, just that it's a pity that that level of discussion isn't
possible.
As to Johnson, I can't comment in a qualified way about his knowledge of
biology, and I am sure he made mistakes. But I think his analysis of
the metaphysical underpinnings of science, and the use of science in public,
political, and legal discussion is very insightful. Johnson's major
failing, it seems to me, is in failing to point towards what an alternate
design based theory of species origins might look like.
>And I disagree with the Dawkins' statement which you paraphrase. If you
>are interested in biology, Darwin can help you become an intellectually
>fulfilled _person_. Darwin's work neither contradicts Christianity nor
>implies atheism. You will obtain much more intellectual fulfillment
>reading Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, or even Jonathan Weiner's "Beak of the
>Finch," than you will by wasting your time with Johnson.
I don't see how as a "fairly conservative Protestant" you think there is
much "fulfillment" to be gained from Dawkins, who is a militant opponent
of all forms of religion, or Wilson, who's sociobiology has right-wing
political implications that have been strongly challenged by fellow
Darwinian biologists like Gould and Richard Lewontin.
If you mean these folks are effective and lucid Darwinist apologists,
they are, but they come freighted with a lot of metaphysical/political
baggage that makes me question where their science breaks off and their
philosophy begins. As to Weiner, he's worse than a lawyer, he's a
journalist.
Nicholas Plummer
In article <532ano$a...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
> Nicholas Plummer (nplu...@umich.edu) writes:
> >Well, I'm a fairly conservative Protestant from an evangelical background,
> >and I tend to agree with Berlinski's detractors. His responses to
> >criticism on t.o left me far from impressed with his grasp of biology. I
> >have not read Behe yet, but I may do so when I finish Gould's latest. I
> >have read Johnson, and I was disgusted by _Darwin on Trial_. It was a
> >hodge podge of lawyer's rhetoric, liberally interspersed with pathetic
> >misunderstanding of biology. The chapter on molecular evidence for
> >evolution, my particular interest, was especially bad. Johnson certainly
> >will not help one become an "intellectually fulfilled Christian."
>
> First, I thought Berlinski's responses on t.o. were quite good, given the
> nature of the forum. Given the amount of sheer abuse and misunderstanding
> of his position that was directed at him, I was amazed that he persevered
> for as long as he did with the view serious interlocutors he had. As I
> said before, it is t.o.'s loss that an intelligent voice like that was
> hounded from the Newsgroup. I'm not saying he is necessarily right in all
> particulars, just that it's a pity that that level of discussion isn't
> possible.
Hmm, well, you may be right about the level of discussion. Perhaps
Berlinski should have tried a moderated group like sci.bio.evolution
instead of an unmoderated forum
> As to Johnson, I can't comment in a qualified way about his knowledge of
> biology, and I am sure he made mistakes. But I think his analysis of
> the metaphysical underpinnings of science, and the use of science in public,
> political, and legal discussion is very insightful.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I remember, part of Johnson's
thesis was that biologists fail to consider non-naturalistic
explanations. He saw that as a problem. That strikes me as silly. I do
not see naturalistic, scientific explanations of natural phenomena to be a
threat to God or Christianity. "Apples fall because God wills it" and
"apples fall because of gravity" are not contradictory statements. They
can both be true (and I believe they are both true), but only the second
statement is science. In a similar vein, I have no problem with, for
instance, hypotheses regarding the evolution of the eye couched in purely
naturalistic terms, even though I also believe that the eye was created by
God. Christians accept that many natural phenomena appear mechanistic and
may be successfully investigated using naturalistic, mechanistic
assumptions. Why should biology be any different?
> Johnson's major
> failing, it seems to me, is in failing to point towards what an alternate
> design based theory of species origins might look like.
That was one of his failings. But IMO, his major failing is that he does
not know enough about biology to intelligently criticize it. Darwin on
Trial stuck me as the work of a lawyer who wants to win an argument at any
cost.
> >And I disagree with the Dawkins' statement which you paraphrase. If you
> >are interested in biology, Darwin can help you become an intellectually
> >fulfilled _person_. Darwin's work neither contradicts Christianity nor
> >implies atheism. You will obtain much more intellectual fulfillment
> >reading Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, or even Jonathan Weiner's "Beak of the
> >Finch," than you will by wasting your time with Johnson.
>
> I don't see how as a "fairly conservative Protestant" you think there is
> much "fulfillment" to be gained from Dawkins, who is a militant opponent
> of all forms of religion, or Wilson, who's sociobiology has right-wing
> political implications that have been strongly challenged by fellow
> Darwinian biologists like Gould and Richard Lewontin.
Well, fulfillment was your word, but when I used it, I did not mean
"reading things that fit my prejudices and preconceptions." I disagree
with Dawkins' atheism. However, he is a excellent writer, and cogently
defends Darwinian theory. Reading his work is an intellectual challenge,
and I appreciate his science while disagreeing with his metaphysics.
As for Wilson, his work on ant society and evolution is absolutuly
fascinating. Sociobiology is challenging and sometimes disturbing, but I
think that more than a few of the "right-wing implications" have been read
into the theory by those with left-wing prejudices of their own.
(snip)
As to Weiner, he's worse than a lawyer, he's a
> journalist.
I disagree with you as to which is worse...
and as far as I can tell, Weiner gets his science right. That is the
primary criterion by which to judge books which criticize or defend
scientific theories. The criticism must be based on a solid foundation,
and in Johnson's case, the foundation appears to be sand.
Nick
Tedd Hadley
ga...@scholar.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans) writes:
[...]
>From his e-mail to me I gather that he does, in fact, monitor
>talk.origins (else how would he have known of my posting). Thus
>anyone wishing to raise any issues with him should do so in this
>venue.
>Why he did not simply post directly to talk.origins is beyond me.
Would that more creationists would simply monitor rather then
post... (Hi George!)
++
Tedd Hadley (had...@uci.edu)
Michael L. Siemon
In article <nplummer-031...@host-174.subnet-52.med.umich.edu>,
nplu...@umich.edu (Nicholas Plummer) wrote:
+Well, I'm a fairly conservative Protestant from an evangelical background,
+and I tend to agree with Berlinski's detractors.
Seconded (from a liberal and Anglo-Catholic background. :-))
--
Michael L. Siemon m...@panix.com
"sempiternal, though sodden towards sundown."
Michael L. Siemon
In article <532agt$a...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
+If Darwinism is true, then
+God probably doesn't exist, and if God exists, then Darwinism probably
+isn't true.
I realize you are stating this as an opinion, but I am baffled by it.
Neither implication strikes me as having much reason or justification
behind it. I realize that some hasty people grab at either side and
claim precisely what you pose as the consequences, but a Dawkins-type
atheism (and I find Dawkins *extremely* irritating to read, because
he *will* indulge in off-hand offensiveness to theists) is as inane as
empty assertions of "traces of God's providence" in nature -- both
ideologies are projections beyond anything demonstrable. What Dawkins
*has* that may not be ignored by honest Christians is careful refutation
of most of the pious bilge that has saddled "Christian" anti-Darwinism.
One need not go along with his speculations to understand that he does
present adequate conter-examples to claims of Paleyesque design or the
rest of the standard list. Behe and others are simply trying to play
the argument from personal incredulity (and personal ignorance) to a
limit that these arguments are worthless to sustain. There is, IMCO
(in my Christian opinion), a rather sickening eargerness by some to
grab at *any* hint, however feeble and unsubstantiated, that there are
"complexities" beyond natural causation -- where the modest and humble
conclusion would be that they are beyond present understanding (and may
not even be that, as the proponents of such reasoning are often very
much out of date in their grand proclamations of untraversable bounds.)
Perhaps you could step back and explain to me (as Christian to Christian)
what, exactly, makes you think that Darwinism implies the non-existence
of God or [more likely a fruitful line] why in the Name above all Names
the existence of God should imply -- what I think is blatantly contra-
dicted by incontrovertible evidence -- that Darwinism is not true. On
the only level at which Science deals with Truth, I believe it to be a
near certainty that Darwinism *is* true. Are you telling me that I am
wrong to believe in God? and my salvation in Christ Jesus? Why, for
God's sake?
You *seem* to be suggesting that I must abandon obvious truth in order
to follow the God of Truth. I must ask for some coherent justification
of so wild a claim.
What, exactly, do you think "Darwinism" is, that it has so stark a
contradiction to the claims of our faith? And what *is* that contra-
diction, for I do not see it.
Mark T. Cameron
Nicholas Plummer (nplu...@umich.edu) writes:
> In article <532ano$a...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
> ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
>
>> As to Johnson, I can't comment in a qualified way about his knowledge of
>> biology, and I am sure he made mistakes. But I think his analysis of
>> the metaphysical underpinnings of science, and the use of science in public,
>> political, and legal discussion is very insightful.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I remember, part of Johnson's
> thesis was that biologists fail to consider non-naturalistic
> explanations. He saw that as a problem. That strikes me as silly. I do
> not see naturalistic, scientific explanations of natural phenomena to be a
> threat to God or Christianity. "Apples fall because God wills it" and
> "apples fall because of gravity" are not contradictory statements. They
> can both be true (and I believe they are both true), but only the second
> statement is science. In a similar vein, I have no problem with, for
> instance, hypotheses regarding the evolution of the eye couched in purely
> naturalistic terms, even though I also believe that the eye was created by
> God. Christians accept that many natural phenomena appear mechanistic and
> may be successfully investigated using naturalistic, mechanistic
> assumptions. Why should biology be any different?
Johnson's objection is not simply that biologists fail to consider
non-naturalistic explanations, but that biologists (or rather the
neo-Darwinian establishment) rule out non-naturalistic explanations as
_a priori_ impossibilities. Now if naturalism is simply a methodological or
heuristic device to spur on the development of scientific hypotheses as far
as possible without admitting impenetrable mysteries, then perhaps there is
no problem with this. But it should be noted that methodological
naturalism
is not a necessary precondition for scientific investigation. Many of the
great scientists such as Newton and Boyle were firm believers in intelligent
design and saw their work as confirming this. A.N. Whitehead argues that
the Judeo-Christian conception of an intelligent, lawgiving creator was a
necessary for the rise of science in the first place. So science is not
necessarily stymied by theistic assumptions.
Second, many scientists have shown themselves to be unwilling to accept
naturalism as simply heuristic or methodological, but as a statement about
reality. As Johnson notes, most of the major figures of neo-Darwinism, such
as Huxley, Mayr, Monod, Dawkins, Gould, and Futuyma, have all held that
evolution understood as a combination of impersonal natural laws and blind
chance rules out a meaningful role for a creator. To quote the villain
himself:
"The problem, very briefly stated, is this: if employing MN is the
only way to reach true conclusions about the history of the universe,
and if the attempt to provide a naturalistic history of the universe
has continually gone from success to success, and if even theists
concede that trying to do science on theistic premises always leads
nowhere or into error (the embarrassing "God of the gaps"), then the
likely explanation for this state of affairs is that naturalism is
true and theism is false." (_Reason in the Balance_, 1995, p. 211)
A creator who has no empirical consequences, whose workings are
indistinguishable from chance events, is a rather meaningless figure. We are
close to the Anthony Flew's unfalsifiable invisible, intangible gardener.
I agree that if every time we came across something unexplained we invoked
mysterious divine action, science wouldn't get very far. But neither can we
assume _a priori_ that natural phenomena like life cannot be explained by
reference to intelligent purposes and still be good science. We do not
resort to this in other areas of science. For instance, if a mysterious
death occurs, medical and forensic science can investigate to determine
whether the death was due to disease (natural cause) or murder (intelligent
purpose). If we find a rock covered with strange markings geological and
archeological science can investigate to determine whether the markings were
causing by weathering (natural cause) or are some form of human art or symbols
(intelligent purpose). Why do we have to rule out this approach when it comes
to investigating the origins and development of life? Johnson again:
"Theists do not throw up their hands and refer everything to God's
great plan, but they do recognize that attempts to explain all of
reality in totally naturalistic terms may leave out something of
importance. Thus they reject the routine non sequiturs of scientism
which pervade the Darwinist literature: because science cannot study
a cosmic purpose, the cosmos must have no purpose; because science
cannot make value judgments, values must be purely subjective;
because science cannot study God, only purposeless material forces
can have been involved in biological creation; and so on."
(_Darwin on Trial_, 1993, p. 210)
As I stated, I think Johnson arguments on these points related to the nature
and practice of science are sound, however uninformed his biological knowledge
may be. Where I think Johnson is weak is in saying where one might expect to
find the line between natural causes and intelligent purpose, and when one
should expect to find one or the other at work in nature.
I think a possible answer (heartily endorse by Johnson, as it happens) is the
suggestion of Bradley and Thaxton in "Information and the Origin of Life" (in
_The Creation Hypothesis_, Moreland et al., 1994). They point out that in
our ordinary experience, information is always the product of intelligence.
Science has demonstrated conclusively that phenomenally complex order can be
generated by a few natural laws and random chance - snowflakes or
crystals, for example - so Paley-type design arguments appealing to the
incredible beauty and order in the universe won't work. But it remains the
fact that ordered patterns that convey meaningful information about the
outside world is more than just order, and seems to require an intelligent
source. The SETI project hopes to find evidence of extra-terrestrial life
by isolating information-bearing radio signals from the wash of meaningless
cosmic background noise. Simply ordered signals, like pulsars, won't do,
but signals that are proved by mathematical algorithms to be information
patterns would likely be hailed as proof of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Of course, the one place where genuinely complex information appears to
occur in nature is in DNA and RNA. No plausible theory of abiogenesis has
yet been produced. Why should we expect to find a naturalistic explanation
of this when in any other field of research, finding a complex information
pattern would be taken as proof of intelligent cause? Surely it is no more
unscientific to ask whether DNA was consciously designed than it is to ask
whether strange markings on stone were carved by our prehistoric ancestors.
I know that some will object that origins of life isn't evolution or Darwinism
strictly speaking, but the tendency of Darwinian evolutionists to apply their
theory "all the way down" to the origins of life, and even the universe, and
"all the way up" to human consciousness and society makes it a worthwhile
example of where the _a priori_ exclusion of non-naturalistic explanations is
not simply application of a neutral scientific method, but ideology.
Stephen Watson
In article <534bm0$2...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
Mark T. Cameron <ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
[interesting summary of Johnson snipped. I would agree with most of
it, as far as it goes -- both Johnson's quotes and Mark's commentary]
>I think a possible answer (heartily endorse by Johnson, as it happens) is the
>suggestion of Bradley and Thaxton in "Information and the Origin of Life" (in
>_The Creation Hypothesis_, Moreland et al., 1994). They point out that in
>our ordinary experience, information is always the product of intelligence.
I don't know what is meant by "ordinary experience", but according to
the only *rigorous* definitions of information I know of, information
is almost entirely unrelated to intelligence (or meaning, or any of
the other things we colloquially associate with it). The unit of
information is the bit, and the information content of any entity is
the length of the shortest bit string required to fully specify it.
This leads to the counter-intuitive result that an object constructed
in a *purely random* manner actually contains *maximal* information,
since it will contain little redundancy, or structure, that we can
take advantage of to shorten the description, and so we will have to
describe every part in individually. If you use file compression
software, you may already have a grasp of this: the compressd size of
a file is closer to it's true information content than the raw size of
the original file (I say "closer", since real compression software
does not achieve the theoretical maximum for every file). A file
consisting mostly of the same data repeated can be compressed very
small. A file consisting entirely of purely random numbers would not
compress much, if at all. The kinds of files that contain what is, to
us, "useful information" or "meaningful information" (e.g. text or
programs) seem to compress by amounts in the 30-60% range.
So the conclusion (which seems to escape most Creationists) is that
the Universe can get all the information it needs, from randomness.
>Science has demonstrated conclusively that phenomenally complex order can be
>generated by a few natural laws and random chance - snowflakes or
>crystals, for example - so Paley-type design arguments appealing to the
>incredible beauty and order in the universe won't work. But it remains the
>fact that ordered patterns that convey meaningful information about the
>outside world is more than just order, and seems to require an intelligent
>source.
"Complex order", AFAIK, is an ill-defined concept. Gell-Mann and his
Santa Fe Institute (see _The Quark & The Jaguar_) are trying to define
it somewhat better -- and some predict they will not succeed. Pending
their success, arguments over the necessity of "intelligence" for it's
origin are ill-founded (or at least, they do not deserve the patina of
"scientific" respectability that Creationists like to varnish them
with).
>Of course, the one place where genuinely complex information appears to
>occur in nature is in DNA and RNA. No plausible theory of abiogenesis has
>yet been produced. Why should we expect to find a naturalistic explanation
>of this when in any other field of research, finding a complex information
>pattern would be taken as proof of intelligent cause? Surely it is no more
>unscientific to ask whether DNA was consciously designed than it is to ask
>whether strange markings on stone were carved by our prehistoric ancestors.
Personally, I think it is a legitimate question to *ask* (although I'm
not sure that science has the conceptual tools to properly frame the
query). What I object to is the eagerness of some of our
co-religionists to jump to premature *answers*. (I should point out
that I am a Christian, of the United Church variety -- and I dread
slip-shod apologetics at least as much as I dread having no
apologetics). The other day Ken Ham was here, and trotted out a slide
of Mt. Rushmore to demonstrate that we can tell the difference between
that which is designed by intelligence, and that which occurs by
chance. Among myriad other reasons, this argument fails because it
does not follow that, since we can tell the difference in *some*
cases, we can tell the difference in *all* cases. And in the cases
before us (the origin of the Universe, and of life) the jury is still
out.
--
#Steve Watson# swa...@nortel.ca #Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Ont. Canada #
## The above is the output of a 7th-order Markovian analysis of all posts on ##
## this group for the past month. Not only is it not BNR's opinion, it's ##
## not even *my* opinion: it's really just a mish-mash of all YOUR opinions! ##
Mark Isaak
In article <52vrt2$d...@freenet-news.carleton.ca> ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>There is a valid theological debate as to whether a purely
>naturalistic theory of evolution is compatible with faith, but even if the
>answer is no, that doesn't mean one should commit intellectual suicide by
>according to Dawkins, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheists, then
>perhaps some of the Christians around here should read Johnson, Berlinski,
>Behe, or the _Creation Hypothesis_ edited by Moreland so that they can
>become intellectually fulfilled Christians.
All of the arguments in Berlinski's article I saw first in the writings of
Gish or his ilk. Why should I not consider Berlinski a Gish-style
creationist?
--
Mark Isaak "The first principle is that you must not
is...@aurora.com fool yourself, and you're the easiest
person to fool." - Richard Feynman
Mark T. Cameron
Mark Isaak (is...@aurora.com) writes:
> All of the arguments in Berlinski's article I saw first in the writings of
> Gish or his ilk. Why should I not consider Berlinski a Gish-style
> creationist?
Gish, Morris and co. have a dual agenda. 1) They point out difficulties,
real or imagined, with the current Dawrinist paradigm. 2) They argue that
since Darwinism has been "proved" false, young earth creationism must be
true. They propose a young earth creationist scenario, based on a literal
interpretation of Genesis, and then find selective, decontextualized bits
of scientific data that they argue supports it.
Berlinski and the new wave of critics follow Gish and co. part way on step
1). They point out some legitimate difficulties with the Darwinist
paradigm, albeit at a more rigorous level. They then suggest that to the
extent that these difficulties raise problems that can not be solved _in
principle_ by a naturalistic explanation, that intelligent design should
be considered as an alternative. But they do not propose any postive
theory of how intelligent design is said to have accomplished the creation
of life, etc. So there are a few parallels, but correlation does not
prove causality.
The difference is as profound as the difference between somebody in 1900
who denied the eternity of the universe simply because it was opposed to
Scripture, and somebody in 1935 hypothesizing a Big Bang to explain
Einstein's calculations and Hubble's telescopic observations.
Bowen Simmons
In article <534bm0$2...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
> ...
> I think a possible answer (heartily endorse by Johnson, as it happens) is the
> suggestion of Bradley and Thaxton in "Information and the Origin of Life" (in
> _The Creation Hypothesis_, Moreland et al., 1994). They point out that in
> our ordinary experience, information is always the product of intelligence.
> ...
> Of course, the one place where genuinely complex information appears to
> occur in nature is in DNA and RNA.
Your premise assumes your conclusion. In order for your assertion "that
in our ordinary experience, information is always the product of
intelligence" to be true, you must assume that DNA and RNA are the product
of intelligence, otherwise your assertion is false. You then use this
assumption to prove that DNA and RNA are the product of intelligence.
--
Bowen Simmons
bo...@netgate.net
Bowen Simmons
In article <52vrt2$d...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
> and was not surprised that he gave up on it quickly. This is simply not a
> forum for civilized discussion.
>
It can be. Everyone has control of two things: the posts they write and
the posts they respond to. If you only write civilized posts and only
respond to same, then you are having a civilized discussion. The fact
that third parties may make non-civilized posts on the same thread is a
phenomenon easily dealt with by ignoring them.
> I think in many ways this Newsgroup is a tragic wasted opportunity. There
> is a fascinating intellectual debate out there between orthodox Darwinists
> (Dawkins, Dennett, Maynard Smith), moderate or critical Darwinists (Gould,
> Kauffman, Shapiro) and Darwin deniers or design advocates (Berlinski,
> Behe, Johnson). Why people here insist on polarizing the debate between
> hardcore Dawkins-esque Darwinism and Biblical literalist young earth
> creationism is beyond me.
Discussions that are framed within scientific norms are conducted in the
science newsgroups. This newsgroup tends to handle challenges whose
origin is outside of the scientific community. The sci-cre stuff is of
this type. It is not a scientific debate, but a political contest over
the separation of church and state. It is fought in this newsgroup
because both sides feel it to be an important one.
This does make it somewhat difficult for other arguments to take place
because of the large volume of posts generated on this subject, but it is
by no means impossible. Ted Holden and a small band of fellow-believers
have been debating Velikovskiian catastrophism here for years.
> I guess it just proves the economists are right
> that bad currency drives out good.
Interesting and informative posts are written for this newsgroup every
day. Andew MacRae's posts alone are usually worth the price of sorting
through all the traffic.
> A lot of the fault here belongs to Christians (I am a conservative
> Catholic, and am from an evangelical background) who believe that
> pseudo-scientific literalist creationism is the only way to be faithful to
> the Bible. There is a valid theological debate as to whether a purely
> naturalistic theory of evolution is compatible with faith, but even if the
> answer is no, that doesn't mean one should commit intellectual suicide by
> embracing Duane Gish style creationism. If Darwin made it possible,
> according to Dawkins, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheists, then
> perhaps some of the Christians around here should read Johnson, Berlinski,
> Behe, or the _Creation Hypothesis_ edited by Moreland so that they can
> become intellectually fulfilled Christians.
I thought that I was an intellectually fulfilled Christian. What I have
read of Johnson and Berlinski does not inspire me to think that these men
have something really interesting to say on the topic of evolutionary
biology. Johnson in particular repeats many so many fallacious sci-cre
arguments that I am left to conclude that he must literally not know what
he is talking about.
> ...Too bad you won't have somebody like David Berlinski to interract with.
Perhaps. I don't have that specific a memory of Berlinski's posts but
they did not strike me as particularly interesting. In any event, it was
his decision to leave, not mine.
--
Bowen Simmons
bo...@netgate.net
Mark T. Cameron
I have to say at the outset that I am not a scientist, just an
interested lay person, and I don't pretend to understand the mathematics
of this stuff, but Bradley and Thaxton are drawing on concepts of
Information Theory developed by Claude Shannon and the work of Hubert
Yockey in applying it to biology. As I understand (and you as a BNR
employee likely know better) in this theory the information content of
the bit string is determined by a logarithmic relationship between the
number of symbols in a message and the number of bits required to specify
them. This means that both a perfectly random and a perfectly but
linearly ordered pattern contain minimal information content. One of the
issues that led to the most confusion during Berlinski's sojourn here was
between the use of the concept of entropy in information theory and in the
Second Law, which led some to say that Berlinski was simply parroting the
old "evolution violates the Second Law" canard.
>>Science has demonstrated conclusively that phenomenally complex order
can be
>>generated by a few natural laws and random chance - snowflakes or
>>crystals, for example - so Paley-type design arguments appealing to the
>>incredible beauty and order in the universe won't work. But it remains the
>>fact that ordered patterns that convey meaningful information about the
>>outside world is more than just order, and seems to require an intelligent
>>source.
>
>"Complex order", AFAIK, is an ill-defined concept. Gell-Mann and his
>Santa Fe Institute (see _The Quark & The Jaguar_) are trying to define
>it somewhat better -- and some predict they will not succeed. Pending
>their success, arguments over the necessity of "intelligence" for it's
>origin are ill-founded (or at least, they do not deserve the patina of
>"scientific" respectability that Creationists like to varnish them
>with).
Again, it's not just order, however complex, its information - order that
carries a mathematically quantifiable symbolic pattern - which is at
question. According to Yockey, there is simply no way mathematically to
go from the information content of prebiotic chemical compounds to that
of living organisms. In an article that was posted on this newsgroup last
year:
"All dialectical materialist origin of life scenarios
require in extremis a primeval soup. There is no path from this mythical
soup to the generation of a genome and a genetic code. John von Neumann
showed that fact in his Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata U of Ill.
Press 1966. One must begin with a genetic message of a rather large
information content. Manfred Eigen and his disciples argue that all it
takes is one self-catalytic molecule to generate a genome. This
self-catalytic molecule must have a very small information content. By
that token, there must be very few of them [Section 2.4.1] As they
self-reproduce and evolve the descendants get lost in the enormous number
of possible sequences in which the specific messages of biological are
buried. From the Shannon-McMillan theorem I have shown that a small
protein, cytochrome c is only 2 x 10^-44 of the possible sequences. It
takes religious faith to believe that would happen. Of course the minimum
information content of the simplest organism is much larger than the
information content of cytochrome c."
I have no way of knowing whether Von Neumann or Yockey have proved this
mathematically, but if they have, then both the neo-Darwinian and
self-organizational models of life origins will not work. Again, I don't
have the theoretical background to contribuute much to this discussion,
but I would love to see this kind of discussion take place.
>>Of course, the one place where genuinely complex information appears to
>>occur in nature is in DNA and RNA. No plausible theory of abiogenesis has
>>yet been produced. Why should we expect to find a naturalistic explanation
>>of this when in any other field of research, finding a complex information
>>pattern would be taken as proof of intelligent cause? Surely it is no more
>>unscientific to ask whether DNA was consciously designed than it is to ask
>>whether strange markings on stone were carved by our prehistoric ancestors.
>
>Personally, I think it is a legitimate question to *ask* (although I'm
>not sure that science has the conceptual tools to properly frame the
>query). What I object to is the eagerness of some of our
>co-religionists to jump to premature *answers*. (I should point out
>that I am a Christian, of the United Church variety -- and I dread
>slip-shod apologetics at least as much as I dread having no
>apologetics). The other day Ken Ham was here, and trotted out a slide
>of Mt. Rushmore to demonstrate that we can tell the difference between
>that which is designed by intelligence, and that which occurs by
>chance. Among myriad other reasons, this argument fails because it
>does not follow that, since we can tell the difference in *some*
>cases, we can tell the difference in *all* cases. And in the cases
>before us (the origin of the Universe, and of life) the jury is still
>out.
All I am saying is that the jury is still out! It is the hardline
Darwinists and naturalists who have stacked the jury, saying _any_
reference to intelligent causation is not science. If there are major
unsolved problems in the Darwinist paradigm (as there evidently are, or
the controversy between gradualists and punctuationists, or the appeals
to laws of complexity to explain life, would not be necessary) then surely
the scientific thing to do is to consider all plausible theories that may
be able to answer the questions, including those theories that consider
intelligent design.
howard hershey
bo...@netgate.net (Bowen Simmons) wrote:
>In article <52vrt2$d...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
>ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
>
> > ...
> > I was amazed that Berlinski had actually braved the Newsgroup in person,
> > and was not surprised that he gave up on it quickly. This is simply not a
> > forum for civilized discussion.
> >
>
>It can be. Everyone has control of two things: the posts they write and
>the posts they respond to. If you only write civilized posts and only
>respond to same, then you are having a civilized discussion. The fact
>that third parties may make non-civilized posts on the same thread is a
>phenomenon easily dealt with by ignoring them.
Indeed it can. I have had many interesting posts with Jeff Cox (for example).
Not free from humor, of course. But Jeff, unlike most of the creationists
here, actually thinks about what he posts and is not just parroting back
stuff he doesn't understand. [For that reason, his old earth 'creation theory'
actually looks like evolution with a "God did it" patina, but what the
heck.] Same goes for Douglas Cox and a few others.
I reserve my less-civilized posts for those who deserve it by wasting
everyone's time with spew they neither understand nor care to question.
I have even come to the defense of creationists - karl, no less - when
they (by mistake) make a valid point or are accused of being racist (lack of
evidence) or stupid or wilfully mendacious (rather than merely
information-challenged and logic-impaired).
R. Tang
In article <538pgp$i...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
>real or imagined, with the current Dawrinist paradigm. 2) They argue that
>since Darwinism has been "proved" false, young earth creationism must be
>true.
>
>1). They point out some legitimate difficulties with the Darwinist
>paradigm, albeit at a more rigorous level. They then suggest that to the
>extent that these difficulties raise problems that can not be solved _in
>principle_ by a naturalistic explanation, that intelligent design should
>be considered as an alternative. But they do not propose any postive
>theory of how intelligent design is said to have accomplished the creation
>of life, etc.
I find this distinction to be of little use, since the defintion
of "intelligent design" is not made, nor are there any tests can be made
to differentiate the two. Putting out the smokescreen of "naturalistic
explanations" is sophistry since it takes it precisely out of the area of
science.
--
Roger Tang, gwan...@u.washington.edu, Artistic Director PC Theatre
Editor, Asian American Theatre Revue:
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~gwangung/TC.html
Declared 4-F in the War Between the Sexes
Stephen Watson
In article <537i2l$6...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,>Stephen Watson (swa...@bnr.ca) writes:
[..........]
>>the other things we colloquially associate with it). The unit of
>>information is the bit, and the information content of any entity is
>>the length of the shortest bit string required to fully specify it.
>>So the conclusion (which seems to escape most Creationists) is that
>>the Universe can get all the information it needs, from randomness.
>
>I have to say at the outset that I am not a scientist, just an
>interested lay person, and I don't pretend to understand the mathematics
>of this stuff, but Bradley and Thaxton are drawing on concepts of
>Information Theory developed by Claude Shannon and the work of Hubert
>Yockey in applying it to biology. As I understand (and you as a BNR
>employee likely know better) in this theory the information content of
>the bit string is determined by a logarithmic relationship between the
>number of symbols in a message and the number of bits required to specify
>them. This means that both a perfectly random and a perfectly but
>linearly ordered pattern contain minimal information content.
It's been over 16 years since I did this stuff formally, but that
sounds like informational entropy -- not quite the same thing as the
"algorithmic information content" concept that I was using. However,
this does not necessarily change the essential point: what we consider
"useful information" exists somewhere in between the extremes of
boring uniformity and total randomness. The question is: does the
universe have some mechanism for "paring down" the information content
of randomness (of which it has plenty) into something "useful" (or, in
entropic terms, of producing locally lower informational entropy).
(And of course, this assumes we have defined the desired product
rigorously in the first place!)
[.........]
>Again, it's not just order, however complex, its information - order that
>carries a mathematically quantifiable symbolic pattern - which is at
>question. According to Yockey, there is simply no way mathematically to
>go from the information content of prebiotic chemical compounds to that
>of living organisms. In an article that was posted on this newsgroup last
>year:
[Yockey quote...]
>....From the Shannon-McMillan theorem I have shown that a small
>protein, cytochrome c is only 2 x 10^-44 of the possible sequences. It
>takes religious faith to believe that would happen. Of course the minimum
>information content of the simplest organism is much larger than the
>information content of cytochrome c."
>
>I have no way of knowing whether Von Neumann or Yockey have proved this
>mathematically, but if they have, then both the neo-Darwinian and
>self-organizational models of life origins will not work. Again, I don't
>have the theoretical background to contribuute much to this discussion,
>but I would love to see this kind of discussion take place.
Since I have read neither Yockey nor Behe, I couldn't say either. It
sounds intersting enough to make me want to read one or the other (
after I defend my Master's thesis, get through E.O. Wilson's _The
Diversity of Life_ and Penrose's _Shadows of the Mind_, and learn
Win95 programming [the number of books and magazines spilling off my
night-table onto the floor makes getting into bed a hazardous trip
these days] ;-). The one prejudice I do have is that, in every
"abiogenesis is impossible" argument I have yet read, the proponent
failed to show that he had covered (frequently, even defined) the
entire "plausibility space" (if I might coin a term). Yockey sounds
like he *claims* to have done so (by way of a general mathematical
proof), and I suspect I don't have the necessary background to judge
his claim.
[............]
>to laws of complexity to explain life, would not be necessary) then surely
>the scientific thing to do is to consider all plausible theories that may
>be able to answer the questions, including those theories that consider
>intelligent design.
As you have already noted, both Johnson and Behe fall down in
explicating their alternative. Only theories which use the
"intelligent designer" concept in a reasonably well-defined and
limitted way can be considered scientific. If someone came up with
such a definition, then we would be on the way to discussing this
scientifically. Until then, we have no theory: all we have (assuming
Yockey's skepticism turned out to be well-founded) is an unsolved
problem.
Mark T. Cameron
R. Tang (gwan...@u.washington.edu) writes:
> In article <538pgp$i...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
> Mark T. Cameron <ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>>Gish, Morris and co. have a dual agenda. 1) They point out difficulties,
>>real or imagined, with the current Dawrinist paradigm. 2) They argue that
>>since Darwinism has been "proved" false, young earth creationism must be
>>true.
>>
>>Berlinski and the new wave of critics follow Gish and co. part way on step
>>1). They point out some legitimate difficulties with the Darwinist
>>paradigm, albeit at a more rigorous level. They then suggest that to the
>>extent that these difficulties raise problems that can not be solved _in
>>principle_ by a naturalistic explanation, that intelligent design should
>>be considered as an alternative. But they do not propose any postive
>>theory of how intelligent design is said to have accomplished the creation
>>of life, etc.
>
> I find this distinction to be of little use, since the defintion
> of "intelligent design" is not made, nor are there any tests can be made
> to differentiate the two. Putting out the smokescreen of "naturalistic
> explanations" is sophistry since it takes it precisely out of the area of
> science.
>
I have in other posts discussed how science conducts tests in other fields
to determine whether intelligent design is responsible for a phenomenon.
Forensi science can determine whether a death was caused by natural causes
or intelligent purpose (i.e. murder), archaeologists can determine whether
a strange rock formation was caused by weathering or was carved by some
ancient civilization, and SETI reserachers have algorithms to determine
whether radio signals from outer space are background noise, pulsars, or
intelligent signals carrying information.
In DNA and RNA, we seem to have a code with an alphabet, syntax, and structure
similar to that of a language or computer program. In any other field of
research, stumbling across data of this type would be taken as proof of
design. What would we think if we started receiving a radio signal from
space that was decoded as a map of a human (or an alien) genome? If there
are reasons in principle why a signal with this level of mathematical
complexity could not have arisen by chance, as some prominent
mathematicians and information theorists have suggested, then perhaps
intelligent design should be considered as a cause. No less a materialist
than Sir Francis Crick has seriously suggested that the complexity of DNA
is so great that it could not have come from earth, and that we should
perhaps hypothesize that the first cells were sent here from space
(directed panspermia).
Great scientists of the past like Kepler, Newton, and Boyle did not
hesitate to consider divine causes of events. In modern times, Noam
Chomsky has asserted that his hypothetical language organ could not have
evolved and bears the marks of "special design" (although he does not posit
any cause). While philosophical and theological speculation about the
nature of God may be beyond the scope of science, there doesn't seem to be
any principled scientific reason why inferring evidence for God from nature is
unscientific. It is an arbitrary convention of 19th and early 20th century
science.
So, 1) other sciences are able to construct tests to separate intelligent
from natural causes, 2) an intelligent cause of life does not necessarily
imply divine creation, and 3) scientists of past and present have invoked
God or design without being unscientific, and there is no non-arbitrary
reason why consideration of divine or intelligent causation should be
considered unscientific.
Wayne Throop
::: Berlinski and the new wave of critics follow Gish and co. part way
::: on step 1). They point out some legitimate difficulties with the
::: Darwinist paradigm, albeit at a more rigorous level. They then
::: suggest that to the extent that these difficulties raise problems
::: that can not be solved _in principle_ by a naturalistic explanation,
::: that intelligent design should be considered as an alternative. But
::: they do not propose any postive theory of how intelligent design is
::: said to have accomplished the creation of life, etc.
:: I find this distinction to be of little use, since the defintion of
:: "intelligent design" is not made, nor are there any tests can be made
:: to differentiate the two. Putting out the smokescreen of
:: "naturalistic explanations" is sophistry since it takes it precisely
:: out of the area of science.
: ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron)
: I have in other posts discussed how science conducts tests in other
: fields to determine whether intelligent design is responsible for a
: phenomenon. Forensi science can determine whether a death was caused
: by natural causes or intelligent purpose (i.e. murder),
: archaeologists can determine whether a strange rock formation was
: caused by weathering or was carved by some ancient civilization, and
: SETI reserachers have algorithms to determine whether radio signals
: from outer space are background noise, pulsars, or intelligent signals
: carrying information.
And every one of these cases involves (whether explicitly or implicitly)
a "positive theory" of how the inteligence is supposed to have accomplished
whatever is being discussed. Further, every case listed involves comparing
features of instances with known causes with the suspect one. Forensic
science is comparing to other crimes, or to established standards
reproduceable in the lab. Archaeologists are comparing the surfaces of
rocks known to be weathered or known to be carved. SETI researchers are
looking for features that occur in known-intentinal signals.
But "Berlinski and the new wave of critics follow Gish and co" are not
doing this; they "do not propose any postive theory of how intelligent
design is said to have accomplished the creation of life, etc." Without
such a positive theory, at least to some extent, the scientific method
can't be applied; you can't form hypotheses and check them.
: In DNA and RNA, we seem to have a code with an alphabet, syntax, and
: structure similar to that of a language or computer program.
In some ways similar. In many crucial ways, however, NOT similar.
For examples, the "alphabet" is not even close to being optimally
designed, the non-coding regions don't correspond to elements in
a designed language, and areas that seem to be copies
are found to have unrelated function.
And in considering how form and function are distributed across
species, we find they can be sorted into a single-origin tree of
descent. This is exactly the reverse of what occurs in every
known case of design; function crosses heirarchy.
That life might be designed, in whole or in part, can itself be
considered only in the context of a proposal that at least points out
diagnostic features of this design which can be searched for. And when
this is done, we find hen's teeth and horse's toes and whale legs and
panda's thumbs instead. The conclusion that living things are
probably not designed, at least not in a direct and trivial way,
is not arbitrary, motiveless, or ill-considered.
--
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
thr...@cisco.com
Mark T. Cameron
Wayne Throop (thr...@sheol.org) writes:
> : ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron)
> : I have in other posts discussed how science conducts tests in other
> : fields to determine whether intelligent design is responsible for a
> : phenomenon. Forensi science can determine whether a death was caused
> : by natural causes or intelligent purpose (i.e. murder),
> : archaeologists can determine whether a strange rock formation was
> : caused by weathering or was carved by some ancient civilization, and
> : SETI reserachers have algorithms to determine whether radio signals
> : from outer space are background noise, pulsars, or intelligent signals
> : carrying information.
>
> And every one of these cases involves (whether explicitly or implicitly)
> a "positive theory" of how the inteligence is supposed to have accomplished
> whatever is being discussed. Further, every case listed involves comparing
> features of instances with known causes with the suspect one. Forensic
> science is comparing to other crimes, or to established standards
> reproduceable in the lab. Archaeologists are comparing the surfaces of
> rocks known to be weathered or known to be carved. SETI researchers are
> looking for features that occur in known-intentinal signals.
Having never received an alien radio broadcast, which might take the form
of a strange language or message unknown to humans, how do SETI
researchers know what to look for? They look for informational patterns
based on mathematical information algorithms, algorithms which are also
found in human language and signals (computer programs, etc.) and DNA.
> But "Berlinski and the new wave of critics follow Gish and co" are not
> doing this; they "do not propose any postive theory of how intelligent
> design is said to have accomplished the creation of life, etc." Without
> such a positive theory, at least to some extent, the scientific method
> can't be applied; you can't form hypotheses and check them.
I agree this is a major drawback of intelligent design advocates - they
have no comprehensive positive theory. At this point, they are only
pointing to flaws, some potentially fatal, in the existing paradigm, and
have not developed a theory and positive research program of their own.
> : In DNA and RNA, we seem to have a code with an alphabet, syntax, and
> : structure similar to that of a language or computer program.
>
> In some ways similar. In many crucial ways, however, NOT similar.
> For examples, the "alphabet" is not even close to being optimally
> designed, the non-coding regions don't correspond to elements in
> a designed language, and areas that seem to be copies
> are found to have unrelated function.
If I find a notepad with a few sentences on it, and the rest meaningless
squiggles and doodles, do I therefore assume that the sentences are also
meaningless?
> And in considering how form and function are distributed across
> species, we find they can be sorted into a single-origin tree of
> descent. This is exactly the reverse of what occurs in every
> known case of design; function crosses heirarchy.
>
> That life might be designed, in whole or in part, can itself be
> considered only in the context of a proposal that at least points out
> diagnostic features of this design which can be searched for. And when
> this is done, we find hen's teeth and horse's toes and whale legs and
> panda's thumbs instead. The conclusion that living things are
> probably not designed, at least not in a direct and trivial way,
> is not arbitrary, motiveless, or ill-considered.
I'm not denying that common descent and natural selection are part of the
story, simply that life itself and some features found in life (i.e. human
symbolic reasoning and language) may require a non-evolutionary
explanation, and that macroevolution may involve other processes than
natural selection and random mutation.
Christopher C. Wood
In article <53cmg6$k...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
|> If I find a notepad with a few sentences on it, and the rest
|> meaningless squiggles and doodles, do I therefore assume that the
|> sentences are also meaningless?
It depends. A friend of mine shared with me a letter from her father.
To me, it looked like meaningless scribbles interspersed with nicely
printed English words. As her first language was Arabic, (second
French, and third English -- yet she spoke English better than most
Americans), the assumption that the squiggles were meaningless was
certainly invalid.
[ trimmed ]
|> I'm not denying that common descent and natural selection are part
|> of the story, simply that life itself and some features found in
|> life (i.e. human symbolic reasoning and language) may require a
|> non-evolutionary explanation,
So far, there is no evidnece that any particular features of life
_require_ a non-evolutionary explanation. I would be very surprised
if such evidence ever turns up.
Chris
--
Speaking only for myself, of course.
Chris Wood chr...@lexis-nexis.com ca...@CFAnet.com
Matthew P Wiener
In article <532ano$a...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap865@FreeNet (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>First, I thought Berlinski's responses on t.o. were quite good, given the
>nature of the forum.
Why? Why does the nature of this form require to you spout of retarded
nonsense about elementary biology, chemistry and physics?
>[...] As I said before, it is t.o.'s loss that an intelligent voice
>like that was hounded from the Newsgroup.
It wasn't displaying any intelligence.
> I'm not saying he is
>necessarily right in all particulars,
Wow. Give yourself a cookie.
> just that it's a pity that that
>level of discussion isn't possible.
If he's going to *be* self-made stupid, no, it's not possible.
>As to Johnson, I can't comment in a qualified way about his knowledge of
>biology, and I am sure he made mistakes.
You mean, sort of like misprints here and there, right? No, he did
not "make mistakes". He was simply ignorantly gibbering.
> But I think his analysis of
>the metaphysical underpinnings of science, and the use of science in
>public, political, and legal discussion is very insightful.
How is that even possible, if he doesn't have a clue about the science
in the first place?
> Johnson's major
>failing, it seems to me, is in failing to point towards what an alternate
>design based theory of species origins might look like.
That, and not noticing that evolution is in fact a solid well-established
fact, much like gravity and Pluto's orbit and the earth's center.
>>And I disagree with the Dawkins' statement which you paraphrase. If you
>>are interested in biology, Darwin can help you become an intellectually
>>fulfilled _person_. Darwin's work neither contradicts Christianity nor
>>implies atheism. You will obtain much more intellectual fulfillment
>>reading Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, or even Jonathan Weiner's "Beak of the
>>Finch," than you will by wasting your time with Johnson.
>I don't see how as a "fairly conservative Protestant" you think there is
>much "fulfillment" to be gained from Dawkins, who is a militant opponent
>of all forms of religion, or Wilson, who's sociobiology has right-wing
>political implications that have been strongly challenged by fellow
>Darwinian biologists like Gould and Richard Lewontin.
He said "more". Johnson is *that* pathetic. Understand? Not just
mistakes here and there, but through and through sputteringly clueless.
>If you mean these folks are effective and lucid Darwinist apologists,
>they are, but they come freighted with a lot of metaphysical/political
>baggage that makes me question where their science breaks off and their
>philosophy begins. As to Weiner, he's worse than a lawyer, he's a
>journalist.
Gosh. You have trouble with the book? Too many hard proven facts you
don't want to hear about, or what?
--
-Matthew P Wiener (wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Matthew P Wiener
In article <530jgs$5...@news.nyu.edu>, gans@scholar (Paul J. Gans) writes:
>Let me give you an example. Mr. Berlinski does, indeed, have net
>access and can post to talk.origins if he so chooses. He has
>essentially told me that in (recent) private e-mail. When someone
>posted a question to talk.origins about Berlinski's article, I
>answered. Berlinski saw my answer. Rather than post to talk.origins
>and claiming IN PUBLIC that he had not disappeared, he chose to
>send me private e-mail *claiming* he had not disappeared. He
>is doubtless following this exchange with some satisfaction.
Also note that when he first showed up, he claimed write-only access.
Now he seemingly has read-only access.
He smells of dishonest slime, through and through.
R. Tang
In article <53bl96$i...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
Mark T. Cameron <ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>R. Tang (gwan...@u.washington.edu) writes:
>> In article <538pgp$i...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
>> Mark T. Cameron <ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>>>Gish, Morris and co. have a dual agenda. 1) They point out difficulties,
>>>real or imagined, with the current Dawrinist paradigm. 2) They argue that
>>>since Darwinism has been "proved" false, young earth creationism must be
>>>true.
>>>
>>>1). They point out some legitimate difficulties with the Darwinist
>>>paradigm, albeit at a more rigorous level. They then suggest that to the
>>>extent that these difficulties raise problems that can not be solved _in
>>>principle_ by a naturalistic explanation, that intelligent design should
>>>theory of how intelligent design is said to have accomplished the creation
>>>of life, etc.
>>
>> of "intelligent design" is not made, nor are there any tests can be made
>> to differentiate the two. Putting out the smokescreen of "naturalistic
>> explanations" is sophistry since it takes it precisely out of the area of
>> science.
>>
>
>to determine whether intelligent design is responsible for a phenomenon.
Fine. Then Berlinski and Johnson should be able to propose such
tests. Otherwise, it's still intellectual smoke.
>Forensi science can determine whether a death was caused by natural causes
>or intelligent purpose (i.e. murder), archaeologists can determine whether
>a strange rock formation was caused by weathering or was carved by some
>ancient civilization, and SETI reserachers have algorithms to determine
>whether radio signals from outer space are background noise, pulsars, or
>intelligent signals carrying information.
And do you know why? Because investigators can operationalize
the difference between artifical and non-artificial artifacts. Have
Berlinski, Johnson et al been able to do so?
>In DNA and RNA, we seem to have a code with an alphabet, syntax, and structure
>similar to that of a language or computer program.
No, we do not. Beware of arguments from metaphor; the syntax and
structure are inherent from the laws of chemistry.
>So, 1) other sciences are able to construct tests to separate intelligent
>from natural causes,
So? What about THIS science?
Believe me, a scientist who could design a test for "intelligent
design" and demonstrate it as existing now would be famous beyond belief
(not to mention rich).
The idea is put up or shut up.
Akshay Patki
ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
>"All dialectical materialist origin of life scenarios
>require in extremis a primeval soup. There is no path from this mythical
>soup to the generation of a genome and a genetic code. John von Neumann
>showed that fact in his Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata U of Ill.
>Press 1966. One must begin with a genetic message of a rather large
>information content. Manfred Eigen and his disciples argue that all it
>takes is one self-catalytic molecule to generate a genome. This
>self-catalytic molecule must have a very small information content. By
>that token, there must be very few of them [Section 2.4.1]
>As they
>self-reproduce and evolve the descendants get lost in the enormous number
>of possible sequences in which the specific messages of biological are
>buried. From the Shannon-McMillan theorem I have shown that a small
>protein, cytochrome c is only 2 x 10^-44 of the possible sequences. It
>takes religious faith to believe that would happen. Of course the minimum
>information content of the simplest organism is much larger than the
>information content of cytochrome c."
Since information content refers to the probability a given message
will be received, above seems to reduce entirely to the Bridge
fallacy;
I) The odds that I would get this particular hand dealt in Bridge is
vanishingly small.
II) Hence, it takes religious faith to believe I just got this hand
dealt.
" As the deck is shuffled and dealt, the hands eventually dealt get
lost in the enormous number of possible hands....blablabla"
Anyway, as Stephen Watson has argued, getting info content is easy;
getting something useful is not, but there is no reason natural
mechanisms could not do this. Evolution is the prime example.
I wouldn't trust the reference to von Neumann, though I have not
read any of the above. If above really is the Bridge fallacy, I would
not trust anything about it at all, in fact.
> Again, I don't
>have the theoretical background to contribuute much to this discussion,
>but I would love to see this kind of discussion take place.
Happy now? ;-)
>All I am saying is that the jury is still out! It is the hardline
>Darwinists and naturalists who have stacked the jury, saying _any_
>reference to intelligent causation is not science. If there are major
>unsolved problems in the Darwinist paradigm (as there evidently are, or
>the controversy between gradualists and punctuationists, or the appeals
>to laws of complexity to explain life, would not be necessary)
I think most scientists would say appeals to as yet unknown laws of
complexity are unnecessary. (at the moment) The gradualist/PunkEek
affair has nothing to do at all with intelligent causation, and is
basically a discussion on the importance of Punk Eek.
-Akshay
Matthew P Wiener
In article <537i2l$6...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap865@FreeNet (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>All I am saying is that the jury is still out! It is the hardline
>Darwinists and naturalists who have stacked the jury, saying _any_
>reference to intelligent causation is not science.
False.
You have to give us some details. Something more informative than "whoosh".
> If there are major
>unsolved problems in the Darwinist paradigm (as there evidently are, or
>the controversy between gradualists and punctuationists, or the appeals
>to laws of complexity to explain life, would not be necessary) then surely
>the scientific thing to do is to consider all plausible theories that may
>be able to answer the questions, including those theories that consider
>intelligent design.
As there are zero such theories known, what's your problem? Like, duh
Matthew P Wiener
In article <538pgp$i...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap865@FreeNet (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>Berlinski and the new wave of critics follow Gish and co. part way on
>step 1). They point out some legitimate difficulties with the
Uh no. They use more sophisticated vocabulary, but their criticisms
remain the same old garbage of Gish and friends.
Matthew P Wiener
In article <534bm0$2...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap865@FreeNet (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>I agree that if every time we came across something unexplained we
>invoked mysterious divine action, science wouldn't get very far.
You have a gift for understatement. Science would not exist, period.
>But neither can we assume _a priori_ that natural phenomena like life
>cannot be explained by reference to intelligent purposes and still be
>good science.
Uh, why not?
> We do not resort to this in other areas of science.
Sure we do.
>For instance, if a mysterious death occurs, medical and forensic
>science can investigate to determine whether the death was due to
>disease (natural cause) or murder (intelligent purpose).
That isn't "science".
> If we find
>a rock covered with strange markings geological and archeological
>science can investigate to determine whether the markings were
>causing by weathering (natural cause) or are some form of human art
>or symbols (intelligent purpose).
Calling archeology "archeological science" does not make it "science".
> Why do we have to rule out this
>approach when it comes to investigating the origins and development
>of life?
We don't. It just happens to be an entirely useless hypothesis. Give
one bit of use for it in biology--just *one*.
> Johnson again:
> "[blah blah blah gibber whine duh duh duh omitted]"
Whoops. Not a use. Try again.
>As I stated, I think Johnson arguments on these points related to the
>nature and practice of science are sound, however uninformed his
>biological knowledge may be.
Since his biology is crap, any argument he makes about it is OF COURSE crap.
Like, duh.
>I think a possible answer (heartily endorse by Johnson, as it
>happens) is the suggestion of Bradley and Thaxton in "Information and
>the Origin of Life" (in _The Creation Hypothesis_, Moreland et al.,
>1994). They point out that in our ordinary experience, information
>is always the product of intelligence.
What utter gibber. There is tons of information whereever you look,
with or without "intelligence". For example, the cratering pattern
on the moon is quite information packed. You plan to tell me that
this is "proof" that God threw meteors at the moon? Come on, I'll
even promise to drink something while reading your response--I haven't
gagged through the nose in a while.
> But it remains the fact
>that ordered patterns that convey meaningful information about the
>outside world is more than just order, and seems to require an
>intelligent source.
Uh no. That is just wishful thinking of the most sophomoric sort, easily
disproven. All one needs is laws and time. Try, for example, playing
Conway's Life with a random start or something.
Found information is generally proof of _history_, not intelligence.
> The SETI project hopes to find evidence of
>extra-terrestrial life by isolating information-bearing radio signals
>from the wash of meaningless cosmic background noise. Simply ordered
>signals, like pulsars, won't do,
They are not simply ordered. The signals are, in fact, quite complex,
and contain loads of information. Detecting and decoding that information
has been worth three Nobel prizes to date, for example, and keeps dozens
upon dozens of astrophysicists quite busy.
> but signals that are proved by
>mathematical algorithms to be information patterns would likely be
>hailed as proof of extraterrestrial intelligence.
At this rate, it is clear that you and your sources are just tossing the
word "information" around at random, having no idea of what you are talking
about.
>Of course, the one place where genuinely complex information appears
>to occur in nature is in DNA and RNA. No plausible theory of
>abiogenesis has yet been produced.
That is false. No extremely detailed and plausible theory of abiogenesis
has been produced. Several rough outlines, all quite plausible, have been
offered.
> Why should we expect to find a
>naturalistic explanation of this when in any other field of research,
Since naturalistic explanations of complex information patterns is what
we find all across the board in the sciences.
>finding a complex information pattern would be taken as proof of
>intelligent cause?
Uh no. Give yourself a "duh".
> Surely it is no more unscientific to ask whether
>DNA was consciously designed than it is to ask whether strange
>markings on stone were carved by our prehistoric ancestors.
Sure it is.
>I know that some will object that origins of life isn't evolution or
>Darwinism strictly speaking,
Correct. I take it you're throwing in the towel on evolution, right? I
mean, why switch subjects, right?
> but the tendency of Darwinian
>evolutionists to apply their theory "all the way down" to the origins
>of life, and even the universe, and "all the way up" to human
>consciousness and society makes it a worthwhile example of where the
>_a priori_ exclusion of non-naturalistic explanations is not simply
>application of a neutral scientific method, but ideology.
No, it _is_ the application of a neutral scientific method.
If you have an alternative abiogenetic model--say as detailed and as
testable as Cairns-Smith's model--tell us about it. Ditto for any of
the inflationary Big Bang models. Don't expect the rest of us to join
you in your brainless wishful thinking.
Keith Robison
Mark T. Cameron (ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
: R. Tang (gwan...@u.washington.edu) writes:
: > In article <538pgp$i...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
: > Mark T. Cameron <ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
: In DNA and RNA, we seem to have a code with an alphabet, syntax, and structure
: similar to that of a language or computer program. In any other field of
: research, stumbling across data of this type would be taken as proof of
: design. What would we think if we started receiving a radio signal from
: space that was decoded as a map of a human (or an alien) genome? If there
: are reasons in principle why a signal with this level of mathematical
: complexity could not have arisen by chance, as some prominent
: mathematicians and information theorists have suggested, then perhaps
: intelligent design should be considered as a cause.
Except we know, through in vitro and in silico evolution experiments,
that mutation + selection can generate such "information". There
are, therefore, no "reasons in principle why a signal with this level
of mathematical complexity could not have arisen by chance", and the
theorists who think otherwise need to update their knowledge of
molecular biology.
: No less a materialist
: than Sir Francis Crick has seriously suggested that the complexity of DNA
: is so great that it could not have come from earth, and that we should
: perhaps hypothesize that the first cells were sent here from space
: (directed panspermia).
It is not at all obvious that Crick was serious. Read anything about
the man, and you will realize he has a michevious sense of humor.
Keith Robison
Harvard University
Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology
Department of Genetics
Keith Robison
Mark T. Cameron (ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
: Stephen Watson (swa...@bnr.ca) writes:
: > In article <534bm0$2...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
: > Mark T. Cameron <ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
: Again, it's not just order, however complex, its information - order that
While I have respect for Yockey, but there are several flaws
in his line of reasoning.
First, his estimate of the information content of cytochrome c is
based on _modern_ cytochrome c's. These all must meet some threshold
of functionality, in order to support _modern_ metabolism. The problem
is that there are many cytochrome c-like variants which have _some_
cytochrome c activity but not necessarily enough to support modern
metabolism. Many point mutants in a gene which reduce its function
do not _abolish_ function, they just knock it down below some critical
threshold -- but that threshold is not a fixed entity, but rather
a product of all of the other systems in the cell depending on
that gene.
If you could evolve a set of cytochrome c's with an activity at
least 10% of a modern cytochrome c, the information content you
would calculate would be much lower. If you set the threshold
lower, an even lower information content would be required (i.e.,
many more sequences would have enough activity to meet the threshold).
The next problem with Yockey's reasoning is that he is _assuming_
that there is only one constellation of protein sequences that can
yield something with the function of cytochrome c. There may well
be other proteins, completely unrelated in sequence to cytochrome c,
which have similar function. To go further, there may be many potential
metabolisms which would support life, some of which might not require
cytochrome c-like function. Without summing over all such possibilities,
we cannot reliably estimate the probability.
Is there factual support for the views I have expressed? Yes.
We know there are often multiple solutions to a biochemical problem.
For example, many proteases use the same "catalytic triad" of three
amino acids to do their work -- and yet many of these proteases show
no other similarity to each other. Experiments with in vitro evolution
of catalytic RNA's indeed show that one can start with very low
activity RNAs and evolve much higher activities, and that multiple
unrelated species of RNA can possess such higher activities.
: All I am saying is that the jury is still out! It is the hardline
: Darwinists and naturalists who have stacked the jury, saying _any_
: reference to intelligent causation is not science. If there are major
: unsolved problems in the Darwinist paradigm (as there evidently are, or
: the controversy between gradualists and punctuationists, or the appeals
: to laws of complexity to explain life, would not be necessary) then surely
: the scientific thing to do is to consider all plausible theories that may
: be able to answer the questions, including those theories that consider
: intelligent design.
Yes, but we cannot test "intelligent design". The best you can
do is have a "god of the gaps" theory -- that which cannot be
explained by other means is left to "intelligent design".
As the naturalistic explanations improve, what is left to i.d. is
increasingly slim pickings.
Matthew P Wiener
In article <53bl96$i...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap865@FreeNet (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>I have in other posts discussed how science conducts tests in other
>fields to determine whether intelligent design is responsible for a
>by natural causes or intelligent purpose (i.e. murder),
Not science.
>archaeologists can determine whether a strange rock formation was
>caused by weathering or was carved by some ancient civilization,
Not science.
>and SETI reserachers have algorithms to determine whether radio signals
>from outer space are background noise, pulsars, or intelligent
>signals carrying information.
No intelligent purpose.
>In DNA and RNA, we seem to have a code with an alphabet, syntax, and
>structure similar to that of a language or computer program.
What utter gibber. There are vague similarities, but that is all.
> In any
>other field of research, stumbling across data of this type would be
>taken as proof of design.
Give an example where this has happened. Otherwise, you are engaged
in a baldfaced transparent circular argument.
> What would we think if we started
>receiving a radio signal from space that was decoded as a map of a
>human (or an alien) genome?
That somebody spiked a satellite, obviously.
> If there are reasons in principle why a
>signal with this level of mathematical complexity could not have
>arisen by chance, as some prominent mathematicians and information
>theorists have suggested,
None have. Hint: Yockey is not prominent, except for his public display
of ignorance and incompetence.
> then perhaps intelligent design should be
>considered as a cause. No less a materialist than Sir Francis Crick
>has seriously suggested that the complexity of DNA is so great that
>it could not have come from earth, and that we should perhaps
>hypothesize that the first cells were sent here from space (directed
>panspermia).
Whooptie do. Crick, of course, is not a mathematician, and has zero
comprehension of just what is going on regarding the mathematics of
abiogenesis.
>Great scientists of the past like Kepler, Newton, and Boyle did not
>hesitate to consider divine causes of events. [...]
Yawn. So what? If you have an argument, give one, instead of whinging
like a great big baby, OK?
>So, 1) other sciences are able to construct tests to separate intelligent
>from natural causes, 2) an intelligent cause of life does not necessarily
>imply divine creation, and 3) scientists of past and present have invoked
>God or design without being unscientific, and there is no non-arbitrary
>reason why consideration of divine or intelligent causation should be
>considered unscientific.
You have failed to explain what about DNA would make anyone think it is
the product of intelligent design? While it is impressive, it sucks in
many many ways. For example, if humans had a distinct amino acid code,
we would not be subject to animal viruses. Now *that* would be both a
body blow for evolution and strong evidence that somebody planned things
that way.
What do you know, we have the exact same code. Fancy that.
Notice how I cite actual facts. Unlike you, who just gibbers about how
your poor gibbering (with no actual facts) is treated as stupid gibber.
Richard Harter
A.P...@inter.nl.net (Akshay Patki) wrote:
>ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
>>"All dialectical materialist origin of life scenarios
>>require in extremis a primeval soup. There is no path from this mythical
>>soup to the generation of a genome and a genetic code. John von Neumann
>>showed that fact in his Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata U of Ill.
>>Press 1966. One must begin with a genetic message of a rather large
>>information content. Manfred Eigen and his disciples argue that all it
>>takes is one self-catalytic molecule to generate a genome. This
>>self-catalytic molecule must have a very small information content. By
>>that token, there must be very few of them [Section 2.4.1]
[snip]
> I wouldn't trust the reference to von Neumann, though I have not
>read any of the above. If above really is the Bridge fallacy, I would
>not trust anything about it at all, in fact.
You would be wise not to trust the above reference to von Neumann
because von Neumann showed no such thing. The argument being quoted
is not the bridge fallacy. Basically what Yockey is arguing is that
starting with a single self-catalytic molecule won't work. In this
conclusion he is almost certainly correct although not for the reasons
he presents. The essential argument is this: the amount of
information carried in an ur-molecule is small whereas the amount of
information carried in a living cell is large. There are fairly good
reasons for believing that there is a threshold of information content
in life, i.e., a minimum level of information required, and that the
smallest bacteria are very close to that level. The question is "How
does get from the small amount of information in the ur-molecule to
the large amount of information in the smallest viable cell?".
Eigen's argument is that selection and replication suffices. Yockey
is saying that they do not; that the result will be an error
catastrophe. In this critique Yockey is right. However the entire
argument rests on a fallacy, that there was an ur-molecule and that
its information content is the only thing of consequence.
A living cell carries information above and beyond the genome. It is
not neatly encoded in digital form but the information is there,
none-the-less. A mixture of chemicals represents information, to wit
what chemicals there are and in what proportions. In the cell much of
this information is incidental or accidental, the state of the system
as of the moment. Much, however, is not - it is a way of saying you
need this, that, and the other thing in order to have this kind of
stable living cell.
Now in the prebiotic environment there was a large amount of
information in analog form. The question at hand is under what
circumstances will a stable living cell coalesce from the environment.
In particular do we have a gradual accumulation of order or do we have
a sudden phase transition.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-508-369-3911
Soc.women is the Beirut of the internet. There is nothing
left but rubble and fanatics shooting at each other.
Matthew P Wiener
In article <53cmg6$k...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap865@FreeNet (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>Having never received an alien radio broadcast, which might take the form
>of a strange language or message unknown to humans, how do SETI
>researchers know what to look for? They look for informational patterns
>based on mathematical information algorithms, algorithms which are also
>found in human language and signals (computer programs, etc.) and DNA.
You're clearly making this up as you go along. SETI researchers are
looking for DNA? What utter baloney.
Why don't you just admit that you are making up your argument as you go
along, and that you haven't actually thought about it all that much?
>I agree this is a major drawback of intelligent design advocates - they
>have no comprehensive positive theory.
Again, you understate things. They have absolutely *nothing*.
> At this point, they are only
>pointing to flaws, some potentially fatal, in the existing paradigm,
Name even one. "My name is Behe, and I'm too stupid to think of an
explanation" is _not_ a flaw in the current paradigm.
>If I find a notepad with a few sentences on it, and the rest meaningless
>squiggles and doodles, do I therefore assume that the sentences are also
>meaningless?
What's that have to do with anything?
>I'm not denying that common descent and natural selection are part of the
>story, simply that life itself and some features found in life (i.e. human
>symbolic reasoning and language) may require a non-evolutionary
>explanation, and that macroevolution may involve other processes than
>natural selection and random mutation.
Old news. Language is considered partially Lamarckian.
If you have something original to mention, let us know, OK?
Matthew P Wiener
In article <532ano$a...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap865@FreeNet (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>First, I thought Berlinski's responses on t.o. were quite good, given the
>nature of the forum.
Why? Why does the nature of this forum require to you spout off retarded
Let me guess--you're too ignorant of any science and any metaphysics to
ever tell? Thought so.
> As to Weiner, he's worse than a lawyer, he's a
>journalist.
Gosh. You have trouble with the book? Too many hard proven facts you
don't want to hear about, or what?
Matthew P Wiener
In article <53ef0p$c...@news-central.tiac.net>, cri@tiac (Richard Harter) writes:
>A.P...@inter.nl.net (Akshay Patki) wrote:
>>ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
>>>"All dialectical materialist origin of life scenarios require in
>>>extremis a primeval soup. There is no path from this mythical soup
>>>to the generation of a genome and a genetic code. John von Neumann
>>>showed that fact in his Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata U of
>>>Ill. Press 1966. One must begin with a genetic message of a rather
>>>large information content. [...]
>> I wouldn't trust the reference to von Neumann, though I have not
>>read any of the above. If above really is the Bridge fallacy, I would
>>not trust anything about it at all, in fact.
>You would be wise not to trust the above reference to von Neumann
>because von Neumann showed no such thing.
Correct. This was pointed out when Yockey tried to run it by talk.origins
last year or so.
> The argument being quoted
>is not the bridge fallacy. Basically what Yockey is arguing is that
>starting with a single self-catalytic molecule won't work. In this
>conclusion he is almost certainly correct although not for the reasons
>he presents. The essential argument is this: the amount of
>information carried in an ur-molecule is small whereas the amount of
>information carried in a living cell is large. [...]
>Now in the prebiotic environment there was a large amount of
>information in analog form. The question at hand is under what
>circumstances will a stable living cell coalesce from the
>environment. In particular do we have a gradual accumulation of
>order or do we have a sudden phase transition.
In particular, what Yockey has never noticed, even when it was waved
in front of his face, is that some of this surrounding environmental
information can be converted into encoded genetic information. If one
tries, as Yockey does, to make a "second law" argument that information
can't spontaneously increase, one has to take into account that, like
the decrease of entropy, such only holds for a closed system. Natural
selection always records a certain amount of surrounding history into
the genome--so of *course* the information grows over time.
Cairns-Smith, for example, proposes a "vital mud" prebiotic stage in his
genetic takeover model. The initial stages are very gradual, and there
are no separate organisms that we can call life.
Presumably, when cells formed, there was a phase transition.
Richard Harter
wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) wrote:
>Whooptie do. Crick, of course, is not a mathematician, and has zero
>comprehension of just what is going on regarding the mathematics of
>abiogenesis.
It is correct that Crick is not a mathematician. It is completely
false to say that "and has zero comprehension...mathematics of
abiogenesis." Read _Life Itself_. It's a short and easy read.
Note that I nobly resisted the temptation to add the phrase "about
your speed". This being talk.origins and not rec.arts.books
:-)
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) wrote:
[snip]
>If I find a notepad with a few sentences on it, and the rest meaningless
>squiggles and doodles, do I therefore assume that the sentences are also
>meaningless?
Since you already know the sentences have meaning, this is a
misleading analogy.
Matt Silberstein
-----------------------------
The opinions expressed in this post reflect those of the Walt
Disney Corp. Which might come as a surprise to them.
Matthew P Wiener
In article <53fa9a$t...@news-central.tiac.net>, cri@tiac (Richard Harter) writes:
>wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) wrote:
>>Whooptie do. Crick, of course, is not a mathematician, and has zero
>>comprehension of just what is going on regarding the mathematics of
>>abiogenesis.
>It is correct that Crick is not a mathematician. It is completely
>false to say that "and has zero comprehension...mathematics of
>abiogenesis." Read _Life Itself_. It's a short and easy read.
Yes, I had cancelled the original article on second thought. Sorry
about that.
>Note that I nobly resisted the temptation to add the phrase "about
>your speed". This being talk.origins and not rec.arts.books
I bow to your munificence.
Mark Isaak
In article <53bl96$i...@freenet-news.carleton.ca> ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>I have in other posts discussed how science conducts tests in other fields
>to determine whether intelligent design is responsible for a phenomenon.
In those other fields, there are objective criteria to determine whether or
not something is designed, usually because we have seen the design process
in action. If you want to know whether a flint was struck by a person or by
thermal fracturing, you strike some yourself, thermally fracture others, and
look for features that distinguish the results of the two processes.
Please specify the objective criteria by which I may distinguish design from
non-design. I have a rock on my bookcase that I still haven't determined
whether it's designed or not, and I would like to decide.
--
Mark Isaak "The first principle is that you must not
is...@aurora.com fool yourself, and you're the easiest
person to fool." - Richard Feynman
Mark T. Cameron
A while ago I jumped in on this thread and expressed the opinion that
Berlinski had probably left this group because of the dreck that passes
for argument and discussion on this group, not any sense of being
intellectually defeated by unanswerable arguments. I expressed my
position as a theist who does not dismiss evolution _a priori_, but who is
skeptical as to whether naturalistic processes could have created life or
human consciousness, and as to whether the Darwinian mechanism is
sufficient to explain species diversity and the fossil record. (I do
accept common descent, however, and do not insist that macroevolution
cannot happen naturalistically.)
In the ensuing discussion, a tangent developed regarding what constitutes
evidence for design, information theory and mathematical arguments against
abiogenesis, irreducible complexity, etc. While I received my fair quota of
inane and insulting replies, I also received very well argued, intelligent
critiques of my position from Stephen Watson, Mark Koebbe, Keith Robison,
and Richard Harter. Being neither a biologist nor a mathematician (I am,
egads, a sometime political science grad student and a government
employee), it will probably take me some time to go through their evidence
and compare with Berlinski, Yockey, Thaxton, Behe, etc. As I have other
pressing concerns, I probably won't post for a few weeks.
A few parting thoughts: I think this newsgroup would be a better place if
there were more discussions of this kind, and I think that the defenders
of evolutionary orthodoxy would do well to imitate the style and substance
of those posters I have complimented. You might even find some of the
non-orthodox scientists more willing to come here and debate their point
of view without fear of having their mailboxes flooded with drivel.
Cheers for now,
Mark C.
Matthew P Wiener
In article <53h05v$e...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ap865@FreeNet (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
>In the ensuing discussion, a tangent developed regarding what constitutes
>evidence for design, information theory and mathematical arguments against
>abiogenesis, irreducible complexity, etc. While I received my fair quota of
>inane and insulting replies, I also received very well argued, intelligent
>critiques of my position from Stephen Watson, Mark Koebbe, Keith Robison,
>and Richard Harter.
And you have not responded to having your inane opinions being exposed
for the worthless nonsense that they were.
> Being neither a biologist nor a mathematician
We noticed.
> (I am,
>egads, a sometime political science grad student and a government
>employee), it will probably take me some time to go through their evidence
>and compare with Berlinski, Yockey, Thaxton, Behe, etc.
It should only take a minute, actually.
> As I have other
>pressing concerns, I probably won't post for a few weeks.
Bye bye.
CWood64801
Because Berlinski is outnumbered and overmatched.
Paul J. Gans
Richard Harter (c...@tiac.net) wrote:
[deletions]
: You would be wise not to trust the above reference to von Neumann
: because von Neumann showed no such thing. The argument being quoted
: is not the bridge fallacy. Basically what Yockey is arguing is that
: starting with a single self-catalytic molecule won't work. In this
: conclusion he is almost certainly correct although not for the reasons
: he presents. The essential argument is this: the amount of
: information carried in an ur-molecule is small whereas the amount of
: information carried in a living cell is large. There are fairly good
: reasons for believing that there is a threshold of information content
: in life, i.e., a minimum level of information required, and that the
: smallest bacteria are very close to that level. The question is "How
: does get from the small amount of information in the ur-molecule to
: the large amount of information in the smallest viable cell?".
:
: Eigen's argument is that selection and replication suffices. Yockey
: is saying that they do not; that the result will be an error
: catastrophe. In this critique Yockey is right. However the entire
: argument rests on a fallacy, that there was an ur-molecule and that
: its information content is the only thing of consequence.
:
: A living cell carries information above and beyond the genome. It is
: not neatly encoded in digital form but the information is there,
: none-the-less. A mixture of chemicals represents information, to wit
: what chemicals there are and in what proportions. In the cell much of
: this information is incidental or accidental, the state of the system
: as of the moment. Much, however, is not - it is a way of saying you
: need this, that, and the other thing in order to have this kind of
: stable living cell.
:
: Now in the prebiotic environment there was a large amount of
: information in analog form. The question at hand is under what
: circumstances will a stable living cell coalesce from the environment.
: In particular do we have a gradual accumulation of order or do we have
: a sudden phase transition.
Since I have been so free lately in giving out "best post of
the week awards", I might as well continue.
I nominate this for the Best Post of This Week on a Substantive
Topic.
Indeed, it is probably the Best Post of the Month on a Substantive
Topic.
I predict that all of those who *should* read it, won't.
----- Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
William H. Jefferys
In article <53kdbp$8...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
CWood64801 <cwood...@aol.com> wrote:
#Because Berlinski is outnumbered and overmatched.
If his arguments held water, it would not matter. He
would convince people with his evidence. As it happens,
his arguments don't hold water, so of course he lost
when he posted here.
Bill
--
Bill Jefferys/Department of Astronomy/University of Texas/Austin, TX 78712
E-mail: bi...@clyde.as.utexas.edu | URL: http://quasar.as.utexas.edu
Finger for PGP Key: F7 11 FB 82 C6 21 D8 95 2E BD F7 6E 99 89 E1 82
Unlawful to use this email address for unsolicited ads: USC Title 47 Sec 227
Paul J. Gans
Mark Isaak (is...@aurora.com) wrote:
: In article <52vrt2$d...@freenet-news.carleton.ca> ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
: >There is a valid theological debate as to whether a purely
: >naturalistic theory of evolution is compatible with faith, but even if the
: >answer is no, that doesn't mean one should commit intellectual suicide by
: >embracing Duane Gish style creationism. If Darwin made it possible,
: >according to Dawkins, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheists, then
: >perhaps some of the Christians around here should read Johnson, Berlinski,
: >Behe, or the _Creation Hypothesis_ edited by Moreland so that they can
: >become intellectually fulfilled Christians.
:
: All of the arguments in Berlinski's article I saw first in the writings of
: Gish or his ilk. Why should I not consider Berlinski a Gish-style
: creationist?
Well, that's *exactly* the point, isn't it. Berlinski later argued
in his talk.origins posts that there was no pro-creationist argument
in his article. But as Mark says, there was essentially nothing in
his article that we haven't seen here before. Since, in his article,
he never *said* that creationism wasn't the answer either, I think
anyone familiar with the material is justified in concluding that
Berlinski was, at best, a creationist fellow-traveller.
Richard Harter
rob...@nucleus.harvard.edu (Keith Robison) wrote:
>Mark T. Cameron (ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
>: No less a materialist
>: than Sir Francis Crick has seriously suggested that the complexity of DNA
>: is so great that it could not have come from earth, and that we should
>: perhaps hypothesize that the first cells were sent here from space
>: (directed panspermia).
>It is not at all obvious that Crick was serious. Read anything about
>the man, and you will realize he has a michevious sense of humor.
Gaaak.
That wasn't what Crick said at all. It wasn't the complexity of DNA
he was talking about, it was the likelihood of abiogenesis. His point
was that we so know the process of abiogenesis or the suitability of
prebiotic Earth that we cannot make a meaningful assessment of the
likelihood of abiogenesis on prebiotic Earth. He went on to argue
that it behooves us to consider alternatives on a speculative basis.
Richard Harter
ga...@scholar.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans) wrote:
>Richard Harter (c...@tiac.net) wrote:
[short essay by yours truly deleted]
>Since I have been so free lately in giving out "best post of
>the week awards", I might as well continue.
>I nominate this for the Best Post of This Week on a Substantive
>Topic.
Blush, blush. Modesty forbids me to agree with you but I believe it
is permissable to commend you on your generally excellent judgement.
>Indeed, it is probably the Best Post of the Month on a Substantive
>Topic.
Now here, despite my natural partisanship, I have to disagree. I will
grant the posts merits - it addresses simply and clearly a single
issue which is often the source of much confusion. That is good.
But I would say that a number of Andrew MacRae's posts have been
superior. My post touches but a single point and touches but a simple
bit of logic. Andrew not only writes simply and clearly, his posts
contain a wealth of information from which I, for one, have learned
much. It is one thing to say "this is what the reasoning is"; it is
quite another to say "this is what the reasoning is and here is the
data to support it".
Of course, I may be wrong.
:-)
>I predict that all of those who *should* read it, won't.
That seems like a safe prediction.
Paul J. Gans
: I have to say at the outset that I am not a scientist, just an
: interested lay person, and I don't pretend to understand the mathematics
: of this stuff, but Bradley and Thaxton are drawing on concepts of
: Information Theory developed by Claude Shannon and the work of Hubert
: Yockey in applying it to biology. As I understand (and you as a BNR
: employee likely know better) in this theory the information content of
: the bit string is determined by a logarithmic relationship between the
: number of symbols in a message and the number of bits required to specify
: them. This means that both a perfectly random and a perfectly but
: linearly ordered pattern contain minimal information content. One of the
: issues that led to the most confusion during Berlinski's sojourn here was
: between the use of the concept of entropy in information theory and in the
: Second Law, which led some to say that Berlinski was simply parroting the
: old "evolution violates the Second Law" canard.
[deletions]
Point 1: Berlinski is a mathematician. He can be expected to use
such concepts correctly.
Point 2: If you'd read his article you'd know that he references
the Second Law directly when talking about "order". Again,
Berlinski is a mathematician. It is to be expected that he
would know better. Indeed, in e-mail, I believe he claimed to
have been talking about statistical thermodynamics. That, of
course, won't help him a bit, but you will note the implicit
admission of deception.
Paul J. Gans
:
: > All of the arguments in Berlinski's article I saw first in the writings of
: > Gish or his ilk. Why should I not consider Berlinski a Gish-style
: > creationist?
: Gish, Morris and co. have a dual agenda. 1) They point out difficulties,
: real or imagined, with the current Dawrinist paradigm. 2) They argue that
: since Darwinism has been "proved" false, young earth creationism must be
: interpretation of Genesis, and then find selective, decontextualized bits
: of scientific data that they argue supports it.
:
: Berlinski and the new wave of critics follow Gish and co. part way on step
: 1). They point out some legitimate difficulties with the Darwinist
: extent that these difficulties raise problems that can not be solved _in
: be considered as an alternative. But they do not propose any postive
: theory of how intelligent design is said to have accomplished the creation
: prove causality.
Sorry, it won't wash. When Berlinski talks about intelligent
design, I, and most everybody else, read God. That makes
Berlinski a creationist. Are you denying this?
The fact that Berlinski doesn't deal with *how* the "intelligent
designer", i.e. God, accomplished the creation of life is quite
besides the point, isn't it?
More: I would challenge you to list a "legitimate difficulty
with the Darwinist paradigm albeit at a more rigorous level."
Many on this newsgroup would love to see it.
[deletions]
Richard Harter
ga...@scholar.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans) wrote:
>Richard Harter (c...@tiac.net) wrote:
>[deletions]
It occurs to me, upon rereading, that there is an obvious question
that is not touched - how does information in analog form get
converted into digital (genetic) form. I suspect that here mutation,
replication, and selection are a necessary part of the process.
However there is a further thought which I have never seen suggested
but which may be critical.
We have seen that the insufficiency of information is a phantom
problem. However this does not save us from the error catastrophe
problem which arises thuswise: the unreliability of the replicators
leads to cumulative loss of replicative ability. Bad mutants swamp
good ones. However this arises because the replicators replicate
themselves. Suppose we have an auxiliary mechanism, not made by the
replicators, which also makes copies of the replicators. For example,
suppose are replicators are primitive RNA molecules and the auxiliary
mechanism is a clay substrate that effects the replication of RNA
molecules that chance to land on it. My suggestion is that such an
auxiliary mechanism is not only a necessary part of abiogenesis but
that it is a necessary precursor. In short we begin, not with
primitive RNA molecules replicating themselves but rather with a
factory for making RNA molecules.
>Since I have been so free lately in giving out "best post of
>the week awards", I might as well continue.
>I nominate this for the Best Post of This Week on a Substantive
>Topic.
>Indeed, it is probably the Best Post of the Month on a Substantive
>Topic.
>I predict that all of those who *should* read it, won't.
> ----- Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
sdb
In article <53qau9$6...@news-central.tiac.net>
c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) writes:
> It occurs to me, upon rereading, that there is an obvious question
> that is not touched - how does information in analog form get
> converted into digital (genetic) form. I suspect that here mutation,
> replication, and selection are a necessary part of the process.
> However there is a further thought which I have never seen suggested
> but which may be critical.
Interesting point, but keep in mind that information is
_identically_ energy. Changing from various forms (analog
to digital) just involves changes in bond energy.
--Randy
sdb
In article <53h05v$e...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>
ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
> A while ago I jumped in on this thread and expressed the opinion that
> Berlinski had probably left this group because of the dreck that passes
> for argument and discussion on this group, not any sense of being
> intellectually defeated by unanswerable arguments.
The problem here, my friend, is that you can't distinguish
Berlinski's ramblings and misrepresentations as being
horribly bad science. Those of us in science can. Hence,
I bandied "fucking moron" about, because it is this level
to which Berlinski can only aspire. Read his rebuttals
in _Commentary_. Do they seem valid to you? Are they
clear and to-the-point to you? Funny, to me they seem like
Berlinski has begun a lucid dreaming adventure, mistakenly,
and often humorously, tackling subjects of which he is
ill-equipped to discuss. And yet he gets in the last word
due to sympathetic editors (I thought his challenging
Richard Dawkins to a mental World Wrestling Foundation
exhibition was truly inspired). He is very much
the Quixote he loves so much, and he has pulled in a
new gaggle of clueless sidekicks to pat him on the back,
shouting "good answer; good answer" with all the
enthusiasm of a Family Feud team.
Survey says....
BZZZT!
> I expressed my
> position as a theist who does not dismiss evolution _a priori_, but who is
> skeptical as to whether naturalistic processes could have created life
I'll grant you this is less clear than evolution. However, the
question you pose is "could have", and the answer to that is
"very likely".
> or
> human consciousness,
Consider smacking a creationist in the head until they lose conscious-
ness. Try reading up on brain mapping. Consciousness is a
very naturalistic process. It's not even a solely human trait:
apes are self-conscious, for chrissake.
> and as to whether the Darwinian mechanism is
> sufficient to explain species diversity and the fossil record. (I do
> accept common descent, however, and do not insist that macroevolution
> cannot happen naturalistically.)
Well, that's a breath of fresh air to hear.
Anyway, just a couple of tidbits for the Berlinski fans:
(1) "Information" is identically equal to "energy" (as, I
believe, Berlinski pointed out at one point). Thus, asking
if species have enough information to evolve is exactly
asking whether they have enough energy to evolve. The
answer to this is: yes. See that big, hydrogen-helium
fusion reaction in the sky?
(2) Von Neumann was dead wrong in his proof that hidden
variables in physics were impossible. Citing every
sentence Von Neumann made as absolute certainty is appeal
to authority, and science will have none of that, thank
you very much.
--Randy M. Wadkins
(new location; same old pissy attitude)
howard hershey
rwad...@pop.flash.net (sdb) wrote:
>In article <53h05v$e...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>
>ap...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark T. Cameron) writes:
[snip]
>> I expressed my
>> position as a theist who does not dismiss evolution _a priori_, but who is
>> skeptical as to whether naturalistic processes could have created life
>
>I'll grant you this is less clear than evolution. However, the
>question you pose is "could have", and the answer to that is
>"very likely".
>
>> or
>> human consciousness,
>
>Consider smacking a creationist in the head until they lose conscious-
>ness. Try reading up on brain mapping. Consciousness is a
>very naturalistic process. It's not even a solely human trait:
>apes are self-conscious, for chrissake.
Of course, keen observers would say that if God has shown us anything about
how He works, it is that He has a prediliction for using 'naturalistic
processes' in preference to using the recipies in any book of incantation
and myth. :-)