Scottish verdict on accusation of a "bait and switch scam"
pnyikos
lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
"bait and switch scam".
After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
and it should not be banned from schools. If a
science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
she should have the academic freedom to do so.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
that
the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
that they have the ID science for some teacher
to teach.
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
this case.
I have very little doubt that if Okimoto ever brought a class action
suit against the DI of "running a bait and switch scam," based only on
the evidence I have seen so far, the verdict would be, "Not guilty."
But I am more careful about my own conclusions than even an American
court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
Scotland" that illustrates my own frame of mind nicely] and so I
naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
NOT PROVEN!
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
chris thompson
> For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> "bait and switch scam".
>
> After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
>
> Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> that
>
> the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> that they have the ID science for some teacher
>
> Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>
> I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> this case.
>
> I have very little doubt that if Okimoto ever brought a class action
> suit against the DI of "running a bait and switch scam," based only on
> the evidence I have seen so far, the verdict would be, "Not guilty."
>
> But I am more careful about my own conclusions than even an American
> court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
> Scotland" that illustrates my own frame of mind nicely] and so I
> naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> NOT PROVEN!
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>
> The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
I think this is pretty disingenuous of you, Peter.
First off, I doubt that Ron has any problem with teaching ID in
private schools. He has always limited his remarks to the American
public school system. It's plain, after reading his posts for years
now, that he would consider banning ID from a private school (in
particular, a religious school) as much a First Amendment violation as
teaching creationism in a public school. This part of your argument
has no merit whatsoever.
Second, if the Discovery Institute wants to claim ID is a scientific
theory, and use that as a basis for bringing it into a public school
classroom (which is their stated goal- it is already legal to teach ID
in any private school that wants to) we have to assume they know the
definition of "theory". Scientific theories (as opposed to the
layman's definition of "theory", i.e., an unsupported guess) are well-
established explanations for myriad phenomena. The reason they are
well-established is because over the course of time, significant
amounts of evidence have been accumulated to support the theory. If ID
really is a scientific theory, there should be lots of scientific
evidence in support of it. Ron (and me, for that matter, and lots of
other t.o. regulars) have been asking to see that evidence for quite
some time now. It has not been forthcoming.
Chris
pnyikos
> lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> "bait and switch scam".
>
> After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
>
> Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> fact."
Even more relevantly: it makes no assertion that the DI has any kind
of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
in the public schools.
There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
"scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
of chance, or the work of a creator.
The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
despite an anonymous "Wedge Document" that was never adopted by the DI
itself.
Ron O cherry-picked the above quote, as anyone checking out the above
website can verify: the main emphasis is on trying to "teach the
controversy" surrounding Darwinian explanations of evolution. There
never is any recommendation that the schools teach about Intelligent
Design, only the above statement that they should have the
constitutional right to discuss it.
As I said in another post, replying to Ron O, whose words appear on
the first line of the excerpt:
----------------------------------- begin excerpt
> I do not see any qualifiers about the Teacher's version of ID.
Nor do I see any about the DI version of ID, prevaricator. The
playing field would be level, except that your quote is taken out of a
a context that makes it clear that the DI is covering its ass in case
some teacher teaches his/her version of ID and claims the DI as the
authority for it.
Is that why you keep posting a link that doesn't take one to the
actual context, so readers who aren't keen on which of us is telling
the truth don't bother to click on the link within the link and are
left up in the air as to which of us is telling the truth? Here is
the RELEVANT url that doesn't run the same risk:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
============== end of excerpt from
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/10aa468962f878ef
Peter Nyikos
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
alextangent
> For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> "bait and switch scam".
>
> After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
>
> Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> that
>
> the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> that they have the ID science for some teacher
>
> Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>
> I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> this case.
>
> I have very little doubt that if Okimoto ever brought a class action
> suit against the DI of "running a bait and switch scam," based only on
> the evidence I have seen so far, the verdict would be, "Not guilty."
>
> But I am more careful about my own conclusions than even an American
> court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
> Scotland" that illustrates my own frame of mind nicely] and so I
> naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> NOT PROVEN!
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>
> The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
As a Scot (although IANAL), I can assure you that the mealy mouthed
paragraph you quote would be considered a hanging offence by any
Scottish jury. Where is the theory? What does a teacher discuss?
Guilty as charged.
Dakota
creationism in a new package. In other words, it was an attempt at bait
and switch. The bait was that it is a secular scientific theory. The
switch was that it was merely creationism with the word 'god' removed.
Kalkidas
I long ago gave up trying to find anything resembling cogency in
Okimoto's position. Rather, I have taken to snipping everything but the
words and phrases "bait and switch", "rubes", "perps" and "scam" from
his posts, leaving the essence of his real "argument" intact and in focus.
Mike Dworetsky
The evidence presented by the plaintiff's counsel demonstrated that the
textbook being proposed for ID teaching, "Of Pandas and People", had started
life as a creationist textbook, and after the Supreme Court ruling a word
processor (such as existed in 1987) was used to alter every instance of
"creationist" into "design proponent". this did not always work perfectly,
hence the infamous phrase, "cdesign proponentist" which turned up in one of
the drafts of the hasty revision.
So not just removal of "God" but removing the base word "creation" and
substituting "intelligent design". The rest of the text with its standard
creationist stance remained unchanged, essentially.
--
Mike Dworetsky
(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)
Grandbank
> On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>
> > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > fact."
>
> Even more relevantly: it makes no assertion that the DI has any kind
> of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
> in the public schools.
>
> There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
> mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
> "scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
> the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
> of chance, or the work of a creator.
>
> The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
Reality disconnect complete, proceed to disjointed rambling.
> despite an anonymous "Wedge Document" that was never adopted by the DI
> itself.
>
> Ron O cherry-picked the above quote, as anyone checking out the above
> website can verify: the main emphasis is on trying to "teach the
> controversy" surrounding Darwinian explanations of evolution. There
> never is any recommendation that the schools teach about Intelligent
> Design, only the above statement that they should have the
> constitutional right to discuss it.
>
> As I said in another post, replying to Ron O, whose words appear on
> the first line of the excerpt:
>
> ----------------------------------- begin excerpt
>
> > I do not see any qualifiers about the Teacher's version of ID.
>
> Nor do I see any about the DI version of ID, prevaricator. The
> playing field would be level, except that your quote is taken out of a
> a context that makes it clear that the DI is covering its ass in case
> some teacher teaches his/her version of ID and claims the DI as the
> authority for it.
>
> Is that why you keep posting a link that doesn't take one to the
> actual context, so readers who aren't keen on which of us is telling
> the truth don't bother to click on the link within the link and are
> left up in the air as to which of us is telling the truth? Here is
> the RELEVANT url that doesn't run the same risk:http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
> ============== end of excerpt fromhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/10aa468962f878ef
>
> Peter Nyikos
>
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> > The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> > representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
KP
pnyikos
> On Apr 13, 3:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
> >
> > fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> > that
> > the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> > that they have the ID science for some teacher
> > to teach.
> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
>
> > Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> > public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>
> > I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> > as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> > alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> > this case.
>
> > I have very little doubt that if Okimoto ever brought a class action
> > suit against the DI of "running a bait and switch scam," based only on
> > the evidence I have seen so far, the verdict would be, "Not guilty."
>
> > But I am more careful about my own conclusions than even an American
> > court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
> > Scotland" that illustrates my own frame of mind nicely]
Three men are taking a bus tour through Scotland. One is a layman,
one is a lawyer, and one is a mathematician.
Some sheep are spotted grazing on the hill. Spotting one that looks
different from the rest, the layman says:
"Ah, I see there are black sheep in Scotland."
The lawyer corrects him:
"You can't really say that; what you can say is that there is at least
one black sheep in Scotland."
The mathematician chimes up:
"You can't even say that; the most you can say is that there is at
least one sheep in Scotland that is black on at least one side."
On this thread, I am like that mathematician -- so far at least.
> >and so I
> > naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > NOT PROVEN!
>
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> > The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> > representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
>
> As a Scot (although IANAL), I can assure you that the mealy mouthed
> paragraph you quote would be considered a hanging offence by any
> Scottish jury.
Cute hyperbole.
> Where is the theory?
Start with Paley, and work your way through voluminous writings about
the Argument from Design. Lots of well known physical, chemical, and
biological phenomena are discussed. I once browsed a book in the
Carnegie-Mellon University library that was a collection of essays by
scientists of a wide variety of disciplines saying why their knowledge
of science supported their belief in a creator.
And they didn't even touch upon what is now the most popular argument
among the scientifically sophisticated theists -- the fine tuning of
the basic physical constants in a way that makes life in our universe
possible.
If you want a theory that actually hypothesizes a specific designer
(or designers) and design event well after the beginning of our
universe, there is always the theory of directed panspermia:
The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
Simon and Schuster, 1981
The "senders" to which Crick refers are hypothetical directed
panspermists: intelligent creatures of almost 4 billion years
ago who sent microorganisms to earth, which according to the
hypothesis had an ocean rich in amino acids and various
other organic materials but no living things as yet. He developed
this hypothesis together with Leslie Orgel. He doesn't claim
this is more likely or less likely than life arising here
spontaneously, precisely because he doesn't know what the odds are.
> What does a teacher discuss?
An atheist can discuss Christianity --- negatively, for the most part,
one would presume, so this is close to the opposite extreme from what
we are talking about.
Anyway, the point is that one can discuss something without explicitly
endorsing it. IIRC, the film of which I wrote in my second post to
this thread never came out and claimed point-blank that the phenomena
that were lectured about in the film were
> Guilty as charged.
Layman. :-)
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Wed 4/13/11 9:07, pnyikos wrote:
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
> > http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
[...]
> > But I am more careful about my own conclusions than even an American
> > court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
> > Scotland" that illustrates my own frame of mind nicely] and so I
> > naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > NOT PROVEN!
>
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina
> >http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> > The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> > representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
>
> I guess you're ignoring the fact that the Dover court ruled that ID was
> creationism in a new package.
Not at all. I have had lots to say about that elsewhere, but the
relevant fact here is that this ruling only applies to the Dover
school district.
> In other words, it was an attempt at bait
> and switch. The bait was that it is a secular scientific theory.
> The switch was that it was merely creationism with the word 'god' removed.
That's not the bait and switch that I have been discussing here. I'm
willing to discuss it some time next week if you bring it up again,
but right now I am focused on the specific bait identified in the
first post to this thread.
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
> For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> "bait and switch scam".
>
> After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
>
> Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> that
>
> the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> that they have the ID science for some teacher
>
> Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>
> I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> this case.
Yeah, I don't think so. You are correct that there isn't much hard
evidence as to the DI's position on teaching ID in schools. But it's
not because Ron is wrong about their goals, it's because of the
methods this iteration of creationism has chosen to further their
goals.
The CIA is a useful analogue. They have a mandate regarding
international relations, just as does the Foreign Service or the
Diplomatic Corps. But unlike the latter two, the mission of the CIA
does not include leaving clues as to their activities. Their
operations are intended to be covert. After the failures of cases like
Edwards v. Aguillard it became clear to a set of creation science
advocates that their future efforts would need to be more "fingerprint-
free" if you will. So they set about designing a movement with the
goal of diminishing the scope of and respect for evolutionary biology
while at the same time creating room for their more, shall we say,
spiritual alternative. These goals are plainly explained in the Wedge
Document (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html) that you
so blithely dismiss. This is a fingerprint they very desperately wish
had been erased.
If you think the analogy with the CIA, along with my analysis of their
motives, is overwrought all you need to do is familiarize yourself
with the issue of "cdesign proponetsists" (http://pandasthumb.org/
archives/2005/11/missing-link-cd.html). And this brings us to the
subject of your thread.
Look up "Of Pandas and People," "The Design of Life," "Explore
Evolution," and countless videos if you think the DI is not involved
in attempting to influence how and what is taught regarding evolution
in this country. The books I mentioned were written either as
textbooks or accessory materials for bio classes. I will grant you
that they do not come directly from the DI (they are published by The
Foundation for Thought and Ethics), but they are products of DI
authors and efforts.
After the debacle in Dover - the unfortunate victims of which "bait
and switch" (not fomented, but clearly aided by the DI*) were the
Dover tax-payers - as well as their stumbling attempts shortly
thereafter in Lebec, CA, the DI backed away from overtly supporting
school board overreaching. What they have done instead is supply an
endless stream of p.r. slogans like "academic freedom" ("fairness"
"balanced treatment" etc.), and "strengths and weaknesses," and
"scientific criticisms" ("evidence for and against" etc.) along with
the attendant rhetoric as encouragement and cover for when ignorant
school board members try to bring forth new ID proposals.
Whether all, or any, of this is a "bait and switch" is a matter of
perspective. The issue is similar to the question of whether one can
be said to be lying (an act of deliberate misrepresentation) when
repeating something that is demonstrably false in the estimation of
everyone but oneself. In other words, when does willful
misapprehension stop being an excuse for prevarication? I don't know
where that line is.
So I prefer to err on the side of generosity until I see clear
evidence to the contrary. Although I think it is abundantly clear that
the Discovery Institute wishes to promote the acceptance of, and yes
the teaching of, ID wherever possible, I believe that for the most
part they are not acting maliciously. I'm think most of them believe
they are acting in the interests of the greater good. Unfortunately
their definition of the greater good is, at best, self-serving, and at
worst, dangerously contradictory.
RLC
(*Previous to which William Dembski famously said "I'll wager a bottle
of single-malt scotch, should it ever go to trial whether ID may
legitimately be taught in public school science curricula, that ID
will pass all constitutional hurdles." As far as I know he has yet to
pay up.)
<snip silliness>
chris thompson
> On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>
> > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > fact."
>
> Even more relevantly: it makes no assertion that the DI has any kind
> of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
> in the public schools.
You are a professor of mathematics, correct? Tell me something please.
In your classes, do you discuss things before you teach them? Do you
think that is good pedagogy? It would seem to me that if the students
have not been taught something, they can only discuss it from a
position of ignorance. (Which, in my own opinion, is exactly what the
DI wants.)
>
> There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
> mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
> "scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
> the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
> of chance, or the work of a creator.
Disingenuous again I see. First, it is a false dilemma. Second, do you
propose teaching this class before or after the students have been
taught real evolutionary biology? Third, I can think of many better
ways to spend students' time than watching reruns of "Wild
Kingdom" (much as I liked the episode where Jim was almost drowned by
the anaconda). The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>
> The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
> despite an anonymous "Wedge Document" that was never adopted by the DI
> itself.
>
Cool. What research have they published? Are the papers peer-reviewed?
I am aware of 3 papers published, and one of those was retracted by
the journal that published it. A second was co-authored by the very
same person who circumvented normal peer-review processes in the case
of the retracted paper.
How would you feel about that kind of track record in Mathematics,
Peter?
> Ron O cherry-picked the above quote, as anyone checking out the above
> website can verify: the main emphasis is on trying to "teach the
> controversy" surrounding Darwinian explanations of evolution. There
> never is any recommendation that the schools teach about Intelligent
> Design, only the above statement that they should have the
> constitutional right to discuss it.
What, exactly, is the _scientific_ controversy? And how do you discuss
something the students have not been taught?
Chris
>
> As I said in another post, replying to Ron O, whose words appear on
> the first line of the excerpt:
>
> ----------------------------------- begin excerpt
>
> > I do not see any qualifiers about the Teacher's version of ID.
>
> Nor do I see any about the DI version of ID, prevaricator. The
> playing field would be level, except that your quote is taken out of a
> a context that makes it clear that the DI is covering its ass in case
> some teacher teaches his/her version of ID and claims the DI as the
> authority for it.
>
> Is that why you keep posting a link that doesn't take one to the
> actual context, so readers who aren't keen on which of us is telling
> the truth don't bother to click on the link within the link and are
> left up in the air as to which of us is telling the truth? Here is
> the RELEVANT url that doesn't run the same risk:http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
> ============== end of excerpt fromhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/10aa468962f878ef
pnyikos
wrote:
> On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
> > http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
>
> > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> > that
>
> > the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> > that they have the ID science for some teacher
> > to teach.
> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
>
> > Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> > public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>
> > I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> > as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> > alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> > this case.
>
> > I have very little doubt that if Okimoto ever brought a class action
> > suit against the DI of "running a bait and switch scam,"
Wrong article. Ron O fairly consistently uses the expression "the
bait and switch scam" and the bait has been touted to be the above by
him for some time now.
> >based only on
> > the evidence I have seen so far, the verdict would be, "Not guilty."
>
> > But I am more careful about my own conclusions than even an American
> > court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
> > Scotland" that illustrates my own frame of mind nicely] and so I
> > naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > NOT PROVEN!
>
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> > The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> > representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
>
> I think this is pretty disingenuous of you, Peter.
You seem to be laboring under some sort of misconception about me --
as though I were undertaking to defend the DI against sundry other
charges that have been leveled against it here.
The truth is, I really know very little about the Discovery Institute,
and almost everything I know about it has come to me through a single
filter: the posts of Ron Okimoto. And so I feel ill equipped to
discuss anything about it except that which I've been able to
ascertain in the course of our <cough> conversations.
Of course, this includes the websites whose urls he has posted. But
our conversations about their contents have been rather limited so
far.
> First off, I doubt that Ron has any problem with teaching ID in
> private schools. He has always limited his remarks to the American
> public school system.
I never hinted otherwise, did I?
> It's plain, after reading his posts for years
> now, that he would consider banning ID from a private school (in
> particular, a religious school) as much a First Amendment violation as
> teaching creationism in a public school. This part of your argument
> has no merit whatsoever.
I have no idea what you are referring to here. I even explicitly
mentioned public school teachers and limited the description of "the
bait" to them.
> Second, if the Discovery Institute wants to claim ID is a scientific
> theory, and use that as a basis for bringing it into a public school
> classroom (which is their stated goal-
It is the stated goal of the "Wedge Doctrine" but that had a
ridiculous timetable that I doubt anyone cognizant of the true state
of affairs, like Behe, would have had anything to do with. Its
authorship has been an impenetrable mystery to me so far. I asked
Behe who wrote it, and he said he didn't know, but he knew this much:
the author was not Phillip Johnson.
Anyway, the issue I'm involved with is whether they have *claimed* to
ALREADY have the science ready to teach, and you aren't addressing
that anywhere in this post.
Concluded in next reply.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
wrote:
> Second, if the Discovery Institute wants to claim ID is a scientific
> theory, and use that as a basis for bringing it into a public school
> classroom (which is their stated goal- it is already legal to teach ID
> in any private school that wants to) we have to assume they know the
> definition of "theory". Scientific theories (as opposed to the
> layman's definition of "theory", i.e., an unsupported guess) are well-
> established explanations for myriad phenomena.
Well, Behe says the following in the Dover transcript, so that
assumption would seem to be correct, except for the "well-established"
bit:
20 Under my definition, a scientific theory is a
21 proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical,
22 observable data and logical inferences.
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day11PMSession.pdf
[The numbers in the margin refer to the line number in the page where
this appears, page 38.
>The reason they are
> well-established is because over the course of time, significant
> amounts of evidence have been accumulated to support the theory. If ID
> really is a scientific theory, there should be lots of scientific
> evidence in support of it.
Would you say that Wegener's theory of continental drift was not a
theory at all, because so far from being "well-established" in the
eyes of the scientific community, it was widely disparaged during his
lifetime?
I have been home schooling my youngest daughter from the first grade
on, and today I taught her about Ohm's law with the help of my old
college physics textbook. I had not seen the page where it is set out
since my course of 45 years ago, and so I was surprised by a footnote
on page 314 which reads as follows:
Georg Ohm (1787-1854) was a German high-school
teacher. His enunciation of this law in 1827
aroused such bitter antagonism that he lost his
position. Years later, when his work was
corroborated by other scientists, he was honored
by a professorship in physics at the University
of Muich. Ohm stated his law only eight years
after Oersted discovered the magnetic effect
of a current (Chapter 28). Ohm had no reliable
voltmeters, ammeters, or batteries. He employed
thermocouples to generate currents.
-- _General Physics_, O.H. Blackwood,
W.C. Kelly, and R.M. Bell, 1963, John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Would you say that Ohm had no theory (let alone a "law") until his
work was corroborated by well-established scientists?
> Ron (and me, for that matter, and lots of
> other t.o. regulars) have been asking to see that evidence for quite
> some time now. It has not been forthcoming.
>
> Chris
I'm not the person to ask. I know next to nothing about the current
state of affairs at DI.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
Did you think I meant "scientific research"? I wouldn't be the least
bit surprised to learn that 99% of the "research" the DI does is the
kind of stuff that passes for research in the humanities, *mutatis
mutandis* : searches of the scientific literature for actual
scientific research done by others, which they then interpret in the
light of various standards they have as to what would constitute
evidence of intelligent design.
But even that kind of "research" is very remote from the pedagogy of
the public high schools. And that was my point.`
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
wrote:
> On Apr 13, 11:08 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
> > > http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
>
> > > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > > fact."
>
> > Even more relevantly: it makes no assertion that the DI has any kind
> > of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
> > in the public schools.
>
> You are a professor of mathematics, correct? Tell me something please.
> In your classes, do you discuss things before you teach them?
In the undergraduate classes? almost never. In the graduate
classes? occasionally.
In the seminars? very often, because there we are on the cutting edge
where we still do not have theorems, but only open problems and
conjectures. And then we go ahead and say what we do know on related
matters that may shed some light on the open problems.
Mathematics has open problems galore, by the way. I'm in a very good
position to know that, having been Problems Editor for _Topology
Proceedings_ for twenty years (1976 - 1996).
> Do you
> think that is good pedagogy?
Not in mathematics, unless I have a reasearch project suitable for
high school students. I have only one project like that, and even
that is only for very gifted students.
But mathematics does not follow the scientific Procrustean Bed of
"hypothesis, observations to test the hypothesis, (provisional)
conclusion". That's why I've never been able to come up with a
project for my mathematically minded youngest daughter for the
regional science fairs. Mathematical reasoning, which is essential
for every theorem I have ever proven, does not fit the definition of
"observation" that these science fairs seem to require.
> It would seem to me that if the students
> have not been taught something,
You left out the word "about" between "taught" and "something",
rendering your next statement irrelevant.
> they can only discuss it from a
> position of ignorance. (Which, in my own opinion, is exactly what the
> DI wants.)
Well, you can hardly claim to be an unbiased observer, if that is your
opinion.
> > There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
> > mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
> > "scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
> > the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
> > of chance, or the work of a creator.
>
> Disingenuous again I see.
I never started. I hope by the time you see this you will have seen
my first reply to your first post, made only after you posted this.
> First, it is a false dilemma.
Between what and what?
> Second, do you
> propose teaching this class before or after the students have been
> taught real evolutionary biology?
Huh? I wasn't proposing that anyone teach anything like this in the
high schools. I was only explaining why Ron Okimoto's "explanation"
of the DI quote is full of holes.
You see, I use the word "could" in an utterly different way than Ron O
does. Above, for example, I used it in the sense of, "If a teacher
were to decide to exercise what the DI considers to be her/his
constitutional right to discuss ID, this is one of the resources
available to her/him."
>Third, I can think of many better
> ways to spend students' time than watching reruns of "Wild
> Kingdom" (much as I liked the episode where Jim was almost drowned by
> the anaconda).
Me too -- but that does not mean a single scene from a single episode
in the course of a semester might not be beneficial, if very carefully
chosen.
>The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
microevolution.
Did you ever read that DI website whose url I keep reposting because
Google makes hash of long urls in replies?
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
>
>
> > The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
> > despite an anonymous "Wedge Document" that was never adopted by the DI
> > itself.
>
> Cool. What research have they published?
Quite a bit of what passes for research in the humanities, explained
in my reply to "Grandbank".
> Are the papers peer-reviewed?
Some are. Have you looked at this one, by Behe? I don't think it
was done under the aegis of the DI, but here it is anyway:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/pdf/Behe/QRB_paper.pdf
I don't think it mentions Intelligent Design [I haven't read the whole
paper yet] but it is certainly grist for the DI mill.
> I am aware of 3 papers published, and one of those was retracted by
> the journal that published it. A second was co-authored by the very
> same person who circumvented normal peer-review processes in the case
> of the retracted paper.
You may be working uncritically from a third-hand list. There is an
url that Ron O keeps using for the quote above, and it is a page where
you can click somewhere to get to the actual website the quote is
taken from.
Anyway, further down the page you will see more than three peer-
reviewed papers since 1995. I may have corrected your third-hand
reference earlier this month when he said there were only 3 papers
since 1995, but I found four further down that page that were from
1996 on, and none of the authors were the ones that t.o. participant
mentioned.
[...]
> > Ron O cherry-picked the above quote, as anyone checking out the above
> > website can verify: the main emphasis is on trying to "teach the
> > controversy" surrounding Darwinian explanations of evolution. There
> > never is any recommendation that the schools teach about Intelligent
> > Design, only the above statement that they should have the
> > constitutional right to discuss it.
>
> What, exactly, is the _scientific_ controversy? And how do you discuss
> something the students have not been taught?
See the url for the DI quote. The website has quite a long discussion
about that.
alextangent
> On Apr 13, 12:12 pm, alextangent <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 13, 3:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>
> > > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > > fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> > > that
I was aware of the "joke".
>
> > >and so I
> > > naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > > NOT PROVEN!
>
> > > Peter Nyikos
> > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> > > The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> > > representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
>
> > As a Scot (although IANAL), I can assure you that the mealy mouthed
> > paragraph you quote would be considered a hanging offence by any
> > Scottish jury.
>
> Cute hyperbole.
You haven't seen a Scottish jury in action, I take it?
Then why do these theories present themselves like hypotheses?
>
> > What does a teacher discuss?
>
> An atheist can discuss Christianity --- negatively, for the most part,
> one would presume, so this is close to the opposite extreme from what
> we are talking about.
Any science teacher who did so would be straying far from the role
expected. Belief or disbelief is not science, so why discuss it in a
science class?
>
> Anyway, the point is that one can discuss something without explicitly
> endorsing it. IIRC, the film of which I wrote in my second post to
> this thread never came out and claimed point-blank that the phenomena
> that were lectured about in the film were
>
> > Guilty as charged.
>
> Layman. :-)
Hang a thief when he's young, and he'll not steal when he's old.
>
> Peter Nyikos
chris thompson
> On Apr 13, 10:39 am, chris thompson <chris.linthomp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Second, if the Discovery Institute wants to claim ID is a scientific
> > theory, and use that as a basis for bringing it into a public school
> > classroom (which is their stated goal- it is already legal to teach ID
> > in any private school that wants to) we have to assume they know the
> > definition of "theory". Scientific theories (as opposed to the
> > layman's definition of "theory", i.e., an unsupported guess) are well-
> > established explanations for myriad phenomena.
>
> Well, Behe says the following in the Dover transcript, so that
> assumption would seem to be correct, except for the "well-established"
> bit:
>
> 20 Under my definition, a scientific theory is a
> 21 proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical,
> 22 observable data and logical inferences.
>
> http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day11PMSession.pdf
> [The numbers in the margin refer to the line number in the page where
> this appears, page 38.
Well, Behe is wrong and so are you. A scientific theory (and as a
Professor of Mathematics, you should know this) IS supported by a vast
body of evidence. Of course, if you want to use the layman's
definition of "theory" or "theoretical" that is your prerogative. But
it won't carry any weight in scientific circles. Behe's personal
definition of "theory" carries no weight; the collectively decided
definition of "theory" is what's important.
>
> >The reason they are
> > well-established is because over the course of time, significant
> > amounts of evidence have been accumulated to support the theory. If ID
> > really is a scientific theory, there should be lots of scientific
> > evidence in support of it.
>
> Would you say that Wegener's theory of continental drift was not a
> theory at all, because so far from being "well-established" in the
> eyes of the scientific community, it was widely disparaged during his
> lifetime?
Absolutely not. Wegener's ideas about continental drift constituted a
hypothesis. He had some observational data, namely, the almost-perfect
fit of the continents and the presence of identical fossils on now-
separated continents. It took advanced methods of sampling the deep
layers of the earth to make continental drift- or more properly, plate
tectonics (of which continental drift is just a part) a theory.
>
> I have been home schooling my youngest daughter from the first grade
> on, and today I taught her about Ohm's law with the help of my old
> college physics textbook. I had not seen the page where it is set out
> since my course of 45 years ago, and so I was surprised by a footnote
> on page 314 which reads as follows:
>
> Georg Ohm (1787-1854) was a German high-school
> teacher. His enunciation of this law in 1827
> aroused such bitter antagonism that he lost his
> position. Years later, when his work was
> corroborated by other scientists, he was honored
> by a professorship in physics at the University
> of Muich. Ohm stated his law only eight years
> after Oersted discovered the magnetic effect
> of a current (Chapter 28). Ohm had no reliable
> voltmeters, ammeters, or batteries. He employed
> thermocouples to generate currents.
> -- _General Physics_, O.H. Blackwood,
> W.C. Kelly, and R.M. Bell, 1963, John
> Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Excellent. I applaud you for making sure your daughter gets a well-
rounded education. However, some things seem to be universal while
others change. Ohm's law has not changed in quite some time, has it?
On the other hand, evolutionary biology has progressed far beyond
Darwin's ideas. We know about a LOT of things, especially at the
population genetics level, that we knew in 1899 (to pick a year at
random). Do you think biology has stood still since then?
>
> Would you say that Ohm had no theory (let alone a "law") until his
> work was corroborated by well-established scientists?
Again, Peter, you should know the difference between a theory and a
hypothesis. Later experiments turned that hypothesis into a theory.
And "law" in science- as you should well know- is a pretty discredited
term. "Rule" is better, since rules are meant to be broken.
>
> > Ron (and me, for that matter, and lots of
> > other t.o. regulars) have been asking to see that evidence for quite
> > some time now. It has not been forthcoming.
>
> > Chris
>
> I'm not the person to ask. I know next to nothing about the current
> state of affairs at DI.
Yet you defend them. Pony up or shut up.
Chris
>
> Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Apr 13, 7:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
>
> > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> > that
>
> > the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> > that they have the ID science for some teacher
> > to teach.http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
>
> > Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> > public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>
> > I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> > as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> > alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> > this case.
>
> Yeah, I don't think so. You are correct that there isn't much hard
> evidence as to the DI's position on teaching ID in schools. But it's
> not because Ron is wrong about their goals,
I did not write above about what their goals are, only about a very
specific alleged-by-Okimoto claim by the DI.
> it's because of the
> methods this iteration of creationism has chosen to further their
> goals.
That may explain Ron O's vendetta against them, and his vendetta
against me for not agreeing with his allegations about them, but
that's a separate issue.
> The CIA is a useful analogue. They have a mandate regarding
> international relations, just as does the Foreign Service or the
> Diplomatic Corps. But unlike the latter two, the mission of the CIA
> does not include leaving clues as to their activities. Their
> operations are intended to be covert. After the failures of cases like
> Edwards v. Aguillard it became clear to a set of creation science
> advocates that their future efforts would need to be more "fingerprint-
> free" if you will. So they set about designing a movement with the
> goal of diminishing the scope of and respect for evolutionary biology
> while at the same time creating room for their more, shall we say,
> spiritual alternative. These goals are plainly explained in the Wedge
> Document (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html) that you
> so blithely dismiss. This is a fingerprint they very desperately wish
> had been erased.
What is the actual evidence of there being a "desperate wish" to
disown an anonymous document whose connection with the DI in its
present form is still a mystery to me?
Can you shed any light on this mystery, or are you simply relying on
hearsay?
[...]
> Look up "Of Pandas and People," "The Design of Life," "Explore
> Evolution," and countless videos if you think the DI is not involved
> in attempting to influence how and what is taught regarding evolution
> in this country.
Don't be silly. The evidence of the involvement is all over the url
that I keep reposting afresh. I think I've done it enough times that
I can forego it this time around.
Have you ever read what the website says about "The Criticisms of Neo-
Darwinism"? It's got NOTHING to do with "the bait," as in "the bait
and switch scam." It does, however, have plenty to do with what Ron
O. calls the "switch."
Only, without a bait, there is no switch. You might as well talk
about the sound of one hand clapping. [Yeah, I know, there is an old
Zen riddle about that.]
[...]
> After the debacle in Dover - the unfortunate victims of which "bait
> and switch" (not fomented, but clearly aided by the DI*)
The evidence that you have NOT read the website is becoming
overwhelming. Right near the beginning it says:
_____________________________begin excerpt
For the record, we do not propose that intelligent design should
be mandated in public schools, which is why we strongly
opposed the school district policy at issue in the Kitzmiller v.
Dover case. However, if you voluntarily choose to raise the issue
of intelligent design in your classroom, it is vitally important
that any information you present accurately convey the views
of the scientists and scholars who support intelligent design,
not a caricature of their views. Otherwise you will be engaging
in indoctrination, not education.
Whether you support or oppose intelligent design, the following
materials will help you better understand what it actually proposes
and correct common misunderstandings and misrepresentations
about the concept often found in the newsmedia.
========= end of first excerpt
And a number of pages later you will find:
____________________________begin excerpt
In fall 2004, the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania adopted
a policy requiring teachers to read a statement to students
informing them that intelligent design (ID) “is an explanation
of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view” and that
“[t]he reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for
students who might be interested in gaining an understanding
of what Intelligent Design actually involves.”
»» Discovery Institute opposed the Dover policy from
the start and urged the Dover school board to repeal
it. Although the Institute believes that teachers should
have the right to voluntarily discuss ID in an objective and
pedagogically appropriate manner, it opposes efforts to
mandate its discussion because it thinks that such mandates
are counterproductive. They politicize what first of all should
be a scientific and intellectual debate, and they harm the
efforts of scientists to gain a fair hearing for their ideas about
intelligent design in the scientific community.
»» The Dover board rejected Discovery Institute’s advice.
===================
> were the
> Dover tax-payers - as well as their stumbling attempts shortly
> thereafter in Lebec, CA, the DI backed away from overtly supporting
> school board overreaching.
I doubt that any sane person would consider the quotes I gave above to
be about overtly supporting school board overreaching.
Ron Okimoto is a different matter. :-)
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> But mathematics does not follow the scientific Procrustean Bed of
> "hypothesis, observations to test the hypothesis, (provisional)
> conclusion". That's why I've never been able to come up with a
> project for my mathematically minded youngest daughter for the
> regional science fairs. Mathematical reasoning, which is essential
> for every theorem I have ever proven, does not fit the definition of
> "observation" that these science fairs seem to require.
Have you considered a simulation? They're used a lot in science to test
the implications of all sorts of models, and you don't need any
"observations" to perform a useful "experiment".
>> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
>> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
>> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>
> Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
> microevolution.
Are you that naive about creationism? It's microevolution to a
creationist, because "flies are still just flies". But to a scientist,
it's macroevolution because there are 500 species evolving from one
progenitor.
pnyikos
wrote:
> On Apr 13, 6:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 13, 10:39 am, chris thompson <chris.linthomp...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > Second, if the Discovery Institute wants to claim ID is a scientific
> > > theory, and use that as a basis for bringing it into a public school
> > > classroom (which is their stated goal- it is already legal to teach ID
> > > in any private school that wants to) we have to assume they know the
> > > definition of "theory". Scientific theories (as opposed to the
> > > layman's definition of "theory", i.e., an unsupported guess) are well-
> > > established explanations for myriad phenomena.
>
> > Well, Behe says the following in the Dover transcript, so that
> > assumption would seem to be correct, except for the "well-established"
> > bit:
>
> > 20 Under my definition, a scientific theory is a
> > 21 proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical,
> > 22 observable data and logical inferences.
>
> >http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day11PMSession.pdf
> > [The numbers in the margin refer to the line number in the page where
> > this appears, page 38.
>
> Well, Behe is wrong and so are you. A scientific theory (and as a
> Professor of Mathematics, you should know this)
As a pure mathematician, I am amused by the incongruity of it all--
all this talk about "supported by a vast body of evidence" yet needing
to be falsifiable to even be regarded as a scientific theory.
Pure mathematicians live in a completely different world, where
something either has a proof or does not. Occasionally there are some
doubts about whether a proof is correct, but that's as far as the
resemblance to the empirical sciences goes.
> IS supported by a vast
> body of evidence. Of course, if you want to use the layman's
> definition of "theory" or "theoretical" that is your prerogative.
This is REALLY amusing, coming from someone who labeled something a
"false dilemma" earlier today, without explanation.
> But
> it won't carry any weight in scientific circles. Behe's personal
> definition of "theory" carries no weight; the collectively decided
> definition of "theory" is what's important.
By what "collective"? I think you should read the whole transcript
of that day at Dover, with Behe being interrogated by someone who
definitely seemed hostile:
________________________ excerpt from pp. 37-38
Q In any event, in your expert report, and in your
6 testimony over the last two days, you used a looser
7 definition of "theory," correct?
8 A I think I used a broader definition, which is more
9 reflective of how the word is actually used in the
10 scientific community.
11 Q But the way you define scientific theory, you said
12 it s just based on your own experience; it s not a
13 dictionary definition, it s not one issued by a scientific
14 organization.
15 A It is based on my experience of how the word is
16 used in the scientific community.
17 Q And as you said, your definition is a lot broader
18 than the NAS definition?
19 A That s right, intentionally broader to encompass
20 the way that the word is used in the scientific community.
21 Q Sweeps in a lot more propositions.
22 A It recognizes that the word is used a lot more
23 broadly than the National Academy of Sciences defined it.
Q In fact, your definition of scientific theory is
25 synonymous with hypothesis, correct?
A Partly -- it can be synonymous with hypothesis, it
2 can also include the National Academy s definition. But in
3 fact, the scientific community uses the word "theory" in
4 many times as synonymous with the word "hypothesis," other
5 times it uses the word as a synonym for the definition
6 reached by the National Academy, and at other times it uses
7 it in other ways.
8 Q But the way you are using it is synonymous with the
9 definition of hypothesis?
10 A No, I would disagree. It can be used to cover
11 hypotheses, but it can also include ideas that are in fact
12 well substantiated and so on. So while it does include
13 ideas that are synonymous or in fact are hypotheses, it also
14 includes stronger senses of that term.
15 Q And using your definition, intelligent design is a
16 scientific theory, correct?
17 A Yes.
18 Q Under that same definition astrology is a
19 scientific theory under your definition, correct?
20 A Under my definition, a scientific theory is a
21 proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical,
22 observable data and logical inferences. There are many
23 things throughout the history of science which we now think
24 to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that -- which
25 would fit that definition.
==================== end of excerpt from
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day11PMSession.pdf
> > >The reason they are
> > > well-established is because over the course of time, significant
> > > amounts of evidence have been accumulated to support the theory. If ID
> > > really is a scientific theory, there should be lots of scientific
> > > evidence in support of it.
>
> > Would you say that Wegener's theory of continental drift was not a
> > theory at all, because so far from being "well-established" in the
> > eyes of the scientific community, it was widely disparaged during his
> > lifetime?
>
> Absolutely not. Wegener's ideas about continental drift constituted a
> hypothesis.
So you do maintain it was not a theory. [I snipped something below
which made that clear.] To what does "absolutely not" refer? Are you
claiming that acceptance by the scientific community is irrelevant?
I thought you meant it was relevant when you used the formula, "and
the reason they are well-established..."
You certainly lay a great store by what you believe (on the word of
the handful of people writing NAS publications?) to be the only
scientifically accepted definition of "theory." Can you actually
quote it?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > But mathematics does not follow the scientific Procrustean Bed of
> > "hypothesis, observations to test the hypothesis, (provisional)
> > conclusion". That's why I've never been able to come up with a
> > project for my mathematically minded youngest daughter for the
> > regional science fairs. Mathematical reasoning, which is essential
> > for every theorem I have ever proven, does not fit the definition of
> > "observation" that these science fairs seem to require.
>
> Have you considered a simulation?
I have trouble coming up with a simulation of a mathematical concept.
> They're used a lot in science to test
> the implications of all sorts of models, and you don't need any
> "observations" to perform a useful "experiment".
>
> >> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
> >> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
> >> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>
> > Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
> > microevolution.
>
> Are you that naive about creationism?
No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
since.
What year are you stuck in? :-)
> It's microevolution to a
> creationist, because "flies are still just flies". But to a scientist,
> it's macroevolution because there are 500 species evolving from one
> progenitor.
*Drosophilia* is a genus. I haven't been keeping up, but I don't
think most YECs are that narrow nowadays. Henry Morris even said that
occasionally the Biblical *min* could even refer to a family:
It is significant that the phrase "after its kind" occurs
ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. Whatever precisely
is meant by the term "kind" (Hebrew *min*), it does indicate
the limitations of variation. Each organism was to reproduce
after its own kind, not after some other kind. Exactly what
this corresponds to in terms of the modern Linnaean
classification
system is a matter to bae decided by future research. It will
probably be found eventually that the *min* often is identical
with the species, sometimes with the genus, and possibly once
in
a while with the "family". Practically never is variation
possible outside the biologic family.
Henry M. Morris, _The Genesis Record_, Baker Book
House,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, pp. 63-64
Hmmm....perhaps you are stuck in 1975. :-) :-) :-)
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> But mathematics does not follow the scientific Procrustean Bed of
>>> "hypothesis, observations to test the hypothesis, (provisional)
>>> conclusion". That's why I've never been able to come up with a
>>> project for my mathematically minded youngest daughter for the
>>> regional science fairs. Mathematical reasoning, which is essential
>>> for every theorem I have ever proven, does not fit the definition of
>>> "observation" that these science fairs seem to require.
>> Have you considered a simulation?
>
> I have trouble coming up with a simulation of a mathematical concept.
I'm suggesting a way in which mathematics may be applied to a scientific
subject -- it's a science fair, not a math fair -- without the need for
any of that pesky "data".
>> They're used a lot in science to test
>> the implications of all sorts of models, and you don't need any
>> "observations" to perform a useful "experiment".
>>
>>>> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
>>>> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
>>>> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>>> Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
>>> microevolution.
>> Are you that naive about creationism?
>
> No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
> Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
> since.
>
> What year are you stuck in? :-)
Has it occurred to you that creationist definitions of "microevolution"
are so flexible as to be useless, and bear no great resemblance to the
scientific definition?
>> It's microevolution to a
>> creationist, because "flies are still just flies". But to a scientist,
>> it's macroevolution because there are 500 species evolving from one
>> progenitor.
>
> *Drosophilia* is a genus. I haven't been keeping up, but I don't
> think most YECs are that narrow nowadays. Henry Morris even said that
> occasionally the Biblical *min* could even refer to a family:
>
> It is significant that the phrase "after its kind" occurs
> ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. Whatever precisely
> is meant by the term "kind" (Hebrew *min*), it does indicate
> the limitations of variation. Each organism was to reproduce
> after its own kind, not after some other kind. Exactly what
> this corresponds to in terms of the modern Linnaean
> classification
> system is a matter to bae decided by future research. It will
> probably be found eventually that the *min* often is identical
> with the species, sometimes with the genus, and possibly once
> in
> a while with the "family". Practically never is variation
> possible outside the biologic family.
> Henry M. Morris, _The Genesis Record_, Baker Book
> House,
> Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, pp. 63-64
>
>
> Hmmm....perhaps you are stuck in 1975. :-) :-) :-)
I see no mention of microevolution or macroevolution there, merely a
vague description of what "kinds" might be. Are you assuming that
anything happening within a "kind" must by definition be microevolution?
If so, where did you get that definition?
None of that was relevant to my point, which is that real biologists use
the term "macroevolution" when referring to anything above the level of
species, while "microevolution" refers to processes happening within
species. Discussing the history of 500 Hawaiian species of Drosophila is
therefore discussing macroevolution.
Now, to a creationist, macroevolution is defined as "whatever didn't
happen"; anything a creationist is willing to believe did happen is
microevolution. But that's hardly a useful definition.
pnyikos
> On 4/13/2011 7:07 AM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
Well said. It's nice to know that Ray Martinez, Tony Pagano and I
aren't the only ones who are willing to risk the undying enmity of Ron
Okimoto. It would be even nicer if it turned out that you are not a
creationist (the usual definition, not the excessively literal-minded
definition of Ron O). It's lonely being the only evolutionist who
sees through him and isn't afraid to tell the unvarnished, brutal
truth about him in public.
By the way, I did tell him early today about this thread, in his
favorite thread--the one in which I encountered him the first time.
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
And I didn't say you said anything about their goals. Must you spend
so much of your replies dithering about irrelevant minutiae?
> > it's because of the
> > methods this iteration of creationism has chosen to further their
> > goals.
>
> That may explain Ron O's vendetta against them, and his vendetta
> against me for not agreeing with his allegations about them, but
> that's a separate issue.
You lavish so much concern on your zany interpersonal misadventures
that I'm beginning to think that's what you're really here for. It
would be so much more productive if you would just worry about the
substance of the issues.
> > The CIA is a useful analogue. They have a mandate regarding
> > international relations, just as does the Foreign Service or the
> > Diplomatic Corps. But unlike the latter two, the mission of the CIA
> > does not include leaving clues as to their activities. Their
> > operations are intended to be covert. After the failures of cases like
> > Edwards v. Aguillard it became clear to a set of creation science
> > advocates that their future efforts would need to be more "fingerprint-
> > free" if you will. So they set about designing a movement with the
> > goal of diminishing the scope of and respect for evolutionary biology
> > while at the same time creating room for their more, shall we say,
> > spiritual alternative. These goals are plainly explained in the Wedge
> > Document (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html) that you
> > so blithely dismiss. This is a fingerprint they very desperately wish
> > had been erased.
>
> What is the actual evidence of there being a "desperate wish" to
> disown an anonymous document whose connection with the DI in its
> present form is still a mystery to me?
>
> Can you shed any light on this mystery, or are you simply relying on
> hearsay?
The "actual evidence" is their continued shrugging off of any
reference made to the document (they get rather agitated about how
agitated they believe their detractors are) without an overt disavowal
of the substance thereof. To the contrary, there has been plenty of
reinforcement of many of the ideas put forth in the Wedge by many DI
fellows and ancillary players.
> > Look up "Of Pandas and People," "The Design of Life," "Explore
> > Evolution," and countless videos if you think the DI is not involved
> > in attempting to influence how and what is taught regarding evolution
> > in this country.
>
> Don't be silly. The evidence of the involvement is all over the url
> that I keep reposting afresh. I think I've done it enough times that
> I can forego it this time around.
Then why are you taking issue with words like "teach" as opposed to
"discuss?" If you're familiar with the books I mentioned, as well as
the information on the webpage you so tirelessly continue to post, you
know that the distinction offered by those two words is meaningless in
the greater overall context.
> Have you ever read what the website says about "The Criticisms of Neo-
> Darwinism"? It's got NOTHING to do with "the bait," as in "the bait
> and switch scam." It does, however, have plenty to do with what Ron
> O. calls the "switch."
>
> Only, without a bait, there is no switch. You might as well talk
> about the sound of one hand clapping. [Yeah, I know, there is an old
> Zen riddle about that.]
Again, I couldn't care less about how the points stack up between you
and Ron. Maybe you can pass me a note after class with the final
tally.
> > After the debacle in Dover - the unfortunate victims of which "bait
> > and switch" (not fomented, but clearly aided by the DI*)
>
> The evidence that you have NOT read the website is becoming
> overwhelming.
Take the time to read what I have written before you accuse me of not
reading something.
Well, if that's what it says on the DI website then it must be true.
Good lord, how naive are you? The DI says lots of things that are pure
marketing speak. They are a p.r. outlet.
> > were the
> > Dover tax-payers - as well as their stumbling attempts shortly
> > thereafter in Lebec, CA, the DI backed away from overtly supporting
> > school board overreaching.
>
> I doubt that any sane person would consider the quotes I gave above to
> be about overtly supporting school board overreaching.
Neither would any sane person swallow such bilge so easily as you have
done.
RLC
Ron O
> For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> "bait and switch scam".
They sold the rubes the science of intelligent design, but all the
IDiot rubes ever get from them to teach is a stupid obfuscation scam
that doesn't even mention that ID ever existed. That is the classic
bait and switch scam. Sell one thing and only give the rubes the
booby prize. Nyikos can't deny that rationally because he can't find
a single IDiot rube that ever wanted to teach the science of
intelligent design that ever got the science of intelligent design to
teach. Zero is a number a mathematician should understand, but in
Nyikos' case he has to lie to himself about it. Anyone that denies
that the ID perps sold the rubes the claim that they had the ID
science to teach is just lying to themselves.
>
> After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
Nyikos has to keep lying about it because he has been so bogously
dishonest about the fact that he was told many times in no uncertain
terms what the bait and switch was and even who did it that lying
again is just second nature to him
This is a post where I look back and find several of the examples of
what Nyikos is denying about ever getting the description of the bait
and switch scam that the ID perps have been running. He was lyiing
then and he is lying now.
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/98d7769dfb82872b?hl=en
>
> Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> she should have the academic freedom to do so.http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
>
> Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> that
Geez. What does a teacher do when they discuss something in class?
This is the sum total of anything that Nyikos can come up with.
Redefining reality is stupid, but that is all Nyikos can do.
>
> the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> that they have the ID science for some teacher
> to teach.http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
In the post that I just linked to above we were also discussing this
Discovery Institute quote. And the Discovery Institute is claiming
exactly what I claim. Anyone can just read the quote and understand
that they are telling a teacher that it is legal to teach the science
of intelligent design because intelligent design is a "legitimate"
scientific theory. Nyikos has to keep denying the obvious because the
only way that he can exist is to keep lying to himself.
>
> Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
The pamphlet that the quote comes from is about the Dover fiasco where
the IDiots wanted to teach the nonexistent ID science to public school
children. For some reason Nyikos has to try these lame distinctions
when they do not matter. There are no qualifiers that this statement
is not about public schools.
>
> I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> this case.
This is direct evidence that the ID perps are still claiming that they
have the science of intelligent design for a teacher to teach. There
is no question about that. What will such a teacher get to teach from
the ID perps?
The ID perps are obviously still selling the IDiot rubes the science
of intelligent design. Any rube that believes them will have the bait
and switch run on them and all they will get to teach is the bogus
obfuscation switch scam that doesn't even mention that the ID science
ever existed. There is no doubt that this has happened for the last 9
years because Nyikos can't find a single example of any teacher,
school board or legislator that ever got the ID science to teach from
the ID perps. Zero should tell Nyikos something, but he has to lie to
himself about reality.
>
> I have very little doubt that if Okimoto ever brought a class action
> suit against the DI of "running a bait and switch scam," based only on
> the evidence I have seen so far, the verdict would be, "Not guilty."
It is a political scam. They aren't breaking any laws that I know of
for lying about politics. Look at holocaust deniers. It isn't
illegal to lie to the gullible. The jails would be full of culprits.
This doesn't make any IDiot rube any less of a rube for believing the
scam artists. The only IDiots left that support the ID scam are the
ignorant, incompetent and or dishonest. There are no other types
left It doesn't matter if they are breaking any laws or not. These
are the boobs that are claiming the moral high ground and all they can
do is lie to themselves about reality. Look at all the bogus people
that are bending over and taking the switch scam from the same guys
that lied to them about ID and have to claim that religion isn't their
motivation.
Now, the Discovery Institute has called the Wedge document a "fund
raising" document and if it could be determined that they mailed the
document through the post office to people for the purposes of
soliciting funding, knowingly lying to the rubes, that would be a
federal offense. It would be mail fraud. Nyikos knows this because
he claims that the Wedge document was never officially adopted even
though the ID perps did just about everything in the document except
produce the ID science that would have made the ID scam legit. Were
the ID perps lying about their religious and political motivations in
this document, or are they lying when they tell the rubes that they
are only interested in the science that they never produced to make
the document legit? What kind of choice is that? My guess is that if
they had to go to court that they would admit that they are lying
about the not having political and religious motivation and that what
they wrote in the Wedge document is what they are really doing. This
likely would not be a lie. The real lie is the political lie that
they have the ID science and that they are interested in science
education, not just in abusing science education. So they likely
would not be convicted, they would just be shown to be lying about the
ID science.
>
> But I am more careful about my own conclusions than even an American
> court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
> Scotland" that illustrates my own frame of mind nicely] and so I
> naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> NOT PROVEN!
This means proven beyond a shadow of doubt in Nyikos speak.
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
What is the teacher going to get to teach from the ID perps? Zero
should have significance to a math professor, but Nyikos has to lie to
himself about reality. Not a single IDiot that ever wanted to teach
the science of intelligent design has ever gotten the ID science to
teach. The ID perps do not even have a lesson plan to demonstrate
that there is any ID science worth teaching. Why is that? No matter
what the ID perps have ever said about teaching ID, the bait and
switch has always gone down, and who is running the switch scam? The
same guys that lied about having the science of intelligent design.
Why doesn't the switch scam mention that ID ever existed? Why not
mention IC or specified complexity or their new law of
thermodynamics? Selling ID and then giving the rubes a stupid
obfuscation scam is a classic case of the bait and switch scam. The
sad thing is that the ID perps are running the scam, not on the
science side, but on their own creationist rube IDiot supporters.
IDiots like Nyikos have to lie to themselves about that reality.
Ron Okimoto
Walter Bushell
John Harshman <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Are you that naive about creationism? It's microevolution to a
> creationist, because "flies are still just flies". But to a scientist,
> it's macroevolution because there are 500 species evolving from one
> progenitor.
And humans are just fish.
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
> >>> But mathematics does not follow the scientific Procrustean Bed of
> >>> "hypothesis, observations to test the hypothesis, (provisional)
> >>> conclusion". That's why I've never been able to come up with a
> >>> project for my mathematically minded youngest daughter for the
> >>> regional science fairs. Mathematical reasoning, which is essential
> >>> for every theorem I have ever proven, does not fit the definition of
> >>> "observation" that these science fairs seem to require.
> >> Have you considered a simulation?
>
> > I have trouble coming up with a simulation of a mathematical concept.
>
> I'm suggesting a way in which mathematics may be applied to a scientific
> subject -- it's a science fair, not a math fair -- without the need for
> any of that pesky "data".
You are getting vaguer and vaguer. Did you have ANY specific
simulations in mind? [Don't worry: if they've already been done, I'm
not about to suggest them to my daughter. I once overruled a science
fair judge who wanted to give the top math prize to someone who
duplicated Buffon's needle experiment.]
Continued in next post
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
[chris thompson wrote:]
> >>>> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
> >>>> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
> >>>> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>
> >>> Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
> >>> microevolution.
>
> >> Are you that naive about creationism?
>
> > No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
> > Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
> > since.
>
> > What year are you stuck in? :-)
>
> Has it occurred to you that creationist definitions of "microevolution"
> are so flexible as to be useless, and bear no great resemblance to the
> scientific definition?
Huh? Wasn't the term "microevolution" coined by creationists?
Anyway, I do get the impression that there are standards generally
accepted by creationists who study the creationist literature. So I
believe what I wrote still applies to the majority of YECs and OECs.
I suggest you try quoting Henry Morris to creationists who expand
"kind" more broadly than he does, and see what their reaction is. You
seem a lot more motivated to argue with them than I am. IMHO, there
is only one thing that can save creationism from a long and lingering
death at the hands of universities and the media.
Islam.
If creationism ever became the dominant doctrine among militant
Muslims, I'd join in the fray myself.
But, a day or two before I returned to talk.origins, I saw a post by
Paul Gans, who was paranoid about creationists back in the 1990's,
attacking people with a negative view of Islam. So I don't think
people here are worried about such an eventuality.
So I won't worry about it unless I learn otherwise.
>
>
> >> It's microevolution to a
> >> creationist, because "flies are still just flies". But to a scientist,
> >> it's macroevolution because there are 500 species evolving from one
> >> progenitor.
>
> > *Drosophilia* is a genus. I haven't been keeping up, but I don't
> > think most YECs are that narrow nowadays. Henry Morris even said that
> > occasionally the Biblical *min* could even refer to a family:
>
> > It is significant that the phrase "after its kind" occurs
> > ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. Whatever precisely
> > is meant by the term "kind" (Hebrew *min*), it does indicate
> > the limitations of variation. Each organism was to reproduce
> > after its own kind, not after some other kind. Exactly what
> > this corresponds to in terms of the modern Linnaean
> > classification
> > system is a matter to bae decided by future research. It will
> > probably be found eventually that the *min* often is identical
> > with the species, sometimes with the genus, and possibly once
> > in a while with the "family". Practically never is variation
> > possible outside the biologic family.
> > Henry M. Morris, _The Genesis Record_, Baker Book
> > House,
> > Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, pp. 63-64
>
> > Hmmm....perhaps you are stuck in 1975. :-) :-) :-)
>
> I see no mention of microevolution or macroevolution there,
AFAIK, the only distinction that makes a difference to Christian
creationists is the use of the word "*min*" in Genesis. That's where
almost all of them draw the line. Have you seen ANY exceptions?
By the way, do you have any idea who cooked up the term "baramin", and
how?
> merely a
> vague description of what "kinds" might be. Are you assuming that
> anything happening within a "kind" must by definition be microevolution?
It seems vague to you? I suspect it's because "family" is a
meaningless concept as far as you are concerned. In fact, the kinds
of nasty things you say about higher taxa might lead a naive person to
think that you don't see any difference between genera and phyla in
the Linnean classification.
But I think Henry Morris had a pretty good idea of the relative sizes
of various taxa of vertebrates, at least. I certainly have a good
one. There is some looseness, true: lumping all marsupials into the
same order was downright silly. I'd give them subclass or infraclass
status, but not class status.
> Now, to a creationist, macroevolution is defined as "whatever didn't
> happen"; anything a creationist is willing to believe did happen is
> microevolution. But that's hardly a useful definition.
I wonder how many people in this newsgroup will agree with that; I
think it is hopelessly out of touch with what motivates creationism
among evangelicals.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Apr 13, 4:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Apr 13, 5:00 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 13, 7:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > > > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > > > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > > > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > > > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > > > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > > > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>
> > > > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > > > fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> > > > that
>
> > > > the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> > > > that they have the ID science for some teacher
> > > > to teach.http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
>
> > > > Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> > > > public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>
> > > > I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> > > > as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> > > > alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> > > > this case.
Below, you don't seem to realize why I said something I did.
> > > Yeah, I don't think so.
What did this refer to? I thought it referred to moving to a verdict
on the narrow issue I laid out: the lack of convincing evidence that
the DI is claiming that it has scientific information on Intelligent
Design suitable for teaching in the public schools.
> > > You are correct that there isn't much hard
> > > evidence as to the DI's position on teaching ID in schools. But it's
> > > not because Ron is wrong about their goals,
>
> > I did not write above about what their goals are, only about a very
> > specific alleged-by-Okimoto claim by the DI.
>
> And I didn't say you said anything about their goals. Must you spend
> so much of your replies dithering about irrelevant minutiae?
What you call "minutiae" is my attempt to clarify what your "I don't
think so" was all about.
Documentation?
> To the contrary, there has been plenty of
> reinforcement of many of the ideas put forth in the Wedge by many DI
> fellows and ancillary players.
But which ones, that's the issue here.
> > > Look up "Of Pandas and People," "The Design of Life," "Explore
> > > Evolution," and countless videos if you think the DI is not involved
> > > in attempting to influence how and what is taught regarding evolution
> > > in this country.
>
> > Don't be silly. The evidence of the involvement is all over the url
> > that I keep reposting afresh. I think I've done it enough times that
> > I can forego it this time around.
>
> Then why are you taking issue with words like "teach" as opposed to
> "discuss?"
Because the issue is the NATURE of their involvement. And what is
constitutionally protected, and what is not. A teacher who discusses
intelliigent design without endorsing it should be safe, IMO. Just as
it is perfectly OK to discuss the Bible as a literary piece of work.
Some of it is drivel, but Job and Ecclesiastes are great.
> If you're familiar with the books I mentioned, as well as
> the information on the webpage you so tirelessly continue to post, you
> know that the distinction offered by those two words is meaningless in
> the greater overall context.
It means a great deal where not getting a teacher into trouble is
concerned.
[...]
>
> > > After the debacle in Dover - the unfortunate victims of which "bait
> > > and switch" (not fomented, but clearly aided by the DI*)
>
> > The evidence that you have NOT read the website is becoming
> > overwhelming.
>
> Take the time to read what I have written before you accuse me of not
> reading something.
I did. Did you expect me also to be gifted with precognition as to
what you would write this time around?
Do you think they were lying when they wrote the following?
Discovery Institute opposed the Dover policy from
the start and urged the Dover school board
to repeal it.
If so, where is your evidence?
> Good lord, how naive are you?
This from someone who criticized me for getting stuck into somehting
other than the issues.
>The DI says lots of things that are pure
> marketing speak. They are a p.r. outlet.
> > > were the
> > > Dover tax-payers - as well as their stumbling attempts shortly
> > > thereafter in Lebec, CA, the DI backed away from overtly supporting
> > > school board overreaching.
>
> > I doubt that any sane person would consider the quotes I gave above to
> > be about overtly supporting school board overreaching.
>
> Neither would any sane person swallow such bilge so easily as you have
> done.
"It would be so much more productive if you would just
worry about the substance of the issues."
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> In article <S5udnUFEd9Y8qzvQRVn_...@giganews.com>,
> John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> > Are you that naive about creationism? It's microevolution to a
> > creationist, because "flies are still just flies". But to a scientist,
> > it's macroevolution because there are 500 species evolving from one
> > progenitor.
>
> And humans are just fish.
Can you document a published creationist paper, book, or pamphlet to
that effect? I'd be very surprised.
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
> On Apr 13, 11:35 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:> On Apr 13, 4:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 13, 5:00 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Apr 13, 7:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
<snip>
>
> > > > The CIA is a useful analogue. They have a mandate regarding
> > > > international relations, just as does the Foreign Service or the
> > > > Diplomatic Corps. But unlike the latter two, the mission of the CIA
> > > > does not include leaving clues as to their activities. Their
> > > > operations are intended to be covert. After the failures of cases like
> > > > Edwards v. Aguillard it became clear to a set of creation science
> > > > advocates that their future efforts would need to be more "fingerprint-
> > > > free" if you will. So they set about designing a movement with the
> > > > goal of diminishing the scope of and respect for evolutionary biology
> > > > while at the same time creating room for their more, shall we say,
> > > > spiritual alternative. These goals are plainly explained in the Wedge
> > > > Document (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html) that you
> > > > so blithely dismiss. This is a fingerprint they very desperately wish
> > > > had been erased.
>
> > > What is the actual evidence of there being a "desperate wish" to
> > > disown an anonymous document whose connection with the DI in its
> > > present form is still a mystery to me?
>
> > > Can you shed any light on this mystery, or are you simply relying on
> > > hearsay?
>
> > The "actual evidence" is their continued shrugging off of any
> > reference made to the document (they get rather agitated about how
> > agitated they believe their detractors are) without an overt disavowal
> > of the substance thereof.
>
> Documentation?
"Denying nothing in the Wedge document, I started by thanking him for
reading a section often omitted by ID-critics—the part which describes
the long-term goal for ID to become an established, respected field of
science. If one reads the Wedge document carefully, I explained, it
makes it clear that every goal outlined is to be driven by scientific
research." research.http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/archives/
science/luskin.php>
(That last comment is particularly funny, especially in retrospect.)
"The wedge metaphor has outlived its usefulness. Indeed, with ID
critics like Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross writing books like
Evolution and the Wedge of Intelligent Design: The Trojan Horse
Strategy, the wedge metaphor has even become a liability. To be sure,
our critics will attempt to keep throwing the wedge metaphor (and
especially the notorious wedge document) in our face. But the wedge
needs to be seen as a propaedeutic – as an anticipation of and
preparation for a positive, design-theoretic research program that
invigorates science and renews culture. The wedge, to mix metaphors,
has already swept the field, cleaned house, shone the spotlight, and
exposed scientific materialism’s dirty laundry. Now that that has been
accomplished, where do we go from here?"
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.10.27.Disciplined_Science.htm
(I don't hear a lot of denial in there, though there's plenty of "I
wish this thing would go away.")
"A final thought: Don’t Darwinists have better ways to spend their
time than inventing absurd conspiracy theories about their opponents?
The longer Darwinists persist in spinning such urban legends, the more
likely it is that fair-minded people will begin to question whether
Darwinists know what they are talking about."
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=450
(Just a tad histrionic, wouldn't you agree?)
Enough to get started?
> > To the contrary, there has been plenty of
> > reinforcement of many of the ideas put forth in the Wedge by many DI
> > fellows and ancillary players.
>
> But which ones, that's the issue here.
Not really. You asked for evidence regarding my assessment of the ID
movement's reaction to the Wedge. I gave it to you. I can also give
you specific examples of comments that, as I said, reinforce ideas put
forth in the Wedge, the salient ones being those about removing
obstacles that stand in the way of an intended religious "renewal" of
our culture.
> > > > Look up "Of Pandas and People," "The Design of Life," "Explore
> > > > Evolution," and countless videos if you think the DI is not involved
> > > > in attempting to influence how and what is taught regarding evolution
> > > > in this country.
>
> > > Don't be silly. The evidence of the involvement is all over the url
> > > that I keep reposting afresh. I think I've done it enough times that
> > > I can forego it this time around.
>
> > Then why are you taking issue with words like "teach" as opposed to
> > "discuss?"
>
> Because the issue is the NATURE of their involvement. And what is
> constitutionally protected, and what is not. A teacher who discusses
> intelliigent design without endorsing it should be safe, IMO.
No, it would require more than a lack of endorsement. A teacher who
discusses ID in science class without putting it in its proper
context, i.e., categorizing it as non-science, should *not* be safe.
The vast bulk of ID argument (that has any connection with science) is
concerned with invalid or irrelevant criticisms of evolution. Those
are not appropriate at any time. The philosophical and epistemological
aspects of ID may be appropriate in other classes, but the DI, which
has always insisted ID is science, isn't after that particular
outcome.
Considering the extremely heterogenous mix that makes up ID theorizing
and argumentation there are few criticisms we can categorically tar
the DI with. But this is one - they wish to cast doubt upon evolution
for the purposes of leading people to infer a transcendental designer.
They wish to do this in as many cultural venues as possible (though
the promised research program is still missing in action). And that
includes secondary school curricula.
> Just as
> it is perfectly OK to discuss the Bible as a literary piece of work.
> Some of it is drivel, but Job and Ecclesiastes are great.
In the appropriate context, sure. But that is not what ID is about.
> > If you're familiar with the books I mentioned, as well as
> > the information on the webpage you so tirelessly continue to post, you
> > know that the distinction offered by those two words is meaningless in
> > the greater overall context.
>
> It means a great deal where not getting a teacher into trouble is
> concerned.
This is about whether a teacher gets in trouble or not, it's about
whether you're right in your judgement of the DI's approach to
promoting ID in public schools.
No, I don't think they were lying. I said as much when I admitted
previously that they were not responsible for fomenting that action.
However I also think they're not telling the whole story, which, if
you had been paying attention during that time (it was discussed here
and on all the blogs incessantly) includes their willingness to lend
legal and testimonial aid to the very obviously misguided side of that
case. They chose to be on the wrong side, they crowed about how they
would be triumphant, and then whined about how terribly unfairly they
were treated afterwards.
RLC
Robert Camp
>
> (I don't hear a lot of denial in there, though there's plenty of "I
> wish this thing would go away.")
>
> "A final thought: Don’t Darwinists have better ways to spend their
> time than inventing absurd conspiracy theories about their opponents?
> The longer Darwinists persist in spinning such urban legends, the more
> likely it is that fair-minded people will begin to question whether
...not...
> would be ...
>
> read more »
Burkhard
> On Apr 13, 8:42 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > pnyikos wrote:
> > > On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > >> pnyikos wrote:
> [chris thompson wrote:]
> > >>>> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
> > >>>> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
> > >>>> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>
> > >>> Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
> > >>> microevolution.
>
> > >> Are you that naive about creationism?
>
> > > No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
> > > Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
> > > since.
>
> > > What year are you stuck in? :-)
>
> > Has it occurred to you that creationist definitions of "microevolution"
> > are so flexible as to be useless, and bear no great resemblance to the
> > scientific definition?
>
> Huh? Wasn't the term "microevolution" coined by creationists?
Only if you think that Yuri Filipchenko was a creationists, which
would be unorthodox to say the least.
(In "Variabilität und Variation", Gebrüder Bornträger Verlag, Berlin.
1929.)
<snip>
chris thompson
Exactly what is wrong with requiring a scientific theory be
falsifiable? That's one of the hallmarks of science, you know.
>
> Pure mathematicians live in a completely different world, where
> something either has a proof or does not. Occasionally there are some
> doubts about whether a proof is correct, but that's as far as the
> resemblance to the empirical sciences goes.
And yet, we're not talking about math here. We're talking science,
right?
>
> > IS supported by a vast
> > body of evidence. Of course, if you want to use the layman's
> > definition of "theory" or "theoretical" that is your prerogative.
>
> This is REALLY amusing, coming from someone who labeled something a
> "false dilemma" earlier today, without explanation.
It was intuitively obvious to the casual observer. You suggested
presenting students with a choice: did nature come about by chance or
through the action of a creator. Leaving aside the fact that (wink
nudge) ID is not supposed to be about religion, there are clearly more
choices available.
>
> > But
> > it won't carry any weight in scientific circles. Behe's personal
> > definition of "theory" carries no weight; the collectively decided
> > definition of "theory" is what's important.
>
> By what "collective"? I think you should read the whole transcript
I have read the Dover transcript, thank you. I am aware that Behe is
aware that when speaking informally, even scientists use the layman's
definition of "theory". I'm sure the people at The National Academy of
Science are also aware of that. And it's all beside the point. What
matters is that the DI wants to label ID a _scientific_ theory, and
that definition, as Behe points out, is rather more rigorous than the
layman's definition. I'm sure there is terminology in math that has
alternative usages in everyday life. One that seems apropos at the
moment is "tangent", as in "off on a tangent". When someone wanders in
a discussion and goes off-topic, do you immediately assume they've
busied themselves dividing one side of a triangle by another?
> of that day at Dover, with Behe being interrogated by someone who
> definitely seemed hostile:
>
[snip Dover transcript excerpt]
>
> > > >The reason they are
> > > > well-established is because over the course of time, significant
> > > > amounts of evidence have been accumulated to support the theory. If ID
> > > > really is a scientific theory, there should be lots of scientific
> > > > evidence in support of it.
>
> > > Would you say that Wegener's theory of continental drift was not a
> > > theory at all, because so far from being "well-established" in the
> > > eyes of the scientific community, it was widely disparaged during his
> > > lifetime?
>
> > Absolutely not. Wegener's ideas about continental drift constituted a
> > hypothesis.
>
> So you do maintain it was not a theory. [I snipped something below
> which made that clear.] To what does "absolutely not" refer?
Um, it referred to the question you asked. At the time, it was
absolutely not a theory; it was a hypothesis. Wegener made some
observations (the shapes of the various continents, the identical
fossils found on distant continents, the closely related species
living on distant continents) and proposed an explanation. Note: it
was not disqualified (for lack of a better word) form being a theory
because it was derided. It did not constitute a theory because Wegener
lacked evidence for it. It would seem to share that with ID, come to
think of it. But continental drift did not need charlatans and shills
to bring it to the forefront of geology the way ID seems to.
Nowadays, continental drift isn't a hypothesis and it isn't a theory.
It's data. Movement rates of continents have been measured (thanks to
some handy mirrors left behind on the moon by Apollo missions). It is
data that support the larger, more encompassing theory of plate
tectonics.
> Are you
> claiming that acceptance by the scientific community is irrelevant?
Sheesh. Where did you get that idea? Specialized language is decided
over time by a consensus of the specialists. Sometimes, the
specialists convene a council to decide terminology. The International
Council on Zoological Nomenclature is one example; the IEEE is
another. Such councils decide (whether directly or in directly) the
mainstream definitions of terminology. You are certainly free to
market something called a "USB cable" but if you are using it as an
Underwater Serious Boyfriend-Finder cable" you are likely to have some
issues.
> I thought you meant it was relevant when you used the formula, "and
> the reason they are well-established..."
Goodness. "Formula"? I see neither an equal sign nor an inequality
sign. Might words have more than one usage? And might the meaning of
words be context- and situation-dependent?
>
> You certainly lay a great store by what you believe (on the word of
> the handful of people writing NAS publications?) to be the only
> scientifically accepted definition of "theory." Can you actually
> quote it?
No, I cannot quote it off the top of my head. Is that relevant? The
NAS definition of theory is:
"In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of
an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time.
Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet
unobserved phenomena."
That is likely incomplete. So what? It differs not a whit from my
understanding of real scientific theories. ID predicts everything and
nothing. Evolution predicts we will not find kangaroo fossils in
Precambrian strata, and so far that's held up. If we DO find a real
kangaroo fossil in Precambrian rock, then we need to seriously rethink
the theory, no? Or is this too far into science for a pure
mathematician?
But again, if we find kangaroo fossils in some Precambrian strata in
Canada, it would be a serious problem. That's what is cool about
scientific theories...the next damned thing might be right around the
corner.*
Chris
*who is NOT holding his breath waiting for an Ediacaran kangaroo.
pnyikos
> On Apr 13, 7:47 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Apr 13, 12:12 pm, alextangent <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 13, 3:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > But I am more careful about my own conclusions than even an American
> > > > court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
> > > > Scotland" that illustrates my own frame of mind nicely]
>
> > Three men are taking a bus tour through Scotland. One is a layman,
> > one is a lawyer, and one is a mathematician.
>
> > Some sheep are spotted grazing on the hill. Spotting one that looks
> > different from the rest, the layman says:
>
> > "Ah, I see there are black sheep in Scotland."
>
> > The lawyer corrects him:
>
> > "You can't really say that; what you can say is that there is at least
> > one black sheep in Scotland."
>
> > The mathematician chimes up:
>
> > "You can't even say that; the most you can say is that there is at
> > least one sheep in Scotland that is black on at least one side."
>
> > On this thread, I am like that mathematician -- so far at least.
>
> I was aware of the "joke".
Don't you find it funny? Being a mathematician, I do--it describes
our frame of mind when doing research very well. I know two women
mathematicians who are married to lawyers, and both they and their
husbands like it a lot.
> > > >and so I
> > > > naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > > > NOT PROVEN!
>
> > > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > > University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> > > > The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> > > > representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
>
> > > As a Scot (although IANAL), I can assure you that the mealy mouthed
> > > paragraph you quote would be considered a hanging offence by any
> > > Scottish jury.
>
> > Cute hyperbole.
>
> You haven't seen a Scottish jury in action, I take it?
Scotland being part of the UK, i believe an actual, legally appointed
21st century Scottish jury would take offense at the way you are
blurring the distinction between them and a lynch mob.
They might even consider it a hanging offense. :-)
[snip issue I'll discuss if you are sufficiently interested]
> > > What does a teacher discuss?
>
> > An atheist can discuss Christianity --- negatively, for the most part,
> > one would presume, so this is close to the opposite extreme from what
> > we are talking about.
>
> Any science teacher who did so would be straying far from the role
> expected. Belief or disbelief is not science, so why discuss it in a
> science class?
I wasn't talking about science teachers, I was using the example to
illustrate the distinction between teaching something as though it
were well-established (to use Camp's terminology) and merely
discussing it. As I said next:
> > Anyway, the point is that one can discuss something without explicitly
> > endorsing it. IIRC, the film of which I wrote in my second post to
> > this thread never came out and claimed point-blank that the phenomena
> > that were lectured about in the film were
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> On Apr 13, 8:42 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> pnyikos wrote:
>>>>> But mathematics does not follow the scientific Procrustean Bed of
>>>>> "hypothesis, observations to test the hypothesis, (provisional)
>>>>> conclusion". That's why I've never been able to come up with a
>>>>> project for my mathematically minded youngest daughter for the
>>>>> regional science fairs. Mathematical reasoning, which is essential
>>>>> for every theorem I have ever proven, does not fit the definition of
>>>>> "observation" that these science fairs seem to require.
>>>> Have you considered a simulation?
>>> I have trouble coming up with a simulation of a mathematical concept.
>> I'm suggesting a way in which mathematics may be applied to a scientific
>> subject -- it's a science fair, not a math fair -- without the need for
>> any of that pesky "data".
>
> You are getting vaguer and vaguer. Did you have ANY specific
> simulations in mind?
No. It was a general suggestion. But simulations of evolution can be
fun. There are lots of potential situations and models.
John Harshman
> On Apr 13, 8:42 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> pnyikos wrote:
>
>
> [chris thompson wrote:]
>>>>>> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
>>>>>> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
>>>>>> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>>>>> Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
>>>>> microevolution.
>>>> Are you that naive about creationism?
>>> No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
>>> Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
>>> since.
>>> What year are you stuck in? :-)
>> Has it occurred to you that creationist definitions of "microevolution"
>> are so flexible as to be useless, and bear no great resemblance to the
>> scientific definition?
>
> Huh? Wasn't the term "microevolution" coined by creationists?
Oh my goodness gracious no.
> Anyway, I do get the impression that there are standards generally
> accepted by creationists who study the creationist literature. So I
> believe what I wrote still applies to the majority of YECs and OECs.
>
> I suggest you try quoting Henry Morris to creationists who expand
> "kind" more broadly than he does, and see what their reaction is.
Why? We were talking about "microevolution". What does the definition of
"kind" have to do with that?
> You
> seem a lot more motivated to argue with them than I am. IMHO, there
> is only one thing that can save creationism from a long and lingering
> death at the hands of universities and the media.
>
> Islam.
>
> If creationism ever became the dominant doctrine among militant
> Muslims, I'd join in the fray myself.
>
> But, a day or two before I returned to talk.origins, I saw a post by
> Paul Gans, who was paranoid about creationists back in the 1990's,
> attacking people with a negative view of Islam. So I don't think
> people here are worried about such an eventuality.
>
> So I won't worry about it unless I learn otherwise.
Was the entire point there to take a dig at Gans? Otherwise I don't see one.
I've never seen a clear definition of "microevolution" from a
creationist. Have you? An initial requirement would seem to be that the
word "microevolution" is mentioned somewhere within it.
> By the way, do you have any idea who cooked up the term "baramin", and
> how?
I do. Frank Marsh, 1941, on the basis of bad Hebrew.
>> merely a
>> vague description of what "kinds" might be. Are you assuming that
>> anything happening within a "kind" must by definition be microevolution?
>
> It seems vague to you? I suspect it's because "family" is a
> meaningless concept as far as you are concerned. In fact, the kinds
> of nasty things you say about higher taxa might lead a naive person to
> think that you don't see any difference between genera and phyla in
> the Linnean classification.
There is in fact no necessary difference. Do you think there's an
objective definition of "family"? If so, what is it? And I think it's
vague not just because it's attached to "family", which itself has no
definition, but because he doesn't say "family"; he says sometimes this,
sometimes that.
> But I think Henry Morris had a pretty good idea of the relative sizes
> of various taxa of vertebrates, at least. I certainly have a good
> one. There is some looseness, true: lumping all marsupials into the
> same order was downright silly. I'd give them subclass or infraclass
> status, but not class status.
I'd be interested in your rationale for assigning particular ranks to
groups. But I don't see how this would make Morris' definition less
vague anyway.
>> Now, to a creationist, macroevolution is defined as "whatever didn't
>> happen"; anything a creationist is willing to believe did happen is
>> microevolution. But that's hardly a useful definition.
>
> I wonder how many people in this newsgroup will agree with that; I
> think it is hopelessly out of touch with what motivates creationism
> among evangelicals.
I find it interesting that you claim so much knowledge of creationism at
one moment, and then very little knowledge at the next. I would be
interested in your critique of my statement, though. What do you find
wrong about it, and why?
John Harshman
That isn't what creationists say. It's what biologists say. I believe
Walter was intending to put the "just flies" claim in some perspective,
Diptera being a clade roughly similar in variety to Osteichthyes.
alextangent
In a "If I was a lawyer and married to a mathematician, I'd find it
funny" way. IANAL though, and my wife is not a mathematician.
>
> > > > >and so I
> > > > > naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > > > > NOT PROVEN!
>
> > > > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > > > University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> > > > > The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> > > > > representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
>
> > > > As a Scot (although IANAL), I can assure you that the mealy mouthed
> > > > paragraph you quote would be considered a hanging offence by any
> > > > Scottish jury.
>
> > > Cute hyperbole.
>
> > You haven't seen a Scottish jury in action, I take it?
>
> Scotland being part of the UK, i believe an actual, legally appointed
> 21st century Scottish jury would take offense at the way you are
> blurring the distinction between them and a lynch mob.
Two points; the Scottish legal system is distinct from the rest of the
UK. Which has no bearing on whether they would be offended or not. I
suspect you may be reading too much into "a hanging offence". But
then, you are a mathematician and only the half of the sheep you can
see is black.
>
> They might even consider it a hanging offense. :-)
>
> [snip issue I'll discuss if you are sufficiently interested]
>
> > > > What does a teacher discuss?
>
> > > An atheist can discuss Christianity --- negatively, for the most part,
> > > one would presume, so this is close to the opposite extreme from what
> > > we are talking about.
>
> > Any science teacher who did so would be straying far from the role
> > expected. Belief or disbelief is not science, so why discuss it in a
> > science class?
>
> I wasn't talking about science teachers, I was using the example to
> illustrate the distinction between teaching something as though it
> were well-established (to use Camp's terminology) and merely
> discussing it. As I said next:
>
> > > Anyway, the point is that one can discuss something without explicitly
> > > endorsing it. IIRC, the film of which I wrote in my second post to
> > > this thread never came out and claimed point-blank that the phenomena
> > > that were lectured about in the film were
How to tell the difference is a major problem. Especially for a child.
>
> Peter Nyikos
Walter Bushell
John Harshman <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
Pretty much without as much erudition.
richardal...@gmail.com
> On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>
> > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > fact."
>
> of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
> in the public schools.
>
> There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
> mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
> "scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
> the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
> of chance, or the work of a creator.
>
> The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
Wow! They kept that quiet.
So what research has the DI carried out, and where have they published
it? By the way, books don't represent research findings, and neither
do papers which purport to demonstrate limitations of some
evolutionary processes to drive evolutionary change. Research involves
acquiring data, formulating hypotheses from that data, testing those
hypotheses by the acquisition of further data, and presenting the
results in a way which allows it to be replicated by other
researchers.
How do they define "design" in the context of their "theory"?
How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
years ago) is the hallmark of "design"?
How does one measure "specified complexity", and on what basis have
they determined the limits of naturalistic processes to create such
complexity?
What research have they done into the characteristics of "designed"
vs. "non-designed" objects and systems which would allow an impartial
observer to detect "design"?
Where has all this ground-breaking research been carried out?
Where has it been published?
Why, if they are claiming to have a scientific theory, are they
demanding that we redefine science to allow for supernatural
explanations?
How does one engage in scientific research other than under the
assumption of naturalism?
Enquiring minds demand answers!
RF
> despite an anonymous "Wedge Document" that was never adopted by the DI
> itself.
>
> Ron O cherry-picked the above quote, as anyone checking out the above
> website can verify: the main emphasis is on trying to "teach the
> controversy" surrounding Darwinian explanations of evolution. There
> never is any recommendation that the schools teach about Intelligent
> Design, only the above statement that they should have the
> constitutional right to discuss it.
>
> As I said in another post, replying to Ron O, whose words appear on
> the first line of the excerpt:
>
> ----------------------------------- begin excerpt
>
> > I do not see any qualifiers about the Teacher's version of ID.
>
> Nor do I see any about the DI version of ID, prevaricator. The
> playing field would be level, except that your quote is taken out of a
> a context that makes it clear that the DI is covering its ass in case
> some teacher teaches his/her version of ID and claims the DI as the
> authority for it.
>
> Is that why you keep posting a link that doesn't take one to the
> actual context, so readers who aren't keen on which of us is telling
> the truth don't bother to click on the link within the link and are
> left up in the air as to which of us is telling the truth? Here is
> the RELEVANT url that doesn't run the same risk:http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
> ============== end of excerpt fromhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/10aa468962f878ef
>
> Peter Nyikos
richardal...@gmail.com
> On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> > pnyikos wrote:
> > > But mathematics does not follow the scientific Procrustean Bed of
> > > "hypothesis, observations to test the hypothesis, (provisional)
> > > conclusion". That's why I've never been able to come up with a
> > > project for my mathematically minded youngest daughter for the
> > > regional science fairs. Mathematical reasoning, which is essential
> > > for every theorem I have ever proven, does not fit the definition of
> > > "observation" that these science fairs seem to require.
>
> > Have you considered a simulation?
>
> I have trouble coming up with a simulation of a mathematical concept.
>
> > They're used a lot in science to test
> > the implications of all sorts of models, and you don't need any
> > "observations" to perform a useful "experiment".
>
> > >> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
> > >> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
> > >> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>
> > > Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
> > > microevolution.
>
> > Are you that naive about creationism?
>
> No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
> Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
> since.
Funny thing, but I read some books by Henry Morris ('Scientific
Creationism') and Duane Gish ('Evolution: The fossils say No!') way
back in the 1970s. At the time I was a Pentecostal Christian, but I
had already spent countless hours scrabbling around in the rocks
collecting fossils, so I had a pretty good understanding of what
fossil are, how to find them, and the extent and variation of the
deposits in which they are found.
The impression I got from both books was that the authors must have
known that some of what they had written is categorically false - i.e.
they were lying. Nothing I have read since by any creationist has led
me to think anything else. I knew that what those books contained was
false not because I had been indoctrinated by any authoritarian
scientific community, but because of my personal experience of fossil
collecting.
I have yet to come across any creationist source which is not riddled
with misrepresentation, distortion and outright falsehoods. I don't
ask anyone to take my word for this, which is why I have set aside a
part of my web site analysing several creationist sources to identify
such dishonesty.
http://plesiosaur.com/creationism/
I have invited creationists on numerous occasions to demonstrate that
I am incorrect in any of the instances of dishonesty I identify, but
no creationist seems to have the slightest interest in doing so.
I've invited creationists on numerous occasions to post a link to a
creationist source which is *not* riddled with misrepresentation,
distortion and outright falsehoods, but no creationist seems to have
the slightest interest in doing so.
I've invited creationists on numerous occasions to post a link to any
"evolutionist" site which is riddled with misrepresentation,
distortion and outright falsehoods, but no creationist seems to have
the slightest interest in doing so.
From this I conclude not only that creationist sources are dishonest,
but that creationists know that they are dishonest but find such
dishonesty is acceptable provided it comes from their own kind. Coming
as it does from those claiming the moral high ground it is utter
hypocrisy.
What other conclusion can one draw from the evidence?
RF
Ron O
> On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
> >http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
>
> > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > fact."
Note that Nyikos has no concept of what a teacher is doing when they
discuss a topic in the public school class room. Maybe the Discovery
Institute should have written something about the teacher discussing
this with school kids after class when they were not supposed to be
teaching the students something?
>
> Even more relevantly: it makes no assertion that the DI has any kind
> of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
> in the public schools.
What a bonehead. You were the one making up junk about the teacher's
version, and the whole pamphlet is written by the ID perps that have
been selling the intelligent design scam for arouind 15 years, and you
can make your leap about the teacher's version and not see the obvious
in front of your face. This isn't just a lame excuse, but just bogus
and dishonest denial.
>
> There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
> mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
> "scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
> the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
> of chance, or the work of a creator.
This is the Nyikos that claimed that the intelligent design scam was a
young science of only 15 years old. Do you want me to bring up that
quote? It was me that had to correct you about it being a very old
concept that had never amounted to anything for thousands of years.
There isn't a single intelligent design success in the entire history
of science. There has been a 100% failure rate for the assertions
that science has been able to test. Not only that, but the
intelligent design claims are usually so worthless that they can't be
tested directly (just like the current ID scam junk) but scientists
have to do the hard work and figure out what is actually going on.
There is literally nothing for some teacher to teach about the subject
until there is such a success. Just go to the Discovery Institute and
look for their list of ID successes. Zero should tell Nyikos
something, but it never does and the guy claims to be a
mathematician. What is the teacher going to teach? I never claimed
that the science existed, only that the ID perps are obviously
claiming that they have the ID science. If the guys that have been
selling the ID scam junk for 15 years don't have it, who does?
>
> The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
> despite an anonymous "Wedge Document" that was never adopted by the DI
> itself.
This is hilarious since the Biologic institute was only started by the
ID perps after both Behe and Minnich admitted that they nor no one
that they knew of was validating the ID science, not a single
pubilcation supporting the ID junk in a scientific journal. Behe
claimed that he only needed induction and didn't have to
scientifically test his claptrap. Minnich just claimed that he hadn't
gotten around to doing any testing, but he thought that it might be
possible.
The Discovery Institute has admitted to writing the Wedge document, so
it isn't "anonymous" in any sense that would absolve them of it.
Anyone can just read the document and see that the ID perps followed
their plan in the Wedge document consistently. About the only thing
that they did not do was produce the ID science, and the document had
nothing about resorting to running the bait and switch scam once the
jig was up and it was obvious that they never had the ID science to
teach. They did target legislators and school boards. They did make
their stupid video and have their "debates," They did all kinds of
publicity junk, no one denies that they tried to use intelliigent
design as the wedge, they just came up short on the actual science.
For not being officially adopted they sure followed the plan as if it
were adopted.
http://ncse.com/webfm_send/747
The fact that IDiots are willing to lie to themselves about the stupid
things is pathetic.
>
> Ron O cherry-picked the above quote, as anyone checking out the above
> website can verify: the main emphasis is on trying to "teach the
> controversy" surrounding Darwinian explanations of evolution. There
> never is any recommendation that the schools teach about Intelligent
> Design, only the above statement that they should have the
> constitutional right to discuss it.
Denial is stupid and you know it. How can anyone lie to themselves
like this. Not only that, but you are trying to defend a bunch of
scam artists that decided to use rubes like yourself as cannon fodder
in their movement. They know that their supporters have to be
ignorant, incompetent and or dishonest and you fit the bill.
>
> As I said in another post, replying to Ron O, whose words appear on
> the first line of the excerpt:
>
> ----------------------------------- begin excerpt
>
> > I do not see any qualifiers about the Teacher's version of ID.
>
> Nor do I see any about the DI version of ID, prevaricator. The
> playing field would be level, except that your quote is taken out of a
> a context that makes it clear that the DI is covering its ass in case
> some teacher teaches his/her version of ID and claims the DI as the
> authority for it.
Above I made a statement that is just as applicable as a response to
this nonsense as when he tried something similar above so I will just
put it in here.
QUOTE:
What a bonehead. You were the one making up junk about the teacher's
version. Not only that but the whole pamphlet is written by the ID
perps that have been selling the intelligent design scam for arouind
15 years, and you can make your leap about the teacher's version and
not see the obvious in front of your face. This isn't just a lame
excuse, but just bogus and dishonest denial.
END QUOTE:
No, you can't make this junk up. Nyikos is this lame and dishonest.
>
> Is that why you keep posting a link that doesn't take one to the
> actual context, so readers who aren't keen on which of us is telling
> the truth don't bother to click on the link within the link and are
> left up in the air as to which of us is telling the truth? Here is
> the RELEVANT url that doesn't run the same risk:http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
> ============== end of excerpt fromhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/10aa468962f878ef
I post the link because it is the official download site of the
Discovery Institute and there is no question who is responsible for
the pamphlet and what it is supposed to be about.
http://www.discovery.org/a/4299
The download site makes most of Nyikos' lame denial look as stupid as
it is. Why would Nyikos have to whine and lie about a link if he had
a real argument?
Ron Okimoto
pnyikos
AFAIK, it has everything to do with it.
> > You
> > seem a lot more motivated to argue with them than I am. IMHO, there
> > is only one thing that can save creationism from a long and lingering
> > death at the hands of universities and the media.
>
> > Islam.
>
> > If creationism ever became the dominant doctrine among militant
> > Muslims, I'd join in the fray myself.
against creationism, of course. It takes courage, but I have it.
> > But, a day or two before I returned to talk.origins, I saw a post by
> > Paul Gans, who was paranoid about creationists back in the 1990's,
> > attacking people with a negative view of Islam. So I don't think
> > people here are worried about such an eventuality.
>
> > So I won't worry about it unless I learn otherwise.
>
> Was the entire point there to take a dig at Gans? Otherwise I don't see one.
You seem to be wearing strange blinders. My point was that I don't
see any reason to involve myself with debate against creationists, as
long as they are vastly outnumbered in talk.origins. Gans was only
mentioned to underscore why I see no reason for it.
However, if the topic is interesting enough, I might sporadically
involve myself, as I've been doing with Suzanne on another thread.
Yes, a personal friend who is going for a Ph.D. in philosophy and is a
creationist. He equates microevolution with evolution within a kind,
accepts it, and repudiates macroevolution. The Henry Morris quote
made a favorable impression on him. We know that neither can convert
the other, so we simply agree to disagree on that and fill our time
talking about other things.
Anyway, I suggest you bring this equivalence up to creationists here
from time to time and see how they feel about it.
> > By the way, do you have any idea who cooked up the term "baramin", and
> > how?
>
> I do. Frank Marsh, 1941, on the basis of bad Hebrew.
Interesting. Thanks.
> >> merely a
> >> vague description of what "kinds" might be. Are you assuming that
> >> anything happening within a "kind" must by definition be microevolution?
>
> > It seems vague to you? I suspect it's because "family" is a
> > meaningless concept as far as you are concerned. In fact, the kinds
> > of nasty things you say about higher taxa might lead a naive person to
> > think that you don't see any difference between genera and phyla in
> > the Linnean classification.
>
> There is in fact no necessary difference. Do you think there's an
> objective definition of "family"?
There is none, but there is a well established practice that has made
for a situation where no traditional zoologist would ever call
something a phylum that is close to being a mere order in its distance
from other known animals.
I'm not sure about the situation in botany. I've always wondered why
dicots had such a small taxon.
> > But I think Henry Morris had a pretty good idea of the relative sizes
> > of various taxa of vertebrates, at least. I certainly have a good
> > one. There is some looseness, true: lumping all marsupials into the
> > same order was downright silly. I'd give them subclass or infraclass
> > status, but not class status.
>
> I'd be interested in your rationale for assigning particular ranks to
> groups. But I don't see how this would make Morris' definition less
> vague anyway.
See above about well established practice. You might as well ask what
distinguishes a minor C league in baseball from a major league. There
is no accepted definition (except to say which teams belong to which)
there either, but the difference in quality should be evident to
anyone comparing the level of play.
> >> Now, to a creationist, macroevolution is defined as "whatever didn't
> >> happen"; anything a creationist is willing to believe did happen is
> >> microevolution. But that's hardly a useful definition.
>
> > I wonder how many people in this newsgroup will agree with that; I
> > think it is hopelessly out of touch with what motivates creationism
> > among evangelicals.
>
> I find it interesting that you claim so much knowledge of creationism at
> one moment, and then very little knowledge at the next. I would be
> interested in your critique of my statement, though. What do you find
> wrong about it, and why
I've never seen anything like it outside of talk.origins. And you
know how kooky people can be, how out of touch with even the
mainstream of the things they embrace. Not as bad as Wretch Fossil,
but pretty darn bad.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
first response to him, I am sticking to the issue that I laid out in
my first post to this thread, the one to which he is responding here,
and putting brief summaries in brackets of the things I am snipping.
On Apr 14, 8:23 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Apr 13, 9:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> [earlier, incomplete version of the bait]
> but all the
> IDiot rubes ever get from them to teach is a stupid obfuscation scam
> that doesn't even mention that ID ever existed.
If so, then this would certainly be a switch from the more complete
description of the bait:
"they have the ID science for some [public school] teacher to teach"
>[digression into personal matters]
.
>> [my preamble to a quote which Ron O has used to support the above description]
.
>[more personal comments not bearing on the description of he bait]
Here follows that quote, from a Discovery Institute website:
> > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
>
> >Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> > that
>
>[skepticism by Ron O about the relevance of the distinction]
.
> > the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> > that they have the ID science for some teacher
> > to teach.
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
>
> In the post that I just linked to above we were also discussing this
> Discovery Institute quote.
I snipped that above, but now I restore it:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/98d7769dfb82872b?hl=en
It contains no further documentation for the next statement:
> And the Discovery Institute is claiming
> exactly what I claim.
Of course, if Ron O wants to bring in fresh documentation here, he is
welcome to do so. What he says next is something I've been harping on
for some time in other threads, and I am glad to see that we agree on
this much, at least:
> Anyone can just read the quote and understand
> that they are telling a teacher that it is legal to teach the science
> of intelligent design because intelligent design is a "legitimate"
> scientific theory.
.
>[unrelated dig at me]
> > Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> > public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>[confirmation of that by Ron O.]
> > I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> > as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> > alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> > this case.
Nor did he bring in any new evidence below, so I am continuing in the
above belief, but am not pressing for a verdict yet because no one
else has stated their attitude towards this issue yet.
> This is direct evidence that the ID perps are still claiming that they
> have the science of intelligent design for a teacher to teach. There
> is no question about that.
I question it, and would like to know from the other participants on
this thread where they stand on this matter.
>[general comments, mostly about the "switch," no new information about the bait]
> > [my preamble to my suggested verdict, below]
> It is a political scam. They aren't breaking any laws that I know of
I was thinking in terms of a civil lawsuit, not a criminal one.
>[more general comments, some of a personal nature]
.
> > [more preamble by me to:]
> > I naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > NOT PROVEN!
>
> This means proven beyond a shadow of doubt in Nyikos speak.
As a research mathematician, I know all about proof beyond a shadow of
a doubt, but I also know that it is very different from the "proof
beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of criminal courts, which in turn
is very different from the "preponderance of evidence" standard in
civil courts. Having served on a jury in a civil proceeding myself, I
confidently maintain that the evidence you've seen above falls well
below even that standard.
How do other participants on this thread view the matter? I have had
some feedback from Robert Camp which strongly suggests that he agrees
with me. [Of course, he is free to deny this.] Anyone else?
John Harshman
Go on.
The problem with that definition is two-fold. First, in discussions with
anyone, it helps if we mean the same things by the words we use. If
kinds are families, then "microevolution" to a creationist can
incorporate lots of what scientists mean by "macroevolution". Second,
this creationist definition of microevolution is circular and
non-operational. It's equivalent to defining macroevolution as what
doesn't happen. But how do you know it doesn't happen? Because kinds, by
definition, have no transitions between them. There can be no evidence
for macroevolution because whetever there is good evidence for is by
definition microevolution. Then we are left with deciding what kinds
are. An honest appraisal of the evidence would tell us that all life is
a single kind, and so all evolution is microevolution.
>>> By the way, do you have any idea who cooked up the term "baramin", and
>>> how?
>> I do. Frank Marsh, 1941, on the basis of bad Hebrew.
>
> Interesting. Thanks.
>
>>>> merely a
>>>> vague description of what "kinds" might be. Are you assuming that
>>>> anything happening within a "kind" must by definition be microevolution?
>>> It seems vague to you? I suspect it's because "family" is a
>>> meaningless concept as far as you are concerned. In fact, the kinds
>>> of nasty things you say about higher taxa might lead a naive person to
>>> think that you don't see any difference between genera and phyla in
>>> the Linnean classification.
>> There is in fact no necessary difference. Do you think there's an
>> objective definition of "family"?
>
> There is none, but there is a well established practice that has made
> for a situation where no traditional zoologist would ever call
> something a phylum that is close to being a mere order in its distance
> from other known animals.
I know you think those words mean something, but they don't. The only,
minimal, meaning is the hierarchical arrangement of names: a phylum
can't be inside a class, or an order inside a family, and so on. There's
nothing about "distance", however you think that might be measured.
> I'm not sure about the situation in botany. I've always wondered why
> dicots had such a small taxon.
>
>>> But I think Henry Morris had a pretty good idea of the relative sizes
>>> of various taxa of vertebrates, at least. I certainly have a good
>>> one. There is some looseness, true: lumping all marsupials into the
>>> same order was downright silly. I'd give them subclass or infraclass
>>> status, but not class status.
>> I'd be interested in your rationale for assigning particular ranks to
>> groups. But I don't see how this would make Morris' definition less
>> vague anyway.
>
> See above about well established practice.
I see only a wave of the hand.
> You might as well ask what
> distinguishes a minor C league in baseball from a major league. There
> is no accepted definition (except to say which teams belong to which)
> there either, but the difference in quality should be evident to
> anyone comparing the level of play.
Could be. But I see nothing comparable in taxonomy.
>>>> Now, to a creationist, macroevolution is defined as "whatever didn't
>>>> happen"; anything a creationist is willing to believe did happen is
>>>> microevolution. But that's hardly a useful definition.
>>> I wonder how many people in this newsgroup will agree with that; I
>>> think it is hopelessly out of touch with what motivates creationism
>>> among evangelicals.
>> I find it interesting that you claim so much knowledge of creationism at
>> one moment, and then very little knowledge at the next. I would be
>> interested in your critique of my statement, though. What do you find
>> wrong about it, and why
>
> I've never seen anything like it outside of talk.origins. And you
> know how kooky people can be, how out of touch with even the
> mainstream of the things they embrace. Not as bad as Wretch Fossil,
> but pretty darn bad.
Could you try to present something concrete here? I have no idea what
your actual objection is.
Ernest Major
<jhar...@pacbell.net> writes
>>> There is in fact no necessary difference. Do you think there's an
>>> objective definition of "family"?
>> There is none, but there is a well established practice that has
>>made
>> for a situation where no traditional zoologist would ever call
>> something a phylum that is close to being a mere order in its distance
>> from other known animals.
>
>I know you think those words mean something, but they don't. The only,
>minimal, meaning is the hierarchical arrangement of names: a phylum
>can't be inside a class, or an order inside a family, and so on.
>There's nothing about "distance", however you think that might be
>measured.
There is the observation that traditional zoologists classified as two
separate phyla organisms now placed as parts of a single family in a 3rd
phylum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siboglinidae
--
alias Ernest Major
Ron O
> The plaintiff, Ron O, has made his entry into this thread. In this
> first response to him, I am sticking to the issue that I laid out in
> my first post to this thread, the one to which he is responding here,
> and putting brief summaries in brackets of the things I am snipping.
>
> On Apr 14, 8:23 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 13, 9:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > [earlier, incomplete version of the bait]
> > but all the
> > IDiot rubes ever get from them to teach is a stupid obfuscation scam
> > that doesn't even mention that ID ever existed.
Snipping and lying about what you snip is stupid and dishonest.
Anyone can just go up to my post and see what you snipped out. Even
though it is brief, why is it incomplete? Just state your reasons
instead of just lying.
>
> If so, then this would certainly be a switch from the more complete
> description of the bait:
>
> "they have the ID science for some [public school] teacher to teach"
They are claiming that. What a bonehead. What is the pamphlet about?
The quote that you are discussing says just that. You can deny it all
you want, but who cares about how you can lie about something?
> >[digression into personal matters]
This is stupid.
> .
> >> [my preamble to a quote which Ron O has used to support the above description]
> .
> >[more personal comments not bearing on the description of he bait]
This is what Nyikos snipped out and is in denial about. He has
consistently lied about getting a description of the ID perp's bait
and switch scam.
QUOTE:
> After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
Nyikos has to keep lying about it because he has been so bogously
dishonest about the fact that he was told many times in no uncertain
terms what the bait and switch was and even who did it that lying
again is just second nature to him
This is a post where I look back and find several of the examples of
what Nyikos is denying about ever getting the description of the bait
and switch scam that the ID perps have been running. He was lyiing
then and he is lying now.
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/98d7769dfb82872b?hl=en
END QUOTE:
>
> Here follows that quote, from a Discovery Institute website:
>
> > > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
This link doesn't work in Google
>
> > >Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > > fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> > > that
>
> >[skepticism by Ron O about the relevance of the distinction]
He means the truth that he can't deal with.
> .
> > > the Discovery Institute is obviously still claiming
> > > that they have the ID science for some teacher
> > > to teach.
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
>
>
>
> > In the post that I just linked to above we were also discussing this
> > Discovery Institute quote.
>
> I snipped that above, but now I restore it:http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/98d7769dfb82872b?hl=en
>
> It contains no further documentation for the next statement:
>
> > And the Discovery Institute is claiming
> > exactly what I claim.
>
> Of course, if Ron O wants to bring in fresh documentation here, he is
> welcome to do so. What he says next is something I've been harping on
> for some time in other threads, and I am glad to see that we agree on
> this much, at least:
I don't need any further documentation. What is presented should be
enough for anyone. They have the pamphlet and the quote that you are
in denial about.
>
> > Anyone can just read the quote and understand
> > that they are telling a teacher that it is legal to teach the science
> > of intelligent design because intelligent design is a "legitimate"
> > scientific theory.
> .
> >[unrelated dig at me]
More truth that Nyikos can't counter with out snipping and lying about
it.
> > > Moreover, he has consistently maintained that "teacher" refers to
> > > public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
> >[confirmation of that by Ron O.]
Putting back what Nyikos should have addressed instead of pretending
that it never existed:
QUOTE:
The pamphlet that the quote comes from is about the Dover fiasco
where
the IDiots wanted to teach the nonexistent ID science to public
school
children. For some reason Nyikos has to try these lame distinctions
when they do not matter. There are no qualifiers that this statement
is not about public schools.
END QUOTE:
So what is Nyikos' excuse for making such lame distinctions in the
face of what the pamphlet was written to address? He can do nothing
but SNIP and go into denial.
> > > I haven't seen any evidence by Okimoto that is any less flimsy, as far
> > > as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> > > alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> > > this case.
>
> Nor did he bring in any new evidence below, so I am continuing in the
> above belief, but am not pressing for a verdict yet because no one
> else has stated their attitude towards this issue yet.
Why keep snipping my response and they making stupid and bogus
claims. Why not address my response?
>
> > This is direct evidence that the ID perps are still claiming that they
> > have the science of intelligent design for a teacher to teach. There
> > is no question about that.
>
> I question it, and would like to know from the other participants on
> this thread where they stand on this matter.
Well stop snipping and lying and address the reasons why it is not
good enough for you in the face of the reality of the situation. The
ID perps wrote the pamphlet to address their disastrous defeat in the
attempt of the Dover IDiots to teach the bogus ID science in the
public schools. What does Nyikos think that the ID perps are talking
about in this quote in the face of that reality? He can only snip and
deny the basis for the ID perps to have written the pamphlet and
produce that quote.
>
> >[general comments, mostly about the "switch," no new information about the bait]
Why even pretend?
> > > [my preamble to my suggested verdict, below]
> > It is a political scam. They aren't breaking any laws that I know of
>
> I was thinking in terms of a civil lawsuit, not a criminal one.
So what would be the basis of a civil lawsuit. Just think if you
could sue politicians for lying. Running bogus political scams is not
against the law and how would you prove injury from it? The guys with
the best case would be IDiots like yourself that have debased
themselves and resorted to bogus and dishonest behavior in order to
support the ID perps. If you could prove that you really believed the
ID perps and just were not playing along with the bogus scam, and that
it made you do insane things that affected your sanity or public image
you might have a case.
>
> >[more general comments, some of a personal nature]
> .
> > > [more preamble by me to:]
> > > I naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > > NOT PROVEN!
>
> > This means proven beyond a shadow of doubt in Nyikos speak.
>
> As a research mathematician, I know all about proof beyond a shadow of
> a doubt, but I also know that it is very different from the "proof
> beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of criminal courts, which in turn
> is very different from the "preponderance of evidence" standard in
> civil courts. Having served on a jury in a civil proceeding myself, I
> confidently maintain that the evidence you've seen above falls well
> below even that standard.
You don't seem to understand zero. What kind of pathetic
mathematician are you? How many ID sucesses have there been in the
entire history of science? How many legitimate verified scientific
theories of intelligent design do the ID perps have to teach in the
public schools? Why doesn't zero mean anything to you in terms of
what the ID perps are still claiming and the fact that you know that
the next IDiot rube that wants to teach the science of intelligent
design will have the bait and switch run on them because there hasn't
be a single IDiot rube that has ever gotten the ID science to teach
for the last 9 years that the ID perps have been running the bait and
switch? Zero should be easy for a mathematician to understand, but
you have to lie about it.
>
> How do other participants on this thread view the matter? I have had
> some feedback from Robert Camp which strongly suggests that he agrees
> with me. [Of course, he is free to deny this.] Anyone else?
>
> Peter Nyikos
What is there to agree with?
How can you be so bogus. You didn't address my response, you just
kept what you had written as if it wasn't as bogus as when you first
wrote it.
Ron Okimoto
Steven L.
"pnyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:44d2020e-185a-4c79...@v11g2000prb.googlegroups.com:
> On Apr 13, 10:39 am, chris thompson <chris.linthomp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Second, if the Discovery Institute wants to claim ID is a scientific
> > theory, and use that as a basis for bringing it into a public school
> > classroom (which is their stated goal- it is already legal to teach ID
> > in any private school that wants to) we have to assume they know the
> > definition of "theory". Scientific theories (as opposed to the
> > layman's definition of "theory", i.e., an unsupported guess) are well-
> > established explanations for myriad phenomena.
>
> Well, Behe says the following in the Dover transcript, so that
> assumption would seem to be correct, except for the "well-established"
> bit:
>
> 20 Under my definition, a scientific theory is a
> 21 proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical,
> 22 observable data and logical inferences.
>
> http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day11PMSession.pdf
> [The numbers in the margin refer to the line number in the page where
> this appears, page 38.
>
> >The reason they are
> > well-established is because over the course of time, significant
> > amounts of evidence have been accumulated to support the theory. If ID
> > really is a scientific theory, there should be lots of scientific
> > evidence in support of it.
>
> Would you say that Wegener's theory of continental drift was not a
> theory at all, because so far from being "well-established" in the
> eyes of the scientific community, it was widely disparaged during his
> lifetime?
When Wegener proposed continental drift, his own proposed mechanism--he
claimed the continents just plowed right through the basalt at the ocean
floor--was quickly shot down by his colleagues. That left him with some
interesting map concordances (the shapes of South America and Africa
seem to fit together, oh wow)--and that's all. At that point, it was no
longer a theory, but a hypothesis. And it would stay that way until the
second half of the 20th century when we learned more about plate
tectonics, and when measurements taken from space proved conclusively
that the continents were moving.
But it was still a *scientific* hypothesis. Wegener would still believe
that *some* natural mechanism must be responsible for continental drift,
even if his own turned out to be wrong.
-- Steven L.
Ron O
> On 4/13/2011 7:07 AM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
> >http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
>
> > fact." And yet Ron Okimoto has insisted that this very quote proves
> > that
>
> > that they have the ID science for some teacher
> > to teach.
> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8804178f839912a3
>
> > public school teachers on (at most) the American high school level.
>
> > as the "bait" is concered [he is more voluminous in his support of an
> > alleged "switch"] and I think that we can safely move to a verdict on
> > this case.
>
> > suit against the DI of "running a bait and switch scam," based only on
> > the evidence I have seen so far, the verdict would be, "Not guilty."
>
> > court would be [there is a classic anecdote about "black sheep in
> > naturally gravitate towards a Scottish verdict of:
>
> > NOT PROVEN!
>
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina
> >http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> > representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
>
> Okimoto's position. Rather, I have taken to snipping everything but the
> words and phrases "bait and switch", "rubes", "perps" and "scam" from
> his posts, leaving the essence of his real "argument" intact and in focus.
How could anyone be proud enough of their juvenile misdirection ploy
that they would bring it up again? That is how bogus the IDiots are.
Why couldn't you address the issue instead of snipping it all out and
concentrating on playing with yourself. Not once, but several times
as if it got better with use. This is the type of loser behavior that
is the hallmark of an IDiot. When did that become a reality for you?
When did you realize that you had to stoop that low to continue to lie
to yourself about reality. You know that you are only lying to
yourself because if you could you would have countered. Other people
claim that you have half a brain, and what did it tell you to do? Why
keep lying to yourself. What does it get you? Have you seen how
bogus and dishonest Nyikos has become trying to defend the ID perps
that sold you the ID scam? He has lied, snipped and lied, tryied
misdirection ploys, run, blamed the IDiot victims of the ID scam,
tried to redefine reality etc. You know that would have been you if
you would have tried, so you didn't even try. At least Nyikos gave it
a shot.
You just lied to yourself and ran. Just do something as simple as
this. Defend Nyikos' interpretation of the quote that he is going on
about in this thread. Read the pamphlet, acquaint yourself with the
particulars of the Dover fiasco and defend Nyikos' interpretation.
Lying to yourself about your own stupidity just compounds your
stupidity.
The only IDiots left that support the ID scam are the ignorant,
incompetent, and or dishonest. Therre isn't an IDiot posting that
doesn't fit that bill, and my guess is that you can't find a counter
example. What kind of person would support the ID scam artists when
they are running the bait and switch scam on their own creationist
support base? How could any competent and honest person justify that
reality? Really, what does that mean about the science of intelligent
design that the ID perps sold to the rubes?
Ron Okimoto
pnyikos
> > On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
[someone else wrote:]
> > > >> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
> > > >> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
> > > >> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>
> > > > Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
> > > > microevolution.
>
> > > Are you that naive about creationism?
>
> > No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
> > Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
> > since.
That is a single quote which I have been using purely for the purpose
of explaining to creationists and non-creationists where a prominent
creationist fixes the limits of evolution. So far from endorsing it,
I am firmly convinced that all metazoans are descended from a common
ancestor and think the evidence is pretty good for there being at most
three evolutionary trees since the end of what Woese calls
"annealing," for the three separate domains of life that Woese has
identified.
> Funny thing, but I read some books by Henry Morris ('Scientific
> Creationism') and Duane Gish ('Evolution: The fossils say No!') way
> back in the 1970s. At the time I was a Pentecostal Christian, but I
> had already spent countless hours scrabbling around in the rocks
> collecting fossils, so I had a pretty good understanding of what
> fossil are, how to find them, and the extent and variation of the
> deposits in which they are found.
> The impression I got from both books was that the authors must have
> known that some of what they had written is categorically false - i.e.
> they were lying. Nothing I have read since by any creationist has led
> me to think anything else. I knew that what those books contained was
> false not because I had been indoctrinated by any authoritarian
> scientific community, but because of my personal experience of fossil
> collecting.
And I would agree on the basis of what I have seen so far on your
website.
> I have yet to come across any creationist source which is not riddled
> with misrepresentation, distortion and outright falsehoods. I don't
> ask anyone to take my word for this, which is why I have set aside a
> part of my web site analysing several creationist sources to identify
> such dishonesty.
>
> http://plesiosaur.com/creationism/
Wow, I see there that you are a vertebrate paleontologist! Do you
specialize in other things besides plesiosaurs?
Vertebrate paleontology has been near and dear to my heart since I was
7 (and especially since I turned 11) and I have a daughter who shares
my love for the subject. That's why I'm hoping you can post regularly
to sci.bio.paleontology. I don't think we have a professional
vertebrate paleontologist there right now.
I posted a good bit to sci.bio.paleontology in the 1990's and 2000,
when it was still a modest but healthy newsgroup. When I returned
late last year after a decade of absence, I was appalled to see that
it was on the verge of extinction, almost completely the domain of
spammers advertising this or that (much of it having to do with sexual
stimulation).
I've tried to resuscitate the newsgroup, with the cooperation of John
Harshman, and the change is noticeable, but s.b.p. is still critically
endangered. I'd love to have you join us there.
> I have invited creationists on numerous occasions to demonstrate that
> I am incorrect in any of the instances of dishonesty I identify, but
> no creationist seems to have the slightest interest in doing so.
>
> I've invited creationists on numerous occasions to post a link to a
> creationist source which is *not* riddled with misrepresentation,
> distortion and outright falsehoods, but no creationist seems to have
> the slightest interest in doing so.
>
> I've invited creationists on numerous occasions to post a link to any
> "evolutionist" site which is riddled with misrepresentation,
> distortion and outright falsehoods, but no creationist seems to have
> the slightest interest in doing so.
I think I could do that third thing, right in the Ediacara archive,
but it would be in the area of abiogenesis, not evolution, of whose
reality I am firmly convinced.
There is some falsehood in the depiction of people in some of the
archives, but I gather you want to focus on the substantive issues of
evolution.
> From this I conclude not only that creationist sources are dishonest,
> but that creationists know that they are dishonest but find such
> dishonesty is acceptable provided it comes from their own kind. Coming
> as it does from those claiming the moral high ground it is utter
> hypocrisy.
>
> What other conclusion can one draw from the evidence?
How extensive is the sample to which you allude? Specifically, what
experience do you have in face-to-face contact with creationists?
All this has to do with the integrity of creatioists, not the truth of
creationism, which I've never taken seriously since the age of 7.
John Harshman
> On Apr 15, 3:50 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
> <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Apr 14, 1:12 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>>> On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> [someone else wrote:]
>>>>>> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
>>>>>> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
>>>>>> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>>>>> Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
>>>>> microevolution.
>>>> Are you that naive about creationism?
>>> No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
>>> Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
>>> since.
>
> That is a single quote which I have been using purely for the purpose
> of explaining to creationists and non-creationists where a prominent
> creationist fixes the limits of evolution.
You will note that he doesn't so much fix the limits as fuzz them up. He
presents no criteria, and supposes no correspondence between "kinds" and
any Linnean rank. The most he does is imply that no taxa ranked as
orders or above are likely to be single kinds. Why? We don't know.
pnyikos
Because, as you yourself have noted, the very concept of "genus",
"family" etc. in the Linnean system is fuzzed up, while cladism does
away with them altogether. So "kind" might correspond to "genus"
where *Drosophilia* is concerned, "family" where Equidae is concerned
[thereby neatly finessing the best evidence for macroevolution in the
fossil record] and species where *Homo sapiens* is concerned.
Note, I'm not saying Morris would agree with the above. Perhaps he
had some good intuitive ideas as to what "kinds" can encompass. There
are lots of clues in the Bible. For example: given that the OT
allows the eating of sheep but not of pigs, one can definitely infer
that these two sorts of artiodactyls are not of the same "kind" even
though they are both cloven-hoofed. [Yes, the OT had a pretty good
concept of *Artiodactyla.*]
> The most he does is imply that no taxa ranked as
> orders or above are likely to be single kinds. Why? We don't know.
The clues in the Bible impose common-sense limits to what creationists
will recognize as the same "kind". If you can find a single one that
thinks tapirs and horses, or rhinos and tapirs, are the same kind, I
would certainly like to hear about it.
By the way: have you been reading Ron O's posts to this thread and my
one reply to a post of his so far? I will be continuing in a very
similar vein in my replies to him for the rest of this month.
Comments?
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
In which case, Morris has done nothing twice: he has failed specifically
to define "kind" in terms of ranks which at any rate have no meaning.
> Note, I'm not saying Morris would agree with the above. Perhaps he
> had some good intuitive ideas as to what "kinds" can encompass. There
> are lots of clues in the Bible. For example: given that the OT
> allows the eating of sheep but not of pigs, one can definitely infer
> that these two sorts of artiodactyls are not of the same "kind" even
> though they are both cloven-hoofed. [Yes, the OT had a pretty good
> concept of *Artiodactyla.*]
That would require the assumption that a single kind must fall into a
single food-category. Can you present a justification for that assumption?
>> The most he does is imply that no taxa ranked as
>> orders or above are likely to be single kinds. Why? We don't know.
>
> The clues in the Bible impose common-sense limits to what creationists
> will recognize as the same "kind". If you can find a single one that
> thinks tapirs and horses, or rhinos and tapirs, are the same kind, I
> would certainly like to hear about it.
How does the bible provide such clues? It doesn't mention tapirs as far
as I know. So what clue have you generalized to reach this conclusion?
Now baraminologists commonly do get clues vrom the bible. Some go so far
as to claim that anything with its own word must be a kind, but I see no
justification for that. Any two things created on separate days must be
different kinds, which at least shows that birds aren't dinosaurs.
Humans are specifically mentioned (Genesis 2) as being separately
created, and there are apparently multiple kinds of fruit trees (also
Genesis 2). But there really are very few such clues, none of which I
can interpret as suggesting what to do with horses and tapirs.
> By the way: have you been reading Ron O's posts to this thread and my
> one reply to a post of his so far? I will be continuing in a very
> similar vein in my replies to him for the rest of this month.
> Comments?
I tend not to read anything by Ron O and certainly not any exchanges
between the two of you. If there's something worth reading in there, I
would like some hint of what it is before I bother looking.
pnyikos
mentioned, because it only has to do with certain technical terms like
"kind" and "microevolution," and what they mean to the two camps.
On Apr 18, 4:14 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Apr 18, 12:23 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
> >>> On Apr 15, 3:50 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
> >>> <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Apr 14, 1:12 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >>>>> On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>> [someone else wrote:]
> >>>>>>>> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
> >>>>>>>> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
> >>>>>>>> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
> >>>>>>> Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
> >>>>>>> microevolution.
> >>>>>> Are you that naive about creationism?
> >>>>> No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
> >>>>> Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
> >>>>> since.
> >>> That is a single quote which I have been using purely for the purpose
> >>> of explaining to creationists and non-creationists where a prominent
> >>> creationist fixes the limits of evolution.
And *Drosophilia* is a genus, so it may well be considered one "kind"
by Morris:
Whatever precisely
is meant by the term "kind" (Hebrew *min*), it does indicate
the limitations of variation. Each organism was to reproduce
after its own kind, not after some other kind. Exactly what
this corresponds to in terms of the modern Linnaean
classification
system is a matter to be decided by future research. It will
probably be found eventually that the *min* often is identical
with the species, sometimes with the genus, and possibly once
in
a while with the "family". Practically never is variation
possible outside the biologic family.
Henry M. Morris, _The Genesis Record, Baker Book
House,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, pp. 63-64
> >> You will note that he doesn't so much fix the limits as fuzz them up. He
> >> presents no criteria, and supposes no correspondence between "kinds" and
> >> any Linnean rank.
>
> > Because, as you yourself have noted, the very concept of "genus",
> > "family" etc. in the Linnean system is fuzzed up, while cladism does
> > away with them altogether. So "kind" might correspond to "genus"
> > where *Drosophilia* is concerned, "family" where Equidae is concerned
> > [thereby neatly finessing the best evidence for macroevolution in the
> > fossil record] and species where *Homo sapiens* is concerned.
>
> In which case, Morris has done nothing twice: he has failed specifically
> to define "kind" in terms of ranks which at any rate have no meaning.
In your opinion. There is established practice among classical
systematists of vertebrates that precludes too much leeway in these
categories. *Pogonophora* shows the risks of this practice where
there is no rich fossil history as for the vertebrates, but we have
enough fossils among the vertebrates not to go too badly astray.
> > Note, I'm not saying Morris would agree with the above. Perhaps he
> > had some good intuitive ideas as to what "kinds" can encompass. There
> > are lots of clues in the Bible. For example: given that the OT
> > allows the eating of sheep but not of pigs, one can definitely infer
> > that these two sorts of artiodactyls are not of the same "kind" even
> > though they are both cloven-hoofed. [Yes, the OT had a pretty good
> > concept of *Artiodactyla.*]
>
> That would require the assumption that a single kind must fall into a
> single food-category.
You are trying to make this too cut and dried. It stands to reason,
though, that being forbidden to eat something would preclude it being
classified as the same "kind" as something that the Jews were
*ordered* to eat in conjunction with the first Passover.
>
> >> The most he does is imply that no taxa ranked as
> >> orders or above are likely to be single kinds. Why? We don't know.
>
> > The clues in the Bible impose common-sense limits to what creationists
> > will recognize as the same "kind". If you can find a single one that
> > thinks tapirs and horses, or rhinos and tapirs, are the same kind, I
> > would certainly like to hear about it.
>
> How does the bible provide such clues? It doesn't mention tapirs as far
> as I know. So what clue have you generalized to reach this conclusion?
> Now baraminologists commonly do get clues vrom the bible. Some go so far
> as to claim that anything with its own word must be a kind, but I see no
> justification for that. Any two things created on separate days must be
> different kinds, which at least shows that birds aren't dinosaurs.
> Humans are specifically mentioned (Genesis 2) as being separately
> created, and there are apparently multiple kinds of fruit trees (also
> Genesis 2). But there really are very few such clues, none of which I
> can interpret as suggesting what to do with horses and tapirs.
A close look at anatomy will support the hypothesis that they are
about as far apart as sheep and pigs, IMO. [I stick to anatomy since
the people of the OT knew nothing about biochemistry, nor about
fossils.] I think any creationist who decided that Perissodactyls
constitute one "kind" would have a hard time arguing otherwise.
And yet, *Hyracotherium* is very close to being the last common
ancestor of the whole order, according to Romer and/or Colbert. I
suppose, being a cladophile, you would pronounce that statement to be
meaningless.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
Well, for one thing, I snipped all personal accusations out of my one
reply so far, and will continue to do so until the end of the month.
For another, I am narrowly focused on the issue of whether the
Discovery Institute people actually claimed:
"they have the ID science for some
[public school] teacher to teach"
See
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9f9982979877a375
That is the way I will continue on this thread, in response to him, at
least for the rest of this week. As for the rest of the month, I
might be persuaded to go back to the version of "the bait" that
doesn't explicitly mention public school teachers, but only if he
states that it is a different "bait" from the one described above.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 13, 4:08 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>
> > > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > > fact."
>
> > Even more relevantly: it makes no assertion that the DI has any kind
> > of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
> > in the public schools.
>
> > There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
> > mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
> > "scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
> > the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
> > of chance, or the work of a creator.
>
> > The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
>
> Wow! They kept that quiet.
Did you miss what I wrote in reply to "Grandbank"?
______________________________________________
Did you think I meant "scientific research"? I wouldn't be the least
bit surprised to learn that 99% of the "research" the DI does is the
kind of stuff that passes for research in the humanities, *mutatis
mutandis* : searches of the scientific literature for actual
scientific research done by others, which they then interpret in the
light of various standards they have as to what would constitute
evidence of intelligent design.
But even that kind of "research" is very remote from the pedagogy of
the public high schools. And that was my point.`
========================
> So what research has the DI carried out, and where have they published
> it? By the way, books don't represent research findings, and neither
> do papers which purport to demonstrate limitations of some
> evolutionary processes to drive evolutionary change. Research involves
> acquiring data, formulating hypotheses from that data, testing those
> hypotheses by the acquisition of further data, and presenting the
> results in a way which allows it to be replicated by other
> researchers.
Yes, it looks like you really did miss that reply.
> How do they define "design" in the context of their "theory"?
>
> How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
> incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
> years ago)
I've only seen hints of it documented. Can you give me a quote that
clearly shows it?
> is the hallmark of "design"?
They haven't, and they aren't making that claim. They have various
criteria for when someone might infer design, as in the following
website:
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.10.27.Disciplined_Science.htm
Note that no such sweeping claim as you suggest is made for
Irreducible Complexity anywhere.
[...]
> Why, if they are claiming to have a scientific theory, are they
> demanding that we redefine science to allow for supernatural
> explanations?
I have not seen any such demand in any non-anonymous document
associated with the DI. AFAIK the DI is trying to establish the
existence of design without going into details about the nature of the
designer[s]--other than, of course, the fact that it is/they are/were
intelligent. But it need not involve an intelligence greater than our
own.
> How does one engage in scientific research other than under the
> assumption of naturalism?
>
> Enquiring minds demand answers!
I hope mine don't disappoint you too much.
John Harshman
Or may not. Who can tell? That's my point, that Morris has defined
nothing here. Of course we were originally talking about microevolution,
and Morris doesn't even pretend to address that in this quote, so I'm
not sure why we're talking about him at all.
> "Whatever precisely is meant by the term "kind" (Hebrew *min*), it
> does indicate the limitations of variation. Each organism was to
> reproduce after its own kind, not after some other kind. Exactly what
> this corresponds to in terms of the modern Linnaean classification
> system is a matter to be decided by future research. It will probably
> be found eventually that the *min* often is identical with the
> species, sometimes with the genus, and possibly once in a while with
> the "family". Practically never is variation possible outside the
> biologic family." Henry M. Morris, _The Genesis Record, Baker Book
> House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, pp. 63-64 >
>
>>>> You will note that he doesn't so much fix the limits as fuzz them up. He
>>>> presents no criteria, and supposes no correspondence between "kinds" and
>>>> any Linnean rank.
>>> Because, as you yourself have noted, the very concept of "genus",
>>> "family" etc. in the Linnean system is fuzzed up, while cladism does
>>> away with them altogether. So "kind" might correspond to "genus"
>>> where *Drosophilia* is concerned, "family" where Equidae is concerned
>>> [thereby neatly finessing the best evidence for macroevolution in the
>>> fossil record] and species where *Homo sapiens* is concerned.
>> In which case, Morris has done nothing twice: he has failed specifically
>> to define "kind" in terms of ranks which at any rate have no meaning.
>
> In your opinion. There is established practice among classical
> systematists of vertebrates that precludes too much leeway in these
> categories.
Is there? Can you point to anything of the sort, or is it just the
unwritten rule? There have certainly been claims that ranks correspond
to something real, but I have never seen that supported.
> *Pogonophora* shows the risks of this practice where
> there is no rich fossil history as for the vertebrates, but we have
> enough fossils among the vertebrates not to go too badly astray.
How do fossils tell us what families are? Can you back this up with any
genuine, objective criteria, or will you continue merely to allege that
you're right?
>>> Note, I'm not saying Morris would agree with the above. Perhaps he
>>> had some good intuitive ideas as to what "kinds" can encompass. There
>>> are lots of clues in the Bible. For example: given that the OT
>>> allows the eating of sheep but not of pigs, one can definitely infer
>>> that these two sorts of artiodactyls are not of the same "kind" even
>>> though they are both cloven-hoofed. [Yes, the OT had a pretty good
>>> concept of *Artiodactyla.*]
>> That would require the assumption that a single kind must fall into a
>> single food-category.
>
> You are trying to make this too cut and dried. It stands to reason,
> though, that being forbidden to eat something would preclude it being
> classified as the same "kind" as something that the Jews were
> *ordered* to eat in conjunction with the first Passover.
So you allege. But do you have a rational reason for saying so? As far
as I know, baraminologists make no such claim.
>>>> The most he does is imply that no taxa ranked as
>>>> orders or above are likely to be single kinds. Why? We don't know.
>>> The clues in the Bible impose common-sense limits to what creationists
>>> will recognize as the same "kind". If you can find a single one that
>>> thinks tapirs and horses, or rhinos and tapirs, are the same kind, I
>>> would certainly like to hear about it.
>> How does the bible provide such clues? It doesn't mention tapirs as far
>> as I know. So what clue have you generalized to reach this conclusion?
>> Now baraminologists commonly do get clues vrom the bible. Some go so far
>> as to claim that anything with its own word must be a kind, but I see no
>> justification for that. Any two things created on separate days must be
>> different kinds, which at least shows that birds aren't dinosaurs.
>> Humans are specifically mentioned (Genesis 2) as being separately
>> created, and there are apparently multiple kinds of fruit trees (also
>> Genesis 2). But there really are very few such clues, none of which I
>> can interpret as suggesting what to do with horses and tapirs.
>
> A close look at anatomy will support the hypothesis that they are
> about as far apart as sheep and pigs, IMO.
Since you have not established that sheep and pigs are different kinds,
even if you can define "about as far apart", you have shown nothing. And
I don't think you can define it, nor do I think you can support any
claim that kinds must incorporate particular amounts of variation.
> [I stick to anatomy since
> the people of the OT knew nothing about biochemistry, nor about
> fossils.] I think any creationist who decided that Perissodactyls
> constitute one "kind" would have a hard time arguing otherwise.
Why would a modern creationist be limited to sources of data known to
ancient people? And I don't know what you mean by "otherwise".
> And yet, *Hyracotherium* is very close to being the last common
> ancestor of the whole order, according to Romer and/or Colbert. I
> suppose, being a cladophile, you would pronounce that statement to be
> meaningless.
Being a rational human being, I would indeed call it meaningless.
Science has advanced conceptually (as well as in other ways) since
Simpson and Colbert, fine scientists though they were. You may choose to
ignore the last 30-odd years, but I don't.
Ernest Major
<490e6d64-3795-43e8...@l2g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> writes
>> How do they define "design" in the context of their "theory"?
>>
>> How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
>> incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
>> years ago)
>
>I've only seen hints of it documented. Can you give me a quote that
>clearly shows it?
Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of
Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No 5,
Sept 1918, pp 422-499
http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/3/5/422
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html
--
alias Ernest Major
richardal...@gmail.com
> On Apr 15, 3:40 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Apr 13, 4:08 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > For over four months now, Ron Okimoto has posted untold thousands of
> > > > lines in the service of the accusation that evidently means so much to
> > > > him: the allegation that the Discovery Institute (DI) is running a
> > > > "bait and switch scam".
>
> > > > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > > > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > > > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach". He
> > > > has taken to claiming that the following cherry-picked quote from a
> > > > DI website establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt:
>
> > > > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > > > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > > > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > > > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > > > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > > > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > > > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
>
So, in other words, they have the untested assertion that certain
characteristics of systems are the hallmark of design, and they trawl
through the research findings of others and claim that they support
their untested assertion.
That isn't research. It's apologetics.
>
> > How do they define "design" in the context of their "theory"?
>
> > How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
> > incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
> > years ago)
>
> I've only seen hints of it documented. Can you give me a quote that
> clearly shows it?
Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of
Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No
5, Sept 1918, pp 422-499.
http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/3/5/422
>
> > is the hallmark of "design"?
>
> They haven't, and they aren't making that claim.
What on earth was Michael Behe defending in the Dover trial if that is
the case?
> They have various
> criteria for when someone might infer design, as in the following
> website:http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.10.27.Disciplined_Scien...
>
Let's see:
"First, evolutionary biology has been so hugely unsuccessful as a
scientific theory in accounting for the origin of life and the
emergence of biological complexity that it does not deserve a monopoly
regardless what state of formation ID has reached. Second, ID is
logically speaking the only alternative to a mechanistic evolutionary
biology."
1 - Evolutionary biology is not a theory of the origin of life. It's a
theory which explains the diversity of living organisms.
2 - Evolutionary biology provides a robust theory for the "emergence
of complexity".
3 - There is no other scientific theory to explain the "emergence of
complexity".
4 - Even if evolutionary biology did not provide a robust explanation,
the alternative is not ID, but some other "mechanistic" (by which I
presume he means 'naturalistic' scientific explanation.
"Techniques, methods, and criteria of design detection are widely
employed in various special sciences (like archeology, cryptography,
and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI). "
Flatly false. Archaeologists, cryptographers and SETI researchers
*don't* look for "design". They look for artificiality, based on the
known properties of artificial objects and systems.
The whole article is riddled with such misrepresentations and
falsehoods. It doesn't present any evidence whatsoever that the
critera it suggests are the hallmarks of "designed" systems, or
suggest any research programme to find out. Empty assertion is not
evidence, and empty assertion is not research.
> Note that no such sweeping claim as you suggest is made for
> Irreducible Complexity anywhere.
No, but that is an article by Dembski. Behe asserts in his books and
articles that irreducible complexity *is* the hallmark of design - a
position he defended (rather badly) during the Dover v. Kitzmiller
trial. Dembski, of course, ran away from the possibility of having his
assertions being subjected to cross-examination. Rather telling that
before the trial he wrote "I’m waiting for the day when the hearings
are not voluntary but involve subpoenas in which evolutionists are
deposed at length on their views. On that happy day, I can assure you
they won’t come off looking well." and that his response to the judges
ruling was an animation of Judge Jones to which he had added fart
noises.
>
> [...]
>
> > Why, if they are claiming to have a scientific theory, are they
> > demanding that we redefine science to allow for supernatural
> > explanations?
>
> I have not seen any such demand in any non-anonymous document
> associated with the DI.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/does-id-presuppose-a-mechanistic-view-of-nature/
Here's William Dembski claiming that we should allow for "the infinite
personal transcendent creator God of Christianity" as an explanation.
By the way, why should it matter if the document is anonymous or not
if it is posted on the DIs web site?
> AFAIK the DI is trying to establish the
> existence of design without going into details about the nature of the
> designer[s]
...but specifically includes the possibility that the designer uses
supernatural methods.
>--other than, of course, the fact that it is/they are/were
> intelligent. But it need not involve an intelligence greater than our
> own.
>
> > How does one engage in scientific research other than under the
> > assumption of naturalism?
>
> > Enquiring minds demand answers!
>
> I hope mine don't disappoint you too much.
Well yes it has. You have not offered any proposition for how one can
carry out scientific research other than under the assumption of
naturalism. Unsupported assertion, misrepresentation and outright
falsehoods are not a scientific research programme.
RF
richardal...@gmail.com
So go ahead and do it.
> but it would be in the area of abiogenesis, not evolution, of whose
> reality I am firmly convinced.
So what?
If you can demonstrate that the site is riddled with
misrepresentation, distortion and outright falsehoods, go ahead and do
so. It's worth noting that in some of the instances of falsehood I
identify in creationist sources it seems inescapable that they are
promoted with the knowledge that they are false and with the intent to
deceive. I call this lying.
>
> There is some falsehood in the depiction of people in some of the
> archives, but I gather you want to focus on the substantive issues of
> evolution.
Actually, if you are making accusations of falsehood I suggest it's up
to you to provide evidence to support your assertions.
>
> > From this I conclude not only that creationist sources are dishonest,
> > but that creationists know that they are dishonest but find such
> > dishonesty is acceptable provided it comes from their own kind. Coming
> > as it does from those claiming the moral high ground it is utter
> > hypocrisy.
>
> > What other conclusion can one draw from the evidence?
>
> How extensive is the sample to which you allude?
I've read a lot of creationist literature and have yet to come across
any which is not riddled with misrepresentation, distortion and
outright falsehoods. I've analysed a representative sample.
If you know of any creationist source which is *not* riddled with
misrepresentation, distortion and outright falsehoods feel free to
post a reference.
> Specifically, what
> experience do you have in face-to-face contact with creationists?
Why should I need face-to-fact contact with creationists to
demonstrate that the sources on which they rely are riddled with
misrepresentation, distortion and outright falsehoods? As it happens,
I have had face-to-fact contact with creationists and have found it
impossible to hold a rational discussion with them.
>
> All this has to do with the integrity of creatioists, not the truth of
> creationism, which I've never taken seriously since the age of 7.
So why are you defending ID?
RF
pnyikos
On Apr 19, 6:16 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 18, 4:30 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 15, 3:50 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Apr 14, 1:12 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > > The impression I got from both books was that the authors must have
> > > known that some of what they had written is categorically false - i.e.
> > > they were lying. Nothing I have read since by any creationist has led
> > > me to think anything else. I knew that what those books contained was
> > > false not because I had been indoctrinated by any authoritarian
> > > scientific community, but because of my personal experience of fossil
> > > collecting.
>
> > And I would agree on the basis of what I have seen so far on your
> > website.
>
> > > I have yet to come across any creationist source which is not riddled
> > > with misrepresentation, distortion and outright falsehoods. I don't
> > > ask anyone to take my word for this, which is why I have set aside a
> > > part of my web site analysing several creationist sources to identify
> > > such dishonesty.
>
> > >http://plesiosaur.com/creationism/
>
> > Wow, I see there that you are a vertebrate paleontologist! Do you
> > specialize in other things besides plesiosaurs?
Why didn't you answer this question? I was hoping to make a
meaningful contact with you.
> > Vertebrate paleontology has been near and dear to my heart since I was
> > 7 (and especially since I turned 11) and I have a daughter who shares
> > my love for the subject. That's why I'm hoping you can post regularly
> > to sci.bio.paleontology. I don't think we have a professional
> > vertebrate paleontologist there right now.
Paging John Harshman! Do we have anyone besides the person who posted
on mesonychids? And even in her case--did she post there only because
she saw the posts in talk.origins?
> > I posted a good bit to sci.bio.paleontology in the 1990's and 2000,
> > when it was still a modest but healthy newsgroup. When I returned
> > late last year after a decade of absence, I was appalled to see that
> > it was on the verge of extinction, almost completely the domain of
> > spammers advertising this or that (much of it having to do with sexual
> > stimulation).
>
> > I've tried to resuscitate the newsgroup, with the cooperation of John
> > Harshman, and the change is noticeable, but s.b.p. is still critically
> > endangered. I'd love to have you join us there.
Why no response? Are you a *professional* vertebrate paleontologist?
Are you bored with your work and trying to get away from it on Usenet?
Remainder deleted, to be replied to only on talk.origins since it
involves creationism vs. evolution.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what you mean by "the hallmark
of". And where do you get the idea that they are untested? I have
proposed a number of tests myself as to why they might be (very weak,
so far) evidence of design.
>and they trawl
> through the research findings of others and claim that they support
> their untested assertion.
Do you have a specific example in mind? The only thing I can think of
is a very careless statement about the connection between IC and ID by
the DI, and I have Behe's agreement that it ought to be changed.
> That isn't research.
It is what passes for research in the humanities. Lots of untested
assumptions are floating around as to the connection between, to cite
just one example, the theme of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ and the
theme of Goethe's _Faust_.
> It's apologetics.
I await a specific example.
>
> > > How do they define "design" in the context of their "theory"?
>
> > > How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
> > > incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
> > > years ago)
>
> > I've only seen hints of it documented. Can you give me a quote that
> > clearly shows it?
>
> Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of
> Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No
> 5, Sept 1918, pp 422-499.
>
> http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/3/5/422
I'll look closely at it later this week. I am rather pressed for time
now.
> > > is the hallmark of "design"?
>
> > They haven't, and they aren't making that claim.
>
> What on earth was Michael Behe defending in the Dover trial if that is
> the case?
Behe only makes very tentative claims about the connection between IC
and ID, noting that there are indirect paths that could occur, and so
he is very cautious about saying that any DID occur.
After all, he is a scientist, trained not to jump to conclusions but
to make only those conclusions which the evidence warrants.
If you disagree, please cite something from his Dover testimony.
[snip a lot, to be addressed when I have more time]
>
> > AFAIK the DI is trying to establish the
> > existence of design without going into details about the nature of the
> > designer[s]
>
> ...but specifically includes the possibility that the designer uses
> supernatural methods.
"possibility" is all. But they also include the opposite possibility,
and I stick to the opposite religiously [excuse the pun] in this
newsgroup.
> >--other than, of course, the fact that it is/they are/were
> > intelligent. But it need not involve an intelligence greater than our
> > own.
And that is the only level of intelligence that I assume in this
newsgroup.
> > > How does one engage in scientific research other than under the
> > > assumption of naturalism?
>
> > > Enquiring minds demand answers!
>
> > I hope mine don't disappoint you too much.
>
> Well yes it has.
I have barely begun to give them. I'd appreciate it if you'd hear me
out before making comments like this.
>You have not offered any proposition for how one can
> carry out scientific research other than under the assumption of
> naturalism.
Nor will I. As for the DI, as long as the possibility of a
naturalistic explanation exists, the hypothesis that this or that is
designed is perfectly legitimate.
[pointless-looking truism deleted]
Peter Nyikos
chris thompson
chris thompson
What are the rules for assigning organisms to a particular kind?
What rules do you use to make the dividing lines? Are there any
categories above or below kind? Is there a Tiger kind and a Lion
kind, or do they fall into some sort of Cat kind? If there's a
Cat kind, what makes it different from "Felidae"? And if there's a
Cat kind, are Housecats and Jaguars and Pumas and Lynxes all part
that kind? If they don't all belong to the same kind, what are
the rules for excluding them? What about Hyeanas? Are they in a Dog
kind, a Cat kind, or their own? How many Kangaroo kinds are
there please, and do Kangaroo Rats and Kangaroo Mice belong there?
Are South American Possums in the same kind as Australian Possums?
How about Red Wolves, Gray Wolves, Huskies, Akitas, Cockapoos,
Coyotes, and Tasmanian Wolves? Speaking of Tasmanian Wolves, how does
the kind concept deal with extinct species?
Thanks,
Chris
pnyikos
to his second post sticks to the substantive issue, deleting all
remarks that aren't directly relevant to it in some way. This time I
only use [...] to denote snips, since I have not gotten any feedback
from others other than Ron O about the brief descriptions I used in my
earlier post. [I do make one at one point,though.]
On Apr 15, 7:55 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Apr 13, 10:08 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach".
Public school teacher, that is. In support of this description, he
has posted the following from a DI website:
> > > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
> > > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
> > >http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
>
> > > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > > fact."
[...]
> Maybe the Discovery
> Institute should have written something about the teacher discussing
> this with school kids after class when they were not supposed to be
> teaching the students something?
They could have, but that wasn't one of the many points they were
making in the website.
> > Even more relevantly: it makes no assertion that the DI has any kind
> > of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
> > in the public schools.
>
[...]
> the whole pamphlet is written by the ID perps that have
> been selling the intelligent design scam for arouind 15 years, and you
> can make your leap about the teacher's version
Hardly a leap. See below.
[...]
> > There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
> > mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
> > "scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
> > the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
> > of chance, or the work of a creator.
>
> This is the Nyikos that claimed that the intelligent design scam was a
> young science of only 15 years old.
What I have been maintaining is that the particular methodology of
the Discovery Institute (DI) is only about 15 years old. It's
fairly sophisticated--much more sophisticated than the methodology of
that film, and probably not suitable for presentation on the high
school level. Take a look at the numbered descriptions starting about
halfway down and see whether you disagree:
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.10.27.Disciplined_Science.htm
[...]
> There is literally nothing for some teacher to teach about the subject
> until there is such a success.
We mathematicians discuss things all the time without there being any
success. The Twin Primes Conjecture has been discussed for over a
century with nothing resembling success. It is a mystery, and there
is nothing wrong with teachers teaching about the mysteries of
science.
It IS a mystery how the one species of bird has been able to migrate
over thousands of miles of trackless ocean to find a small island year
after year. That is one of the mysteries that 1950's film relates.
We have some naturalistic conjectures but they are largely untested,
and in the meantime the teacher is free to ask her pupils to think
about whether the known laws of science, are adequate to account for
it.
If they do not, then the natural alternative is intelligent design--
but not necessarily by supernatural agents; one might conjecture
genetic engineering by intelligent visitors from another solar system.
[...]
> What is the teacher going to teach?
See above for just one of many possible examples that predate the DI
by a wide margin.
> I never claimed
> that the science existed, only that the ID perps are obviously
> claiming that they have the ID science.
But not necessarily on the public school level. They may not have
anything worthwhile to add to expositions like that in the film on
that score. As I said:
> > The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
> > despite an anonymous "Wedge Document" that was never adopted by the DI
> > itself.
[...]
What I deleted just now are undocumented claims about Behe and Minnich
that don't seem to bear on the question of whether the DI is guilty of
the "bait" described at the beginning.
> The Discovery Institute has admitted to writing the Wedge document,
What do you mean by this--that it has admitted that it was put
together by a whole panel of authors?
> They did target legislators and school boards.
In a way that alleged that they had information about ID, suitable for
teaching on the public school level, and not available from well-known
sources like that 1950's film?
> http://ncse.com/webfm_send/747
The above is the url for the Wedge document.
[....]
About the website from which the quote at the beginning was taken:
> the main emphasis is on trying to "teach the
> > controversy" surrounding Darwinian explanations of evolution. There
> > never is any recommendation that the schools teach about Intelligent
> > Design, only the above statement that they should have the
> > constitutional right to discuss it.
[...]
> > As I said in another post, replying to Ron O, whose words appear on
> > the first line of the excerpt:
>
> > ----------------------------------- begin excerpt
>
> > > I do not see any qualifiers about the Teacher's version of ID.
>
> > Nor do I see any about the DI version of ID, prevaricator. The
> > playing field would be level, except that your quote is taken out of a
> > a context that makes it clear that the DI is covering its ass in case
> > some teacher teaches his/her version of ID and claims the DI as the
> > authority for it.
>
> Above I made a statement that is just as applicable as a response to
> this [...]
And I have critiqued it above.
> > ============== end of excerpt from
> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/10aa468962f878ef
>
> I post the link because it is the official download site of the
> Discovery Institute and there is no question who is responsible for
> the pamphlet and what it is supposed to be about.
>
> http://www.discovery.org/a/4299
This seems to be the only relevant portion of that website:
Discovery Institute has published its own guide,
The Theory of Intelligent Design: A briefing packet
for educators to help them understand the debate
between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design.
Click here to download a PDF.
Now a click takes one to the website from which the quote at the
beginning was taken:
.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1453
[...]
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
wrote:
This, by Wayne Frair, doesn't answer those questions, but it does give
you a sense of how today's baraminologists (yeah, it kinda sticks in
the throat) are ostensibly trying to works these things out. Take note
of Rule #1.
----------------------------------
"Guidelines
In accomplishing the goal of separating parts of polybaramins,
partitioning apobaramins, building monobaramins and characterizing
holobaramins, a taxonomist needs guidelines for deciding what belongs
to a particular monobaraminic branch. These standards will vary
depending upon the groups being considered, but general guidelines
which have been utilized include:
1. Scripture claims (used in baraminology but not in discontinuity
systematics). This has priority over all other considerations. For
example humans are a separate holobaramin because they separately were
created (Genesis 1 and 2). However, even as explained by Wise in his
1990 oral presentation, there is not much relevant taxonomic
information in the Bible. Also, ReMine’s discontinuity systematics,
because it is a neutral scientific enterprise, does not include the
Bible as a source of taxonomic information.
2. Hybridization. Historically Marsh and others have placed this
criterion second only to the Bible; for if viable offspring could be
obtained from a cross between two different forms, this would be
definitive of their monobaraminic status. However, we realize today
that the lack of known hybridization between two members from
different populations of organisms does not necessarily by itself mean
that they are unrelated. The hybridization criterion probably will
retain validity, but it is being reconsidered in the light of modern
genetics.
3. Ontogeny, namely the development of an individual from embryo to
adult. Hartwig-Scherer (1998) suggested that comparative ontogeny
followed hybridization in importance as a criterion for membership in
a particular type.
4. Lineage. Is there evidence of a clear-cut lineage between and among
either or both fossil and living forms.
5. Structure (morphology) and physiology (function). Structures may be
macroscopic (large entities such as body organs), microscopic (small,
and observed using magnification), and molecular (chemical)
configurations.
6. Fossils in rock layers. These studies can include locations of
fossil forms in the rock layers, and may entail considerations of
Flood sediments.
7. Ecology. It is important to comprehend an organism’s niche, that is
to say the region where it lives and how it interacts with the
environment including other living things."
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/37/37_2/baraminology.htm
-------------------------------------
Sometimes these methods produce answers they like, sometimes they
don't and the results are disputed or ignored. Right now they don't
seem to be able to say much of anything for sure, and I'm guessing
it's going to stay that way.
RLC
Walter Bushell
<cf6d6f10-701f-4e4d...@l6g2000vbn.googlegroups.com>,
chris thompson <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What are the rules for assigning organisms to a particular kind?
> What rules do you use to make the dividing lines? Are there any
> categories above or below kind? Is there a Tiger kind and a Lion
> kind, or do they fall into some sort of Cat kind? If there's a
> Cat kind, what makes it different from "Felidae"? And if there's a
> Cat kind, are Housecats and Jaguars and Pumas and Lynxes all part
> that kind? If they don't all belong to the same kind, what are
> the rules for excluding them? What about Hyeanas? Are they in a Dog
> kind, a Cat kind, or their own? How many Kangaroo kinds are
> there please, and do Kangaroo Rats and Kangaroo Mice belong there?
> Are South American Possums in the same kind as Australian Possums?
> How about Red Wolves, Gray Wolves, Huskies, Akitas, Cockapoos,
> Coyotes, and Tasmanian Wolves? Speaking of Tasmanian Wolves, how does
> the kind concept deal with extinct species?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
Your argument is most unkindly.
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
Walter Bushell
<42b3fa9b-1b0c-41cb...@v31g2000vbs.googlegroups.com>,
chris thompson <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm still looking for an invertebrate paleontologist. The views of a
cheolopod, for example, could be quite interesting.
jillery
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 14, 1:12 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > > > But mathematics does not follow the scientific Procrustean Bed of
> > > > "hypothesis, observations to test the hypothesis, (provisional)
> > > > conclusion". That's why I've never been able to come up with a
> > > > project for my mathematically minded youngest daughter for the
> > > > regional science fairs. Mathematical reasoning, which is essential
> > > > for every theorem I have ever proven, does not fit the definition of
> > > > "observation" that these science fairs seem to require.
>
> > > Have you considered a simulation?
>
> > I have trouble coming up with a simulation of a mathematical concept.
>
> > > They're used a lot in science to test
> > > the implications of all sorts of models, and you don't need any
> > > "observations" to perform a useful "experiment".
>
> > > >> The first that springs to mind is, say, presenting real
> > > >> data about evolution. I personally like the biogeographical and
> > > >> genetic data of Hawaiian _Drosophila_ myself.
>
> > > > Even a YEC would have no qualms about teaching about that; it's
> > > > microevolution.
>
> > > Are you that naive about creationism?
>
> > No, I am that sophisticated about it. I actually read something by
> > Henry Morris way back in the mid-90's that I've been relying on ever
> > since.
>
> Creationism') and Duane Gish ('Evolution: The fossils say No!') way
> back in the 1970s. At the time I was a Pentecostal Christian, but I
> had already spent countless hours scrabbling around in the rocks
> collecting fossils, so I had a pretty good understanding of what
> fossil are, how to find them, and the extent and variation of the
> deposits in which they are found.
> known that some of what they had written is categorically false - i.e.
> they were lying. Nothing I have read since by any creationist has led
> me to think anything else. I knew that what those books contained was
> false not because I had been indoctrinated by any authoritarian
> scientific community, but because of my personal experience of fossil
> collecting.
>
> with misrepresentation, distortion and outright falsehoods. I don't
> ask anyone to take my word for this, which is why I have set aside a
> part of my web site analysing several creationist sources to identify
> such dishonesty.
>
> http://plesiosaur.com/creationism/
>
> I am incorrect in any of the instances of dishonesty I identify, but
> no creationist seems to have the slightest interest in doing so.
>
> I've invited creationists on numerous occasions to post a link to a
> creationist source which is *not* riddled with misrepresentation,
> distortion and outright falsehoods, but no creationist seems to have
> the slightest interest in doing so.
>
> I've invited creationists on numerous occasions to post a link to any
> distortion and outright falsehoods, but no creationist seems to have
> the slightest interest in doing so.
>
> but that creationists know that they are dishonest but find such
> dishonesty is acceptable provided it comes from their own kind. Coming
> as it does from those claiming the moral high ground it is utter
> hypocrisy.
>
> What other conclusion can one draw from the evidence?
>
It's self-evident. You need to improve your web marketing :)
jillery
> In article
> <42b3fa9b-1b0c-41cb-9fe7-fc6367d06...@v31g2000vbs.googlegroups.com>,
> chris thompson <chris.linthomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In the category, I Can Specialize in Everything!
>
> > > Wow, I see there that you are a vertebrate paleontologist! Do you
> > > specialize in other things besides plesiosaurs?
>
> I'm still looking for an invertebrate paleontologist. The views of a
> cheolopod, for example, could be quite interesting.
As you may know, cheolopods are discriminated against, and so are
under-represented among invertebrate paleontologists. We need
legislation to support the legal rights of cheolopods everywhere.
BTW, what's a cheolopod?
Walter Bushell
<60573a4a-17ed-408d...@q30g2000vbs.googlegroups.com>,
jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
I meant chilopod, of course. The group containing centipedes. Or was it
cephalopods? In either case, the views would be interesting.
Sponge paleontologists need not apply.
richardal...@gmail.com
So why evade the questions I have asked?
>
> > > Vertebrate paleontology has been near and dear to my heart since I was
> > > 7 (and especially since I turned 11) and I have a daughter who shares
> > > my love for the subject. That's why I'm hoping you can post regularly
> > > to sci.bio.paleontology. I don't think we have a professional
> > > vertebrate paleontologist there right now.
>
> Paging John Harshman! Do we have anyone besides the person who posted
> on mesonychids? And even in her case--did she post there only because
> she saw the posts in talk.origins?
>
> > > I posted a good bit to sci.bio.paleontology in the 1990's and 2000,
> > > when it was still a modest but healthy newsgroup. When I returned
> > > late last year after a decade of absence, I was appalled to see that
> > > it was on the verge of extinction, almost completely the domain of
> > > spammers advertising this or that (much of it having to do with sexual
> > > stimulation).
>
> > > I've tried to resuscitate the newsgroup, with the cooperation of John
> > > Harshman, and the change is noticeable, but s.b.p. is still critically
> > > endangered. I'd love to have you join us there.
>
> Why no response? Are you a *professional* vertebrate paleontologist?
> Are you bored with your work and trying to get away from it on Usenet?
No, I'm a palaeontologist who posts on forums such as this to expose
the ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty of creationists.;
>
> Remainder deleted, to be replied to only on talk.origins since it
> involves creationism vs. evolution.
Evasion noted.
RF
>
> Peter Nyikos
richardal...@gmail.com
A defining characteristic;.
> And where do you get the idea that they are untested?
From reading what ID proponents have written.
> I have
> proposed a number of tests myself as to why they might be (very weak,
> so far) evidence of design.
None of them represent tests in any scientific sense.
>
> >and they trawl
> > through the research findings of others and claim that they support
> > their untested assertion.
>
> Do you have a specific example in mind?
The example you cited is just one of many.
> The only thing I can think of
> is a very careless statement about the connection between IC and ID by
> the DI, and I have Behe's agreement that it ought to be changed.
Then I suggest that you can't be very familiar with the output of the
DI.
>
> > That isn't research.
>
> It is what passes for research in the humanities.
Not in science, and the demand of the ID crowd are that their untested
or untestable assertions should be considered as science.
> Lots of untested
> assumptions are floating around as to the connection between, to cite
> just one example, the theme of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ and the
> theme of Goethe's _Faust_.
Bully for them.
They aren't science or pretending to be science.
>
> > It's apologetics.
>
> I await a specific example.
The references you cited as examples of research are just that.
>
>
>
> > > > How do they define "design" in the context of their "theory"?
>
> > > > How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
> > > > incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
> > > > years ago)
>
> > > I've only seen hints of it documented. Can you give me a quote that
> > > clearly shows it?
>
> > Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of
> > Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No
> > 5, Sept 1918, pp 422-499.
>
> >http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/3/5/422
>
> I'll look closely at it later this week. I am rather pressed for time
> now.
Evasion noted.
>
> > > > is the hallmark of "design"?
>
> > > They haven't, and they aren't making that claim.
>
> > What on earth was Michael Behe defending in the Dover trial if that is
> > the case?
>
> Behe only makes very tentative claims about the connection between IC
> and ID, noting that there are indirect paths that could occur, and so
> he is very cautious about saying that any DID occur.
So what?
He was defending the notion that IC is the hallmark of "design" during
the Dover v. Kitzmiller trial.
>
> After all, he is a scientist, trained not to jump to conclusions but
> to make only those conclusions which the evidence warrants.
So why is he demanding that we reject the assumption of naturalism
fundamental to science in favour of supernatural explanations?
>
> If you disagree, please cite something from his Dover testimony.
>
How about:
"there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for
intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations
which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of
any biological system occurred"
?
> [snip a lot, to be addressed when I have more time]
>
>
>
> > > AFAIK the DI is trying to establish the
> > > existence of design without going into details about the nature of the
> > > designer[s]
>
> > ...but specifically includes the possibility that the designer uses
> > supernatural methods.
>
> "possibility" is all.
"Possibility" is all that is needed to make the ID assertion
untestable.
> But they also include the opposite possibility,
> and I stick to the opposite religiously [excuse the pun] in this
> newsgroup.
What rot!
>
> > >--other than, of course, the fact that it is/they are/were
> > > intelligent. But it need not involve an intelligence greater than our
> > > own.
>
> And that is the only level of intelligence that I assume in this
> newsgroup.
>
> > > > How does one engage in scientific research other than under the
> > > > assumption of naturalism?
>
> > > > Enquiring minds demand answers!
>
> > > I hope mine don't disappoint you too much.
>
> > Well yes it has.
>
> I have barely begun to give them. I'd appreciate it if you'd hear me
> out before making comments like this.
Why? It seems a simple and straightforward question which goes to the
heart of the matter.
>
> >You have not offered any proposition for how one can
> > carry out scientific research other than under the assumption of
> > naturalism.
>
> Nor will I.
Glad we're clear on that.
> As for the DI, as long as the possibility of a
> naturalistic explanation exists, the hypothesis that this or that is
> designed is perfectly legitimate.
Only if it is supported by evidence and can be tested by the
acquisition of further evidence.
"It's complex, so it must be designed" is not evidence. It's unfounded
assertion, no matter how many sciency-sounding words you wrap it up
in.
RF
pnyikos
No evasion. Just lack of time, as now.
And I note a lack of any hint of an answer to MY question.
> > > > Vertebrate paleontology has been near and dear to my heart since I was
> > > > 7 (and especially since I turned 11) and I have a daughter who shares
> > > > my love for the subject. That's why I'm hoping you can post regularly
> > > > to sci.bio.paleontology. I don't think we have a professional
> > > > vertebrate paleontologist there right now.
>
> > Paging John Harshman! Do we have anyone besides the person who posted
> > on mesonychids? And even in her case--did she post there only because
> > she saw the posts in talk.origins?
>
> > > > I posted a good bit to sci.bio.paleontology in the 1990's and 2000,
> > > > when it was still a modest but healthy newsgroup. When I returned
> > > > late last year after a decade of absence, I was appalled to see that
> > > > it was on the verge of extinction, almost completely the domain of
> > > > spammers advertising this or that (much of it having to do with sexual
> > > > stimulation).
>
> > > > I've tried to resuscitate the newsgroup, with the cooperation of John
> > > > Harshman, and the change is noticeable, but s.b.p. is still critically
> > > > endangered. I'd love to have you join us there.
>
> > Why no response? Are you a *professional* vertebrate paleontologist?
> > Are you bored with your work and trying to get away from it on Usenet?
>
> No, I'm a palaeontologist who posts on forums such as this to expose
> the ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty of creationists.;
That answers the last question, not the first two.
> > Remainder deleted, to be replied to only on talk.origins since it
> > involves creationism vs. evolution.
>
> Evasion noted.
You call that an evasion??? Sheesh, it looks like you are taking on
some of the bad qualilties of the creationists whom you describe.
FYI, sci.bio.paleontology is NOT for discussion of creationism vs.
evolution. It says so specifically on the "Topics" list in Google:
Description: Life of the past (but no creation vs evolution!).
Capice?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
wrote:
Those are all good questions to ask of creationists. Why don't you
ask some of them at opportune times?
About all I can contribute to these questions is my layman's opinion
of how far apart each of these are anatomically, relative to the gap
between pigs and sheep. But I think our bashful vertebrate
paleontologist, Richard Forrest, is much better qualified to judge
these things than I am.
By the way, I asked the questions below of John Harshman, but I'd like
your answers too. Since I posted them, I have done another reply to
him. Have you seen it?
pnyikos
> In article
> <42b3fa9b-1b0c-41cb-9fe7-fc6367d06...@v31g2000vbs.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > In the category, I Can Specialize in Everything!
>
> > > Wow, I see there that you are a vertebrate paleontologist! Do you
> > > specialize in other things besides plesiosaurs?
>
> I'm still looking for an invertebrate paleontologist. The views of a
> cheolopod, for example, could be quite interesting.
If I come across one in Usenet, I'll let you know. I'm also on the
lookout for a paleobotanist.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
I think you missed your calling. With your great desire for
precision, you should have become a mathematician.
Although I am one, I also recognize the fuzziness of most non-
mathematical things, even in the sciences. If you were a physicist
or a biochemist, I'd understand your desire for precision in biology,
but...what IS your line of work, anyway?
Not as real as you evidently want, e.g. an airtight rule that can be
stated in fewer words than are contained in all of Wikipedia.
> > *Pogonophora* shows the risks of this practice where
> > there is no rich fossil history as for the vertebrates, but we have
> > enough fossils among the vertebrates not to go too badly astray.
>
> How do fossils tell us what families are? Can you back this up with any
> genuine, objective criteria, or will you continue merely to allege that
> you're right?
See above. If you are happy with some rough rules of thumb I'll be
glad to discuss this later as a sci.bio.paleontology exclusive. I
think there is too little interest in this in talk.origins.
I do believe that a creationist like Morris would be happy with rough
rules of thumb, but that's because I think he's put a lot more thought
into this than any creationist posting here.
As far as creationist regulars of t.o. go, I think the best course of
action is to stick to individual examples like the ones I've been
giving, and which chris thompson has added.
> >>> Note, I'm not saying Morris would agree with the above. Perhaps he
> >>> had some good intuitive ideas as to what "kinds" can encompass. There
> >>> are lots of clues in the Bible. For example: given that the OT
> >>> allows the eating of sheep but not of pigs, one can definitely infer
> >>> that these two sorts of artiodactyls are not of the same "kind" even
> >>> though they are both cloven-hoofed. [Yes, the OT had a pretty good
> >>> concept of *Artiodactyla.*]
> >> That would require the assumption that a single kind must fall into a
> >> single food-category.
>
> > You are trying to make this too cut and dried. It stands to reason,
> > though, that being forbidden to eat something would preclude it being
> > classified as the same "kind" as something that the Jews were
> > *ordered* to eat in conjunction with the first Passover.
>
> So you allege. But do you have a rational reason for saying so? As far
> as I know, baraminologists make no such claim.
Try them on it. It's as good a start to the issue of "kinds" as any
I've ever seen.
> >>>> The most he does is imply that no taxa ranked as
> >>>> orders or above are likely to be single kinds. Why? We don't know.
> >>> The clues in the Bible impose common-sense limits to what creationists
> >>> will recognize as the same "kind". If you can find a single one
A creationist, that is. Not a Biblical verse.
> >>> that
> >>> thinks tapirs and horses, or rhinos and tapirs, are the same kind, I
> >>> would certainly like to hear about it.
> >> How does the bible provide such clues? It doesn't mention tapirs as far
> >> as I know. So what clue have you generalized to reach this conclusion?
> >> Now baraminologists commonly do get clues vrom the bible. Some go so far
> >> as to claim that anything with its own word must be a kind, but I see no
> >> justification for that. Any two things created on separate days must be
> >> different kinds, which at least shows that birds aren't dinosaurs.
> >> Humans are specifically mentioned (Genesis 2) as being separately
> >> created, and there are apparently multiple kinds of fruit trees (also
> >> Genesis 2). But there really are very few such clues, none of which I
> >> can interpret as suggesting what to do with horses and tapirs.
>
> > A close look at anatomy will support the hypothesis that they are
> > about as far apart as sheep and pigs, IMO.
>
> Since you have not established that sheep and pigs are different kinds,
See above.
> even if you can define "about as far apart", you have shown nothing. And
> I don't think you can define it, nor do I think you can support any
> claim that kinds must incorporate particular amounts of variation.
>
> > [I stick to anatomy since
> > the people of the OT knew nothing about biochemistry, nor about
> > fossils.] I think any creationist who decided that Perissodactyls
> > constitute one "kind" would have a hard time arguing otherwise.
>
> Why would a modern creationist be limited to sources of data known to
> ancient people?
Almost all of them use the Bible as their ultimate authority on what
"kind" means. Duh.
> And I don't know what you mean by "otherwise".
Against the hypothesis to which it refers. Duh.
> > And yet, *Hyracotherium* is very close to being the last common
> > ancestor of the whole order, according to Romer and/or Colbert. I
> > suppose, being a cladophile, you would pronounce that statement to be
> > meaningless.
>
> Being a rational human being,
An excessively rational one, IMHO. I'm beginning to wonder whether
you have Asperger's Syndrome. [That's NOT an insult. Such
illustrious people as Thomas Jefferson have been suspected of having
had it.]
> I would indeed call it meaningless.
> Science has advanced conceptually (as well as in other ways) since
> Simpson and Colbert, fine scientists though they were. You may choose to
> ignore the last 30-odd years, but I don't.
I wouldn't call destroying a powerful weapon against Creationism a
conceptual advance. It's bad enough that cladists have abolished
taxa from everything except the leaves of their cladograms; now you
want to take away the rules of thumb telling us how close this or that
taxon is to the LCA.
No wonder you think of platypuses as "transitional" animals!
Peter Nyikos
jillery
>
>
>
>
>
> jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Apr 19, 11:55 pm, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > > In article
> > > <42b3fa9b-1b0c-41cb-9fe7-fc6367d06...@v31g2000vbs.googlegroups.com>,
> > > chris thompson <chris.linthomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > In the category, I Can Specialize in Everything!
>
> > > > > Wow, I see there that you are a vertebrate paleontologist! Do you
> > > > > specialize in other things besides plesiosaurs?
>
> > > I'm still looking for an invertebrate paleontologist. The views of a
> > > cheolopod, for example, could be quite interesting.
>
> > As you may know, cheolopods are discriminated against, and so are
> > under-represented among invertebrate paleontologists. We need
> > legislation to support the legal rights of cheolopods everywhere.
>
> > BTW, what's a cheolopod?
>
> I meant chilopod, of course. The group containing centipedes. Or was it
> cephalopods? In either case, the views would be interesting.
>
> Sponge paleontologists need not apply.
Well, yeah, assuming having views is a bona fide job requirement. I
understand some sponges do well in the entertainment industry.
John Harshman
Or perhaps a scientist?
> Although I am one, I also recognize the fuzziness of most non-
> mathematical things, even in the sciences. If you were a physicist
> or a biochemist, I'd understand your desire for precision in biology,
> but...what IS your line of work, anyway?
I'm a systematist. Isn't that appropriate? Rigor in reasoning is not
unknown outside mathematics. Fuzzy concepts might be fine, but fuzzy
thinking never.
Can you support your claim in any way at all?
>>> *Pogonophora* shows the risks of this practice where
>>> there is no rich fossil history as for the vertebrates, but we have
>>> enough fossils among the vertebrates not to go too badly astray.
>> How do fossils tell us what families are? Can you back this up with any
>> genuine, objective criteria, or will you continue merely to allege that
>> you're right?
>
> See above. If you are happy with some rough rules of thumb I'll be
> glad to discuss this later as a sci.bio.paleontology exclusive. I
> think there is too little interest in this in talk.origins.
I would be happy if you would justify your claim anywhere at all.
> I do believe that a creationist like Morris would be happy with rough
> rules of thumb, but that's because I think he's put a lot more thought
> into this than any creationist posting here.
I see no indication, from all his writings, that Morris ever put more
thought into it than what's in that single quote. Morris seems in fact
quite uninterested in what kinds are, except that he knows evolution is
impossible and that humans are a different kind from apes. That's about
it as far as he and most other creationists are concerned.
> As far as creationist regulars of t.o. go, I think the best course of
> action is to stick to individual examples like the ones I've been
> giving, and which chris thompson has added.
Sorry, examples of what? Where?
>>>>> Note, I'm not saying Morris would agree with the above. Perhaps he
>>>>> had some good intuitive ideas as to what "kinds" can encompass. There
>>>>> are lots of clues in the Bible. For example: given that the OT
>>>>> allows the eating of sheep but not of pigs, one can definitely infer
>>>>> that these two sorts of artiodactyls are not of the same "kind" even
>>>>> though they are both cloven-hoofed. [Yes, the OT had a pretty good
>>>>> concept of *Artiodactyla.*]
>>>> That would require the assumption that a single kind must fall into a
>>>> single food-category.
>>> You are trying to make this too cut and dried. It stands to reason,
>>> though, that being forbidden to eat something would preclude it being
>>> classified as the same "kind" as something that the Jews were
>>> *ordered* to eat in conjunction with the first Passover.
>> So you allege. But do you have a rational reason for saying so? As far
>> as I know, baraminologists make no such claim.
>
> Try them on it. It's as good a start to the issue of "kinds" as any
> I've ever seen.
The standard text on baraminology has no mention of such things.
>>>>>> The most he does is imply that no taxa ranked as
>>>>>> orders or above are likely to be single kinds. Why? We don't know.
>>>>> The clues in the Bible impose common-sense limits to what creationists
>>>>> will recognize as the same "kind". If you can find a single one
>
> A creationist, that is. Not a Biblical verse.
>
>>>>> that
>>>>> thinks tapirs and horses, or rhinos and tapirs, are the same kind, I
>>>>> would certainly like to hear about it.
>>>> How does the bible provide such clues? It doesn't mention tapirs as far
>>>> as I know. So what clue have you generalized to reach this conclusion?
>>>> Now baraminologists commonly do get clues vrom the bible. Some go so far
>>>> as to claim that anything with its own word must be a kind, but I see no
>>>> justification for that. Any two things created on separate days must be
>>>> different kinds, which at least shows that birds aren't dinosaurs.
>>>> Humans are specifically mentioned (Genesis 2) as being separately
>>>> created, and there are apparently multiple kinds of fruit trees (also
>>>> Genesis 2). But there really are very few such clues, none of which I
>>>> can interpret as suggesting what to do with horses and tapirs.
>>> A close look at anatomy will support the hypothesis that they are
>>> about as far apart as sheep and pigs, IMO.
>> Since you have not established that sheep and pigs are different kinds,
>
> See above.
I'm looking. No, I see nothing to suggest it. What clues in the bible
impose limits that would help determine if horses and tapirs are
different kinds? How do the opinions of randomly selected creationists
address the question?
>> even if you can define "about as far apart", you have shown nothing. And
>> I don't think you can define it, nor do I think you can support any
>> claim that kinds must incorporate particular amounts of variation.
>>
>>> [I stick to anatomy since
>>> the people of the OT knew nothing about biochemistry, nor about
>>> fossils.] I think any creationist who decided that Perissodactyls
>>> constitute one "kind" would have a hard time arguing otherwise.
>> Why would a modern creationist be limited to sources of data known to
>> ancient people?
>
> Almost all of them use the Bible as their ultimate authority on what
> "kind" means. Duh.
Why does that mean that they must be limited to ancient data sources?
Can't new data illuminate old questions? You will search the bible in
vain for indications even of what anatomical characters indicate
differences in kind.
>> And I don't know what you mean by "otherwise".
>
> Against the hypothesis to which it refers. Duh.
Too many pronouns without antecedents. Must you always be so elliptical?
So you say that a creationist who thinks Perissodactyls are one kind
would have a hard time arguing that they aren't one kind? Pardon me if
that makes little sense to me.
>>> And yet, *Hyracotherium* is very close to being the last common
>>> ancestor of the whole order, according to Romer and/or Colbert. I
>>> suppose, being a cladophile, you would pronounce that statement to be
>>> meaningless.
>> Being a rational human being,
>
> An excessively rational one, IMHO. I'm beginning to wonder whether
> you have Asperger's Syndrome. [That's NOT an insult. Such
> illustrious people as Thomas Jefferson have been suspected of having
> had it.]
So why mention it? How relevant is it to the conversation unless you're
trying to point out what you consider a fault. "Excessively" means
nothing to you? It avoids the question of whether I'm right or wrong;
apparently I'm *too* right, which is as good as wrong. Right?
>> I would indeed call it meaningless.
>> Science has advanced conceptually (as well as in other ways) since
>> Simpson and Colbert, fine scientists though they were. You may choose to
>> ignore the last 30-odd years, but I don't.
>
> I wouldn't call destroying a powerful weapon against Creationism a
> conceptual advance.
I reject your claims that confusion and obfuscation are powerful weapons.
> It's bad enough that cladists have abolished
> taxa from everything except the leaves of their cladograms;
Where would you put them? How will you identify ancestors?
> now you
> want to take away the rules of thumb telling us how close this or that
> taxon is to the LCA.
What rules of thumb? Can you state any of them?
> No wonder you think of platypuses as "transitional" animals!
Of course they are. Egg-laying mammals? Perfect transitions. We can
ignore autapomorphies and look at the plesiomorphies, which are instructive.
Your longing for the good old days of radio drama and Packard sedans is
charming, but hardly a useful argument.
John Harshman
These don't actually appear to be methods. 3-7 are types of data,
without any mention of how the data would be used to assign organisms to
kinds. 1 is, as said, not all that useful, since there is little
relevant information in the bible. 2 is reasonable, if we assume that
different kinds would not be able to hybridize (a fair assumption, but
an untestable one); but as the author points out, hybridization can tell
us two organisms are the same kind, but lack thereof can't tell us
they're different kinds.
John Harshman
They seldom answer. Creationists mostly don't care about kinds, except
that humans must be a separate kind and evolution must not happen.
They're usually happy to think that all flies are one kind.
> About all I can contribute to these questions is my layman's opinion
> of how far apart each of these are anatomically, relative to the gap
> between pigs and sheep. But I think our bashful vertebrate
> paleontologist, Richard Forrest, is much better qualified to judge
> these things than I am.
How would he judge that, and why are pigs and sheep your touchstone?
What makes you think they're different kinds?
John Harshman
> Paging John Harshman! Do we have anyone besides the person who posted
> on mesonychids? And even in her case--did she post there only because
> she saw the posts in talk.origins?
You're talking about Christine Janis? I think she wandered into TO and
may have wandered out again. There's hardly anyone posting to
sci.bio.paleo, and the few that do aren't palentologists. If I recall,
Tom Holtz used to, but that was a long time ago.
John Harshman
Whoosh, I'm afraid.
Walter Bushell
<ae4eda4f-714e-4217...@17g2000prr.googlegroups.com>,
jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, yeah, assuming having views is a bona fide job requirement. I
> understand some sponges do well in the entertainment industry.
Bob even has his own show.
Robert Camp
> Robert Camp wrote:
> > On Apr 19, 6:49 pm, chris thompson <chris.linthomp...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> On Apr 18, 3:46 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >>> On Apr 18, 12:23 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>>> pnyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Apr 15, 3:50 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
> >>>>> <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> On Apr 14, 1:12 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Apr 13, 7:49 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
<snip>
I actually thought of them all (besides #1) as data (to be plugged, or
not, into the scriptural model). If one is predisposed to *not*
recognize or accept broad patterns of interrelatedness then doesn't
even a fairly comprehensive understanding of hybridization amount to
little more than "this one is not like that one?"
RLC
I guess I don't really see how observing how kinds hybridize (or not)
is any more of a methodology than observing embryological stages or
ecological interactions. If one is predisposed *not* to see broad
patterns of interrelatedness
Robert Camp
> In article
> <42b3fa9b-1b0c-41cb-9fe7-fc6367d06...@v31g2000vbs.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > In the category, I Can Specialize in Everything!
>
> > > Wow, I see there that you are a vertebrate paleontologist! Do you
> > > specialize in other things besides plesiosaurs?
>
> I'm still looking for an invertebrate paleontologist.
How about an inveterate paleontologist? I hear they're pretty sure of
themselves.
pnyikos
Yeah, I miss him.
By the way, I found out that Richard Forrest is a Ph.D. student.
http://plesiosaur.com/research.php
So that explains why he was bashful about answering the question of
what else he specializes in besides plesiosaurs, and whether he is a
*professional* paleontologist. Given his current status, it might be
asking too much of him to get working on anything except plesiosaurs.
By the way, I've made a second reply to Ron Okimoto on this thread [in
t.o., that is; what people are seeing in s.b.p is just a few fragments
of that t.o. thread]. I've been carefully following the pattern I
mentioned to you in a post to which you haven't replied yet. Could I
prevail on you to read at least one of the replies I've made to him on
this thread?
Peter Nyikos
Walter Bushell
<ed0e1226-7a13-4af6...@e26g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>,
Robert Camp <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Are there any inadvertent paleontologists?
Robert Camp
> Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 19, 8:55 pm, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > > In article
> > > <42b3fa9b-1b0c-41cb-9fe7-fc6367d06...@v31g2000vbs.googlegroups.com>,
> > > chris thompson <chris.linthomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > In the category, I Can Specialize in Everything!
>
> > > > > Wow, I see there that you are a vertebrate paleontologist! Do you
> > > > > specialize in other things besides plesiosaurs?
>
> > > I'm still looking for an invertebrate paleontologist.
>
> > How about an inveterate paleontologist? I hear they're pretty sure of
> > themselves.
>
> Are there any inadvertent paleontologists?
There was one, but I heard he passed away in an accident.
Robert Camp
Please ignore the part below the initials. I nead to prufreed beter.
Dana Tweedy
No matter how square their pants might be?
DJT
richardal...@gmail.com
Actually, it answers both.
>
> > > Remainder deleted, to be replied to only on talk.origins since it
> > > involves creationism vs. evolution.
>
> > Evasion noted.
>
> You call that an evasion??? Sheesh, it looks like you are taking on
> some of the bad qualilties of the creationists whom you describe.
>
> FYI, sci.bio.paleontology is NOT for discussion of creationism vs.
> evolution.
I haven't posted on sci.bio.paleontology
I've posted on talk.origins
RF
richardal...@gmail.com
> On Apr 20, 11:07 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> > pnyikos wrote:
> > > Paging John Harshman! Do we have anyone besides the person who posted
> > > on mesonychids? And even in her case--did she post there only because
> > > she saw the posts in talk.origins?
>
> > You're talking about Christine Janis? I think she wandered into TO and
> > may have wandered out again. There's hardly anyone posting to
> > sci.bio.paleo, and the few that do aren't palentologists. If I recall,
> > Tom Holtz used to, but that was a long time ago.
>
> Yeah, I miss him.
>
> By the way, I found out that Richard Forrest is a Ph.D. student.
>
> http://plesiosaur.com/research.php
>
> So that explains why he was bashful about answering the question of
> what else he specializes in besides plesiosaurs,
What on earth has this to do with the claims to ID for scientific
status? It's not being bashful to ignore questions which are utterly
irrelevant to the subject under discussion. Nor is it evasion to
ignore questions which are irrelevant to the subject under discussion.
It *is* evasion to attempt to sidetrack the discussion into matters
which are irrelevant to the subject under discussion.
RF
John Harshman
> On Apr 20, 11:07 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> Paging John Harshman! Do we have anyone besides the person who posted
>>> on mesonychids? And even in her case--did she post there only because
>>> she saw the posts in talk.origins?
>> You're talking about Christine Janis? I think she wandered into TO and
>> may have wandered out again. There's hardly anyone posting to
>> sci.bio.paleo, and the few that do aren't palentologists. If I recall,
>> Tom Holtz used to, but that was a long time ago.
>
> Yeah, I miss him.
>
> By the way, I found out that Richard Forrest is a Ph.D. student.
Yes, I knew that. I don't see why it matters.
> By the way, I've made a second reply to Ron Okimoto on this thread [in
> t.o., that is; what people are seeing in s.b.p is just a few fragments
> of that t.o. thread]. I've been carefully following the pattern I
> mentioned to you in a post to which you haven't replied yet. Could I
> prevail on you to read at least one of the replies I've made to him on
> this thread?
What thread, and what is the subject under discussion?
John Harshman
No, it's "this one is like that one"; only the presence of hybridization
tells you anything. While the creator could conceivably have designed
different kinds so they could hybridize, why would he? It seems a clear
inference. And the sort of similarity you need to produce viable
offspring couldn't possibly happen by chance. I would go farther. It
seems to me that any two species capable of getting to a 2-celled zygote
stage must be the same kind, as that sort of genetic compatibility
doesn't just happen. But that criterion, though it uses the same
argument as the common one, probably would produce some kinds too big
for creationists to accept. Like primates, perhaps.
> I guess I don't really see how observing how kinds hybridize (or not)
> is any more of a methodology than observing embryological stages or
> ecological interactions. If one is predisposed *not* to see broad
> patterns of interrelatedness
It's data *and* a criterion. If we see hybridization, we infer common
ancestry. The others aren't like that. If we see "ontogeny", what do we
infer?
Ron O
> As in my reply to Ron O's first post to this thread, this first reply
> to his second post sticks to the substantive issue, deleting all
> remarks that aren't directly relevant to it in some way. This time I
> only use [...] to denote snips, since I have not gotten any feedback
> from others other than Ron O about the brief descriptions I used in my
> earlier post. [I do make one at one point,though.]
This means that Nyikos will be ignoring all the relevant material that
he can't counter, or just snipping and lying about it. As sad as that
sounds that is just what he has been doing so far.
>
> On Apr 15, 7:55 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 13, 10:08 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > On Apr 13, 10:07 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > After making a number of incomplete statements about what the "bait"
> > > > involved is, Ron O has settled down to the following description: the
> > > > claim that "they have the ID science for some teacher to teach".
>
> Public school teacher, that is. In support of this description, he
> has posted the following from a DI website:
For some reason Nyikos likes to have flashbacks to junk that he should
have never written in the first place. Why snip out your own material
without attribution? Was it so bad? Why try to rewrite history
without showing what history you are rewriting? You are just sad.
The truth hurts even when you are lying about it.
The quote does say exactly what I claim and you are only lying about
it.
>
> > > > Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
>
> > > > No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
> > > > Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
> > > > constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
> > > > and it should not be banned from schools. If a
> > > > science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
> > > > she should have the academic freedom to do so.
> > > >http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
>
> > > > Note the words "discuss"--not "teach as though it were an established
> > > > fact."
>
> [...]
>
> > Maybe the Discovery
> > Institute should have written something about the teacher discussing
> > this with school kids after class when they were not supposed to be
> > teaching the students something?
>
> They could have, but that wasn't one of the many points they were
> making in the website.
Remember what Nyikos claimed above about what he would snip. One
sentence and it just points out what a teacher is actually doing when
they discuss something in class, and Nyikos has to pretend that it was
never put up. This is so bogus that why does Nyikos even try
QUOTE:
Note that Nyikos has no concept of what a teacher is doing when they
discuss a topic in the public school class room. Maybe the Discovery
Institute should have written something about the teacher discussing
this with school kids after class when they were not supposed to be
teaching the students something?
END QUOTE:
The statement that Nyikos chose to remove from context was just a
sarcastic follow up to setting him straight about how stupid and bogus
his interpretation of reality is. You can't make this junk up.
Nyikos really is this dishonest and bogus.
Nyikos knows what a teacher is doing when they discuss something in
class, but he chooses to lie to himself about it. To snip in order to
avoid the real argument and make a stupid statement about what does
not matter is premeditated dishonestly. You are guilty, just deal
with reality instead of trying to lie about it all the time
>
> > > Even more relevantly: it makes no assertion that the DI has any kind
> > > of materials on Intelligent Design (ID) in a form ready to be taught
> > > in the public schools.
>
> [...]
>
> > the whole pamphlet is written by the ID perps that have
> > been selling the intelligent design scam for arouind 15 years, and you
> > can make your leap about the teacher's version
>
> Hardly a leap. See below.
Why even do this? Cutting a sentence in half at the "and?" When it
is pointing out why your argument is bogus?
QUOTE:
What a bonehead. You were the one making up junk about the teacher's
version, and the whole pamphlet is written by the ID perps that have
been selling the intelligent design scam for arouind 15 years, and
you
can make your leap about the teacher's version and not see the
obvious
in front of your face. This isn't just a lame excuse, but just bogus
and dishonest denial.
END QUOTE:
Beats me what I am supposed to see below.
You aren't addressing what you did and how bogus what you are doing
is.
>
> [...]
>
> > > There are plenty of resources such a teacher could use, including a
> > > mid-1950's film showing various mysteries of nature, that is quite
> > > "scientific" as far as the data are concened, and asking the viewer at
> > > the end which they think is more likely: that all this was the result
> > > of chance, or the work of a creator.
>
> > This is the Nyikos that claimed that the intelligent design scam was a
> > young science of only 15 years old.
>
> What I have been maintaining is that the particular methodology of
> the Discovery Institute (DI) is only about 15 years old. It's
> fairly sophisticated--much more sophisticated than the methodology of
> that film, and probably not suitable for presentation on the high
> school level. Take a look at the numbered descriptions starting about
> halfway down and see whether you disagree:
>
> http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.10.27.Disciplined_Scien...
It is all bogus because Nyikos knows that the ID perps are running the
bait and switch on any IDiot stupid enough to believe anything that
they say. That is the whole reason that he has to make a big deal
about a stupid statement where the ID perps are obviously still
claiming to have the ID science to teach to school kids, but what is
any teacher going to get from them? Claiming that it is too complex
is stupid when what it really is is too bogus to put forward.
QUOTE:
Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
and it should not be banned from schools. If a
science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
she should have the academic freedom to do so.
END QUOTE:
Where in this statement or the entire pamphlet do the ID perps claim
that the ID science that they have been selling to the IDiot rubes for
over 15 years is too complex to teach in the public schools?
They wrote the whole pamphlet on teaching ID in the public schools and
if they don't have the ID science that they are talking about, who
does? These are the ID perps that used to claim that ID was their
business before they started to run the bait and switch on any rube
stupid enough to believe them. Here they are still claiming to have
the ID science so that they can run the bait and switch on the next
ignorant or incompetent rube that is stupid enough to believe them.
For some reason Nyikos has to bend over backwards to try to change
this reality. Lying about it is just second nature to him. There
really isn't any excuse.
>
> [...]
>
> > There is literally nothing for some teacher to teach about the subject
> > until there is such a success.
>
> We mathematicians discuss things all the time without there being any
> success. The Twin Primes Conjecture has been discussed for over a
> century with nothing resembling success. It is a mystery, and there
> is nothing wrong with teachers teaching about the mysteries of
> science.
With all your snipping how is anyone going to know what I am talking
about. It isn't the twin primes conjecture it is the 100% failure
rate of the ID claims. It is a given that the only ID claims that are
still standing are the ones that can't be tested at this time. We
aren't taking about mysteries, but the 100% failure rate. Not a
single ID success in the entire history of science. Zero. You can't
deny that by just snipping it out.
>
> It IS a mystery how the one species of bird has been able to migrate
> over thousands of miles of trackless ocean to find a small island year
> after year. That is one of the mysteries that 1950's film relates.
> We have some naturalistic conjectures but they are largely untested,
> and in the meantime the teacher is free to ask her pupils to think
> about whether the known laws of science, are adequate to account for
> it.
The only thing that you should be a mystery in this discussion is why
you have to lie to yourself about reality. What you have just written
has no bearing on what the quote in question means. You can't justify
lying by introducing something about migrating birds and a 1950
documentary that isn't even under discussion. Is the 1950 documentary
mentioned in the ID perp scam pamphlet put out to lie to some poor
teacher?
>
> If they do not, then the natural alternative is intelligent design--
> but not necessarily by supernatural agents; one might conjecture
> genetic engineering by intelligent visitors from another solar system.
What does this have to do with the non existent ID science that some
teacher is supposed to be able to teach? or the price of tea in
China? Aren't you just repeating some of the claims of the ID perps?
Who sold the rubes intelligent design for the last 15 years? What is
that pamphlet quote about? What a bonehead.
>
> [...]
>
> > What is the teacher going to teach?
>
> See above for just one of many possible examples that predate the DI
> by a wide margin.
That doesn't mean that the ID perps weren't selling the clap trap
junk. Heck even IC predates the ID perps so what? Do you even know
what a valid argument is?
Where is the ID science? A lot of creationist arguments that the ID
perps use predate the DI, so what? Where is the science? What is the
justification for introducing something with a 100% failure rate into
the science class? Not a single scientific success for ID in the
entire history of science. Shouldn't there be such a success before
you think of teaching something that has nothing but failure to back
it up? God of the gaps is not science and is even bad theology. Why
do you think that the bait and switch has been going down for over 9
years. Who is selling the ID science? Who is running in the switch
scam that doesn't even mention that ID ever existed? If the ID
science really existed we would have seen it by now.
This whole argument has practically no bearing on whether the ID perps
are still claiming that some teach can teach the ID science. My
interpretation of the quote still stands. You are just making your
stupid distinctions and hair splitting that never matter in the face
of reality.
>
> > I never claimed
> > that the science existed, only that the ID perps are obviously
> > claiming that they have the ID science.
>
> But not necessarily on the public school level. They may not have
> anything worthwhile to add to expositions like that in the film on
> that score. As I said:
Bull pucky. The whole pamphlet is about teaching in the public
schools. Didn't you read the claims at the downloard site or even the
rest of the pamphlet?
You forgot to mark your snip:
QUOTE:
If the guys that have been selling the ID scam junk for 15 years
don't have it, who does?
END QUOTE:
If the guys that have been selling the ID clap trap for 15 years do
not have the ID science to teach, who does?
Lying to yourself may have become a way of life, but it isn't a way of
life that you can be proud of.
>
> > > The DI, after all, is primarily devoted to research, not pedagogy,
> > > despite an anonymous "Wedge Document" that was never adopted by the DI
> > > itself.
>
> [...]
>
> What I deleted just now are undocumented claims about Behe and Minnich
> that don't seem to bear on the question of whether the DI is guilty of
> the "bait" described at the beginning.
But you left your own material in and for what purpose?
It is just a fact that scientific research hasn't been a high priority
of the ID perps. They wouldn't be running the bait and switch if they
had been successful and Behe claimed that he didn't have to
scientifically test his junk and Minnich did claim that he hadn't
gotten around to it, but that it might be possible. Nyikos likely has
read that boring testimony by Behe where he keeps claiming that all he
needs is induction and he has to repeatedly admit that no scientific
papers have been published by the ID perps that support intelligent
design. It goes on for pages.
>
> > The Discovery Institute has admitted to writing the Wedge document,
>
> What do you mean by this--that it has admitted that it was put
> together by a whole panel of authors?
Nope only that they admit that they produced the document. My guess
is that all the senior fellows and likely most of the fellows at the
time (around 1998) were involved in working up the 5 year plan of the
Discovery Institute, but they don't make any claims about that. If
your senior fellows are not involved what kind of 5 year plan could
you make? Why did they accomplish so many of the goals if the senior
fellows were not involved? Was Chapman that good of a manipulator?
Anyone can check it out. About the only things that the ID perps did
not do that was in the Wedge document was generate the viable ID
science so they had nothing to use as the wedge, and they don't
mention that they planed to run the bait and switch instead of drop
the issue and admit that they never had the ID science to teach oncer
they were exposed.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=349
There is no doubt that the Discovery Institute is responsible for the
Wedge document.
>
> > They did target legislators and school boards.
>
> In a way that alleged that they had information about ID, suitable for
> teaching on the public school level, and not available from well-known
> sources like that 1950's film?
What is this about some 1950's film. I've never heard of the ID perps
making any such claims. They were selling their version of the ID
clap trap to school boards and legislators.
>
> >http://ncse.com/webfm_send/747
>
> The above is the url for the Wedge document.
You snipped out the material that would make the wedge document
relevant and why the people should check it out. What a bonehead.
You didn't even mark your snip.
This is getting ridiculous. Did you have any honest intent when you
started to write this post?
>
> [....]
>
> About the website from which the quote at the beginning was taken:
>
> > the main emphasis is on trying to "teach the
> > > controversy" surrounding Darwinian explanations of evolution. There
> > > never is any recommendation that the schools teach about Intelligent
> > > Design, only the above statement that they should have the
> > > constitutional right to discuss it.
>
> [...]
Nyikos leaving his junk in and snipping out my response. Are you
fooling anyone even yourself?
>
> > > As I said in another post, replying to Ron O, whose words appear on
> > > the first line of the excerpt:
>
> > > ----------------------------------- begin excerpt
>
> > > > I do not see any qualifiers about the Teacher's version of ID.
>
> > > Nor do I see any about the DI version of ID, prevaricator. The
> > > playing field would be level, except that your quote is taken out of a
> > > a context that makes it clear that the DI is covering its ass in case
> > > some teacher teaches his/her version of ID and claims the DI as the
> > > authority for it.
>
> > Above I made a statement that is just as applicable as a response to
> > this [...]
>
> And I have critiqued it above.
Nyikos means that he probably snipped it out and lied about it.
QUOTE:
What a bonehead. You were the one making up junk about the teacher's
version. Not only that but the whole pamphlet is written by the ID
perps that have been selling the intelligent design scam for arouind
15 years, and you can make your leap about the teacher's version and
not see the obvious in front of your face. This isn't just a lame
excuse, but just bogus and dishonest denial.
END QUOTE:
Why does Nyikos snip it out because here it is where Nyikos is making
a big deal about the teacher's version of ID. You can't make this
junk up.
>
> > > ============== end of excerpt from
> > >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/10aa468962f878ef
>
> > I post the link because it is the official download site of the
> > Discovery Institute and there is no question who is responsible for
> > the pamphlet and what it is supposed to be about.
>
> >http://www.discovery.org/a/4299
>
> This seems to be the only relevant portion of that website:
>
> Discovery Institute has published its own guide,
> The Theory of Intelligent Design: A briefing packet
> for educators to help them understand the debate
> between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design.
> Click here to download a PDF.
Public school educators, including that teacher in the quote that
Nyikos is currently lying about. It isn't just this part, but the
junk about Dover and what has been suggested to be taught in the
public schools.
How pathetic can someone be that can read and not comprehend reality?
>
> Now a click takes one to the website from which the quote at the
> beginning was taken:
> .http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...
So what?
You are about the most dishonest poster that I have ever encountered
on TO. Most of the lamest just lie and run away. You keep lying
about the same things and keep doing the same bogus things that you
have been called on mulitple times. How can anyone with a brain think
that they are getting away with this kind of bogus behavior? You are
just sad. The only IDiots that still support the ID scam are the
ignorant, incompetent and or dishonest. Look at the example that you
are setting. What should it tell anyone that someone as low and
degenerate as you are the only type that wants to even try to defend
the ID perps and the bait and switch scam that the ID perps are
running on their own creationist support base. The ID perps are not
running the bait and switch on the science side. They are running the
bait and switch on IDiots like Nyikos and all the IDiots can do is
bend over and take it. Why lie to yourself about something this lame?
Why do you think that my prediction of what you were going to snip was
so accurate? It is just what you have been doing for months. It is a
really stupid thing to do when all I have to do is put back what you
have snipped. Is just temporarily lying to yourself that important?
Ron Okimoto
>
> [...]
>
> Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
Actually, I meant to remove the above paragraph before posting. But
now I'm interested.
> It's data *and* a criterion. If we see hybridization, we infer common
> ancestry. The others aren't like that. If we see "ontogeny", what do we
> infer?
Well, what we infer and what creationists infer may be entirely
different, but just the same what's to stop them from using these
observations comparatively (as they suggest they do in #3) and drawing
an inference of relatedness? This doesn't establish common ancestry, I
grant you , but it may be a useful data point for those who are bent
upon supporting preconceived notions of continuity and discontinuity
among organisms.
In any case I see your point. I was thinking too broadly in trying to
suggest that an inability, or unwillingness, to see common descent
reduced all of their observations to simplistic, unconnected data. But
that (even if true, and in retrospect I don't really think it is)
doesn't speak to the difference between observations and standards for
inclusion in some particular category, the distinction I now see you
were making.
RLC
John Harshman
Here's the problem: hybridization is a simple, binary test. It happens
or it doesn't. If it does, we (if we are baraminologists, that is) can
suppose relationship. If it doesn't, we can't suppose anything. But the
others aren't binary but, at best, matters of degree. How much
ontogenetic similarity shows relationship, and how little shows lack
thereof? I have no idea, and there is no clue to be had in the
description. Further, there are all degrees of such similarity; it's a
near-continuum. Any dividing line must be arbitrary. Unlike the case
with hybridization, mention of the data suggests no criterion by which
we may judge relationship.
> This doesn't establish common ancestry, I
> grant you , but it may be a useful data point for those who are bent
> upon supporting preconceived notions of continuity and discontinuity
> among organisms.
Why doesn't it establish common ancestry? I think it definitely does,
unless god is weirdly capricious. And if he is, we can't know anything.