Twenty Years After Darwin on Trial, ID is Dead

[Randy C]

The web page at http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darwin_on_t.php
has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
theory for a number of years.

Here are some quotes from that site:

[quote]
Even leaving aside the blow of Kitzmiller v. Dover, ID has simply
collapsed under the weight of its own vacuity. In the nineties and
early 2000s, ID seemed to be producing one novel argument after
another. They were variations on familiar themes, of course, but books
like Darwin on Trial, Darwin's Black Box, No Free Lunch and even Icons
of Evolution, written by people with serious credentials and written
with far more skill than the YEC's could muster, seemed to advance the
discussion in original ways. These books attracted enormous interest
among scientists, if only in the sense that they were promoting bad
ideas that needed be countered. Many books were written to counter
ID's pretensions, and major science periodicals took notice of them.

Not so today. Consider the two biggest ID books of recent years.
Michael Behe's follow-up book, The Edge of Evolution, dropped like a
stone. It got a few perfunctory reviews written by scientists who
perked up just long enough to note its many errors, and then everyone
ignored it. Frankly, even the ID folks don't seem to talk about it
very much. Stephen Meyer's book Signature in the Cell was likewise met
with crickets. It briefly seemed like a big deal, a big book released
by a mainstream publisher, but scientists gave it a scan, saw nothing
remotely new, and yawned.
[/quote]

It ends with this paragraph:

[quote]
In the mid-nineties it was possible to wonder seriously if ID was a
serious intellectual movement, or just another fad that would die out
on its own. That verdict is now in. ID is dead. As a doornail. Even as
YEC shows renewed life with the success of the Creation Museum and the
fracas over their planned Noah's Ark theme park, the ID corpse isn't
even twitching anymore.
[/quote]

[raven1]

On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:17:24 -0800 (PST), Randy C
<randy...@gmail.com> wrote:

>The web page at http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darwin_on_t.php
>has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
>is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
>theory for a number of years.

Probably because there was never a theory of ID to begin with.

[Bruce Stephens]

raven1 <quotht...@nevermore.com> writes:

> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:17:24 -0800 (PST), Randy C
> <randy...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The web page at http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darwin_on_t.php
>>has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
>>is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
>>theory for a number of years.
>
> Probably because there was never a theory of ID to begin with.

Surely we're just waiting for all the research from the Biologic
Institute to be properly evaluated? (I feel sure it'll be just as
convincing as that from the Creation Science movement.)

[...]

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 2:39 pm, Bruce Stephens <bruce+use...@cenderis.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

> raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> writes:
> > On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:17:24 -0800 (PST), Randy C

> > <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...

> >>has an article matching the subject of this post.  It says that there
> >>is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> >>theory for a number of years.
>
> > Probably because there was never a theory of ID to begin with.
>
> Surely we're just waiting for all the research from the Biologic
> Institute to be properly evaluated?  (I feel sure it'll be just as
> convincing as that from the Creation Science movement.)
>
> [...]

Strangely enough, I don't recall ever reading about the Biologic
Institute. Is that a subset of the Discovery Institute?

Anyway, Jaspm Rosenhouse's whole article reads like a bunch of fluff
to me, with no serious attempt to back up its conclusions. Look at
the extreme generality in which the following is couched:

[begin excerpt]
But to anyone outside the ID bubble the claim that evolutionists have
simply ignored the most serious (ahem) Darwin critics is plainly
absurd. There have been numerous books and countless magazine and
internet postings addressing and refuting all of the major arguments
ID has to offer.
[end of excerpt]

I've seen a lot of those purported refutatilons, including the ones on
talk.origins, and about the only one I have seen that holds water is
the Miller-Robison theory of how complicated cascades like the blood
clotting mechanism and the immune system could arise by gradual
evolution IF the key molecules are autocatalytic.

If anyone here disagrees, I would like to see some NEW examples of
real refutations.

The rest of what I have seen is a mountain of misrepresentations,
sincere misunderstandings, and premature claims of refutation. And
one of the worst offenders was PZMyers, whom the author of this
propaganda post somehow admires:

"What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "

The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
all these years.

Myers was one of the worst offenders in the 1990's as far as
misrepresenting it and what others said about it are concerned. I
doubt that he has changed his stripes in the meantime.

He makes much of Myers knocking down a strawman, a Quranic crank
having nothing to do with irreducible complexity, as though this were
relevant to the topic. He links to a typical blustering rant of
Myers, and I have to laugh at Myers's list of 1990's "heavyweights"
who "stomped on" Intelligent Design

[begin excerpt]
Let’s not forget all those other science bloggers and writers who’ve
also stomped on ID repeatedly: Ian Musgrave, Wesley Elsberry, Carl
Zimmer, John Wilkins, Larry Moran, Steve Matheson, Jeff Shallit, Allen
MacNeill, Jerry Coyne, Ken Miller and many more.:
___________ end of excerpt
from http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/28/lonely-broken-hearted-creationists/

Julie Thomas more than held her own against all members of this crowd
who challenged her in talk.origins, and also posted articles about
some of the non-t.o. folks, e.g. "Coyne attempts to refute Behe".
With the one exception noted above, and some of Larry Moran's posts,
they cut a pretty poor figure in competititon with her. [Btw, Robison
never even competed, IIRC. He and I had a few arguments, but I don't
recall him arguing with Julie.]

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[Bruce Stephens]

pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> writes:

[...]

> Strangely enough, I don't recall ever reading about the Biologic
> Institute. Is that a subset of the Discovery Institute?

I believe it is, more or less. A few years ago the DI announced they
were funding a research lab, and it appears the Biologic Institute is
it: <http://www.biologicinstitute.org/>

About

Biologic Institute is a non-profit research organization founded in
2005 for the purpose of developing and testing the scientific case
for intelligent design in biology and exploring its scientific
implications. Its founding was made possible by Discovery
Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which continues to
support its ongoing work.

[...]

[alextangent]

> fromhttp://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/28/lonely-broken-heart...

>
> Julie Thomas more than held her own against all members of this crowd
> who challenged her in talk.origins, and also posted articles about
> some of the non-t.o. folks, e.g. "Coyne attempts to refute Behe".
> With the one exception noted above, and some of Larry Moran's posts,
> they cut a pretty poor figure in competititon with her. [Btw, Robison
> never even competed, IIRC.  He and I had a few arguments, but I don't
> recall him arguing with Julie.]
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics       -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
> nyikos @ math.sc.edu

I'm flabbergasted.

Show anyone here some ID science first. If you can't, recruit someone
who can. Make a prediction.

Anything, really anything at all, would help.

[John Harshman]

Joe Felsenstein has decisively refuted most of Dembski's stuff,
including his NFL theorem interpretations and his "Law of Conservation
of Information", on Panda's Thumb and elsewhere. Is that new?

> The rest of what I have seen is a mountain of misrepresentations,
> sincere misunderstandings, and premature claims of refutation. And
> one of the worst offenders was PZMyers, whom the author of this
> propaganda post somehow admires:
>
> "What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
> why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "
>
> The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
> sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
> all these years.

> Myers was one of the worst offenders in the 1990's as far as
> misrepresenting it and what others said about it are concerned. I
> doubt that he has changed his stripes in the meantime.

That sounds like fluff to me, with no attempt to back up your conclusions.

> He makes much of Myers knocking down a strawman, a Quranic crank
> having nothing to do with irreducible complexity, as though this were
> relevant to the topic. He links to a typical blustering rant of
> Myers, and I have to laugh at Myers's list of 1990's "heavyweights"
> who "stomped on" Intelligent Design
>
> [begin excerpt]
> Let’s not forget all those other science bloggers and writers who’ve
> also stomped on ID repeatedly: Ian Musgrave, Wesley Elsberry, Carl
> Zimmer, John Wilkins, Larry Moran, Steve Matheson, Jeff Shallit, Allen
> MacNeill, Jerry Coyne, Ken Miller and many more.:
> ___________ end of excerpt
> from http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/28/lonely-broken-hearted-creationists/
>
> Julie Thomas more than held her own against all members of this crowd
> who challenged her in talk.origins, and also posted articles about
> some of the non-t.o. folks, e.g. "Coyne attempts to refute Behe".
> With the one exception noted above, and some of Larry Moran's posts,
> they cut a pretty poor figure in competititon with her. [Btw, Robison
> never even competed, IIRC. He and I had a few arguments, but I don't
> recall him arguing with Julie.]

Your mileage may vary.

[JohnN]

On Dec 6, 1:17 pm, Randy C <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...

I'm waiting for Zombie ID. Someone will bring it back and sell it to a
new generation of IDiots.

JohnN

[Kalkidas]

The problem with the "ignore it and it'll go away" strategy is that,
because you're ignoring it you can't tell if it's really going away.

And the problem with the "repeat that it's gone long enough and it'll
really be gone" strategy is the same problem as trying *not* to think of
an elephant.

[Burkhard]

Zombies are intelligently designed, are they not? You need to be a
highly trained bokor to make one, just for starters

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 5:08 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Dec 6, 2:39 pm, Bruce Stephens <bruce+use...@cenderis.demon.co.uk>
> > wrote:
> >> raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> writes:
> >>> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:17:24 -0800 (PST), Randy C
> >>> <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
> >>>> has an article matching the subject of this post.  It says that there
> >>>> is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> >>>> theory for a number of years.
> >>> Probably because there was never a theory of ID to begin with.
> >> Surely we're just waiting for all the research from the Biologic
> >> Institute to be properly evaluated?  (I feel sure it'll be just as
> >> convincing as that from the Creation Science movement.)
>
> >> [...]
>
> > Strangely enough, I don't recall ever reading about the Biologic
> > Institute.  Is that a subset of the Discovery Institute?

Do you know the answer, John?

> > Anyway, Jason Rosenhouse's  whole article reads like a  bunch of fluff

> > to me, with no serious attempt to back up its conclusions.  Look at
> > the extreme generality in which the following is couched:
>
> >   [begin excerpt]
> > But to anyone outside the ID bubble the claim that evolutionists have
> > simply ignored the most serious (ahem) Darwin critics is plainly
> > absurd. There have been numerous books and countless magazine and
> > internet postings addressing and refuting all of the major arguments
> > ID has to offer.
> >   [end of excerpt]
>
> > I've seen a lot of those purported refutatilons, including the ones on
> > talk.origins, and about the only one I have seen that holds water is
> > the Miller-Robison theory of how complicated cascades like the blood
> > clotting mechanism and the immune system could arise by gradual
> > evolution IF the key molecules are autocatalytic.
>
> > If anyone here disagrees, I would like to see some NEW examples of
> > real refutations.
>
> Joe Felsenstein has decisively refuted most of Dembski's stuff,
> including his NFL theorem interpretations and his "Law of Conservation
> of Information", on Panda's Thumb and elsewhere. Is that new?

To me, it is. Can you give me some urls?

> > The rest of what I have seen is a mountain of misrepresentations,
> > sincere misunderstandings,  and premature claims of refutation.  And
> > one of the worst offenders was PZMyers, whom the author of this
> > propaganda post somehow admires:
>
> > "What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
> > why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "
>
> > The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
> > sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
> > all these years.
> >  Myers was one of the worst offenders in the 1990's as far as
> > misrepresenting it and what others said about it are concerned.  I
> > doubt that he has changed his stripes in the meantime.
>
> That sounds like fluff to me, with no attempt to back up your conclusions.

Thanks for flattering me. ["Imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery."] But there are some minor differences:

(1) Jason initiated the discussion, and had enough time to come up
with meaningful links. If he posted any, I missed them.

(2) Myers is long gone from here, except for a brief cameo appearance
earlier this year when certain people [I don't think you were
included, btw.] fawned all over him without bothering to defend
anything he said. I'm not sure anyone is interested in defending him
now. Are you?

(3) I'm willing to defend my claims; I haven't seen much sign of Jason
Rosenhouse defending his. See beginning of a defense at the end of
this post. But before that...

The post to which you are replying has a lot in common with something
I posted to his blog post at about the same time. It will be
interesting to see whether he does any better than the people who have
replied to me up to now. So far, none of them has shown any sign of
knowing the definition of "irreducible complexity" and plenty of sign
of being wedded to standard misconceptions about the concept.

> > He makes much of Myers knocking down a strawman, a Quranic crank
> > having nothing to do with irreducible complexity, as though this were
> > relevant to the topic.  He links to a typical blustering rant of
> > Myers, and I have to laugh at Myers's  list of 1990's "heavyweights"
> > who "stomped on" Intelligent Design
>
> >   [begin excerpt]

> > Let�s not forget all those other science bloggers and writers who�ve

> > also stomped on ID repeatedly: Ian Musgrave, Wesley Elsberry, Carl
> > Zimmer, John Wilkins, Larry Moran, Steve Matheson, Jeff Shallit, Allen
> > MacNeill, Jerry Coyne, Ken Miller and many more.:
> > ___________ end of excerpt

> > fromhttp://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/28/lonely-broken-heart...

>
> > Julie Thomas more than held her own against all members of this crowd
> > who challenged her in talk.origins, and also posted articles about
> > some of the non-t.o. folks, e.g. "Coyne attempts to refute Behe".
> > With the one exception noted above, and some of Larry Moran's posts,
> > they cut a pretty poor figure in competititon with her. [Btw, Robison
> > never even competed, IIRC.  He and I had a few arguments, but I don't
> > recall him arguing with Julie.]
>
> Your mileage may vary.

Here is a little teaser for you about my mileage:

____________ begin excerpts from 1997 reply to Myers_____

Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: The Irreducibly Complex ATP Synthase
References: <650n98$2...@alexander.INS.CWRU.Edu> <347497BD.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 98.71.17.12
41...@super.zippo.com> <3479a942.149140283@nn\
tp.ix.netcom.com> <65agcd$2...@alexander.INS.CWRU.Edu> <myers-
ya02408000R24...@netnews.netax\
s.com>

Myers's biological experise is nowhere in evidence here; instead,
we see some name-dropping and a brazen display of disingenousness
and hypocrisy from him.

CC to Julie, with the usual reminder that Myers has buried
his head in the sand over my posts.

my...@netaxs.com (PZ Myers) writes:

>In article <65agcd$2...@alexander.INS.CWRU.Edu>, iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu
>(Julie Thomas) wrote:

>> This is the first reply to my ATP synthase article that my server has
>> picked up. But apparently there are other replies. If anyone wants
>> to be sure that I see their reply, I suggest they e-mail me a copy.

Myers left this in without comment. OTOH he makes a
highly suspicious looking snip below.

>> In a previous article, sar...@ix.netcom.com (Stanley Friesen) says:
>>
>> >Chris Carrell <cjc...@super.zippo.com> wrote:
>> >>Well, that perks the ears up. Doing a search, I find no mention of
>> >>Andrew Leslie and one mention of Paul Boyer. Was this really based
>> >>on primary literature? (No mention of John Walker, either.)
>>
>> What now? I'm supposed to be a name-dropper? My article was
>> based on recent review articles and primary literature. If the folks
>> you name have anything relevant to say about the origin of the
>> F-ATP synthases, why not share it? My article (like the previous
>> DNA rep and flagellum articles) was not intended as the conclusive
>> last word.

Myers responds with some more name-dropping.

>Ummmm...you are aware that Boyer and Walker (with Jens Skou) won
>this year's Nobel in chemistry for their work on, you guessed it,
>*ATP synthase* and Na+/K+-ATPase, aren't you?

____________end of first excerpt, begin second__________

>[snip]

Let's just see some of what Myers snipped, shall we?

======================= begin restoration, names added in brackets
[Julie:]
>>>> What about the literature? I have been unable to find any speculations
>>>> about the origin of this complex.

[Chris:]
>>>>Why is "We don't know," such an unacceptable answer to you? Do you
>>>>want science to have easy answers? (If it did, it wouldn't be very
>>>>interesting.)

[Stanley:]
>>>Indeed, considering how *recent* the discovery of this mechanism is, our
>>>lack of knowledge of its origin is to be expected.

=========================== end restoration

>> When it came to DNA replication, "we" didn't know. When it came to
>> the bacterial flagellum, "we" didn't know. When it came to the
>> eucaryotic flagellum, "we" didn't know. When it comes to abiogenesis,
>> "we" didn't know. Now, "we" don't know about the origin of the F-ATPase?
>> It ain't goin' stop here, folks. An if y'all don't know about the origin
>> of this, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that, etc., how
>> do y'all know they evolved without intelligent intervention? After all,
>> if these are indeed designed features, that y'all "don't know" is to
>> be expected. After all, if someone still subscribed to the old
>> blending theory of inheritence, I expect she wouldn't know how to
>> explain Mendel's results also.

>Why all the emphasis on "we"?

As if you didn't know from Chris and Stanley's words,
which you snipped and I restored, dissembler.

> Do **you** know?

As if you didn't know from Julie's words which you snipped
and I restored, hypocrite.

Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
========== end of excerpts

There's plenty more where that came from.

[Ray Martinez]

On Dec 6, 10:17�am, Randy C <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...

The DI "IDiots" expressly refuted themselves when they acknowledged
acceptance of all the major terms and claims of Darwinism to exist
conceptually in nature (natural selection, microevolution/mutability,
macroevolution and common descent).

IIRC Johnson said in "Darwin On Trial" that nearly everyone accepts
mutability (meaning him and his friends); Dembski has said he can live
with all the major tenets of Darwinism as long as ID is accepted to
exist at the molecular level (yet he has had a scathing epigrammatic
paragraph posted at his blog denouncing Darwinism as Materialism thus
contradicting what he can live with); and Behe has said that he
accepts all the major terms and claims of Darwinism, including human
evolution.

Like I said "IDiots," not IDists.

Real IDists do not accept the main claims of their scientific enemy.
Johnson, Dembski and Behe are manifestly confused and/or ignorant. So
much for their credentials. The facts here are BASIC.

Ray (Old Earth Paleyan IDist-species immutabilist)

[Kalkidas]

And special cucumbers.

[Frank J]

On Dec 6, 6:39 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> On 12/6/2011 11:17 AM, Randy C wrote:
>
>
>
>
>

> > The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...

> an elephant.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Many of my fellow "Darwinists" seem to think that the ID scam is dead
(or dying fast) but that old-fashoned creationism is alive and well
("Creation Museum" etc.). My take is that the ID scam changed much of
the language, and doesn't need to do much more. People who never heard
of ID and can't name one of it's leaders nevertheless parrot it's
misleading sound bites. Decades ago one would hear a lot about how the
Bible is true, whereas now it's all about how "Darwinism" is "weak."
And becoming more about how accepting "Darwinism" leads to all evil
behavior. Many people, maybe half who are *not* Genesis literalists,
continue to be fooled. The ID scammers *could* rest on their laurels,
but they don't. They continue to publish increasingly paranoid
propaganda (e.g. "Expelled"), target politicians etc. And leave poor
fools like John Freshwater to fend for themselves.

[John Harshman]

pnyikos wrote:
> On Dec 6, 5:08 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Dec 6, 2:39 pm, Bruce Stephens <bruce+use...@cenderis.demon.co.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>> raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> writes:
>>>>> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:17:24 -0800 (PST), Randy C
>>>>> <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
>>>>>> has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
>>>>>> is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
>>>>>> theory for a number of years.
>>>>> Probably because there was never a theory of ID to begin with.
>>>> Surely we're just waiting for all the research from the Biologic
>>>> Institute to be properly evaluated? (I feel sure it'll be just as
>>>> convincing as that from the Creation Science movement.)
>>>> [...]
>>> Strangely enough, I don't recall ever reading about the Biologic
>>> Institute. Is that a subset of the Discovery Institute?
>
> Do you know the answer, John?

Yes, but someone else has answered already.

>>> Anyway, Jason Rosenhouse's whole article reads like a bunch of fluff
>>> to me, with no serious attempt to back up its conclusions. Look at
>>> the extreme generality in which the following is couched:
>>> [begin excerpt]
>>> But to anyone outside the ID bubble the claim that evolutionists have
>>> simply ignored the most serious (ahem) Darwin critics is plainly
>>> absurd. There have been numerous books and countless magazine and
>>> internet postings addressing and refuting all of the major arguments
>>> ID has to offer.
>>> [end of excerpt]
>>> I've seen a lot of those purported refutatilons, including the ones on
>>> talk.origins, and about the only one I have seen that holds water is
>>> the Miller-Robison theory of how complicated cascades like the blood
>>> clotting mechanism and the immune system could arise by gradual
>>> evolution IF the key molecules are autocatalytic.
>>> If anyone here disagrees, I would like to see some NEW examples of
>>> real refutations.
>> Joe Felsenstein has decisively refuted most of Dembski's stuff,
>> including his NFL theorem interpretations and his "Law of Conservation
>> of Information", on Panda's Thumb and elsewhere. Is that new?
>
> To me, it is. Can you give me some urls?

Just google "felsenstein dembski" and you will get several.

>>> The rest of what I have seen is a mountain of misrepresentations,
>>> sincere misunderstandings, and premature claims of refutation. And
>>> one of the worst offenders was PZMyers, whom the author of this
>>> propaganda post somehow admires:
>>> "What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
>>> why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "
>>> The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
>>> sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
>>> all these years.
>>> Myers was one of the worst offenders in the 1990's as far as
>>> misrepresenting it and what others said about it are concerned. I
>>> doubt that he has changed his stripes in the meantime.
>> That sounds like fluff to me, with no attempt to back up your conclusions.
>
> Thanks for flattering me. ["Imitation is the sincerest form of
> flattery."] But there are some minor differences:
>
> (1) Jason initiated the discussion, and had enough time to come up
> with meaningful links. If he posted any, I missed them.

So you're pleading a lack of time?

> (2) Myers is long gone from here, except for a brief cameo appearance
> earlier this year when certain people [I don't think you were
> included, btw.] fawned all over him without bothering to defend
> anything he said. I'm not sure anyone is interested in defending him
> now. Are you?

I'm more interested in having you back up your general claim about
Myers, not just from the mid-'90s. Has he indeed not produced any good
arguments against the claims of any prominent IDer?

> (3) I'm willing to defend my claims; I haven't seen much sign of Jason
> Rosenhouse defending his. See beginning of a defense at the end of
> this post. But before that...
>
> The post to which you are replying has a lot in common with something
> I posted to his blog post at about the same time. It will be
> interesting to see whether he does any better than the people who have
> replied to me up to now. So far, none of them has shown any sign of
> knowing the definition of "irreducible complexity" and plenty of sign
> of being wedded to standard misconceptions about the concept.

If it's the misconception I imagine, many IDers subscribe to the same
one, and Behe certainly encouraged that misunderstanding.

>>> He makes much of Myers knocking down a strawman, a Quranic crank
>>> having nothing to do with irreducible complexity, as though this were
>>> relevant to the topic. He links to a typical blustering rant of
>>> Myers, and I have to laugh at Myers's list of 1990's "heavyweights"
>>> who "stomped on" Intelligent Design
>>> [begin excerpt]

>>> Let�s not forget all those other science bloggers and writers who�ve

>>> also stomped on ID repeatedly: Ian Musgrave, Wesley Elsberry, Carl
>>> Zimmer, John Wilkins, Larry Moran, Steve Matheson, Jeff Shallit, Allen
>>> MacNeill, Jerry Coyne, Ken Miller and many more.:
>>> ___________ end of excerpt
>>> fromhttp://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/28/lonely-broken-heart...
>>> Julie Thomas more than held her own against all members of this crowd
>>> who challenged her in talk.origins, and also posted articles about
>>> some of the non-t.o. folks, e.g. "Coyne attempts to refute Behe".
>>> With the one exception noted above, and some of Larry Moran's posts,
>>> they cut a pretty poor figure in competititon with her. [Btw, Robison
>>> never even competed, IIRC. He and I had a few arguments, but I don't
>>> recall him arguing with Julie.]
>> Your mileage may vary.
>
> Here is a little teaser for you about my mileage:

[snipped]

> There's plenty more where that came from.

One may hope that plenty more contains something better than this, which
consists largely of your own snide attacks on various posters, including
Myers, and very little from Myers himself.

[Burkhard]

Hell's Bells, Kalkidas, your clair vision is almost narcissistic!

[Kalkidas]

I heard that Cucumbers share 99.3% of their genes with Zombies. The
other .7% comes from the Secret Sauce.

[Kalkidas]

The problem with the "call it a scam enough times and everyone'll
believe it's a scam" strategy is that the kinds of people who'll believe
something just because they heard it repeatedly are not really the kind
of people you want on your side. Unless you're a totalitarian dictator
looking for serfs to grind under your iron fist, or a paranoid
mediocrity of an academic looking for an educational system to hijack,
that is.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 7:20 pm, Frank J <f...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 6:39 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 12/6/2011 11:17 AM, Randy C wrote:
>
> > > The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
> > > has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
> > > is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> > > theory for a number of years.
>
> > > Here are some quotes from that site:
>
> > > [quote]
> > > Even leaving aside the blow of Kitzmiller v. Dover,

...to the Dover school board. But the DI remains unscathed by it
except for the huge numbers of people who ignorantly think otherwise.

> > > Not so today. Consider the two biggest ID books of recent years.
> > > Michael Behe's follow-up book, The Edge of Evolution, dropped like a
> > > stone. It got a few perfunctory reviews written by scientists who
> > > perked up just long enough to note its many errors, and then everyone
> > > ignored it. Frankly, even the ID folks don't seem to talk about it
> > > very much. Stephen Meyer's book Signature in the Cell was likewise met
> > > with crickets. It briefly seemed like a big deal, a big book released
> > > by a mainstream publisher, but scientists gave it a scan, saw nothing
> > > remotely new, and yawned.
> > > [/quote]
>
> > > It ends with this paragraph:
>
> > > [quote]
> > > In the mid-nineties it was possible to wonder seriously if ID was a
> > > serious intellectual movement, or just another fad that would die out
> > > on its own. That verdict is now in.

Wishful thinking on Jason's part.

> > > ID is dead. As a doornail. Even as
> > > YEC shows renewed life with the success of the Creation Museum and the
> > > fracas over their planned Noah's Ark theme park, the ID corpse isn't
> > > even twitching anymore.
> > > [/quote]
>
> > The problem with the "ignore it and it'll go away" strategy is that,
> > because you're ignoring it you can't tell if it's really going away.

That never stopped a number of talk.origins regulars from resolutely
ignoring posts that refute what they say.

> > And the problem with the "repeat that it's gone long enough and it'll
> > really be gone" strategy is the same problem as trying *not* to think of
> > an elephant.

Some are very successful at that. And since they are careful to be on
the "right" side of issues like ID, they can get away with it.

> > Many of my fellow "Darwinists" seem to think that the ID scam is

...a scam. I don't. Some of these people, including Behe, seem
perfectly sincere to me. And I am totally sincere in my own brand of
ID, which has to do with directed panspermia.

> People who never heard
> of ID and can't name one of it's leaders nevertheless parrot it's
> misleading sound bites.

And others parrot misleading soundbites dissing it. The majority of
parrots here in t.o. fall into the latter category.

> And leave poor
> fools like John Freshwater to fend for themselves.

I wonder if Ron O. still thinks I am a fool who follows their lead
about ID, when the reality is that I blaze my own trails and follow
those of Crick and Orgel.

Anyway, I am quite happy to fend for myself, unencumbered by any
baggage. Even Behe only gets the benefit of me pointing out how
people just can't get straight what he has said and done, and what he
is all about. As far as any conclusions drawn from irreducible
complexity go, I leave him to fend for himself.

By the way, who is John Freshwater?

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 7:27 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Dec 6, 5:08 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
> >>> On Dec 6, 2:39 pm, Bruce Stephens <bruce+use...@cenderis.demon.co.uk>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> writes:
> >>>>> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:17:24 -0800 (PST), Randy C
> >>>>> <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
> >>>>>> has an article matching the subject of this post.  It says that there
> >>>>>> is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> >>>>>> theory for a number of years.

[...]

> >>> Anyway, Jason Rosenhouse's  whole article reads like a  bunch of fluff
> >>> to me, with no serious attempt to back up its conclusions.  Look at
> >>> the extreme generality in which the following is couched:
> >>>   [begin excerpt]
> >>> But to anyone outside the ID bubble the claim that evolutionists have
> >>> simply ignored the most serious (ahem) Darwin critics is plainly
> >>> absurd. There have been numerous books and countless magazine and
> >>> internet postings addressing and refuting all of the major arguments
> >>> ID has to offer.
> >>>   [end of excerpt]
> >>> I've seen a lot of those purported refutatilons, including the ones on
> >>> talk.origins, and about the only one I have seen that holds water is
> >>> the Miller-Robison theory of how complicated cascades like the blood
> >>> clotting mechanism and the immune system could arise by gradual
> >>> evolution IF the key molecules are autocatalytic.
> >>> If anyone here disagrees, I would like to see some NEW examples of
> >>> real refutations.
> >> Joe Felsenstein has decisively refuted most of Dembski's stuff,
> >> including his NFL theorem interpretations and his "Law of Conservation
> >> of Information", on Panda's Thumb and elsewhere. Is that new?
>
> > To me, it is.  Can you give me some urls?
>
> Just google "felsenstein dembski" and you will get several.

Sorry, I'm holding out for an url that you are willing to stand
behind. Felsenstein may be incommunicado these days.

> >>> The rest of what I have seen is a mountain of misrepresentations,
> >>> sincere misunderstandings,  and premature claims of refutation.  And
> >>> one of the worst offenders was PZMyers, whom the author of this
> >>> propaganda post somehow admires:
> >>> "What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
> >>> why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "
> >>> The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
> >>> sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
> >>> all these years.
> >>>  Myers was one of the worst offenders in the 1990's as far as
> >>> misrepresenting it and what others said about it are concerned.  I
> >>> doubt that he has changed his stripes in the meantime.
> >> That sounds like fluff to me, with no attempt to back up your conclusions.
>
> > Thanks for flattering me. ["Imitation is the sincerest form of
> > flattery."]  But there are some minor differences:
>
> > (1) Jason initiated the discussion, and had enough time to come up
> > with meaningful links.  If he posted any, I missed them.
>
> So you're pleading a lack of time?

Yes, but I'm also pleading a lack of people willing to read 1000 line
posts, which I would be doing if I were to take seriously all the flak
I get for not supporting this or that statement on the spot.

Usenet is the ideal medium for extended give and take. State your
objections to what I write, and I'll do my best to answer them.

> > (2) Myers is long gone from here, except for a brief cameo appearance
> > earlier this year when certain people [I don't think you were
> > included, btw.] fawned all over him without bothering to defend
> > anything he said.  I'm not sure anyone is interested in defending him
> > now.  Are you?
>
> I'm more interested in having you back up your general claim about
> Myers, not just from the mid-'90s. Has he indeed not produced any good
> arguments against the claims of any prominent IDer?

Judging from the Myers post Jason linked, and other writing I've seen
from Myers, it's the same old same old. Got any counterexamples?

Myers shamelessly lied through his teeth, aggressively and massively,
about a lecture Behe gave at Temple University in the 1990's while he
was there.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then perhaps you are not
the best person to ask whether he has gotten any more honest.

> > (3) I'm willing to defend my claims; I haven't seen much sign of Jason
> > Rosenhouse defending his.  See beginning of a defense at the end of
> > this post.  But before that...
>
> > The post to which you are replying has a lot in common with something
> > I posted to his blog post at about the same time.  It will be
> > interesting to see whether he does any better than the people who have
> > replied to me up to now. So far, none of them has shown any sign of
> > knowing the definition of "irreducible complexity" and plenty of sign
> > of being wedded to standard misconceptions about the concept.
>
> If it's the misconception I imagine,

There are several of them. The most prominent is that it is supposed
to be proof of ID.

> many IDers subscribe to the same
> one, and Behe certainly encouraged that misunderstanding.

He hasn't campaigned zealously against that one, but that's not the
same as encouraging it.

> >>> He makes much of Myers knocking down a strawman, a Quranic crank
> >>> having nothing to do with irreducible complexity, as though this were
> >>> relevant to the topic.  He links to a typical blustering rant of
> >>> Myers, and I have to laugh at Myers's  list of 1990's "heavyweights"
> >>> who "stomped on" Intelligent Design
> >>>   [begin excerpt]
> >>> Let s not forget all those other science bloggers and writers who ve
> >>> also stomped on ID repeatedly: Ian Musgrave, Wesley Elsberry, Carl
> >>> Zimmer, John Wilkins, Larry Moran, Steve Matheson, Jeff Shallit, Allen
> >>> MacNeill, Jerry Coyne, Ken Miller and many more.:
> >>> ___________ end of excerpt
> >>> fromhttp://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/28/lonely-broken-heart...
> >>> Julie Thomas more than held her own against all members of this crowd
> >>> who challenged her in talk.origins, and also posted articles about
> >>> some of the non-t.o. folks, e.g. "Coyne attempts to refute Behe".
> >>> With the one exception noted above, and some of Larry Moran's posts,
> >>> they cut a pretty poor figure in competititon with her. [Btw, Robison
> >>> never even competed, IIRC.  He and I had a few arguments, but I don't
> >>> recall him arguing with Julie.]
> >> Your mileage may vary.
>
> > Here is a little teaser for you about my mileage:
>
> [snipped]
>
> > There's plenty more where that came from.
>
> One may hope that plenty more contains something better than this,

Lots better. I just grabbed the first thing I found. Like I said,
it's a teaser, nothing more.

> which
> consists largely of your own snide attacks on various posters, including
> Myers,

False. It contains Julie making sarcastic remarks about them, but also
challenging them to justify their name-dropping, and me focusing
exclusively on Myers.

Try harder to figure out who's who next time.

> and very little from Myers himself.

And even less from me. But, to anyone who hates insincerity, even that
little bit from Myers told a lot about him.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

You are a truly bizarre individual.

http://ncse.com/rncse/27/3-4/has-natural-selection-been-refuted-arguments-william-dembski

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/08/criticisms-of-d.html

You tend to accuse people of lying quite a bit, on flimsy evidence. How
do you know this?

> And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then perhaps you are not
> the best person to ask whether he has gotten any more honest.

Perhaps not. He probably hasn't stopped beating his wife either.

>>> (3) I'm willing to defend my claims; I haven't seen much sign of Jason
>>> Rosenhouse defending his. See beginning of a defense at the end of
>>> this post. But before that...
>>> The post to which you are replying has a lot in common with something
>>> I posted to his blog post at about the same time. It will be
>>> interesting to see whether he does any better than the people who have
>>> replied to me up to now. So far, none of them has shown any sign of
>>> knowing the definition of "irreducible complexity" and plenty of sign
>>> of being wedded to standard misconceptions about the concept.
>> If it's the misconception I imagine,
>
> There are several of them. The most prominent is that it is supposed
> to be proof of ID.

Is most of the burden there on the word "proof"?

>> many IDers subscribe to the same
>> one, and Behe certainly encouraged that misunderstanding.
>
> He hasn't campaigned zealously against that one, but that's not the
> same as encouraging it.

Not quite the one I was thinking of.

I am not teased.

>> which
>> consists largely of your own snide attacks on various posters, including
>> Myers,
>
> False. It contains Julie making sarcastic remarks about them, but also
> challenging them to justify their name-dropping, and me focusing
> exclusively on Myers.
>
> Try harder to figure out who's who next time.
>
>> and very little from Myers himself.
>
> And even less from me. But, to anyone who hates insincerity, even that
> little bit from Myers told a lot about him.

There's nothing there apart from your exegesis, and no real evidence
that it was valid. If you have a smoking gun, this would be the point to
whip it out.

[Harry K]

<snip>

Where did the original source come from?

Harry K

[pnyikos]

Thanks for the urls. I'll get back to you after I've had a chance to
study them carefully.

I trust you are willing to stand behind them. Be ready to do so.


> http://ncse.com/rncse/27/3-4/has-natural-selection-been-refuted-argum...

>
> http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/08/criticisms-of-d.html
>
>
>
>
>
> >>>>> The rest of what I have seen is a mountain of misrepresentations,
> >>>>> sincere misunderstandings,  and premature claims of refutation.  And
> >>>>> one of the worst offenders was PZMyers,

[...]

> >> I'm more interested in having you back up your general claim about
> >> Myers, not just from the mid-'90s. Has he indeed not produced any good
> >> arguments against the claims of any prominent IDer?
>
> > Judging from the Myers post Jason linked, and other writing I've seen
> > from Myers, it's the same old same old.  Got any counterexamples?

You didn't provide any this time around.

> > Myers shamelessly lied through his teeth, aggressively and massively,
> > about a lecture Behe gave at Temple University in the 1990's while he
> > was there.
>
> You tend to accuse people of lying quite a bit, on flimsy evidence.

You seem to be fond of this allegation, but I've never seen you post
evidence for it, except for some tortuous logic about things I've said
about you which I deny to have been accusations of lying.

> How
> do you know this?

I laboriously typed out the transcript of Behe's entire talk and
posted it, and it bore no resemblance to the fantasy he shoved in
Julie's face and said was a description of what Behe had said.

Needless to say, the fantasy made Behe look stupid.

Would you like me to dig up the relevant posts in Google archives?

> > And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then perhaps you are not
> > the best person to ask whether he has gotten any more honest.
>
> Perhaps not. He probably hasn't stopped beating his wife either.

Stop making wisecracks about things of which you are ignorant.

> >>> (3) I'm willing to defend my claims; I haven't seen much sign of Jason
> >>> Rosenhouse defending his.  See beginning of a defense at the end of
> >>> this post.  But before that...
> >>> The post to which you are replying has a lot in common with something
> >>> I posted to his blog post at about the same time.  It will be
> >>> interesting to see whether he does any better than the people who have
> >>> replied to me up to now. So far, none of them has shown any sign of
> >>> knowing the definition of "irreducible complexity" and plenty of sign
> >>> of being wedded to standard misconceptions about the concept.
> >> If it's the misconception I imagine,
>
> > There are several of them.  The most prominent is that it is supposed
> > to be proof of ID.
>
> Is most of the burden there on the word "proof"?

If people merely said it is supposed to be suggestive of ID, they
would have a case against Behe, but a rather flabby one.

> >> many IDers subscribe to the same
> >> one, and Behe certainly encouraged that misunderstanding.
>
> > He hasn't campaigned zealously against that one, but that's not the
> > same as encouraging it.
>
> Not quite the one I was thinking of.

So tell me which one you were thinking of, or retract your claim about
Behe's encouraging the misunderstanding.

[...]

> >>> There's plenty more where that came from.
> >> One may hope that plenty more contains something better than this,
>
> > Lots better.  I just grabbed the first thing I found.  Like I said,
> > it's a teaser, nothing more.
>
> I am not teased.
>
> >> which
> >> consists largely of your own snide attacks on various posters, including
> >> Myers,
>
> > False. It contains Julie making sarcastic remarks about them, but also
> > challenging them to justify their name-dropping, and me focusing
> > exclusively on Myers.
>
> > Try harder to figure out who's who next time.
>
> >> and very little from Myers himself.
>
> > And even less from me. But, to anyone who hates insincerity, even that
> > little bit from Myers told a lot about him.
>
> There's nothing there apart from your exegesis,

Read it again. I caught you making one error about it already, and
this is another one.

> and no real evidence
> that it was valid. If you have a smoking gun, this would be the point to
> whip it out.

Nah, if you are too lazy to look up Myers's post to which this was a
reply, I'll just dig up some better evidence. Like I said, there's
lots more where that came from.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Original source for what? If you are talking about directed
panspermia, I've done a lot of fleshing out of Crick and Orgel's
theory over the years.

They're both dead now, and if you know of anyone else promoting the
theory that we arose from that beginning, I sure would like to know
it. Behe and other IDers mention it from time to time, but they don't
want to press ahead with it.

Peter Nyikos

[AGWFacts]

On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:17:24 -0800 (PST), Randy C

<randy...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Twenty Years After Darwin on Trial, ID is Dead

Was it ever alive?

> The web page at http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darwin_on_t.php
> has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
> is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> theory for a number of years.

What "ID theory?"

> Here are some quotes from that site:
>
> [quote]
> Even leaving aside the blow of Kitzmiller v. Dover, ID has simply
> collapsed under the weight of its own vacuity. In the nineties and
> early 2000s, ID seemed to be producing one novel argument after
> another.

I am not aare of even one "novel argument" ID promoters have made.

--
"I'd like the globe to warm another degree or two or three... and CO2 levels
to increase perhaps another 100ppm - 300ppm." -- cato...@sympatico.ca

[Tim Anderson]

On Dec 7, 11:54 am, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:

<snip>

>
> The problem with the "call it a scam enough times and everyone'll
> believe it's a scam" strategy is that the kinds of people who'll believe
> something just because they heard it repeatedly are not really the kind
> of people you want on your side. Unless you're a totalitarian dictator
> looking for serfs to grind under your iron fist, or a paranoid
> mediocrity of an academic looking for an educational system to hijack,
> that is.

You seem to be arguing that we on the evolutionary science side of the
house should be complicit in its resurgence among a new generation of
credulous people by keeping quiet.

Would you apply that logic to, say, anti-fascism in the early 1930s?

A truth is never degraded by repetition in the face of persistent
lying.

[Tim Anderson]

Is that "theory" in the sense of "an hypothesis or speculative idea",
or "theory" in the sense of "an integrated explanation for a wide
range of evidence"?

[Steven L.]

"Bruce Stephens" <bruce+...@cenderis.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:878vmpm...@cenderis.demon.co.uk:

I had not known about this before.

From a quick look at their website, it looks like they're trying to be
the creationist version of the Santa Fe Institute.




-- Steven L.

[Ron O]

On Dec 6, 5:39 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> On 12/6/2011 11:17 AM, Randy C wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> > The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...

The sad fact is that the science side hasn't had to do much to keep
intelligent design "science" out of the public schools for the past
decade. The guys that sold IDiots like Kalk the ID scam are the ones
to put the brakes on. Any time an ignorant creationist IDiot steps up
and announces that they support teaching intelligent design it is the
ID perps that run in the bait and switch and only give the rubes a
switch scam that doesn't even mention that ID ever existed. Kalk
could demonstrate that I am wrong by putting up a single example of
where the bait and switch did not go down. What happened to Michele
Bachmann back in June? What will happen in her second whack at being
an IDiot this month? What happened when the IDiots in Texas and
Louisiana wanted to put ID in textbook supplements in the past year (I
think Louisiana was last November). What has happened in 100% such
cases? When have the IDiots ever gotten the ID science that is
supposed to exist? The ID perps even tried to run the bait and switch
on the Dover rubes, but they didn't take the switch scam and found out
in court that there was no ID science to teach.

What excuse do IDiots like Kalk and Nyikos have when the bait and
switch has been going down for nearly a decade? The ID perps aren't
running the scam on the science side. They are running the scam on
their own creationist support base. If ID isn't dead why do the guys
that sold the ID scam to the rubes have a new scam that doesn't even
mention that ID ever existed? Which scam do the IDiots always get
instead of any ID science?

Repetition is only required because there is one born every minute and
in this case they can be reborn as needed.

Really, all IDiots like Kalk can do in the face of reality is run
misdirection ploys and go into abject denial. Just watch. You won't
see any refutation because there isn't a valid one to make. Reality
is just what it is. Denial and prevarication won't change that.

Ron Okimoto

[Ron O]

Demonstrate that it isn't a scam. Put up the example where the bait
and switch did not go down. You can't use Dover because Buckingham
claimed that the ID perps did try to get the Dover board to go with
the switch scam. So put up where someone got the promised ID science
to teach. Kenyon and Thaxton have been fellows of the Discovery
Institute since the start and they are responsible for "cdesign
proponentsists" where they wrote a textbook (Pandas and People) that
was supposed to solve the problem that the scientific creationists ran
into in Arkansas where they couldn't put up any materials suitable to
use for teaching scientific creationism in the public schools. When
scientific creationism lost in the supreme court they changed
creationism to intelligent design throughout the book. All this came
out in the Dover trial.

What is not a scam about intelligent design? Nothing that the ID
perps ever produced was even good enough for them to support when they
had to put up or shut up. That is just a simple fact.

Don't just go into denial or run misdirection ploys, but refute
reality. Go for it.

Ron Okimoto

[Ron O]

On Dec 6, 8:58 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 7:20 pm, Frank J <f...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Dec 6, 6:39 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> > > On 12/6/2011 11:17 AM, Randy C wrote:
>
> > > > The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
> > > > has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
> > > > is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> > > > theory for a number of years.
>
> > > > Here are some quotes from that site:
>
> > > > [quote]
> > > > Even leaving aside the blow of Kitzmiller v. Dover,
>
> ...to the Dover school board.  But the DI remains unscathed by it
> except for the huge numbers of people who ignorantly think otherwise.

Who is the guy that claims that he agrees with Philip Johnson in his
last degenerate thread that he started? What did the Discovery
Institute claim in their propaganda pamphlet about the Dover fiasco?
Didn't Meyer and Dembski run away instead of testify?

Everything that the ID perps were selling was found to be a bogus ploy
to get creationism taught in the public schools and the DI remains
unscathed? What a joker. ID was determined to not be any type of
science worth teaching in the public schools and the DI remains
unscathed? Didn't you read the court decision? You are even
retelling the DI's lie about it applying only to Dover when the
federal court decision applies to the whole federal district which, in
this case, is the middle district of Penn.. Not only that, but it is
the only federal decision on record and the only thing anyone has to
tell them if ID can be taught in the public schools anywhere in the
US.

Projection is a way of life for Nyikos.

>
> > > And the problem with the "repeat that it's gone long enough and it'll
> > > really be gone" strategy is the same problem as trying *not* to think of
> > > an elephant.
>
> Some are very successful at that. And since they are careful to be on
> the "right" side of issues like ID, they can get away with it.

How many times did you repeat the lie about not getting the
description of the bait and switch?

>
> > > Many of my fellow "Darwinists" seem to think that the ID scam is
>
> ...a scam.  I don't.  Some of these people, including Behe, seem
> perfectly sincere to me. And I am totally sincere in my own brand of
> ID, which has to do with directed panspermia.

Nyikos knows for a fact that it is a scam. He could demonstrate
otherwise, but he would rather run and repeat his lies in other
posts. Why didn't Behe resign when his institute started running the
bait and switch 9 years ago? Why did he sign up with an institute
with the mission statement that you know that they had back then?
What kind of fellows do they have an the Discovery Institute?
Beckwith quit and started claiming that he had never supported
teaching ID in the public schools, but what did he do for his
fellowship money?

>
> > People who never heard
> > of ID and can't name one of it's leaders nevertheless parrot it's
> > misleading sound bites.
>
> And others parrot misleading soundbites dissing it.  The majority of
> parrots here in t.o. fall into the latter category.

I should put up the quotes by Johnson that you now claim to agree
with, but at the start you snipped them out, prevaricated about them
in any way that you could and you even resorted to claiming that
Johnson was old so what he said didn't really matter.

Those weren't misleading soundbites were they? Everything Johnson
said was true.

>
> > And leave poor
> > fools like John Freshwater to fend for themselves.
>
> I wonder if Ron O. still thinks I am a fool who follows their lead
> about ID, when the reality is that I blaze my own trails and follow
> those of Crick and Orgel.

Nyikos is just a degenerate lying scum bag. He chose to try to defend
the ID scam artists in anyway that he could, and it all bit him in the
face because the ID perps can't be defended in any legitimate way. He
resorted to all kinds of bogus antics, but never put up any counter
evidence. The only evidence that he ever discussed was the evidence
that I put up and that he kept claiming wasn't good enough when he had
none to back up his denial. Nyikos could put up the counter evidence,
but you won't see that. because there isn't any. The ID perps were
caught with their pants down and had to run the bait and switch on any
IDiot rube that has ever believed them about having the ID scienve to
teach in the public schools. That is just a fact.

>
> Anyway, I am quite happy to fend for myself, unencumbered by any
> baggage.  Even Behe only gets the benefit of me pointing out how
> people just can't get straight what he has said and done, and what he
> is all about.  As far as any conclusions drawn from irreducible
> complexity go, I leave him to fend for himself.
>
> By the way, who is John Freshwater?
>
> Peter Nyikos

Behe can't even get it straight. What is the current definition of
IC? Really, the last new thing that I saw out of Behe was that the
more parts something had the more IC it was. More IC isn't IC. Who
was the IDiot rube that was trying to defend IC when our tangle
started in December? I think that his name was Nyikos. Who was that
rube that made a big deal about Behe and astrology, and then ran when
the evidence was put up? Evidence that he claimed did not exist?

The only IDiots left are the ignorant, incompetent and or dishonest
and Nyikos is all three.

Why not go back to the last thread that you started and do the right
thing and apologize for your low life behavior? Continuing to lie
about me is just stupid. Stop running and defend your positions if
you think that you can. If you could do that you wouldn't have to
make up your degenerate stories.

Ron Okimoto

[raven1]

On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 13:33:48 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>"What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
>why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "
>
>The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
>sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
>all these years.

IC is just the logical fallacy of Argument from Personal Incredulity
dressed up in a lab coat.

[John Harshman]

I'll admit I don't follow Myers that much, and he's so prolific it's
hard to think of any particular posts. And of course I'm lazy.

>>> Myers shamelessly lied through his teeth, aggressively and massively,
>>> about a lecture Behe gave at Temple University in the 1990's while he
>>> was there.
>> You tend to accuse people of lying quite a bit, on flimsy evidence.
>
> You seem to be fond of this allegation, but I've never seen you post
> evidence for it, except for some tortuous logic about things I've said
> about you which I deny to have been accusations of lying.

You're constantly accusing me of knowing that things I say are untrue.
What else to think of that?

>> How
>> do you know this?
>
> I laboriously typed out the transcript of Behe's entire talk and
> posted it, and it bore no resemblance to the fantasy he shoved in
> Julie's face and said was a description of what Behe had said.
>
> Needless to say, the fantasy made Behe look stupid.
>
> Would you like me to dig up the relevant posts in Google archives?

I would like you to post a clear, smoking gun.

>>> And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then perhaps you are not
>>> the best person to ask whether he has gotten any more honest.
>> Perhaps not. He probably hasn't stopped beating his wife either.
>
> Stop making wisecracks about things of which you are ignorant.

Educate me.

>>>>> (3) I'm willing to defend my claims; I haven't seen much sign of Jason
>>>>> Rosenhouse defending his. See beginning of a defense at the end of
>>>>> this post. But before that...
>>>>> The post to which you are replying has a lot in common with something
>>>>> I posted to his blog post at about the same time. It will be
>>>>> interesting to see whether he does any better than the people who have
>>>>> replied to me up to now. So far, none of them has shown any sign of
>>>>> knowing the definition of "irreducible complexity" and plenty of sign
>>>>> of being wedded to standard misconceptions about the concept.
>>>> If it's the misconception I imagine,
>>> There are several of them. The most prominent is that it is supposed
>>> to be proof of ID.
>> Is most of the burden there on the word "proof"?
>
> If people merely said it is supposed to be suggestive of ID, they
> would have a case against Behe, but a rather flabby one.

There's a lot of room between "suggestive" and "proof". Behe comes down,
in my opinion, rather closer to the latter than the former. He thinks
it's very unlikely that any IC system would evolve. Right?

>>>> many IDers subscribe to the same
>>>> one, and Behe certainly encouraged that misunderstanding.
>>> He hasn't campaigned zealously against that one, but that's not the
>>> same as encouraging it.
>> Not quite the one I was thinking of.
>
> So tell me which one you were thinking of, or retract your claim about
> Behe's encouraging the misunderstanding.

I was thinking of what many IDers claim is the definition of an IC
system: one that could not have evolved by numerous slight, successive,
advantageous changes.

>> and no real evidence
>> that it was valid. If you have a smoking gun, this would be the point to
>> whip it out.
>
> Nah, if you are too lazy to look up Myers's post to which this was a
> reply, I'll just dig up some better evidence. Like I said, there's
> lots more where that came from.

And that's exactly what I've asked you to do.

[Harry K]

> Peter Nyikos- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

OK since you want to obfuscate: Where did the original start of life
come from.

Harry K

[John Stockwell]

On Dec 6, 3:49 pm, JohnN <jnorri...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Dec 6, 1:17 pm, Randy C <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
> > has an article matching the subject of this post.  It says that there
> > is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> > theory for a number of years.
>
> > Here are some quotes from that site:
>
> > [quote]

> > Even leaving aside the blow of Kitzmiller v. Dover, ID has simply
> > collapsed under the weight of its own vacuity. In the nineties and
> > early 2000s, ID seemed to be producing one novel argument after
> > another. They were variations on familiar themes, of course, but books
> > like Darwin on Trial, Darwin's Black Box, No Free Lunch and even Icons
> > of Evolution, written by people with serious credentials and written
> > with far more skill than the YEC's could muster, seemed to advance the
> > discussion in original ways. These books attracted enormous interest
> > among scientists, if only in the sense that they were promoting bad
> > ideas that needed be countered. Many books were written to counter
> > ID's pretensions, and major science periodicals took notice of them.
>

> > Not so today. Consider the two biggest ID books of recent years.
> > Michael Behe's follow-up book, The Edge of Evolution, dropped like a
> > stone. It got a few perfunctory reviews written by scientists who
> > perked up just long enough to note its many errors, and then everyone
> > ignored it. Frankly, even the ID folks don't seem to talk about it
> > very much. Stephen Meyer's book Signature in the Cell was likewise met
> > with crickets. It briefly seemed like a big deal, a big book released
> > by a mainstream publisher, but scientists gave it a scan, saw nothing
> > remotely new, and yawned.
> > [/quote]
>
> > It ends with this paragraph:
>
> > [quote]
> > In the mid-nineties it was possible to wonder seriously if ID was a
> > serious intellectual movement, or just another fad that would die out

> > on its own. That verdict is now in. ID is dead. As a doornail. Even as

> > YEC shows renewed life with the success of the Creation Museum and the
> > fracas over their planned Noah's Ark theme park, the ID corpse isn't
> > even twitching anymore.
> > [/quote]
>

> I'm waiting for Zombie ID. Someone will bring it back and sell it to a
> new generation of IDiots.


It's fashionable to rewrite classics with a zombie twist. How about
writing a zombie version of the Bible. Jesus as a zombie what fun!


>
> JohnN

[John Stockwell]

On Dec 7, 3:56 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "Bruce Stephens" <bruce+use...@cenderis.demon.co.uk> wrote in message

It's really quite clever. They fund research in intelligent design and
publish papers that really have nothing to do with intelligent design.


>
> -- Steven L.

[Steven L.]

"JohnN" <jnor...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4e44a628-3d77-4490...@4g2000yqu.googlegroups.com:

Either that, or some new form of creationism will be devised.

Because popular distaste for philosophical naturalism will continue.

So there will always be this desire for alternatives.
And there will always be those who try to supply alternatives.



-- Steven L.

[AGWFacts]

On Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:39:53 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:

> On 12/6/2011 11:17 AM, Randy C wrote:

> > The web page at http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darwin_on_t.php

> The problem with the "ignore it and it'll go away" strategy is that,
> because you're ignoring it you can't tell if it's really going away.

Is that why you ignore the fact that your cult leaders *MURDERD*
people, enslaved others, raped children, and robbed people? They
went to prison, you recall, right?

> And the problem with the "repeat that it's gone long enough and it'll
> really be gone" strategy is the same problem as trying *not* to think of
> an elephant.

[Randy C]

> Either that, or some new form of creationism will be devised.

> Because popular distaste for philosophical naturalism will continue.

I don't know that people "dislike" naturalism so much as they "like"
thinking that there really are ghosts and fairies and aliens who
abduct people at night.

As well as gods, of course.

My own guess is that a lot of people feel that their own lives are
boring and the possibility that these other things may really exist
adds some spice to their lives.

If they hear an unexpected sound at night, was it a ghost? Maybe the
possibility at least adds some intrigue.

[Steven L.]

"Randy C" <randy...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0d5dc0e8-6381-42f2...@l19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com:

> > Either that, or some new form of creationism will be devised.
>
> > Because popular distaste for philosophical naturalism will continue.
>
> I don't know that people "dislike" naturalism so much as they "like"
> thinking that there really are ghosts and fairies and aliens who
> abduct people at night.
>
> As well as gods, of course.
>
> My own guess is that a lot of people feel that their own lives are
> boring and the possibility that these other things may really exist
> adds some spice to their lives.

Instead of guessing so that you can erect a strawman to be smoothly
disposed of, you could try asking those who reject philosophical
naturalism why they do so.




-- Steven L.

[Cubist]

On Dec 7, 8:37 am, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's fashionable to rewrite classics with a zombie twist. How about
> writing a zombie version of the Bible. Jesus as a zombie what fun!

Already been done; the *existing* Bible casts Jesus as (a) having
raised up zombies, and (b) a zombie who rose after three days, causing
large numbers of other corpses to rise up at the same time. That said,
it must be admitted that the zombie action in the Bible is pretty
lame, and mostly restricted to the last couple dozen pages. Perhaps
the time is ripe for a Bible re-write which puts the zombies firmly
in the spotlight!

[Cubist]

On Dec 7, 10:26 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "Randy C" <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote in message

Been there, done that. In my experience, asking PN-rejectors... and
by "PN" I do *not* mean that Nyikos fellow... why they reject PN,
either yields no coherent/intelligible answer at all, and/or yields
fallacy-ridden verbiage ('argument from incredulity' being prominent
among the fallacies which are thus put on display), and/or yields an
answer which is functionally equivalent to what Randy C said above.

[Kalkidas]

On 12/7/2011 12:55 AM, Tim Anderson wrote:
> On Dec 7, 11:54 am, Kalkidas<e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>>
>> The problem with the "call it a scam enough times and everyone'll
>> believe it's a scam" strategy is that the kinds of people who'll believe
>> something just because they heard it repeatedly are not really the kind
>> of people you want on your side. Unless you're a totalitarian dictator
>> looking for serfs to grind under your iron fist, or a paranoid
>> mediocrity of an academic looking for an educational system to hijack,
>> that is.
>
> You seem to be arguing that we on the evolutionary science side of the
> house should be complicit in its resurgence among a new generation of
> credulous people by keeping quiet.

No, I'm arguing that fundamentalist Darwinists and materialists can't
ridicule or pretend ID away.

> Would you apply that logic to, say, anti-fascism in the early 1930s?

I would apply the logic to anti-spiritual claims of all ages, including
all "isms" whose basis is in the circular reasonings of fundamentalist
Darwinism and materialism.

> A truth is never degraded by repetition in the face of persistent
> lying.

Which is why ID has never been degraded, despite persistent lying claims
to the contrary.

[JohnN]

On Dec 7, 12:31 pm, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "JohnN" <jnorri...@hotmail.com> wrote in message

The key is to know when it starts so we can get in on the ground floor
and make a killing.
Thar's gold in them there fools.

JohnN

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 7:11 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> The DI "IDiots" expressly refuted themselves when they acknowledged
> acceptance of all the major terms and claims of Darwinism to exist
> conceptually in nature (natural selection, microevolution/mutability,
> macroevolution and common descent).

It is interesting to see that you and Ron O. are in agreement that the
DI people are "IDiots" and that they have refuted themselves, but for
diametrically opposite reasons.

I think you may be a minority of two, but I could be wildly wrong.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

It is "theory" in the sense of "an integrated body of numerous
principles and facts, providing a plausible explanation for an
indispensible condition of our existence -- namely, the beginning of
life on earth -- and incorporating many alternative hypotheses, and
including explanations for several pieces of evidence."

The three main alternative hypotheses are (2), (3), and (4) on the
following list:

(1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
on earth, without any outside intervention.

(2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]

(3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
Golian Hypothesis"]

(4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
Throom Hypothesis"]

(5) Earth life came via undirected panspermia a la Arrhenius, Hoyle,
and Wickramasinghe.

Right now, there is a thread where a sizable chunk of the integrated
body of numerous principles and facts is laid out, mostly in reply to
Ron Okimoto, of all people.

Yes, even Ron O has his good points, one of which is a willingness to
talk about all kinds of details that no one else has shown any
inclination to discuss.

Here is a sampling:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/379a4ee089a28e77

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9f0eed2e85b8d85d

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/a6cf562b30531516

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/d84a0c46659c6954

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/111268ac772a47f4

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9720ed94ed71c8d4

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 7, 8:07 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 8:58 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 6, 7:20 pm, Frank J <f...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Dec 6, 6:39 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> > > > On 12/6/2011 11:17 AM, Randy C wrote:
>
> > > > > The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
> > > > > has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
> > > > > is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> > > > > theory for a number of years.
>
> > > > > Here are some quotes from that site:
>
> > > > > [quote]
> > > > > Even leaving aside the blow of Kitzmiller v. Dover,
>
> > ...to the Dover school board. But the DI remains unscathed by it
> > except for the huge numbers of people who ignorantly think otherwise.
>
> Who is the guy that claims that he agrees with Philip Johnson

...in thread after thread? Despite the skepticism inherent in your
wording ("claims") you will not find a single place where I disagree
with Phillip [note correct spelling] Johnson's assessment that the DI
does not have the ID science in a form ready for promulgation in the
public schools as a serious rival to the neo-Darwinian [including
punctuated equilibrium] synthesis.

You will, however, see numerous examples of me agreeing with this
assessment in quite a few threads.

> What did the Discovery
> Institute claim in their propaganda pamphlet about the Dover fiasco?

1. That they had tried without success to dissuade the Dover school
board to abandon its policy.

2. That they were against forcing the teaching of ID in the public
schools, but if a teacher wanted to teach any kind of ID in accordance
with scientific principles, [s]he should have the Constitutional right
to do so.

3. That what they really recommend is a teaching of the weaknesses of
the current Darwinian theory.

Shall I go on?

>  ID was determined to not be any type of
> science worth teaching in the public schools

...in the form the Dover school board wanted to teach it. Several
people have told me so on talk.origins, saying that there is a lot of
oversimplified talk about what the court decision actually said, and I
never saw anyone contradict them.

> Didn't you read the court decision?  You are even
> retelling the DI's lie about it applying only to Dover when the
> federal court decision applies to the whole federal district which, in
> this case, is the middle district of Penn..

I was going on what I had read. I did read parts of the decision but
don't recall reading anything about what the decision was binding on.
Could you steer me towards the right passages?

[deletia of numerous false, undocumented allegations and assumptions
about me]

> > Anyway, I am quite happy to fend for myself, unencumbered by any
> > baggage. Even Behe only gets the benefit of me pointing out how
> > people just can't get straight what he has said and done, and what he
> > is all about. As far as any conclusions drawn from irreducible
> > complexity go, I leave him to fend for himself.
>
> > By the way, who is John Freshwater?
>
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> Behe can't even get it straight.  What is the current definition of
> IC?

There are several definitions in use by several people, but AFAIK Behe
has not wavered from his original definition on page 39 of _Darwin's
Black Box_.

>  Really, the last new thing that I saw out of Behe was that the
> more parts something had the more IC it was.

I suspect you are misreading something Behe wrote. IC is an either/or
thing. Either the removal of one part effectively destroys the
function under consideration, or it does not. The latter rules out
IC.

[...]

>  Who was that
> rube that made a big deal about Behe and astrology, and then ran when
> the evidence was put up?  Evidence that he claimed did not exist?

Not I. Behe said certain things about astrology, and I described them
accurately. Review the posts in question, and see.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 7, 9:06 am, raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 13:33:48 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>

> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >"What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
> >why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "
>
> >The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
> >sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
> >all these years.
>
> IC is just the logical fallacy of Argument from Personal Incredulity
> dressed up in a lab coat.

You misspelled ID. Even that only applies to the brand of ID that the
DI promulgates. As to my own version of ID, the following exchange
today tells about that:


"I believe ID should be taught as a
theory alongside the evolutionary theory
and that the students be allowed
to choose for themselves."
-- from post number 87 in:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darwin_on_t.php

[Does the url look familiar? It should. It is the url that the first
post to this thread quoted from.]

I replied to that in post number 90 as follows:

Why should they have to choose? I believe in the evolutionary theory,
from the time of the first metazoan, and have no problem with it
extending all the way back to the first prokaryote. It is with what
came before this that my own brand of ID is concerned.

And in this, I am in a very small minority, abandoned by the
Christians who want to believe some form of the Genesis account, and
on the other hand by almost all other deists and theists, and also by
almost all agnostics and atheists.

A lot of the people in the latter four categories simply accept the
conventional wisdom that abiogenesis took place right here on earth
without even thinking about it. A lot of others I have encountered
think about it only long enough to post some variation on:

Mother Earth did it, this I know,
For Ockham's Razor tells me so.

============ end of excerpt

Peter Nyikos

[raven1]

On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 18:43:22 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Dec 7, 9:06 am, raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 13:33:48 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>>
>> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >"What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
>> >why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "
>>
>> >The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
>> >sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
>> >all these years.
>>
>> IC is just the logical fallacy of Argument from Personal Incredulity
>> dressed up in a lab coat.
>
>You misspelled ID.

No, I was referring to irreducible complexity. Try again.

[pnyikos]

Well, you know that "constantly" is untrue, but it is an excusable
hyperbole, given the personality you have been projecting ever since I
rejoined talk.origins a year ago after almost a full decade of
absence.

Similarly, I would wager that 99.99% of all the jokes you have told in
your life are literally untrue, but only a hopelessly out-of-touch
person would accuse you of lying when you tell them.

> What else to think of that?

Use your common sense, man.

> >> How
> >> do you know this?
>
> > I laboriously typed out the transcript of Behe's entire talk and
> > posted it, and it bore no resemblance to the fantasy he shoved in
> > Julie's face and said was a description of what Behe had said.
>
> > Needless to say, the fantasy made Behe look stupid.
>
> > Would you like me to dig up the relevant posts in Google archives?
>
> I would like you to post a clear, smoking gun.

I'll do so eventually, keeping in mind your incredibly high standards
for evidence. For instance, I think only one person in this newsgroup
exceeds your standards for considering something to be evidence of the
supernatural.

Had Lewis and Clark seen Mount Rushmore in the form in which it
appears today, someone living after Teddy Roosevelt became President
and sharing the standards of this person would have said it provides
no evidence for the supernatural at all.

Would you have said that too, in such a hypothetical situation?

Anyway, I'm afraid I will be too short of time this year to gather the
right kind of evidence, but I think I can finish the job some time in
January or February.
[...]

> >>>>> The post to which you are replying has a lot in common with something
> >>>>> I posted to his blog post at about the same time.

"his blog post" refers to the following:

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darwin_on_t.php

> >>>>> It will be
> >>>>> interesting to see whether he does any better than the people who have
> >>>>> replied to me up to now. So far, none of them has shown any sign of
> >>>>> knowing the definition of "irreducible complexity" and plenty of sign
> >>>>> of being wedded to standard misconceptions about the concept.

That still holds true. I tried to post the definition on page 39 of
Behe's DBB to that thread but of all the posts I tried today, that is
the one that still hasn't shown up.

> >>>> If it's the misconception I imagine,
> >>> There are several of them.  The most prominent is that it is supposed
> >>> to be proof of ID.
> >> Is most of the burden there on the word "proof"?
>
> > If people merely said it is supposed to be suggestive of ID, they
> > would have a case against Behe, but a rather flabby one.
>
> There's a lot of room between "suggestive" and "proof". Behe comes down,
> in my opinion, rather closer to the latter than the former. He thinks
> it's very unlikely that any IC system would evolve. Right?

Wrong. The real lowdown is shortly after that page 39 definition. It
depends on how many parts the system has.

>
> >>>> many IDers subscribe to the same
> >>>> one, and Behe certainly encouraged that misunderstanding.
> >>> He hasn't campaigned zealously against that one, but that's not the
> >>> same as encouraging it.
> >> Not quite the one I was thinking of.
>
> > So tell me which one you were thinking of, or retract your claim about
> > Behe's encouraging the misunderstanding.
>
> I was thinking of what many IDers claim is the definition of an IC
> system: one that could not have evolved by numerous slight, successive,
> advantageous changes.

You left out "directly" after "evolved". I don't have the book handy
right now, but like I said, it comes shortly after that p. 39
definition.

By the way, he was forced to acknowledge some exceptions, like the
clotting system, in the wake of the Miller-Robison theory of how it
could have evolveed by numerous slight, successive, advantageous
changes.

But AFAIK no one has made a dent in his claim that the clotting system
beyond the fork is IC.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Perish the thought.

> Where did the original start of life
> come from.

Oh, THAT kind of original source. I thought you meant the original
source for the theory of directed panspermia.

> Harry K

The most likely answer, according to my directed panspermy hypotheses:
abiogenesis, perhaps over a time span of 6 billion years, on another
planet. As I've said often before (except that the 6 billion figure
is relatively new).

Next question.

Peter Nyikos

[deadrat]

pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> On Dec 7, 8:07 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>> On Dec 6, 8:58 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

<snip/>

>> What did the Discovery
>> Institute claim in their propaganda pamphlet about the Dover fiasco?
>
> 1. That they had tried without success to dissuade the Dover school
> board to abandon its policy.
>
> 2. That they were against forcing the teaching of ID in the public
> schools, but if a teacher wanted to teach any kind of ID in accordance
> with scientific principles, [s]he should have the Constitutional right
> to do so.
>
> 3. That what they really recommend is a teaching of the weaknesses of
> the current Darwinian theory.
>
> Shall I go on?
>
>>  ID was determined to not be any type of
>> science worth teaching in the public schools
>

> ....in the form the Dover school board wanted to teach it. Several

> people have told me so on talk.origins, saying that there is a lot of
> oversimplified talk about what the court decision actually said, and I
> never saw anyone contradict them.
>
>> Didn't you read the court decision?  You are even
>> retelling the DI's lie about it applying only to Dover when the
>> federal court decision applies to the whole federal district which, in
>> this case, is the middle district of Penn..
>
> I was going on what I had read. I did read parts of the decision but
> don't recall reading anything about what the decision was binding on.
> Could you steer me towards the right passages?
>

<snip/>

You won't find it in the decision. A federal district court's decision is
binding within the district; a circuit court of appeals decision is
binding within the circuit. Somebody more knowledgeable than I will have
to cite the authority for this.

"Binding" here means that should another school district in the Middle
District of PA try to reach IDiocy, parents would not have to relitigate
the issue; they could simply ask the district court for a permanent
injunction based on _Kitzmiller_.

Jones issued a declaratory judgment in addition to an injunction and an
order for the defendants to pay the plaintiff's legal fees. The
declaratory judgment laid out in great detail why IDiocy was not science
but religion. Thus the reason for the IDiots' howling about declaratory
judgment: it makes very clear what isn't allowable.

> Peter Nyikos
>
>

[Harry K]

> Peter Nyikos- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

And none of the WAGs even come close to addressing the main point.
Just how did that _first_ speck of life happen. The question that
creationists _really_ hate to have brought up.

Harry K

[Harry K]

So why not abiogenesis here on earth? Much simpler than panspermia.
Your "hypothesis" isn't, it is a WAG.

Harry K

[John Harshman]

I doubt that. But who is that one person? And do you in fact have
anything you consider evidence of the supernatural?

> Had Lewis and Clark seen Mount Rushmore in the form in which it
> appears today, someone living after Teddy Roosevelt became President
> and sharing the standards of this person would have said it provides
> no evidence for the supernatural at all.

> Would you have said that too, in such a hypothetical situation?

Yes. It would have been good evidence of time travel, perhaps. Is time
travel supernatural?

But that unlikelihood builds up fast enough that we can probably ignore
the possibility in almost all real cases, right?

>>>>>> many IDers subscribe to the same
>>>>>> one, and Behe certainly encouraged that misunderstanding.
>>>>> He hasn't campaigned zealously against that one, but that's not the
>>>>> same as encouraging it.
>>>> Not quite the one I was thinking of.
>>> So tell me which one you were thinking of, or retract your claim about
>>> Behe's encouraging the misunderstanding.
>> I was thinking of what many IDers claim is the definition of an IC
>> system: one that could not have evolved by numerous slight, successive,
>> advantageous changes.
>
> You left out "directly" after "evolved". I don't have the book handy
> right now, but like I said, it comes shortly after that p. 39
> definition.
>
> By the way, he was forced to acknowledge some exceptions, like the
> clotting system, in the wake of the Miller-Robison theory of how it
> could have evolveed by numerous slight, successive, advantageous
> changes.
>
> But AFAIK no one has made a dent in his claim that the clotting system
> beyond the fork is IC.

Perhaps, but don't confuse a claim that a system is IC with a claim that
it would be unlikely to evolve. Behe seems to do that quite often.

[Tim Anderson]

I understand the speculation, I am dubious about the factual status of
the evidence to support it.

[Tim Anderson]

On Dec 8, 7:53 am, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> On 12/7/2011 12:55 AM, Tim Anderson wrote:

<snip>

>
> I would apply the logic to anti-spiritual claims of all ages, including
> all "isms" whose basis is in the circular reasonings of fundamentalist
> Darwinism and materialism.
>

If you had ended that sentence at the word "reasonings" and deleted
the word "anti-spiritual", you would have some credibility.

[Ron O]

He doesn't know. His 6 billion figure is relatively new because I
rubbed his face in the fact that he only has around 10 billion years
to evolve his aliens, and he has to allow enough time for the required
material to be produced. It took 10 billion years to produce the
material that our star system is made of. The early universe was
hydrogen and helium. Nyikos was claiming that it might have only
taken a billion years to produce the materials to make the aliens and
his first estimate was 8 billion years for the aliens to evolve. At
the rate of decrease in the estimate of 2 billion years in a matter of
days (from 8 to 6 billion) pretty soon the aliens will have evolved in
less time than it took us to evolve with the alien's help. A twofold
difference is nothing when you consider the claptrap evidence that is
at hand for any speculation. There is no reason to consider that the
aliens were needed to diddle fart around with life on this planet.

Ron Okimoto

[Ron O]

On Dec 7, 8:40 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Dec 7, 8:07 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:


> > On Dec 6, 8:58 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Dec 6, 7:20 pm, Frank J <f...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Dec 6, 6:39 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> > > > > On 12/6/2011 11:17 AM, Randy C wrote:
>
> > > > > > The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
> > > > > > has an article matching the subject of this post. It says that there
> > > > > > is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> > > > > > theory for a number of years.
>
> > > > > > Here are some quotes from that site:
>
> > > > > > [quote]
> > > > > > Even leaving aside the blow of Kitzmiller v. Dover,
>
> > > ...to the Dover school board. But the DI remains unscathed by it
> > > except for the huge numbers of people who ignorantly think otherwise.
>
> > Who is the guy that claims that he agrees with Philip Johnson
>
> ...in  thread after thread?  Despite the skepticism inherent in your
> wording  ("claims") you will not find a single place where I disagree
> with Phillip [note correct spelling] Johnson's assessment that the DI
> does not  have the ID science in a form ready for promulgation in the
> public schools as a serious rival to the neo-Darwinian [including
> punctuated equilibrium] synthesis.

You know what I mean. You snipped and ran or just ran from the
Johnson quotes. When you addressed them what did you do?
Prevaricating about not disagreeing with Johnson is just lying. Put
up a post from Jan to March when I was first putting up the Johnson
quotes where you agreed with them.

You did anything that you could to deny what Johnson was saying. You
even made the stupid claim that Johnson was old so that what he said
didn't matter.

>
> You will, however, see numerous examples of me agreeing with this
> assessment in quite a few threads.

You did not start agreeing with the Johnson quote until you had
prevaricated and lied for months. Go for it. Go back to those posts
and demonstrate that what you claim is true. Just because you changed
your mind and are now trying to prevaricate about the issue doesn't
mean jack. What was your stand 8 months ago when you were running and
pretending? Go back to your Feb and March posts and find one that
demonstrates that you are not lying. You should go back and address
some of those posts that you have been running from anyway. Who just
started a thread and has set a standard of running where he is guilty
of it for 11 posts just in the next to last thread that he started?
How many posts are you running from in the Insane logic thread? Just
go by your own standards and count them.

>
> > What did the Discovery
> > Institute claim in their propaganda pamphlet about the Dover fiasco?
>
> 1. That they had tried without success to dissuade the Dover school
> board to abandon its policy.

They admit to running the bait and switch on the Dover board, but the
Dover board would not take the switch scam because they already had
"free" legal service that was willing to test ID in the courts.

>
> 2. That they were against forcing the teaching of ID in the public
> schools, but if a teacher wanted to teach any kind of ID in accordance
> with scientific principles, [s]he should have the Constitutional right
> to do so.

This "forcing" element did not show up in ID perp propaganda until a
couple years after the bait and switch had been going down. It may
not have shown up in ID perp propaganda before the Dover board started
claiming to want to teach ID in 2004. You can look for something from
the Discovery Institute. You can use Oct 2004 as your cut off date,
but the Dover IDiots were claiming to be able to teach ID months
before they implimented their bogus poly. The forcing issue may have
become an issue because of the Dover fiasco. Even after the ID perps
started running the bait and switch scam in 2002 they didn't make
"mandate" an issue until around 2004.

>
> 3. That what they really recommend is a teaching of the weaknesses of
> the current Darwinian theory.

They sold the switch scam in the same pamphlet where they were holding
out ID as the bait.

"Has ID been banned from the public schools?" What were they claiming
in the pamphlet when the answer to that question was "No." Who lied
about that quote and even snipped out the question and answer part of
the quote to try to claim that the ID perps were not talking about
teaching ID in the public schools?

His name is Nyikos the bogus prevaricator.

>
> Shall I go on?

Yes you purposely left out the best parts. You left out the part
where the ID perps continued to claim that the IDiot rubes could still
teach the bogus ID claptrap. The ID perps also claimed that the Dover
decision didn't matter for other IDiots and only applied to Dover, but
they were lying about that too. It was a federal decision and applied
to the federal district, and it was the only federal decision and the
only means that an IDiot could make an informed decision as to whether
it was legal to teach ID somewhere else in the US.

>
> >  ID was determined to not be any type of
> > science worth teaching in the public schools
>
> ...in the form the Dover school board wanted to teach it.  Several
> people have told me so on talk.origins, saying that there is a lot of
> oversimplified talk about what the court decision actually said, and I
> never saw anyone contradict them.

No, in the form that it was at that time, and still is. Behe and IC
were demonstrated to be too bogus to consider. IC is currently the
only ID perp scam that you are still willing to put up, and it was the
most prominent ID science put forward for evaluation. I don't even
know why you would try to deny that.

>
> > Didn't you read the court decision?  You are even
> > retelling the DI's lie about it applying only to Dover when the
> > federal court decision applies to the whole federal district which, in
> > this case, is the middle district of Penn..
>
> I was going on what I had read.  I did read parts of the decision but
> don't recall reading anything about what the decision was binding on.
> Could you steer me towards the right passages?
>
> [deletia of numerous false, undocumented allegations and assumptions
> about me]

I gave the references when this came up before. You look for the
posts. You likely ran or snipped and ran from the information so why
would I have to put it up again?

Nothing I claimed is false. Demonstrate otherwise. You will have to
go back to all those posts that you are running from, so lying about
reality is all you can do.

>
> > > Anyway, I am quite happy to fend for myself, unencumbered by any
> > > baggage. Even Behe only gets the benefit of me pointing out how
> > > people just can't get straight what he has said and done, and what he
> > > is all about. As far as any conclusions drawn from irreducible
> > > complexity go, I leave him to fend for himself.
>
> > > By the way, who is John Freshwater?
>
> > > Peter Nyikos
>
> > Behe can't even get it straight.  What is the current definition of
> > IC?
>
> There are several definitions in use by several people, but AFAIK Behe
> has not wavered from his original definition on page 39 of _Darwin's
> Black Box_.

That definition never made the grade. Demonstrate that it did. Did
Behe ever produce a definition of "well matched" that he could apply
to IC and make evaluations? No. Behe admitted that the other parts
of the definition were not adequate and that systems where you could
take away a part and have the system stop its normal fuction could
evolve. Somewhere at ARN there was something from Behe where he
admitted that a branch falling between two rocks would form an IC
system by chance, so what good is IC to ID?

>
> >  Really, the last new thing that I saw out of Behe was that the
> > more parts something had the more IC it was.
>
> I suspect you are misreading something Behe wrote.  IC is an either/or
> thing.  Either the removal of one part effectively destroys the
> function under consideration, or it does not.  The latter rules out
> IC.

Nope. That was the last addition to IC that I recall seeing. All it
has ever been since (probably around the last 8 years) has just been a
rehash of the IC failure. Demonstrate otherwise. Just demonstrate
that Behe has improved IC since its abject failure in Dover.

>
> [...]

Did you even mark most of your snips?

>
> >  Who was that
> > rube that made a big deal about Behe and astrology, and then ran when
> > the evidence was put up?  Evidence that he claimed did not exist?
>
> Not I. Behe said certain things about astrology, and I described them
> accurately.  Review the posts in question, and see.
>
> Peter Nyikos

I described them accurately and you went into denial and made stupid
and bogus claims. Go back and answer the astrology post that you ran
away from to prove me wrong.

Ron Okimoto

[Steven L.]

"pnyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:1fa7561c-68c6-4345...@u32g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:

That's not my argument against it.

My argument against it is that it just postpones the abiogenesis issue a
few billion years.

So aliens seeded life here on Earth. So who seeded life on *their*
planet originally? Other aliens? It can't be "aliens all the way down"
because we know the Universe had a finite beginning, the Big Bang. So
there had to be *some* planet in this Universe on which abiogenesis took
place. There had to be *some* planet in this Universe that spawned the
very first space-faring civilization without outside intervention.

So unless you can find a reason why abiogenesis is far less likely to
have occurred on Earth instead of elsewhere in this Universe, you have
no case. You can't rule out naturalistic abiogenesis completely because
you have to explain how the very first space-faring civilization arose
in our Universe.

Actually, I think the reverse of your argument is the case: The further
back in time we go, the fewer and fewer stellar systems including heavy
elements there are. Early in the history of our Universe, it was mostly
hydrogen and helium. Everything we know about biochemistry tells us
that you can't create life without heavier elements than those two.




-- Steven L.

[Steven L.]

"pnyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message

news:3a0f21bc-c283-4f11...@s26g2000yqd.googlegroups.com:

Is there something peculiar about the Earth that kept abiogenesis from
happening here spontaneously, while it happens elsewhere in the
Universe?

Why did Earth need outside intervention when other planets didn't?



-- Steven L.

[Kleuskes & Moos]

On Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:42:06 -0800, Harry K wrote:
> On Dec 7, 7:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

<snip>

>> The most likely answer, according to my directed panspermy hypotheses:
>> abiogenesis, perhaps over a time span of 6 billion years, on another
>> planet.  As I've said often before (except that the 6 billion figure is
>> relatively new).
>>
>> Next question.
>>
>> Peter Nyikos- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
> So why not abiogenesis here on earth? Much simpler than panspermia.
> Your "hypothesis" isn't, it is a WAG.

Wife and Girlfriend? World Air Games? Winnipeg Art Gallery?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
________________________________________
/ These PRESERVES should be FORCE-FED to \
\ PENTAGON OFFICIALS!! /
----------------------------------------
\
\
___
{~._.~}
( Y )
()~*~()
(_)-(_)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[hersheyh]

On Thursday, December 8, 2011 8:11:08 AM UTC-5, Steven L. wrote:
> "pnyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message

> news:1fa7561c-68c6-4...@u32g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:

To be specific, the youngest stars now being formed near the galactic
center are also the stars with the highest metallicity (called population
I stars). The sun is one of these relatively young stars, with intermediacy
in metallicity. In general, the further out from the galactic center, the
older and less metallicity there is. The oldest stars in the Milky
Way are around 14 billion years old. These are, of course, metal
poor population II stars. Our sun is about 4.57 billion years old.
As one of the more metallic stars, intermediate population I, the
sun is an indicator of how old new stars have to be to have solar
levels of metallicity. Let's say that a star in the Milky Way galaxy
can have solar levels of heavy elements if it is 8 billion years old
or younger (that is probably pushing it, but someone better versed
in astronomy may be able to give a better estimate).

Moreover, the overall amount of metallicity
in a galaxy is a function of galactic size. Thus, the metallicity of stars
in the two smaller galaxies in the local area are lower than those in the
Milky Way and Andromeda (the closest large galaxy at 2.5 million
light years distant; traveling at 0.01 X the speed of light, makes
panspermia from Andromeda quite iffy. Even more so if the time
til the evolution of intelligent space-faring creatures on the earth
(3.8 billion years) is any indication. Certainly the probability of
panspermia from other more distant galaxies is even more remote
at best.

This puts quite severe constraints on panspermia as a
possibility. Essentially, if panspermia occurred, the
panspermists would have to have sent life to our solar
system before our solar system formed! And the abiogenesis
on this hypothetical edenic planet would either have to have
evolved space-faring capacity much more quickly than on
earth or have evolved in a solar system with much lower
metalicity than sol's sun.

Why Peter thinks pangenesis is more likely than abiogenesis _in situ_
is problematic.


> -- Steven L.

[Harry K]

On Dec 8, 7:12 am, Kleuskes & Moos <kleu...@somewhere.else.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:42:06 -0800, Harry K wrote:
> > On Dec 7, 7:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >> The most likely answer, according to my directed panspermy hypotheses:
> >> abiogenesis, perhaps over a time span of 6 billion years, on another
> >> planet.  As I've said often before (except that the 6 billion figure is
> >> relatively new).
>
> >> Next question.
>
> >> Peter Nyikos- Hide quoted text -
>
> >> - Show quoted text -
>
> > So why not abiogenesis here on earth?  Much simpler than panspermia.
> > Your "hypothesis" isn't, it is a WAG.
>
> Wife and Girlfriend? World Air Games? Winnipeg Art Gallery?
>

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------­---

>  ________________________________________
> / These PRESERVES should be FORCE-FED to \
> \ PENTAGON OFFICIALS!!                   /
>  ----------------------------------------
>   \
>    \
>        ___
>      {~._.~}
>       ( Y )
>      ()~*~()
>      (_)-(_)

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------­----

??? Oh come on. It is the creationists first step leading to a
theory. Of course they never get past the first step.

WAG - Wild Assed Guess.

Alsoseen in other branches of science and engineering.

Harry K

[deadrat]

Kleuskes & Moos <kle...@somewhere.else.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:42:06 -0800, Harry K wrote:
>> On Dec 7, 7:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>> The most likely answer, according to my directed panspermy hypotheses:
>>> abiogenesis, perhaps over a time span of 6 billion years, on another
>>> planet.  As I've said often before (except that the 6 billion figure is
>>> relatively new).
>>>
>>> Next question.
>>>
>>> Peter Nyikos- Hide quoted text -
>>>
>>> - Show quoted text -
>>
>> So why not abiogenesis here on earth? Much simpler than panspermia.
>> Your "hypothesis" isn't, it is a WAG.
>
> Wife and Girlfriend? World Air Games? Winnipeg Art Gallery?

Wild Assed Guess, a pejorative term for someone else's hypothesis, one far
inferior to your own, the latter called a SWAG, or Scientific Wild Assed
Guess.

[Kleuskes & Moos]

Thanks.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
____________________________
< My life is a patio of fun! >

[Kalkidas]

Is that supposed to be an argument?

[Burkhard]

On Dec 8, 3:33 am, deadrat <a...@b.com> wrote:

I'm actually not sure that that's technically true (but the US is of
course not my jurisdiction, so handle with care).I think the orthodoxy
is that district court precedent can be highly persuasive for other
district court judges of the same district, but are not technically
binding. (they are of course persuasive for other district courts, and
often even for appeal courts)generally for lower courts, there is no
doctrine of horizontal precedent ("self-binding") , and for the higher
courts it is typically controversial. the only clear cases are
vertical precedents - from higher to lower court

There are however a number of more recent decisions which indicate
that there "might" be horizontal binding in district courts - Kerr v.
Hurd (S.D. Ohio Mar. 15, 2010) is a case in point. it argues that :“In
the absence of supervening case authority from the Supreme Court or
the court of Appeals, this Court is bound, under the doctrine of Stare
decisis, to follow decisions of its own judgments.”

So that would be the legal authority for your claim but as I said,
that is very recent as far as i can see, contradicts the textbook
account and "received wisdom", has not been tested by SCOTUS and is
also poorly argued. It relies on United States v. Hirschhorn, 21 F.2d
758 (S.D.N.Y. 1927), There, the courts had said that: “the general
rule that a matter which is decided by any District Judge in this
district should be, as a matter of comity, without re-examination by
another judge, so decided", - and then promptly does the exact
opposite! So it seems to me that action speak here louder than words,
and "comity" simply means "persuasive", not "binding"

In reality, the outcome is pretty much the same, and as you said - any
new law suit on the same issue would be summarily dealt with, but as
an issue of comity or practice, not because the new court is
technically bound by judge Jones.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 7, 2:39 pm, Cubist <xub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 7, 10:26 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > "Randy C" <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:0d5dc0e8-6381-42f2...@l19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com:

>
> > > > Either that, or some new form of creationism will be devised.
>
> > > > Because popular distaste for philosophical naturalism will continue.
>

> > > I don't know that people "dislike" naturalism so much as they "like"
> > > thinking that there really are ghosts and fairies and aliens who
> > > abduct people at night.
>
> > > As well as gods, of course.
>
> > > My own guess is that a lot of people feel that their own lives are
> > > boring and the possibility that these other things may really exist
> > > adds some spice to their lives.
>
> > Instead of guessing so that you can erect a strawman to be smoothly
> > disposed of, you could try asking those who reject philosophical
> > naturalism why they do so.
>
>    Been there, done that. In my experience, asking PN-rejectors... and
> by "PN" I do *not* mean that Nyikos fellow... why they reject PN,
> either yields no coherent/intelligible answer at all, and/or yields
> fallacy-ridden verbiage ('argument from incredulity' being prominent
> among the fallacies which are thus put on display),

I'd say the majority of objections to my own theory of directed
panspermia has been really blatant arguments from incredulity, using
loaded terms like "space aliens" to conjure up images of pulp science
fiction, which of course is seriously deficient in credibility.

I have hardly seen any people rejecting PN giving such crass
"arguments from incredulity". People here accuse me of them
regularly, in response to arguments that aren't in the same category
at all. So I have to wonder what kinds of arguments you classify
under that category.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

In that case, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

IC is a concept, a perfectly coherent scientific concept, and I have
yet to see anyone show that any of the main systems Behe claims to be
IC in _DBB_ are not IC. And he gives quite a few arguments for them
being IC.

It is only when someone tries to infer ID from IC that the fallacies
sometimes do come thick and fast.

But thanks for illustrating so nicely the idiotic uses of "argument
from personal incredulity" that I was referring to in a post of a few
minutes ago.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

By sheer blind luck, a once-in-many universes fluke of just the right
ingredients coming together, is my favorite hypothesis.

By the way, what does WAG stand for?

> The question that
> creationists _really_ hate to have brought up.

I love to have it brought up. It gives me a chance to expound on how
miserably people have failed to show that life could be more than a
one in many universes chance occurrence, in all the books and articles
I have read, and all the years of discussion and argument on the
subject in talk.origins.

Were "el cid" still alive, he might have been able to come through.
Alas, he died just a few months after I returned to t.o. after a
nearly decade-long absence.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Ockham's razor doesn't work that way. You have to take all available
information into account. Here is one possibilty that I mentioned on
another thread, in response to Rolf:

[begin excerpt]
Earth formed ca. 4.5
billion (milliard in European lingo) years ago, the universe ca. 9
billion years before that. The planet of the panspermists could have
been as early as 8 billion years before the earth AFAIK, giving them
plenty of time to evolve from the first prokaryote-level organism,
which may have been as much as 6 billion years in the making.
============ end of excerpt
from http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/e4d5a0b139a3e3ee?dmode=source

In contrast, the first earth prokaryotes are believed to have appeared
less than one billion years after the earth cooled enough to start the
process of abiogenesis.

See also another reply to you a little while ago. If abiogenesis is a
once-in-a-universe occurrence, and panspermists are very active in
enough universes where they arise, then the odds may well favor a
*given* intelligent species being the result of panspermia rather than
homegrown abiogenesis.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 8, 8:11 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message

>
> news:1fa7561c-68c6-4345...@u32g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:
>
>
>
> > On Dec 7, 9:06 am, raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> wrote:
> > > On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 13:33:48 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> > > <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > >"What would Kilnghoffer have Myers do? Write another post explaining
> > > >why irreducible complexity is nonsense? "
>
> > > >The concept of irreducible complexity coherent, and makes eminent
> > > >sense, and no one in talk.origins has been able to show otherwise in
> > > >all these years.
>
> > > IC is just the logical fallacy of Argument from Personal Incredulity
> > > dressed up in a lab coat.
>
> > You misspelled ID.  Even that only applies to the brand of ID that the
> > DI promulgates.  As to my own version of ID, the following exchange
> > today tells about that:
>
> >  "I believe ID should be taught as a
> >   theory alongside the evolutionary theory
> >   and that the students be allowed
> >   to choose for themselves."
> >     -- from post number 87 in:

> >http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...

>
> > [Does the url look familiar?  It should.  It is the url that the first
> > post to this thread quoted from.]
>
> > I replied to that in post number 90 as follows:
>
> > Why should they have to choose? I believe in the evolutionary theory,
> > from the time of the first metazoan, and have no problem with it
> > extending all the way back to the first prokaryote. It is with what
> > came before this that my own brand of ID is concerned.
>
> > And in this, I am in a very small minority, abandoned by the
> > Christians who want to believe some form of the Genesis account, and
> > on the other hand by almost all other deists and theists, and also by
> > almost all agnostics and atheists.
>
> > A lot of the people in the latter four categories simply accept the
> > conventional wisdom that abiogenesis took place right here on earth
> > without even thinking about it. A lot of others I have encountered
> > think about it only long enough to post some variation on:
>
> > Mother Earth did it, this I know,
> > For Ockham's Razor tells me so.
>
> That's not my argument against it.

Yes, you are one of a minority who seriously makes good arguments for

it.

> My argument against it is that it just postpones the abiogenesis issue a
> few billion years.
>
> So aliens seeded life here on Earth.  So who seeded life on *their*
> planet originally?

Nobody, according to my hypothesis. See my replies to Harry K and
others an hour or so ago. And have a look at the urls I posted from
another thread. At least one addresses the "heavier elements" issue
that I snipped below due to lack of time.

Very briefly: our universe has evolved. There were many more
supernovas in the first billion years, many more generations of
supergiants than there are now.

Peter Nyikos

[Frank J]

On Dec 6, 7:54 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:

> On 12/6/2011 5:20 PM, Frank J wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 6, 6:39 pm, Kalkidas<e...@joes.pub>  wrote:
> >> On 12/6/2011 11:17 AM, Randy C wrote:
>
> >>> The web page athttp://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darw...
> >>> has an article matching the subject of this post.  It says that there
> >>> is nothing new in ID theory and there hasn't been anything new in ID
> >>> theory for a number of years.
>
> >>> Here are some quotes from that site:
>
> >>> [quote]

> >>> Even leaving aside the blow of Kitzmiller v. Dover, ID has simply
> >>> collapsed under the weight of its own vacuity. In the nineties and
> >>> early 2000s, ID seemed to be producing one novel argument after
> >>> another. They were variations on familiar themes, of course, but books
> >>> like Darwin on Trial, Darwin's Black Box, No Free Lunch and even Icons
> >>> of Evolution, written by people with serious credentials and written
> >>> with far more skill than the YEC's could muster, seemed to advance the
> >>> discussion in original ways. These books attracted enormous interest
> >>> among scientists, if only in the sense that they were promoting bad
> >>> ideas that needed be countered. Many books were written to counter
> >>> ID's pretensions, and major science periodicals took notice of them.

>
> >>> Not so today. Consider the two biggest ID books of recent years.
> >>> Michael Behe's follow-up book, The Edge of Evolution, dropped like a
> >>> stone. It got a few perfunctory reviews written by scientists who
> >>> perked up just long enough to note its many errors, and then everyone
> >>> ignored it. Frankly, even the ID folks don't seem to talk about it
> >>> very much. Stephen Meyer's book Signature in the Cell was likewise met
> >>> with crickets. It briefly seemed like a big deal, a big book released
> >>> by a mainstream publisher, but scientists gave it a scan, saw nothing
> >>> remotely new, and yawned.
> >>> [/quote]
>
> >>> It ends with this paragraph:
>
> >>> [quote]
> >>> In the mid-nineties it was possible to wonder seriously if ID was a
> >>> serious intellectual movement, or just another fad that would die out

> >>> on its own. That verdict is now in. ID is dead. As a doornail. Even as

> >>> YEC shows renewed life with the success of the Creation Museum and the
> >>> fracas over their planned Noah's Ark theme park, the ID corpse isn't
> >>> even twitching anymore.
> >>> [/quote]
>
> >> The problem with the "ignore it and it'll go away" strategy is that,
> >> because you're ignoring it you can't tell if it's really going away.
>

> >> And the problem with the "repeat that it's gone long enough and it'll
> >> really be gone" strategy is the same problem as trying *not* to think of

> >> an elephant.- Hide quoted text -

>
> >> - Show quoted text -
>

> > Many of my fellow "Darwinists" seem to think that the ID scam is dead
> > (or dying fast) but that old-fashoned creationism is alive and well
> > ("Creation Museum" etc.). My take is that the ID scam changed much of
> > the language, and doesn't need to do much more. People who never heard
> > of ID and can't name one of it's leaders nevertheless parrot it's
> > misleading sound bites. Decades ago one would hear a lot about how the
> > Bible is true, whereas now it's all about how "Darwinism" is "weak."
> > And becoming more about how accepting "Darwinism" leads to all evil
> > behavior. Many people, maybe half who are *not* Genesis literalists,
> > continue to be fooled. The ID scammers *could* rest on their laurels,
> > but they don't. They continue to publish increasingly paranoid
> > propaganda (e.g. "Expelled"), target politicians etc. And leave poor
> > fools like John Freshwater to fend for themselves.
>
> The problem with the "call it a scam enough times and everyone'll
> believe it's a scam" strategy

Which is not my strategy by any stretch


> is that the kinds of people who'll believe
> something just because they heard it repeatedly are not really the kind
> of people you want on your side.

Of course not.

> Unless you're a totalitarian dictator
> looking for serfs to grind under your iron fist, or a paranoid
> mediocrity of an academic looking for an educational system to hijack,
> that is.- Hide quoted text -

[pnyikos]

On Dec 8, 8:14 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message

Why do you assume it does?

> Why did Earth need outside intervention when other planets didn't?
>
> -- Steven L.

I think all planets in our universe with intelligent life, except
that of the pansperemists, required their intervention. As a
corollary, ours is the only galaxy in the universe with intelligent
life, by my hypothesis.

I am very short on time the rest of this month for posting. Please do
read my replies to others on this thread.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT: I finished giving my first final exam an hour
ago, and it's a big class and a long exam, and by the time I am done
grading it and the other exam I give on Saturday, and turn in the
grades, it will be almost time for me to go on a holidays posting
break.

My family takes priority over posting during the holiday season, and I
have a few loose ends to tie up in other forums before that begins, so
there will be very few (and mostly very short) posts from me to
talk.origins for the rest of the year.

On Dec 8, 1:00 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Dec 7, 10:30 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
> >>> On Dec 6, 10:59 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>>> pnyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Dec 6, 7:27 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>>>>> pnyikos wrote:

> >>> Thanks for the urls.  I'll get back to you after I've had a chance to
> >>> study them carefully.
> >>> I trust you are willing to stand behind them.  Be ready to do so.

You get a long reprieve, partly because of what I am announcing above
but mostly because of what I write below.

> >>>>http://ncse.com/rncse/27/3-4/has-natural-selection-been-refuted-argum...
> >>>>http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/08/criticisms-of-d.html

Well, I can already see I have my work cut out for me. Felsenstein is
writing a "primer" in the first url and just a little summary in the
second, and he fails to define such key concepts as
"deterministic" (in the context of Medawar's theorem), "information"
and worst of all, "fitness".

If he is using the usual concept of RELATIVE fitness -- i.e, the
propensity of one sub-population to overwhelm the rest of the
population -- then it is not the linear concept that he makes it sound
like all through the essay.

Back to "deterministic": if one ignores it, Medawar's theorem as
Felsenstein "clearly" states it, is patently false: Given ANY set of N
dark pixels and M white pixels, there is a reversible process taking
it to ANY OTHER set of N dark pixels and M white pixels, and so the
whole concept of relative amounts of information collapses.

I doubt that Medawar was this stupid, and so I conclude that
Felsenstein is being sloppy, barring some incredibly obscure
definition of "deterministic."

What's more, his quotes from Dembski are pathetically fragmentary, and
there are no links to anything Dembski or his "allies" have written,
just a mountain of references.

This is clearly a project for the long haul, and there is no chance of
me being able to deliver anything like an informed account of the core
issues until some time in the Spring.

[huge snip due to lack of time, to talk about misconceptions about
Behe]

> >>>>> There are several of them.  The most prominent is that it is supposed
> >>>>> to be proof of ID.
> >>>> Is most of the burden there on the word "proof"?
> >>> If people merely said it is supposed to be suggestive of ID, they
> >>> would have a case against Behe, but a rather flabby one.
> >> There's a lot of room between "suggestive" and "proof". Behe comes down,
> >> in my opinion, rather closer to the latter than the former. He thinks
> >> it's very unlikely that any IC system would evolve. Right?
>
> > Wrong. The real lowdown is shortly after that page 39 definition.  It
> > depends on how many parts the system has.
>
> But that unlikelihood builds up fast enough that we can probably ignore
> the possibility in almost all real cases, right?

I don't recall any definitive claims by Behe to that effect. "Drops
precipitously" (his phrase) lacks quantification.

[another snip]

> > But AFAIK no one has made a dent in his claim that the clotting system
> > beyond the fork is IC.
>
> Perhaps, but don't confuse a claim that a system is IC with a claim that
> it would be unlikely to evolve. Behe seems to do that quite often.

I have yet to see a quote from anyone that the context bears out.
Care to be the very first person to come through?

Peter Nyikos

[Ray Martinez]

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Peter!

Hope you come back.

Ray (anti-evolutionist)

[John Harshman]

pnyikos wrote:
> GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT: I finished giving my first final exam an hour
> ago, and it's a big class and a long exam, and by the time I am done
> grading it and the other exam I give on Saturday, and turn in the
> grades, it will be almost time for me to go on a holidays posting
> break.
>
> My family takes priority over posting during the holiday season, and I
> have a few loose ends to tie up in other forums before that begins, so
> there will be very few (and mostly very short) posts from me to
> talk.origins for the rest of the year.
>
> On Dec 8, 1:00 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Dec 7, 10:30 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> pnyikos wrote:
>>>>> On Dec 6, 10:59 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>>>> pnyikos wrote:
>>>>>>> On Dec 6, 7:27 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>> pnyikos wrote:
>
>>>>> Thanks for the urls. I'll get back to you after I've had a chance to
>>>>> study them carefully.
>>>>> I trust you are willing to stand behind them. Be ready to do so.
>
> You get a long reprieve, partly because of what I am announcing above
> but mostly because of what I write below.

Reprieve? Is there to be an execution, then?

>>>>>> http://ncse.com/rncse/27/3-4/has-natural-selection-been-refuted-argum...
>>>>>> http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/08/criticisms-of-d.html
>
> Well, I can already see I have my work cut out for me. Felsenstein is
> writing a "primer" in the first url and just a little summary in the
> second, and he fails to define such key concepts as
> "deterministic" (in the context of Medawar's theorem), "information"
> and worst of all, "fitness".
>
> If he is using the usual concept of RELATIVE fitness -- i.e, the
> propensity of one sub-population to overwhelm the rest of the
> population -- then it is not the linear concept that he makes it sound
> like all through the essay.

I am not sure what you mean by this objection. Perhaps you can expand on
just how it invalidates Felsenstein's argument.

> Back to "deterministic": if one ignores it, Medawar's theorem as
> Felsenstein "clearly" states it, is patently false: Given ANY set of N
> dark pixels and M white pixels, there is a reversible process taking
> it to ANY OTHER set of N dark pixels and M white pixels, and so the
> whole concept of relative amounts of information collapses.

Why is this false? Felsenstein in fact states that all equally sized
sets of dark and white pixels have identical information content.

> I doubt that Medawar was this stupid, and so I conclude that
> Felsenstein is being sloppy, barring some incredibly obscure
> definition of "deterministic."

So you disagree with Felsenstein's characterization of Medawar, based on
not having read Medawar.

> What's more, his quotes from Dembski are pathetically fragmentary, and
> there are no links to anything Dembski or his "allies" have written,
> just a mountain of references.

It's a copy of a print article, and so doesn't contain links.

> This is clearly a project for the long haul, and there is no chance of
> me being able to deliver anything like an informed account of the core
> issues until some time in the Spring.
>
> [huge snip due to lack of time, to talk about misconceptions about
> Behe]
>
>
>>>>>>> There are several of them. The most prominent is that it is supposed
>>>>>>> to be proof of ID.
>>>>>> Is most of the burden there on the word "proof"?
>>>>> If people merely said it is supposed to be suggestive of ID, they
>>>>> would have a case against Behe, but a rather flabby one.
>>>> There's a lot of room between "suggestive" and "proof". Behe comes down,
>>>> in my opinion, rather closer to the latter than the former. He thinks
>>>> it's very unlikely that any IC system would evolve. Right?
>>> Wrong. The real lowdown is shortly after that page 39 definition. It
>>> depends on how many parts the system has.
>> But that unlikelihood builds up fast enough that we can probably ignore
>> the possibility in almost all real cases, right?
>
> I don't recall any definitive claims by Behe to that effect. "Drops
> precipitously" (his phrase) lacks quantification.

So your defense is that Behe is not actually making any claim that's
capable of being examined?

>>> But AFAIK no one has made a dent in his claim that the clotting system
>>> beyond the fork is IC.
>> Perhaps, but don't confuse a claim that a system is IC with a claim that
>> it would be unlikely to evolve. Behe seems to do that quite often.
>
> I have yet to see a quote from anyone that the context bears out.
> Care to be the very first person to come through?

Perhaps. That would take me some time too.

[Tim Anderson]

It is a comment on a post containing unsupported assertions.

[pnyikos]

Ignoring parts of your gigantic posts is a necessity when one is as
busy as I am. But when you press the issue, I do get around to the
things that are worth getting around to.

> When you addressed them what did you do?

I did exactly what I am saying. Earlier, I snipped the quotes due to
lack of time -- and lack of relevance to the "bait" part of your "bait
and switch" monomania. It was all part of overkill on the "switch"
angle.

You waited almost a WHOLE YEAR before posting evidence of the "bait"
part that ANYONE HERE EXCEPT YOU took to be strong evidence of the
"bait" part. Yet you are such a madman, you actually called me a liar
and insane for NOT being THE VERY FIRST PERSON TO AGREE WITH YOU that
the quotes did what you say they do.

All you could ever muster was lame bleatings about how I should "ask"
Pagano, etc. whether they disagree with the conclusions you draw from
those quotes.

IIRC you never asked me to present them with the quotes and ask
whether they agreed with YOUR interpretation of the quotes.

And when I presented them to the general readership in the Scottish
verdict thread, NOBODY agreed with your interpretation.

Was embarrassment over that what caused you to keep lying, over and
over, that the thread was "bogus"?

> Prevaricating about not disagreeing with Johnson is just lying.

Watch just how insane your logic is:

>  Put
> up a post from Jan to March when I was first putting up the Johnson
> quotes where you agreed with them.

Where's the prevarication in that? You never heard of the saying
"Silence gives consent," eh?

> You did anything that you could to deny what Johnson was saying.  You
> even made the stupid claim that Johnson was old so that what he said
> didn't matter.

I don't recall anything fitting either description. I defy you to
post BOTH the exact quotes AND the urls for the where they originally
occurred. In the SAME post, next to each other.

> > You will, however, see numerous examples of me agreeing with this
> > assessment in quite a few threads.
>
> You did not start agreeing with the Johnson quote until

...I started addressing the contents. Go ahead, try to refute me in
the same manner I ask above.

> > > What did the Discovery
> > > Institute claim in their propaganda pamphlet about the Dover fiasco?
>
> > 1. That they had tried without success to dissuade the Dover school
> > board to abandon its policy.
>
> They admit to running the bait and switch on the Dover board,

Not in the propaganda pamphlet, you shameless liar.

TO BE CONTINUED

Peter Nyikos

[deadrat]

Thanks. I'll have to admit that I'd never considered the legal basis for my
claim, and in retrospect, it should have been clear to me that there probably
wasn't any. Federal district judges are trying cases, not laws; and no two
cases would likely have identical issues of fact. Of course, district judges
have to decide how to apply the laws, and disagreements over these decisions
are what keeps the Circuit Courts of Appeal in business. But judicial comity
(really, I'd say judicial jealousy) prevents these things from coming up.
Both US v Hirschhorn and Kerr v Hurd are about one court examining another
court's determination of the law. As rare as these types of cases are, I'd
bet even rarer unto nonexistence are cases in which one court in a district
re-adjudicates the facts of a case.

And that's what made Dover such a disaster for IDiots. Jones decided that as
a matter of fact, IDiocy is equivalent to creationism, which is itself
religion. No new law required. There isn't a federal judge in the Middle
District of PA who would hold a trial to re-determine the status of IDiocy.
I'd say you'd have a hard time finding a federal judge in any district would
rule otherwise.

Unless, of course, IDiots made substantial scientific advances in their
theories, which they can't do, because, well because it's IDiocy.

[Harry K]

> fromhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/e4d5a0b139a3e3ee?dmod...

>
> In contrast, the first earth prokaryotes are believed to have appeared
> less than one billion years after the earth cooled enough to start the
> process of abiogenesis.
>
> See also another reply to you a little while ago.  If abiogenesis is a
> once-in-a-universe occurrence, and panspermists are very active in
> enough universes where they arise, then the odds may well favor a
> *given* intelligent species being the result of panspermia rather than
> homegrown abiogenesis.
>
> Peter Nyikos
>
>
>
> > Your "hypothesis" isn't, it is a WAG.
>

> > Harry K- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

In other words, you accept abiogenesis from nature. Why can't you
just _say_ it? Then complain that it didn't happen _here_ because
there wasn't enough time.

Wow!

Harry K

[Harry K]

On Dec 8, 3:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Dec 7, 11:40 pm, Harry K <turnkey4...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>

<snip>

Wild Assed Guess and if you didn't know that...

> > The question that
> > creationists _really_ hate to have brought up.
>
> I love to have it brought up.  It gives me a chance to expound on how
> miserably people have failed to show that life could be more than a
> one in many universes chance occurrence, in all the books and articles
> I have read, and all the years of discussion and argument on the
> subject in talk.origins.
>

IOW "Argument from incredulity" If it could happen once given the
right conditions why couldn't it happen again given the same
conditions? Or do you think that out of the billions and billions of
planets out there only one had just the right conditions?

[AGWFacts]

On Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:53:51 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:

> On 12/7/2011 12:55 AM, Tim Anderson wrote:
> > On Dec 7, 11:54 am, Kalkidas<e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> >
> > <snip>

> >>
> >> The problem with the "call it a scam enough times and everyone'll

> >> believe it's a scam" strategy is that the kinds of people who'll believe

> >> something just because they heard it repeatedly are not really the kind

> >> of people you want on your side. Unless you're a totalitarian dictator

> >> looking for serfs to grind under your iron fist, or a paranoid
> >> mediocrity of an academic looking for an educational system to hijack,
> >> that is.
> >

> > You seem to be arguing that we on the evolutionary science side of the
> > house should be complicit in its resurgence among a new generation of
> > credulous people by keeping quiet.

> No, I'm arguing that fundamentalist Darwinists

Who?

> and materialists can't ridicule or pretend ID away.

ID doesn't exist, as you have already learned. But golly, why do
you ignore the fact that your cult leaders *MURDERD* people,
enslaved others, raped children, and robbed people? They
went to prison, you recall, right?


--
"I'd like the globe to warm another degree or two or three... and CO2 levels
to increase perhaps another 100ppm - 300ppm." -- cato...@sympatico.ca

[jillery]

On Thu, 8 Dec 2011 15:12:51 +0000 (UTC), Kleuskes & Moos
<kle...@somewhere.else.net> wrote:

>On Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:42:06 -0800, Harry K wrote:
>> On Dec 7, 7:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>>> The most likely answer, according to my directed panspermy hypotheses:
>>> abiogenesis, perhaps over a time span of 6 billion years, on another
>>> planet.  As I've said often before (except that the 6 billion figure is
>>> relatively new).
>>>
>>> Next question.
>>>
>>> Peter Nyikos- Hide quoted text -
>>>
>>> - Show quoted text -
>>
>> So why not abiogenesis here on earth? Much simpler than panspermia.
>> Your "hypothesis" isn't, it is a WAG.
>
>Wife and Girlfriend? World Air Games? Winnipeg Art Gallery?

All of these would provide the credibility directed panspermia
deserves.

[Steven L.]

"talk.o...@googlegroups.com" <talk.o...@googlegroups.com> wrote in
message
news:21284131.774.1323360157572.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yqcd41:

Not if they used their warp drive or their wormhole hyperspatial
transport system.

As long as Peter is writing science fiction, let's help him finish his
short story.



-- Steven L.

[Mark Isaak]

On 12/8/11 2:39 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> IC is a concept, a perfectly coherent scientific concept,

Aside from it not being defined (since the concepts Behe defines it in
terms of are hopelessly fuzzy).

> and I have
> yet to see anyone show that any of the main systems Behe claims to be
> IC in _DBB_ are not IC. And he gives quite a few arguments for them
> being IC.
>
> It is only when someone tries to infer ID from IC that the fallacies
> sometimes do come thick and fast.

Of course, that is 100% of the time, since IC is not useful for anything
and was never intended for anything else.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume

[Friar Broccoli]

On 2011-12-08 19:14, John Harshman wrote:

> pnyikos wrote:


>>> Perhaps, but don't confuse a claim that a system is IC with a claim that
>>> it would be unlikely to evolve. Behe seems to do that quite often.
>>
>> I have yet to see a quote from anyone that the context bears out.
>> Care to be the very first person to come through?
>
> Perhaps. That would take me some time too.

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
By Michael J. Behe page 110 (at bottom)

"Irreducibly complex systems like mousetraps, Rube Goldberg machines,
and the intracellular transport system cannot evolve in a Darwinian
fashion."

http://books.google.ca/books?id=7L8mkq4jG6EC&pg=PA110#v=onepage&q&f=false

--
Friar Broccoli (Robert Keith Elias), Quebec Canada
I consider ALL arguments in support of my views

[pnyikos]

On Dec 8, 1:58 am, Tim Anderson <timothya1...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Dec 8, 7:53 am, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:> On 12/7/2011 12:55 AM, Tim Anderson wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > I would apply the logic to anti-spiritual claims of all ages, including
> > all "isms" whose basis is in the circular reasonings of fundamentalist
> > Darwinism and materialism.
>
> If you had ended that sentence at the word "reasonings" and deleted
> the word "anti-spiritual", you would have some credibility.

Unless he is of the opinion that ALL reasonings of fundamentalist
Darwinism and materialism are circular, you hardly have any room for
complaint about what he wrote. I see one-sided attacks on spiritual
claims in talk.origins all the time, with no effort to provide balance
by acknowledging that some anti-spiritual claims are also fallacious.

I've tried to bring some balance to this newsgroups on these matters.
One of my contributions is to identify "Darwin of the Gaps" and "Randy
C. of the Gaps" arguments. The latter goes like this: "Who cares how
or why it evolved? It evolved. End of story." [or words to that
effect]

Darwin should not be given the main responsibility for "Darwin of the
Gaps," it is his devotees aping him who are really responsible for
Darwin of the Gaps arguments, which employ the following format, in
effect:

"Well, it's natural selection, y'know. The __________ that did/could/
are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."

This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena.

Peter Nyikos

[Frank J]

On Dec 9, 2:00 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net>
wrote:

> On 12/8/11 2:39 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
> > IC is a concept, a perfectly coherent scientific concept,
>
> Aside from it not being defined (since the concepts Behe defines it in
> terms of are hopelessly fuzzy).

I suspect that it was a fortunate accident, and not deliberately
planned by Behe, but I recall early critics divided between "it's not
IC" and "it's IC but it nevertheless evolved." Those critics all had
the same valid criticism, and differed only on the definition of a
word that was already poorly-defined, but a casual read would likely
have missed that, and erroneously concluded "Darwinist" confusion. And
ID scammers certainly spun it as that to those who didn't even give
the criticisms a casual read.

[pnyikos]

Relative fitness cannot be quantified on a linear scale, as though one
organism scores 100 on the fitness scale, another 250, another 1000,
etc. Yet Felsenstein acts as though "fitness," which he doesn't
define anywhere, works that way.

> > Back to "deterministic": if one ignores it, Medawar's theorem as
> > Felsenstein "clearly" states it, is patently false: Given ANY set of N
> > dark pixels and M white pixels, there is a reversible process taking
> > it to ANY OTHER set of N dark pixels and M white pixels, and so the
> > whole concept of relative amounts of information collapses.
>
> Why is this false? Felsenstein in fact states that all equally sized
> sets of dark and white pixels have identical information content.

I didn't find any such sweeping statement ("all") in either article.
Could you point me to it?

> > I doubt that Medawar was this stupid, and so I conclude that
> > Felsenstein is being sloppy, barring some incredibly obscure
> > definition of "deterministic."
>
> So you disagree with Felsenstein's characterization of Medawar,

to be precise: of his theory.

> based on
> not having read Medawar.

I'll take that as an admission that you haven't read Medawar either.
And I thought you were ready to stand behind Felsenstein's article.

> > What's more, his quotes from Dembski are pathetically fragmentary, and
> > there are no links to anything Dembski or his "allies" have written,
> > just a mountain of  references.
>
> It's a copy of a print article, and so doesn't contain links.

He could have set the website up differently, as he did the second.

> > This is clearly a project for the long haul, and there is no chance of
> > me being able to deliver anything like an informed account of the core
> > issues until some time in the Spring.
>
> > [huge snip due to lack of time, to talk about misconceptions about
> > Behe]
>
> >>>>>>> There are several of them.  The most prominent is that it is supposed
> >>>>>>> to be proof of ID.
> >>>>>> Is most of the burden there on the word "proof"?
> >>>>> If people merely said it is supposed to be suggestive of ID, they
> >>>>> would have a case against Behe, but a rather flabby one.
> >>>> There's a lot of room between "suggestive" and "proof". Behe comes down,
> >>>> in my opinion, rather closer to the latter than the former. He thinks
> >>>> it's very unlikely that any IC system would evolve. Right?
> >>> Wrong. The real lowdown is shortly after that page 39 definition.  It
> >>> depends on how many parts the system has.
> >> But that unlikelihood builds up fast enough that we can probably ignore
> >> the possibility in almost all real cases, right?
>
> > I don't recall any definitive claims by Behe to that effect.  "Drops
> > precipitously" (his phrase) lacks quantification.
>
> So your defense is that Behe is not actually making any claim that's
> capable of being examined?

Stop parading your cluelessness. Behe makes quite a few claims about
this or that system being IC, and I have never seen a refutation of
any of them that stood up under scrutiny. In fact, I've only seen two
real attempts.

1. Miller's mousetrap "refutation" depended on modifying some of the
parts in order to be able to dispense with the others, and there is no
gradual process of evolution that would convert Miller's mousetraps
into Behe's.

2. Doolittle was dead wrong when he claimed that those genetically
altered mice with two clotting genes knocked out were normal for all
practical purposes; he simply misread an article about them. You can
read about that in the following exchange between me and "jillery",
who abandoned the thread after the second post by me (whose url is
third on the list):

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/cc67be0a4fdb28ad

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ae708ea7f029b240

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9e9e49fe7100f7b2

Quite simply Doolittle fell flat on his face trying to refute the IC
nature of the cascade.

That is quite a distinct issue from whether the cascade could have
evolved through natural selection; Miller and Robison were able to
show that the clotting mechanism and the immune system could have
evolved directly in slow steps, BUT ONLY because both have
autocatalytic molecules at crucial junctures.

> >>> But AFAIK no one has made a dent in his claim that the clotting system
> >>> beyond the fork is IC.
> >> Perhaps, but don't confuse a claim that a system is IC with a claim that
> >> it would be unlikely to evolve. Behe seems to do that quite often.
>
> > I have yet to see a quote from anyone that the context bears out.
> > Care to be the very first person to come through?
>
> Perhaps. That would take me some time too.

No hurry.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 9, 4:23 pm, Friar Broccoli <elia...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2011-12-08 19:14, John Harshman wrote:
>
> > pnyikos wrote:
> >>> Perhaps, but don't confuse a claim that a system is IC with a claim that
> >>> it would be unlikely to evolve. Behe seems to do that quite often.
>
> >> I have yet to see a quote from anyone that the context bears out.
> >> Care to be the very first person to come through?
>
> > Perhaps. That would take me some time too.
>
> Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
>   By Michael J. Behe  page 110 (at bottom)
>
> "Irreducibly complex systems like mousetraps, Rube Goldberg machines,
> and the intracellular transport system cannot evolve in a Darwinian
> fashion."
>

> http://books.google.ca/books?id=7L8mkq4jG6EC&pg=PA110#v=onepage&q&f=f...

Note the qualifier, "in a Darwinian fashion". If you don't understand
why that makes a difference, you haven't read the book carefully.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 8, 11:10 am, Harry K <turnkey4...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Dec 8, 7:12 am, Kleuskes & Moos <kleu...@somewhere.else.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:42:06 -0800, Harry K wrote:
> > > On Dec 7, 7:07 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > <snip>
>
> > >> The most likely answer, according to my directed panspermy hypotheses:
> > >> abiogenesis, perhaps over a time span of 6 billion years, on another
> > >> planet.  As I've said often before (except that the 6 billion figure is
> > >> relatively new).
>
> > >> Next question.
>
> > >> Peter Nyikos- Hide quoted text -
>
> > >> - Show quoted text -
>
> > > So why not abiogenesis here on earth?  Much simpler than panspermia.
> > > Your "hypothesis" isn't, it is a WAG.
>
> > Wife and Girlfriend? World Air Games? Winnipeg Art Gallery?
>

> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------­---
> >  ________________________________________
> > / These PRESERVES should be FORCE-FED to \
> > \ PENTAGON OFFICIALS!!                   /
> >  ----------------------------------------
> >   \
> >    \
> >        ___
> >      {~._.~}
> >       ( Y )
> >      ()~*~()
> >      (_)-(_)
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------­----
>
> ??? Oh come on.  It is the creationists first step leading to a
> theory.  Of course they never get past the first step.
>
> WAG - Wild Assed Guess.
>
> Also seen in other branches of science and engineering.
>
> Harry K

So far, on this thread, you have been behaving like what I call an EGG
(Egregiously Grinning Gargoyle).

"Grinning Gargoyles" is my private slang expression for people who
take pot shots at others, making only flimsy or no attempts to justify
them, and who seem to be very satisified with themselves for having
done it.

"Egregiously" means doing it in rapid fire fashion, and largely
ignoring patient explanations and rebuttals by the target of the pot
shots.

Btw there are a few real bad EGGs in this newsgroup, but I haven't
seen enough from you yet to see whether you are one of them.

Peter Nyikos

[Friar Broccoli]

Haven't read it at all. Would you be kind enough to explain the
significance of this qualifier. The only restriction that I remember
from Darwin himself was evolution in tiny incremental steps.

Is that what you are talking about?

If so, why is that significant in this context?

[pnyikos]

On Dec 8, 6:41 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Earlier, I snipped the quotes due to
> lack of time -- and lack of relevance to the "bait" part of your "bait
> and switch" monomania.  It was all part of overkill on the "switch"
> angle.
>
> You waited almost a WHOLE YEAR before posting evidence of the "bait"
> part that ANYONE HERE EXCEPT YOU took to be strong evidence of the
> "bait" part.

Haste makes waste. What I should have said after the first "part"
was:

"up until that time, you could only post a miserable pair of quotes
that NO ONE HERE EXCEPT YOU took to be strong evidence of the `bait'
part."

It was that miserable pair that I referred to in the following
paragraphs:

>Yet you are such a madman, you actually called me a liar
> and insane for NOT being THE VERY FIRST PERSON TO AGREE WITH YOU that
> the quotes did what you say they do.
>
> All you could ever muster was lame bleatings about how I should "ask"
> Pagano, etc. whether they disagree with the conclusions you draw from
> those quotes.
>
> IIRC you never asked me to present them with the quotes and ask
> whether they agreed with YOUR interpretation of the quotes.
>
> And when I presented them to the general readership in the Scottish
> verdict thread, NOBODY agreed with your interpretation.
>
> Was embarrassment over that what caused you to keep lying, over and
> over, that the thread was "bogus"?

Actually it was only the first one that I presented to the general
readership; the second one was posted only a few months before Ron O
finally dug up a quote that made a good case for his claim about the
"bait" having been a reality at some point (about a decade ago IIRC).

But now he insists that the DI is still indulging in bait and switch,
and his only evidence for that is the second of his miserable quotes,
which is no more evidence than the first one was.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Because his claim does not rule out big jumps not envisioned by
Darwin, like the effect of changing a hox gene.

And now I've really spent more time in this newsgroup today than I
should have, and need to get back to exams.

Peter Nyikos

[Walter Bushell]

In article
<f7343941-34e4-4e71...@r6g2000yqr.googlegroups.com>,

pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> By the way, what does WAG stand for?

Wild Assumed Guess

--
It is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant
and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting. -- H. L. Mencken

[Ron O]

This just means that when I give the evidence Nyikos just runs. Watch
how this post unfolds. Nyikos can cram a lot of lies into a short
post, but he demands evidence of everything that I write. He doesn't
seem to think that this applies to him, but it is mainly because
Nyikos knows that he is lying and can't back up what he claims. I do
not have that problem.

>
> > When you addressed them what did you do?
>
> I did exactly what I am saying.  Earlier, I snipped the quotes due to
> lack of time -- and lack of relevance to the "bait" part of your "bait
> and switch" monomania.  It was all part of overkill on the "switch"
> angle.

So, you admit that what I claimed was true. You did start off by
snipping out the quotes.

I have dealt with Nyikos for a year and his modus operandi is to first
snip out what he can't deal with or run from the post. If you persist
and keep putting the evidence forward he will start to prevaricate
about the evidence in anyway that he can. Once that is a lost cause
he will just start lying about it and keep repeating the lies in new
threads and new posts. Nyikos is admitting to the first phase of
denial about the Johnson quotes above.

>
> You waited almost a WHOLE YEAR before posting evidence of the "bait"
> part that ANYONE HERE EXCEPT YOU took to be strong evidence of the
> "bait" part.  Yet you are such a madman, you actually called me a liar
> and insane for NOT being THE VERY FIRST PERSON TO AGREE WITH YOU that
> the quotes did what you say they do.

This is the third phase for this lie. Nyikos keeps denying that I put
up the evidence, and he finally had to start lying about it in Sept.
This lie is one of the reasons why he started the Insane logic
thread. He had to run in denial of the obvious lies so he started
another bogus thread.

This is where I demonstrate to Nyikos that I gave him additional
evidence that he claims that he didn't get for a year back in April.

QUOTE:
> It never even OCCURRED to me that the quote of which you are so
> inordinately fond is the ONLY documentation you have for the claim
> that the DI is running a bait and switch.


It isn't the ONLY documentation. Why lie like this. You have gotten
other evidence multiple times about the ID perps selling the rubes
that they had the ID science to teach in the public schools before
the
bait and switch went down. That shouldn't even be needed because the
ID perps do not deny selling the rubes the ID scam. They only claim
that they never wanted it mandated to be taught. From the first time
that I put up this quote I claimed that it was only evidence that the
ID perps were still claiming to be able to teach the bogus ID scam
junk. I have even put up their current claims on their official web
site with the same claim.


Posts where Nyikos has gotten other documentation about the ID perps
selling the rubes that they had the ID science to teach in the public
schools:


From back in April:


http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/4dea96d935b7522c?hl=en


This is where I link back to this post in response to one of Nyikos'
denials. Nyikos responded to this post, but snipped out the link and
response and ran.


http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/402dde0861d6785e?hl=e...
END QUOTE:


After quoting the evidence again I give another link to where I put up
the evidence again.

QUOTE:
I also have similar material in this more recent post:


http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/83c586604dd9986c?hl=en%02a9eb8898289a07f


I recall putting something similar into another post at some time,
but
I can't recall where that post is.


So, Nyikos do not lie about this issue again.
END QUOTE:


Does Nyikos take my advice? No. He is still lying about not getting
the additional evidence for a year when he got it back in April, and
started lying about not getting it in Sept.

Nyikos has even tried to lie about how similar the April evidence is
to the paper that I put up last month, when the April evidence
contained reference to a book written by the same authors as the paper
that Nyikos claims is convincing evidence.

QUOTE:
Anyone just has to Google "Intelligent design wiki" and get this
link:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design


QUOTE:
From the mid-1990s, intelligent design proponents were supported by
the Discovery Institute, which, together with its Center for Science
and Culture, planned and funded the "intelligent design movement".
[17]
[n 1] They advocated inclusion of intelligent design in public school
curricula, leading to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School
District trial, where U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled
that
intelligent design is not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself
from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and that the
school district's promotion of it therefore violated the
Establishment
Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[18]
END QUOTE:


Meyer and intelligent design:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer


QUOTE:
In 1999, Meyer with David DeWolf and Mark DeForrest laid out a legal
strategy for introducing intelligent design into public schools in
their book Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum.[15
END QUOTE:


Doesn't look like they did not sell the IDiot rubes the teach ID
scam. Where did the IDiots get the idea? Who did the Ohio rubes
call
in when they wanted to teach the science of Intelligent design? Who
ran the bait and switch on them personally?
END QUOTE:


What is not similar about a book written by Meyer and DeWolf on
teaching ID in the public schools?

So that takes care of the first Nyikosian lie in the paragraph
underdiscussion (the first sentence).

Did anyone else agree with my interpretation? Major and Camp came
forward in the Scottish verdict thread.

Ernest Majors post:


http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/5d85efce1f441ff7?hl=en


It seems to me that it takes a strained, acontextual, reading of
those
words to not see them as validating the claim that the Discovery
Institute has (can identify) ID science for some [public school]
teacher
to teach.
--
alias Ernest Major
END QUOTE:


Nyikos tried to persuade Major that he was wrong by doctoring the
quote under discussion removing the "Has ID been banned from the
public schools? No." part of the quote What kind of IDiot would do
that when he is trying to claim that the quote is not about teaching
ID in the public schools?

I take Nyikos to task for this bogus manipulation:

QUOTE:
> > > >"Science teachers
> > >> have the right to teach science. Since ID is a legitimate scientific
> > >> theory, it should be constitutional to discuss in science classrooms and
> > >> it should not be banned from schools. If a science teacher wants to
> > >> voluntarily discuss ID, she should have the academic freedom to do so."


> Here is where that statement appears, along with lots of pages of
> context:http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...


What did Nyikos remove from this quote? Gee I wonder why he did
that.


QUOTE:
Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
No. Science teachers have the right to teach science. Since ID is a
legitimate scientific theory, it should be constitutional to discuss
in
science classrooms and it should not be banned from schools. If a
science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID, she should have
the academic freedom to do so.
END QUOTE:


It is obvious that the ID perps are talking about teaching ID in the
public schools. Nyikos has to lie about something this simple for
some reason. Lying is just a way of life for him. This quote states
exactly what I have claimed.


http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/4dea96d935b7522c?hl=en
END QUOTE:


Camp’s post

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/d382ecb6f4a56ddf?hl=en

Camp's support has an even more ridiculous Nyikosian history. Nyikos
claimed that Camp was supporting him and then quote mined Camp when I
put up the full statement by Camp to demonstrate how wrong Nyikos
was. Camp was employing a standard rhetorical tactic of putting up
the negative and then destroying it. Nyikos snipped out everything
except the negative comment and he started the SNIP at the "But"
statement. I am not making this up

Where I catch Nyikos quote mining:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/3c8d3f3f728062b8?hl=enKf4c1af25c978cf

Usually the bogus quote miner manipulates the quote in a book or
somewhere that you can't check, but Nyikos did it when I just had to
go up to my post for the actual quote.

I couldn't make this junk up. Who would believe me?

So much for the second lie in the paragraph under discussion.

I think that it is apparent who the madman insane liar is.

>
> All you could ever muster was lame bleatings about how I should "ask"
> Pagano, etc. whether they disagree with the conclusions you draw from
> those quotes.

I also told you to get a friend to read the pamphlet and the quote and
tell you what it meant.

Has ID been banned from the public schools? What does it mean when
the ID perp's answer was No? What did it mean when they claimed to
have a scientific theory of ID to teach?

>
> IIRC you never asked me to present them with the quotes and ask
> whether they agreed with YOUR interpretation of the quotes.

I did ask you to present it to a friend, but you didn't seem to have
any.

>
> And when I presented them to the general readership in the Scottish
> verdict thread, NOBODY agreed with your interpretation.

Repeating a lie doesn't make it any less of a lie. What about Major
and Camp?

Why did you run from that thread?

Isn't it even sadder that you had to start the Scottish verdict thread
in order to run from the realization that you were the dirty debater
in that thread?

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/a995034f6931eba4?hl=enKf4c1af25c978cf%03c8d3f3f728062b8

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/2a9eb8898289a07f?hl=enKf4c1af25c978cf%03c8d3f3f728062b8

You can't deny that you started the Scottish verdict thread the day
after the April 12 post.

>
> Was embarrassment over that what caused you to keep lying, over and
> over, that the thread was "bogus"?

Projection is a way of life for Nyikos. It is obvious who the bogus
liar is. Nyikos keeps making up these stupid stories about me when
they obviously apply to Nyikos.

>
> > Prevaricating about not disagreeing with Johnson is just lying.
>
> Watch just how insane your logic is:

You are running from quite a lot of posts in the Insane logic thread.
This is by your own definition of running for posts that are that old.

>
> >  Put
> > up a post from Jan to March when I was first putting up the Johnson
> > quotes where you agreed with them.
>
> Where's the prevarication in that? You never heard of the saying
> "Silence gives consent," eh?

That was only the first phase of your denial. It progressed to the
second phase of prevaricating in any way that you could.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/6f8e15ba4f8bc2af?hl=en%E1%A8%AFb9aa27d7c037

QUOTE:
> he just points the finger at
> the "science" ID perps for never developing the science that it would
> have taken to make the ID scam legit.

If Ron O. thinks the above is a description of what he quotes from
Johnson up there, he is at best woefully ignorant of the scientific
issues, and at worst a mental basket case.

Peter Nyikos
END QUOTE:

It is difficult to figure out what Nyikos is prevaricating about, but
it is about the Johnson quote in question.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/64b188664dc64eb0

This is also the post that Nyikos accused me of running from for 3
whole days when he had posted it to someone else and there was no
reason for me to know that it existed. I don't make this junk up.

So Nyikos graduated to the prevarication stage after the snipping and
running stage and we can see him lying about it in this thread.

Another full Nyikosian progression documented.

>
> > You did anything that you could to deny what Johnson was saying.  You
> > even made the stupid claim that Johnson was old so that what he said
> > didn't matter.
>
> I don't recall anything fitting either description.  I defy you to
> post BOTH the exact quotes AND the urls for the where they originally
> occurred. In the SAME post, next to each other.

See above.

I could find those posts with a simple Google search, but I can't
remember enough of your "old" quote to get Google to find it. Maybe
you can find the post and demonstrate that you didn't mean what I
claim. The statement was so bogus that you know that you wrote it,
and I did remind you about it from time to time with no denial on your
part until now.

>
> > > You will, however, see numerous examples of me agreeing with this
> > > assessment in quite a few threads.
>
> > You did not start agreeing with the Johnson quote until
>
> ...I started addressing the contents.  Go ahead, try to refute me in
> the same manner I ask above.

I did. See above. How did you first address the contents?

>
> > > > What did the Discovery
> > > > Institute claim in their propaganda pamphlet about the Dover fiasco?
>
> > > 1. That they had tried without success to dissuade the Dover school
> > > board to abandon its policy.
>
> > They admit to running the bait and switch on the Dover board,
>
> Not in the propaganda pamphlet, you  shameless liar.

I was just paraphrasing what the first statement really meant. What a
bonehead. How do you think the ID perps run the bait and switch on
the rubes? Do they give them the ID science or do they try to fob off
the switch scam onto them?

>
> TO BE CONTINUED

Probably another Nyikosian lie. Maybe you should count up the times
that you have not "CONTINUED?"

Ron Okimoto

>
> Peter Nyikos

[Ron O]

On Dec 9, 7:33 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Dec 8, 6:41 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > Earlier, I snipped the quotes due to
> > lack of time -- and lack of relevance to the "bait" part of your "bait
> > and switch" monomania.  It was all part of overkill on the "switch"
> > angle.
>
> > You waited almost a WHOLE YEAR before posting evidence of the "bait"
> > part that ANYONE HERE EXCEPT YOU took to be strong evidence of the
> > "bait" part.
>
> Haste makes waste.  What I should have said after the first "part"
> was:
>
> "up until that time, you could only post a miserable pair of quotes
> that NO ONE HERE EXCEPT YOU took to be strong evidence of the `bait'
> part."
>
>  It was that miserable pair that I referred to in the following
> paragraphs:

There was another quote that went with the Johnson quote under
discussion. It was about the fat lady singing. You go find it for
the exercise. Because this point doesn't matter for what I have
already responded to.

>
> >Yet you are such a madman, you actually called me a liar
> > and insane for NOT being THE VERY FIRST PERSON TO AGREE WITH YOU that
> > the quotes did what you say they do.
>
> > All you could ever muster was lame bleatings about how I should "ask"
> > Pagano, etc. whether they disagree with the conclusions you draw from
> > those quotes.
>
> > IIRC you never asked me to present them with the quotes and ask
> > whether they agreed with YOUR interpretation of the quotes.
>
> > And when I presented them to the general readership in the Scottish
> > verdict thread, NOBODY agreed with your interpretation.
>
> > Was embarrassment over that what caused you to keep lying, over and
> > over, that the thread was "bogus"?
>
> Actually it was only the first one that I presented to the general
> readership; the second one was posted only a few months before Ron O
> finally dug up a quote that made a good case for his claim about the
> "bait" having been a reality at some point (about a decade ago IIRC).
>
> But now he insists that the DI is still indulging in bait and switch,
> and his only evidence for that is the second of his miserable quotes,
> which is no more evidence than the first one was.

You have to supply some context for this one. A link would be good.
I can't figure out what you are talking about. You have treated other
quotes the same way that you treated the Johnson quote and the
Scottish verdict quote. They both had two quotes associated with them
at first. There was also the Meyer quote that you ran from and
bogously manipulated that had two quotes associated with it. Remember
you kept clipping out the quote that demonstrated that Meyer ran the
bait and switch on the Ohio rubes and claimed that there was no
evidence of Discovery Institute involvement? You did the dishonest
manipulation twice, snipping out the same material so it was
deliberate. I don't think that the official Discovery Institute
statement on teaching ID in the public schools was presented as two
quotes. You ignored that quote for several posts, started snipping it
out and then started lying about it when you started the Insane logic
thread.

So you will have to put up some context for this one because even the
Behe astrology Nyikosian boon doggle involved two quotes, one from the
Discovery Institute and one from the Court transcripts. Both quotes
supported what I claimed. You should remember because you ran.

Ron Okimoto

>
> Peter Nyikos

[Harry K]

On Dec 9, 5:23 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

well, I'm sorry that asking you to come up with a logical reason for
your panspermia is not germane to the discussion. I realize that it
has probably been discussed before but I hadn't seen it. Thus far I
haven't been able to see any reason why you are so adamant that it had
to be panspermia or why abiogenises couldn'thave happened here. Your
'time" argument falls flat.

Harry K