Behe speaking in TO this week

[Mark Buchanan]

For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
the next week. See:

http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html

I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
could be fun.

Mark

[Harry K]

Might be a problem to keep from laughing. Were it withing range, I'd
like to be there.

Harry K

[jillery]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2012 20:42:39 -0800 (PST), Harry K <tur...@q.com>
wrote:

It would be illegal to throw Reducibly-Complex mousetraps at him. But
I can dream.

[Frank J]

If you can, please ask him to confirm, or deny in the rare case that
he changed his mind*, his acceptance of ~4 billion years of common
descent. In other words, keep the subject on the details of his
"theory," not on the "weaknesses" of "Darwinism" on which these people
prefer to concentrate their smoke and mirrors.

* If the audience has many Biblical literalists, he will not want to
advertise the fact that he does not buy any of their interpretations,
young earth or old. If he adds that pathetic disclaimer that some ID
peddlers who deny common descent are "more familiar with the relevant
science," make sure he names them.

[pnyikos]

By all means, do so -- but only if you intend to give an accurate,
balanced account of what Behe said, including his replies to post-
lecture questions/allegations.

If you do, you will go a long way towards erasing the stigma that
Myers gave talk.origins by lying through his teeth about a lecture at
Temple University that Behe gave in the 1990's.

The stigma to which I refer is "There is something rotten in the
state of talk.origins."

I spent literally hours transcribing Behe's actual talk from a
recording, which showed just how Myers flrted with actionable libel.
But Myers continued to enjoy the same popularity in talk.origins that
he'd had up to that point, because the newsgroup at the time was
thoroughly politicized.

And I'm afraid it still is. There are any number of people,
including old-timers from that era and even before, who continually
remind me of the spin-doctoring that spokespersons for the Democratic
and Republican parties indulge in immediately after every
Presidential debate, with no attempt from the media interviewers to
seriously cross-examine either of them.

Of course, if they knew a cross-examination was coming, these spin
doctors probably wouldn't consent to give commentaries in the first
place.

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

[pnyikos]

And to give an unbiased account?

OK, people can start laughing already. :-)

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 12, 4:37�am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Nov 2012 20:42:39 -0800 (PST), Harry K <turn...@q.com>

That sort of thing has been done countless times. Another example is
the genetically altered mice that Doolittle made a jackass of himself
over.

Doolittle, world-class expert on the evolution of blood clotting, had
completely misread an article about an experiment and put his foot in
it with a screed to Cold Spring Harbor News.

That screed was mentioned at the talk Behe gave here at the University
of South Carolina in the 1990's. Someone repeated Doolittle's foolish
conclusions, and Behe was ready with a batch of slides about that
experiment and how Doolittle had misread it.

That "someone," a biology professor, had nothing to say during the Q&A
period, but was visibly angered after the whole thing was over,
denouncing Behe as a fraud to a sympathetic colleague.

Here it is, the second decade of this century, and the same jillery to
whose post I am replying got into a long, detailed argument with me
about how Doolittle was supposedly right.

When it was painfully apparent that jillery had lost, jillery
abandoned the thread without replying to my long, carefully reasoned
final exposition. Later, [s]he gave the utterly bogus excuse that 'e
must have been disgusted by my personal remarks.

But in fact, there hadn't been any negative personal remarks in either
that post or the one by me on the preceding round. Jillery had no
trouble replying to that one, convinced that [s]he could still win the
debate.

I don't think it's a coincidence that jillery killfiled me not long
after giving that transparently phony excuse.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 12, 7:52 am, Frank J <f...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 11 Nov, 21:02, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
> > the next week. See:
>
> >http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>
> > I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
> > could be fun.
>
> > Mark
>
> If you can, please ask him to confirm, or deny in the rare case that
> he changed his mind*, his acceptance of ~4 billion years of common
> descent. In other words, keep the subject on the details of his
> "theory," not on the "weaknesses" of "Darwinism" on which these people
> prefer to concentrate their smoke and mirrors.

WHOSE smoke and mirrors, pray tell. In my experience, they are all
wielded by the anti-Behe zealots. See my replies to the posts by Mark
and jillery.

> * If the audience has many Biblical literalists, he will not want to
> advertise the fact that he does not buy any of their interpretations,
> young earth or old. If he adds that pathetic disclaimer that some ID
> peddlers who deny common descent are "more familiar with the relevant
> science," make sure he names them.

Fair enough, even though flagrantly adversarial. You would wilt under
that kind of cross-examination.

In fact, you wilted under something much milder. When I challenged
your claim that Behe indulged in "pseudoscience," and asked for
specific, valid examples, you chickened out by saying that you didn't
have any that *I* would consider valid examples.

And so, you did what three people (including two old-timers from the
mid-90's at least) accuse me of doing to them: you acted as though you
could read people's minds. More grist for the mill of anyone
advancing the thesis,

"Something is rotten in the state of talk.origins.

Peter Nyikos

[Walter Bushell]

In article <k7pla1$3tr$1...@dont-email.me>,

Hey, I parsed that as Behe was scheduled to post here in talk origins.

--
This space unintentionally left blank.

[Robert Camp]

On Nov 11, 6:02 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:

Many of us would love to hear how it went. Maybe a little pad and a
pencil for notes? Perhaps a small voice recorder? Even better, a
little videocamera...but if you are caught we will disavow all
knowledge of your activities.

RLC

[pnyikos]

Yes, the video camera might go a long way towards stopping mountains
of anti-Behe hearsay about the talks, not just here but in Panda's
Thumb, scienceblogs, etc.

++++++++++++++ sarcasm on

And we can't have that, can we, Camp?

++++++++++++++ sarcasm off

I think it will be very interesting to see whether video cameras in
the audience would be confiscated. They shouldn't, but Canada does
not have the same tradition of freedom of the press, speech, and
religion that the USA has. Canadian authorities talk the talk, but
they don't walk the walk anywhere near as well as American authorities
do.

Something people in the blue states, many of which are next door to
Canada, may do well to ponder.

Peter Nyikos

[Steven L.]

That's reasonable.

If you google for "TO", it doesn't return Toronto Ontario as one of the
hits, unless it's way down in the list somewhere.



--
Steven L.

[Mark Buchanan]

I'll go well prepared with pen and notebook in hand (with a backup pen).
Behe isn't quite video camera worthy so I'll skip that - also, that
lecture theater might not be the best place to do a video. (I almost had
a class in there on 'Science and Pseudo-science' as UofT is my
Alma-mata.) It's hard to say what the audience makeup will be. UofT is
very diverse in it's faculty and different colleges - not quite the
unified bastion of atheism one might picture a major university to be.
The audience will depend on how the event is promoted and who does the
promoting.

I found out about this Behe thing on Sunday while at a series of talks
about faith and science at the church I used to go to - Rexdale Alliance
Church. The person who was handing out the flyers (a very passionate
promotor) expects about 300 people to be there on Thursday. The Saturday
session is going to be in the basement of the same church - providing a
more 'intimate' setting of about 60 people. As horrid as that may sound
I would have preferred to be at the Saturday event, but we will be away
on a little vacation. Somehow a basement of a church seems so much more
appropriate for Behe.

I'll try to produce a report shortly after. To satisfy Peter N. I'll try
to be as unbiased as possible. The best way to do that is to fully
acknowledge ones biases up front. To that end I'll admit that right now
I think Behe is incompetent and delusional. My bias is based on accounts
of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller &
'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).

Mark

[Mark Buchanan]

Sorry about that - people who have lived in Toronto for too long tend to
think of it as the centre of Canada if not the world. Don't live there
now but did for 15 years and still work there.

Mark

[Robert Camp]

Well, that last bit is always good policy, regardless.

> The best way to do that is to fully acknowledge ones biases up front.

Of course that's important if you're going to offer personal
impressions. Trying to deal in direct quotes as much as possible helps
to avoid some of those problems.

> To that end I'll admit that right now I think Behe is incompetent and delusional.

My impressions differ. I agree he's delusional but I don't see him as
incompetent. The application of either term is dependent upon how one
uses them, of course. I consider him deluded because of his fealty to
preconceived absolutes, which forces him to make non-scientific
inferences (his version of ID). However, in comparison to other
creationists he's clearly among the less deluded just by dint of how
much of the biological evidence he's willing to accept.

As for incompetence, I suppose you could make that case based on
exactly my comments above (he makes non-scientific inferences). But I
suppose I judge his competence on other bases, like the fact that he
seems to be a reasonably proficient biochemist who can do research and
get published.

I think of him as a transitional species of creationist.

> My bias is based on accounts of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller & 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).

I've seen him speak several times, one of which was just after he took
that drubbing at the Dover trial and needed some rehabilitation.
http://ncse.com/rncse/26/3/grill-id-guys-event-at-biola

His shtick doesn't seem to change much, and I expect (judging from the
lecture titles) that you'll be treated to standard stuff. I think he's
sincere - I can't help but like the guy - but he usually strikes me as
being in over his head (I saw him lecture once following Dembski and
the difference in how adroitly they handled some of the difficulties
of their perspectives was striking).

Have fun. Hopefully the audience won't be too partisan and there will
be some good Q and A.

RLC

[pnyikos]

On Nov 12, 7:12�pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll go well prepared with pen and notebook in hand (with a backup pen).
> Behe isn't quite video camera worthy so I'll skip that - also, that
> lecture theater might not be the best place to do a video. (I almost had
> a class in there on 'Science and Pseudo-science' as UofT is my
> Alma-mata.) It's hard to say what the audience makeup will be. UofT is
> very diverse in it's faculty and different colleges - not quite the
> unified bastion of atheism one might picture a major university to be.
> The audience will depend on how the event is promoted and who does the
> promoting.
>
> I found out about this Behe thing on Sunday while at a series of talks
> about faith and science at the church I used to go to - Rexdale Alliance
> Church. The person who was handing out the flyers (a very passionate
> promotor) expects about 300 people to be there on Thursday. The Saturday
> session is going to be in the basement of the same church - providing a
> more 'intimate' setting of about 60 people. As horrid as that may sound
> I would have preferred to be at the Saturday event, but we will be away
> on a little vacation. Somehow a basement of a church seems so much more
> appropriate for Behe.
>
> I'll try to produce a report shortly after. To satisfy Peter N. I'll try
> to be as unbiased as possible.

Thanks.

>The best way to do that is to fully
> acknowledge ones biases up front. To that end I'll admit that right now
> I think Behe is incompetent and delusional. My bias is based on accounts
> of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller &
> 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).

That accounts for it. Hearsay from people with their own axes to
grind. I've been over Behe's testimony very carefully, and he did
very well.

I can't say the same for the Opinion of the Court nor the tendentious
ACLU brief on which Judge Jones based over 90% of the Opinion of the
Court. Behe was flagrantly misrepresented in at least one place.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1186

If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
substitute for actually going over it yourself.

http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertrialtranscripts.htm
One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
transcript:
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf

Peter Nyikos

[Mark Buchanan]

You just dashed my hopes of anything really interesting happening.

> His shtick doesn't seem to change much, and I expect (judging from the
> lecture titles) that you'll be treated to standard stuff. I think he's
> sincere - I can't help but like the guy - but he usually strikes me as
> being in over his head (I saw him lecture once following Dembski and
> the difference in how adroitly they handled some of the difficulties
> of their perspectives was striking).
>
> Have fun. Hopefully the audience won't be too partisan and there will
> be some good Q and A.
>
> RLC
>

Appreciate your comments.

My charge of incompetence isn't so much based on his science but that
fact that he really didn't do a very well at Dover. He did have the
courage to go through with it however - when some of his fellow IDists
seemed to chicken out at the last minute.

If I do ask a question it might be about Dennis Venema's latest
challenge concerning the LTEE going over his 'edge of evolution'. See:

http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-3-tinkering-over-the-edge

Based on your experience it might be a waste of effort.

Mark

[pnyikos]

Behe is not a creationist to begin with. Even Frank J has an open
mind about that, although he obviously has his suspicions.

> As for incompetence, I suppose you could make that case based on
> exactly my comments above (he makes non-scientific inferences). But I
> suppose I judge his competence on other bases, like the fact that he
> seems to be a reasonably proficient biochemist who can do research and
> get published.
>
> I think of him as a transitional species of creationist.
>
> > My bias is based on accounts of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller & 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).
>
> I've seen him speak several times, one of which was just after he took
> that drubbing at the Dover trial and needed some rehabilitation.

> http://ncse.com/rncse/26/3/grill-id-guys-event-at-biola

What drubbing?

And "where's the beef" in your treatment of Behe linked in the url?
Where's the justification of your editorializing "half-answer"?
Where's the beef in the question about exaptation? I've talked
elsewhere about the "Exaptor of the Gaps" type arguments: lots of
handwaving about how "ID people forgot about exaptation" but not a
clue as to what could reasonably have been exapted in the specific
cases of which Behe has written.

Type III excretory mechanisms were experimented on by Minnich, as were
the components of the bacterial flagellum. Minnich testified to this
in Dover, maintaining that the case for Type III evolving from the
flagellum is at least as good as the opposite.

Minnich's work and testimony have gone down the memory hole of
everyone who claims there have been no experiments testing IC.

> His shtick doesn't seem to change much, and I expect (judging from the
> lecture titles) that you'll be treated to standard stuff. I think he's
> sincere - I can't help but like the guy - but he usually strikes me as
> being in over his head (I saw him lecture once following Dembski and
> the difference in how adroitly they handled some of the difficulties
> of their perspectives was striking).

And I saw Phillip Johnson perform at our university a few months after
Behe did. He was far more adroit and in his element than Behe.

Behe is too much into his gimmick of IC. There is far better evidence
for the tremendous difficulty of abiogenesis elsewhere in
biochemistry, especially in the fantastic complexity of the protein
translation mechanism.

Peter Nyikos

> Have fun. Hopefully the audience won't be too partisan and there will
> be some good Q and A.
>

> RLC- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Roger Shrubber]

On Nov 13, 12:52 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:


> Type III excretory mechanisms were experimented on by Minnich, as were
> the components of the bacterial flagellum. Minnich testified to this
> in Dover, maintaining that the case for Type III evolving from the
> flagellum is at least as good as the opposite.

I'll withhold the obvious criticism to ask a question.

Isn't it just as damning either way?

I refer to the core argument of claiming that the existence of X is so
very implausible if there is only evolution as we know it available
to
make X, that it must have been something else to account for X than
evolution.

I'll also avoid asking about why "something else" permutes into
"intelligent design".

[Robert Camp]

> http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-3...

>
> Based on your experience it might be a waste of effort.

Depends on what you hope to get out of it, I guess.

Sometimes it's worth it just to see their faces and body language when
they talk. Never having seen these guys (ID theorists) in person, it's
easy to think of them as liars and shills. But sitting in the audience
for many of their talks I've seen their humanity and sincerity right
alongside their self-serving logical contortions, and that's a
valuable experience when fighting the temptation to demonize those
with whom we disagree.

Of course it's easy to forget all that when they start going off on a
rant about "Darwinists," but in my experience Behe's pretty good about
not getting into the gutter on these things.

RLC

[Ron O]

> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...

>
> If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
> substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>

> http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...

>    One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> transcript:http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> Peter Nyikos

Is this the same Peter Nyikos that prevaricates about why he doesn't
belong on the By Their Fruits list by deleting and running from the
explanation of him supporting the ID scam and being a Behe disciple?
I guess it is apparent why he would manipulate the post like that and
run away in denial. Sad, just sad.

Behe admits that he is Catholic, and he only denies being a YEC type
fundy creationist. He is also involved in other conservative
religious political groups so there is pretty much no doubt that his
ultimate intelligent designer is the God that he worships when he goes
to Catholic mass. Ridiculous denial about being a creationist is one
of the things that makes the ID scam so dishonest. What was the
mission statement that Behe and the others signed up with the
Discovery Institute under? This was their mission statement until
1999, and Behe was involved with intelligent design when he wrote
parts of the creationist's "intelligent design textbook" Of Pandas and
People in the late 1980's.

QUOTE:
What is The Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture All About?

The Mission of the Center

THE proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is
one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built.
Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's
greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human
rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.
Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under
wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern
science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man,
thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud
portrayed human beings not as eternal and accountable beings, but as
animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by chance and whose
behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of
biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of
reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from
politics and economics to literature and music.

The cultural consequences of this triumph of materialism were
devastating. Materialists denied the existence of objective standards
binding on all cultures, claiming that environment dictates our moral
beliefs. Such moral relativism was uncritically adopted by much of the
social sciences, and it still undergirds much of modern economics,
political science, psychology and sociology.

Materialists also undermined personal responsibility by asserting that
human thoughts and behaviors are dictated by our biology and
environment. The results can be seen in modern approaches to criminal
justice, product liability, and welfare. In the materialist scheme of
things, everyone is a victim and no one can be held accountable for
his or her actions.

Finally, materialism spawned a virulent strain of utopianism. Thinking
they could engineer the perfect society through the application of
scientific knowledge, materialist reformers advocated coercive
government programs that falsely promised to create heaven on earth.

Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture
seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its damning
cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural
sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center
explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive
science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-
opened the case for the supernatural. The Center awards fellowships
for original research, holds conferences, and briefs policymakers
about the opportunities for life after materialism.

The Center is directed by Discovery Senior Fellow Dr. Stephen Meyer.
An Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College, Dr. Meyer
holds a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge
University. He formerly worked as a geophysicist for the Atlantic
Richfield Company.
END QUOTE:

http://web.archive.org/web/19980114111554/http:/discovery.org/crsc/aboutcrsc.html

You have to click on the link to get a picture of God and Adam on this
page that was part of the Discovery Institute's ID scam division logo
for years before they decided to become more stealthy and dishonest
about who their intelligent designer was.

Denial is stupid at this time, and it will never change reality.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark Buchanan]

Did you happen to read 'Devil in Dover'? Lebo's father is YEC - she
didn't have any axe to grind. Her book is basically the incredibly sad
story of how much damage was done in Dover because of the case.

>
> I can't say the same for the Opinion of the Court nor the tendentious
> ACLU brief on which Judge Jones based over 90% of the Opinion of the
> Court. Behe was flagrantly misrepresented in at least one place.
>
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1186
>

That document reads like a nitpicking exercise by sore losers with a
persecution complex. This is the same outfit that deliberately caused
the court case in the first place right?

[pnyikos]

On Nov 13, 9:27�pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/12/2012 9:34 PM, pnyikos wrote:

> > On Nov 12, 7:12 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >> I'll try to produce a report shortly after. To satisfy Peter N. I'll try
> >> to be as unbiased as possible.
>
> > Thanks.
>
> >> The best way to do that is to fully
> >> acknowledge ones biases up front. To that end I'll admit that right now
> >> I think Behe is incompetent and delusional. My bias is based on accounts
> >> of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller &
> >> 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).
>
> > That accounts for it. �Hearsay from people with their own axes to
> > grind. �I've been over Behe's testimony very carefully, and he did
> > very well.
>
> Did you happen to read 'Devil in Dover'?

I have to admit that I did not, but unless Lebo totally divorced
herself from creationism, there was an axe to grind all right.

> Lebo's father is YEC - she
> didn't have any axe to grind. Her book is basically the incredibly sad
> story of how much damage was done in Dover because of the case.

But not by Behe, I trust? Behe basically used the witness stand as a
bully pulpit for the scientific side of ID.

The damage was done by the school board, which shamelessly overplayed
its hand, forcing the teachers to make public statements with which
they disagreed.

And Judge Jones's final judgment ("holding") lasting only about a full
page, was a far cry from the incredibly tendentious Opinion of the
Court. Jones very sensibly enjoined the teaching of ID as an
ALTERNATIVE to evolution. Behe, for one, only considers it to be a
supplement.

>
>
> > I can't say the same for the Opinion of the Court nor the tendentious
> > ACLU brief on which Judge Jones based over 90% of the Opinion of the
> > Court. �Behe was flagrantly misrepresented in at least one place.
>

> >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertrialtranscripts.htm

> That document reads like a nitpicking exercise by sore losers with a
> persecution complex.

Even if it does seem that way to you, can you not look past that at
the factual errors [to use a value-neutral term] that it documents?

>This is the same outfit that deliberately caused
> the court case in the first place right?

Absolutely not. The Dover school board acted on its own initiative,
and the "outfit" explicitly says elsewhere that it requested the
school board to change its policy, to no avail.

> > If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
> > substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>
> >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertrialtranscripts.htm

> > � � One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> > transcript:
> >http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> > Peter Nyikos

No reply to this from you.

Is it the case that your mind is made up, and you don't want to be
confused with the facts? If so, you would do well to run whatever you
post here by a third party whom you trust to be objective about it.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 13, 7:52�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Nov 12, 8:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:


> > If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
> > substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>
> >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...
> > One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> > transcript:http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> Is this the same Peter Nyikos that prevaricates about why he doesn't
> belong on the By Their Fruits list by deleting and running from the
> explanation of him supporting the ID scam and being a Behe disciple?

The explanation was totally bogus. My true opinions on ID and Behe can
be found in my replies to this thread, to less biased people than
yourself -- and that includes every thread participant besides
yourself.

And here is something more about my opinions on ID, expressed on
another thread where I talked about you, now no longer behind your
back:

[QUOTE:]
Some of Ron's opinion of *me* is based on the fact that I
support the idea of the panspermists being the source of ID in the
first prokaryotes, with which they seeded earth. That the immediate
origin of earth life is due to panspermists, not homegrown
abiogenesis, is what Ray has been referring to as my "DI"
hypothesis.

This "ID" hypothesis is a separate, though related, issue, one which
has marked me in Ron O's mind as being an "ID promoter".
[UNQUOTE]

> I guess it is apparent why he would manipulate the post like that and
> run away in denial. �Sad, just sad.

It would be if it were true that you aren't completely deluded about
me.

> Behe admits that he is Catholic, and he only denies being a YEC type
> fundy creationist.

Also an OEC type fundie creationist. He is no more one than the last
two Popes, the first of whom said that evolution is more than just a
hypothesis, and the present one who told the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences something related here:

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-faith-and-science-needed-for-peace-and-humanitys-destiny/

>�He is also involved in other conservative

> religious political groups so there is pretty much no doubt that his
> ultimate intelligent designer is the God that he worships when he goes
> to Catholic mass.

"ultimate" refers to the creation of the universe. If you go beyond
that, you go beyond the available evidence about Behe's position.

>�Ridiculous denial about being a creationist is one

> of the things that makes the ID scam so dishonest.

Since you define "creationist" as anyone who believes in a creator,
even if only one of the individual human soul (while being a
contemporary of our universe instead of its creator), you are in no
position to call such denials "ridiculous".

After all, they may be going by a very different definition, such as
the one used in the talk.origins FAQ.

>�What was the

> mission statement that Behe and the others signed up with the
> Discovery Institute under?

What makes you think Behe signed up with it in the first place? He is
listed as a "fellow" which means nothing more than a source of
information for anyone wishing to pursue topics in which the DI is
interested. Minnich made that clear in his Dover testimony IIRC.

> This was their mission statement until
> 1999, and Behe was involved with intelligent design when he wrote
> parts of the creationist's "intelligent design textbook" Of Pandas and
> People in the late 1980's.

Do you know which parts?

> http://web.archive.org/web/19980114111554/http:/discovery.org/crsc/ab...

Heck, a Theistic Evolutionist like Ken Miller could sign on to that
statement in good conscience. Your knowledge of religions is sadly
deficient.

And I don't need to tell you how ardently Miller opposes Behe. It's
almost as ardent as Martinez's opposition to Pagano or to Kalkidas.

> You have to click on the link to get a picture of God and Adam on this
> page that was part of the Discovery Institute's ID scam division logo
> for years before they decided to become more stealthy and dishonest
> about who their intelligent designer was.

You have a very simplistic, black-and-white [with yourself as lily
white, of course] view of these issues.

> Denial is stupid at this time, and it will never change reality.

What is the reality YOU are denying? Here is something else I wrote
about you in that same post:

[QUOTE:]
I am highly skeptical about Ron being a Christian, or believing in the
Bible, in any meaningful sense of the word.

Oh, sure, he's a member of the Methodist Church, but the most
effective fanatic in talk.abortion was for many years a member of
ELCA. Then in 2009 he admitted that he was an atheist, and behaved
like the "best" of them.

Even while he was a member of ELCA, I opined publicly that he had no
more business being a member than the jotun Loki had being a blood
brother of Odin.
[UNQUOTE]
https://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/1a1d4ea8fc520b8c

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 12, 10:27�pm, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 13, 12:52 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > Type III excretory mechanisms were experimented on by Minnich, as were
> > the components of the bacterial flagellum. Minnich testified to this
> > in Dover, maintaining that the case for Type III evolving from the
> > flagellum is at least as good as the opposite.
>
> I'll withhold the obvious criticism to ask a question.
>
> Isn't it just as damning either way?

Damning to what? Not to the following statement, surely:

> I refer to the core argument of claiming that the existence of X is so
> very �implausible if there is only evolution as we know it available
> to
> make X, that it must have been something else to account for X than
> evolution.

I don't think anyone ever claimed that the Type III mechanism could
not have evolved from the bacterial flagellum.

All it takes is a loss of about half of the whole flagellum and the
addition of a few little extras.

OTOH it takes quite a lot to build a gram-negative prokaryote
flagellum out of a Type III excretory mechanism. Which is why the
anti-ID crowd loves it -- if they can get away with claiming the
flagellum is an easy exaptation of the Type III mechanism, they are
practically home free.

> I'll also avoid asking about why "something else" permutes into
> "intelligent design".

Thanks, but I'll tell you MY take on it, which is very different from
the usual ID take on it.

I think the gram-negative bacterial flagellum is one nice candidate
for something that was designed by technologically advanced (although
only a bit beyond our own present level) creatures in another solar
system ca. 4 bya.

It is highly useful, and very different from anything else in biology
(except for things easily derivable from it, like the gram-positive
bacterial flagellum and the Type III mechanism).

Also, unlike non-living artifacts which are easily lost in ca. 4
billlion years due to meteor impacts, weather, plate tectonics, etc.
it would be the closest thing to an eternal monument to the
panspermists.

If we ever seed other planets, diverse varieties of cyanobacteria,
some of which able to withstand great extremes of temperature, etc.
would be one of the best kinds of organisms to send. And if some of
them lack flagellae in their present state, genetic engineering (a
modest form of ID) could provide them.

Peter Nyikos

[John Stockwell]

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012 7:47:28 AM UTC-7, pnyikos wrote:
> On Nov 13, 9:27�pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 11/12/2012 9:34 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
> > > On Nov 12, 7:12 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > >> I'll try to produce a report shortly after. To satisfy Peter N. I'll try
>
> > >> to be as unbiased as possible.
>
> >
>
> > > Thanks.
>
> >
>
> > >> The best way to do that is to fully
>
> > >> acknowledge ones biases up front. To that end I'll admit that right now
>
> > >> I think Behe is incompetent and delusional. My bias is based on accounts
>
> > >> of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller &
>
> > >> 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).
>
> >
>
> > > That accounts for it. �Hearsay from people with their own axes to
>
> > > grind. �I've been over Behe's testimony very carefully, and he did
>
> > > very well.
>
> >
>
> > Did you happen to read 'Devil in Dover'?
>
>
>
> I have to admit that I did not, but unless Lebo totally divorced
>
> herself from creationism, there was an axe to grind all right.
>
>
>
> > Lebo's father is YEC - she
>
> > didn't have any axe to grind. Her book is basically the incredibly sad
>
> > story of how much damage was done in Dover because of the case.
>
>
>
> But not by Behe, I trust? Behe basically used the witness stand as a
>
> bully pulpit for the scientific side of ID.

I would agree, in that he was essentially taken apart on the stand
and the world got to see that there is no scientific side to ID.

-John

[Mark Buchanan]

On 11/11/2012 9:01 PM, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
> the next week. See:
>
> http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>
> I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
> could be fun.
>

> Mark
>

For a blow by blow account go here:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1rK8i1j1Sq85rnXtaFWSUnpALo9mYOm-JoOld83LbK5Q

As changes are made they will be updated.

Mark

[Ron O]

On Nov 14, 9:17 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Nov 13, 7:52 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 12, 8:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
> > > substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>
> > >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...
> > > One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> > > transcript:http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> > > Peter Nyikos
>
> > Is this the same Peter Nyikos that prevaricates about why he doesn't
> > belong on the By Their Fruits list by deleting and running from the
> > explanation of him supporting the ID scam and being a Behe disciple?
>
> The explanation was totally bogus. My true opinions on ID and Behe can
> be found in my replies to this thread, to less biased people than
> yourself -- and that includes every thread participant besides
> yourself.

What about the part of your post that you snipped out with out marking
your SNIPs?

How sad is it when you have to lie like this about junk that you have
just written? What was I talking about and why did you delete it?
You were defending the ID perps and you obviously are a Behe disciple.

>
> And here is something more about my opinions on ID, expressed on
> another thread where I talked about you, now no longer behind your
> back:

Only a scum bag would lie behind someones back and then put up the
evidence as if it were something that they were proud of doing.

If you have a beef with me post it to me not in some thread that I am
not even participating in. What kind of degenerate loser are you?

>
> [QUOTE:]
> Some of Ron's opinion of *me* is based on the fact that I
> support the idea of the panspermists being the source of ID in the
> first prokaryotes, with which they seeded earth. That the immediate
> origin of earth life is due to panspermists, not homegrown
> abiogenesis, is what Ray has been referring to as my "DI"
> hypothesis.

This is false. As stated above it is Nyikos' support for the ID scam
artists and his being a Behe disciple that is the basis of my opinion
of Nyikos. The junk that he deleted and ran from and lied about
above.

Nyikos did bring up his stupid panspermist junk, but that was not the
issue and he knows it. How many times did Nyikos lie about never
getting an explanation of the bait and switch ID scam? That had
nothing to do with panspermia. Nyikos is just lying again and for
what purpose and to someone that could care less or even know that he
was lying. It is just sad.

>
> This "ID" hypothesis is a separate, though related, issue, one which
> has marked me in Ron O's mind as being an "ID promoter".
> [UNQUOTE]

Who kept denying what was written by the ID perps in order to claim
that they were not running the bait and switch? You lied and
prevaricated about the issue for nearly a year and you can't even be
honest about what you were lying about.

>
> > I guess it is apparent why he would manipulate the post like that and
> > run away in denial. Sad, just sad.
>
> It would be if it were true that you aren't completely deluded about
> me.

How did you manipulate this post? Why did you do that? Does it
really help you lie to yourself if you delete the material and you
know that it exists, but it no longer exists in the post where you
have to lie about it?

>
> > Behe admits that he is Catholic, and he only denies being a YEC type
> > fundy creationist.
>
> Also an OEC type fundie creationist. He is no more one than the last
> two Popes, the first of whom said that evolution is more than just a
> hypothesis, and the present one who told the Pontifical Academy of
> Sciences something related here:

It doesn't matter and you know it. There are a lot of different types
of creationists that Behe is not. What matters is the type of
creationist that he is. Prevarication is just stupid as well as
dishonest.

>
> http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-faith-and-science-needed-fo...

>
> > He is also involved in other conservative
> > religious political groups so there is pretty much no doubt that his
> > ultimate intelligent designer is the God that he worships when he goes
> > to Catholic mass.
>
> "ultimate" refers to the creation of the universe. If you go beyond
> that, you go beyond the available evidence about Behe's position.

Ultimate just refers to who Behe's intelligent designer is and it is
the God of the Bible.

>
> > Ridiculous denial about being a creationist is one
> > of the things that makes the ID scam so dishonest.
>
> Since you define "creationist" as anyone who believes in a creator,
> even if only one of the individual human soul (while being a
> contemporary of our universe instead of its creator), you are in no
> position to call such denials "ridiculous".

It fits and encompasses the various types of creationists. Who is
Behe's intelligent designer? That makes him a creationist.

>
> After all, they may be going by a very different definition, such as
> the one used in the talk.origins FAQ.

They only use that definition to lie about what they are so that they
can lie about their religious motivations to circumvent the Supreme
Court ruling on creationism in the public schools. Only a boob
doesn't realize that at this point in time.

>
> > What was the
> > mission statement that Behe and the others signed up with the
> > Discovery Institute under?
>
> What makes you think Behe signed up with it in the first place? He is
> listed as a "fellow" which means nothing more than a source of
> information for anyone wishing to pursue topics in which the DI is
> interested. Minnich made that clear in his Dover testimony IIRC.

Behe was one of the few founding members of the ID scam wing of the
Discovery Institute. He was affiliated with Meyer, Kenyon and Thaxton
in his involvement with Of Pandas and People. All fellow fellows. He
likely helped write the mission statement below. What "Think Tank"
organization would not involved the founding members in developing a
mission statement? This was the mission statement in place when guys
like Berlinski and Dembski signed on.

>
> > This was their mission statement until
> > 1999, and Behe was involved with intelligent design when he wrote
> > parts of the creationist's "intelligent design textbook" Of Pandas and
> > People in the late 1980's.
>
> Do you know which parts?

My recollection of Behe's admission was that someone noted how similar
the wording of Pandas was to what Behe later wrote. It was the
argument about complexity, but did not state irreducible complexity
that Behe likely coined later. Behe was also a Denton fan so he might
(it is only my guess) have had a hand in writing that part of the book
with the bogus molecular arguments where the data was analyzed in a
fashion that no one that knew what they were doing would have done
that way. Denton obviously did not know what he was doing and later
dropped all that bogus molecular junk and acted like common descent
was a fact of nature in his second book. My guess is that Denton knew
how bogus his molecular argument was by the time that they wrote
Pandas, but whoever wrote that section either didn't know that or
didn't care.

Prove it.

Not only that, but who cares? This was the mission of the ID scam
wing of the Discovery Institute when it was founded. Why try to deny
it by claiming that someone else might agree with it? When another
creationists agrees with an obviously creationist mission statement
what does that change? Miller doesn't just believe in a creator god,
but he believes in an interactive creator god. That came up in some
past thread. Miller just knows that ID was a scam from the beginning
and that it has so little scientific basis that it pretty much is not
science.

>
> And I don't need to tell you how ardently Miller opposes Behe. It's
> almost as ardent as Martinez's opposition to Pagano or to Kalkidas.

The ID scam was dishonest and poor science, what was there to not be
against?

>
> > You have to click on the link to get a picture of God and Adam on this
> > page that was part of the Discovery Institute's ID scam division logo
> > for years before they decided to become more stealthy and dishonest
> > about who their intelligent designer was.
>
> You have a very simplistic, black-and-white [with yourself as lily
> white, of course] view of these issues.

How can you lie to yourself like this? Who used that Logo and what
did it mean to them? Why claim to be intelligent design advocates and
have a picture of the Christian creator God as your logo? Berlinski
hadn't signed on yet so all the founding members were Christians.

>
> > Denial is stupid at this time, and it will never change reality.
>
> What is the reality YOU are denying? Here is something else I wrote
> about you in that same post:

More bogus lies that you had to tell to someone else.

>
> [QUOTE:]
> I am highly skeptical about Ron being a Christian, or believing in the
> Bible, in any meaningful sense of the word.
>
> Oh, sure, he's a member of the Methodist Church, but the most
> effective fanatic in talk.abortion was for many years a member of
> ELCA. Then in 2009 he admitted that he was an atheist, and behaved
> like the "best" of them.
>
> Even while he was a member of ELCA, I opined publicly that he had no
> more business being a member than the jotun Loki had being a blood
> brother of Odin.
> [UNQUOTE]https://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/1a1d4ea8fc520b8c
>
> Peter Nyikos

How sad is your above quote? Really, self-evaluate it based on what
you are guilty of. Who prevaricated about their religious beliefs for
nearly two years and finally lied about being an agnostic after
committing multiple bogus and dishonest deeds in order to keep lying
about the issue? Who has to project their own bogus behavior
concerning their religious beliefs onto someone else? You have no
evidence for what you claim above it is just a degenerate personal
attack that you had to make because you are the one that got caught
lying about your religious beliefs. This is so sad that you have to
be degenerate scum to even think that it was worth requoting.

Really, demonstrate that your above quote is anything more than a
stupid degenerate personal attack on someone elses religious beliefs.
You are just sad and pathetic.

Just go back to what you are running from in the By Their Fruits
thread. How sad is it that you have to continue in this fashion? You
knew that your arguments were bogus over a year ago and you still have
to pretend about the ID scam and be a degenerate scum bag while doing
it. Self-evaluate this post and apologize if you have any integrity
left at all.

Ron Okimoto

[Robert Camp]

On Nov 15, 4:12 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/11/2012 9:01 PM, Mark Buchanan wrote:
>
> > For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
> > the next week. See:
>
> >http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>
> > I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
> > could be fun.
>
> > Mark
>
> For a blow by blow account go here:
>

> https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1rK8i1j1Sq85rnXtaFWSUnpALo9mY...

>
> As changes are made they will be updated.
>
> Mark

Great stuff. Thanks for taking the time and the notes.

So much to discuss, but I'll just start by asking how deeply he went
into the whole nano/machine business. Was he actually attempting some
kind of serious point when he was talking about Cell Bio making use
of
machine terminology? He's always been enamored of that particularly
credulous argument from analogy,

"I mean, literally, there are real machines inside everybody s cells
and this is what they are called by all biologists who work in the
field, molecular machines. They re little trucks and busses that run
around the cell that takes supplies from one end of the cell to the
other. They re little traffic signals to regulate the flow. They re
signposts to tell them when they get to the right destination. They
re
little outboard motors that allow some cells to swim. If you look at
the parts of these, they re remarkably like the machineries that we
use in our everyday world."
Michael Behe, Understanding Creation, Evolution and Intelligent
Design, 2005

"Little trucks and buses"..."real machines"..."literally!"

RLC

[Paul J Gans]

Thanks for that!

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[Mark Buchanan]

On 11/15/2012 9:12 PM, Robert Camp wrote:
> On Nov 15, 4:12 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> On 11/11/2012 9:01 PM, Mark Buchanan wrote:
>>
>>> For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
>>> the next week. See:
>>
>>> http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>>
>>> I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
>>> could be fun.
>>
>>> Mark
>>
>> For a blow by blow account go here:
>>

>> https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1rK8i1j1Sq85rnXtaFWSUnpALo9mY...

>>
>> As changes are made they will be updated.
>>
>> Mark
>

> Great stuff, Mark. Thanks for taking the time and the notes.

>
> So much to discuss, but I'll just start by asking how deeply he went
> into the whole nano/machine business. Was he actually attempting some
> kind of serious point when he was talking about Cell Bio making use of
> machine terminology? He's always been enamored of that particularly
> credulous argument from analogy,
>
> “I mean, literally, there are real machines inside everybody’s cells
> and this is what they are called by all biologists who work in the
> field, molecular machines. They’re little trucks and busses that run
> around the cell that takes supplies from one end of the cell to the
> other. They’re little traffic signals to regulate the flow. They’re
> signposts to tell them when they get to the right destination. They’re
> little outboard motors that allow some cells to swim. If you look at
> the parts of these, they’re remarkably like the machineries that we

> use in our everyday world.” — Behe, Understanding Creation, Evolution

> and Intelligent Design, 2005
>
> "Little trucks and buses"..."real machines"..."literally!"
>
> RLC
>

Yes there is quite a bit to think over. I'll have to make a few
corrections and I want to add more details and comments to the document
- might be a day or two.

I did sign up for the presentation material and a free copy of the
video. There were several people handing out feedback cards and a
sign-up sheet for the video - even free cookies. Prof. Moran of
'Sandwalk' blog fame was there but he didn't ask any question. See:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto.html

The nano/machine thing reminded me of his discussion of 'design' in DBB
(Darwin's Black Box) and how biologists always talk design but couldn't
come out and say it. He played this analogy up quite a bit using the
BORG example from Star Trek - with pictures from the show. There wasn't
anything of real substance, just a list of papers with words like
'machine' in the title. As you say - nothing beyond argument from
incredulity. Most of the talk was not about IC but the limits of
evolution and how the 'best' examples demonstrate the EofE.

Mark

[Mark Buchanan]

On 11/14/2012 9:44 AM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Nov 13, 9:27 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 11/12/2012 9:34 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>>> On Nov 12, 7:12 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> I'll try to produce a report shortly after. To satisfy Peter N. I'll try
>>>> to be as unbiased as possible.
>>
>>> Thanks.
>>
>>>> The best way to do that is to fully
>>>> acknowledge ones biases up front. To that end I'll admit that right now
>>>> I think Behe is incompetent and delusional. My bias is based on accounts
>>>> of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller &
>>>> 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).
>>
>>> That accounts for it. Hearsay from people with their own axes to
>>> grind. I've been over Behe's testimony very carefully, and he did
>>> very well.
>>
>> Did you happen to read 'Devil in Dover'?
>
> I have to admit that I did not, but unless Lebo totally divorced
> herself from creationism, there was an axe to grind all right.

How can you make that call without reading the book?

>
>> Lebo's father is YEC - she
>> didn't have any axe to grind. Her book is basically the incredibly sad
>> story of how much damage was done in Dover because of the case.
>
> But not by Behe, I trust? Behe basically used the witness stand as a
> bully pulpit for the scientific side of ID.
>
> The damage was done by the school board, which shamelessly overplayed
> its hand, forcing the teachers to make public statements with which
> they disagreed.
>

Completely wrong, in the end the teachers didn't have to read anything,
the school board did it themselves. The statement was only read once
since they got sued right away.

I actually have more sympathy for the school board than for Behe, the
DI, and the law firm Thomas Moore Law Center. The YEC members of the
school board were pawns in the hands of the ID crowd that wanted to put
on a court challenge. The ID proponents should take the responsibility
of what happened. They don't seem to really care what happened to the
town however - just very concerned about what it did to their reputation.

I didn't think it needed one but since you insist: to me it's a trivial
difference that Behe didn't actually say 'they aren't good enough'. His
assessment of the material was based on ignorance as he didn't read the
articles in question. Behe, like almost all creationists, spends a great
deal of time in attack mode but never offers a better explanation for
the evidence for evolution. His recent lecture is further proof of that.

Mark

[pnyikos]

On Nov 16, 1:27 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/2012 9:44 AM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Nov 13, 9:27 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 11/12/2012 9:34 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> >>> On Nov 12, 7:12 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>> I'll try to produce a report shortly after. To satisfy Peter N. I'll try
> >>>> to be as unbiased as possible.
>
> >>> Thanks.
>
> >>>> The best way to do that is to fully
> >>>> acknowledge ones biases up front. To that end I'll admit that right now
> >>>> I think Behe is incompetent and delusional. My bias is based on accounts
> >>>> of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller &
> >>>> 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).
>
> >>> That accounts for it.  Hearsay from people with their own axes to
> >>> grind.  I've been over Behe's testimony very carefully, and he did
> >>> very well.
>
> >> Did you happen to read 'Devil in Dover'?
>
> > I have to admit that I did not, but unless Lebo totally divorced
> > herself from creationism, there was an axe to grind all right.
>
> How can you make that call without reading the book?

You know what YEC and OEC creationism is like.

'nuff said?

>
>
> >> Lebo's father is YEC - she
> >> didn't have any axe to grind. Her book is basically the incredibly sad
> >> story of how much damage was done in Dover because of the case.
>
> > But not by Behe, I trust?  Behe basically used the witness stand as a
> > bully pulpit for the scientific side of ID.
>
> > The damage was done by the school board, which shamelessly overplayed
> > its hand, forcing the teachers to make public statements with which
> > they disagreed.

My use of "forced" here is a holdover from my talk.abortion
participation: it only means that the teachers were under compulsion
to do it. That they didn't actually do it is beside the point.

> Completely wrong, >in the end the teachers didn't have to read anything,
> the school board did it themselves. The statement was only read once
> since they got sued right away.

That doesn't contradict what I meant. The school board overplayed its
hand in making the reading of the statement mandatory.

> I actually have more sympathy for the school board than for Behe, the
> DI, and the law firm Thomas Moore Law Center. The YEC members of the
> school board were pawns in the hands of the ID crowd that wanted to put
> on a court challenge.

This reminds me of the old Ron O *ipse dixit*: the school board were
mere "rubes," and it is "vile" to blame "rubes."

As for you, you lump Behe in together with the rest of the ID crowd,
and so I challenge you to answer:

1. In what way did the ID crowd manipulate the school board?

2. What role, if any, did Behe have in the manipulation?

>The ID proponents should take the responsibility
> of what happened.

As much as, or more than, or less than you should take responsibility
for the character assassination campaigns of Ron O?

>They don't seem to really care what happened to the
> town however - just very concerned about what it did to their reputation.

You're making this up as you go along, aren't you?

> > And Judge Jones's final judgment ("holding") lasting only about a full
> > page, was a far cry from the incredibly tendentious Opinion of the
> > Court.  Jones very sensibly enjoined the teaching of ID as an
> > ALTERNATIVE to evolution.  Behe, for one, only considers it to be a
> > supplement.
>
> >>> I can't say the same for the Opinion of the Court nor the tendentious
> >>> ACLU brief on which Judge Jones based over 90% of the Opinion of the
> >>> Court.  Behe was flagrantly misrepresented in at least one place.
>

> >>>http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...

>
> >> That document reads like a nitpicking exercise by sore losers with a
> >> persecution complex.
>
> > Even if it does seem that way to you, can you not look past that at
> > the factual errors [to use a value-neutral term] that it documents?
>
> >> This is the same outfit that deliberately caused
> >> the court case in the first place right?
>
> > Absolutely not.  The Dover school board acted on its own initiative,
> > and the "outfit" explicitly says elsewhere that it requested the
> > school board to change its policy, to no avail.

Funny, you didn't contradict this.

And yet, if you do not contradict it, everything you said up there is
in danger of collapsing like a house of cards.

> >>> If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
> >>> substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>

> >>>http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...

>
> >>>      One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> >>> transcript:
> >>>http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> >>> Peter Nyikos
>
> > No reply to this from you.
>
> I didn't think it needed one but since you insist: to me it's a trivial
> difference that Behe didn't actually say 'they aren't good enough'. His
> assessment of the material was based on ignorance as he didn't read the
> articles in question.

He made no assessment of the material beyond "These articles are
excellent articles I assume." His words were:

2 A. These articles are excellent articles I
3 assume. However, they do not address the
4 question that I am posing.
4 So it's not that
5 they aren't good enough. It's simply that they
6 are addressed to a different subject.

The questioner had more or less implied that they did NOT offer step-
by-step scenarios by asking:

24 Q. Is that your position today that these
25 articles aren't good enough, you need to see
1 a step-by-step description?

And then came what you see from Behe above. He HAD gone through eight
papers, and those certainly fit the description.

> Behe, like almost all creationists,

Behe is one only in Ron O's sense of "creationists." You and he make
interesting bedfellows.

> spends a great
> deal of time in attack mode but never offers a better explanation for
> the evidence for evolution.

You missed the distinction between "alternative" and "supplement" in
the part of my post that you passed through without a murmur.

> His recent lecture is further proof of that.

Which recent lecture? Were you present?

[pnyikos]

I'm calling your bluff. Tell me which pages of the Dover transcripts
justify this sweeping claim of yours.

> and the world got to see that there is no scientific side to ID.
>
> -John

There is to some parts, like the ID of directed panspermists in the
Crick-Orgel hypothesis which I have championed.

And Behe does mention it in _DBB_, but rather briefly, probably so as
not to alienate most of the buyers of the book.

But then, there is nothing that goes beyond the ethics of talk.origins
in that. You wouldn't want to have to justify everything Ron O does,
would you?

You didn't even want to address what I wrote below, and even Mark
Isaak gingerly picked his way through it.

> > The damage was done by the school board, which shamelessly overplayed
> > its hand, forcing the teachers to make public statements with which
> > they disagreed.
>
> > And Judge Jones's final judgment ("holding") lasting only about a full
> > page, was a far cry from the incredibly tendentious Opinion of the
> > Court.  Jones very sensibly enjoined the teaching of ID as an
> > ALTERNATIVE to evolution.  Behe, for one, only considers it to be a
> > supplement.
>
> > > > I can't say the same for the Opinion of the Court nor the tendentious
> > > > ACLU brief on which Judge Jones based over 90% of the Opinion of the
> > > > Court.  Behe was flagrantly misrepresented in at least one place.
>

> > > >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...

>
> > > That document reads like a nitpicking exercise by sore losers with

> > > persecution complex.
>
> > Even if it does seem that way to you, can you not look past that at
> > the factual errors [to use a value-neutral term] that it documents?
>
> > >This is the same outfit that deliberately caused
> > > the court case in the first place right?
>
> > Absolutely not.  The Dover school board acted on its own initiative,
> > and the "outfit" explicitly says elsewhere that it requested the
> > school board to change its policy, to no avail.
>
> > > > If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
> > > > substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>

> > > >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...

>
> > > >     One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> > > > transcript:
>
> > > >http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>

[Mark Buchanan]

On 11/16/2012 8:29 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Nov 16, 1:27 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 11/14/2012 9:44 AM, pnyikos wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Nov 13, 9:27 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 11/12/2012 9:34 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>>
>>>>> On Nov 12, 7:12 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>>> I'll try to produce a report shortly after. To satisfy Peter N. I'll try
>>>>>> to be as unbiased as possible.
>>
>>>>> Thanks.
>>
>>>>>> The best way to do that is to fully
>>>>>> acknowledge ones biases up front. To that end I'll admit that right now
>>>>>> I think Behe is incompetent and delusional. My bias is based on accounts
>>>>>> of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller &
>>>>>> 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).
>>
>>>>> That accounts for it. Hearsay from people with their own axes to
>>>>> grind. I've been over Behe's testimony very carefully, and he did
>>>>> very well.
>>
>>>> Did you happen to read 'Devil in Dover'?
>>
>>> I have to admit that I did not, but unless Lebo totally divorced
>>> herself from creationism, there was an axe to grind all right.
>>
>> How can you make that call without reading the book?
>
> You know what YEC and OEC creationism is like.
>
> 'nuff said?

No, you made an accusation - time to back that accusation up. Who cares
what Lebo actually believes, she was a reporter for a local paper.
Either she did her job well or not. Your uninformed opinion is worthless.

See comments at the end.

Behe argues - endlessly - that naturalistic evolution is 'not up to the
task' of producing anything significant. There is either natural or
super-natural causes. Super-natural causes is creationism in terms of
origins. What other option is there?

>
>> spends a great
>> deal of time in attack mode but never offers a better explanation for
>> the evidence for evolution.
>
> You missed the distinction between "alternative" and "supplement" in
> the part of my post that you passed through without a murmur.
>
>
>> His recent lecture is further proof of that.
>
> Which recent lecture? Were you present?
>

The lecture that this thread is all about. You could review the posts to
find the link to my comments on it. The entire event was explicitly
theistic as well.

>> Mark
>>
>>
>>
>>> Is it the case that your mind is made up, and you don't want to be
>>> confused with the facts? If so, you would do well to run whatever you
>>> post here by a third party whom you trust to be objective about it.
>>
> Peter Nyikos
>

We would not be talking about Dover at all without the DI getting
involved - something you seem determined not to acknowledge. Behe is
complicit as an active, prominent participant in the whole affair. So
what if the school board didn't follow instructions explicitly. The DI
got what they wanted - a high profile court case. Besides, if the
statement wasn't read, the court case would never have happened.

Mark

[pnyikos]

On Nov 15, 8:12 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Nov 14, 9:17 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 13, 7:52 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Nov 12, 8:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
> > > > substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>
> > > >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...
> > > > One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> > > > transcript:http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> > > > Peter Nyikos

Unable to deal with the facts related above, Ron O went into one of
his usual *ad hominem* attacks:

> > > Is this the same Peter Nyikos that prevaricates about why he doesn't
> > > belong on the By Their Fruits list by deleting and running from the
> > > explanation of him supporting the ID scam and being a Behe disciple?
>
> > The explanation was totally bogus. My true opinions on ID and Behe can
> > be found in my replies to this thread, to less biased people than
> > yourself -- and that includes every thread participant besides
> > yourself.
>
> What about the part of your post that you snipped out with out marking
> your SNIPs?

If you think it is relevant, go ahead and repost it in your reply.

[snip broken record routine by you]

> > And here is something more about my opinions on ID, expressed on
> > another thread where I talked about you, now no longer behind your
> > back:
>
> Only a scum bag would lie behind someones back

Aren't you glad, then, that I didn't lie about you?

> If you have a beef with me post it to me

People deserve to know what you are really like. If I post it in
reply to you, very few people are apt to read it because almost
everybody got bored by our back-and-forth long ago.

> not in some thread that I am
> not even participating in.  What kind of degenerate loser are you?
>
>
>
> > [QUOTE:]
> > Some of Ron's opinion of *me* is based on the fact that I
> > support the idea of the panspermists being the source of ID in the
> > first prokaryotes, with which they seeded earth. That the immediate
> > origin of earth life is due to panspermists, not homegrown
> > abiogenesis, is what Ray has been referring to as my "DI"
> > hypothesis.
>
> This is false.

It's the only way in which I am at all an ID supporter.

> As stated above it is Nyikos' support for the ID scam
> artists

Nonexistent.

> and his being a Behe disciple that is the basis of my opinion
> of Nyikos.

Since I am not, and never was, at all like a Behe "disciple", your
opinion is utterly basless.

>
> Nyikos did bring up his stupid panspermist junk, but that was not the
> issue and he knows it.  How many times did Nyikos lie about never
> getting an explanation of the bait and switch ID scam?

Never, since you never proved that there has been any bait since
2004. You keep posting reams and reams about what you call "the
switch scam" that I've nicknamed, "the sound of one hand clapping."

[snip usual ranting]

> > This "ID" hypothesis is a separate, though related, issue, one which
> > has marked me in Ron O's mind as being an "ID promoter".
> > [UNQUOTE]
>
> Who kept denying what was written by the ID perps

Didn't you mean to say, "Who kept denying what the omniscient Ron O
has made into a broken record routine?" ?

You just kept stupidly posting the same old quotes, over and over
again, and calling me a liar and insane for not agreeing that they
constituted proof that the DI was claiming to have their brand of ID
science in a form ready to teach in the public schools as an
ALTERNATIVE to evolution!

Funny how even Robert Camp, who insults me when he is not ignoring me,
agreed that there was no proof. Why didn't you call him a liar and
insane, huh?

> in order to claim
> that they were not running the bait and switch?  You lied and
> prevaricated about the issue for nearly a year and you can't even be
> honest about what you were lying about.

The above statement has no basis in reality, except as projection by
you.

>
>
> > > I guess it is apparent why he would manipulate the post like that and
> > > run away in denial.  Sad, just sad.
>
> > It would be if it were true that you aren't completely deluded about
> > me.
>
> How did you manipulate this post?

You have your own private meaning for "manipulate," which is unknown
to me and perhaps to everyone else but you. So go figure out the
answer yourself.

[allegations about the existence of undescribed lies, deleted]

> > > Behe admits that he is Catholic, and he only denies being a YEC type
> > > fundy creationist.
>
> > Also an OEC type fundie creationist.  He is no more one than the last
> > two Popes, the first of whom said that evolution is more than just a
> > hypothesis, and the present one who told the Pontifical Academy of
> > Sciences something related here:
>
> It doesn't matter and you know it.

I know it doesn't matter to YOU. Behe has always been a creationist
according to your definition.

> There are a lot of different types
> of creationists that Behe is not.  What matters is the type of
> creationist that he is.

He fits your definition of "creationist". End of story.

> Prevarication is just stupid as well as
> dishonest.

Are you pretending I actually denied that he was a creationist by your
definition?

> >http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-faith-and-science-needed-fo...
>
> > > He is also involved in other conservative
> > > religious political groups so there is pretty much no doubt that his
> > > ultimate intelligent designer is the God that he worships when he goes
> > > to Catholic mass.
>
> > "ultimate" refers to the creation of the universe.  If you go beyond
> > that, you go beyond the available evidence about Behe's position.
>
> Ultimate just refers to who Behe's intelligent designer is and it is
> the God of the Bible.

Not the God of the fundie interpretation of the Bible.

>
> > > Ridiculous denial about being a creationist is one
> > > of the things that makes the ID scam so dishonest.
>
> > Since you define "creationist" as anyone who believes in a creator,
> > even if only one of the individual human soul (while being a
> > contemporary of our universe instead of its creator), you are in no
> > position to call such denials "ridiculous".
>
> It fits and encompasses the various types of creationists.  Who is
> Behe's intelligent designer?  That makes him a creationist.

By your definition. We can agree on this much.

>
>
> > After all, they may be going by a very different definition, such as
> > the one used in the talk.origins FAQ.
>
> They only use that definition to lie about what they are

Are you alleging that "Anyone who doesn't adopt the Ron O definition
of creationist is lying when he denies being a creationist."?

> so that they
> can lie about their religious motivations to circumvent the Supreme
> Court ruling on creationism in the public schools.  Only a boob
> doesn't realize that at this point in time.

Are you in favor of disqualifying all people YOU call creationists
from teaching science?

No, that can't be right. So what is your point?

>
>
> > > What was the
> > > mission statement that Behe and the others signed up with the
> > > Discovery Institute under?
>
> > What makes you think Behe signed up with it in the first place?  He is
> > listed as a "fellow" which means nothing more than a source of
> > information for anyone wishing to pursue topics in which the DI is
> > interested. Minnich made that clear in his Dover testimony IIRC.
>
> Behe was one of the few founding members of the ID scam wing of the
> Discovery Institute.

Fallacy of begging the question ("scam wing").

See above about the sound of one hand clapping.

Peter Nyikos

[Ron O]

On Nov 16, 9:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Nov 15, 8:12 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 14, 9:17 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Nov 13, 7:52 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Nov 12, 8:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
> > > > > substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>
> > > > >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...
> > > > > One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> > > > > transcript:http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> > > > > Peter Nyikos
>
> Unable to deal with the facts related above, Ron O went into one of
> his usual *ad hominem* attacks:

Projection is so sad that I really wonder what Nyikos gets out of it?
What was my post about that Nyikos lied about with the assistance of
his post manipulation?

>
> > > > Is this the same Peter Nyikos that prevaricates about why he doesn't
> > > > belong on the By Their Fruits list by deleting and running from the
> > > > explanation of him supporting the ID scam and being a Behe disciple?
>
> > > The explanation was totally bogus. My true opinions on ID and Behe can
> > > be found in my replies to this thread, to less biased people than
> > > yourself -- and that includes every thread participant besides
> > > yourself.
>
> > What about the part of your post that you snipped out with out marking
> > your SNIPs?
>
> If you think it is relevant, go ahead and repost it in your reply.
>
> [snip broken record routine by you]

What a loser.

Here is what Nyikos snipped out defending the ID perps and and being a
Behe disciple:

QUOTE:

>The best way to do that is to fully
> acknowledge ones biases up front. To that end I'll admit that right now
> I think Behe is incompetent and delusional. My bias is based on accounts
> of his performance at the Dover trial (from 'Only A Theory' - Miller &
> 'The Devil in Dover' - Lebo).

That accounts for it. Hearsay from people with their own axes to
grind. I've been over Behe's testimony very carefully, and he did
very well.

I can't say the same for the Opinion of the Court nor the tendentious
ACLU brief on which Judge Jones based over 90% of the Opinion of the
Court. Behe was flagrantly misrepresented in at least one place.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=...

END QUOTE:

The only reason for deletinng it was so that Nyikos could make his
inane remarks and blow off reality again.

>
> > > And here is something more about my opinions on ID, expressed on
> > > another thread where I talked about you, now no longer behind your
> > > back:
>
> > Only a scum bag would lie behind someones back
>
> Aren't you glad, then, that I didn't lie about you?

It wasn't the truth was it?

Lying is when you don't tell the truth. Demonstrate that it was the
truth. Why didn't you do that? Why lie about lying?

>
> > If you have a beef with me post it to me
>
> People deserve to know what you are really like. If I post it in
> reply to you, very few people are apt to read it because almost
> everybody got bored by our back-and-forth long ago.

Uh, Nyikos why post something relevant to me where I am not likely to
see it? Something stupid and dishonest that you are lying about? The
only reason why you got "bored" with the back and forth is because you
had nothing to come back with. Face reality and stop lying.

>
> > not in some thread that I am
> > not even participating in. What kind of degenerate loser are you?
>
> > > [QUOTE:]
> > > Some of Ron's opinion of *me* is based on the fact that I
> > > support the idea of the panspermists being the source of ID in the
> > > first prokaryotes, with which they seeded earth. That the immediate
> > > origin of earth life is due to panspermists, not homegrown
> > > abiogenesis, is what Ray has been referring to as my "DI"
> > > hypothesis.
>
> > This is false.
>
> It's the only way in which I am at all an ID supporter.

What were you doing in the material that you snipped out? What are
you doing when you try promote Behe's IC claptrap? What are you doing
when you lie about never getting a description of the bait and switch
scam and you lie about what the ID perps have been doing for years?
All that has nothing to do with panspermia.

>
> > As stated above it is Nyikos' support for the ID scam
> > artists
>
> Nonexistent.

Lying is so stupid in this case that your delusional fantasy world has
to a pretty tight space for you to live in.

>
> > and his being a Behe disciple that is the basis of my opinion
> > of Nyikos.
>
> Since I am not, and never was, at all like a Behe "disciple", your
> opinion is utterly basless.

So you never tried to bogously defend Behe's IC claptrap and what his
testimony was in the trial? You never did all that bogus junk that
you had to run away from? What did Behe do after the Dover case with
respect to his astrology comments? Who prevaricated that requoting
his disposition testimony in Court was not Behe's testifying about the
issue? Why would you bogously defend Behe in that way if you were not
a Behe disciple? Who makes all the bogus claims to defend Behe? Who
could only come up with other bogus prevarication to defend the ID
perps and Behe for a year before giving up? Wasn't that all stupid?
Why did you debase yourself for all those months?

There is no doubt that you were a Behe disciple when you came back to
TO and that you resorted to stupid and dishonest ploys to defend
Behe. What are you doing when you claim that Behe is not a
creationist when you know what kind of creationist Behe is? Isn't
Behe the type of creationist that matters when discussing the IC
claptrap? What is Behe doing when he claims that the flagellum is IC
and that an intelligent designer is needed to make one? Who is Behe's
intelligent designer?

>

> > Nyikos did bring up his stupid panspermist junk, but that was not the
> > issue and he knows it. How many times did Nyikos lie about never
> > getting an explanation of the bait and switch ID scam?
>
> Never, since you never proved that there has been any bait since
> 2004. You keep posting reams and reams about what you call "the
> switch scam" that I've nicknamed, "the sound of one hand clapping."

"Never" doesn't mean the same thing to Nyikos as it does to sane and
honest people. When he says never he means that he consistently did
the dirty deeds that he is denying and is only saying never to
perpetrate the Big Lie type of discourse. Nyikos has to lie about
lying. He even knows that the ID perps are still running the bait and
switch scam. Who lied about me taking that quote out of context, but
could not tell anyone what context that he was talking about when I
reposted the entire Discovery Institute official statement on the
issue? You are just degenerate scum.

>
> [snip usual ranting]
>
> > > This "ID" hypothesis is a separate, though related, issue, one which
> > > has marked me in Ron O's mind as being an "ID promoter".
> > > [UNQUOTE]
>
> > Who kept denying what was written by the ID perps
>
> Didn't you mean to say, "Who kept denying what the omniscient Ron O
> has made into a broken record routine?" ?

Lying is just stupid. Why do it?

>
> You just kept stupidly posting the same old quotes, over and over
> again, and calling me a liar and insane for not agreeing that they
> constituted proof that the DI was claiming to have their brand of ID
> science in a form ready to teach in the public schools as an
> ALTERNATIVE to evolution!

What did you do? How did you keep denying what the quotes meant? Who
manipulated the quote and removed the part about public schools in
order to keep telling this lie? There was no doubt that the ID perps
wanted to teach the ID claptrap in the public schools. Lying about it
like this is just stupid.

I just used the By their Fruits thread to go back and look up a couple
of these old threads. I took these out of the Insane logic thread.

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:

http://www.discovery.org/a/4299

Isn't it sad that at one point Nyikos has to stoop to removing the
question and "No" answer to deny that the ID perps were talking about
the public schools?

As a bonus the first response to Nyikos' bogus Scottish verdict thread
had this about Nyikos' denial about getting a description of the bait
and switch.

QUOTE:
This is a post where I look back and find several of the examples of
what Nyikos is denying about ever getting the description of the bait
and switch scam that the ID perps have been running. He was lyiing
then and he is lying now.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/98d7769dfb82872b?hl=en
End QUOTE:

This is in response to Nyikos lying about not getting a description of
the bait and switch back in April 2011.

There is a summary of Nyikos' bogus efforts to defend the ID scam and
the reason for getting on the Fruits list Oct 2011.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/1b79ab72833a2e4e?hl=en

You can find posts that will get you just about any of Nyikos' bogus
deeds defending the ID perps there.

The QUOTE that Nyikos started to lie about after being exposed as such
degenerate scum in the Insane logic thread.

QUOTE:
Although Discovery Institute does not advocate requiring the teaching
of intelligent design in public schools, it does believe there is
nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific
theory of design in the classroom. In addition, the Institute opposes
efforts to persecute individual teachers who may wish to discuss the
scientific debate over design in an objective and pedagogically
appropriate manner.
END QUOTE:

http://www.discovery.org/a/3164

Who lied about me taking this quote out of context? Where is that
context?

>
> Funny how even Robert Camp, who insults me when he is not ignoring me,
> agreed that there was no proof. Why didn't you call him a liar and
> insane, huh?

Sick and delusional. Nyikos quote mined Camp to claim that Camp was
supporting his position. You can't make this junk up. When I
countered Nyikos' delusions by reposting Camp's entire statement.
Nyikos deleted everything Camp wrote after the "But" statement and
lied again about Camp supporting his position. Really, Camp made his
intial statement and then started his "But" statement with a capital B
and Nyikos deleted the entire "But" statement in order to continue to
lie about Camp supporting his position. Camp had employed the
rhetorical device of stating the opposing sides position and then
destroying it. Lying about what dishonest deeds that you have
committed is just stupid and dishonest. That Nyikos would be so
delusional to bring up Camp is so stupid that it has to be
delusional. Could anyone be that dishonest with themselves?

>
> > in order to claim
> > that they were not running the bait and switch? You lied and
> > prevaricated about the issue for nearly a year and you can't even be
> > honest about what you were lying about.
>
> The above statement has no basis in reality, except as projection by
> you.

Why lie about having a problem with projection? Who is lying right
now in your statement?

The link is above to a summary of your efforts to defend the Bait and
Switch scam up to Oct 2011. Review it and then try to project your
bogus behavior onto someone else. Projection just seems to be self
flagellation to me because the perpetrator likely has to confront why
he is projecting. Who had the insane logic? What was the Scottish
verdict on Nyikos? Who was the dirty debater? etc etc etc.

>
> > > > I guess it is apparent why he would manipulate the post like that and
> > > > run away in denial. Sad, just sad.
>
> > > It would be if it were true that you aren't completely deluded about
> > > me.
>
> > How did you manipulate this post?
>
> You have your own private meaning for "manipulate," which is unknown
> to me and perhaps to everyone else but you. So go figure out the
> answer yourself.

You snipped out the relevant material without marking your snips.
That is bogus post manipulation. It is bogus because the material
directly reflected on what you decided to lie about. You can't deny
it. I just requoted it above. Why even try to defend such bogus
junk? Lying about lying is stupid.

>
> [allegations about the existence of undescribed lies, deleted]

He means that he can't counter and this is the only way that he has to
lie to himself.

>
> > > > Behe admits that he is Catholic, and he only denies being a YEC type
> > > > fundy creationist.
>
> > > Also an OEC type fundie creationist. He is no more one than the last
> > > two Popes, the first of whom said that evolution is more than just a
> > > hypothesis, and the present one who told the Pontifical Academy of
> > > Sciences something related here:
>
> > It doesn't matter and you know it.
>
> I know it doesn't matter to YOU. Behe has always been a creationist
> according to your definition.

Behe is the type of creationist that matters for the ID scam. There
is no doubt about that.

>
> > There are a lot of different types
> > of creationists that Behe is not. What matters is the type of
> > creationist that he is.
>
> He fits your definition of "creationist". End of story.

Who is Behe's intelligent designer? End of story.

>
> > Prevarication is just stupid as well as
> > dishonest.
>
> Are you pretending I actually denied that he was a creationist by your
> definition?

What are you doing? Just because you can claim that you did not
specifically deny that Behe was a creationist that all your
prevarication about the issue was not dishonest? Lying to yourself is
just stupid? Why prevaricate about what type of creationist that Behe
is when you know that he is the type of creationist that matters for
what we are talking about? That is bogus and dishonest denial even if
you want to lie about it. There is no other reason for prevaricating
about what type of creationist Behe is. Name another reason. Who is
Behe's intelligent designer? Why prevaricate about it?

>
> > >http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-faith-and-science-needed-fo...
>
> > > > He is also involved in other conservative
> > > > religious political groups so there is pretty much no doubt that his
> > > > ultimate intelligent designer is the God that he worships when he goes
> > > > to Catholic mass.
>
> > > "ultimate" refers to the creation of the universe. If you go beyond
> > > that, you go beyond the available evidence about Behe's position.
>
> > Ultimate just refers to who Behe's intelligent designer is and it is
> > the God of the Bible.
>
> Not the God of the fundie interpretation of the Bible.

Isn't this just stupid denial? Behe's God is the God of the Bible.
Why does it matter if it isn't the fundie interpretation? Behe is a
creationist. His intelligent designer is the God of the Bible. He
obviously believes that for religious reasons.

>
> > > > Ridiculous denial about being a creationist is one
> > > > of the things that makes the ID scam so dishonest.
>
> > > Since you define "creationist" as anyone who believes in a creator,
> > > even if only one of the individual human soul (while being a
> > > contemporary of our universe instead of its creator), you are in no
> > > position to call such denials "ridiculous".
>
> > It fits and encompasses the various types of creationists. Who is
> > Behe's intelligent designer? That makes him a creationist.
>
> By your definition. We can agree on this much.

It is just reality, not my definition. Behe's intelligent designer is
the God of the Bible. You can't change that by claiming that he isn't
a creationist by some other definition. Denial is just delusional.

>
> > > After all, they may be going by a very different definition, such as
> > > the one used in the talk.origins FAQ.
>
> > They only use that definition to lie about what they are
>
> Are you alleging that "Anyone who doesn't adopt the Ron O definition
> of creationist is lying when he denies being a creationist."?

If he specifically notes that he is talking about fundy creationists
he isn't lying, but that doesn't mean that he isn't prevaricating
about who his designer is. The ID perps lie about who there designer
is and they do it by claiming that they are not the fundy types of
creationist, when they know that their designer is the God of the
Bible. What is the issue? It isn't whether the ID perps are fundies
even though guys like Kenyon are YEC, it is their motivation for being
ID perps in the first place, and who is their intelligent designer?
What was the mission statement? What was their initial logo for the
ID scam wing of the Discovery Institute? It is just a simple fact
that they are creationists in the sense that matters. You can't deny
that by claiming that they are not fundie creationists.

>
> > so that they
> > can lie about their religious motivations to circumvent the Supreme
> > Court ruling on creationism in the public schools. Only a boob
> > doesn't realize that at this point in time.
>
> Are you in favor of disqualifying all people YOU call creationists
> from teaching science?
>
> No, that can't be right. So what is your point?

Why change the subject? Where did this come from and how does it
counter the fact that the ID perps lie about being the type of
creationists that they are in order to circumvent the court rulings?

Do you even know what you are arguing?

Why would what I claim exclude anyone from teaching science? What
does religion have to do with being a good science teacher? Is Miller
a good science teacher? Most of the Dover teachers that refused to do
the boards bidding were Christians. Just like anything else there are
dishonest creationists and honest creationist. It is the ability and
integrity of the teacher that matters, not whether or not they are a
creationist.

Your denial is so sad that why not self-evaluate what you have done in
the last month? What kind of low life scum bag would do what you have
done and still post this type of stupidity?

>
> > > > What was the
> > > > mission statement that Behe and the others signed up with the
> > > > Discovery Institute under?
>
> > > What makes you think Behe signed up with it in the first place? He is
> > > listed as a "fellow" which means nothing more than a source of
> > > information for anyone wishing to pursue topics in which the DI is
> > > interested. Minnich made that clear in his Dover testimony IIRC.
>
> > Behe was one of the few founding members of the ID scam wing of the
> > Discovery Institute.
>
> Fallacy of begging the question ("scam wing").

He was a founding member and lying to yourself in this fashion is just
stupid and dishonest. Was the teach ID scam legitimate? Who ran the
teach ID scam for years, and is still claiming to be able to teach the
scientific theory of ID in the public schools? Was there ever any ID
science worth teaching? Who has run the bait and switch on every rube
that has ever stepped up and wanted to teach the bogus ID science in
the public schools? Isn't the answer "the ID scam wing of the
Discovery Institute?"

Here is an extended quote from a past thread on ID. The rest of that
post should be enough for anyone.

START EXTENDED QUOTE:
Even the person most deeply in denial (Peter Nyikos) was finally
convinced that the Discovery Institute claimed to have the ID science
to teach in the public schools by this article on the subject.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010414020851/http://law.gonzaga.edu/peop...

Teaching the Controversy:
Darwinism, Design and the Public School Science Cirriculum
David K. DeWolf, Stephen C. Meyer, and Mark E Deforrest.

QUOTE:
9. Conclusion
Local school boards and state education officials are frequently
pressured to avoid teaching the controversy regarding biological
origins. Indeed, many groups, such as the National Academy of
Sciences, go so far as to deny the existence of any genuine scientific
controversy about the issue.(162) Nevertheless, teachers should be
reassured that they have the right to expose their students to the
problems as well as the appeal of Darwinian theory. Moreover, as the
previous discussion demonstrates, school boards have the authority to
permit, and even encourage, teaching about design theory as an
alternative to Darwinian evolution--and this includes the use of
textbooks such as Of Pandas and People that present evidence for the
theory of intelligent design.
The controlling legal authority, the Supreme Court's decision in
Edwards v. Aguillard, explicitly permits the inclusion of alternatives
to Darwinian evolution so long as those alternatives are based on
scientific evidence and not motivated by strictly religious concerns.
Since design theory is based on scientific evidence rather than
religious assumptions, it clearly meets this test. Including
discussions of design in the science curriculum thus serves an
important goal of making education inclusive, rather than
exclusionary. In addition, it provides students with an important
demonstration of the best way for them as future scientists and
citizens to resolve scientific controversies--by a careful and fair-
minded examination of the evidence.
END QUOTE:

The bait and switch continues to go down because the Discovery
Institute is still claiming to have the science of intelligent design
to teach in the public schools on their web page in their official
stance on the subject.

http://www.discovery.org/a/3164
END EXTENDED QUOTE:

https://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/e69993742059cfb3?hl=en

>
> See above about the sound of one hand clapping.
>

Snipping and running is just stupid. Self-evaluate this post and what
you have snipped out. You can only do yourself some good. Use the
link back to all your bogus deeds in this matter and ask yourself what
kind of low life scum bag would write what he just did in order to
deny reality.

Ron Okimoto

> Peter Nyikos

[J.J. O'Shea]

On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:34:03 -0500, pnyikos wrote
(in article
<c42bd2d7-3481-4371...@a14g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>):

>>  As stated above it is Nyikos' support for the ID scam
>> artists
>
> Nonexistent.

BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

[Mark Buchanan]

On Sunday, November 11, 2012 9:02:37 PM UTC-5, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
>
> the next week. See:
>
>
>
> http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>
>
>
> I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
>
> could be fun.
>
>
>
> Mark

Moran's blog about Thursday evening:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-2.html#more

Mark

[Robert Camp]

On Nov 19, 10:27 am, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-2.ht...

Don't forget Part 1,

http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-1.html#more

...in which we learn that Behe rejects Margulis' endosymbiotic theory,

"My respect soon dropped another notch when he said that he didn't
accept endosymbiosis as the evolutionary explanation for the origin of
mitochondria. Behe believes that evolution cannot explain how a
primitive bacterium and a primitive eukaryotic cell could have co-
adapted to form a cell with mitochondria. I think he means that
mitochondria might have come from bacteria but that God had to tinker
with the system quite a bit in order to come up with the required
mutations for symbiosis."

The evidence for EST is so strong, one has to wonder why Behe would
bother to take issue with this when he accepts so much of evolutionary
biology. Moran has his own speculations in that last sentence. I
suppose it's possible Behe is still committed, to some degree, to
front-loading. Or maybe the apparently "happy accident" nature of EST
just gives anyone with an anthropocentric view of the universe the
heebie-jeebies.

RLC

[Mark Buchanan]

Thanks for that link - didn't check the Sandwalk on Sunday as I was recovering from doing an activity on Saturday that was not meant for anyone over 40 - let alone 50. (My son loved it however and an adult had to go along for the experience.)

I would have liked to crash the afternoon session but found out about it after that fact.

No wonder Moran didn't bother asking any more questions on Thursday night.

Mark

[John Stockwell]

All of it. Behe makes a poor showing. Defending using "Of Pandas and
People" as a textbook may be the biggest howler. Pointing out that his
definition of science would include astrology is another one.

Behe made a very poor showing. I don't think that he is as stupid as
he came off appearing, but he really did did a deep hole for himself.

He seems to have no understanding of science whatsoever.

-John

[John Stockwell]

Basically Crick and Orgel said it all in 1973. It's a dead subject.

>
>
>
> And Behe does mention it in _DBB_, but rather briefly, probably so as
>
> not to alienate most of the buyers of the book.

Who cares? DBB was not peer reviewed. DBB was more than half philosophizing.

>
>
>
> But then, there is nothing that goes beyond the ethics of talk.origins
>
> in that. You wouldn't want to have to justify everything Ron O does,
>
> would you?

I have no interest in Ron O.

>
>
>
> You didn't even want to address what I wrote below, and even Mark
>
> Isaak gingerly picked his way through it.
>
>
>
> > > The damage was done by the school board, which shamelessly overplayed
>
> > > its hand, forcing the teachers to make public statements with which
>
> > > they disagreed.
>
> >
>
> > > And Judge Jones's final judgment ("holding") lasting only about a full
>
> > > page, was a far cry from the incredibly tendentious Opinion of the
>
> > > Court. �Jones very sensibly enjoined the teaching of ID as an
>
> > > ALTERNATIVE to evolution. �Behe, for one, only considers it to be a
>
> > > supplement.

Teaching ID is a waste of time. If you are teaching using _Of pandas
and People_ then you are teaching creationism.

>
> >
>
> > > > > I can't say the same for the Opinion of the Court nor the tendentious
>
> > > > > ACLU brief on which Judge Jones based over 90% of the Opinion of the
>
> > > > > Court. �Behe was flagrantly misrepresented in at least one place.
>
> >
>
> > > > >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...
>
> >
>
> > > > That document reads like a nitpicking exercise by sore losers with
>
> > > > persecution complex.
>
> >
>
> > > Even if it does seem that way to you, can you not look past that at
>
> > > the factual errors [to use a value-neutral term] that it documents?
>
> >
>
> > > >This is the same outfit that deliberately caused
>
> > > > the court case in the first place right?
>
> >
>
> > > Absolutely not. �The Dover school board acted on its own initiative,
>
> > > and the "outfit" explicitly says elsewhere that it requested the
>
> > > school board to change its policy, to no avail.
>
> >
>
> > > > > If you really want to know how Behe's testimony went, there is no
>
> > > > > substitute for actually going over it yourself.
>
> >
>
> > > > >http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertr...
>
> >
>
> > > > > � � One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
>
> > > > > transcript:
>
> >
>
> > > > >http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> >
>
> > > No reply to this from you.
>
> >
>
> > > Is it the case that your mind is made up, and you don't want to be
>
> > > confused with the facts? �If so, you would do well to run whatever you
>
> > > post here by a third party whom you trust to be objective about it.
>
>
>
> Peter Nyikos

-John

[Paul J Gans]

Thanks for that. I also read part-1, obtained from the above
URL by deleting #more and changing the 2 to a 1.

Larry is quite right. It is almost impossible to do a dramatic
refutation in that sort of venue. The fact is that science,
especially evolution, cannot be talked about in 30 seconds with
at most two syllable words.

Result: evolution is mostly on the defensive in such venues. Now
when it comes to a venue such as the Dover trials, well then...

[jillery]

ISTM that's a problem of adjusting one's response to the audience. An
appropriate counterweight for that Toronto audience is a catchy
soundbite, not too insulting but reasonably pithy. Of course, such
one-liners come to me too late.

[Paul J Gans]

While I understand and agree with you, I'm not sure my copy of
"One Liners for All Occasions" is up to explaining evolution in
a pithy phrase or two.

[jillery]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:32:08 +0000 (UTC), Paul J Gans

Maybe a visual would be better. I loved when Ken Miller wore an
irreducibly complex tie-clip out of mousetrap parts.

[Mark Buchanan]

A question that might have been good in this situation would be:

Supposing that IC systems are only possible by a designer, would IC
systems that appear to us as nefarious also be attributed to the same
designer?

This is an old tactic, the ichneumonoidea was used in the 19th century
as a counter example to the 'wonderful' designs that nature is
supposedly filled with. The principle is the same, Behe's unnamed
designer is supposed to help evolution along when evolution can't come
up with the needed system. Would a benevolent designer also help the
nastier side of nature?

If nothing else asking this question should make the devotees think
twice about how nice their designer god is - if Behe is right.

Moran posted #3 today:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-3.html

From the last paragraph:

"It's just not that easy for the average person to refute the arguments
of people like Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells. That's why we need to
teach the controversy in school and show why their science is flawed."

Mark

[Robert Camp]

On Nov 20, 2:47 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/20/2012 1:32 PM, Paul J Gans wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 01:56:10 +0000 (UTC), Paul J Gans
> >> <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>

> >>> Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Sunday, November 11, 2012 9:02:37 PM UTC-5, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> >>>>> For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
>
> >>>>> the next week. See:
>
> >>>>>http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>
> >>>>> I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
>
> >>>>> could be fun.
>
> >>>>> Mark
>
> >>>> Moran's blog about Thursday evening:
>

> >>>>http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-2.ht...

Couldn't disagree with him more. We need to teach critical thinking,
some basic philosophy, and a lot more and better science. But "Teach
the controversy?" That's an open door to all sorts of tripe.

RLC

[Paul J Gans]

Yup. It isn't easy at all. We have folks here who think that
Behe has good points.

As for teaching the controversy, the first comment on Moran's
page reads:

"But who will teach the teachers first? It's a safe bet that
only a small proportion of them have a sufficient understanding
of good science."

Which (note thread tie) the stance of Mario Rubio on the age of
the earth is so important.

[jillery]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:43:24 -0500, Mark Buchanan

IMO such an argument is easily refuted. From the POV of the
ichneumonoidea, there's nothing nasty about what it's doing. And it's
just as reasonable to suppose an omni-everything creator has a
perfectly valid reason to create them as it did to create their hosts,
without getting superficially sentimental about what is 'nasty'.

[pnyikos]

On Nov 19, 1:52 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 19, 10:27 am, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sunday, November 11, 2012 9:02:37 PM UTC-5, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> > > For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
>
> > > the next week. See:
>
> > >http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>
> > > I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
>
> > > could be fun.
>
> > > Mark
>
> > Moran's blog about Thursday evening:
>
> >http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-2.ht...
>
> Don't forget Part 1,
>

> http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-1.ht...

>
> ...in which we learn that Behe rejects Margulis' endosymbiotic theory,

No, we do not. Moran is speaking out of both sides of his mouth
below.

> "My respect soon dropped another notch when he said that he didn't
> accept endosymbiosis as the evolutionary explanation for the origin of
> mitochondria. Behe believes that evolution cannot explain how a
> primitive bacterium and a primitive eukaryotic cell could have co-
> adapted to form a cell with mitochondria.

There is discordance between these two sentences. Behe DOES respect
the theory of the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria, in contrast to
the first sentence. He devotes over a page of praise to it in DBB.
The second sentence seems to acknowledge this, and only talks about
the question of how the endosymbiosis got to be successful.

And that is a very difficult and fascinating question. Many of the
genes for mitochondria are actually now in the cell nucleus. Indeed
it is only through the transfer of crucial genetic material to the
cell nucleus that mitochondria are actually able to maintain a
different genetic code than the cell as a whole.

> I think he means that
> mitochondria might have come from bacteria but that God had to tinker
> with the system quite a bit in order to come up with the required
> mutations for symbiosis."

Speculation, but plausible speculation. And it again contrasts with
the sentence which describes how Moran *allegedly* lowered his respect
for Behe.

Good night, y'all; it's time to hit the sack. I hope I can spare some
time for this thread tomorrow, before I go on my Thanksgiving posting
break. There are several loose ends needing to be tied up, and it is
only because I have been so busy elsewhere that they are still loose.

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

PS Camp's speculations below are hardly worth commenting on; he is
building castles in the air.

[Robert Camp]

It's been a while since I read that silly book, but I'm guessing his
"praise" was more likely in the context of, "See, these apparently
crazy ideas eventually gained acceptance, why not Intelligent Design?"
Post the appropriate context for his feelings about EST and I'll be
glad to admit my error, should that be the case.

In any case, unless Moran mistook a "yes" for a "no," it seems that
even if Behe did at one time accept EST he's changed his mind in the
interim.

> The second sentence seems to acknowledge this, and only talks about
> the question of how the endosymbiosis got to be successful.

The second sentence in no way mitigates the suggested denial of EST.

> And that is a very difficult and fascinating question.  Many of the
> genes for mitochondria are actually now in the cell nucleus.  Indeed
> it is only through the transfer of crucial genetic material to the
> cell nucleus that mitochondria are actually able to maintain a
> different genetic code than the cell as a whole.

None of which is relevant.

> > I think he means that
> > mitochondria might have come from bacteria but that God had to tinker
> > with the system quite a bit in order to come up with the required
> > mutations for symbiosis."
>
> Speculation, but plausible speculation.

There is nothing plausible about a speculative inference to magic
(assuming "plausible" is meant to imply some measure of empirical
credibility).

> And it again contrasts with
> the sentence which describes how Moran *allegedly* lowered his respect
> for Behe.

Again, it does no such thing, unless there is something in
endosymbiotic theory that includes extrapolation to supernatural
influence. Somehow, I don't think that's what Margulis had in mind,

"Anthropocentric writers with a proclivity for the miraculous and a
commitment to divine intervention tend to attribute historical
appearances like eyes, wings, and speech to 'irreducible
complexity' (as, for example, Michael Behe does in his book, Darwin's
Black Box) or 'ingenious design' (in the tradition of William Paley
who used the functional organs of animals as proof for the existence
of God). Here we feel no need for supernatural hypotheses. Rather, we
insist that today, more than ever, it is the growing scientific
understanding of how new traits appear, ones even as complex as the
vertebrate eye, that has triumphed" (Acquiring Genomes, p. 202).

RLC

<snip stuff nobody cares about>

[Roger Shrubber]

You prevaricate with the obvious. Endosymbiotic theory does not
include that some supernatural entity or designer retrofit a
primitive bacterium into an incipient eukaryotic cell. The
presumption is that this was a fully naturalistic event.
Behe's rejection of it as a naturalistic event is his non acceptance
of endosymbiotic theory.

> And that is a very difficult and fascinating question. �Many of the
> genes for mitochondria are actually now in the cell nucleus. �Indeed
> it is only through the transfer of crucial genetic material to the
> cell nucleus that mitochondria are actually able to maintain a
> different genetic code than the cell as a whole.

And? The mechanisms of this are clear and evidence of it are present
in comparison of different mitochondrial genomes. It is evidenced
as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
a well understood process demonstrates his failure to include
current biochemical and genetic knowledge.

> > I think he means that
> > mitochondria might have come from bacteria but that God had to tinker
> > with the system quite a bit in order to come up with the required
> > mutations for symbiosis."

> Speculation, but plausible speculation. �And it again contrasts with
> the sentence which describes how Moran *allegedly* lowered his respect
> for Behe.

No, it doesn't. Behe makes a great deal of noise about finding what
he claims are challenges for evolutionary science and then proceeds
to remain apparently ignorant of the resolution to his challenges.
Chasing down all of his omissions is a fool's errand. Enough have been
documented to put his "scholarship" in disrepute. It's far too easy
to fool an amateur with a little knowledge by painting things as so
vastly complex. Behe is justly scorned by his professional
colleagues.

[pnyikos]

On Nov 21, 12:37�am, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 20, 8:27 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> > On Nov 19, 1:52 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Nov 19, 10:27 am, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
>
> > > > On Sunday, November 11, 2012 9:02:37 PM UTC-5, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> > > > > For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
>
> > > > > the next week. See:
>
> > > > >http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>
> > > > > I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
>
> > > > > could be fun.
>
> > > > > Mark
>
> > > > Moran's blog about Thursday evening:
>
> > > >http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-2.ht...
>
> > > Don't forget Part 1,
>
> > >http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-1.ht...
>
> > > ...in which we learn that Behe rejects Margulis' endosymbiotic theory,
>
> > No, we do not. Moran is speaking out of both sides of his mouth
> > below.
>
> > > "My respect soon dropped another notch when he said that he didn't
> > > accept endosymbiosis as the evolutionary explanation for the origin of
> > > mitochondria. Behe believes that evolution cannot explain how a
> > > primitive bacterium and a primitive eukaryotic cell could have co-
> > > adapted to form a cell with mitochondria.

See pp. 188-9 of _DBB_ for what I am talking about below.

> > There is discordance between these two sentences. Behe DOES respect
> > the theory of the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria, in contrast to
> > the first sentence. He devotes over a page of praise to it in DBB.

> It's been a while since I read that silly book, but I'm guessing his
> "praise" was more likely in the context of, "See, these apparently
> crazy ideas eventually gained acceptance, why not Intelligent Design?"

If your recollection of the rest of this book is as seriously
distorted as this, it's high time you re-read it.

Behe does mention the skepticism with which Margulis's idea was first
greeted, but he does NOT make any connection with lack of acceptance
of ID. The only contrast he makes is between the general acceptance
of endosymbiosis today, and the lack of acceptance of many of
Margulis's other ideas about symbiosis.

The REAL use to which he puts this theme is that even if all of
Margulis's theories were to gain acceptance, they still would not
explain the origins of the complex biochemical systems of which the
rest of the book talks, because we are talking about the joining of
two fully functional systems.

> Post the appropriate context for his feelings about EST and I'll be
> glad to admit my error, should that be the case.

Sorry, the only on-line version I've seen omits most of the book,
including all of pages 188 and 189. The url for it is near the end of
this post.

> In any case, unless Moran mistook a "yes" for a "no,"

My, my, such rudimentary reasoning from you, of all people! Who would
have thunk it?

> it seems that
> even if Behe did at one time accept EST he's changed his mind in the
> interim.

The disharmony between this claim and your claim below about a
"speculative inference to magic" should be obvious to any talk.origins
regular with an objective mind.

Paraphrasing a famous ancient Greek, I'd appeal to Roger Camp sober
against Robert Camp drunk, but I can't quite figure out which is
which.

> > The second sentence seems to acknowledge this, and only talks about
> > the question of how the endosymbiosis got to be successful.
>
> The second sentence in no way mitigates the suggested denial of EST.

Nor does it in any way support it.

> > And that is a very difficult and fascinating question. Many of the
> > genes for mitochondria are actually now in the cell nucleus. Indeed
> > it is only through the transfer of crucial genetic material to the
> > cell nucleus that mitochondria are actually able to maintain a
> > different genetic code than the cell as a whole.
>
> None of which is relevant.

What are your biochemical credentials for making that statement?

> > > I think he means that
> > > mitochondria might have come from bacteria but that God had to tinker
> > > with the system quite a bit in order to come up with the required
> > > mutations for symbiosis."
>
> > Speculation, but plausible speculation.
>
> There is nothing plausible about a speculative inference to magic

Wrong referent. I was talking about the sentence as a whole, and what
I call speculation is the imputing of claims of supernatural
intervention to Behe.

Where is your evidence that Behe was doing this?

More to the point, where is the concord in the discord between this
and the claim that Behe changed his mind in the interim?

> (assuming "plausible" is meant to imply some measure of empirical
> credibility).

The unintended irony is colossal. For a decade and a half now, I've
dealt with massive amounts of claims about what Behe said and did and
believed, without any *empirical* credibility.

> > And it again contrasts with
> > the sentence which describes how Moran *allegedly* lowered his respect
> > for Behe.
>
> Again, it does no such thing, unless there is something in
> endosymbiotic theory that includes extrapolation to supernatural
> influence. Somehow, I don't think that's what Margulis had in mind,

You can't even reason logically about how the two things are actually
connected, even granted that they are both on the mark.

> "Anthropocentric writers with a proclivity for the miraculous and a
> commitment to divine intervention tend to attribute historical
> appearances like eyes, wings, and speech to 'irreducible
> complexity' (as, for example, Michael Behe does in his book, Darwin's
> Black Box)

This is a grotesque misrepresentation of _DBB_. NOWHERE does he get
that far away from biochemistry. In fact he ignores any reasoning
from the gross structure of eyes to divine intervention. See pp.
16-22.

These pages CAN be found on line:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7L8mkq4jG6EC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

> or 'ingenious design' (in the tradition of William Paley
> who used the functional organs of animals as proof for the existence
> of God). Here we feel no need for supernatural hypotheses. Rather, we
> insist that today, more than ever, it is the growing scientific
> understanding of how new traits appear, ones even as complex as the
> vertebrate eye, that has triumphed" (Acquiring Genomes, p. 202).

Talk about the blind leading the blind! Did you actually READ _DBB_,
or only skim it in less than half an hour?

> RLC
>
> <snip stuff nobody cares about>

Close to half the stuff you snipped was by YOU.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Hardly. And by the way, if I were to insult you the way you've
insulted me, I could name two regulars who go back at least as far as
you in talk.origins, who would take that as more evidence that I go
out of my way to pick fights with people.

Without ever specifically referring to it, of course. It would all go
into one colossal blanket statement of the sort they never bother to
support with identifiable individual cases.

> Endosymbiotic theory does not
> include that some supernatural entity or designer retrofit a
> primitive bacterium into an incipient eukaryotic cell.

Nor is it incompatible with it. Supernatural intervention in the
subsequent biochemical changes does not preclude evolutionary
development.

By "subsequent biochemical changes" I refer to what happened between
the initial symbiosis and the present day status of mitochondria (also
of chloroplasts).

> The
> presumption is that this was a fully naturalistic event.

Sorry, that does not follow from the fact that the *methodology* of
*science* prescribes such a presumption. You need to look at the
context of Behe's whole apporach to "what actually happened."

> Behe's rejection of it as a naturalistic event is his non acceptance
> of endosymbiotic theory.

This could be pure GIGO for all I know. Where is your evidence for
it?

> > And that is a very difficult and fascinating question. Many of the
> > genes for mitochondria are actually now in the cell nucleus. Indeed
> > it is only through the transfer of crucial genetic material to the
> > cell nucleus that mitochondria are actually able to maintain a
> > different genetic code than the cell as a whole.
>
> And? The mechanisms of this are clear

Are you referring to the *evolutionary* mechanism of the intermediate
stages between free living prokaryotes and mitochondria?

If so, I would love to see it, including a scenario for the non-fatal
change in the genetic code.

> and evidence of it are present
> in comparison of different mitochondrial genomes.

Isn't that a bit like saying that the mechanism of evolution of
present day life from prokaryotes is clearly understood by a
comparison of different mammalian genomes?

> It is evidenced
> as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
> a well understood process

I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
Behe is supposedly denying.

> demonstrates his failure to include
> current biochemical and genetic knowledge.

I'm all ears about that current knowledge.

> > > I think he means that
> > > mitochondria might have come from bacteria but that God had to tinker
> > > with the system quite a bit in order to come up with the required
> > > mutations for symbiosis."

Read: the present day stage of endosymbiosis.

> > Speculation, but plausible speculation. And it again contrasts with
> > the sentence which describes how Moran *allegedly* lowered his respect
> > for Behe.
>
> No, it doesn't. Behe makes a great deal of noise about finding what
> he claims are challenges for evolutionary science and then proceeds
> to remain apparently ignorant of the resolution to his challenges.

I'm all ears. See above.

> Chasing down all of his omissions is a fool's errand. Enough have been
> documented to put his "scholarship" in disrepute.

Does this mean you will duck my questions above? I hope not.

> It's far too easy
> to fool an amateur with a little knowledge by painting things as so
> vastly complex. Behe is justly scorned by his professional
> colleagues.

Anyone can make such claims, and innumerable people do.

The trick is to back them up.

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

PS Below, you can see some of the stuff Camp claimed was "stuff no one
cares about".

[Mark Isaak]

On 11/26/12 1:01 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Nov 21, 3:22 am, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrub...@gmail.com> wrote:

> [...]

>> Endosymbiotic theory does not
>> include that some supernatural entity or designer retrofit a
>> primitive bacterium into an incipient eukaryotic cell.
>
> Nor is it incompatible with it. Supernatural intervention in the
> subsequent biochemical changes does not preclude evolutionary
> development.

*Every* theory is incompatible with it. Proposing supernatural
intervention tells nobody anything about anything. It does not even
mean anything. It is wholly out of place, not to mention infinitely
stupid, in any discussion that seeks to discover anything.

> By "subsequent biochemical changes" I refer to what happened between
> the initial symbiosis and the present day status of mitochondria (also
> of chloroplasts).
>
>> The
>> presumption is that this was a fully naturalistic event.
>
> Sorry, that does not follow from the fact that the *methodology* of
> *science* prescribes such a presumption. You need to look at the
> context of Behe's whole apporach to "what actually happened."

Except for "God did it", Behe has no approach to "what actually
happened". He only has an approach (fatally flawed several times over)
about what did not happen.

>> It is evidenced
>> as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
>> a well understood process
>
> I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
> Behe is supposedly denying.

Co-option, scaffolding, coevolution. But the most obvious process that
Behe is denying is the process that nobody has suggested yet. Just
because a process is not well understood does not mean it does not exist.

--
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

[Roger Shrubber]

On Nov 27, 7:01 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Nov 21, 3:22 am, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Nov 21, 2:27 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > On Nov 19, 1:52 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On Nov 19, 10:27 am, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com>
> > > > wrote:

> > > >http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-1.ht...
>
> > > > ...in which we learn that Behe rejects Margulis' endosymbiotic theory,
>
> > > No, we do not. Moran is speaking out of both sides of his mouth
> > > below.
>
> > > > "My respect soon dropped another notch when he said that he didn't
> > > > accept endosymbiosis as the evolutionary explanation for the origin of
> > > > mitochondria. Behe believes that evolution cannot explain how a
> > > > primitive bacterium and a primitive eukaryotic cell could have co-
> > > > adapted to form a cell with mitochondria.
>
> > > There is discordance between these two sentences. Behe DOES respect
> > > the theory of the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria, in contrast to
> > > the first sentence. He devotes over a page of praise to it in DBB.
> > > The second sentence seems to acknowledge this, and only talks about
> > > the question of how the endosymbiosis got to be successful.

> > You prevaricate with the obvious.

<snip distraction>

> > Endosymbiotic theory does not
> > include that some supernatural entity or designer retrofit a
> > primitive bacterium into an incipient eukaryotic cell.

> Nor is it incompatible with it.  Supernatural intervention in the
> subsequent biochemical changes does not preclude evolutionary
> development.
>
> By "subsequent biochemical changes" I refer to what happened between
> the initial symbiosis and the present day status of mitochondria (also
> of chloroplasts).

You prevaricate again.
If you accept endosymbiotic theory, you accept that it was an
event that did not require supernatural tinkering. This expands
to the issue of "theistic" evolution in general. You may have
personal beliefs that your particular god did tinker about to
achieve some specific outcomes, but if you think that supernatural
intervention was required you have rejected the modern synthesis.

The reporting indicates that Behe is now claiming that tinkering
by TheGreatDesigner was required. That is a rejection of
endosymbiotic theory full stop.

> > The
> > presumption is that this was a fully naturalistic event.

> Sorry, that does not follow from the fact that the *methodology* of
> *science* prescribes such a presumption.  You need to look at the
> context of Behe's whole apporach to "what actually happened."

No, I don't have to look at Behe's personal approach to science or
make special exceptions for him. I don't have to read his mind to
synthesize something from his many contradictory claims. It is
far far simpler.

If he claims it's just too implausible for mitochondria to have arisen
naturally so there must have been intervention, he is rejecting
endosymbiotic theory. You can put lipstick on that pig or put it
in a dress but it's still a pig. If you introduce an extra requirement
for an intervention by an unknown agent to produce the observed
outcome, you have rejected the naturalistic explanation.
Endosymbiotic Theory is a naturalistic explanation. So is the
Modern Synthesis.

> > Behe's rejection of it as a naturalistic event is his non acceptance
> > of endosymbiotic theory.

> This could be pure GIGO for all I know.  Where is your evidence for
> it?

> > > And that is a very difficult and fascinating question. Many of the
> > > genes for mitochondria are actually now in the cell nucleus. Indeed
> > > it is only through the transfer of crucial genetic material to the
> > > cell nucleus that mitochondria are actually able to maintain a
> > > different genetic code than the cell as a whole.

> > And? The mechanisms of this are clear

> Are you referring to the *evolutionary* mechanism of the intermediate
> stages between free living prokaryotes and mitochondria?

> If so, I would love to see it, including a scenario for the non-fatal
> change in the genetic code.

What do you need? There are bacteria that commonly live inside
other cells. There is variation in the mitochondrial genome with
more or less of the genome being transferred to the nucleus.
The mechanisms for evolving the code are well understood.
Don't play dumb or if you don't know these, don't play smart.

> > and evidence of it are present
> > in comparison of different mitochondrial genomes.

> Isn't that a bit like saying that the mechanism of evolution of
> present day life from prokaryotes is clearly understood by a
> comparison of different mammalian genomes?

No. It isn't. The above qualifies as a dumb question, moreso
for its misbegotten rhetorical intent. If you don't know about
bacterial endosymbiots, or about gene transfer between the
mitochondria and the nucleous, or about how the genetic
code evolves, stop pretending to have an informed opinion.

> > It is evidenced
> > as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
> > a well understood process

> I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
> Behe is supposedly denying.

Take an advanced course in biochemistry and in cell biology.

> > demonstrates his failure to include
> > current biochemical and genetic knowledge.

> I'm all ears about that current knowledge.

No you aren't. There are plenty of free reviews available on-line.
You've got some confused preconceptions that you've alluded to.

> > > > I think he means that
> > > > mitochondria might have come from bacteria but that God had to tinker
> > > > with the system quite a bit in order to come up with the required
> > > > mutations for symbiosis."

> Read: the present day stage of endosymbiosis.

> > > Speculation, but plausible speculation. And it again contrasts with
> > > the sentence which describes how Moran *allegedly* lowered his respect
> > > for Behe.

You think it's plausible that God had to tinker about with the
progenitors
of mitochondria to get them to work? And you think this with
effectively
no knowledge of mitochondrial evolution, bacterial endosymbiosis and
the biochemical mechanisms of gene transfer. Isn't that special.

> > No, it doesn't. Behe makes a great deal of noise about finding what
> > he claims are challenges for evolutionary science and then proceeds
> > to remain apparently ignorant of the resolution to his challenges.

> I'm all ears.  See above.

> > Chasing down all of his omissions is a fool's errand. Enough have been
> > documented to put his "scholarship" in disrepute.

> Does this mean you will duck my questions above?  I hope not.

It's too easy for you to ask ignorant question while pretending to
know
what you are talking about. If you could demonstrate some knowledge
it might be worth my while. But all you do is keep showing you know
very little about the topics you consider important. You don't
understand
biochemical catalysis as has been repeatedly demonstrated in
your rambling about ribosomes. You don't even understand the
core catalytic principles of how a ribosome works. Sorry but you
have to show an aptitude before you get the advanced lesson.

> > It's far too easy
> > to fool an amateur with a little knowledge by painting things as so
> > vastly complex. Behe is justly scorned by his professional
> > colleagues.

> Anyone can make such claims, and innumerable people do.
>
> The trick is to back them up.

That comment applies to your ill informed skepticism.

[pnyikos]

Those are big words coming from someone who weaseled his way past my
questions below.

But I'll answer anyway. Back when I first wrote about "axes", I was
going on your description of where your admitted bias comes from. One
of three things is true, beyond a reasonable doubt:

1. You have seriously misread what Miller and Lebo wrote.

2. "They have axes to grind" is one of the kindest words I can have
for someone who leaves you thinking that .

"Behe is incompetent and delusional."

3. You have a very low threshold for calling people to whom you are
opposed "incompetent and delusional."

I actually lean towards the third alternative, which hadn't occurred
to me at the time. Perhaps by "incompetent" you mean "Behe chose his
replies to loaded questions a mere 10 times as well as I would have if
I had been subjected to such intensive interrogation" and by
"delusional" you mean, "Behe is way too fond of his concept of IC, a
gimmick which has earned him many invitations from leading
universities."

> Who cares
> what Lebo actually believes, she was a reporter for a local paper.
> Either she did her job well or not. Your uninformed opinion is worthless.

Seeing firsthand how abysmal reporters can be when reporting anything
to do with science, I'd say she could have done her job "well" and
still distorted the proceedings enormously. Just look at what goes on
in talk.origins in thread after thread after thread.

I've fought the same distortions over and over and over again, and
the effect is like a stone dropped in a pool: some ripples for a
little while and then the pool is back to its old self again. Look at
how Robert Camp approvingly quoted one grotesque distortion with no
idea of what the truth was.

Look at how YOU distorted Behe's use of "weren't good enough" and when
I set the record straight, you breezed right past without making a
single comment:

> >>>>> One flagrantly misrepresented bit occurs on p.19 in the Day 12 PM
> >>>>> transcript:
> >>>>>http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12PM.pdf
>
> >>>>> Peter Nyikos
>
> >>> No reply to this from you.
>
> >> I didn't think it needed one but since you insist: to me it's a trivial
> >> difference that Behe didn't actually say 'they aren't good enough'. His
> >> assessment of the material was based on ignorance as he didn't read the
> >> articles in question.
>
> > He made no assessment of the material beyond "These articles are
> > excellent articles I assume." His words were:
>
> > 2 A. These articles are excellent articles I
> > 3 assume. However, they do not address the
> > 4 question that I am posing.
> > 4 So it's not that
> > 5 they aren't good enough. It's simply that they
> > 6 are addressed to a different subject.
>
> > The questioner had more or less implied that they did NOT offer step-
> > by-step scenarios by asking:
>
> > 24 Q. Is that your position today that these
> > 25 articles aren't good enough, you need to see
> > 1 a step-by-step description?
>
> > And then came what you see from Behe above. He HAD gone through eight
> > papers, and those certainly fit the description.
>

I moved the above from further down, because above is where the
comments are most relevant.

> >>>> Lebo's father is YEC - she
> >>>> didn't have any axe to grind. Her book is basically the incredibly sad
> >>>> story of how much damage was done in Dover because of the case.
>
> >>> But not by Behe, I trust?  Behe basically used the witness stand as a
> >>> bully pulpit for the scientific side of ID.

And if any damage was done by that, it had to do with the distortions
that emanated from the trial, starting with the abysmal Opinion of the
Court.

> >>> The damage was done by the school board, which shamelessly overplayed
> >>> its hand, forcing the teachers to make public statements with which
> >>> they disagreed.
>
> > My use of "forced" here is a holdover from my talk.abortion
> > participation: it only means that the teachers were under compulsion
> > to do it.  That they didn't actually do it is beside the point.

[...]

> >> I actually have more sympathy for the school board than for Behe, the
> >> DI, and the law firm Thomas Moore Law Center. The YEC members of the
> >> school board were pawns in the hands of the ID crowd that wanted to put
> >> on a court challenge.
>
> > This reminds me of the old Ron O *ipse dixit*: the school board were
> > mere "rubes," and it is "vile" to blame "rubes."
>
> > As for you, you lump Behe in together with the rest of the ID crowd,
> > and so I challenge you to answer:

And you weaseled your way past both challenges:

> > 1. In what way did the ID crowd manipulate the school board?
>
> > 2.  What role, if any, did Behe have in the manipulation?

What you wrote at the end did NOT support the words that led to my
challenge.

[huge snip to get to the point]

> We would not be talking about Dover at all without the DI getting
> involved - something you seem determined not to acknowledge.

Are you equating "getting involved" with "instigated," as your words
"pawns" and "wanted to put on a court challenge" clearly implied?

And where do you get the farfetched notion that Behe was "complicit"
in *wanting* a court challenge?

> Behe is
> complicit as an active, prominent participant in the whole affair.

"whole affair" = testimony once the OPPONENTS of the YEC crowd put it
to the court challenge that *they* wanted?

> So
> what if the school board didn't follow instructions explicitly. The DI
> got what they wanted - a high profile court case.

I'd like to see documentation that this is what they wanted.

But more importantly, I'd like to see documentation that this is what
BEHE wanted.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 17, 3:17 pm, "J.J. O'Shea" <try.not...@but.see.sig> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:34:03 -0500, pnyikos wrote
> (in article

> <c42bd2d7-3481-4371-99d2-4373df213...@a14g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>):

>
> >> As stated above it is Nyikos' support for the ID scam
> >> artists
>
> > Nonexistent.
>
> BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!

SOCRATES: Do you laugh, Polus? Well, this is
a new kind of refutation-when any one says
anything, instead of refuting him to laugh at him.
--Plato's "Gorgias," Jowett translation

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Thanks for revealing your propensity for ridiculous exaggeration.

> Behe makes a poor showing. Defending using "Of Pandas and
> People" as a textbook may be the biggest howler.

I do believe most readers will be grateful for the way you ducked the
challenge to produce a page number.

> Pointing out that his
> definition of science would include astrology is another one.

They will be ETERNALLY grateful to you for omitting the page number on
this one, because you are oh-so-conveniently ignoring the fact that he
wasn't talking about *present-day* astrology, but astrology as it
might have been practiced in the middle ages (and perhaps a bit
beyond, e.g. by Kepler).

By the way, it wasn't "pointed out" by him: it was wormed out of him
when the interrogator persisted after Behe first prefaced his comments
with other things that were much less conducive to distortion than
anything he could possibly say about astrology in reply to the
relentlessly leading questions.

> Behe made a very poor showing. I don't think that he is as stupid as
> he came off appearing, but he really did did a deep hole for himself.
>
> He seems to have no understanding of science whatsoever.

You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
responsible adult.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

This was actually a strawman. Getting a primitive bacterium into an
incipient eukaryotic cell isn't endosymbiosis of the form which is the
bone of contention. I doubt that this is where Behe had problems with
the evolutionary development of mitochondria.

And so, despite my opening sentence below, I quickly focused on the
part which I think occasions difficulties in the mind of Behe.

> > Nor is it incompatible with it.  Supernatural intervention in the
> > subsequent biochemical changes does not preclude evolutionary
> > development.
>
> > By "subsequent biochemical changes" I refer to what happened between
> > the initial symbiosis and the present day status of mitochondria (also
> > of chloroplasts).
>
> You prevaricate again.

There you go again with unsupported insults.

> If you accept endosymbiotic theory, you accept that it was an
> event that did not require supernatural tinkering.

Again you confuse methodology with the ding-an-sich. Endosymbiotic
theory does not go into the minutiae of all the myriad changes. It
provides a framework for events, all of which were "naturalistic" but
is agnostic about the immediate causes of the events.

Note, I said "agnostic" not "theistic". Are you of the opinion that
true science must be avowedly atheistic?

> This expands
> to the issue of "theistic" evolution in general. You may have
> personal beliefs that your particular god did tinker about to
> achieve some specific outcomes,

Not I, and nobody has been able to pin that charge on Behe AFAIK.

> but if you think that supernatural
> intervention was required you have rejected the modern synthesis.
>
> The reporting indicates that Behe is now claiming that tinkering
> by TheGreatDesigner was required.

Whose reporting? Moran's? Can you remember how he was morally
certain Julie Thomas was a creationist until long, relentless
interrogation revealed that she knew exactly what she was saying about
the scientific side of ID, without ever having to bring supernatural
agencies into the picture?

By the end of her all-too-brief stay in t.o., Moran had a grudging
respect for her and was even defending her against the more idiotic
claims about her.

Were you one of the ones he defended her against?

Got to run now. Duty calls.

Continued tomorrow, unless more urgent matters intervene.

Peter Nyikos

[J.J. O'Shea]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:23:18 -0500, pnyikos wrote
(in article
<84075edd-51df-4c27...@e25g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>):

It was new then. It's a lot older now.

And, again: BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!

[J.J. O'Shea]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:34:40 -0500, pnyikos wrote
(in article
<b386faaa-f784-426e...@y6g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>):

>> He seems to have no understanding of science whatsoever.
>
> You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
> responsible adult.

[Roger Shrubber]

You indulge in misleading ambiguity == prevaricate.
The documentation and explanation was supplied. Behe cannot
both accept endosymbiotic theory and think it is evidence for a
designer. You strange allusions to methodological naturalism
obfuscate the point. Accepting endosymbiotic theory is not a
claim of historicity that magic faeries did not tinker with things
in the past, but it does say they weren't required.

> There you go again with unsupported insults.
>
> > If you accept endosymbiotic theory, you accept that it was an
> > event that did not require supernatural tinkering.
>
> Again you confuse methodology with the ding-an-sich.   Endosymbiotic
> theory does not go into the minutiae of all the myriad changes.  It
> provides a framework for events, all of which were "naturalistic" but
> is agnostic about the immediate causes of the events.
>
> Note, I said "agnostic" not "theistic".  Are you of the opinion that
> true science must be avowedly atheistic?

A further tangent avoiding the obvious.

> > This expands
> > to the issue of "theistic" evolution in general. You may have
> > personal beliefs that your particular god did tinker about to
> > achieve some specific outcomes,

> Not I, and nobody has been able to pin that charge on Behe AFAIK.

> > but if you think that supernatural
> > intervention was required you have rejected the modern synthesis.

> > The reporting indicates that Behe is now claiming that tinkering
> > by TheGreatDesigner was required.

> Whose reporting?  Moran's?  Can you remember how he was morally
> certain Julie Thomas was a creationist until long, relentless
> interrogation revealed that she knew exactly what she was saying about
> the scientific side of ID, without ever having to bring supernatural
> agencies into the picture?
>
> By the end of her all-too-brief stay in t.o., Moran had a grudging
> respect for her and was even defending her against the more idiotic
> claims about her.
>
> Were you one of the ones he defended her against?

Invocation of saints and demons is not at issue. The issue is simple.
Behe either accepts endosymbiotic theory or he doesn't. Moran
reports: "My respect soon dropped another notch when he said

that he didn't accept endosymbiosis as the evolutionary explanation
for the origin of mitochondria. Behe believes that evolution cannot
explain how a primitive bacterium and a primitive eukaryotic cell

could have co-adapted to form a cell with mitochondria. I think

he means that mitochondria might have come from bacteria but
that God had to tinker with the system quite a bit in order to
come up with the required mutations for symbiosis."

Ignoring the part about what Larry thinks Behe means, we
are left with Behe apparently claiming he does not accept
endosymbiotic theory. This is consistent with his rejection
of origins of the blood clotting cascade, the complement
cascade, antibiody diversity and the immune system in general.
Behe seems to be better at imagining problems than in keeping
up with solutions.

[pnyikos]

On Nov 27, 7:57�pm, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 27, 7:01�am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> > On Nov 21, 3:22�am, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Nov 21, 2:27 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > On Nov 19, 1:52 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > On Nov 19, 10:27 am, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com>
> > > > > wrote:
> > > > >http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2012/11/michael-behe-in-toronto-part-1.ht...
>
> > > > > ...in which we learn that Behe rejects Margulis' endosymbiotic theory,
>
> > > > No, we do not. Moran is speaking out of both sides of his mouth
> > > > below.
>
> > > > > "My respect soon dropped another notch when he said that he didn't
> > > > > accept endosymbiosis as the evolutionary explanation for the origin of
> > > > > mitochondria. Behe believes that evolution cannot explain how a
> > > > > primitive bacterium and a primitive eukaryotic cell could have co-
> > > > > adapted to form a cell with mitochondria.
>
> > > > There is discordance between these two sentences. Behe DOES respect
> > > > the theory of the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria, in contrast to
> > > > the first sentence. He devotes over a page of praise to it in DBB.
> > > > The second sentence seems to acknowledge this, and only talks about
> > > > the question of how the endosymbiosis got to be successful.

You began with a distraction:

> > > You prevaricate with the obvious.
>
> �<snip distraction>

Too bad you snipped it before you did another distraction. Did you
forget what my alleged distraction was all about in between the time
you snipped it and the time you posted your new distraction?

[snip things dealt with in my first reply to this arrogant post of
yours, including your new distraction]

> > > The
> > > presumption is that this was a fully naturalistic event.
>
> > Sorry, that does not follow from the fact that the *methodology* of
> > *science* prescribes such a presumption. �You need to look at the
> > context of Behe's whole apporach to "what actually happened."
>
> No, I don't have to look at Behe's personal approach to science or
> make special exceptions for him. I don't have to read his mind

Too bad, then, that you are relying on the mind-reading of Moran.

> to
> synthesize something from his many contradictory claims. It is
> far far simpler.

Actually, it is more complicated, because you have to sift through all
the mind-reading that has gone on through the last 17 years to figure
out which claims of Behe, if any, are contradictory.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just read what Behe wrote and find one, JUST
ONE, actual contradiction between two claims of his?

> If he claims it's just too implausible for mitochondria to have arisen
> naturally so there must have been intervention, he is rejecting
> endosymbiotic theory.

Relying on Moran's mind-reading again? Or are you just assuming
something here for the sake of argument?

[snip additional mind-reading/potential-GIGO by you]

> > > Behe's rejection of it as a naturalistic event is his non acceptance
> > > of endosymbiotic theory.
> > This could be pure GIGO for all I know. �Where is your evidence for
> > it?

<crickets chirping>

Looks like this was just GIGO, crickets.

> > > > And that is a very difficult and fascinating question. Many of the
> > > > genes for mitochondria are actually now in the cell nucleus. Indeed
> > > > it is only through the transfer of crucial genetic material to the
> > > > cell nucleus that mitochondria are actually able to maintain a
> > > > different genetic code than the cell as a whole.
> > > And? The mechanisms of this are clear
> > Are you referring to the *evolutionary* mechanism of the intermediate
> > stages between free living prokaryotes and mitochondria?
> > If so, I would love to see it, including a scenario for the non-fatal
> > change in the genetic code.
>
> What do you need? There are bacteria that commonly live inside
> other cells. There is variation in the mitochondrial genome with
> more or less of the genome being transferred to the nucleus.

I'd like to know more about the "more or less" -- is it something like
60% vs. 66%?

> The mechanisms for evolving the code are well understood.
> Don't play dumb or if you don't know these, don't play smart.

I know the mechanisms that have been proposed for the evolution of the
slightly different codes of ciliates. Are you claiming they are the
same mechanisms for mitochondria?

> > > and evidence of it are present
> > > in comparison of different mitochondrial genomes.
> > Isn't that a bit like saying that the mechanism of evolution of
> > present day life from prokaryotes is clearly understood by a
> > comparison of different mammalian genomes?
>
> No. It isn't. The above qualifies as a dumb question,

When someone plays with the cards as close to his chest as you do, I
have very little to go on as to what questions to ask.

And no, I do NOT know what percentage of the bacterial genome was
transferred to the eukaryotic nucleus to produce present-day
mitochondria. Will you duck my 60% to 66% question on the grounds
that I am one of the Untermenschen of talk.origins, while you are one
of the Herrenvolk, and that I am only allowed to ask questions of you
that someone memorizing Voet and Voet from cover to cover might still
not know the answer to?

> moreso
> for its misbegotten rhetorical intent. If you don't know about
> bacterial endosymbiots, or about gene transfer between the
> mitochondria and the nucleous, or about how the genetic
> code evolves, stop pretending to have an informed opinion.

+++++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm on

IOW, you won't answer my questions until I grovel at your feet and
confess to being utterly ignorant of biochemistry.

After all, that is what we Untermenschen are expected to do when
confronted with Herrenvolk like yourself.

+++++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off

> > > It is evidenced
> > > as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
> > > a well understood process
> > I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
> > Behe is supposedly denying.
>
> Take an advanced course in biochemistry and in cell biology.

How advanced? Would it be on the level of a graduate seminar for
Ph.D. students who have passed their comprehensive exams? That is
where I would expect a detailed, step by step scenario for transfer,
in which it is explained why the mitochondrial proteins formed by
genes outside the mitochondrion do not wreak havoc with the ones
formed by the genes inside, once the change of genetic code has taken
place.

Perhaps you need to be reminded at this point that this is
talk.origins and not sci.biochemistry. There are OTHER people reading
this thread whose knowledge of biochemistry is far below the level you
claim to have, but do not deign to display.

> > > demonstrates his failure to include
> > > current biochemical and genetic knowledge.
> > I'm all ears about that current knowledge.
>
> No you aren't.

I am where you are concerned. Too bad your mouth is otherwise
engaged, figuratively speaking.

> There are plenty of free reviews available on-line.

Reviews of how Behe made mistakes due to him not knowing some items of
current biochemical and genetic knowledge?

> You've got some confused preconceptions that you've alluded to.
>
> > > > > I think he means that
> > > > > mitochondria might have come from bacteria but that God had to tinker
> > > > > with the system quite a bit in order to come up with the required
> > > > > mutations for symbiosis."
> > Read: the present day stage of endosymbiosis.
> > > > Speculation, but plausible speculation. And it again contrasts with
> > > > the sentence which describes how Moran *allegedly* lowered his respect
> > > > for Behe.

Like Camp, you missed the point of what my "plausible" referred to.
It has nothing to do with what you ask next:

> You think it's plausible that God had to tinker about with the
> progenitors
> of mitochondria to get them to work?

The plausibility of THAT would depend on how much time one might
expect to elapse between the moment those bacteria were engulfed, to
the present stage, under ordinary evolutionary pressures. Behe has
probably made a lot longer study of these things than even YOU have,
and he may suspect that it falls under a rubric that he uses at one
point in _DBB_.

"The universe does not have that long to wait."

Now comes some more Garbage In:

>And you think this with
> effectively
> no knowledge of mitochondrial evolution, bacterial endosymbiosis and
> the biochemical mechanisms of gene transfer.

I'm not Behe, and I don't know how much knowledge HE has of it. Nor
do I know how much knowledge YOU have of it.

And now comes the Garbage Out:

> Isn't that special.
>
> > > No, it doesn't. Behe makes a great deal of noise about finding what
> > > he claims are challenges for evolutionary science and then proceeds
> > > to remain apparently ignorant of the resolution to his challenges.
> > I'm all ears. �See above.
> > > Chasing down all of his omissions is a fool's errand. Enough have been
> > > documented to put his "scholarship" in disrepute.
> > Does this mean you will duck my questions above? �I hope not.
>
> It's too easy for you to ask ignorant question while pretending to
> know
> what you are talking about.

And it's easy for YOU to pretend to knowledge you don't have. Unlike
people who bluff at poker, and whose bluff is called, you will NEVER
have to show your hand, thanks to the fact that YOU are strongly anti-
Behe as are ALL of the people who lock horns with me in t.o.

As for the others, they are deterred by the formidable mass of horn-
lockers (Herrenvolk as I sarcastically call them, except for
Untermensch Martinez) from asking you to show your hand.

> If you could demonstrate some knowledge
> it might be worth my while.

I did show that I know that mRNA and tRNA are not part of the
ribosome. You didn't even do that much--you claimed that they WERE
part of it.

Of course, as one of the Herrenvolk, you have the privilege of
defining the word "part" in such a way that my statement became false,
while yours became true.

>But all you do is keep showing you know
> very little about the topics you consider important. You don't
> understand
> biochemical catalysis as has been repeatedly demonstrated in
> your rambling about ribosomes.

All I demonstrated was that I did not go along with your definition of
"a part of".

Would you mind repeating it for the benefit of your fellow Herrenvolk,
so that they may uniformly use it from now on, and so avoid people
having to ask questions like the following:

Will either __________ or Shrubber correct the other as to the proper
usage of "a part of"?

Will the Pope convert to Islam?

Which of the preceding two questions is more likely to have a "Yes"
answer?

[snip]

> > > It's far too easy
> > > to fool an amateur with a little knowledge by painting things as so
> > > vastly complex. Behe is justly scorned by his professional
> > > colleagues.
> > Anyone can make such claims, and innumerable people do.
>
> > The trick is to back them up.
>
> That comment applies to your ill informed skepticism.

Even if it did, the fact remains that you haven't backed yours up.

By the way, what is the skepticism that you are attributing to me with
your Pee Wee Hermanism?

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 26, 8:56 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> On 11/26/12 1:01 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> > On Nov 21, 3:22 am, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > [...]
> >> Endosymbiotic theory does not
> >> include that some supernatural entity or designer retrofit a
> >> primitive bacterium into an incipient eukaryotic cell.
>
> > Nor is it incompatible with it.  Supernatural intervention in the
> > subsequent biochemical changes does not preclude evolutionary
> > development.
>
> *Every* theory is incompatible with it.  Proposing supernatural
> intervention tells nobody anything about anything.  It does not even
> mean anything.

See my last question, near the very end.

I might be able to spare you even that much effort if you believe "God
did it" is INcompatible with "it was due to supernatural
intervention." [i.e., your concept of "God" and your concept of "the
supernatural" are incompatible.] In that case, there is nothing for us
to argue about here.

>  It is wholly out of place, not to mention infinitely
> stupid, in any discussion that seeks to discover anything.

I await your reply to my last comment in lieu of arguing with this
here.

> > By "subsequent biochemical changes" I refer to what happened between
> > the initial symbiosis and the present day status of mitochondria (also
> > of chloroplasts).
>
> >> The
> >> presumption is that this was a fully naturalistic event.
>
> > Sorry, that does not follow from the fact that the *methodology* of
> > *science* prescribes such a presumption.  You need to look at the
> > context of Behe's whole apporach to "what actually happened."
>
> Except for "God did it", Behe has no approach to "what actually
> happened".  He only has an approach (fatally flawed several times over)
> about what did not happen.

Will you be the first person in 17 years to demonstrate any of those
alleged fatal flaws to me?

The cicadas are waiting. :-)

> >> It is evidenced
> >> as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
> >> a well understood process
>
> > I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
> > Behe is supposedly denying.
>
> Co-option, scaffolding, coevolution.

You are confusing labeling with exposition.

Are you the type who judges books by their covers?

Is this your basis for judging _Darwin's Black Box_?

> But the most obvious process that
> Behe is denying is the process that nobody has suggested yet.

And in the absence of such a process, you are confident in your
knowlege that "God did not do it", aren't you?

Or is it your knowledge that "God did not do it" is a meaningless
statement that your are confident of?

> Just
> because a process is not well understood does not mean it does not exist.

Thanks for this nice illustration of one form of the "Nobody Of The
Gaps" argument for non-directed evolution.

Peter Nyikos

[John Stockwell]

No. I am not exaggerating. All of it. The fact that any person
calling themselves a scientist would, for even a millisecond
defend, in any way shape or form, defend intelligent design is
evidence that said individual has a screw loose.

>
>
>
> > Behe makes a poor showing. Defending using "Of Pandas and
>
> > People" as a textbook may be the biggest howler.
>
>
>
> I do believe most readers will be grateful for the way you ducked the
>
> challenge to produce a page number.

All of the pages that have Behe's name suffice.

Here is a web page:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11am.html

start here, and keep hitting that little right pointing arrow
until you are finished with Behe's testimony. You can read it
for yourself.

>
>
>
> > Pointing out that his
>
> > definition of science would include astrology is another one.
>
>
>
> They will be ETERNALLY grateful to you for omitting the page number on
>
> this one, because you are oh-so-conveniently ignoring the fact that he
>
> wasn't talking about *present-day* astrology, but astrology as it
>
> might have been practiced in the middle ages (and perhaps a bit
>
> beyond, e.g. by Kepler).
>
>
>
> By the way, it wasn't "pointed out" by him: it was wormed out of him
>
> when the interrogator persisted after Behe first prefaced his comments
>
> with other things that were much less conducive to distortion than
>
> anything he could possibly say about astrology in reply to the
>
> relentlessly leading questions.

Behe hanged himself on his own bullshit. Astrology is a form of
magic. Is now, and always has been. Intelligent design is a
form of scientific creationism. Is now and always has been.

>
>
>
>
>
> > Behe made a very poor showing. I don't think that he is as stupid as
>
> > he came off appearing, but he really did did a deep hole for himself.
>
> >
>
> > He seems to have no understanding of science whatsoever.
>
>
>
> You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
>
> responsible adult.

Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it. Stop pretending. Intelligent design is creationism. You know it, I
know it. Stop pretending.

-John




>
>
>
> Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

To your satisfaction? Don't be silly. It is pointless even to try.

>>>> It is evidenced
>>>> as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
>>>> a well understood process
>>
>>> I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
>>> Behe is supposedly denying.
>>
>> Co-option, scaffolding, coevolution.
>
> You are confusing labeling with exposition.

I have already given the subject much more exposition than it deserves.
My book devotes five whole pages to it.

> Are you the type who judges books by their covers?
>
> Is this your basis for judging _Darwin's Black Box_?

I wasn't judging _Darwin's Black Box_; I was judging irreducible
complexity as described by Behe. My basis for dismissing it is that it
is founded on a falsehood.

>> But the most obvious process that
>> Behe is denying is the process that nobody has suggested yet.
>
> And in the absence of such a process, you are confident in your
> knowlege that "God did not do it", aren't you?

Since such a process is not absent, your question is moot.

> Or is it your knowledge that "God did not do it" is a meaningless
> statement that your are confident of?

Yes, "God did not do it" is as entirely meaningless as "God did it." I
don't know why you would attribute "knowledge" relevant to that question
to me, and I disclaim any such knowledge.

[J.J. O'Shea]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:35:45 -0500, John Stockwell wrote
(in article <c301d2a7-95e4-470f...@googlegroups.com>):

>> You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
>>
>> responsible adult.
>
>
> Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
> Intelligent design is creationism. You know it, I know it. Stop pretending.

Peter will never, ever, do that. Never.

[John Stockwell]

On Friday, November 30, 2012 7:36:40 AM UTC-7, J.J. O'Shea wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:35:45 -0500, John Stockwell wrote
>
> (in article <c301d2a7-95e4-470f...@googlegroups.com>):
>
>
>
> >> You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
>
> >>
>
> >> responsible adult.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
>
> > Intelligent design is creationism. You know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
>
>
>
> Peter will never, ever, do that. Never.

Of course, Behe's and Peter's intellectd tower over that of that Gonzalez guy who wasn't smart enough to get tenure before publishing creation pseudoscience.

-John

[pnyikos]

Misleading whom to think what?

> The documentation and explanation was supplied. Behe cannot
> both accept endosymbiotic theory and think it is evidence for a
> designer.

But we do not know whether Behe thinks any such thing.

[snip of posible castles-in-air builiding]

> > There you go again with unsupported insults.
>
> > > If you accept endosymbiotic theory, you accept that it was an
> > > event that did not require supernatural tinkering.
>
> > Again you confuse methodology with the ding-an-sich. Endosymbiotic
> > theory does not go into the minutiae of all the myriad changes. It
> > provides a framework for events, all of which were "naturalistic" but
> > is agnostic about the immediate causes of the events.
>
> > Note, I said "agnostic" not "theistic". Are you of the opinion that
> > true science must be avowedly atheistic?
>
> A further tangent avoiding the obvious.

Obvious to you; and since you are one of the Herrenvolk, I am once
again alone in daring to say that it is not obvious to me.

> > > This expands
> > > to the issue of "theistic" evolution in general. You may have
> > > personal beliefs that your particular god did tinker about to
> > > achieve some specific outcomes,
> > Not I, and nobody has been able to pin that charge on Behe AFAIK.

Nor do you do it here.

> > > but if you think that supernatural
> > > intervention was required you have rejected the modern synthesis.
> > > The reporting indicates that Behe is now claiming that tinkering
> > > by TheGreatDesigner was required.

> > Whose reporting? Moran's? Can you remember how he was morally
> > certain Julie Thomas was a creationist until long, relentless
> > interrogation revealed that she knew exactly what she was saying about
> > the scientific side of ID, without ever having to bring supernatural
> > agencies into the picture?
>
> > By the end of her all-too-brief stay in t.o., Moran had a grudging
> > respect for her and was even defending her against the more idiotic
> > claims about her.
>
> > Were you one of the ones he defended her against?
>
> Invocation of saints and demons is not at issue. The issue is simple.
> Behe either accepts endosymbiotic theory or he doesn't. Moran
> reports:

Report deleted, along with everything you wrote after this, because
all of this begs the question of how accurate that reporting was.


Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

If you think that what you wrote next proves that, you have more than
just one screw loose.

> The fact that any person
> calling themselves a scientist would, for even a millisecond
> defend, in any way shape or form, defend intelligent design is
> evidence that said individual has a screw loose.

Thanks for revealing that you have a closed mind about directed
panspermia.

Don't forget, it was YOU who wrote "in any way shape or form."

The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
Simon and Schuster, 1981

>
>
> > > Behe makes a poor showing. Defending using "Of Pandas and
> > > People" as a textbook may be the biggest howler.

What actually appears in the website you gave is so laughable, it
calls your very sanity into question. He was NOT defending the book.
He was talking about something he wrote for that book, which was
repeated with some updates in _Darwin's Black Box_.

Now I expect you to change your story and say that anyone who WRITES
for such a book deserves to be pilloried. But one could equally say
he "exploited" the book to push his own theories.

> > I do believe most readers will be grateful for the way you ducked the
> > challenge to produce a page number.
>
> All of the pages that have Behe's name suffice.

I was referring to the official transcripts, not the huge pages that
are in the TO FAQ. It takes quite a while to zero in on the relevant
information there.

> Here is a web page:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11am.html
>
> start here, and keep hitting that little right pointing arrow
> until you are finished with Behe's testimony. You can read it
> for yourself.

I've read most of the testimony long ago, and that was why your lie
about "defending the book" just didn't ring a bell with me.

Thanks for reinforcing my impression that you have little idea of what

it means to be a mature, responsible adult.

>

> > > Pointing out that his
>
> > > definition of science would include astrology is another one.
>
> > They will be ETERNALLY grateful to you for omitting the page number on
>
> > this one, because you are oh-so-conveniently ignoring the fact that he
>
> > wasn't talking about *present-day* astrology, but astrology as it
>
> > might have been practiced in the middle ages (and perhaps a bit
>
> > beyond, e.g. by Kepler).
>
> > By the way, it wasn't "pointed out" by him: it was wormed out of him
>
> > when the interrogator persisted after Behe first prefaced his comments
>
> > with other things that were much less conducive to distortion than
>
> > anything he could possibly say about astrology in reply to the
>
> > relentlessly leading questions.
>
> Behe hanged himself on his own bullshit. Astrology is a form of
> magic. Is now, and always has been.

Substitute "alchemy" for "astrology" and most people would agree with
you. Yet the alchemists discovered many useful substances, like
sulfuric acid, despite them working from some incorrect premises.

Besides, you are assuming you know far more about medieval astrology
than anyone does.

> Intelligent design is a
> form of scientific creationism. Is now and always has been.

'fess up now: have you NEVER seen me post that quote from the atheist
Crick, with "specially designed" as part of it?

> > > Behe made a very poor showing. I don't think that he is as stupid as
> > > he came off appearing, but he really did did a deep hole for himself.
> > > He seems to have no understanding of science whatsoever.
>
> > You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
> > responsible adult.
>
> Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it.

I know he is far less of an idiot than the "John Stockwell" dummy-
analogue that I see here and elsewhere in talk.origins under the "John
Stockwell" byline.

Does the ventriloquist-analogue who types the words that are posted
here know this too?

> Stop pretending. Intelligent design is creationism. You know it, I
> know it. Stop pretending.

Will the the real John Stockwell, the ventriloquist-analogue, ever
disavow these words in the light of the quote from Crick?

Don't hold your breath, Gentle Reader.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 15, 7:12�pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11/11/2012 9:01 PM, Mark Buchanan wrote:
>
> > For those in the Toronto area M. Behe is giving several lectures over
> > the next week. See:
>
> >http://www.thecopernicuslectures.com/lectures.html
>
> > I'm going to try to make it to the Thursday night lecture at UofT -
> > could be fun.
>
> > Mark
>

> For a blow by blow account go here:
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1rK8i1j1Sq85rnXtaFWSUnpALo9mY...
>
> As changes are made they will be updated.

The following quote is the only substantive comment I saw from you:

<<He failed to mention the development of the ability to use citrate.
How can he claim to follow the evidence when he ignores so much of
it.>>

IIRC that was a very complicated affair, which Behe has written about
at considerable length. Didn't anyone have the gumption to bring it
up in the question and answer period?

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 30, 9:36 am, "J.J. O'Shea" <try.not...@but.see.sig> wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:35:45 -0500, John Stockwell wrote
> (in article <c301d2a7-95e4-470f...@googlegroups.com>):
>
> >> You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
>
> >> responsible adult.
>
> > Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
> > Intelligent design is creationism. You know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
>
> Peter will never, ever, do that. Never.

Since I am not pretending, the point is moot.

The real question is: will the ventriloquist-analogues behind "J. J.
O'Shea" and "John Stockwell" ever reveal themselves in talk.origins?

Did you do that in the period 1995-2005, under a different name?

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

To the satisfaction of ANYONE with an open mind. By that I mean,
anyone who is willing to look seriously at the rebuttal I make to any
alleged "fatal flaw" you come up with.

++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm on

I suppose you agree with Stockwell that just supporting intelligent
design is a fatal flaw.

++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off

Go ahead, throw the book at me for "gratuitously" bringing someone
else into the discussion. At least Stockwell had the guts to name
what he thought were fatal flaws. You prefer to post with the cards
held tightly to your chest.

> >>>> It is evidenced
> >>>> as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
> >>>> a well understood process
>
> >>> I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
> >>> Behe is supposedly denying.
>
> >> Co-option, scaffolding, coevolution.
>
> > You are confusing labeling with exposition.
>
> I have already given the subject much more exposition than it deserves.
>   My book devotes five whole pages to it.

Is it accessible on line? If so, please provide an url, preferably
with a page number.

Mind you, if it doesn't mention the process whereby the mitochondria
transferred most of their genes to the nucleus, along with an
explanation for how the genetic codes "safely" changed, you will be
evading the issue.

> > Are you the type who judges books by their covers?
>
> > Is this your basis for judging _Darwin's Black Box_?
>
> I wasn't judging _Darwin's Black Box_; I was judging irreducible
> complexity as described by Behe.  My basis for dismissing it is that it
> is founded on a falsehood.

Keep posting with the cards held tightly to your chest ("a
falsehood"). You are most amusing that way.

> >>   But the most obvious process that
> >> Behe is denying is the process that nobody has suggested yet.
>
> > And in the absence of such a process, you are confident in your
> > knowlege that "God did not do it", aren't you?
>
> Since such a process is not absent, your question is moot.

Wow, "a process nobody has suggested yet" is not absent?

It certainly was absent from the post where you mentioned it, and is
absent here, unless your little label provided it.

> > Or is it your knowledge that "God did not do it" is a meaningless
> > statement that your are confident of?
>
> Yes, "God did not do it" is as entirely meaningless as "God did it."  I
> don't know why you would attribute "knowledge" relevant to that question
> to me, and I disclaim any such knowledge.

Who said anything about knowledge? I'm talking about the
intelligibility of the word "God". Are you claiming it is meaningless
to say that God did something?

Are you, perhaps, under the spell of Tillich et.al. who claimed God is
not a being, but the ground of all being, and hence it is meaningless
to attribute ANY actions to God.

Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

Many of those people were already making the same arguments before I did.

> By that I mean,
> anyone who is willing to look seriously at the rebuttal I make to any
> alleged "fatal flaw" you come up with.
>
> ++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm on
>
> I suppose you agree with Stockwell that just supporting intelligent
> design is a fatal flaw.
>
> ++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off
>
> Go ahead, throw the book at me for "gratuitously" bringing someone
> else into the discussion.

No need; you just did so yourself.

>>>>>> It is evidenced
>>>>>> as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
>>>>>> a well understood process
>>
>>>>> I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
>>>>> Behe is supposedly denying.
>>
>>>> Co-option, scaffolding, coevolution.
>>
>>> You are confusing labeling with exposition.
>>
>> I have already given the subject much more exposition than it deserves.
>> My book devotes five whole pages to it.
>
> Is it accessible on line? If so, please provide an url, preferably
> with a page number.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html is close enough.

> Mind you, if it doesn't mention the process whereby the mitochondria
> transferred most of their genes to the nucleus, along with an
> explanation for how the genetic codes "safely" changed, you will be
> evading the issue.

Bullshit. The issue is whether Behe is correct, in DBB and elsewhere,
that irreducible complexity implies an impossiblity of gradual
evolution. His argument is shown to fail utterly on theoretical and
other more general grounds.

An analogy: Behe says it is impossible to walk from Houston to Mobile
because the Mississippi River is in the way. I rebut by saying that
that Mississippi River is not infinitely long; having an upper end, it
is possible to walk around it. You counter the rebuttal by demanding
that I trace every footstep of someone who has, in fact, walked from
Houston to Mobile. I shake my head and consider you clueless.

>>> Are you the type who judges books by their covers?
>>
>>> Is this your basis for judging _Darwin's Black Box_?
>>
>> I wasn't judging _Darwin's Black Box_; I was judging irreducible
>> complexity as described by Behe. My basis for dismissing it is that it
>> is founded on a falsehood.
>
> Keep posting with the cards held tightly to your chest ("a
> falsehood"). You are most amusing that way.

That card was laid on the table more than a decade ago. It's not my
fault you never look at it.

>>>> But the most obvious process that
>>>> Behe is denying is the process that nobody has suggested yet.
>>
>>> And in the absence of such a process, you are confident in your
>>> knowlege that "God did not do it", aren't you?
>>
>> Since such a process is not absent, your question is moot.
>
> Wow, "a process nobody has suggested yet" is not absent?

Of course not.

> It certainly was absent from the post where you mentioned it, and is
> absent here, unless your little label provided it.

The description is absent. The process exists. A great many
unsuggested processes exist, perhaps infinitely many.

>>> Or is it your knowledge that "God did not do it" is a meaningless
>>> statement that your are confident of?
>>
>> Yes, "God did not do it" is as entirely meaningless as "God did it." I
>> don't know why you would attribute "knowledge" relevant to that question
>> to me, and I disclaim any such knowledge.
>
> Who said anything about knowledge?

You did. I quote: "Or is it your knowledge ..."

> I'm talking about the
> intelligibility of the word "God". Are you claiming it is meaningless
> to say that God did something?

Yes. Or at least meaningless re God, the doing, and the something. The
statement usually carries some information about the beliefs and
knowledge (or lack thereof) of the speaker.

> Are you, perhaps, under the spell of Tillich et.al. who claimed God is
> not a being, but the ground of all being, and hence it is meaningless
> to attribute ANY actions to God.

No.

[J.J. O'Shea]

On Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:08:53 -0500, pnyikos wrote
(in article
<12ff2e48-9634-4072...@bx4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>):

> On Nov 30, 9:36ï¿œam, "J.J. O'Shea" <try.not...@but.see.sig> wrote:
>> On Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:35:45 -0500, John Stockwell wrote
>> (in article <c301d2a7-95e4-470f...@googlegroups.com>):
>>
>>>> You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
>>
>>>> responsible adult.
>>
>>> Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
>>> Intelligent design is creationism. You know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
>>
>> Peter will never, ever, do that. Never.
>
> Since I am not pretending, the point is moot.

Oh, yes you're a pretender, Peter. Indeed, you're the Great Pretender.

[J.J. O'Shea]

On Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:03:23 -0500, pnyikos wrote
(in article
<8e157fb9-d135-4dd7...@r14g2000vbd.googlegroups.com>):

>> Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it.
>
> I know he is far less of an idiot than the "John Stockwell" dummy- analogue
> that I see here and elsewhere in talk.origins under the "John Stockwell"
> byline.

And again Peter is accusing those he doesn't like of being sock-puppets.

[jillery]

On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 09:08:09 -0500, "J.J. O'Shea"
<try.n...@but.see.sig> wrote:

>On Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:08:53 -0500, pnyikos wrote
>(in article
><12ff2e48-9634-4072...@bx4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>):
>

>> On Nov 30, 9:36�am, "J.J. O'Shea" <try.not...@but.see.sig> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:35:45 -0500, John Stockwell wrote
>>> (in article <c301d2a7-95e4-470f...@googlegroups.com>):
>>>
>>>>> You seem to have no understanding of what it means to be a mature,
>>>
>>>>> responsible adult.
>>>
>>>> Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
>>>> Intelligent design is creationism. You know it, I know it. Stop pretending.
>>>
>>> Peter will never, ever, do that. Never.
>>
>> Since I am not pretending, the point is moot.
>
>Oh, yes you're a pretender, Peter. Indeed, you're the Great Pretender.

His Platters are filled with sour notes.

[Mark Buchanan]

I'll do my best to unwasel below.

>
> But I'll answer anyway. Back when I first wrote about "axes", I was
> going on your description of where your admitted bias comes from. One
> of three things is true, beyond a reasonable doubt:
>

So your "axes" opinion is not only based on complete ignorance of what
Miller/Lebo wrote but was formed by my opinion of what they wrote. How
pathetic is that? I'll freely admit that my biases might be wrong -
that's why I freely admitted that they were my biases. Your not doing
yourself any favor by justifying your ignorant opinion in this way.

Concerning Miller's so called "axe": How could he possibly have an axe
to grind? His side won the court case. If anything he had an opportunity
to gloat in 'Only a Theory'. But of course you likely didn't read
Miller's book either.

The only way you can salvage any integrity about your "axes" charge is
to read said books.

> 1. You have seriously misread what Miller and Lebo wrote.
>
> 2. "They have axes to grind" is one of the kindest words I can have
> for someone who leaves you thinking that .
> "Behe is incompetent and delusional."
>
> 3. You have a very low threshold for calling people to whom you are
> opposed "incompetent and delusional."
>
> I actually lean towards the third alternative, which hadn't occurred
> to me at the time. Perhaps by "incompetent" you mean "Behe chose his
> replies to loaded questions a mere 10 times as well as I would have if
> I had been subjected to such intensive interrogation" and by
> "delusional" you mean, "Behe is way too fond of his concept of IC, a
> gimmick which has earned him many invitations from leading
> universities."
>

Since delusional and incompetent are my stated biases I have no problem
being challenged about them and will admit I could be wrong. Behe's talk
gave me an opportunity to rethink them.

Incompetent I defined as him doing a particularly bad job in Dover,
Since his talk didn't address Dover, my bias didn't change on that
account but was modified in another way. Behe didn't mention any
evidence contrary to his main position that 'evolution is not up to the
job'. This is surprising as he did admit at Dover that evolution is '. .
. in many aspects, well substantiated.' (See pg. 56 line 22 of day 10 -
Behe morning testimony). For Behe to give a talk to young impressionable
students without giving balance shows either gross incompetence or is
grossly misleading. Since I agree that Behe really is sincere the only
option is incompetence.

He is delusional in thinking his argument is convincing for those who
know the evidence for evolution well enough. When I first read DBB about
15 years ago I was convinced he was right - until I made the effort to
understand the evidence for evolution. Having been fooled by Behe once I
wasn't about to let it happen again so easily.

>> Who cares
>> what Lebo actually believes, she was a reporter for a local paper.
>> Either she did her job well or not. Your uninformed opinion is worthless.
>
> Seeing firsthand how abysmal reporters can be when reporting anything
> to do with science, I'd say she could have done her job "well" and
> still distorted the proceedings enormously. Just look at what goes on
> in talk.origins in thread after thread after thread.
>
> I've fought the same distortions over and over and over again, and
> the effect is like a stone dropped in a pool: some ripples for a
> little while and then the pool is back to its old self again. Look at
> how Robert Camp approvingly quoted one grotesque distortion with no
> idea of what the truth was.
>
> Look at how YOU distorted Behe's use of "weren't good enough" and when
> I set the record straight, you breezed right past without making a
> single comment:
>

There can be different reasons one doesn't respond to an argument -
including conceding the point.* I have given this issue some thought
however. I've admitted that Behe didn't actually say the literature in
question 'wasn't good enough' but it's it minor technical issue. To
quote from the transcript (pg. 19 - Behe day 12 PM):

7 Q. And I'm correct when I asked you, you would
8 need to see a step-by-step description of how
9 the immune system, vertebrate immune system
10 developed?
11 A. Not only would I need a step-by-step,
12 mutation by mutation analysis, I would also
13 want to see relevant information such as what
14 is the population size of the organism in which
15 these mutations are occurring, what is the
16 selective value for the mutation, are there any
17 detrimental effects of the mutation, and many
18 other such questions.

So for Behe to accept immune system evolution (and presumably the
evolution of any IC system) he will need to see rigorous description of
every mutation with background justification. Even as an amateur
bio-layman this is obviously ridiculous and unreasonable. It's like the
YEC demand to see every single transitional species in the fossil
record. The 'not good enough' accusation against Behe is completely
justified.

The Dover school board members involved wanted to introduce old fashion
creationism into the school curriculum. If they were left alone they
would have failed miserably - instead they were coached to introduce ID
in the friendliest way possible. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

> And where do you get the farfetched notion that Behe was "complicit"
> in *wanting* a court challenge?
>
>> Behe is
>> complicit as an active, prominent participant in the whole affair.
>
> "whole affair" = testimony once the OPPONENTS of the YEC crowd put it
> to the court challenge that *they* wanted?
>
>> So
>> what if the school board didn't follow instructions explicitly. The DI
>> got what they wanted - a high profile court case.
>
> I'd like to see documentation that this is what they wanted.
>

Read Lebo, Miller, and the Wiki article.

> But more importantly, I'd like to see documentation that this is what
> BEHE wanted.
>

No one could force Behe into participating. An expert witness normally
becomes one if they feel passionate about whatever they are an expert
in. The exception is if it's their job, but Behe was not paid for is
testimony - unless you can prove otherwise.

Mark

* Another reason is that the discussion has got to the point where one
side is flagrantly obstinate.

[pnyikos]

On Nov 30, 11:03 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> On 11/30/12 3:22 PM, pnyikos wrote:

> > On Nov 29, 6:33 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> >> On 11/29/12 12:20 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> >>> On Nov 26, 8:56 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> >>>> On 11/26/12 1:01 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> >>>>> On Nov 21, 3:22 am, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>> [...]
> >>>>>> Endosymbiotic theory does not
> >>>>>> include that some supernatural entity or designer retrofit a
> >>>>>> primitive bacterium into an incipient eukaryotic cell.
>
> >>>>> Nor is it incompatible with it.  Supernatural intervention in the
> >>>>> subsequent biochemical changes does not preclude evolutionary
> >>>>> development.

[snip]

> >>>>> By "subsequent biochemical changes" I refer to what happened between
> >>>>> the initial symbiosis and the present day status of mitochondria (also
> >>>>> of chloroplasts).
>
> >>>>>> The
> >>>>>> presumption is that this was a fully naturalistic event.
>
> >>>>> Sorry, that does not follow from the fact that the *methodology* of
> >>>>> *science* prescribes such a presumption.  You need to look at the
> >>>>> context of Behe's whole apporach to "what actually happened."
>
> >>>> Except for "God did it", Behe has no approach to "what actually
> >>>> happened".  He only has an approach (fatally flawed several times over)
> >>>> about what did not happen.
>
> >>> Will you be the first person in 17 years to demonstrate any of those
> >>> alleged fatal flaws to me?
>
> >> To your satisfaction?  Don't be silly.  It is pointless even to try.
>
> > To the satisfaction of ANYONE with an open mind.
>
> Many of those people were already making the same arguments before I did.

As before, you play with the cards held tightly to your chest: still
no identification of a single alleged fatal flaw.

> > By that I mean,
> > anyone who is willing to look seriously at the rebuttal I make to any
> > alleged "fatal flaw" you come up with.

Since you don't even identify any of those "same arguments" against
the alleged "fatal flaws", I tentatively conclude that you are
bluffing with a "Nothing hand" about the "fatality" of those flaws..

I expect you to go on bluffing, maybe even raising the ante by
charging me with making a wild-assed guess as to what cards you are
holding to your chest.

> > ++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm on
>
> > I suppose you agree with Stockwell that just supporting intelligent
> > design is a fatal flaw.
>
> >   ++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off
>
> > Go ahead, throw the book at me for "gratuitously" bringing someone
> > else into the discussion.
>
> No need; you just did so yourself.

I don't think there is anything wrong with my bringing Stockwell, who
is an active participant on this thread, into the discussion. If he
isn't interested in what I have to say, that's his problem.

You made an unmarked deletion here of me comparing Stockwell
*favorably* to you.
There is at least one person in this newsgroup who would call that
"dishonestly manipulating" what I wrote, were you not one of the
Herrenvolk of this newsgroup.

Since I am one of the Untermenschen, he has no scruples about using
those words on me in such contexts.

__________repost of snipped text___________

At least Stockwell had the guts to name
what he thought were fatal flaws. You prefer to post

with the cards held tightly to your chest.
=============== end of repost
from http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/1bcddbc513297c2b

> >>>>>> It is evidenced
> >>>>>> as a continuing process. Moran is correct that Behe's denial of
> >>>>>> a well understood process

Note the words "evidenced as a continuing process" and "a well
understood process".

> >>>>> I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
> >>>>> Behe is supposedly denying.
>
> >>>> Co-option, scaffolding, coevolution.

Behe does not deny the existence of such things, you four-flusher. He
merely is skeptical about such processes being able to effect the
changes in the mitochondrion which I indicated to be problematic.

And so do I, for that matter: I think the first two words fail to
describe the "subsequent evolution" described above, while the third
trivially describes it: the nucleus co-evolves with the mitochondrion
by the very process of genes being transferred from one to the
other.

[Well, you might also say that the nucleus "co-opts" those genes from
the mitochondrion, and that the original nucleus provided a "scaffold"
for the genes that were added to it. If that's your "well understood
process," you can go back to playing in sandboxes.]

The devil is in the details, and you have completely evaded the issue
which actually concerns Behe.

> >>> You are confusing labeling with exposition.
>
> >> I have already given the subject much more exposition than it deserves.
> >>    My book devotes five whole pages to it.
>
> > Is it accessible on line?  If so, please provide an url, preferably
> > with a page number.
>
> http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.htmlis close enough.

As expected, it doesn't even mention mitochondria.

> > Mind you, if it doesn't mention the process whereby the mitochondria
> > transferred most of their genes to the nucleus, along with an
> > explanation for how the genetic codes "safely" changed, you will be
> > evading the issue.

Now you resort to obfuscation:

> Bullshit.  The issue is whether Behe is correct, in DBB and elsewhere,
> that irreducible complexity implies an impossiblity of gradual
> evolution.

Double bullshit by you: Behe never wrote that, and the issue was your
fellow Herrenvolk expressing astonishment and condemnation of Behe
daring to think that there were unexplained difficulties in the
evolution of mitochondria in their present state.

With this obfuscation as evidence, I hereby charge you with folding
with a "nothing hand" on THIS issue. How do you plead?

>  His argument is shown to fail utterly on theoretical and
> other more general grounds.

Pure bluff, with no evidence to back it up.

> An analogy:  Behe says it is impossible to walk from Houston to Mobile
> because the Mississippi River is in the way.

This is not an analogy to anything I have ever seen Behe write.

Anyone who uses analogies to nothing concretein lieu of giving even
ONE example of a fatal flaw, etc. might as well go back to playing in
sandboxes.

> I rebut by saying that
> that Mississippi River is not infinitely long; having an upper end, it
> is possible to walk around it.  You counter the rebuttal by demanding
> that I trace every footstep of someone who has, in fact, walked from
> Houston to Mobile.

Nor does this last sentence resemble anything I ever said.

> I shake my head and consider you clueless.

As one of the Herrenvolk, it is your prerogative to indulge in blatant
GIGO like this, thereby providing another bit of evidence for my
thesis,

"Something is rotten in the state of talk.origins."

Concluded in next reply to this post of yours.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 1, 9:08 am, "J.J. O'Shea" <try.not...@but.see.sig> wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:03:23 -0500, pnyikos wrote
> (in article

> <8e157fb9-d135-4dd7-ab36-758ad4fa0...@r14g2000vbd.googlegroups.com>):

>
> >> Really, Peter. Behe is an idiot, you know it, I know it.
>
> > I know he is far less of an idiot than the "John Stockwell" dummy- analogue
> > that I see here and elsewhere in talk.origins under the "John Stockwell"
> > byline.
>
> And again Peter is accusing those he doesn't like of being sock-puppets.

Get the concept of "sock puppet" right, twit. It doesn't include
Lokis, nor others who are insincere to a similar degree in their
statements.

It is massive insincerity that triggers the use of "dummy-analogue"
and "ventriloquist-analogue" in my posts.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Not where Miller is concerned. I've seen enough from him to know that
he is highly biased against Behe.

> Concerning Miller's so called "axe": How could he possibly have an axe
> to grind? His side won the court case.

His axe was there long before Dover, in misguided attacks on things
like the irreducible complexity of the mousetrap. I think it may stem
from his neo-Deist outlook getting the better of him.

The one good thing that came from him (or was he using an insight by
Keith Robison without crediting the originator?) where Behe is
concerned that I've seen is that he has drastically simplified the
problem of the evolution of the cascades that incorporate
autocatalytic factors, like the clotting cascade and the immune system
cascade of which Behe wrote in _DBB_.

But there were enough other systems in _DBB_ that are unaffected by
this analysis.

> > 1. You have seriously misread what Miller and Lebo wrote.
>
> > 2.  "They have axes to grind" is one of the kindest words I can have
> > for someone who leaves you thinking that .
> > "Behe is incompetent and delusional."
>
> > 3.  You have a very low threshold for calling people to whom you are
> > opposed "incompetent and delusional."
>
> > I actually lean towards the third alternative, which hadn't occurred
> > to me at the time.  Perhaps by "incompetent" you mean "Behe chose his
> > replies to loaded questions a mere 10 times as well as I would have if
> > I had been subjected to such intensive interrogation" and by
> > "delusional" you mean, "Behe is way too fond of his concept of IC, a
> > gimmick which has earned him many invitations from leading
> > universities."
>
> Since delusional and incompetent are my stated biases I have no problem
> being challenged about them and will admit I could be wrong. Behe's talk
> gave me an opportunity to rethink them.
>
> Incompetent I defined as him doing a particularly bad job in Dover,
> Since his talk didn't address Dover, my bias didn't change on that
> account but was modified in another way. Behe didn't mention any
> evidence contrary to his main position that 'evolution is not up to the
> job'.

Up to the job of WHAT? Be specific.

And are those his exact words? In what context?

> This is surprising as he did admit at Dover that evolution is '. .
> . in many aspects, well substantiated.' (See pg. 56 line 22 of day 10 -
> Behe morning testimony).

No surprise at all *yet*, given the out of context quote it is
supposed to be in contrast with.

> For Behe to give a talk to young impressionable
> students without giving balance shows either gross incompetence or is
> grossly misleading.

Poor babies. As though their professors always gave both sides to
every pet theory of theirs.

Behe was obviously saving his breath for the cross-examination. In a
place like U of Toronto, it could be expected to get very intense.

Weren't there enough hostile biologists, etc. in the audience to take
Behe apart in the question and answer session? If Behe were
incompetent, he would soon have withered.

>Since I agree that Behe really is sincere the only
> option is incompetence.

See above. Also, chew on this: If Behe were to mention all the crap
that has been attributed to him in this thread alone, he could rightly
be charged with "knocking down strawmen".

The blogosphere is full of such strawmen, which their erectors
mistakenly think are scarecrows at least as formidable as "The
Scarecrow" in the Batman comics.

> He is delusional in thinking his argument is convincing for those who
> know the evidence for evolution well enough.

I have no idea where you dug up this "scarecrow."

> When I first read DBB about
> 15 years ago I was convinced he was right - until I made the effort to
> understand the evidence for evolution. Having been fooled by Behe once I
> wasn't about to let it happen again so easily.

You were fooled into thinking evolution is impossible?? ? Looks like
you were one of those YECs who don't bother to think about the nuances
in Behe's book.

[snip]

> > I've fought the same distortions over and over and over again, and
> > the effect is like a stone dropped in a pool: some ripples for a
> > little while and then the pool is back to its old self again. Look at
> > how Robert Camp approvingly quoted one grotesque distortion with no
> > idea of what the truth was.

Were you fooled 15 years ago into thinking that Behe actually said
things like wings and eyes (and speech!!!) were irreducibly complex?

Continued in next post.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 1, 4:13 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/11/2012 3:13 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> > On Nov 16, 9:57 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 11/16/2012 8:29 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> >>> On Nov 16, 1:27 pm, Mark Buchanan <marklynn.bucha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> On 11/14/2012 9:44 AM, pnyikos wrote:

Repeating a bit from my first reply for continuity.

> > I've fought the same distortions over and over and over again, and
> > the effect is like a stone dropped in a pool: some ripples for a
> > little while and then the pool is back to its old self again. Look at
> > how Robert Camp approvingly quoted one grotesque distortion with no
> > idea of what the truth was.

Were you fooled 15 years ago into thinking that Behe actually said
things like wings and eyes (and speech!!!) were irreducibly complex?

> > Look at how YOU distorted Behe's use of "weren't good enough" and when
> > I set the record straight, you breezed right past without making a
> > single comment:
>
> There can be different reasons one doesn't respond to an argument -
> including conceding the point.* I have given this issue some thought
> however. I've admitted that Behe didn't actually say the literature in
> question 'wasn't good enough' but it's it minor technical issue. To
> quote from the transcript (pg. 19 - Behe day 12 PM):

The following quote is not relevant to the "good enough," it's
relevant to his ACTUAL characterization, which was that the authors
were writing about completely different things.

> 7 Q. And I'm correct when I asked you, you would
> 8 need to see a step-by-step description of how
> 9 the immune system, vertebrate immune system
> 10 developed?
> 11 A. Not only would I need a step-by-step,
> 12 mutation by mutation analysis, I would also
> 13 want to see relevant information such as what
> 14 is the population size of the organism in which
> 15 these mutations are occurring, what is the
> 16 selective value for the mutation, are there any
> 17 detrimental effects of the mutation, and many
> 18 other such questions.
>
> So for Behe to accept immune system evolution (and presumably the
> evolution of any IC system) he will need to see rigorous description of
> every mutation with background justification.

Yes, he is setting the bar very high for his own acceptance. But the
point he makes elsewhere is that the literature doesn't even *begin*
to do any such thing.

Even Miller's reduction of the immune cascade by use of autocatalycity
[which I believe less than 1% of Behe's critics understand adequately]
takes place in a general framework. Miller does not identify the
factors in the cascade that he believes to be descended from a common
"ancestor," nor does he describe the "common ancestor" in even very
general terms, nor does he try to say what mutations happened at
various nodes in the non-described tree.

In fact, Miller doesn't even identify any factors at all, because it
is all done on a very theoretical level. It's good enough for me -- I
think the case for non-intervention of intelligent species is closed
on the clotting and "complement pathway of the immune system"
cascades, but I can see why Behe might want to hold out for more.

[snip]

> >>>> I actually have more sympathy for the school board than for Behe, the
> >>>> DI, and the law firm Thomas Moore Law Center. The YEC members of the
> >>>> school board were pawns in the hands of the ID crowd that wanted to put
> >>>> on a court challenge.
>
> >>> This reminds me of the old Ron O *ipse dixit*: the school board were
> >>> mere "rubes," and it is "vile" to blame "rubes."
>
> >>> As for you, you lump Behe in together with the rest of the ID crowd,
> >>> and so I challenge you to answer:
>
> > And you weaseled your way past both challenges:
>
> >>> 1. In what way did the ID crowd manipulate the school board?
>
> >>> 2. What role, if any, did Behe have in the manipulation?
>
> > What you wrote at the end did NOT support the words that led to my
> > challenge.
>
> > [huge snip to get to the point]
>
> >> We would not be talking about Dover at all without the DI getting
> >> involved - something you seem determined not to acknowledge.
>
> > Are you equating "getting involved" with "instigated," as your words
> > "pawns" and "wanted to put on a court challenge" clearly implied?
>
> The Dover school board members involved wanted to introduce old fashion
> creationism into the school curriculum. If they were left alone they
> would have failed miserably

They failed miserably anyway, but at least Behe got his chance to
knock down a colossal strawman erected by Doolittle. Most people here
still think that strawman is an impregnable scarecrow, by the looks of
it, and the flaws in the transcripts -- attributing something to Behe
that was actually written by Doolittle, being quoted by Behe -- may be
partly to blame for that.

> - instead they were coached to introduce ID
> in the friendliest way possible. See:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

And the school board ignored their advice on this, obviously. So I
fail to see any support for your claim of "instigation."

> > And where do you get the farfetched notion that Behe was "complicit"
> > in *wanting* a court challenge?
>
> >> Behe is
> >> complicit as an active, prominent participant in the whole affair.
>
> > "whole affair" = testimony once the OPPONENTS of the YEC crowd put it
> > to the court challenge that *they* wanted?
>
> >> So
> >> what if the school board didn't follow instructions explicitly. The DI
> >> got what they wanted - a high profile court case.
>
> > I'd like to see documentation that this is what they wanted.
>
> Read Lebo, Miller, and the Wiki article.

Not until you give page numbers for the books. I don't relish hunting
through huge haystacks for possibly nonexistent needles.

As for the Wiki article, where on earth did you see any such thing?
What I saw suggests the exact opposite:

_____________ excerpt_____________
The Discovery Institute's John West said the case displayed the ACLU's
"Orwellian" effort to stifle scientific discourse and objected to the
issue being decided in court. "It's a disturbing prospect that the
outcome of this lawsuit could be that the court will try to tell
scientists what is legitimate scientific inquiry and what is not,"
West said. "That is a flagrant assault on free speech."
======================= end of excerpt=====

Can you see why I said "possibly nonexistent needles"?

> > But more importantly, I'd like to see documentation that this is what
> > BEHE wanted.

And now you move the goalposts from "wanting a high profile court
case" to "wanting to participate in a high profile court case that had
been brought by the ACLU"

> No one could force Behe into participating. An expert witness normally
> becomes one if they feel passionate about whatever they are an expert
> in. The exception is if it's their job, but Behe was not paid for is
> testimony - unless you can prove otherwise.

> Mark
>
> * Another reason is that the discussion has got to the point where one
> side is flagrantly obstinate.

You confuse reasonable objections to your claims with "flagrant
obstinacy".

++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm on

I'm sure you would characterize Danton as guilty of "flagrant
obstinacy" in maintaining his innocence in front of the French
Revolutionary tribunal.

+++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off

Peter Nyikos

[John Stockwell]

"Directed panspermia" is a science fiction plot. There is
no physical evidence to back up the idea.

>
>
>
> Don't forget, it was YOU who wrote "in any way shape or form."
>
>
>
> The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
>
> microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
>
> conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
>
> combine all the desirable properties within one single type
>
> of organism or to send many different organisms is not
>
> completely clear.
>
> --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
>
> Simon and Schuster, 1981

I notice that you quote a non-peer reviewed publication.
Crick could wave his "Nobel Laureate" title around and
publish a manual on how to effectively hump a dog, if he had
wanted to. It could have been "directed dog-spermia"...

Crick is not the first nor will he be the last "grand old man"
of a scientific field to get idle speculation noticed because
of his laurels.

For your information, Peter, you are no Nobel Laureate, so you cannot expect to get such kid glove treatment. At any rate,
why don't you get your own gig? Crick cornered the market
on panspermia speculation. You haven't supplied any additional
science to go with the science that Crick did not supply.

>
>
>
>
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > > > Behe makes a poor showing. Defending using "Of Pandas and
>
> > > > People" as a textbook may be the biggest howler.
>
>
>
> What actually appears in the website you gave is so laughable, it
>
> calls your very sanity into question. He was NOT defending the book.
>
> He was talking about something he wrote for that book, which was
>
> repeated with some updates in _Darwin's Black Box_.
>
>
>
> Now I expect you to change your story and say that anyone who WRITES
>
> for such a book deserves to be pilloried. But one could equally say
>
> he "exploited" the book to push his own theories.

I quote:
"Q So Dr. Behe, do you think Pandas would be a good book, a good reference book for students to have access to?

A Yes, I do.

Q And why is that?

A Well, because in order to best discern the difference between facts and theories, it's extremely useful to be able to view facts from a couple of different theoretical perspectives. It would help a student separate theory from facts. It would help show a student that the strength of facts, the strength of support that facts lend to a theory can oftentimes depend on a theory -- excuse me, a theoretical perspective somebody committed to a theory might see the facts as more strongly fitting the theory than somebody else. It also might help the student see that difficulties with the theory -- the strengths of the difficulties are also relative to the viewpoints that people bring to the table, that somebody who views a theory as very strongly supported already like, for example, the ether theory of light, will view difficulties with the theory a lot differently and perhaps a lot more permissively than somebody who does not share the same theoretical perspective. So I think it would be very good for that purpos

e."

Really, Of Pandas and People a "good reference for students
to have access to?" Have you read that book, Peter. It is
a piece of shit, scientifically speaking. Defending this book
reveals Behe's incompetence.

The correct answer would be: "Of Pandas and People? That
piece of shit is just a rebranded scientific creationist
publication.

Behe was certainly exploited by the creationists, by being
suckered into writing a chapter for the book.

Dawkins and PZ Meyer's both got suckered by creationists'
bushwack journalism.

Behe couldn't apparently get that he had been bushwacked.

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > > I do believe most readers will be grateful for the way you ducked the
>
> > > challenge to produce a page number.
>
> >
>
> > All of the pages that have Behe's name suffice.
>
>
>
> I was referring to the official transcripts, not the huge pages that
>
> are in the TO FAQ. It takes quite a while to zero in on the relevant
>
> information there.

Typical dodge.

>
>
>
> > Here is a web page:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11am.html
>
> >
>
> > start here, and keep hitting that little right pointing arrow
>
> > until you are finished with Behe's testimony. You can read it
>
> > for yourself.
>
>
>
> I've read most of the testimony long ago, and that was why your lie
>
> about "defending the book" just didn't ring a bell with me.

It wasn't a lie. I posted the quote above.

>
>
>
> Thanks for reinforcing my impression that you have little idea of what
>
> it means to be a mature, responsible adult.

You really are an arrogant asshole, Peter. And to think
that I defended you.

>
>
>
> >
>
> > > > Pointing out that his
>
> >
>
> > > > definition of science would include astrology is another one.
>
> >
>
> > > They will be ETERNALLY grateful to you for omitting the page number on
>
> >
>
> > > this one, because you are oh-so-conveniently ignoring the fact that he
>
> >
>
> > > wasn't talking about *present-day* astrology, but astrology as it
>
> >
>
> > > might have been practiced in the middle ages (and perhaps a bit
>
> >
>
> > > beyond, e.g. by Kepler).
>
> >
>
> > > By the way, it wasn't "pointed out" by him: it was wormed out of him
>
> >
>
> > > when the interrogator persisted after Behe first prefaced his comments
>
> >
>
> > > with other things that were much less conducive to distortion than
>
> >
>
> > > anything he could possibly say about astrology in reply to the
>
> >
>
> > > relentlessly leading questions.
>
> >
>
> > Behe hanged himself on his own bullshit. Astrology is a form of
>
> > magic. Is now, and always has been.
>
>
>
> Substitute "alchemy" for "astrology" and most people would agree with
>
> you. Yet the alchemists discovered many useful substances, like
>
> sulfuric acid, despite them working from some incorrect premises.
>
>
>
> Besides, you are assuming you know far more about medieval astrology
>
> than anyone does.

European astrology was rooted in the writings of Ptolemy.

Prior to our modern scientific revolution, reasoning from analogy was the order of the day. Funny you mention astrology
and alchemy. The connection between the two was that each
of the major celestial bodies were identified with metals.
Gold with the Sun.Venus with copper-Aphrodite's other name in ancient Greekliterature was Kupros (copper). The moon was identified with silver, Mars with iron. Quick silver with Mercury (hence our use of the same name for both the planet and for the element). Tin was associated with Jupiter. Lead with Saturn (our word quntessence or "fifth element" was associated with Saturn being the 5th planet. That sort of thing.

The characteristics of astrological signs were taken from
classical allusions to the characteristics of the various gods
for whom the planets were named.

There was a medical connection, as well. As the moon moved through the astrological signs, different parts of the body
were considered "at risk". I could go on.

The point is that "astrological investigations" were not attempts to test hypotheses. Rather the hypotheses were
generated by making the most convincing analogies with various
classical themes. Astrology is not now, nor was it ever an
"investigative program", where empirical results were deemed
as being the deciding factor for keeping an idea.

[Mark Isaak]

On 12/4/12 11:43 AM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Nov 30, 11:03 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
>> On 11/30/12 3:22 PM, pnyikos wrote:

> [...]

>>
>>>>> Will you be the first person in 17 years to demonstrate any of those
>>>>> alleged fatal flaws to me?
>>
>>>> To your satisfaction? Don't be silly. It is pointless even to try.
>>
>>> To the satisfaction of ANYONE with an open mind.
>>
>> Many of those people were already making the same arguments before I did.
>
> As before, you play with the cards held tightly to your chest: still
> no identification of a single alleged fatal flaw.

<rolls eyes> Yes I did. Like I said, satisfying you would be impossible.

>>> ++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm on
>>
>>> I suppose you agree with Stockwell that just supporting intelligent
>>> design is a fatal flaw.
>>
>>> ++++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off
>>
>>> Go ahead, throw the book at me for "gratuitously" bringing someone
>>> else into the discussion.
>>
>> No need; you just did so yourself.
>

> I don't think there is anything wrong with my bringing Stockwell ...

That's your problem.

>>>>>>> I eagerly await your exposition of the "well understood process" that
>>>>>>> Behe is supposedly denying.
>>
>>>>>> Co-option, scaffolding, coevolution.
>
> Behe does not deny the existence of such things, you four-flusher. He
> merely is skeptical about such processes being able to effect the
> changes in the mitochondrion which I indicated to be problematic.

Bully for him. The existence of such processes, however, remove his
grounds for skepticism. I expect he would remain skeptical -- no, not
skeptical, but disbelieving -- even if a step-by-gorily-detailed-step
process for their evolution were presented to him. You are right,
though, that the real process that Behe is denying is none of those
three, but evolution as a whole.

> And so do I, for that matter [...]

Why? Just because you don't know how it evolved, you believe it can't?

> The devil is in the details, and you have completely evaded the issue
> which actually concerns Behe.

The fact is that the details don't matter for the question at hand,
which is whether the evolution of something is possible, not how exactly
it took place. I cast out the Devil.

>>>>> You are confusing labeling with exposition.
>>
>>>> I have already given the subject much more exposition than it deserves.
>>>> My book devotes five whole pages to it.
>>
>>> Is it accessible on line? If so, please provide an url, preferably
>>> with a page number.
>>

>> http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html is close enough.

>
> As expected, it doesn't even mention mitochondria.

Look again. It talks about biochemical systems. Mitochondria are
biochemical systems.

>>> Mind you, if it doesn't mention the process whereby the mitochondria
>>> transferred most of their genes to the nucleus, along with an
>>> explanation for how the genetic codes "safely" changed, you will be
>>> evading the issue.
>

>> Bullshit. The issue is whether Behe is correct, in DBB and elsewhere,
>> that irreducible complexity implies an impossiblity of gradual
>> evolution.
>
> Double bullshit by you: Behe never wrote that

Triple bullshit to you. Yes, he did. Darwin's Black Box, page 39. You
know as well as I do that even though he allows there that the
probability evolution is nonzero, he expresses that it is close enough
to zero not to matter.

>> His argument is shown to fail utterly on theoretical and
>> other more general grounds.
>
> Pure bluff, with no evidence to back it up.

Hardly a bluff. You said yourself that co-option, scaffolding,
coevolution are real.

>> An analogy: Behe says it is impossible to walk from Houston to Mobile
>> because the Mississippi River is in the way.
>
> This is not an analogy to anything I have ever seen Behe write.

Yes it is. Behe himself used a quite similar analogy to make his point.

>> I rebut by saying that
>> that Mississippi River is not infinitely long; having an upper end, it
>> is possible to walk around it. You counter the rebuttal by demanding
>> that I trace every footstep of someone who has, in fact, walked from
>> Houston to Mobile.
>
> Nor does this last sentence resemble anything I ever said.

Sorry, it was something Behe said, that you approved of.

[Ernest Major]

In message <0d70a00c-e65b-42f9...@googlegroups.com>, John
Stockwell <john.1...@gmail.com> writes

>> > The fact that any person
>>
>> > calling themselves a scientist would, for even a millisecond
>>
>> > defend, in any way shape or form, defend intelligent design is
>>
>> > evidence that said individual has a screw loose.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for revealing that you have a closed mind about directed
>>
>> panspermia.

There are two problems here. Firstly that directed panspermia is not
intelligent design. (The intelligent design in your conjectures is in
the directed abiogenesis.)

The second and more important problem is equivocation on the meaning of
intelligent design. (For clarity John Stockwell would have been better
to have written Intelligent Design.)

>
>
>
>"Directed panspermia" is a science fiction plot. There is no physical
>evidence to back up the idea.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Glenn]

"John Stockwell" <john.1...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:0d70a00c-e65b-42f9...@googlegroups.com...

So is life on Mars. Go complain to NASA.

[John Stockwell]

Looking for life on Mars is a legitimate area of research,
because they are actually looking for something.

Intelligent design, as any other form of pseudoscience, is about rebanding things that are already known as being
in some sense "unknowable" scientifically, allowing them
to be used as "idols", in the sense of Francis Bacon's use
of the term, of some mythology. The mythology could be
religion, or it could be some alternative paradigm such
as UFOs, or other hoped for paranormal topic.

-John

[pnyikos]

On Dec 5, 2:46 am, "Glenn" <glennshel...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> "John Stockwell" <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote in messagenews:0d70a00c-e65b-42f9...@googlegroups.com...

Stockwell continues to reveal just how closed his mind is:

> > "Directed panspermia" is a science fiction plot. There is
> > no physical evidence to back up the idea.
>
> So is life on Mars. Go complain to NASA.

An even more apt comparison is SETI. The likes of Sagan (and
Stockwell?) were very unhappy when the "Golden Fleece" award was
giving to it and federal financing withdrawn. But a few years later
it was partially restored, and a lot of private funding continues, and
the project is alive and well.

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

I do believe Stockwell is very, very happy about that.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 5, 2:19 am, Ernest Major <{$t...@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <0d70a00c-e65b-42f9...@googlegroups.com>, John

> Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> writes

>
> >> > The fact that any person
>
> >> > calling themselves a scientist would, for even a millisecond
>
> >> > defend, in any way shape or form, defend intelligent design is
>
> >> > evidence that said individual has a screw loose.
>
> >> Thanks for revealing that you have a closed mind about directed
>
> >> panspermia.
>
> There are two problems here. Firstly that directed panspermia is not
> intelligent design. (The intelligent design in your conjectures is in
> the directed abiogenesis.)

Utterly false. You really seem to be out of it where my positions are
concerned; I already caught you in that unenviable position earlier
this week.

But then, that is nothing new. For 16 years now, people have been out
to lunch where both my positions and Behe's are concerned. And they
almost seem to be proud of being out of touch.

Here is a rough description of where the intelligent design in my
conjectures REALLY is:

The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
Simon and Schuster, 1981

The "senders" to which Crick refers are hypothetical directed
panspermists: intelligent creatures of almost 4 billion years
ago who sent microorganisms to earth, which according to the
hypothesis had an ocean rich in amino acids and various
other organic materials but no living things as yet. He developed
this hypothesis together with Leslie Orgel.

> The second and more important problem is equivocation on the meaning of
> intelligent design. (For clarity John Stockwell would have been better
> to have written Intelligent Design.)

What is your definition of Intelligent Design? If it entails
supernatural intervention, you are begging the question. Neither Behe
nor Dembski nor the DI has included supernatural intervention in
their descriptions of what they call "the scientific theory of
Intelligent Design."

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 4, 6:32 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, November 30, 2012 4:03:23 PM UTC-7, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Nov 29, 5:35 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Wednesday, November 28, 2012 1:34:40 PM UTC-7, pnyikos wrote:
>
> > > > On Nov 19, 4:57 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Friday, November 16, 2012 6:42:21 PM UTC-7, pnyikos wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Nov 14, 6:42 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > > > > > > I would agree, in that he was essentially taken apart on the stand
>
> > > > > > I'm calling your bluff. Tell me which pages of the Dover transcripts
> > > > > > justify this sweeping claim of yours.
>
> > > > > All of it.
>
> > > > Thanks for revealing your propensity for ridiculous exaggeration.
>
> > > No. I am not exaggerating. All of it.
>
> > If you think that what you wrote next proves that, you have more than
> > just one screw loose.

No reply to this, but with each new post of yours, more things that
look like loose screws come to light.

> > > The fact that any person
> > > calling themselves a scientist would, for even a millisecond
> > > defend, in any way shape or form, defend intelligent design is
> > > evidence that said individual has a screw loose.
>
> > Thanks for revealing that you have a closed mind about directed
> > panspermia.

[possibly hypocritical crap, dealt with me in reply to Glenn, flushed]

> > Don't forget, it was YOU who wrote "in any way shape or form."

And don't forget, Ernest Major totally ignored the following quote
when posting a completely false statement about where intelligent
design comes in where my conjectures are concerned.

> >      The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> >       microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> >       conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> >       combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> >       of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> >       completely clear.
>
> >                 --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> >                   Simon and Schuster, 1981
>
> I notice that you quote a non-peer reviewed publication.

I notice that you are a snob with no credentials with which to back up
your snobbery.

But then, that is a prerogative of yours, and it is Ernest Major's
prerogative to make idiotic statements about my position, with NO long-
lasting reprecussions for either of you. It comes with the two of you
being Herrenvolk of talk.origins while I am one of the Untermenschen.

> Crick could wave his "Nobel Laureate" title around and
> publish a manual on how to effectively hump a dog, if he had
> wanted to. It could have been "directed dog-spermia"...

You are a kindred spirit to those who say the Declaration of
Independence has all the legal force of a roll of toilet paper.

[another application of Herrenvolk prerogatives flushed]

> > > > > Behe makes a poor showing. Defending using "Of Pandas and
> > > > > People" as a textbook may be the biggest howler.
>
> > What actually appears in the website you gave is so laughable, it

Actually it isn't what Behe said that is laughable, it is your
Herrenvolk-prerogative use of an inappropriate webpage to back up your
claim.

> > calls your very sanity into question.  He was NOT defending the book.
> > He was talking about something he wrote for that book, which was
> > repeated with some updates in _Darwin's Black Box_.
>
> > Now I expect you to change your story and say that anyone who WRITES
> > for such a book deserves to be pilloried.  But one could equally say
> > he "exploited" the book to push his own theories.
>
> I quote:

NOT from the webpage YOU gave me. THIS is the webpage you gave me:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11am.html

> "Q So Dr. Behe, do you think Pandas would be a good book, a good reference book for students to have access to?
>
> A Yes, I do.
>
> Q And why is that?
>
> A Well, because in order to best discern the difference between facts and theories, it's extremely useful to be able to view facts from a couple of different theoretical perspectives.

Exactly what Mark Buchanan was suggesting about the Poor Babies
(students at U of Toronto), when his ox was gored. Mark jumped to all
kinds of pejorative conclusions about Behe reserving objections to
his theoretical perspectives to wolves in sheep's clothing like
Laurence A. Moran.

>"It would help a student separate theory from facts. It would help show a student that the strength of facts, the strength of support that facts lend to a theory can oftentimes depend on a theory -- excuse me, a theoretical perspective somebody committed to a theory might see the facts as more strongly fitting the theory than somebody else. It also might help the student see that difficulties with the theory -- the strengths of the difficulties are also relative to the viewpoints that people bring to the table, that somebody who views a theory as very strongly supported already like, for example, the ether theory of light, will view difficulties with the theory a lot differently and perhaps a lot more permissively than somebody who does not share the same theoretical perspective. So I think  it would be very good for that purpose."
>
> Really, Of Pandas and People a "good reference for students
> to have access to?" Have you read that book, Peter.

Since you have discredited yourself with your vulgar, ignorant talk
about Crick and directed panspermia, I will wait for someone more
objective, like John Harshman or even Glenn, to give his evaluation of
the book, based on more than just insults and wisecracks like that
"propentis" bit, before cracking it open.

I trust that answers your question.

[insults by you deleted]

> Behe was certainly exploited by the creationists, by being
> suckered into writing a chapter for the book.

The issue is who exploited whom more, and you are obviously unfit
psychologically to render an expert opinion on that.

> Dawkins and PZ Meyer's both got suckered by creationists'
> bushwack journalism.

Really? In what way?

> > > > I do believe most readers will be grateful for the way you ducked the
> > > > challenge to produce a page number.
>
> > > All of the pages that have Behe's name suffice.
>
> > I was referring to the official transcripts, not the huge pages that
> > are in the TO FAQ.  It takes quite a while to zero in on the relevant
> > information there.
>
> Typical dodge.

Typical t.o. Herrenvolk behavior, to expect me to do all YOUR legwork
for you. And the evidence mounts that you challenged me to do
something you never did.

> > > Here is a web page:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11am.html
> > > start here, and keep hitting that little right pointing arrow

Hitting it once took me to a page that shows how shamelessly you use
your Herrenvolk prerogative to ignore gigantic pieces of testimony,
where Behe makes lots of criticisms of Miller's criticisms of various
parts of Pandas.

And the quote which you gave up there was a CONCLUSION from a great
deal of such cases, wasn't it?

Don't bother to answer this question until you've read that second
huge webpage. All of it.

> > > until you are finished with Behe's testimony. You can read it
> > > for yourself.
>
> > I've read most of the testimony long ago, and that was why your lie
> > about "defending the book" just didn't ring a bell with me.
>
> It wasn't a lie. I posted the quote above.

Ripped out of context. But then, that's another Herrenvolk
prerogative that we Untermenschen wouldn't dare use so flagrantly.

>
> > Thanks for reinforcing my impression that you have little idea of what
> > it means to be a mature, responsible adult.
>
> You really are an arrogant asshole, Peter. And to think
> that I defended you.

You "defended" me by saying I couldn't help being the arrogant
asshole, or whatever, that I allegedly was back then.

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Continued in next reply.

Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

On Dec 5, 7:46 am, "Glenn" <glennshel...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> "John Stockwell" <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote in messagenews:0d70a00c-e65b-42f9...@googlegroups.com...

Well, the difference is that with Mars, there are lots of things we
can actually do.Developing methods to look for
life on Mars was reasonably straightforward, even before we could
physically go there. But how do you, in
purely practical terms, go about finding things about a hypothesised
civilisation in a
galaxy far far away, which very possibly died out billions of years
ago? The very minimum you should be ble to ask of
any theory is: where do we go from here, how can we learn more on this
basis?

Sure, you can speculate a lot, about their way of thinking, motives
etc - but if they then start to sound suspiciously like
a group of middle aged academics, you know you are in SF territory -
you can't write fiction about something too
alien for the reader to relate to.

Nothing wrong with good science fiction. also nothing wrong with a bit
of wild speculation when doing good science, can
be a helpful heuristics - but then there so to speak the Dan brown's
of which world, who are really not any good at fiction
writing, but sell well by cresting the illusion of being at least well
researched. These one should avoid, as they do neither discipline any
justice.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 4, 6:32 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, November 30, 2012 4:03:23 PM UTC-7, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Nov 29, 5:35 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

In this second reply to Stockwell's long post, I'm skipping over some
talk about astrology to focus on a flagrant example of Stockwell
moving the goalposts.

I've already given him more of my limited free time today than he
deserves.

> > > Intelligent design is a
> > > form of scientific creationism. Is now and always has been.
>
> > 'fess up now: have you NEVER seen me post that quote from the atheist
> > Crick, with "specially designed" as part of it?

Stockwell, having made some nasty remarks about Crick in the first
part of his post, didn't deign to answer this question. But just look
at how he put his foot in his mouth below:

[snip side isssue]

>
> > > Stop pretending. Intelligent design is creationism. You know it, I
> > > know it. Stop pretending.

Will those old-time regulars who keep accusing me of poor "mind-
reading" ever criticize Stockwell for saying this?

Don't hold your breath, Gentle Reader.

> > Will the the real John Stockwell, the  ventriloquist-analogue, ever
> > disavow these words in the light of the quote from Crick?
>
> > Don't hold your breath, Gentle Reader.

Looks like I have Stockwell pretty well pegged, eh, Gentle Readers?

Let's hear it from those old-time regulars next. :-)

> > Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Hah, don't dismiss science fiction too quickly as a basis for science!
Why, did not Molly
Templar start out as a writer of celestial fiction, only to lead a
successful expedition to Kaliban
and the iron moon, averting great peril for mankind in so doing? Of
course, the dolts at the Royal
Society laughed at her, being "just a writer", just as they laughed
at Amelia Harsh and her quest
for the lost civilisation of Camlantis,

Why, after these two mistakes, I would not join the RS even where they
to offer me a fellowship
and said "pretty please"

[Robert Camp]

From Behe,

"By “intelligent design” I mean to imply design beyond the laws of
nature. That is, taking the laws of nature as given, are their [sic]
other
reasons for concluding that life and its component systems have been
intentionally arranged? In my book, and in this essay, whenever I
refer to intelligent design (ID) I mean this stronger sense of
design-
beyond-laws.” - Philosophical Objections to Intelligent Design, 2002

"I’m still not against Darwinian evolution on theological grounds.
I’m
against it on scientific grounds. I think God could have made life
using apparently random mutation and natural selection. But my
reading
of the scientific evidence is that he did not do it that way, that
there was a more active guiding. I think that we are all descended
from some single cell in the distant past but that that cell and
later
parts of life were intentionally produced as the result of
intelligent
activity. As a Christian, I say that intelligence is very likely to
be
God." - Can You Believe in God and Evolution?, Time, 2005

From Dembski,

"The fine-tuning of the universe, about which cosmologists make such
a
to-do, is both complex and specified and readily yields design. So
too, Michael Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems readily
yield design. The complexity-specification criterion demonstrates
that
design pervades cosmology and biology. Moreover, it is a transcendent
design, not reducible to the physical world. Indeed, no intelligent
agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of
the universe or the origin of life." - The Act of Creation: Bridging
Transcendence and Immanence, 1998

"ID is three things:
1. A scientific research program that investigates the effects of
intelligent causes
2. An intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its
naturalistic legacy
3. A way of understanding divine action." - The Act of Creation:
Bridging
Transcendence and Immanence, 1998

From the DI,

“Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture
seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural
legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural
sciences
and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center
explores
how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise
serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the
case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. [Note: The
original version of the Wedge document phrased this last part as
"have
reopened the case for the supernatural."]” – The Wedge Strategy,
Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture

"Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the
materialistic's worldview and to replace it with a science consonant
with Christian and theistic convictions." - The Wedge Strategy, Center
for the Renewal of Science and Culture

RLC

[Robert Camp]

Okay, I've had it with Google. Time to look for a newsreader again.

Just go here for the quotes,
http://litcandle.blogspot.com/2005/07/in-their-own-words-is-intelligent.html

RLC