Directed Panspermy
bkl...@panspermia.org
Peter Nyikos wrote:
> And please note, IF directed panspermy did happen, it makes sense
> to send a large variety of organisms, fit for a large variety
> of environments. Hence the base of the phylogenetic tree
> could be far back in the home planet.
>
> >: >2. So far as we know, you can't travel faster than light. How could a
> >: >spacefaring people seed the earth.
>
> >: They don't have to visit it. As Crick himself put it, "Prokaryotes
> >: travel farther". So they could have visited planets within
> >: a radius of, say, 100 light years in the whole course of their
> >: civilization (which may have lasted 100,000 years or even
> >: much more), sent primitive eukaryotes to places 1000 light
> >: years away, and sent prokaryotes to places 10,000 light years
> >: or more away, chilling them to near absolute zero to make it
> >: possible for them to survive a journey taking maybe a hundred
> >: times that long.
>
> >: That 100 light year figure is arbitrary but it could represent
> >: the radius of a star cluster, beyond which stars were too
> >: scattered to make it worthwhile for them to go further out.
A lot of the questions going on in this thread get seriously
dealt with at the website, "Cosmic Ancestry" at
http://www.panspermia.org. It is the Internet's most
comprehensive resource on the modern or "strong" version of
panspermia. The modern theory is different enough to deserve
the new name.
Cosmic Ancestry has more content, more supporting evidence, and
more important implications than people associate with
"panspermia." Please check it out.
--
Brig Klyce * bkl...@panspermia.org
1503 Union Ave #216B Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 726-1111 * fax 726-0120
http://www.panspermia.org
--
Posted using Reference.COM http://www.reference.com
Browse, Search and Post Usenet and Mailing list Archive and Catalog.
InReference, Inc. accepts no responsibility for the content of this posting.
Peter Nyikos
bkl...@panspermia.org writes:
I couldn't find any mention in your website about directed
panspermy, which is arguably more modern than your version,
which is an updating of Arrhenius's old spore theory.
>Cosmic Ancestry has more content, more supporting evidence, and
>more important implications than people associate with
>"panspermia." Please check it out.
I did. I'd like to hear the reaction of others to it.
It seems to tread on a lot of anti-creationist toes, but
mine are relatively unscathed.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Steve Geller
I still don't see what the basis is for "directed panspermy".
(1) We don't have any evidence of "sperm" coming in from space.
There's noting in meteorites, collections from baloons etc.
(2) We really don't know where in space the nearest life is.
We're not having much luck with Mars. Maybe Clarke will be right
about Europa. Jupiter's atmosphere is dry.
(3) Nothing reliable from SETI et al.
(4) No convincing evidence of "improbability", "irreducible
complexity" beyond various statements of personal incredulity.
(5) Even the religious traditions don't suggest any space origin
of life. There's just some vague mumbles from Jesus about "other
sheep" and from Baha'u'llah about the likelyhood of ET life.
Frankly, to me, directed panspermia has all the credibility of, say,
creation. There's no evidence for creation either.
But panspermia sure is an interesting idea.
Chris Carrell
If we were pure experimentalists, we'd say something like, "who cares?"
Agreed tha tit may be an interesting idea. However, as it has been
presented to me, I have no other option but to chuck it out on
its apparent lack of merit. The idea's defenders certainly have not
done even a marginally competent presentation.
Chris
bkl...@panspermia.org
>Steve Geller wrote:
>I still don't see what the basis is for "directed panspermy".
>(1) We don't have any evidence of "sperm" coming in from space.
>There's noting in meteorites, collections from baloons etc.
There are many reports of fossils in meteorites, for example in
Murchison (http://www.panspermia.org/hoover.htm). And there is
evidence collected in the high atmosphere
(http://www.panspermia.org/comets.htm).
>(2) We really don't know where in space the nearest life is.
>We're not having much luck with Mars. Maybe Clarke will be right
>about Europa. Jupiter's atmosphere is dry.
The evidence for life on Mars from the Viking landers is actually
pretty good (http://www.panspermia.org/marslife.htm).
>(3) Nothing reliable from SETI et al.
Agreed.
>(4) No convincing evidence of "improbability", "irreducible
>complexity" beyond various statements of personal incredulity.
Nor any convincing evidence that genetic instructions with
truly new meaning (really new genes) can get written by blind
trial and error. The process doesn't work in analogous codes
such as text or computer programs.
>(5) Even the religious traditions don't suggest any space origin
>of life. There's just some vague mumbles from Jesus about "other
>sheep" and from Baha'u'llah about the likelyhood of ET life.
How about "Our father who art in heaven." How about the Native
American traditions that place our origins in the stars.
[...]
Steve Geller
>There are many reports of fossils in meteorites, for example in
>Murchison (http://www.panspermia.org/hoover.htm). And there is
>evidence collected in the high atmosphere
>(http://www.panspermia.org/comets.htm).
Thanks for the references. I hadn't heard about any of this.
It does appear that the evidence is not conclusive. The alleged
microfossils in the Murchison and Allende meteorites could
be non-life structures. The finds are is the same class as the
Martian meteorite.
This brings up the question of what non-earth life should look like.
Microorganisms here on earth come is a wide variety of forms,
but there are still two basic kinds -- archaeobacteria and the
common kinds with a cell nucleus. There well be several other
possibilities which arose elsewhere.
When life is that tiny, it's difficult to distinguish life structures
from other chemical structures. Life is, after all, a kind of
chemistry.
On earth, bacteria have been found deep underground, and alive.
It may be too much to expect that exo-bacteria would survive
millions of years in space. I'd like to see a space probe which
gathers dust samples and returns them to earth.
>The evidence for life on Mars from the Viking landers is actually
>pretty good (http://www.panspermia.org/marslife.htm).
Again, it's inconclusive. But we still have the same problem of
recognizing non-earth life. Things may have happened quite
differently on Mars.
>Nor any convincing evidence that genetic instructions with
>truly new meaning (really new genes) can get written by blind
>trial and error. The process doesn't work in analogous codes
>such as text or computer programs.
Oh come, now. That's creationist propaganda, and not true at all.
Genentech, and the bacteria breeders, do this all the time.
Shall we believe that life out in space was created only
in "fixed kinds"? <chuckle>
I think we'll find that life, in the wider context of the cosmos,
is more varied than life on earth. There's been some specualtion
that life arose on earth several times, and was beaten back
by cosmic catastrophe. What we see today is just one of several
possibilities.
The molecules of life are large and complex, but they're based on
a small set of amino acids. Exo-life may well have gotten started
using a different set of amino acids -- or something else entirely.
Amino acids found in carbonaceous meteorites don't show the
"handedness" bias generated by life; both left-handed and right-handed
forms are found.
>>(5) Even the religious traditions don't suggest any space origin
>>of life.
>How about "Our father who art in heaven." How about the Native
>American traditions that place our origins in the stars.
The "heavens" have been obvious to even our remotest ancestors.
Some people have even seen "stones from the sky". It's not
unreasonable to imagine we came from there. But these traditions
don't describe how life is spread over the galaxy; none of them
had any idea there was a galaxy in the first place.
There's a modern religion, the Church of Scientology, which has a
tradition of life originating in space.
Then there's "Heaven's Gate", the folks who sought to hitch a ride
on the comet.
bkl...@panspermia.org
>sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) wrote
>[...]
>On earth, bacteria have been found deep underground, and alive.
>It may be too much to expect that exo-bacteria would survive
>millions of years in space. I'd like to see a space probe which
>gathers dust samples and returns them to earth.
Stardust is on schedule, but it will 2011 before the sample
returns.
>>Nor any convincing evidence that genetic instructions with
>>truly new meaning (really new genes) can get written by blind
>>trial and error. The process doesn't work in analogous codes
>>such as text or computer programs.
>Oh come, now. That's creationist propaganda, and not true at all.
>Genentech, and the bacteria breeders, do this all the time.
>Shall we believe that life out in space was created only
>in "fixed kinds"? <chuckle>
I would like to know the specifics of any examples you have in
mind. I am aware of no examples of new genes with unforseen,
new functions produced by any lab using a neo-Darwinistic
process, or any other process. I have been paying close
attention.
Steve Geller
>Stardust is on schedule, but it will 2011 before the sample
>returns.
Who's launching it? Where's is going to go?
>>Oh come, now. That's creationist propaganda, and not true at all.
>>Genentech, and the bacteria breeders, do this all the time.
>>Shall we believe that life out in space was created only
>>in "fixed kinds"? <chuckle>
>
>I would like to know the specifics of any examples you have in
>mind. I am aware of no examples of new genes with unforseen,
>new functions produced by any lab using a neo-Darwinistic
>process, or any other process. I have been paying close
>attention.
I can't say I've been paying close attention. I have read in
Science News about "genetic algorithms" and rapid breeding
of bacteria to do a specific job -- one was to eat oil spills.
I don't know what you'd call "new genes", but it seems clear that
genes can be manipulated. If we had the right micro-manipulators,
cow genes could be manipulated into cauliflower genes. The code
base is the same.
Peter Nyikos
sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) writes:
>>Stardust is on schedule, but it will 2011 before the sample
>>returns.
>Who's launching it? Where's is going to go?
I'm curious too. What is Stardust?
>>>Oh come, now. That's creationist propaganda, and not true at all.
>>>Genentech, and the bacteria breeders, do this all the time.
>>>Shall we believe that life out in space was created only
>>>in "fixed kinds"? <chuckle>
Not I. I've been arguing for the possibility of genetically
engineered organisms being the stuff of directed panspermy.
>>I would like to know the specifics of any examples you have in
>>mind. I am aware of no examples of new genes with unforseen,
>>new functions produced by any lab using a neo-Darwinistic
>>process, or any other process. I have been paying close
>>attention.
>I can't say I've been paying close attention. I have read in
>Science News about "genetic algorithms" and rapid breeding
>of bacteria to do a specific job -- one was to eat oil spills.
>I don't know what you'd call "new genes", but it seems clear that
>genes can be manipulated. If we had the right micro-manipulators,
>cow genes could be manipulated into cauliflower genes. The code
>base is the same.
Keep it up, Steve. You are doing a bang-up job of demonstrating
the feasibility of directed panspermy by designers who altered
their organisms genetically so as to leave a "trademark" like
the suspiciously gizmo-like bacterial flagellum.
Peter Nyikos
sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) writes:
>I still don't see what the basis is for "directed panspermy".
>(1) We don't have any evidence of "sperm" coming in from space.
>There's noting in meteorites, collections from baloons etc.
That's got nothing to do with *directed* panspermy, as Steve
Novak, er, Chris Carrell ought to be able to tell you.
>(2) We really don't know where in space the nearest life is.
>We're not having much luck with Mars. Maybe Clarke will be right
>about Europa. Jupiter's atmosphere is dry.
That's more devastating to abiogenesis than to directed panspermy.
Any unsuccessful probe 3.5+ bya probably wouldn't leave any
signs of having been here.
>(3) Nothing reliable from SETI et al.
3.5+ billion years after the main event, and you even expect the
species to be still in existence?
>(4) No convincing evidence of "improbability", "irreducible
>complexity" beyond various statements of personal incredulity.
Oh, cut it out. What's relevant is that nobody has a good
scenario for home-grown abiogenesis, one that includes demonstrating
that RNA world doesn't violate the laws of chemistry.
>(5) Even the religious traditions don't suggest any space origin
>of life.
They don't need to. They also don't suggest evolution of the
vertebrates as we know it occurred.
>Frankly, to me, directed panspermia has all the credibility of, say,
>creation. There's no evidence for creation either.
There's plenty, but it takes a trained eye to see it.
>But panspermia sure is an interesting idea.
You've been arguing against it more than you have against
directed panspermy. As I said to Carrell:
===================== begin abridged excerpt, deletia marked by {...}
>I seem to have lost interest because you are a mental defective
>wrt directed panspermy. The word _directed_ actually means something.
You don't need to say that to me. It's your allies that
seem to have trouble with it.
{...}
Directed panspermy is intelligent creatures sending living
organisms in space probes; they need not accompany them.
I have never deviated from this definition.
=========================== end of abridged excerpt
Steve Geller
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>(1) We don't have any evidence of "sperm" coming in from space.
>>There's nothing in meteorites, collections from balloons etc.
>
>That's got nothing to do with *directed* panspermy, as Steve
>Novak, er, Chris Carrell ought to be able to tell you.
Somebody should tell me. Right now, to me, panspermy means that
live pervades the Universe, and that some of it sprinked on the earth.
This is plausible scientifically; it's not a theory because we don't
have clear evidence of ET life.
"Directed Panspermy" sounds less like science than theology.
Who/what is doing the directing, and what is the purpose behind
the direction?
>>(2) We really don't know where in space the nearest life is.
>>We're not having much luck with Mars. Maybe Clarke will be right
>>about Europa. Jupiter's atmosphere is dry.
>
>That's more devastating to abiogenesis than to directed panspermy.
>Any unsuccessful probe 3.5+ bya probably wouldn't leave any
>signs of having been here.
As far as I know, we have no definite evidence of life anywhere but
earth. All we know is that the first traces of life date back to
3.5 billion years ago. We do not know if this was when the ET sperm
was directed in, or even if this happened at all.
>>(3) Nothing reliable from SETI et al.
>
>3.5+ billion years after the main event, and you even expect the
>species to be still in existence?
Surely the the ET spermians visited other worlds than earth.
Shouldn't we hear from some of our fellow sperm recipients?
I still don't see why the panspermians could only operate
back at the beginnings of life.
>>(4) No convincing evidence of "improbability", "irreducible
>>complexity" beyond various statements of personal incredulity.
>
>Oh, cut it out. What's relevant is that nobody has a good
>scenario for home-grown abiogenesis, one that includes demonstrating
>that RNA world doesn't violate the laws of chemistry.
Not sure what point you might be making here. What is the
"RNA world"?
>>(5) Even the religious traditions don't suggest any space origin
>>of life.
>
>They don't need to. They also don't suggest evolution of the
>vertebrates as we know it occurred.
Do we know life came from space?
>>Frankly, to me, directed panspermia has all the credibility of, say,
>>creation. There's no evidence for creation either.
>
>There's plenty, but it takes a trained eye to see it.
with a believing brain behind it?
>>But panspermia sure is an interesting idea.
>
>You've been arguing against it more than you have against
>directed panspermy.
I'm just noting that the evidence is not strong.
What is "directed panspermia" and why is this easier to believe?
howard hershey
This is the sum total of Peter's evidence for directed panspermy: It
could have happened because humans can design things (even biological
things). All you have to do then is posit the existence of human-like
organisms at the right time and place. Abracadabara. That solves
everything. That there is zero, zip, nada evidence for these
marvelously convenient critters doesn't matter. OTOH, if you propose a
mechanism that doesn't involve these little green men, you better be
able to show how every amino acid appeared.
bkl...@panspermia.org
>sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) wrote:
>Somebody should tell me. Right now, to me, panspermy means
>that live pervades the Universe, and that some of it sprinked
>on the earth. This is plausible scientifically; it's not a
>theory because we don't have clear evidence of ET life.
There are some pretty good pictures of fossils in meteorites
that resemble life -- for example in the Murchison Meteorite. Is
there "clear evidence" that life comes from chemicals?
>"Directed Panspermy" sounds less like science than theology.
>Who/what is doing the directing, and what is the purpose
>behind the direction?
Directed Panspermia was the name give to Crick's theory that
bacteria came to Earth on a spaceship, possibly pointed here.
Bacteria that are widespread in space and are carried by comets
would exemplify ordinary [undirected] panspermia. Who or what
would be behind that is hard to know at this point.
>Surely the the ET spermians visited other worlds than earth.
>Shouldn't we hear from some of our fellow sperm recipients?
>I still don't see why the panspermians could only operate
>back at the beginnings of life.
Quite right. The modern or "strong" version of panspermia says
that the process is ongoing and effects evolution.
>...What is the "RNA world"?
It's the current favorite theory for how nonliving chemicals
turned into life. But it is losing steam. In December, 1996,
after a September Astrobiology conference at Ames, even NASA
said the theory had problems.
>Do we know life came from space?
Of course not, but it is a reasonable guess. If all life comes
from life, as Pasteur said, then Earthly life had to come from
somewhere. Where else is there besides space?
---
Brig Klyce http://www.panspermia.org
Steve Geller
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>I've been arguing for the possibility of genetically
>engineered organisms being the stuff of directed panspermy.
>>I don't know what you'd call "new genes", but it seems clear that
>>genes can be manipulated. If we had the right micro-manipulators,
>>cow genes could be manipulated into cauliflower genes. The code
>>base is the same.
>
>Keep it up, Steve. You are doing a bang-up job of demonstrating
>the feasibility of directed panspermy by designers who altered
>their organisms genetically so as to leave a "trademark" like
>the suspiciously gizmo-like bacterial flagellum.
You are saying that if human technology can do it, then it's
likely that the Panspermy Directors out there could do what we have
and more.
Only one little problem: where are they? The only life we know is
here; the only genetic engineers we know are us.
Directed Panspermy is an intriguing idea, but until we get some
direct evidence of the designers, it has the same artificial
fuzziness as "God did it".
Why is the bacterial flagellum a "trademark"? Would you call the
shape of a river delta, of a thunderhead, a "trademark" of some
designer? How about a brain, a central nervous system? More design?
Steve Geller
bkl...@panspermia.org wrote:
>There are some pretty good pictures of fossils in meteorites
>that resemble life -- for example in the Murchison Meteorite. Is
>there "clear evidence" that life comes from chemicals?
Well, yes, actually: life is clearly a collection of chemical
processes. Cell biology shades into organic chemistry.
The "fossils" in meteorites, judging from your Web examples,
are intriguing but not convincing. But I suppose any life form
that got into a meteorite would have to be pretty basic.
The pictures of asteroids we've been getting are not encouraging
for possible fossil finds; there's so much evidence of catastrophic
violence. Still, we may turn up a chunk of fossil layer from
the parent planet of the asteroids -- if there ever was such a thing.
>Directed Panspermia was the name give to Crick's theory that
>bacteria came to Earth on a spaceship, possibly pointed here.
>Bacteria that are widespread in space and are carried by comets
>would exemplify ordinary [undirected] panspermia. Who or what
>would be behind that is hard to know at this point.
Does Crick have any evidence of this spaceship? How does he
distinguish a random bacterial rain from special delivery by
spaceship?
>>Do we know life came from space?
>
>Of course not, but it is a reasonable guess. If all life comes
>from life, as Pasteur said, then Earthly life had to come from
>somewhere. Where else is there besides space?
So we're back to the fundamental question: is life a likely result,
given a warm and watery planet? Or is life so special that it
had to get started elsewhere?
Based on the current (lack of) evidence, it's plausible that life
is extremely unlikely, and that we are here as a result of amazing
blind luck. In this view, life has no importance in the vast
universe at all.
Creationists, as we know well, avoid this possibility by bringing
on the miracles. This may be entirely appropriate, if life really
is such a rarity.
Did anyone tell us what the "Stardust Project" is? I gather it's
a spacecraft to collect interstellar debris? Any details?
Ken Livingston
bkl...@panspermia.org wrote:
> >sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) wrote:
[snip]
> >Do we know life came from space?
>
> Of course not, but it is a reasonable guess. If all life comes
> from life, as Pasteur said, then Earthly life had to come from
> somewhere. Where else is there besides space?
Well, this begs the question, how did life in space begin? Life
must have arisen from non-life at some point and Earth would seem
to be at least as likely a place as any other.
Regards,
Ken
--
Ken Livingston
ken...@pcug.org.au
Peter Nyikos
I've added alt.alien.research as a courtesy to someone from that
newsgroup who expressed an interest.
Howard Hershey continues to reveal that the Howard Hershey I
spent about a megabyte patiently discussing things with
was just a facade for a completely unscrupulous propagandist.
[I also spent about a megabyte impatiently arguing with him,
but he still pretended to be a responsible person most of
that time.]
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) writes:
>> >I can't say I've been paying close attention. I have read in
>> >Science News about "genetic algorithms" and rapid breeding
>> >of bacteria to do a specific job -- one was to eat oil spills.
>>
>> >I don't know what you'd call "new genes", but it seems clear that
>> >genes can be manipulated. If we had the right micro-manipulators,
>> >cow genes could be manipulated into cauliflower genes. The code
>> >base is the same.
>> Keep it up, Steve. You are doing a bang-up job of demonstrating
>> the feasibility of directed panspermy by designers who altered
>> their organisms genetically so as to leave a "trademark" like
>> the suspiciously gizmo-like bacterial flagellum.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Of course, the following statement completely ignores the
highlighted words:
>This is the sum total of Peter's evidence for directed panspermy: It
>could have happened because humans can design things (even biological
>things).
Hershey is, apparently, trying to get me to say "Hershey is lying"
by posting things he knows to be untrue but which he figures
he can weasel out of by disqualifying the mountains of things
Julie Thomas has written on the bacterial flagellum, the
refutation by Julie and me of innumerable Hershey snow jobs
about "microvilli" being apt descriptions of proto-cilia,
of Stentor being a purely sessile creature with randomly
beating cilia, etc, etc.
[No, he didn't say Stentor's cilia beat at random but the
context was such that readers knowing nothing about Stentor
would guess that.]
I have posted the following bit three times before, and Hershey
has ducked the question each time AFAIK.
==================== begin included excerpt
Tell me the truth: when you first saw the bacterial flagellum
diagram in the upper half of p. 71, wasn't your reaction something
like: "The bacterial flagellum couldn't possibly look anything like
that. That's got to be someone's April Fool joke. I mean, the
L ring and P ring and S ring look like friggin' *washers*, and the rod, rotor
and stator look like they were cribbed from a diagram of some electric
machine or fancy faucet valve."
================================== end of excerpt
>[...] That there is zero, zip, nada evidence for these
>marvelously convenient critters doesn't matter.
The evidence is in many places, including over a hundred pages
of Crick's book referenced at the end of the following quote:
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available
to us now, could only state that in some sense, the
origin of life seems at the moment to be almost a miracle,
so many are the conditions which would have had to have
been satisfied to get it going.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_,
Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 88.
OTOH, if you propose a
>mechanism that doesn't involve these little green men, you better be
>able to show how every amino acid appeared.
Hershey is shamelessly confusing the issue. My megabyte or more
criticizing his blatant assertions about how RNA World (whose
very existence has not been shown to be chemically possible)
gave rise to the genetic code had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER
to do with the production of amino acids, which I always assumed
to be a trivial "given".
Matt Silberstein
On 7 Oct 1997 15:15:55 -0400, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>CC: Steve, since this has been delayed a good bit.
>
>sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) writes:
>
>>bkl...@panspermia.org wrote:
>
>>>Directed Panspermia was the name give to Crick's theory that
>>>bacteria came to Earth on a spaceship, possibly pointed here.
>>>Bacteria that are widespread in space and are carried by comets
>>>would exemplify ordinary [undirected] panspermia. Who or what
>>>would be behind that is hard to know at this point.
>
>>Does Crick have any evidence of this spaceship? How does he
>>distinguish a random bacterial rain from special delivery by
>>spaceship?
>
>Well, the spaceship allows lots longer journeys thru providing
>protection of the bacteria from radiation, and also protects
>them from the heat of atmospheric entry. Also it may have the
>capacity to steer towards those planets, and those parts
>of planets, that give the best habitats for the organisms
>inside. A MIRV-style setup could even steer different bacteria
>towards different environments on the same planet.
>
That is interesting. To you think you could answer the questions
though?
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
----------------------------------------------
CAUCHON. And you, and not the Church, are to be the judge?
JOAN. What other judgment can I judge by but my own?
_Saint Joan_ by GBS, Scene VI
I am away from my computer now, so I don't have a
spell checker. Sorry.
Peter Nyikos
CC: Steve, since this has been delayed a good bit.
sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) writes:
>bkl...@panspermia.org wrote:
>>Directed Panspermia was the name give to Crick's theory that
>>bacteria came to Earth on a spaceship, possibly pointed here.
>>Bacteria that are widespread in space and are carried by comets
>>would exemplify ordinary [undirected] panspermia. Who or what
>>would be behind that is hard to know at this point.
>Does Crick have any evidence of this spaceship? How does he
>distinguish a random bacterial rain from special delivery by
>spaceship?
Well, the spaceship allows lots longer journeys thru providing
protection of the bacteria from radiation, and also protects
them from the heat of atmospheric entry. Also it may have the
capacity to steer towards those planets, and those parts
of planets, that give the best habitats for the organisms
inside. A MIRV-style setup could even steer different bacteria
towards different environments on the same planet.
>>>Do we know life came from space?
>>
>>Of course not, but it is a reasonable guess. If all life comes
>>from life, as Pasteur said, then Earthly life had to come from
>>somewhere. Where else is there besides space?
>So we're back to the fundamental question: is life a likely result,
>given a warm and watery planet? Or is life so special that it
>had to get started elsewhere?
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available
to us now, could only state that in some sense, the
origin of life seems at the moment to be almost a miracle,
so many are the conditions which would have had to have
been satisfied to get it going.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_,
Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 88.
Crick doesn't claim that this answer is final, nor does he consider
directed panspermy more likely *or* less likely than life arising
here spontaneously, precisely because he doesn't know what the odds are.
>Based on the current (lack of) evidence, it's plausible that life
>is extremely unlikely, and that we are here as a result of amazing
>blind luck. In this view, life has no importance in the vast
>universe at all.
Well, philosophers say that a mountain can crush a man, but
the man is more important because he is aware of it.
>Creationists, as we know well, avoid this possibility by bringing
>on the miracles. This may be entirely appropriate, if life really
>is such a rarity.
Indeed. But I'd rather wait till next year to get into that.
Peter Nyikos
ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>bkl...@panspermia.org wrote:
>> >sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) wrote:
>> >Do we know life came from space?
>>
>> Of course not, but it is a reasonable guess. If all life comes
>> from life, as Pasteur said, then Earthly life had to come from
>> somewhere. Where else is there besides space?
>Well, this begs the question, how did life in space begin? Life
>must have arisen from non-life at some point and Earth would seem
>to be at least as likely a place as any other.
I've addressed this issue earlier, Ken.
================== excerpt from followup to "lo...@my.sig", names added
[Wade Hines:]
>>>Is the miracle that life evolved?
[Peter Nyikos:]
>>The near-miracle is that it came from simple chemical compounds.
["lo...@my.sig"]
>Just not here on earth, huh? Tell me, Peter, why is it easier for you
>to consider that life arose under completely unknown conditions in a
>unknown location and then got transported to earth by unknown means
>rather than that life arose on earth?
The odds, for one thing. One intelligent species living
100,000 generations could send a lot of prokaryote-carrying
probes to likely planets. Come 1998, I might be arguing that
prebiota -> abiogenesis -> technological civilization
can be expected to happen maybe in one in
a billion universes even if they are as favorable to the
advent of life as this one. In that case, the theory of Poisson
processes would say that abiogenesis leading naturally to
a technological civilization is most likely to be a one-shot
deal in any universe where it happens, and then there is a good
case for the fact that it probably wasn't HERE on earth.
But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes. And let's
see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
progress in biochemistry.
============================== end of excerpt from
"Directed panspermy (Was: Phylogenetic classification)"
Bruce Salem
In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>
>But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
>of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes. And let's
>see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
>couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
>progress in biochemistry.
But Peter it took an eon, a billion years or more for the
bacteria to appear between the origina of the earth and the first
bacteria-like microfossils. Surely a tousand years of concerted
biochemical research, at least 10,000 faster, may well make the
flagellium from scratch. But if nature is undirected, we can give
her time enough to do it undirected. The complexity she accmulates
has to have a memory in structures passed on in each geneation of
biota. Either could be the case, but you have no proof that either
could not be the case, you are just arguing from ignorance, again.
Bruce Salem
--
!! Just my opinions, maybe not those of my sponsor. !!
howard hershey
How in the heck does that answer the question?
> >Just not here on earth, huh? Tell me, Peter, why is it easier for you
> >to consider that life arose under completely unknown conditions in a
> >unknown location and then got transported to earth by unknown means
> >rather than that life arose on earth?
You have not presented even a hint as to why, if life is a one-shot
deal, that it could not be that the Earth is the lucky ducky. We *know*
that semi-intelligent life exists here, after all.
>
> But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
> of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes.
Done to the extent that independent evidence allows. Now where is your
independent evidence that the Xordaxians stuck a tail on eubacteria?
> And let's
> see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
> couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
> progress in biochemistry.
Ken Livingston
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
> But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
> of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes. And let's
> see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
> couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
> progress in biochemistry.
> ============================== end of excerpt from
> "Directed panspermy (Was: Phylogenetic classification)"
Thanks for this, Peter. I see a few problems, though. Firstly, of
course, a Poisson distribution or any other is meaningless as we can
make no definitive statements about either the actual instances of
intelligent life occurring in the universe nor do we know the boundary
conditions beyond inferences drawn from our own particular case of
intelligent life on this planet.
Secondly, if, as you suggest, one intelligent species living 100,000
generations did send a lot of prokaryote-carrying probes to likely
planets, the destinations of these probes would of needs have been
restricted to a limited region in the galaxy within the sphere of
knowledge and reach of the launchers. As Earth would have been
included in the seeded area, we might expect to find a rather high
distribution of life occurring in our own neighbourhood of the galaxy
and having a common ancestor. The probability of detecting ETI nearby
and concurrent with our own civilisation is thereby increased. Nothing
yet has been detected.
And this raises the further question of what happened to the original
parent species? Given that the parent species had sufficient knowledge
to seed life on other planets, the odds are good that the parent species
had sufficient knowledge - or would have developed sufficient knowledge
- not only to ensure their own survival but to monitor the results of
their probes. Thusfar, we have no evidence of this.
While directed panspermy cannot be ruled out, neither should the anthropic
principle be ruled out, in its various flavours. Probabilistic problems
are allayed significantly if the universe is predisposed to the genesis
of life - and perhaps conscious life. It seems to me that life is no
accident. But removing the origin of life from Earth and ascribing it
to planet X does not increase the odds of life occurring - for why would
the probability of life arising on planet X have been any greater than
on planet Earth?
Wade Hines
ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>Thanks for this, Peter. I see a few problems, though. Firstly, of
>course, a Poisson distribution or any other is meaningless as we can
>make no definitive statements about either the actual instances of
>intelligent life occurring in the universe nor do we know the boundary
>conditions beyond inferences drawn from our own particular case of
>intelligent life on this planet.
>Secondly, if, as you suggest, one intelligent species living 100,000
>generations did send a lot of prokaryote-carrying probes to likely
>planets, the destinations of these probes would of needs have been
>restricted to a limited region in the galaxy within the sphere of
>knowledge and reach of the launchers. As Earth would have been
>included in the seeded area, we might expect to find a rather high
>distribution of life occurring in our own neighbourhood of the galaxy
>and having a common ancestor. The probability of detecting ETI nearby
>and concurrent with our own civilisation is thereby increased. Nothing
>yet has been detected.
Then there's the recursion problem. Why only one seed? Why not lots
of different seeds? Do panspermists have a "prime directive" that
causes their seed pods to self destruct if previous life is
detected? Would some panspermists try to Borg the rest of the
universe? If you leap on that little bandwagon out of Saganistic
hopes and dreams, why stop at one seeding event?
If you want to play at thought games where you extrapolate
from other thought games rahter than from evidence, why ever
stop?
Peter Nyikos
The cryptoSalem strikes again, posting as usual under the Bruce Salem
name. ;-)
sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
> I promised myself that I would make the assertion in
>the title on the next ocassion I caught Peter tilting toward
>un-natural, supernatural, forces in the history of life iastead
>of the boring, undirected, mandane natural processes of organic
>evolution, which he says he believes in. I only had to wait
>about a minute.
That's because you have a secret meaning for "evolution" which
obviously means something radically different from "common
descent of all living things from primitive one-celled creatures".
> A Cryptocreationist is one who argues for a designer's
>hand because he believes that nature cannot do it all by herself,
>make life and cause it to change.
And a cryptoSalem is someone who is unable to fathom the difference
between believing something and taking its possibility seriously.
>In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) writes:
>>
>>>Creationists, as we know well, avoid this possibility by bringing
>>>on the miracles. This may be entirely appropriate, if life really
>>>is such a rarity.
>>
>>Indeed. But I'd rather wait till next year to get into that.
It may be entirely appropriate for Creationists to act that way,
and me to get into discussing the pros and cons of it,
but cryptoSalem obviously prefers to read something else
into what I wrote.
Peter Nyikos
howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>> >Well, this begs the question, how did life in space begin? Life
>> >must have arisen from non-life at some point and Earth would seem
>> >to be at least as likely a place as any other.
>> I've addressed this issue earlier, Ken.
And continue to address it below, since my hints went over
Hershey's head (to give him the benefit of the doubt).
>> ================== excerpt from followup to "lo...@my.sig", names added
>>
>> [Wade Hines:]
>> >>>Is the miracle that life evolved?
>>
>> [Peter Nyikos:]
>> >>The near-miracle is that it came from simple chemical compounds.
>>
>> ["lo...@my.sig"]
>> >Just not here on earth, huh? Tell me, Peter, why is it easier for you
>> >to consider that life arose under completely unknown conditions in a
>> >unknown location and then got transported to earth by unknown means
>> >rather than that life arose on earth?
>>
>> The odds, for one thing. One intelligent species living
>> 100,000 generations could send a lot of prokaryote-carrying
>> probes to likely planets. Come 1998, I might be arguing that
>> prebiota -> abiogenesis -> technological civilization
>> can be expected to happen maybe in one in
>> a billion universes even if they are as favorable to the
>> advent of life as this one. In that case, the theory of Poisson
>> processes would say that abiogenesis leading naturally to
>> a technological civilization is most likely to be a one-shot
>> deal in any universe where it happens, and then there is a good
>> case for the fact that it probably wasn't HERE on earth.
>How in the heck does that answer the question?
See below for a hint.
>> >Just not here on earth, huh? Tell me, Peter, why is it easier for you
>> >to consider that life arose under completely unknown conditions in a
>> >unknown location and then got transported to earth by unknown means
>> >rather than that life arose on earth?
>You have not presented even a hint as to why, if life is a one-shot
>deal, that it could not be that the Earth is the lucky ducky.
The hint is in "Poisson processes", which continue to apply
to the final clause in what I wrote.
>> But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
>> of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes.
>Done to the extent that independent evidence allows.
In other words, you have a bust hand. Your "homology" bit
only argues for a common origin of the things involved, but
not a blessed clue about how Darinian processes could
have done it.
> Now where is your
>independent evidence that the Xordaxians stuck a tail on eubacteria?
^^^^^^^^^^^^
You mistook a troll for an ally of mine???
>> And let's
>> see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
>> couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
>> progress in biochemistry.
You passed on this one, so I'm still holding all the good cards.
Peter Nyikos
sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
>>of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes. And let's
>>see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
>>couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
>>progress in biochemistry.
> But Peter it took an eon, a billion years or more for the
>bacteria to appear between the origina of the earth and the first
>bacteria-like microfossils.
That estimate no longer is generally accepted. One half to a
billion years is the current estimate, and it is also conjectured
that a mere 100 million years elapsed from the time the
earth cooled enough to allow life to form, and the first
primitive organisms.
Surely a tousand years of concerted
>biochemical research, at least 10,000 faster, may well make the
>flagellium from scratch. But if nature is undirected, we can give
>her time enough to do it undirected. The complexity she accmulates
>has to have a memory in structures passed on in each geneation of
>biota.
"biota" assumes abiogenesis has already occurred. Well, let's
assume it for the sake of argument. So what? How many eons
do you estimate it takes to produce a bacterial flagellum
by Darwinian processes?
If you take refuge in "nobody knows," then please allow
me confine my followups on this matter with people who try a
little harder than that.
Peter Nyikos
ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>> ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>>
>> >bkl...@panspermia.org wrote:
>>
>> >> >sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) wrote:
>>
>> >> >Do we know life came from space?
>> >>
>> >> Of course not, but it is a reasonable guess. If all life comes
>> >> from life, as Pasteur said, then Earthly life had to come from
>> >> somewhere. Where else is there besides space?
>>
>> >Well, this begs the question, how did life in space begin? Life
>> >must have arisen from non-life at some point and Earth would seem
>> >to be at least as likely a place as any other.
>>
>> I've addressed this issue earlier, Ken.
>>
>> ================== excerpt from followup to "lo...@my.sig", names added
>>
>> [Wade Hines:]
>> >>>Is the miracle that life evolved?
>>
>> [Peter Nyikos:]
>> >>The near-miracle is that it came from simple chemical compounds.
>>
>> ["lo...@my.sig"]
>> >Just not here on earth, huh? Tell me, Peter, why is it easier for you
>> >to consider that life arose under completely unknown conditions in a
>> >unknown location and then got transported to earth by unknown means
>> >rather than that life arose on earth?
>>
>> The odds, for one thing. One intelligent species living
>> 100,000 generations could send a lot of prokaryote-carrying
>> probes to likely planets. Come 1998, I might be arguing that
>> prebiota -> abiogenesis -> technological civilization
>> can be expected to happen maybe in one in
>> a billion universes even if they are as favorable to the
>> advent of life as this one. In that case, the theory of Poisson
>> processes would say that abiogenesis leading naturally to
>> a technological civilization is most likely to be a one-shot
>> deal in any universe where it happens, and then there is a good
>> case for the fact that it probably wasn't HERE on earth.
>>
>> But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
>> of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes. And let's
>> see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
>> couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
>> progress in biochemistry.
>> ============================== end of excerpt from
>> "Directed panspermy (Was: Phylogenetic classification)"
>Thanks for this, Peter. I see a few problems, though. Firstly, of
>course, a Poisson distribution or any other is meaningless as we can
>make no definitive statements about either the actual instances of
>intelligent life occurring in the universe nor do we know the boundary
>conditions beyond inferences drawn from our own particular case of
>intelligent life on this planet.
Please don't use the word "meaningless" in this way. Until
someone shows the advent of life to be a high probability
event in a universe such as ours, we have to contend with
possibilities like the one I argue for.
>Secondly, if, as you suggest, one intelligent species living 100,000
>generations did send a lot of prokaryote-carrying probes to likely
>planets, the destinations of these probes would of needs have been
>restricted to a limited region in the galaxy within the sphere of
>knowledge and reach of the launchers. As Earth would have been
>included in the seeded area, we might expect to find a rather high
>distribution of life occurring in our own neighbourhood of the galaxy
>and having a common ancestor.
Quite possibly, but the intelligent life forms may be very
widely scattered, and ours might be among the first--how many
others experienced such things as our Cambrian explosion
to speed evolution up, for instance?
> The probability of detecting ETI nearby
>and concurrent with our own civilisation is thereby increased. Nothing
>yet has been detected.
Back before 1991, people were widely speculating that any
highly advanced civilization would blow itself up shortly
after the discovery of nuclear fission. Are you old enough
to remember the doomsday "Atomic Scientists" with their clocks set
a few minutes short of midnight, and what big adjustments
they made with each major turn in world events?
>And this raises the further question of what happened to the original
>parent species?
A *lot* can happen in 3.5+ billion years.
>Given that the parent species had sufficient knowledge
>to seed life on other planets, the odds are good that the parent species
>had sufficient knowledge - or would have developed sufficient knowledge
>- not only to ensure their own survival but to monitor the results of
>their probes. Thusfar, we have no evidence of this.
You evidently haven't read much about these Atomic Scientists
and their predictions based on the naive assumption that
the probability of us blowing ourselves up in any given
year adds up to near-certainty in the next millennium.
I wonder--were all their critics dismissed as diehard
right wing conservatives? For sure, they seemed to command
respect from the mainstream media.
>While directed panspermy cannot be ruled out, neither should the anthropic
>principle be ruled out, in its various flavours. Probabilistic problems
>are allayed significantly if the universe is predisposed to the genesis
>of life - and perhaps conscious life.
Sure, but the anthropic principle doesn't address such nebulous
things as "predispositions"--or at least it shouldn't without
some hard-nosed specifics to back it up.
> It seems to me that life is no
>accident. But removing the origin of life from Earth and ascribing it
>to planet X does not increase the odds of life occurring - for why would
>the probability of life arising on planet X have been any greater than
>on planet Earth?
You forget that there are millions of candidates for planet X, and
only one earth.
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>
> >Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>
> >> ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
> >>
> >> >bkl...@panspermia.org wrote:
> >>
> >> >> >sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) wrote:
> >>
Peter sure does seem to have strange ideas about the use of the Poisson
distribution for a math professor. Apparently statistics is not his
forte. I sure hope he doesn't teach a statistics course. But given his
difficulty in envisioning topological transformations of morphology via
allometry, I wonder sometimes whether topology is his forte either.
>
[snip]
>
> > It seems to me that life is no
> >accident. But removing the origin of life from Earth and ascribing it
> >to planet X does not increase the odds of life occurring - for why would
> >the probability of life arising on planet X have been any greater than
> >on planet Earth?
>
> You forget that there are millions of candidates for planet X, and
> only one earth.
So where are the other 'planets with life' that you would *need* to make
any kind of estimate of life-bearing planets using a Poisson
distribution? At the present time, we have a total sample size of 9
observed planets (and a number of moons and planetoids) with only one
*known* to have life (there are a few uncertain 'possibles'). We have
no other sample of planets that would allow us to estimate either that
1/9 is reasonable for the rest of the universe, or if 1/10^9 is
reasonable, or if the earth is the *only* planet with life in this
universe. The only *certainty* is that life does exist on the earth.
But why does a guesstimate that there are millions of candidates for
other planets which might have (or have had) life (which might or might
not be true) mean that life certainly could not have evolved directly on
the one planet we *know* has life but must instead have evolved on some
other planet and been sent here? I see a logical disconnect here. Even
if you assume that planets with life are exceedingly rare, what is it
about the Poisson distribution that makes it unlikly that the earth in
particular (the one planet we know has life) was one of those planets?
You wouldn't be making an *a posteriori* calculation, would you?
Doug Quarnstrom
Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.SC.EDU) wrote:
: >biota.
: "biota" assumes abiogenesis has already occurred. Well, let's
: assume it for the sake of argument. So what? How many eons
: do you estimate it takes to produce a bacterial flagellum
: by Darwinian processes?
: If you take refuge in "nobody knows," then please allow
: me confine my followups on this matter with people who try a
: little harder than that.
If the real answer is that nobody knows, how is it that you
imagine anything useful is to be accomplished by debating
those who imagine they do?
I mean, hell, the science is probably only now getting
to the point where there is some basis for estimating
how long it will take a finches beak to change given
certain environmental pressures.
I must reiterate, why should I take seriously any claim
that says "it MUST be able to happen this quickly" or
it "could not possibly happen as fast as that?"
doug
Peter Nyikos
sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>In article <1997101002...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>The cryptoSalem strikes again, posting as usual under the Bruce Salem
>>name. ;-)
>>
>>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>>
>>> I promised myself that I would make the assertion in
>>>the title on the next ocassion I caught Peter tilting toward
>>>un-natural, supernatural, forces in the history of life iastead
>>>of the boring, undirected, mandane natural processes of organic
>>>evolution, which he says he believes in. I only had to wait
>>>about a minute.
>>
>>That's because you have a secret meaning for "evolution" which
>>obviously means something radically different from "common
>>descent of all living things from primitive one-celled creatures".
> Oh, but then one could include theistic evolution, or lemarkism,
>or I-will-to-grow-this-new-organ-over-time-ism, with that definition
>which is the one which is what people mean by calling evolution a "fact".
>it is the emperical fact of change in the forms of life through time.
True. And I should qualify what I said above. I no more "believe in"
the exciting, undirected, natural processes of organic evolution
than I "believe in" any of the alternatives. I salute the fact
of common descent, believe in it fervently where vertebrates are
concerned, and have far more confidence where all metazoans
are concerned, than I have in the existence of the supernatural.
That said, I must confess to a personal bias towards *hoping*
that death does not mean oblivion, and that there is a benevolent
God who makes the afterlife more rewarding and meaningful than,
say, the nightmare version seen in Homer's _The Odyssey_, which
is even more undesirable IMO than oblivion.
But the point is, I have seen too much in my 51 years to be
taken in by easy arguments for this hope being a reality. My
temperament, particularly when arguing logically, tends to
take the "It's just too good to be true" attitude, and I doubt
that you'll find a more severe critic of my own arguments in
this direction than myself--at least among critics who don't
resort to dirty debating tricks to muddy the waters.
> What we are really debating is the mechanism for such change.
>I assert that undirected natural selection is sufficient to explain
>it all, and you don't really accept that.
No, because your assertion is pure blind faith in atheism.
> You want engineers to intervene from time to time
No, I do not. I go with the evidnence wherever it leads, and
you people have done far more to convince me of the weakness
of your evidence than all the creationist literature I have
ever read, and all the creationist arguments I have ever heard,
put together.
Which isn't even surprising in a way, because I have seen
far more of your arguments than I have of creationist arguments.
> Call it, or me, what you want, it all boils down to the idea
>that you don't think that nature can do it all by herself without help
>from LGM or God or by lusty bats being turned on by which one has the
>most skin showing on its arms.
And you think the last item is not a natural process? You really
do have a blind faith in the pitiful few processes you do consider
to be natural, then.
>>> A Cryptocreationist is one who argues for a designer's
>>>hand because he believes that nature cannot do it all by herself,
>>>make life and cause it to change.
>>
>>And a cryptoSalem is someone who is unable to fathom the difference
>>between believing something and taking its possibility seriously.
> And why should anyone take it seriously? I have a good idea
>why you take it seriously. I think that you have a hidden agenda
>which you won't admit in public, but which is easy to guess. It goes
>back to my first reaction to you, that you have religious prejudices.
See mine above, such as they are. What are yours? Do you
think oblivion is preferable to an afterlife at the hands
of a just and merciful God? I don't mean the literal one
of the Gospels, but the kind revealed in Romans 2, who
judges each person according to that person's conscience.
[out-of-left-field speculation of what I am about, deleted]
>>>In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>>>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>sge...@dsp.net (Steve Geller) writes:
>>>>
>>>>>Creationists, as we know well, avoid this possibility by bringing
>>>>>on the miracles. This may be entirely appropriate, if life really
>>>>>is such a rarity.
>>>>
>>>>Indeed. But I'd rather wait till next year to get into that.
>>
>>It may be entirely appropriate for Creationists to act that way,
>>and me to get into discussing the pros and cons of it,
>>but cryptoSalem obviously prefers to read something else
>>into what I wrote.
> I am just placing my bet that, like the creationists, you
>won't stand and deliver.
Or that you can run away from what I post whenever you feel
like it. Just why haven't you answered my questions about
the second and third digits of bats yet? You indulged in
glittering generalities about parallel evolution of microchiropterans
and macrochiropterans from separate wingless ancestors as if
you took it very seriously indeed.
When will you stand and deliver on THOSE sentiments?
Matt Silberstein
On 10 Oct 1997 12:07:54 -0400, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU>
wrote:
>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>
>>In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>>
>>>But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
>>>of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes. And let's
>>>see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
>>>couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
>>>progress in biochemistry.
>
>> But Peter it took an eon, a billion years or more for the
>>bacteria to appear between the origina of the earth and the first
>>bacteria-like microfossils.
>
>That estimate no longer is generally accepted. One half to a
>billion years is the current estimate, and it is also conjectured
>that a mere 100 million years elapsed from the time the
>earth cooled enough to allow life to form, and the first
>primitive organisms.
>
Does not leave much time for your aliens to get their stuff here.
> Surely a tousand years of concerted
>>biochemical research, at least 10,000 faster, may well make the
>>flagellium from scratch. But if nature is undirected, we can give
>>her time enough to do it undirected. The complexity she accmulates
>>has to have a memory in structures passed on in each geneation of
>>biota.
>
>"biota" assumes abiogenesis has already occurred. Well, let's
>assume it for the sake of argument. So what? How many eons
>do you estimate it takes to produce a bacterial flagellum
>by Darwinian processes?
>
I would call the exactly 1 eon.
>If you take refuge in "nobody knows," then please allow
>me confine my followups on this matter with people who try a
>little harder than that.
>
Do you think anyone does know? If so, who?
Ken Livingston
hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
> ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>
>
> >Thanks for this, Peter. I see a few problems, though. Firstly, of
> >course, a Poisson distribution or any other is meaningless as we can
> >make no definitive statements about either the actual instances of
> >intelligent life occurring in the universe nor do we know the boundary
> >conditions beyond inferences drawn from our own particular case of
> >intelligent life on this planet.
>
> >Secondly, if, as you suggest, one intelligent species living 100,000
> >generations did send a lot of prokaryote-carrying probes to likely
> >planets, the destinations of these probes would of needs have been
> >restricted to a limited region in the galaxy within the sphere of
> >knowledge and reach of the launchers. As Earth would have been
> >included in the seeded area, we might expect to find a rather high
> >distribution of life occurring in our own neighbourhood of the galaxy
> >and having a common ancestor. The probability of detecting ETI nearby
> >and concurrent with our own civilisation is thereby increased. Nothing
> >yet has been detected.
>
> Then there's the recursion problem. Why only one seed? Why not lots
> of different seeds? Do panspermists have a "prime directive" that
> causes their seed pods to self destruct if previous life is
> detected? Would some panspermists try to Borg the rest of the
> universe? If you leap on that little bandwagon out of Saganistic
> hopes and dreams, why stop at one seeding event?
>
> If you want to play at thought games where you extrapolate
> from other thought games rahter than from evidence, why ever
> stop?
And one also wonders whether a directed panspermy hypothethis can
ever be falsified. I am dubious.
Bruce Salem
In article <1997101019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>
>>In article <1997101002...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>
>the exciting, undirected, natural processes of organic evolution
>than I "believe in" any of the alternatives. I salute the fact
>of common descent, believe in it fervently where vertebrates are
>concerned, and have far more confidence where all metazoans
>are concerned, than I have in the existence of the supernatural.
>
>That said, I must confess to a personal bias towards *hoping*
>that death does not mean oblivion, and that there is a benevolent
>God who makes the afterlife more rewarding and meaningful than,
>say, the nightmare version seen in Homer's _The Odyssey_, which
>is even more undesirable IMO than oblivion.
>
>But the point is, I have seen too much in my 51 years to be
>taken in by easy arguments for this hope being a reality. My
>temperament, particularly when arguing logically, tends to
>take the "It's just too good to be true" attitude, and I doubt
>that you'll find a more severe critic of my own arguments in
>this direction than myself--at least among critics who don't
>resort to dirty debating tricks to muddy the waters.
Finally, you give some philosophy, and I don't find
much to disagree with, but quite a bit of what you write here
belies this. You do resort to dirty debating tricks to muddy the
waters and you do argue in order to bother more evolutionists than
creationists, seeming to find something fundementally wrong with
undirected natural processes shaping our destinies. Tonight I
am very annoyed with you because you can't seem to resist that
little quirk of personality to throw in a nasty barb or two
when you are appearing to reason. It is a bad habit. Stop it.
>> What we are really debating is the mechanism for such change.
>>I assert that undirected natural selection is sufficient to explain
>>it all, and you don't really accept that.
>
>No, because your assertion is pure blind faith in atheism.
No, you are wrong, and here we may be at the nubb of the
problem. I find nothing in saying that undirected natural processes
are sufficient which proves the non-existance of God. The two are
not related. Indeed to link them is to fall into the same trap as
the Creationists, and it is my perception of your intentions that
you want to distance your views from theirs.
>> You want engineers to intervene from time to time
>
>No, I do not. I go with the evidnence wherever it leads, and
>you people have done far more to convince me of the weakness
>of your evidence than all the creationist literature I have
>ever read, and all the creationist arguments I have ever heard,
>put together.
But you really haven't shown why your evidence is critical.
You see some problems, but so, there are always going to be problems.
The problem I see with your use of evidence is that you look for cases
in which the evidence doesn't exist which leads to the use of an
argument to ignorance to support a proposition that is prejudged by
you. You haven't shown why your attack on the problem of evolution
has any relevance to its overall correctness nor truely dispelled the
possibility that you are arguing to something else that has nothing
to do with whether evolution is how we came to be. You seem to trivialize
the cases where the evidence is strong for gradualism and natural selection.
>Which isn't even surprising in a way, because I have seen
>far more of your arguments than I have of creationist arguments.
Still have to needle people, eh?
>>>> A Cryptocreationist is one who argues for a designer's
>>>>hand because he believes that nature cannot do it all by herself,
>>>>make life and cause it to change.
>>>
>>>And a cryptoSalem is someone who is unable to fathom the difference
>>>between believing something and taking its possibility seriously.
>
>> And why should anyone take it seriously? I have a good idea
>>why you take it seriously. I think that you have a hidden agenda
>>which you won't admit in public, but which is easy to guess. It goes
>>back to my first reaction to you, that you have religious prejudices.
>
>See mine above, such as they are. What are yours? Do you
>think oblivion is preferable to an afterlife at the hands
>of a just and merciful God? I don't mean the literal one
>of the Gospels, but the kind revealed in Romans 2, who
>judges each person according to that person's conscience.
I don't think that any concerns for an afterlife or for the
rest of the religious ideas have any relevance to the truth or
evolution. The correctness of the idea should stand by itself.
I think that you are revealing what I expected you to be
thinking, that religious ideas do color your opinions about evolution
through unguided natural processes. I do applaud this degree of
candor from you now, although I wish you had been a little more
forthcomming earlier. I also don't think that there is an essential
conclict between religion and evolution.
It would be nice if we were immortal, or if there were an
afterlife. My conclusion is that when one dies, that is it, oblivion,
but that is not to say that I know that for sure and it is certaintly
not to say that I know there is no God, and as I said before, I don't
think that this has much to do with evolution unless you have a certian
line of reason which is incorrect.
This wrong reasoning, which I have described before, is the
conclusion that evolution can't be because our nature is fundementally
different from the animals and that moral behavior follows from our
nature modeled more after God than animal. To me this logic is wholely
ad hoc and beggs the whole question of who we are and what consititutes
morality. I think that many Christians follow this error because of
a naive reading of the Bible. They don't see the Creation stories as
metaphors for the problem of being conscious, but as an ontogeny for
morality, and they see morality in authoritarian and absolute terms.
That is why Creationists, armed with so little knowledge of
science, can come out so strongly against evolution, and why people
with religious thinking, such as yourself, can find the attacks on
evolution appealing even if they cannot accept the reasoning of
Creationists.
>> I am just placing my bet that, like the creationists, you
>>won't stand and deliver.
>
>Or that you can run away from what I post whenever you feel
>like it. Just why haven't you answered my questions about
>the second and third digits of bats yet? You indulged in
>glittering generalities about parallel evolution of microchiropterans
>and macrochiropterans from separate wingless ancestors as if
>you took it very seriously indeed.
>
>When will you stand and deliver on THOSE sentiments?
I need to research those questions, I have some source material
to consult, and I did not see a post of yours in which you answered my
remarks. I am still not convinced that bat adaptations provides a critical
test of anything partly owing to the poor fossil record, and to my pending
judgemnt that the details you are offering mean anything that can't be
explained by graudalism and natural selection.
Bruce Salem
Poor Peter, can't resist nasty debate tactics. I guess
we will either have to civilize him or put him in our killfiles
and ignore him. Somehow ignoring Peter sounds like Hell for him, but
for now I'll just get in his face untill he practices a little
more moral conduct. And he accuses me of being immoral. Prehaps
he meant that I am immoral because I don't discard evolution and
accept absolute morality of Christains. I am beginning to think
that I do have good grounds for calling Peter a cryptocreationist
although he should not take umbrage at the idea and just admit
that he has the same reasons for doubting evolution as Creationists
but he doesn't accept their reasoning. Any run-of-the-mill moral
authoritarian Christian would be inclined to dislike evolution
or to try to pervert it for their own ends.
>"biota" assumes abiogenesis has already occurred. Well, let's
>assume it for the sake of argument. So what? How many eons
>do you estimate it takes to produce a bacterial flagellum
>by Darwinian processes?
>
>If you take refuge in "nobody knows," then please allow
>me confine my followups on this matter with people who try a
>little harder than that.
C'mon, yourself, this is a no-brainer, the time required
is well-constrained. It is about 500 million years. That is still
thousands of times longer than any concerted manufacturing project
would need. So there is time enough for an undirected gradual process
to create flagella. By the way, you harp on this problem because there
is no evidence on which to test any alternative theories. That is a
ssoundrals refuge.
lo...@my.sig
Just piggybacking again.
In <343BB2...@indiana.edu>, howard hershey <"hersheyh
"@indiana.edu> wrote:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
<snip>
>> ================== excerpt from followup to "lo...@my.sig", names added
Nyikos still can't be bothered to take note of my name, eh? Here's a
hint for the clue-impaired: Read the fake ID out loud, then follow
the directions.
<snip>
Jack Dominey "Apparently I'm insane.
domineys(at)mindspring.com But I'm one of the happy kinds!"
Ken Livingston
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
> ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
[snippity-doo]
> >Thanks for this, Peter. I see a few problems, though. Firstly, of
> >course, a Poisson distribution or any other is meaningless as we can
> >make no definitive statements about either the actual instances of
> >intelligent life occurring in the universe nor do we know the boundary
> >conditions beyond inferences drawn from our own particular case of
> >intelligent life on this planet.
>
> Please don't use the word "meaningless" in this way. Until
> someone shows the advent of life to be a high probability
> event in a universe such as ours, we have to contend with
> possibilities like the one I argue for.
But we have almost no data upon which to base so much as a conjecture.
We presently have no way of estimating how many planets exist in the
universe, let alone how many planets might be hospitable to the genesis
of life _in any form_. Perhaps we are utterly and completely alone in
the universe. Or maybe the universe is teeming with life. We simply
do not know. Having glanced under a few nearby rocks we are hardly in
a position to draw many conclusions about the distribution of life in
the universe.
> >Secondly, if, as you suggest, one intelligent species living 100,000
> >generations did send a lot of prokaryote-carrying probes to likely
> >planets, the destinations of these probes would of needs have been
> >restricted to a limited region in the galaxy within the sphere of
> >knowledge and reach of the launchers. As Earth would have been
> >included in the seeded area, we might expect to find a rather high
> >distribution of life occurring in our own neighbourhood of the galaxy
> >and having a common ancestor.
>
> Quite possibly, but the intelligent life forms may be very
> widely scattered, and ours might be among the first--how many
> others experienced such things as our Cambrian explosion
> to speed evolution up, for instance?
True. But radio evidence from Earth has propagated only about 50 ly
to date and given the vast range of times and distances and the untold
uncertainties involved, even if intelligent life has arisen in a million
other instances our odds of actually detecting other intelligent life
is uncertain.
> > The probability of detecting ETI nearby
> >and concurrent with our own civilisation is thereby increased. Nothing
> >yet has been detected.
>
> Back before 1991, people were widely speculating that any
> highly advanced civilization would blow itself up shortly
> after the discovery of nuclear fission. Are you old enough
> to remember the doomsday "Atomic Scientists" with their clocks set
> a few minutes short of midnight, and what big adjustments
> they made with each major turn in world events?
Sure, I grew up in the US and remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, Civil
Defence drills and all the rest. Of course, just because our particular
species has self-destructive tendencies doesn't mean other intelligent
beings would necessarily follow our example.
> >And this raises the further question of what happened to the original
> >parent species?
>
> A *lot* can happen in 3.5+ billion years.
Quite true.
> >Given that the parent species had sufficient knowledge
> >to seed life on other planets, the odds are good that the parent species
> >had sufficient knowledge - or would have developed sufficient knowledge
> >- not only to ensure their own survival but to monitor the results of
> >their probes. Thusfar, we have no evidence of this.
>
> You evidently haven't read much about these Atomic Scientists
> and their predictions based on the naive assumption that
> the probability of us blowing ourselves up in any given
> year adds up to near-certainty in the next millennium.
> I wonder--were all their critics dismissed as diehard
> right wing conservatives? For sure, they seemed to command
> respect from the mainstream media.
Naive assumption or not, just as a lot can happen in 3.5 billion years, a
lot can happen politically almost overnight. The possibility of blowing
ourselves to smithereens in the next millennium hasn't been eliminated.
> >While directed panspermy cannot be ruled out, neither should the anthropic
> >principle be ruled out, in its various flavours. Probabilistic problems
> >are allayed significantly if the universe is predisposed to the genesis
> >of life - and perhaps conscious life.
>
> Sure, but the anthropic principle doesn't address such nebulous
> things as "predispositions"--or at least it shouldn't without
> some hard-nosed specifics to back it up.
I agree that we need hard-nosed specifics for such things but we also need
hard-nosed specifics beyond a sample size of 1 before we can make any
statements about the distribution of life in other possible solar systems.
> > It seems to me that life is no
> >accident. But removing the origin of life from Earth and ascribing it
> >to planet X does not increase the odds of life occurring - for why would
> >the probability of life arising on planet X have been any greater than
> >on planet Earth?
>
> You forget that there are millions of candidates for planet X, and
> only one earth.
_Maybe_ there are millions of candidates for planet X. We don't know the
order of magnitude for this and even if we did, we do not know if life
has/had arisen on all of them, most of them, some of them, or none of
them apart from Earth. About the best we can say is "we are here."
While directed panspermy is an interesting idea, it is essentially a
God-of-the-gaps argument. The only difference is that God has been
demoted from a Supreme Being to a race of space aliens. It's Johnny
Appleseed on a cosmic scale. And in any event, the question of how
life arose from non-life remains unanswered.
Peter Nyikos
sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
You have yet to even begin to make a case for this.
> You do resort to dirty debating tricks to muddy the waters
You have yet to even begin to make a case for this.
>and you do argue in order to bother more evolutionists than
>creationists, seeming to find something fundementally wrong with
>undirected natural processes shaping our destinies.
The "in order to" is classic blame-the-victim, and the "seeming
to find..." is pure baseless speculation on your part.
[attempt by Bruce to order me to stop fighting back against
dirty debating tricks by his allies, deleted]
>>> What we are really debating is the mechanism for such change.
>>>I assert that undirected natural selection is sufficient to explain
>>>it all, and you don't really accept that.
>>
>>No, because your assertion is pure blind faith in atheism.
> No, you are wrong, and here we may be at the nubb of the
>problem. I find nothing in saying that undirected natural processes
>are sufficient which proves the non-existance of God.
You are indulging in a Phatom Error Correction. I never implied
anything in that direction--the implications go from atheism to
belief in natural processes, not vice versa.
>>> You want engineers to intervene from time to time
>>
>>No, I do not. I go with the evidnence wherever it leads, and
>>you people have done far more to convince me of the weakness
>>of your evidence than all the creationist literature I have
>>ever read, and all the creationist arguments I have ever heard,
>>put together.
> But you really haven't shown why your evidence is critical.
>You see some problems, but so, there are always going to be problems.
And you see a hidden agenda in me pointing them out. Sorry, but
I think the way science progresses is to have problems pointed
out and possible solutions proposed.
>The problem I see with your use of evidence is that you look for cases
>in which the evidence doesn't exist which leads to the use of an
>argument to ignorance to support a proposition
You obviously have some weird ideas as to what the proposition is
that I am supporting. Science is full of thousands of propositions,
a.k.a. hypotheses awaiting testing.
>You haven't shown why your attack on the problem of evolution
>has any relevance to its overall correctness
Science is full of millions of problems, and evolution theory has
its share of them. They are its lifeblood, and not just because
they keep the "publish or perish" wolf from the door either.
>>Which isn't even surprising in a way, because I have seen
>>far more of your arguments than I have of creationist arguments.
> Still have to needle people, eh?
Not at all. I love science, and hence I've seen far more
arguments for evolution than against it.
You seem to have a relentlessly political approach to science.
Are you even interested in science for the sake of science?
>>>>> A Cryptocreationist is one who argues for a designer's
>>>>>hand because he believes that nature cannot do it all by herself,
>>>>>make life and cause it to change.
>>>>
>>>>And a cryptoSalem is someone who is unable to fathom the difference
>>>>between believing something and taking its possibility seriously.
>>
>>> And why should anyone take it seriously? I have a good idea
>>>why you take it seriously. I think that you have a hidden agenda
>>>which you won't admit in public, but which is easy to guess. It goes
>>>back to my first reaction to you, that you have religious prejudices.
>>
>>See mine above, such as they are. What are yours? Do you
>>think oblivion is preferable to an afterlife at the hands
>>of a just and merciful God? I don't mean the literal one
>>of the Gospels, but the kind revealed in Romans 2, who
>>judges each person according to that person's conscience.
> I don't think that any concerns for an afterlife or for the
>rest of the religious ideas have any relevance to the truth or
>evolution. The correctness of the idea should stand by itself.
I agree 100 percent, which is why it irks me that you seem
to prefer attacking and smoking out hidden agendas to discussing
science with me for the sake of science.
[...]
>>> I am just placing my bet that, like the creationists, you
>>>won't stand and deliver.
>>
>>Or that you can run away from what I post whenever you feel
>>like it. Just why haven't you answered my questions about
>>the second and third digits of bats yet? You indulged in
>>glittering generalities about parallel evolution of microchiropterans
>>and macrochiropterans from separate wingless ancestors as if
>>you took it very seriously indeed.
>>
>>When will you stand and deliver on THOSE sentiments?
> I need to research those questions, I have some source material
>to consult, and I did not see a post of yours in which you answered my
>remarks. I am still not convinced that bat adaptations provides a critical
>test of anything
Nor am I, nor have I ever claimed they do. But you seem to see
a creationist under every bed from which such riddles of science
emanate.
> partly owing to the poor fossil record, and to my pending
>judgemnt that the details you are offering mean anything that can't be
>explained by graudalism and natural selection.
Of course, you are flagrantly ignoring the fact that my bat
scenario was aimed to do just that. And that this macro- micro-
parallel evolution is a totally different issue where you have
also kept searching for creationist sentiments where there are
absolutely none.
Bruce Salem
In article <1997101317...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>
>>and you do argue in order to bother more evolutionists than
>>creationists, seeming to find something fundementally wrong with
>>undirected natural processes shaping our destinies.
>
>The "in order to" is classic blame-the-victim, and the "seeming
>to find..." is pure baseless speculation on your part.
Here again, I think that your countless articles reveal
the substance, or lack, of your arguments.
Tell me, what is your assessment of what others think of
you here? Even if you have some grand crusade to carry unpopular
views, or have the hubrus to believe that you are so much wiser
than the average person who reads, do you honestly think that
you are respected for what you say?
Bruce Salem
In article <1997101317...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>
>> Finally, you give some philosophy, and I don't find
>>much to disagree with, but quite a bit of what you write here
>>belies this.
>
>You have yet to even begin to make a case for this.
You conduct speaks for itself.
>> You do resort to dirty debating tricks to muddy the waters
>
>You have yet to even begin to make a case for this.
Your conduct speaks for itself.
Would you care to poll the people who read you and deal
with their collective assessment of your character as revealed
by your words?
Bruce Salem
In article <1997101317...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>
>> I don't think that any concerns for an afterlife or for the
>>rest of the religious ideas have any relevance to the truth or
>>evolution. The correctness of the idea should stand by itself.
>
>I agree 100 percent, which is why it irks me that you seem
>to prefer attacking and smoking out hidden agendas to discussing
>science with me for the sake of science.
Because you haven't really shown that you have critical
information and because you have said a great deal which implies
prejudice, that is why I am looking for motivation. You are not
forthcomming with full arguments, assertions, yes, nasty barbs, yes,
catchy rhetoric, yes. I don't buy any of that. I think that you are
blowing smoke and don't really know what you are talking about and
I do think that you are arguing from prejudice. If you wern't you
would have suspended judgement long ago and certaintly not wasted
everybody's time with arguing here. With the ammount of verbage
you have wasted here you could have gone out and tested your
hypothesis about where the insectivour-bat intermediaries are,
but you chose to invest ego here and fight your case. You are
infinately more concerned with arguing than you are with any
science, and I dare say that real scientists, when they are on
the trail of something hot, think that the last thing they are
going to do is to argue with Peter on talk.origins. If you
really were a lover of science it is you who would be hot on the
trail of that fossil and not writting megabytes here.
>>>When will you stand and deliver on THOSE sentiments?
>
>> I need to research those questions, I have some source material
>>to consult, and I did not see a post of yours in which you answered my
>>remarks. I am still not convinced that bat adaptations provides a critical
>>test of anything
>
>Nor am I, nor have I ever claimed they do. But you seem to see
>a creationist under every bed from which such riddles of science
>emanate.
I don't trust you, or your word, besides, science does not
consist about speculating on cases where there is little or no information,
on the contrary, if there is no indication of what a given problem suggests,
it is ignored. There are many posable questions for which science is not
ready to provide an answer. Your bat scenerio may be one.
>> partly owing to the poor fossil record, and to my pending
>>judgemnt that the details you are offering mean anything that can't be
>>explained by graudalism and natural selection.
>
>Of course, you are flagrantly ignoring the fact that my bat
>scenario was aimed to do just that. And that this macro- micro-
>parallel evolution is a totally different issue where you have
>also kept searching for creationist sentiments where there are
>absolutely none.
But in fact you are arguing for directed changes in numerous
threads, in writing about Behe, in arguing about the stuff Julie Thomas
posts, and talking about the hereafter, in calling me an atheist. This is
not idle speculation about bats, it is you with an ax to grind, and the
reason you chose the bat problem is precisely because you could pursue your
pet alternative to blind undirected process in a setting where you could
make arguments based on ignorance. Non of this is scientific, and you are
not a scientist but a mathemitician who likes to argue and investes ego
and venom in hearing himself talk. What do you think, Peter, I wasn't
born yesterday? I can recognized a rigged argument from pretty far away.
I can tell by what someone writes if he is honest and forthwright and
willing to get to the truth of things. I don't think that you are either
honest or openminded. You may think that you are honest, at least you
are sure of your beliefs and that you can state them, but a biased person
who is honest about what his rhetorical prositions are is not honest, nor
is one who mixes rhetorical ploys and barbs into his speech.
Bruce Salem
In article <1997101317...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>
>>>> What we are really debating is the mechanism for such change.
>>>>I assert that undirected natural selection is sufficient to explain
>>>>it all, and you don't really accept that.
>>>
>>>No, because your assertion is pure blind faith in atheism.
>
>> No, you are wrong, and here we may be at the nubb of the
>>problem. I find nothing in saying that undirected natural processes
>>are sufficient which proves the non-existance of God.
>
>You are indulging in a Phatom Error Correction. I never implied
>anything in that direction--the implications go from atheism to
>belief in natural processes, not vice versa.
I recall that "Atheism" is the positive assertion that
there is no God, It affirms the proposition that "God does not
exist". You applied the term incorrectly, it seems to me. I expect
you to retract the comment. I stated my position in the way the logic
goes for me. By you calling me "Atheist" and then saying "the implications
go from atheism to belief in natural processes." You are willfully
twisting my statement to suit your own needs. And you are being intentionally
dishonest so as to make your own rhetorical point.
My assertion is that belief in natural processes does not imply
Atheism. Stating the contrapositive is a nice bit of logic which I do
not accept, nor is it correct for you to assert that all belief follows
from belief or not in a God, from faith. Indeed you are making the same
error I pointed out early on in our exchange of trying to own the whole
universe of discouse by making all assertions religious. I do not believe
that natural proceses are sufficient by way of proving or disproving the
existence of God. That is your trip, and it simply reveals, as I suspected
all along, that you are a prejudiced person, who judges everything by his
own set of biases. You are not a philosopher insofar as you cannot honestly
state such beliefs and debate them as propositions, but instead use rhetoric
to disguize your beliefs and invective to try to get your reader off guard.
Bruce Salem
In article <1997101317...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>
>>>> You want engineers to intervene from time to time
>>>
>>>No, I do not. I go with the evidnence wherever it leads, and
>>>you people have done far more to convince me of the weakness
>>>of your evidence than all the creationist literature I have
>>>ever read, and all the creationist arguments I have ever heard,
>>>put together.
>
>> But you really haven't shown why your evidence is critical.
>>You see some problems, but so, there are always going to be problems.
>
>And you see a hidden agenda in me pointing them out. Sorry, but
>I think the way science progresses is to have problems pointed
>out and possible solutions proposed.
But you haven't presented an argument about why bat evolution is
significant, or how you came to select it. What I do see is that you
ignored cases where there is abundant evidence for something you see
fit to criticize in other circumstances and you sieze on a case where
you get to use an appeal by way of ignornace to make a point about some
hypothetical mechanism that is different. If you were a scientist, and
you are not, you would be out in the field getting information that would
help us decide between your scenerio and an alternative, but instead you
engage in idle chatter about why you have the upper hand in the argument.
You don't. You just have lots of questions that suggest that you have
prejudged the situation.
>>The problem I see with your use of evidence is that you look for cases
>>in which the evidence doesn't exist which leads to the use of an
>>argument to ignorance to support a proposition
>
>You obviously have some weird ideas as to what the proposition is
>that I am supporting. Science is full of thousands of propositions,
>a.k.a. hypotheses awaiting testing.
So where is the critical evidence? You don't have late cretaceous
or early paleocene insectivores on their way to becomming bats. Why not?
>>You haven't shown why your attack on the problem of evolution
>>has any relevance to its overall correctness
>
>Science is full of millions of problems, and evolution theory has
>its share of them. They are its lifeblood, and not just because
>they keep the "publish or perish" wolf from the door either.
Oh, where is your bibliography? Surely you have to publish to
keep your professor's chair. I think you are a hell of a one to crticize
the academic establishment. Are you tenured yet. I'll bet you are, so you
can sit and snipe at others, can you? You really ARE a hypocrite?
>>>Which isn't even surprising in a way, because I have seen
>>>far more of your arguments than I have of creationist arguments.
>
>> Still have to needle people, eh?
>
>Not at all. I love science, and hence I've seen far more
>arguments for evolution than against it.
You are a religious person who has a set of beliefs that make it
hard for you to accept evolution by undirected natural processes and you
are trying very hard to find some evidence for some directed process
that lets God in on the story, and you are more than willing to call anyone
who doesn't buy your story an atheist to make points with your thesistic
sympathesizers. Science? You wouldn't know science if it bit you on
the ass!
>You seem to have a relentlessly political approach to science.
>Are you even interested in science for the sake of science?
Ha, you accuse me of being political? Who, but the anti-evolutionists
seek legislative and judicial backing for their views and pander in the
popular book press to push their myths, "The Bell Curve", Darwin this and
Darwin that? If I am political, if I have turned from someone who tolerated
relions to someone who mistrusts theists, and especially the likes of
you, it is because of people like you.
Jonathan Stone
Peter Nyikos seems to objects to being characterized as a
crypto-Creationist. Personaly, I think that's an entirely plausible
interpretation.
Consider that Peter has repeatedly made reference to observation of
Christian festivals (which suggest he is an Xtian of some form); that
Peter argues against evolution; that Peter argues for IC and thus a
Mysterious Designer. Yet Peter denies emphatically that IC == God Did It.
So here's another hypothesis. Maybe Peter Nyikos is a fence-sitter.
But since he doesn't *say* that he's a fence-sitter, he must be a
*crypto*-fence-sitter.
This may or may not be the case. But if it is, then the infamous Paul
Gans has proved his perfidiousness, once again, but in a most
dastardly way: by the recent pre-emptive attacks on Strawman Fence-Sitters,
over in sci.archaeology.
Paul J. Gans
Jonathan Stone (jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
Is a crypto-fence-sitter required to file the key to his
crypto with the FBI? Can they decode the crypto and render
it plain? Inquiring minds want to know...
------ Paul J. Gans [ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
Peter Nyikos
I'm not responding to Bruce's latest post, as per his advice on
another thread. My response to Silberstein that I did a few
minutes ago takes care of the small on-topic component of this
latest post of Bruce's.
Peter Nyikos
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>On 10 Oct 1997 12:07:54 -0400, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU>
>wrote:
>>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>>
>>>In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>>>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>>>But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
>>>>of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes. And let's
>>>>see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
>>>>couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
>>>>progress in biochemistry.
>>> But Peter it took an eon, a billion years or more for the
>>>bacteria to appear between the origina of the earth and the first
>>>bacteria-like microfossils.
>>That estimate no longer is generally accepted. One half to a
>>billion years is the current estimate, and it is also conjectured
>>that a mere 100 million years elapsed from the time the
>>earth cooled enough to allow life to form, and the first
>>primitive organisms.
>Does not leave much time for your aliens to get their stuff here.
You have a strange idea of how long it takes an intelligent species
to get its stuff together, apparently. Our own species is about
1/100th that old, and our space travel capabilities go back
to less than 1/2,000,000th that time.
>> Surely a tousand years of concerted
>>>biochemical research, at least 10,000 faster, may well make the
>>>flagellium from scratch. But if nature is undirected, we can give
>>>her time enough to do it undirected. The complexity she accmulates
>>>has to have a memory in structures passed on in each geneation of
>>>biota.
>>
>>"biota" assumes abiogenesis has already occurred. Well, let's
>>assume it for the sake of argument. So what? How many eons
>>do you estimate it takes to produce a bacterial flagellum
>>by Darwinian processes?
>>
>I would call the exactly 1 eon.
This is a classic argument from ignorance: "It appeared
after one eon, so that's how long it must take for Darwinian
processes to do it."
Or is it? Do you have ANY OTHER reason for your estimate
besides blind faith that Darwininan processes MUST HAVE
BEEN responsible for the bacterial flagellum?
>>If you take refuge in "nobody knows," then please allow
>>me confine my followups on this matter with people who try a
>>little harder than that.
>>
>Do you think anyone does know? If so, who?
No one does, but that doesn't keep some people from proposing
solutions that go beyond a blind faith that "Darwinian processes
did it," and arguments that go beyond, "Nobody knows whether
Darwinian processes really did it, but since I believe they
did, I'm making the estimate of 1 eon based on this belief."
This is a classic anti-Creationist argument from
ignorance, if there isn't anything more behind it.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Wesley R. Elsberry
In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
PN>Deleted. I have decided to follow Bruce's advice on another thread
PN>to the extent of not responding to what he's been saying lately
PN>on this one either.
PN>Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
The suspense *was* intense there for a while, but this timely news
bulletin helped tremendously.
--
Wesley R. Elsberry, 6070 Sea Isle, Galveston TX 77554.
Student in Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences. http://www.rtis.com/nat/user/elsberry
"...that wills forever evil|And does forever good." - Goethe
Jonathan Stone
In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> writes:
|> jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Stone) writes:
|>
|>
|>
|> >Peter Nyikos seems to objects to being characterized as a
|> >crypto-Creationist. Personaly, I think that's an entirely plausible
|> >interpretation.
|>
|> >Consider that Peter has repeatedly made reference to observation of
|> >Christian festivals (which suggest he is an Xtian of some form); that
|> >Peter argues against evolution;
|>
|> for it having taken place on a grand scale.
|>
|> > that Peter argues for IC and thus a
|> >Mysterious Designer.
|>
|> distinct from arguments for being designed, and my hypothesis
|> is about designers that were anything but Mysterious with
|> a capital M.
Peter, you are being a dunce. Please don't play the fool. Even *you*
cannot be *that* obtuse.
You argue for IC. IC claims (whatever one thinks of it) that there
are sources of `irreducible complexity' in biological organisms. The
biological organisms *DO* exist. If you argue for IC, some source for
the IC-ness in the living systems *MUST* exist (or at least have
predated the ancestral lifeform which exhibits IC.)
Without that, IC is ___meaningless twaddle___. It's just a fatuously
long-winded way of saying ``I don't know where this came from''.
|> > Yet Peter denies emphatically that IC == God Did It.
|>
|> Of course. See my response to Steve Geller on another panspermy
|> thread earlier today. You are saying something as foolish
|> as saying, "Interstellar space probes are possible = God Did It".
No, not at all. Why are you playing the dunce again?
Interstellar space probes exhibiting signs of design and construction
are evidence for designers and creators of space probes.
Similarly, biological organism which (you claim) possess IC are
evidence for a non-evolved form of life, namely the primordial IC
ancestor of that lifeform. Non-evolved inescapably implies creation.
Your analogy is pathetic.
Are you really the same professor of topology who waxed irate about
someone else's non-understanding of scope of implicit logical
quantifiers in English?
Peter, for someone who has a history of objecting loudly and
strenously to errors in logical scoping, you are being an utter
hypocrite. You really should consider running for public office.
Provided of course you can keep your hypocrisy, and foaming at the
mouth at opposition who demolish your postion, under control.
I suppose you can choose to say ``well, maybe intelligent aliens did
it'', but who created the intelligent aliens? Or did they evolve? If
they evolved, who gives a tinker's cuss about where *we* came from?
``As flies to little boys'' are we to the aliens, right? And if the
aliens _themselves_ exhibit IC, we've just started alll over again at
one remove.
The five-year-old who asks ``but who created God''? understands this
intutively. Are you just being coy, or is there some reason you
really don't understand this?
|> >This may or may not be the case. But if it is, then the infamous Paul
|> >Gans has proved his perfidiousness, once again, but in a most
|> >dastardly way: by the recent pre-emptive attacks on Strawman Fence-Sitters,
|> >over in sci.archaeology.
|>
|> Thread title?
I forget, but I'll repost it if you wish.
Doug Quarnstrom
Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.SC.EDU) wrote:
: >And one also wonders whether a directed panspermy hypothethis can
: >ever be falsified. I am dubious.
: Oh, if you found lots of different planets with life, and each
: had a genetic code very different from the others, that would
: drastically dampen my ardor for directed panspermy.
Why?
Intelligence could do it any way they wished.
doug
Peter Nyikos
sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
Deleted. I have decided to follow Bruce's advice on another thread
to the extent of not responding to what he's been saying lately
on this one either.
Peter Nyikos
ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>> ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>> >Thanks for this, Peter. I see a few problems, though. Firstly, of
>> >course, a Poisson distribution or any other is meaningless as we can
>> >make no definitive statements about either the actual instances of
>> >intelligent life occurring in the universe nor do we know the boundary
>> >conditions beyond inferences drawn from our own particular case of
>> >intelligent life on this planet.
>> Please don't use the word "meaningless" in this way. Until
>> someone shows the advent of life to be a high probability
>> event in a universe such as ours, we have to contend with
>> possibilities like the one I argue for.
>But we have almost no data upon which to base so much as a conjecture.
>We presently have no way of estimating how many planets exist in the
>universe,
We have some reasonable estimates based on the current model
of how the solar system evolved.
> let alone how many planets might be hospitable to the genesis
>of life _in any form_.
This is much more iffy, since we haven't a good clue as to whether
our own planet is one of those, and that's part of what makes
this thread so interesting.
> Perhaps we are utterly and completely alone in
>the universe. Or maybe the universe is teeming with life. We simply
>do not know.
If it is teeming with life, panspermy seems like a very good bet.
>> >Secondly, if, as you suggest, one intelligent species living 100,000
>> >generations did send a lot of prokaryote-carrying probes to likely
>> >planets, the destinations of these probes would of needs have been
>> >restricted to a limited region in the galaxy within the sphere of
>> >knowledge and reach of the launchers. As Earth would have been
>> >included in the seeded area, we might expect to find a rather high
>> >distribution of life occurring in our own neighbourhood of the galaxy
>> >and having a common ancestor.
>>
>> Quite possibly, but the intelligent life forms may be very
>> widely scattered, and ours might be among the first--how many
>> others experienced such things as our Cambrian explosion
>> to speed evolution up, for instance?
>True. But radio evidence from Earth has propagated only about 50 ly
>to date and given the vast range of times and distances and the untold
>uncertainties involved, even if intelligent life has arisen in a million
>other instances our odds of actually detecting other intelligent life
>is uncertain.
That's what makes SETI a gamble, but lots of people were willing
to bet money on that gamble, or at least to persuade a few key
people to fund it.
[deletia of things on which we seem to agree]
>> >While directed panspermy cannot be ruled out, neither should the anthropic
>> >principle be ruled out, in its various flavours. Probabilistic problems
>> >are allayed significantly if the universe is predisposed to the genesis
>> >of life - and perhaps conscious life.
>>
>> Sure, but the anthropic principle doesn't address such nebulous
>> things as "predispositions"--or at least it shouldn't without
>> some hard-nosed specifics to back it up.
>I agree that we need hard-nosed specifics for such things but we also need
>hard-nosed specifics beyond a sample size of 1 before we can make any
>statements about the distribution of life in other possible solar systems.
The hard-nosed specifics are in our biochemical makeup. That's what
Julie Thomas and Michael Behe have been basing their writings on.
>> > It seems to me that life is no
>> >accident. But removing the origin of life from Earth and ascribing it
>> >to planet X does not increase the odds of life occurring - for why would
>> >the probability of life arising on planet X have been any greater than
>> >on planet Earth?
>>
>> You forget that there are millions of candidates for planet X, and
>> only one earth.
>_Maybe_ there are millions of candidates for planet X.
See above. The James Jeans hypothesis for solar system origin
made this "maybe" a realistic one, because it postulated a
very rare happenstance (collision of two stars) as the source.
But, paradoxically, that was what made the hypothesis appeal to
him--he thought the universe was 10 *trillion* [million million]
years old, and knew the earth was less than 1/1000th that old.
And keep in mind, the "candidates" are for the arising of life,
not the arising of intelligent species once life got started--that's
a whole separate issue.
>While directed panspermy is an interesting idea, it is essentially a
>God-of-the-gaps argument. The only difference is that God has been
>demoted from a Supreme Being to a race of space aliens. It's Johnny
>Appleseed on a cosmic scale.
If you want to put things that way, the God of the Gaps has its counterpart,
the non-God of the non-gaps argument, which postulates that life is a
very likely occurrence in our universe, and has a hard time reassessing
this in the wake of ever newer realizations of just how complicated and
structured even primitive one-celled organisms are.
That argument has been the conventional wisdom ever since Urey-Miller,
and it is very firmly entrenched in the minds of several generations
of readers of popular science.
>And in any event, the question of how
>life arose from non-life remains unanswered.
But, finding out just how earth life got started is a fascinating
quest all in itself, just like paleontology is.
A. Deckers
In <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
[...]
>This is a classic argument from ignorance: "It appeared
>after one eon, so that's how long it must take for Darwinian
>processes to do it."
>
>Or is it? Do you have ANY OTHER reason for your estimate
>besides blind faith that Darwininan processes MUST HAVE
>BEEN responsible for the bacterial flagellum?
On a separate but I believe related point, are you arguing that life
_on Earth_ could not have evolved by Darwinian processes (e.g. because
of a lack of time), or that life cannot have evolved by Darwinian
processes as a matter of principle?
ALain
A. Deckers
In <62gh92$a2c$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>,
Jonathan Stone <jona...@Pescadero.DSG.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
[Replying to Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU>]
>Similarly, biological organism which (you claim) possess IC are
>evidence for a non-evolved form of life, namely the primordial IC
>ancestor of that lifeform. Non-evolved inescapably implies creation.
>Your analogy is pathetic.
If I understand him correctly, Nyikos doesn't actually claim that "IC =
non-evolved", and argues that this view is consistent with Behe's
definition of IC in DBB.
See Message-ID: <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>, where Nyikos
quotes his IC FAQ (incidentally, is this available on a web site or
other convenient place? I haven't been able to find it on DejaNews):
=== begin quote ===
>Q1.3: Isn't "X is irreducibly complex" just a fancy way
>of Michael Behe saying "I cannot imagine how X could have
>evolved"?
>
>A1.3: No, Behe does not consider irreducible complexity either
>necessary or sufficient for the system not being evolvable.
>As to necessity, he even devotes a chapter to AMP synthesis
>while seeming to deny that it is irreducibly complex, yet
>at the same time claiming that it poses much the same
>problems as the irreducibly complex ones. In either case,
>the main problem is explaining how the systems could
>have evolved in Darwinian fashion in a reasonable amount of time.
=== end quote ===
ALain
Peter Nyikos
jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Stone) writes:
>Peter Nyikos seems to objects to being characterized as a
>crypto-Creationist. Personaly, I think that's an entirely plausible
>interpretation.
>Consider that Peter has repeatedly made reference to observation of
>Christian festivals (which suggest he is an Xtian of some form); that
>Peter argues against evolution;
I don't argue against evolution, because the evidence is overwhelming
for it having taken place on a grand scale.
> that Peter argues for IC and thus a
>Mysterious Designer.
A double *non sequitur*. Arguing for systems being IC is quite
distinct from arguments for being designed, and my hypothesis
is about designers that were anything but Mysterious with
a capital M.
> Yet Peter denies emphatically that IC == God Did It.
Of course. See my response to Steve Geller on another panspermy
thread earlier today. You are saying something as foolish
as saying, "Interstellar space probes are possible = God Did It".
>This may or may not be the case. But if it is, then the infamous Paul
>Gans has proved his perfidiousness, once again, but in a most
>dastardly way: by the recent pre-emptive attacks on Strawman Fence-Sitters,
>over in sci.archaeology.
Thread title?
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Peter Nyikos
ken...@pcug.org.au (Ken Livingston) writes:
>hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
>> Then there's the recursion problem. Why only one seed? Why not lots
>> of different seeds?
Indeed, I think they sent lots of different ones to increase the
chances of finding a planet congenial to at least one of them.
>> Do panspermists have a "prime directive" that
>> causes their seed pods to self destruct if previous life is
>> detected?
Some might, some might not.
>> Would some panspermists try to Borg the rest of the
>> universe?
You are back to those 40 tons of pulp fiction, I see.
>> If you leap on that little bandwagon out of Saganistic
>> hopes and dreams, why stop at one seeding event?
Bandwagon? I'm only hopping on the Crick-Orgel wagon, and
you even seem to think they got off it, but have nothing
more conclusive to offer than a look at their websites and a few
articles by Orgel which don't address the usefulness of those
big RNA molecules, only their size (at least, that's the
case with the ones I've been able to find in our rather
meager library holdings).
>> If you want to play at thought games where you extrapolate
>> from other thought games rahter than from evidence, why ever
>> stop?
>And one also wonders whether a directed panspermy hypothethis can
>ever be falsified. I am dubious.
Oh, if you found lots of different planets with life, and each
had a genetic code very different from the others, that would
drastically dampen my ardor for directed panspermy.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Doug Quarnstrom
Jonathan Stone (jona...@Pescadero.DSG.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> writes:
: |> jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Stone) writes:
: |>
: |>
: |>
: |> >Peter Nyikos seems to objects to being characterized as a
: |> >crypto-Creationist. Personaly, I think that's an entirely plausible
: |> >interpretation.
: |>
: |> >Consider that Peter has repeatedly made reference to observation of
: |> >Christian festivals (which suggest he is an Xtian of some form); that
: |> >Peter argues against evolution;
: |>
: |> I don't argue against evolution, because the evidence is overwhelming
: |> for it having taken place on a grand scale.
: |>
: |> > that Peter argues for IC and thus a
: |> >Mysterious Designer.
: |>
: |> A double *non sequitur*. Arguing for systems being IC is quite
: |> distinct from arguments for being designed, and my hypothesis
: |> is about designers that were anything but Mysterious with
: |> a capital M.
: Peter, you are being a dunce. Please don't play the fool. Even *you*
: cannot be *that* obtuse.
Sometimes, with the way he answers questions, one cannot be so sure...
: The five-year-old who asks ``but who created God''? understands this
: intutively. Are you just being coy, or is there some reason you
: really don't understand this?
I vote for coy.
doug
Bruce Salem
In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>to the extent of not responding to what he's been saying lately
>on this one either.
>
This is a Ted Holden strategy. When I got too close to the
truth It was I who got killfiled. Also notice how Peter's .sig has
changed. It no longer identifies him as a Math Professor at
South Carolina State.
Bruce Salem
>another thread. My response to Silberstein that I did a few
>minutes ago takes care of the small on-topic component of this
>latest post of Bruce's.
>
Oh, he pulled another Ted Holden. Maybe we can keep Peter
busy refusing in public to acknowledge my posts. I am sure that
I have got Peter running. All ye, take heart, we can get the
scoundral to flight. Follow my lead.
Peter is a Cryptocreationist!
Bruce Salem
>ignorance, if there isn't anything more behind it.
>
>University of South Carolina
>Columbia, SC 29208
Oh, this is amazing, the master of the argument from
ignorance acuses others of doing the same thing, and even elevates
the instance to a whole class of arguments. It takes one to know
one, Peter.
Please note that Peter used his official .sig here. Surely
he is speaking for his department here, if he has that porogative.
Chris Nedin
On 20 Oct 1997 07:55:58 -0400, jona...@Pescadero.DSG.Stanford.EDU
(Jonathan Stone) wrote:
>In article <l03020907b070abe68a47@[129.127.84.36]>, Chris Nedin
><cne...@geology.adelaide.edu.au> writes:
>
>I'm going to rearrange both my message and Chris' reply; I think it
>makes more sense that way. I disagree quite strongly (but I hope
>good-naturedly) with Chris about Peter Nyikos. But I am very open to
>being corrected. So, here goes:
>
>
>|> Jonathan Stone (jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>
>[this was originally last]
>
>|> >that Peter argues for IC and thus a
>|> >Mysterious Designer. Yet Peter denies emphatically that IC == God
>Did It.
>|>
>|> This, while an oversimplification, is a much more defensible statement.
>
>I disagree. I really think it's not an oversimplification.
>
>Peter *does* argue for IC, _sensu_ Behe. This is, inescapably (dare I
>say ineluctably? :)) an argument for design. (I added `Mysterious' as
>a poor play on words on Twain.)
>
>I can defend these with direct quotes from Peter. Which part do you
>think is an oversimplifaction? That I don't dress it up with hundreds
>of lines of rhetoric, ad-hominems, and weasel-words from which
>disclaimers and flamewars at naysayers can be launched?
"oversimplification" may have been the wrong term, but I don't think
(although I am willing to be corrected on this) that Peter has stated that
the existence of IC systems proves the presence of a Mysterious Designer.
Even Behe has stated that the presence of what some people currently
believe as IC systems does not necessarily prove the existence of a
Mysterious Designer. Peter has suggested the existence of a MD as an
explanation, to be sure, and while you and I may see this as a means of
introducing the concept (eventually) of a Creator in the Christian mould,
it could equally result in a natural explanation. E.g.:
Life on Earth was created/introduced/manipulated by a race of alien MD's.
However, those aliens evolved somewhere else, *without IC systems*.
To put this in its original context, you were arguing that the
crypto-creationist tag was an pausible one for Peter, and you may well be
right. I was trying to point out that the criteria you were using did not
necessarily support your contention.
>|> >that Peter argues against evolution;
>|>
>|> I think this is wrong. Peter argues against people's representation of
>|> evolution, or against certain features of the natural world (such as IC)
>|> which he believes evolution to be an insufficient explaination.
>
>But it is a *fact* that Peter in some cases has a poor grasp of the
>biological facts and technical details about which which he argues. I
>take this as saying that, on occasion, Peter argues against evolution.
That is your opinion, and you are certainly entitled to it, but again
though, Peter argues against certain aspects of evolution, or for certain
aspects of the natural world for which evolution appears an inadequate
explanation. He has not argued against evolution in general, and indeed
has supported it on a number of occassions. I guess we are seeing
different meanings in your use of the term "evolution".
>I also interpret Peter's argument for IC as an argument against
>[qevolution.
That's fine. But you haven't taken into account the possible natural
origin of the designers as I suggested above. My take (and thus only
applicable to my reality and not necessarily anyone else's) is that it is
an attempt to intergrate religious and scientific views, rather than an
argument against evolution. Again what do you mean by "evolution" here?
Is it evolution in general or human evolution?
>This comes down to what one thinks of the IC argument. My
>take on IC is that it's basically worthless; an IC-of-the-Gaps, and a
>version of Paley's watchmaker redressed for the molbio of the 1990s.
This is very similar to my position. IC has been championed by a number of
people as a way of reconciling their religeous and scientific views without
having to compromise either, having rejected literalistic creationism for
the discredited worldview that it is, IC offers them a method of
dovetailing their religeous views with the physical realities of the modern
world. I suspect, however, that IC will go the way of other
'God-of-the-gaps' scenarios.
>|> >Peter Nyikos seems to objects to being characterized as a
>|> >crypto-Creationist. Personaly, I think that's an entirely plausible
>|> >interpretation.
>|>
>|> >Consider that Peter has repeatedly made reference to observation of
>|> >Christian festivals (which suggest he is an Xtian of some form);
>|>
>|> But of and by itself, does not make Peter a creationist.
>
>No, of course not.
Actually it does. Here again we have a problem of definition. All people
who 'observe' christian religious festivals are creationists almost by
definition. This does not mean they see the direct hand of a Creator in
the evolution of humans, nor in the evolution of life, nor in the origin of
life, nor in the origin of the Earth. Are these people also
crypto-creationists because they do not report on the work of a creator
even though they believe in the existence of such a Creator? You need to
define just what you mean by "creationists". Someone who believes in the
existence of a Creator? That's just about all religious people. Or
someone who sees evidence for the direct handiwork of such a Creator in us?
There is nothing wrong with being a creationists in the first sense and I
know of no evidence which precludes such an opinion being correct.
"Creationist" is generally a loaded term in this group and so we need to
specify exactly what we mean by it.
>|> I have friends
>|> who are church-going Christians, who observe the Christian festivals, but
>|> are quite happy with the Earth being 4.6 billion years old and the Human
>|> race evolving from previous forms.
>
>But Chris, I never *said* Peter was a YEC. He's far too intelligent
>and literate to fall into a mind-bogglingly stupid position like
>that. However, he _does_ argue for some form of Creator. IC is
>*meaningless* without that. Peter chooses to suggest that perhaps the
>Creator is a far-removed species of intelligent alien. This clearly
>begs the question: who created said intelligent aliens?
>
>It's obvious even to a child that the only escape from an infinite
>chain of `Creators' is some flavour of First Cause.
What about the scenario I suggested above, with the naturally evolving,
non-IC
systems containing aliens? That neatly sidesteps the infinate chain. As far
as I am aware noone has argued that IC systems (if they do exists) are
essential for *all* life occurring *anywhere*. I happen to think that
*IF* IC
systems do exist, the natural alien scenario is more plausible than the
existence of a creator, but that is just my bias.
>Peter plays coy
>about this; but I simply refuse to beleive that anythihg this basic
>escapes a topologist, let alone someone as sharp as Peter is.
>
>That is why I tend to agree with Bruce: Peter Nyikos is a crypto-Creationist.
However, what I was trying to point out was that your criteria resolve into
one which could be applicable to all christians and a couple based on your
inference of where Peter is going with his arguements. Which, however
likely, are still inferences.
It all hinges on what you mean by "Creationist". Is it someone who
believes in the existence of a Creator? In which case I believe Peter will
fit the bill. Is it someone who believes that they can see evidence for a
Devine Creator in such things as IC? In which case you have no direct
evidence of this wrt Peter, only your inference that this is the direction
he is heading.
Maybe you could define just what is meant by "creationist" in
crypto-creationist.
>However, since Peter also denies that he's a crypto-Creationist,
>and hedges his bets, crypto-Creationist-fence-sitter is, the most accurate
>description. (you really should read the article in sci.archaelogy.)
>
>I look forward to having this argument shredded over beer at the Thumb.
Great, Pete's Wicked Ale all round, Jonathan's paying (look at it as the
fee for processing your application).
BTW I wouldn't recommend shredding anything over your beer as it only makes
the beer go flat.
Chris
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| cne...@geology.adelaide.edu.au | "How can Nedin be trusted" |
| ne...@ediacara.org | C Wieland Director, |
| | Creation Research Foundation, |
| *my views only* | Queensland Australia |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
>>On 10 Oct 1997 12:07:54 -0400, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU>
>>wrote:
>
>>>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>>>
>>>>In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>>>>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>
>>>>>But this is 1997. Let's see you argue for the evolution
>>>>>of the bacterial flagellum by Darwinian processes. And let's
>>>>>see you say with a straight face that a race as bright as ours
>>>>>couldn't have designed it, given a few thousand years of
>>>>>progress in biochemistry.
>
>>>> But Peter it took an eon, a billion years or more for the
>>>>bacteria to appear between the origina of the earth and the first
>>>>bacteria-like microfossils.
>
>>>That estimate no longer is generally accepted. One half to a
>>>billion years is the current estimate, and it is also conjectured
>>>that a mere 100 million years elapsed from the time the
>>>earth cooled enough to allow life to form, and the first
>>>primitive organisms.
>
>>Does not leave much time for your aliens to get their stuff here.
>
>You have a strange idea of how long it takes an intelligent species
>to get its stuff together, apparently. Our own species is about
>1/100th that old, and our space travel capabilities go back
>to less than 1/2,000,000th that time.
>
You miss the point. Near as I can tell, this time is not a constraint
on the aliens developing intelligence or technology or anything. Since
we know nothing about them they could have done anything in the time
from the BB until the first appearance of fossil evidence of life.
This 100MY is the window they have to seed the Earth. If they got here
before that, we were too hot, if they got here after, we already had
life. So they had to do it in this time period. So they somehow had to
find the planet and get here in that time. And I do find that a short
time period. Now if you could tell me something about those aliens I
might revise my judgement.
>>> Surely a tousand years of concerted
>>>>biochemical research, at least 10,000 faster, may well make the
>>>>flagellium from scratch. But if nature is undirected, we can give
>>>>her time enough to do it undirected. The complexity she accmulates
>>>>has to have a memory in structures passed on in each geneation of
>>>>biota.
>>>
>>>"biota" assumes abiogenesis has already occurred. Well, let's
>>>assume it for the sake of argument. So what? How many eons
>>>do you estimate it takes to produce a bacterial flagellum
>>>by Darwinian processes?
>>>
>>I would call the exactly 1 eon.
>
>This is a classic argument from ignorance: "It appeared
>after one eon, so that's how long it must take for Darwinian
>processes to do it."
>
>Or is it? Do you have ANY OTHER reason for your estimate
>besides blind faith that Darwininan processes MUST HAVE
>BEEN responsible for the bacterial flagellum?
>
Simple, an "eon" is an undefined time period. So I define an "eon" as
the time it takes to do that. I have no idea how many years that works
out to. You asked a silly question and I gave you a silly answer.
>>>If you take refuge in "nobody knows," then please allow
>>>me confine my followups on this matter with people who try a
>>>little harder than that.
>>>
>>Do you think anyone does know? If so, who?
>
>No one does,
I see. No one knows, but you want to talk to those who "try harder"
than giving the right answer. Does "try harder" mean give the wrong
answer?
>but that doesn't keep some people from proposing
>solutions that go beyond a blind faith that "Darwinian processes
>did it," and arguments that go beyond, "Nobody knows whether
>Darwinian processes really did it, but since I believe they
>did, I'm making the estimate of 1 eon based on this belief."
>
Well how about the argument that Darwinian processes have been
observed to do several of the pieces necessary. Does that fit in
anywhere?
>This is a classic anti-Creationist argument from
>ignorance, if there isn't anything more behind it.
>
Who said there was nothing more behind it. You asked the question, I
answered.
Matt Silberstein
----------------------------------------------
CAUCHON. And you, and not the Church, are to be the judge?
JOAN. What other judgment can I judge by but my own?
_Saint Joan_ by GBS, Scene VI
Joe Potter
Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hchm$pb0$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
> In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
> >I'm not responding to Bruce's latest post, as per his advice on
> >another thread. My response to Silberstein that I did a few
> >minutes ago takes care of the small on-topic component of this
> >latest post of Bruce's.
> >
> >Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>
> Oh, he pulled another Ted Holden. Maybe we can keep Peter
> busy refusing in public to acknowledge my posts. I am sure that
> I have got Peter running. All ye, take heart, we can get the
> scoundral to flight. Follow my lead.
>
You fight the man? Not his ideas? This makes you a ...
well you know already, do you not.
>
> Peter is a Cryptocreationist!
>
What is a "creationist in your mind? That would help us
with the "cryto-" definition.
Regards, Joe
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
> >On 10 Oct 1997 12:07:54 -0400, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU>
> >wrote:
>
> >>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
> >>
> >>>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>
[snip stuff about flagella]
> >>> But Peter it took an eon, a billion years or more for the
> >>>bacteria to appear between the origina of the earth and the first
> >>>bacteria-like microfossils.
>
> >>That estimate no longer is generally accepted. One half to a
> >>billion years is the current estimate, and it is also conjectured
> >>that a mere 100 million years elapsed from the time the
> >>earth cooled enough to allow life to form, and the first
> >>primitive organisms.
Peter, this 100 million years is the sole reason for not dismissing
panspermy out-of-hand. 100 million years is a very long time, but is it
long enough for abiogeniesis and subsequent evolution of organisms to
the state that existed at the first fossil evidence? That is an open
question. But an 'open question' is not the same as evidence *for* any
alternative hypothesis. Among the things one would need to know before
one leapt to a conclusion that aliens did it: 1) Whether that first
microfossil of an ur-bacteriod (or any of its kin) had a flagella or,
rather, flagella were a later addition to an ur-ecosystem? Without that
knowledge, one has not a clue as to how many years it took to develop
the flagella. Moreover, if the answer is that ur-bacteriods did *not*
have flagella, that kind of shoots the one-shot hypothesis of alien
introduction of the flagellated bacteriods right in the old brain. You
either have to start introducing multiple space spore invaders or toss
the whole idea that the flagella is a clue to alien origins. In short,
you need to know whether flagella are primitive or derived features.
2) If flagella are primitive features seen in the earliest bacteriods,
you then need some kind of estimate about the difficulty of evolving a
*primitive* flagellar system in the 100 million years available. If you
find, for example, that current eubacteria and current archae flagella
use proteins which (although functionally related) are not directly
derivative (i.e., they show convergent evolution exploiting different
pilin proteins to play the role of flagellin), that would be an
indication that 'evolving' flagella is not as difficult as it seems;
that nature tends to select the exploitation of the same general kinds
of systems to generate flagella. But if all bacterial flagella are
monophyletic in origin, you need some way to estimate the time it would
take to evolve it in precise enough a fashion to be able to say that 100
million years is too short. You have asserted that this is the case
without evidence several times (claiming it would take a googol of
universes) but I do not remember any actual analysis of how long it
would take. I suspect there is insufficient information to say how long
it would take to evolve a primitive flagella capable of being improved
stepwise from that point (nor even how many components such a primitive
system would have). All we know is the time required to evolve the
*current* system (about 2-3.5 billion years) and the number of crucial
and accessory and modifier components in the system.
>
[snip]
> This is a classic argument from ignorance: "It appeared
> after one eon, so that's how long it must take for Darwinian
> processes to do it."
>
> Or is it? Do you have ANY OTHER reason for your estimate
> besides blind faith that Darwininan processes MUST HAVE
> BEEN responsible for the bacterial flagellum?
>
> >>If you take refuge in "nobody knows," then please allow
> >>me confine my followups on this matter with people who try a
> >>little harder than that.
> >>
> >Do you think anyone does know? If so, who?
>
> No one does, but that doesn't keep some people from proposing
> solutions that go beyond a blind faith that "Darwinian processes
> did it," and arguments that go beyond, "Nobody knows whether
> Darwinian processes really did it, but since I believe they
> did, I'm making the estimate of 1 eon based on this belief."
>
> This is a classic anti-Creationist argument from
> ignorance, if there isn't anything more behind it.
I am not even claiming that I know how long it took to evolve the
flagella since the evidence of 100 million years is for the time it took
to evolve a bacteriod morphologically similar to present bacteria (but
without any claim that I know of that that bacteriod had flagella). But
for you to claim that the flagella is evidence for a one-time alien
panspermy, it is incumbent on you to *at minimum* show that the earliest
ur-bacteriods (at least some of them) had flagella. Otherwise, the
claim is rather hollow.
Joe Potter
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote in article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>...
> I'm not responding to Bruce's latest post, as per his advice on
> another thread. My response to Silberstein that I did a few
> minutes ago takes care of the small on-topic component of this
> latest post of Bruce's.
>
> Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>
>
Peter,
I sort of fail to see why you would respond at all. I have only
seen personal attack of the most low fashion from him for two
or three weeks. It would be different if the attacks were clever
or new or humorous. --- that would at least be fun.
Regards, Joe
Doug Quarnstrom
Jonathan Stone (jona...@Pescadero.DSG.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: In article <62gn9p$p...@fcnews.fc.hp.com>, d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
: |> Jonathan Stone (jona...@Pescadero.DSG.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: |> : In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> writes:
: |> : |> jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Stone) writes:
: |> : |>
: |> : |> distinct from arguments for being designed, and my hypothesis
: |> : |> is about designers that were anything but Mysterious with
: |> : |> a capital M.
: |>
: |>
: |> : Peter, you are being a dunce. Please don't play the fool. Even *you*
: |> : cannot be *that* obtuse.
: |>
: |> Sometimes, with the way he answers questions, one cannot be so sure...
: |>
: |> : The five-year-old who asks ``but who created God''? understands this
: |> : intutively. Are you just being coy, or is there some reason you
: |> : really don't understand this?
: |>
: Ahah. Another vote for Peter as crypto-Creationist fence-sitter.
To be precise, I only voted for his being coy, which he clearly is.
I have not yet stated I consider him a crypto-creationist, although
I do consider the case of those who accuse him of such to be
somewhat compelling.
doug
Joe Potter
Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <61uue1$cc1$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
<snip>
>
> Oh, where is your bibliography? Surely you have to publish to
> keep your professor's chair. I think you are a hell of a one to crticize
> the academic establishment. Are you tenured yet. I'll bet you are, so you
> can sit and snipe at others, can you? You really ARE a hypocrite?
>
My, my what a little piece of work you are. Please post you college math
courses and grade. :-)
I am very glad, Bruce, that you are on the other side. Serves them right.
(and NO --- he is not a plant from our side to make you folks look bad!)
Regards, Joe
PZ Myers
In article <01bcde62$b6fc98a0$5208460c@default>, "Joe Potter"
<joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> PZ Myers <my...@netaxs.com> wrote in article
<myers-ya02408000...@netnews.netaxs.com>...
> > In article <62j2nf$m...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>, "Joe Potter"
> > <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article
> > <62hcap$p8v$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
> > > > In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
> > > > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >This is a classic anti-Creationist argument from
> > > > >ignorance, if there isn't anything more behind it.
> > > > >
> > > > >Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
> > > > >Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
> > > > >University of South Carolina
> > > > >Columbia, SC 29208
> > > >
> > > > Oh, this is amazing, the master of the argument from
> > > > ignorance acuses others of doing the same thing, and even elevates
> > > > the instance to a whole class of arguments. It takes one to know
> > > > one, Peter.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I think you are going overboard here. (as always?)
> > >
> > > I have never read a post by Peter which is argument from
> > > ignorance --- but I have read the ignorant argue with him.
> > > :-)
> >
> > Would you be so kind as to offer proof for this statement?
> >
>
> Offer proof that I have never read a post ... ---- you know better PMZ.
Minor correction--it's PZM.
>
> But if you mean proof of Peter debating the ignorant, did you not see
> him post to the fellow I'm writing to? :-)
>
> <snip --- typical PMZ whining>
Well, Potter, I'm really impressed. You struggle to get back on TO, and
for what? I've lost track of the number of posts you've made today, and
they are virtually all the same: smarmy, snide little one-liners berating
others, but contributing nothing...unless you call sucking up to Peter
Nyikos something (hmmm. he *does* desperately need a friend).
You also snipped my other queries about some of your claims, specifically:
In article <62j2nf$m...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>, "Joe Potter"
<joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> It has been traditional on talk.origins to disparage those who
> do not have advanced degrees.
> Many, many have used their sigs
> to show they are not just a janitor writing on their in-laws machine.
Would you be so kind as to offer proof for these statements?
Note: this is what Potter calls "typical PMZ [sic] whining" -- turning
his own words against him when he makes these kinds of statements. I
guess calling it "whining" his excuse to snip it and not have to answer
the difficult questions.
--
PZ Myers
http://fishnet.bio.temple.edu/
Wade Hines
"Joe Potter" <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hcap$p8v$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
>> Oh, this is amazing, the master of the argument from
>> ignorance acuses others of doing the same thing, and even elevates
>> the instance to a whole class of arguments. It takes one to know
>> one, Peter.
>>
>I think you are going overboard here. (as always?)
>I have never read a post by Peter which is argument from
>ignorance --- but I have read the ignorant argue with him.
>:-)
Peter frequently rails about his perception of the difficulty of
abiogenesis based on his ignorance of how it could occur in
under a googel years. This is an arguement from ignorance.
Saying "I don't know how it could be, so it must not be."
is an arguement from ignorance.
So nice to have you posting.
Chris Ho-Stuart
Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
> This is a Ted Holden strategy. When I got too close to the
> truth It was I who got killfiled. Also notice how Peter's .sig has
> changed. It no longer identifies him as a Math Professor at
> South Carolina State.
Looking for deep meanings in such minor actions is something
which could quite reasonably added to the proverbs for paranoids
or whatever it is.
Get a grip.
Cheers -- Chris Ho-Stuart
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Chris Nedin <cne...@geology.adelaide.edu.au> wrote:
>On 20 Oct 1997 07:55:58 -0400, jona...@Pescadero.DSG.Stanford.EDU
>(Jonathan Stone) wrote:
>
[snip]
>>I look forward to having this argument shredded over beer at the Thumb.
>
>Great, Pete's Wicked Ale all round, Jonathan's paying (look at it as the
>fee for processing your application).
>
>BTW I wouldn't recommend shredding anything over your beer as it only makes
>the beer go flat.
>
Some good shredded beef over a beer would be just fine right now.
Bruce Salem
In article <62idrl$ubh$1...@orthanc.reference.com>,
<mco...@versatility.com> wrote:
>
>You're wrong, Bruce, St. Peter cited the "standard disclaimer".
>As no doubt Ken Fair would tell you, this has been adjudicated
>by the Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice as
>absolving one's employer of all responsibilty.
>
>(Note to the literal minded: that was a joke; it's not true.)
>
>Mitchell Coffey
What I was pointing out was a case where only the first line
of Peter's .sig appeared, without the part showing his affiliation, and I
was making light of that. Free Speech is one thing, being noticed for
exercizing it from one's job site is quite another. I am not posting from
my employer and I don't believe that I ever have unless the posting was
work related. One way to get noticed would be to spend lots of time
during the work day posting to the news groups that were not work-related
unless that was OK as a form of entertainment while one waits for calls
and tasks. "You can being a book" becomes "You can surf the web.". In other
words all of this can relate to job performance and to one's public
reputation. This is a public place, don't forget, and is more public than
being on the street, in many ways.
Bruce Salem
In article <62j3kg$m...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>,
Joe Potter <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote in article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>...
>> I'm not responding to Bruce's latest post, as per his advice on
>> another thread. My response to Silberstein that I did a few
>> minutes ago takes care of the small on-topic component of this
>> latest post of Bruce's.
>>
>
>
>I sort of fail to see why you would respond at all. I have only
>seen personal attack of the most low fashion from him for two
>or three weeks. It would be different if the attacks were clever
>or new or humorous. --- that would at least be fun.
>
>Regards, Joe
Of course, here we have the Potter calling the Kettle Black.
I'll bet that from where Joe is they had a different term for the
Kettle. But this is just another way of saying that Joe has a head
of clay which goes round and round on the wheel, never able to spin off
more than a sentence of two at a time. Too bad he is dumb as mud, next
thing he be telling us is that God fashioned mankind from clay and
that the real reason for our existence is that that He can put us
in the Inferno to turn us into Joe, brittle and inflexible, and
good for holding buckets of swill. Then our destimy is to be
shattered into shards that make up the midden pile of errant myths
that have died a thousand times.
Bruce Salem
Joe, you are dead wrong about how I argue and what I
am arguing for, you need to be silent for a time and go read
old posts before you bust in here making stupid accusations.
The way you argue has already dropped my estimation of how
much effort you merit in reply, so either do some homework
or into my killfile you go. Got that?
In article <62j1fh$g...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>,
Joe Potter <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hchm$pb0$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
>> In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>> >I'm not responding to Bruce's latest post, as per his advice on
>> >another thread. My response to Silberstein that I did a few
>> >minutes ago takes care of the small on-topic component of this
>> >latest post of Bruce's.
>> >
>> >Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>>
>> Oh, he pulled another Ted Holden. Maybe we can keep Peter
>> busy refusing in public to acknowledge my posts. I am sure that
>> I have got Peter running. All ye, take heart, we can get the
>> scoundral to flight. Follow my lead.
>
>You fight the man? Not his ideas? This makes you a ...
>well you know already, do you not.
You have not followed the arguments I have been having
with Peter in substance, You can shut up until you have.
>>
>> Peter is a Cryptocreationist!
>
>What is a "creationist in your mind? That would help us
>with the "cryto-" definition.
>
>Regards, Joe
Go back and read my posts. I have written about it at
least five or six times. And don't reply to me unless you have.
Joe Potter
Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62jtsh$t6p$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
> In article <62j2nf$m...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>,
> Joe Potter <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> I see a pattern developing here. I don't find Joe
> Potter's little one liners very edifying.
>
> Rather than respond I'll leave one comment that
> speaks for itself. Other might get a good snicker from it:
>
> >I have never read a post by Peter which is argument from
> >ignorance --- but I have read the ignorant argue with him.
> >:-)
>
> I also notice Joe speaking in rather sinplistic terms
> about "Our Side", "Their Side", makes me wonder if this fellow
> is worth any bother, sounds somewhat ideologically dogmatic to
> me. Now, will he turn the other cheek.... and run?
>
Well at least no attacks on the southern States in this one. We
seem to be getting better. A small step for a man, a ....
I find brevity helpful when only making the one point. The point is
that you are ironically attacking Peter the man as you decry this
tactic.
And it is fun to watch you name call as you accuse others of same.
Regards, Joe (or Georgia boy as Bruce called me :-) )
Joe Potter
Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62k135$1ok$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
> In article <01bcde62$b6fc98a0$5208460c@default>,
> Joe Potter <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> >Offer proof that I have never read a post ... ---- you know better PMZ.
> >
> >But if you mean proof of Peter debating the ignorant, did you not see
> >him post to the fellow I'm writing to? :-)
> >
> ><snip --- typical PMZ whining>
> >
> >Regards, Joe
>
> And YOU accuse me of arguing to the man, at least I read all
> his posts and replied and long before You 'was 'round, Georgie Boy!
> Go 'on 'ome, Boy!
>
>
I have read Peter for quite some time now. I followed the present attacks by
you also for some time now.
And Georgia is a fine state, I would not mind being from there. A little cold in
the winter though.
Where did you get this bigotry against the south?
Regards, Joe
Joe Potter
Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62k30m$2mc$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
> In article <62j3kg$m...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>,
> Joe Potter <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> >Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote in article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>...
> >> I'm not responding to Bruce's latest post, as per his advice on
> >> another thread. My response to Silberstein that I did a few
> >> minutes ago takes care of the small on-topic component of this
> >> latest post of Bruce's.
> >>
> >> Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
> >
> >Peter,
> >
> >I sort of fail to see why you would respond at all. I have only
> >seen personal attack of the most low fashion from him for two
> >or three weeks. It would be different if the attacks were clever
> >or new or humorous. --- that would at least be fun.
> >
> >Regards, Joe
>
> Of course, here we have the Potter calling the Kettle Black.
> I'll bet that from where Joe is they had a different term for the
> Kettle. But this is just another way of saying that Joe has a head
> of clay which goes round and round on the wheel, never able to spin off
> more than a sentence of two at a time.
>
My, my you do get exercised!
Nice play on my name, now this was more fun than the usual
from you. I got a laugh this AM reading it and thinking that you
aimed to make me angry.
And you have checked the "old" portion of DejaNews and seen only
one or two sentences from me ever? Hmmm.
>
> Too bad he is dumb as mud, next
> thing he be telling us is that God fashioned mankind from clay and
> that the real reason for our existence is that that He can put us
> in the Inferno to turn us into Joe, brittle and inflexible, and
> good for holding buckets of swill.
>
Hmm. Another insult to the intelligence. Nice, and so much more
civil than the supposed "tactics" of Peter? The irony here is
just delicious.
And a shot at religion while you are at it --- my, my but you pack a
lot into your invective.
>
> Then our destimy is to be
> shattered into shards that make up the midden pile of errant myths
> that have died a thousand times.
>
I do not know what your destiny may be, but I wager it is not to
be remembered as that "nice guy" would always had a good word
for everyone. Time will tell.
Regards, Joe
Joe Potter
Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62jub9$2r$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
> Joe, you are dead wrong about how I argue and what I
> am arguing for, you need to be silent for a time and go read
> old posts before you bust in here making stupid accusations.
> The way you argue has already dropped my estimation of how
> much effort you merit in reply, so either do some homework
> or into my killfile you go. Got that?
>
>
<snip>
But I have followed much of it. I try to point out to you that you are
doing what you say Peter is with almost each post. A few others have
made a comment or two about this besides me. Recall the bigoted remarks
about the south?
I try to consider the source when I'm told that I have fallen in someone's
estimation. And in this case, it is not much of a troubling thing.
And do you really think I fear going into your "kill-file?" You think I would miss
terribly our little notes to each other.
Regards, Joe
Bruce Salem
In article <01bcde62$b6fc98a0$5208460c@default>,
Joe Potter <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>Offer proof that I have never read a post ... ---- you know better PMZ.
>
>But if you mean proof of Peter debating the ignorant, did you not see
>him post to the fellow I'm writing to? :-)
>
><snip --- typical PMZ whining>
>
>Regards, Joe
And YOU accuse me of arguing to the man, at least I read all
his posts and replied and long before You 'was 'round, Georgie Boy!
Go 'on 'ome, Boy!
Bruce Salem
PZ Myers
In article <62krol$3...@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, "Joe Potter"
<joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>PZ Myers <my...@netaxs.com> wrote in article
<myers-ya02408000...@netnews.netaxs.com>...
>> In article <01bcde62$b6fc98a0$5208460c@default>, "Joe Potter"
>> <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>
><snip>
>
>> >
>> > Offer proof that I have never read a post ... ---- you know better PMZ.
>>
>> Minor correction--it's PZM.
>>
>
>Sorry, I meant no insult. Just got it backwards.
>
>
>>
>> Well, Potter, I'm really impressed. You struggle to get back on TO, and
>> for what? I've lost track of the number of posts you've made today, and
>> they are virtually all the same: smarmy, snide little one-liners berating
>> others, but contributing nothing...unless you call sucking up to Peter
>> Nyikos something (hmmm. he *does* desperately need a friend).
>>
>
>
>No, just a few folks calling Peter names concerning his "tactics"
>while doing the same in that very post. I think this is worthy of
>comment.
>
>If you see no irony in the name calling as one is decrying name calling
>then your sense of irony is different from mine.
>
No, I see it...but then, all you've done so far is the same thing --
decrying name calling while doing it yourself. Do you see the irony
in *your* posts?
>
>
>
>> > It has been traditional on talk.origins to disparage those who
>> > do not have advanced degrees.
>> > Many, many have used their sigs
>> > to show they are not just a janitor writing on their in-laws machine.
>>
>> Would you be so kind as to offer proof for these statements?
>>
>
>Look it up on DejaNews. I myself have seen posts where the one fellow
>is told "he just does not understand science." Others have questioned
>people on views since they "are not expert in that field." You already
know this.
>
You still have not supported your claim. There is a difference between
supporting a claim with the authority of knowledge backed by the literature,
and supporting a claim with the authority of having a degree...especially
a degree with no bearing on the claim in question.
Also, you call it "traditional" and say "many, many" do it...that requires
some support from you.
>
>
>
>>
>> Note: this is what Potter calls "typical PMZ [sic] whining" -- turning
>> his own words against him when he makes these kinds of statements. I
>> guess calling it "whining" his excuse to snip it and not have to answer
>> the difficult questions.
>>
>
>Difficult questions? A difficult question might be "explain where these
>supposed aliens came from that sent life to earth in this scheme."
Very good! Why don't you start there, then, and tell us where these
supposed aliens came from that sent life to earth in this scheme.
--
PZ Myers
Joe Potter
PZ Myers <my...@netaxs.com> wrote in article <myers-ya02408000...@netnews.netaxs.com>...
> In article <01bcde62$b6fc98a0$5208460c@default>, "Joe Potter"
> <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
<snip>
> >
> > Offer proof that I have never read a post ... ---- you know better PMZ.
>
> Minor correction--it's PZM.
>
Sorry, I meant no insult. Just got it backwards.
>
> Well, Potter, I'm really impressed. You struggle to get back on TO, and
> for what? I've lost track of the number of posts you've made today, and
> they are virtually all the same: smarmy, snide little one-liners berating
> others, but contributing nothing...unless you call sucking up to Peter
> Nyikos something (hmmm. he *does* desperately need a friend).
>
No, just a few folks calling Peter names concerning his "tactics"
while doing the same in that very post. I think this is worthy of
comment.
If you see no irony in the name calling as one is decrying name calling
then your sense of irony is different from mine.
> > It has been traditional on talk.origins to disparage those who
> > do not have advanced degrees.
> > Many, many have used their sigs
> > to show they are not just a janitor writing on their in-laws machine.
>
> Would you be so kind as to offer proof for these statements?
>
Look it up on DejaNews. I myself have seen posts where the one fellow
is told "he just does not understand science." Others have questioned
people on views since they "are not expert in that field." You already know this.
>
> Note: this is what Potter calls "typical PMZ [sic] whining" -- turning
> his own words against him when he makes these kinds of statements. I
> guess calling it "whining" his excuse to snip it and not have to answer
> the difficult questions.
>
Difficult questions? A difficult question might be "explain where these
supposed aliens came from that sent life to earth in this scheme."
Regards, Joe
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) wrote:
>In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>>
>>Deleted. I have decided to follow Bruce's advice on another thread
>>to the extent of not responding to what he's been saying lately
>>on this one either.
>>
>>Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>
> This is a Ted Holden strategy. When I got too close to the
>truth It was I who got killfiled. Also notice how Peter's .sig has
>changed. It no longer identifies him as a Math Professor at
>South Carolina State.
>
Some time ago Peter made a point of explaining that he posted
differently depending on what account he used. We were supposed to
know this by the .sig, but I do not remember what .sig meant what and
have noticed two different styles.
Matt Silberstein
-----------------------------
The opinions expressed in this post reflect those of the Walt
Disney Corp. Which might come as a surprise to them.
Peter Nyikos
CC: Alain, who sent me one
alain....@man.ac.uk (A. Deckers) writes:
>In <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>[...]
>>This is a classic argument from ignorance: "It appeared
>>after one eon, so that's how long it must take for Darwinian
>>processes to do it."
>>
>>Or is it? Do you have ANY OTHER reason for your estimate
>>besides blind faith that Darwininan processes MUST HAVE
>>BEEN responsible for the bacterial flagellum?
>On a separate but I believe related point, are you arguing that life
>_on Earth_ could not have evolved by Darwinian processes (e.g. because
>of a lack of time),
That's one of they hypotheses I am defending this year, yes.
> or that life cannot have evolved by Darwinian
>processes as a matter of principle?
There seems to be a paradox here: if Darwininan processes can
only be applied to living things, how can the rise of living
things from nonliving matter be explained by Darwinian processes?
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Peter Nyikos
"Joe Potter" <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hcap$p8v$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
>> In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>> >
>> >This is a classic anti-Creationist argument from
>> >ignorance, if there isn't anything more behind it.
>> >
>> >Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>> >Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
>> >University of South Carolina
>> >Columbia, SC 29208
>>
>> Oh, this is amazing, the master of the argument from
>> ignorance acuses others of doing the same thing,
Actually, the anti-creationist fanatics use the
term "argument from ignorance" at the drop of a hat, and
I was just commenting on the delicious irony of one of them
being hoist by his own petard in a most striking way. Was it Bruce
who deleted Silberstein's argument from ignorance, by the way?
>> and even elevates
>> the instance to a whole class of arguments. It takes one to know
>> one, Peter.
I think Bruce has inadvertenly put his finger on WHY anti-creationist
fanatics like Silberstein salivate the words "argument from ignorance"
on the flimisiest of pretexts.
>I think you are going overboard here. (as always?)
>I have never read a post by Peter which is argument from
>ignorance --- but I have read the ignorant argue with him.
>:-)
People love to label my arguments as "arguments from ignorance"
without bothering to justify the label, and Bruce
Salem was just using an Appeal to the Mob Fallacy in claiming
me to be a master of the technique.
>> Please note that Peter used his official .sig here. Surely
>> he is speaking for his department here, if he has that porogative.
Nonsense. As I explained on another sub-thread just now:
Months and months ago I announced a uniform policy
to benefit those people (if any) who are NOT interested in my
personal disputes with others but are interested in my on-topic
offerings: if a post of mine contains material I deem to be
on-topic as far as the evolution-creation/evolutionism-creationism
dispute is concerned, I finish with my four-line virtual .sig.
Otherwise, I close with the one-liner you see above and below.
And note, my four-liner still has the words "standard disclaimer"
in it, which means that I am NOT claiming to speak in the
name of my institution.
>It has been traditional on talk.origins to disparage those who
>do not have advanced degrees. Many, many have used their sigs
>to show they are not just a janitor writing on their in-laws machine.
>You see some "evil" motive in this? You have told this to those on your
>side who do the same?
Bruce is allied with the dominant clique in talk.origins, so
he doesn't *need* to be consistent.
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins "Joe Potter" <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hcap$p8v$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
>> In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>> >
>> >This is a classic anti-Creationist argument from
>> >ignorance, if there isn't anything more behind it.
>> >
>> >Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>> >Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
>> >University of South Carolina
>> >Columbia, SC 29208
>>
>> Oh, this is amazing, the master of the argument from
>> ignorance acuses others of doing the same thing, and even elevates
>> the instance to a whole class of arguments. It takes one to know
>> one, Peter.
>>
>
>I think you are going overboard here. (as always?)
No need for insults.
>
>I have never read a post by Peter which is argument from
>ignorance --- but I have read the ignorant argue with him.
>:-)
>
His panspermia argument has an argument from ignorance as its major
support. Basically he says that we don't have an acceptable detailed
explanation for how abiogenesis occurred on Earth, so this increases
the chance that it actually occurred elsewhere and life was sent here.
>
>>
>> Please note that Peter used his official .sig here. Surely
>> he is speaking for his department here, if he has that porogative.
>>
>
>It has been traditional on talk.origins to disparage those who
>do not have advanced degrees.
Really? When. I have not seen such. There is a "tradition" to object
when someone writes as if they know something, but do not have the
background to support their claims. Who, other than Peter, has
complained about the degrees held by a writer?
>Many, many have used their sigs
>to show they are not just a janitor writing on their in-laws machine.
>
Do they use them to point out their position? I know of at least one
poster who changed his name specifically so he would not seem to be
posting from authority.
>You see some "evil" motive in this? You have told this to those on your
>side who do the same?
>
No "evil", just amusement that Peter would trumpet his professorship
(in math) and decry the background of professionals in the fields he
tries to talk about.
Peter Nyikos
d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>Jonathan Stone (jona...@Pescadero.DSG.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>: In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> writes:
>: |> jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Stone) writes:
>: |>
>: |>
>: |>
>: |> >Peter Nyikos seems to objects to being characterized as a
>: |> >crypto-Creationist. Personaly, I think that's an entirely plausible
>: |> >interpretation.
>: |>
>: |> >Consider that Peter has repeatedly made reference to observation of
>: |> >Christian festivals (which suggest he is an Xtian of some form); that
>: |> >Peter argues against evolution;
>: |>
>: |> I don't argue against evolution, because the evidence is overwhelming
>: |> for it having taken place on a grand scale.
Jonathan Stone and Doug Quarnstorm had nothing to say about this.
Yet they go into a song and dance about me not understanding
questions below.
>: |> > that Peter argues for IC and thus a
>: |> >Mysterious Designer.
>: |>
>: |> A double *non sequitur*. Arguing for systems being IC is quite
>: |> distinct from arguments for being designed, and my hypothesis
>: |> is about designers that were anything but Mysterious with
>: |> a capital M.
>: Peter, you are being a dunce. Please don't play the fool. Even *you*
>: cannot be *that* obtuse.
What a classic example of an *ad hominem* fallacy!! Absolutely
no attempt here to argue me out of what I have just said.
>Sometimes, with the way he answers questions, one cannot be so sure...
What question??? I see no questions up there.
>: The five-year-old who asks ``but who created God''? understands this
>: intutively. Are you just being coy, or is there some reason you
>: really don't understand this?
Understands WHAT intuitively? Show me a five year old who
asks the above question after seeing something like what I put
below, and I'll show you a prodigy the likes of which the world
has hardly ever seen.
Q1.1 What is an irreducibly complex system?
A1.1 As defined by Michael Behe in _Darwin's Black Box_,
it is a system with several distinct parts, producing
a certain effect, such that if ANY ONE of the parts
is eliminated, the system effectively ceases to function.
To put it more succinctly: each and every part is indispensible
to the function.
>I vote for coy.
I vote for "not gifted with telepathy or clairvoyance". I still
haven't the foggiest idea of what either of you guys is driving at.
Peter Nyikos
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>>
>> >On 10 Oct 1997 12:07:54 -0400, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU>
>> >wrote:
>>
>> >>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>> >>
>> >>>In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>> >>>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>
>[snip stuff about flagella]
>> >>> But Peter it took an eon, a billion years or more for the
>> >>>bacteria to appear between the origina of the earth and the first
>> >>>bacteria-like microfossils.
>>
>> >>That estimate no longer is generally accepted. One half to a
>> >>billion years is the current estimate, and it is also conjectured
>> >>that a mere 100 million years elapsed from the time the
>> >>earth cooled enough to allow life to form, and the first
>> >>primitive organisms.
>Peter, this 100 million years is the sole reason for not dismissing
>panspermy out-of-hand.
You are only revealing your blind prejudice against panspermy
by writing the above.
> 100 million years is a very long time, but is it
>long enough for abiogeniesis and subsequent evolution of organisms to
>the state that existed at the first fossil evidence? That is an open
>question. But an 'open question' is not the same as evidence *for* any
>alternative hypothesis.
You are only revealing your blind prejudice against panspermy
by writing the above. Would you also apply those standards
to a highly structured radio signal picked up by SETI?
> Among the things one would need to know before
>one leapt to a conclusion that aliens did it:
Since I have not leapt to that conclusion, the rest of your
post was just a Phantom Error Correction.
>1) Whether that first
>microfossil of an ur-bacteriod (or any of its kin) had a flagella or,
>rather, flagella were a later addition to an ur-ecosystem?
You are flagrantly trying to shift the burden of proof onto
your opponent's shoulders.
> Without that
>knowledge, one has not a clue as to how many years it took to develop.
"took" isn't the right word. "can be expected to take, by
pure chance, which I, Howard Hershey, swear by without
bothering to try to assess the probabilities" is the right
word string.
> Moreover, if the answer is that ur-bacteriods did *not*
>have flagella,
You and what other time traveler is able to prove such
a negative?
>that kind of shoots the one-shot hypothesis of alien
>introduction of the flagellated bacteriods right in the old brain.
Dream on, Howard.
[deletia to which Koltanowski Sanction is applied until
Howard retracts his innuendo about jumping to conclusions]
[Nyikos to Silberstein:]
>> This is a classic argument from ignorance: "It appeared
>> after one eon, so that's how long it must take for Darwinian
>> processes to do it."
I took "eon" to mean "1 billion years," as is often the case,
and the context seemed to bear out this being Silberstein's
meaning.
>> Or is it? Do you have ANY OTHER reason for your estimate
>> besides blind faith that Darwininan processes MUST HAVE
>> BEEN responsible for the bacterial flagellum?
>>
>> >>If you take refuge in "nobody knows," then please allow
>> >>me confine my followups on this matter with people who try a
>> >>little harder than that.
>> >>
>> >Do you think anyone does know? If so, who?
>>
>> No one does, but that doesn't keep some people from proposing
>> solutions that go beyond a blind faith that "Darwinian processes
>> did it," and arguments that go beyond, "Nobody knows whether
>> Darwinian processes really did it, but since I believe they
>> did, I'm making the estimate of 1 eon based on this belief."
>>
>> This is a classic anti-Creationist argument from
>> ignorance, if there isn't anything more behind it.
>I am not even claiming that I know how long it took to evolve the
>flagella since the evidence of 100 million years is for the time it took
>to evolve a bacteriod morphologically similar to present bacteria (but
>without any claim that I know of that that bacteriod had flagella).
Again, do *you* have any other reason for saying this than your
blind faith that Darwininan processes MUST HAVE
BEEN responsible for that bacteroid?
Joe Potter
Wade Hines <hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU> wrote in article <hines.8...@cgl.ucsf.edu>...
> "Joe Potter" <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
> >Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hcap$p8v$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
>
> >> Oh, this is amazing, the master of the argument from
> >> ignorance acuses others of doing the same thing, and even elevates
> >> the instance to a whole class of arguments. It takes one to know
> >> one, Peter.
> >>
>
> >I think you are going overboard here. (as always?)
>
> >I have never read a post by Peter which is argument from
> >ignorance --- but I have read the ignorant argue with him.
> >:-)
>
> Peter frequently rails about his perception of the difficulty of
> abiogenesis based on his ignorance of how it could occur in
> under a googel years. This is an arguement from ignorance.
> Saying "I don't know how it could be, so it must not be."
> is an arguement from ignorance.
>
I have seen Peter as well as respected scientists look at current theory
of prebiotic evolution with great skepticism. But I have never seen
Peter say "so it must not be."
If I am wrong could you point me to the post where he says this?
>
> So nice to have you posting.
>
Thanks for the kind words.
Oddly, I did post a time or two over the last several months as I
mainly was a lurker. I never knew nobody (or very few) could see
the posts due to AT&T doing whatever they did.
Heck, I figured the whole ng kill-filed me. :-)
Regards, Joe
Peter Nyikos
hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) writes:
>"Joe Potter" <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>>Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hcap$p8v$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
>>I have never read a post by Peter which is argument from
>>ignorance --- but I have read the ignorant argue with him.
>>:-)
>Peter frequently rails about his perception of the difficulty of
>abiogenesis
No, the universal perception from competent researchers. Even
Nobel Laureate biochemist Christian de Duve was unable to
justify his blind faith in
the near-inevitability of abiogenesis in his book _Vital Dust_,
and admitted in one part of the book that RNA world is in
big trouble. [Or was, as of 1996 when the book appeared.]
> based on his ignorance of how it could occur in
>under a googel years.
Correction: the ignorance of EVERYONE in this newsgroup.
Hines and others have shamelessly run away from the challenge
to demonstrate how it could have happened in a shorter amount
of time, apart from a bunch of hand-waving about 5 or 6 of
the 1000 or so required steps.
I have pointed to our great ignorance in this matter.
To call this an argument from ignorance is to indulge
in obfuscation.
> This is an arguement from ignorance.
>Saying "I don't know how it could be, so it must not be."
>is an arguement from ignorance.
Hines, of course, is flagrantly misrepresenting me if he
is characterizing me as having said anything like the
thing in quotes. If he is doing that, then he is working
a standard Usenet scam of attributing dogmatic statements
like "so it must be" when none exist.
Joe Potter
Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hc2t$p1r$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
> In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
> >sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
> >
> >Deleted. I have decided to follow Bruce's advice on another thread
> >to the extent of not responding to what he's been saying lately
> >on this one either.
> >
> >Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>
> This is a Ted Holden strategy. When I got too close to the
> truth It was I who got killfiled. Also notice how Peter's .sig has
> changed. It no longer identifies him as a Math Professor at
> South Carolina State.
>
Bruce, you told me that you had read far more from Peter that I
and that I should go back and look. And now you seem to have
missed Peter's reason for sometimes changing sigs.
Check DejaNews.
Oh hell, why not just ask him --- he will not bite when you
are straight forward with him.
Regards, Joe
Wade Hines
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> writes:
>There seems to be a paradox here: if Darwininan processes can
>only be applied to living things, how can the rise of living
>things from nonliving matter be explained by Darwinian processes?
The paradox is only in the flexing definition of "living" ala
the fuzz in defining life.
Darwinian evolution works on systems which have inheritable
variability and are reproduced which goes without saying via
inheritable. Darwinian evolution does not require that which
is typically defined as alive. In its most trivail sense,
viruses are sometimes not considered alive yet they verifiably
evolve via "Darwinian processes".
The same is true of families of self replicating polymers.
This is not news to Peter to it is a mystery as to why he
plays at this objuscation unless he was just attempting
to be cute.
His sig which he seems to find relevant in some way left in.
>Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins "Joe Potter" <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>PZ Myers <my...@netaxs.com> wrote in article <myers-ya02408000...@netnews.netaxs.com>...
>> In article <01bcde62$b6fc98a0$5208460c@default>, "Joe Potter"
>> <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>
><snip>
>
>> >
>> > Offer proof that I have never read a post ... ---- you know better PMZ.
>>
>> Minor correction--it's PZM.
>>
>
>Sorry, I meant no insult. Just got it backwards.
>
>
>>
>> Well, Potter, I'm really impressed. You struggle to get back on TO, and
>> for what? I've lost track of the number of posts you've made today, and
>> they are virtually all the same: smarmy, snide little one-liners berating
>> others, but contributing nothing...unless you call sucking up to Peter
>> Nyikos something (hmmm. he *does* desperately need a friend).
>>
>
>
>No, just a few folks calling Peter names concerning his "tactics"
>while doing the same in that very post. I think this is worthy of
>comment.
>
>If you see no irony in the name calling as one is decrying name calling
>then your sense of irony is different from mine.
>
>
>
>
>> > It has been traditional on talk.origins to disparage those who
>> > do not have advanced degrees.
>> > Many, many have used their sigs
>> > to show they are not just a janitor writing on their in-laws machine.
>>
>> Would you be so kind as to offer proof for these statements?
>>
>
>Look it up on DejaNews. I myself have seen posts where the one fellow
>is told "he just does not understand science." Others have questioned
>people on views since they "are not expert in that field." You already know this.
>
Sorry, but those would not support your claim. If you make a claim
about biology I can discuss your biological knowledge. That is quite
different from discussing your academic credentials. And if you offer
your opinion (rather than evidence and logic) on a subject I can
question your expertise. But, again, that is not the same as
discussing your degree. I hope you see the distinction.
As a direct counter to your claim, there is a respected participant in
this newsgroup who is, IIANM, currently a college junior. Or lets take
your situation. Has anyone on this newsgroup ever asked you what
degrees you have?
[snip]
Doug Quarnstrom
Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.SC.EDU) wrote:
: CC: Alain, who sent me one
: > or that life cannot have evolved by Darwinian
: >processes as a matter of principle?
: There seems to be a paradox here: if Darwininan processes can
: only be applied to living things, how can the rise of living
: things from nonliving matter be explained by Darwinian processes?
There is some question as to whether the idea of natural selection
can be applied to "nonliving systems". Forgive me for not having
all the references, but there was a speculation involving natural
selection on clay crystals as being a basis for building up
complex organic molecules. Also, Kauffman's speculations on
autocatalytic sets appearing and being acted upon by selection
also might qualify.
...the point being that "darwinian" processes might act on any
thing that can replicate itself with errors. Not all of these
things are necessarily alive.
doug
Joe Potter
PZ Myers <my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu> wrote in article <myers-ya02408000...@cronkite.temple.edu>...
> In article <62krol$3...@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, "Joe Potter"
> <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
<snip>
> >
> >If you see no irony in the name calling as one is decrying name calling
> >then your sense of irony is different from mine.
> >
>
> No, I see it...but then, all you've done so far is the same thing --
> decrying name calling while doing it yourself. Do you see the irony
> in *your* posts?
>
Yes! I am aware that I have not been "dispassionate" in my words
to Bruce. However, I will leave it to the unbiased to see if
I have given any unwarranted comments.
<snip>
>
> You still have not supported your claim. There is a difference between
> supporting a claim with the authority of knowledge backed by the literature,
> and supporting a claim with the authority of having a degree...especially
> a degree with no bearing on the claim in question.
>
The claim was that folks here have used the PHd (or other expertise)
to help their argument. Deny that if you want to, tiss a small thing
after all.
See my reply to Wade for more.
<snip>
> >
> >Difficult questions? A difficult question might be "explain where these
> >supposed aliens came from that sent life to earth in this scheme."
>
> Very good! Why don't you start there, then, and tell us where these
> supposed aliens came from that sent life to earth in this scheme.
>
I will leave that to others for now, I'm still working on your side's
"Call to Arms" to defend PN.
When the attacks die down maybe we will get back to the real debate.
Regards, Joe
Peter Nyikos
"Joe Potter" <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62hc2t$p1r$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
>> In article <1997102019...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>> >sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>> >
>> >Deleted. I have decided to follow Bruce's advice on another thread
>> >to the extent of not responding to what he's been saying lately
>> >on this one either.
This alludes to the post Bruce did to which the following
was a followup:
=========================== begin included post
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: What my "lists" are really all about
References: <EGBGu...@world.std.com> <1997100722...@milo.math.sc.edu> <61evuf$ak5$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU> <1997100914...@milo.math.sc.edu> <61k8hm$f18$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>In article <1997100914...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>Why don't you be a man and tell us whether you are playing these
>>games to make me waste my time on you, so I won't have as much
>>time for posting replies to others?
> You could ignore me.
Capital idea! I'll ignore all posts you do to this thread, from
now on. Maybe I'll even extend that to other threads--but I
haven't made up my mind to fling you in *that* briar patch yet.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
============================ end of included post
By the way, the very next sentence by Bruce in the above post
began with the words, "I am not making you reply," and went
downhill from there.
>> >Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>>
>> This is a Ted Holden strategy. When I got too close to the
>> truth It was I who got killfiled. Also notice how Peter's .sig has
>> changed. It no longer identifies him as a Math Professor at
>> South Carolina State.
What nonsense! Months and months ago I announced a uniform policy
to benefit those people (if any) who are NOT interested in my
personal disputes with others but are interested in my on-topic
offerings: if a post of mine contains material I deem to be
on-topic as far as the evolution-creation/evolutionism-creationism
dispute is concerned, I finish with my four-line virtual .sig.
Otherwise, I close with the one-liner you see above and below.
By the way, South Carolina State is quite a different institution
from the University of South Carolina. I wonder whether Bruce
makes this kind of mistake regularly--confusing NC State with
U of NC, Arizona State with U. of Arizona, etc., etc.
>> Bruce Salem
>>
>I read the above several times and could not find any mention of
>Peter using a "killfile" --- well, except for your mindless imagining.
I have NEVER used a killfile. I have put one or two people into
what I call "virtual killfile status" or "a de facto killfile",
meaning I treat their posts as though they were in a killfile,
but there are no people currently in that status, and Bruce is
still a long way from that status, as you can
see from the way I worded the above.
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins "Joe Potter" <joe.p...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
[snip]
>
>Well, I see your point now. You are saying that you also have seen
>folks disparaged for not being an expert in a field. But in our society
>the advanced degree is the "certification" of expertise.
>
>So, I will modify my words to this extent (since it seems to mean so
>much to you) ---- I have seen folks without advanced degrees disparaged
>for lack of expertise. Does this pass muster?
>
Yes (with a reservation discussed later), as they should. When you
make claims that you don't have the knowledge to support you should be
called on it. When you use your ability to imagine or the limits of
your knowledge as an argument, then this is important.
My reservation is that the phrase "without advanced degrees" should be
removed. People have been so disparaged when they have advanced
degrees and people have be non-disparaged when they don't.
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Beyond that, the usage of sigs you suggest seems to require
>> much interpretation. sigs offer contact information which
>> can include by default some affiliation. Do you mean that
>> or did you have some other meaning or was it just weak humor?
>>
>
>It may have been "weak humor" --- since I can not get a stand up gig.
>:-)
>
Oooh!
>However, the point was that when I read many sigs they give a certain
>credibility to the poster. For example, if a fellow is with the CDC, I
>would figure his words on the HIV virus would mean more than most.
>Not a guarantee, as you say, but he gets a closer reading.
>
That is, of course, a dangerous step. Yes we all probably do it and
yes it does help a little, but it can be quite misleading. To depend
on such is an argument from authority.
>Any PHd, should be given a tad more respect for their words than
>just Bubba down at the pub, and many have hints in their sigs
>recognizing this fact. (even though Bubba may be correct more
>often)
>
No. Only if the PhD is in the field in question. I do not take Peter's
math degree to have any meaning wrt biology. OTOH, it is clear to me
that he has studied biology more than I have. It is also clear that
several who have also studied more than I have and who work in the
field disagree with Peter. I take work in the field and direct
knowledge over degrees any day.
>
>>
>> I'm only aware of one professor who actively advertises this fact.
>> I'm aware of a number of other professors who have been posting here
>> for years and avoiding actively advertising that fact in
>> every post. Thus, the impression you seem to be trying to
>> create in contrasted by the facts. Is that a problem for you?
>>
>
>No, since I have seen otherwise as to organization affiliation. As besides,
>it is not generous to hide the PHd and then spring it own a fellow
>mid debate (not saying any would do so).
>
Nor have any done so.
>A question for you please. Do you find something wrong with Peter
>letting readers know his position? If so, what?
>
It is a little troublesome for the reasons you just said. That you, as
an example, take words from a PhD/Professor as having more weight than
from someone else. Peter, you, and I are on equal standing on matters
of biology until we show otherwise.
Doug Quarnstrom
Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.SC.EDU) wrote:
: I have pointed to our great ignorance in this matter.
Fairly so in at least this case.
: To call this an argument from ignorance is to indulge
: in obfuscation.
Pointing out an area of ignorance is NOT argument from ignorance.
Now if someone were to say that BECAUSE we do not know how
it happened it CANNOT have happened and panspermial MUST be
the answer would be argument from ignorance. But to suggest
that not having a good model leads one to think that the probability
that it happened here is lower than it happening somewhere else,
while it might indicate poor judgement, is certainly not
argument from ignorance.
...as long as people who make the argument admit that the
fact that we do not have a model for how it happened here
is not a conclusive argument that it did not.
doug
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
[snip]
>
>I took "eon" to mean "1 billion years," as is often the case,
>and the context seemed to bear out this being Silberstein's
>meaning.
>
I do not remember ever seeing "eon" used this way. Do you have any
examples in mind? And how did the context support this? You asked "How
many eons" so I said "one". How does this show that either (or both)
of us meant 1 billions years?
[snip]
Doug Quarnstrom
Joe Potter (joe.p...@worldnet.att.net) wrote:
: Bruce Salem <sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU> wrote in article <62jub9$2r$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>...
: But I have followed much of it. I try to point out to you that you are
: doing what you say Peter is with almost each post. A few others have
: made a comment or two about this besides me. Recall the bigoted remarks
: about the south?
: I try to consider the source when I'm told that I have fallen in someone's
: estimation. And in this case, it is not much of a troubling thing.
: And do you really think I fear going into your "kill-file?" You think I would miss
: terribly our little notes to each other.
My guess is that you would.
doug
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>>
>> >On 10 Oct 1997 12:07:54 -0400, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU>
>> >wrote:
>>
>> >>sa...@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
>> >>
>> >>>In article <1997100718...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
>> >>>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.SC.EDU> wrote:
>>
>[snip stuff about flagella]
>
>> >>> But Peter it took an eon, a billion years or more for the
>> >>>bacteria to appear between the origina of the earth and the first
>> >>>bacteria-like microfossils.
>>
>> >>That estimate no longer is generally accepted. One half to a
>> >>billion years is the current estimate, and it is also conjectured
>> >>that a mere 100 million years elapsed from the time the
>> >>earth cooled enough to allow life to form, and the first
>> >>primitive organisms.
>
>Peter, this 100 million years is the sole reason for not dismissing
>panspermy out-of-hand. 100 million years is a very long time, but is it
>long enough for abiogeniesis and subsequent evolution of organisms to
>the state that existed at the first fossil evidence?
Does not have to be. The 100MY is only the time for Earth. I suppose
that the alien's home planet could have cooled Some significant time
before that. In fact, we (ok, I can't, but others could) can probably
make some reasonable assumptions of how long before. If it is a planet
of a first gen star it would be, at most, XX old. If it were a planet
of a second gen star it would be, at most, YY old.