A Fine Napoleonic Retreat
Devil's Advocaat
to be crumbling into doubt.
Creationism – God did it.
Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
I wonder what the next step is going to be?
TimK
"Devil's Advocaat" <mank...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:00037d07-7725-454b...@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
Nicely stated!
richardal...@googlemail.com
We've already got it:
We mustn't rule out the possibility that someone did it.
RF
Grandbank
Sadly, these positions are like a series of hoppers with far more
chaff being diverted off into the world than wheat being passed
through.
One also gets the sense that at the end of the process the wheat is
just pretending.
KP
Ron O
The next step that they are already taking is to blow smoke over the
issue. If they can keep people confused and as ignorant as possible
they can tell them at some other time that it looks like somebody did
it and not look like pathetic losers to the ignorant and confused.
Ron Okimoto
squealpiggy
Shaggy - It wasn't me...
raven1
Followed by "you can't prove someone *didn't* do it".
Free Lunch
<anthon...@gmail.com> wrote in talk.origins:
But Scoobie helped.
Devil's Advocaat
Isn't that similar to saying "It looks like somebody did it"?
>
> RF
gregwrld
Obviously, it's "Evo will
make Nazi's of us" and
other non-issues.
gregwrld
Ken
I did it, but you're never gonna be able to prove it, cause I removed
the DVD of me doing it, killed the only witness that saw me do it and
I'll never fess up to me doing it.
Ah...oops
Steven L.
Theistic evolution already says, in effect: "Don't claim that nobody
did it."
--
Steven L.
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
Devil's Advocaat
> Devil's Advocaat wrote:
> > Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> > to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> > Creationism – God did it.
>
> > Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>
> > Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>
> > I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
> Theistic evolution already says, in effect: "Don't claim that nobody
> did it."
Is that a linguistic double negative for emphasis?
>
> --
> Steven L.
> Email: sdlit...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
T Pagano
<mank...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>to be crumbling into doubt.
>
>Creationism – God did it.
On the other hand:
Evolutionism: Nature did it.
>
>Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
Naturalism: It darn looks like somebody did it, but its just an
illusion.
>
>Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
The Law and Chance Inference: The fossil record doesn't corroborate
the transformism of neoDarwinism and neither does genetics and the NFL
Theorems prove that the neoDarwinian "algorithm" can be no better than
a blind search but nonetheless nobody could have had any hand in the
emergence of life and its diversity.
>
>I wonder what the next step is going to be?
I wonder what new fairy tale the atheists will dream up next.
Regards,
T Pagano
P.S. I've been gone for several months and its like I never left.
It's still like shooting fish in a barrel.
David Canzi
What I think they're doing is trying a series of promises to
"only put it in a little" until they find out how little is little
enough to get consent.
--
David Canzi | Life is too short to point out every mistake. |
Woland
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>
The Black Knight Strikes again!
Steven L.
> On 28 Jun, 16:58, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Devil's Advocaat wrote:
>>> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>>> to be crumbling into doubt.
>>> Creationism – God did it.
>>> Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>>> Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>>> I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>> Theistic evolution already says, in effect: "Don't claim that nobody
>> did it."
>
> Is that a linguistic double negative for emphasis?
Let me rephrase it then: "It is unreasonable to claim that nobody did it."
--
Steven L.
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Free Lunch
talk.origins:
>No.
>
We also don't rule out the possibility that Queen Maeve or the IPU or
the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it. We just ignore them since there
isn't any evidence to back up the claim.
Free Lunch
wrote in talk.origins:
>Devil's Advocaat wrote:
>> On 28 Jun, 16:58, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> Devil's Advocaat wrote:
>>>> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>>>> to be crumbling into doubt.
>>>> Creationism – God did it.
>>>> Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>>>> Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>>>> I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>>> Theistic evolution already says, in effect: "Don't claim that nobody
>>> did it."
>>
>> Is that a linguistic double negative for emphasis?
>
>Let me rephrase it then: "It is unreasonable to claim that nobody did it."
A claim that the theists cannot back up.
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "Devil's Advocaat"
<mank...@yahoo.co.uk>:
No, because the "looks like" part has been removed. "We
mustn't rule out" implicitly admits that it *doesn't* look
like somebody did it, but exhorts keeping an open mind, into
which they can pour waste matter.
--
Bob C.
"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless
Devil's Advocaat
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:37:23 -0700 (PDT), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by "Devil's Advocaat"
>
>
>
>
>
> >On 28 Jun, 12:55, richardalanforr...@googlemail.com wrote:
> >> On Jun 28, 11:14 am, "Devil's Advocaat" <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >> > Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> >> > to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> >> > Creationism – God did it.
>
> >> > Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>
> >> > Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>
> >> > I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
> >> We've already got it:
> >> We mustn't rule out the possibility that someone did it.
>
> >Isn't that similar to saying "It looks like somebody did it"?
>
> No, because the "looks like" part has been removed. "We
> mustn't rule out" implicitly admits that it *doesn't* look
> like somebody did it, but exhorts keeping an open mind, into
> which they can pour waste matter.
How silly of me not to realise that. :)
> --
>
> Bob C.
>
> "Evidence confirming an observation is
> evidence that the observation is wrong."
> - McNameless- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Tom McDonald
And look! He's discovered a dragon! Naturally speaking.
Frank J
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>
I guess, if you're the fish.
So, has your position continued to "evolve" during those months? IIRC
last time around you agreed with Behe about the chronology but
disagreed with him about common descent. Does that still hold, and if
not, would you mind elaborating on your differences with other
creationists and IDers?
Frank J
> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> Creationism – God did it.
If you mean classic creationism, it also included what God did, and
when. Nothing on the "how," of course, and no testing of the whats and
whens. And basing it all on sought and fabricated "weaknesses" of
evolution instead of on it's own merits.
>
> Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
IOW a retreat from the designer's identity (and whether or not it is
the creator too). But more importantly a reatreat from stating whats
and whens (which were mutually contradictory anyway) to "don't ask,
don't tell what the designer did when."
>
> Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>
> I wonder what the next step is going to be?
The next step *was* "don't teach ID, only the 'weaknesses' of
evolution." Then it was "academic freedom," which is really "academic
anarchy".
My guess to the next step is more of the "what is science?" rhetoric
that degenerates into an endless word game. One in which pseudoscience
almost always wins in the mind of nonscientists. If they can get
sufficiently fundamentalist or postmodern judges, my fear is that that
approach can win in court as well as the "court of public opinion."
Most other "evolutionists" are more confident than I am that the scam
artists will lose the next court battles, but they don't give me much
hope because they insist on framing it as "us vs. the creationists"
instead of "us vs. all sorts of scam artists hiding under a big tent,
and skilled at uniting rank and file creationists and dividing
scientists."
Cory Albrecht
Yeah - I would have thought that by now you'd have gotten tired of
having to dig that buckshot out of your fleeing ass all the time.
Louann Miller
4cc8-9b07-7...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com:
>> > I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>>
>> Theistic evolution already says, in effect: я"Don't claim that nobody
>> did it."
>
> Is that a linguistic double negative for emphasis?
I'd parse it "don't you dare claim that nobody did it. That would be rude."
Louann Miller
tfsc64h696fi9ah4d...@4ax.com:
>>Creationism - God did it.
>
> On the other hand:
>
> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
It's easy to prove Nature exists. Yours?
Rodjk #613
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>
Pagano is a legend in his own mind. Too bad no one else thinks so.
Rodjk #613
Mark VandeWettering
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
><mank...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>>to be crumbling into doubt.
>>
>>Creationism – God did it.
>
> On the other hand:
>
> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
Nature isn't an entity. It doesn't _do_ anything: it just is.
>>Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>
> Naturalism: It darn looks like somebody did it, but its just an
> illusion.
It doesn't look like someone did it, at least, it doesn't look like
anyone did it who wasn't deliberately trying to emulate mutation,
natural selection and drift.
>>Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>
> The Law and Chance Inference: The fossil record doesn't corroborate
> the transformism of neoDarwinism and neither does genetics and the NFL
> Theorems prove that the neoDarwinian "algorithm" can be no better than
> a blind search but nonetheless nobody could have had any hand in the
> emergence of life and its diversity.
You have no idea what the NFL theorem says. Neither does Dembski.
>
>>
>>I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
> I wonder what new fairy tale the atheists will dream up next.
>
> Regards,
> T Pagano
>
> P.S. I've been gone for several months and its like I never left.
> It's still like shooting fish in a barrel.
Too bad you are one of the fish.
Mark
Ron O
>
A fish in a barrel that thinks it is a big deal to shoot itself in the
foot.
The ID perps are still running the bait and switch instead of teaching
any of that wonderful science of ID that you claim exists. Sort of
makes you look like a fool for believing that they ever had anything
worth talking about.
Don't think that they lied to you and everyone else? Just get your
local school board to teach the science of intelligent design and
watch how fast the switch comes in. Find out that the switch scam
doesn't even mention that ID ever existed and then try to claim that
you have some kind of valid argument. Even you can't deny that the
same dishonest creationist perps that ran the teach ID scam for over a
decade are running the current bait and switch scam.
Ron Okimoto
RAM
Yes he must be either of the "blow fish" or "flounder" kind.
Kermit
> Devil's Advocaat wrote:
> > On 28 Jun, 16:58, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> Devil's Advocaat wrote:
> >>> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> >>> to be crumbling into doubt.
> >>> Creationism – God did it.
> >>> Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
> >>> Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
> >>> I wonder what the next step is going to be?
> >> Theistic evolution already says, in effect: "Don't claim that nobody
> >> did it."
>
> > Is that a linguistic double negative for emphasis?
>
> Let me rephrase it then: "It is unreasonable to claim that nobody did it."
>
Then... it's not unreasonable to not claim that nobody did it?
> --
> Steven L.
> Email: sdlit...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
> Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
Kermit
Kermit
> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> to be crumbling into doubt.
>
You skipped a step.
> Creationism – God did it.
1. Classic Creationism - God said it, and I believe it, and that
settles it.
2. Creation Science (because science is respectable) - God did it, and
we can prove it.
>
> Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
OK, it's really science this time.
>
> Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
We haven't done any actual research yet, but we're getting closer to
science.
>
> I wonder what the next step is going to be?
ID? What ID? We just want academic freedom <wink, wink>
Kermit
Caranx latus
> On Jun 28, 11:24 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Devil's Advocaat wrote:
>>> On 28 Jun, 16:58, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>> Devil's Advocaat wrote:
>>>>> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>>>>> to be crumbling into doubt.
>>>>> Creationism – God did it.
>>>>> Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>>>>> Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>>>>> I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>>>> Theistic evolution already says, in effect: "Don't claim that nobody
>>>> did it."
>>> Is that a linguistic double negative for emphasis?
>> Let me rephrase it then: "It is unreasonable to claim that nobody did it."
>>
>
> Then... it's not unreasonable to not claim that nobody did it?
It's not that it's not unreasonable to not claim that nobody did it, but
rather that not claiming that nobody did it is not reasonable. Or not.
Ferrous Patella
news:oxx9k.10093$Hi7....@newsfe05.lga:
Quite a speach! Recognition from the chair should have come first,
though.
loua...@yahoo.com
> >Creationism – God did it.
>
> >Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>
> >Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>
> >I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
> What I think they're doing is trying a series of promises to
> "only put it in a little" until they find out how little is little
> enough to get consent.
You are a vulgar, vulgar, insightful, vulgar man.
Steven J.
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>
> <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> >to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> >Creationism – God did it.
>
> On the other hand:
>
> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
>
go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
predictions about *how* "nature did it."
>
> >Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>
> illusion.
>
particular did it: there are all sorts of adaptions that it is
tempting to attribute to "design," but the overall pattern we see
doesn't fit any plausible design philosophy or purpose (why, e.g. keen
eyes for predators combined with camoflage for prey? why both
pathogenic organisms and immune systems?).
>
> >Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>
> the transformism of neoDarwinism and neither does genetics and the NFL
> Theorems prove that the neoDarwinian "algorithm" can be no better than
> a blind search but nonetheless nobody could have had any hand in the
> emergence of life and its diversity.
>
record and genetics don't corroborate common descent; his position is
that no unguided mechanism can produce such a result. Behe has noted
that, in fact, the fossil record and genetics *DO* corroborate common
descent ("the transformism of neoDarwinism," as you put it, although
one would not expect fossils to be terribly informative about the
mechanisms, as opposed perhaps to the "tempo and mode," of evolution).
>
>
> >I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
>
"scientific creationists" have been forced to remove more and more of
the detail from their proposals to get their dogma "equal time" in
schools, until very little is left, and this is because they have no
positive, testable theory or actual evidence for it. These are not
problems that evolutionary theory suffers from.
>
> Regards,
> T Pagano
>
> P.S. I've been gone for several months and its like I never left.
> It's still like shooting fish in a barrel.
>
ammunition.
-- Steven J.
David Hare-Scott
"T Pagano" <not....@address.net> wrote in message news:apagano-
>
> and the NFL
> Theorems prove that the neoDarwinian "algorithm" can be no better than
> a blind search
Please demonstrate this or show a reference to the demonstration.
David
The Enigmatic One
not....@address.net says...
>I wonder what new fairy tale the atheists will dream up next.
>
>Regards,
>T Pagano
>
>P.S. I've been gone for several months and its like I never left.
>It's still like shooting fish in a barrel.
Wow.
You're a fucking moron!
-Tim
Mike Dworetsky
news:g471ne$sc4$1...@aioe.org...
Thanks, it's all perfectly clear now.
--
Mike Dworetsky
(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)
Ernest Major
<f686199e-508a-4efb...@d1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
Rodjk #613 <rjk...@gmail.com> writes
talk.origins.
--
alias Ernest Major
Free Lunch
<t...@again.spammers> wrote in talk.origins:
I'm sure he meant to tell us that he came back to be the fish.
TimK
"David Canzi" <dmc...@remulak.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
news:g45tki$1ij$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
> In article
> <00037d07-7725-454b...@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
> Devil's Advocaat <mank...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>>to be crumbling into doubt.
>>
>>
>>Intelligent Design - Somebody did it.
>>
>>Design Inference - It looks like somebody did it.
>>
>>I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
> "only put it in a little" until they find out how little is little
> enough to get consent.
Wonderful bit of double entendre, that.
Frank J
> On Jun 28, 3:14 am, "Devil's Advocaat" <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> > to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> You skipped a step.
>
> > Creationism – God did it.
>
> 1. Classic Creationism - God said it, and I believe it, and that
> settles it.
>
> 2. Creation Science (because science is respectable) - God did it, and
> we can prove it.
I got excited that someone other than I finally used the phrase
"Classic Creationism." Except I use that to include creation
"science", as long as the latter makes testable statements of what the
Creator did, and when.
I'll keep that in mind and try to be more clear to differentiate the
pre-Henry Morris "belief based" creationism (which might still be
dominant among the rank and file) from the "pseudoscience first"
creationism that evolved into ID.
The bottom line is that we need more specific terms, and *not* the
usual self-defeating lumping of all the beliefs and strategies under a
general "creationism" label. Why help them prop up the big tent?
RAM
Tony is a Karl Rove postmodernist he constructs his own reality. And
it has the same consequences. Failure.
RAM
Devil's Advocaat
> "David Canzi" <dmca...@remulak.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
>
> news:g45tki$1ij$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
>
>
>
>
>
> > In article
> > <00037d07-7725-454b-b091-5939e052a...@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
> > Devil's Advocaat <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >>Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> >>to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> >>Creationism - God did it.
>
> >>Intelligent Design - Somebody did it.
>
> >>Design Inference - It looks like somebody did it.
>
> >>I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
> > What I think they're doing is trying a series of promises to
> > "only put it in a little" until they find out how little is little
> > enough to get consent.
>
> Wonderful bit of double entendre, that.
I try to avoid such things, as they are too close to innuendos for my
liking. :P
Devil's Advocaat
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>
> <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> >to be crumbling into doubt.
>
>
> On the other hand:
>
> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
>
>
>
>
> Naturalism: It darn looks like somebody did it, but its just an
> illusion.
>
>
>
>
> The Law and Chance Inference: The fossil record doesn't corroborate
> the transformism of neoDarwinism and neither does genetics and the NFL
> Theorems prove that the neoDarwinian "algorithm" can be no better than
> a blind search but nonetheless nobody could have had any hand in the
> emergence of life and its diversity.
>
>
> >I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
>
Desertphile
<mank...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> Creationism – God did it.
>
> Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>
> Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>
> I wonder what the next step is going to be?
We already see the "next step:" the demand that nobody knows the
answer, therefore all opinions ought to be included in public
school's science classes.
--
http://desertphile.org
Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
"Why aren't resurrections from the dead noteworthy?" -- Jim Rutz
raven1
wrote:
>P.S. I've been gone for several months and its like I never left.
>It's still like shooting fish in a barrel.
I guess it took "several months" to get all the buckshot removed from
your foot from the last time you were here.
Gene Poole
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
> <mank...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>> to be crumbling into doubt.
>>
>> Creationism – God did it.
>
>
> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
You left out a very important difference, "Nature did it, and here's how."
When a creationist or IDist can actually show us "How God did it," then
maybe they'd be taken seriously.
[SNIP]
TT
incompetent and lazy to eat fish any other way is a pretty fair analogy
of how creationists set up their arguments...that's God's way to argue...lol
TT
Boikat
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>
> <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> >to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> >Creationism – God did it.
>
> On the other hand:
>
> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
The essential difference is that "nature" is not a diety or
supernatural being.
>
>
>
> >Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>
> Naturalism: It darn looks like somebody did it, but its just an
> illusion.
Yup. An illusion that many do not see as an illusion.
>
>
>
> >Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>
> The Law and Chance Inference: The fossil record doesn't corroborate
> the transformism of neoDarwinism and neither does genetics and the NFL
> Theorems prove that the neoDarwinian "algorithm" can be no better than
> a blind search but nonetheless nobody could have had any hand in the
> emergence of life and its diversity.
Actually, the fossil record *does* support transitions, so does
genetics. You should suspect the source of your (ahem" wisdom to be
susp[ect in their honesty. As far as the rest of your mindless
babbling, when millions of years of hundreds of thousands of
generations with millions of variations due to drift and mutations are
involved, *almost* anything is possible. Including new species
diverging from a parent species. But your mind is too limited to
grasp that.
>
>
>
> >I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
> I wonder what new fairy tale the atheists will dream up next.
What deoes atheism have to do with it? You were addressing scientific
matters. Science/scientists =/= atheism/atheist. If you believe
otehrsise, you are stupid. Not ignorant (Ignorance can be cured),
but simply *stupid*.
>
> Regards,
> T Pagano
>
> P.S. I've been gone for several months and its like I never left.
> It's still like shooting fish in a barrel.
Then why do you keep shooting youself in the foot?
Boikat
DuhIdiot
news:g45tki$1ij$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
> In article
> <00037d07-7725-454b...@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
> Devil's Advocaat <mank...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>>to be crumbling into doubt.
>>
>>Creationism – God did it.
>>
>>Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>>
>>Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>>
>>I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
> What I think they're doing is trying a series of promises to
> "only put it in a little" until they find out how little is little
> enough to get consent.
The next step: Genesis 1:1 printed on school lunch trays on the notion that
eatin' ain't cheatin'.
--
No SPAM in my email.
.
T Pagano
<stev...@altavista.com> wrote:
>On Jun 28, 12:34 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>>
>> <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> >Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>> >to be crumbling into doubt.
>>
>> >Creationism – God did it.
>>
>> On the other hand:
>>
>> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
>>
>No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
>go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
>predictions about *how* "nature did it."
1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
EXISTING characteristics.
2. Secularists don't have a clue how novelty emerges or how it
progresses to maturity. Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.
3. The fossil record does not show the ubiquitous transformism that
neoDarwinism predicted. It shows without exception "sudden
appearance" and "STASIS."
4. Genetics/Population Genetics have not found any observable
mechanisms that would progressively and coherently incorporate only
beneficial mutations while discarding all the unhelpful ones. All of
the known mechanisms either shuffle existing information or
dramatically attenuate all mutations. Populations in the wild tend
toward stasis not ubiquitous change.
5. One of the founders of population genetics (J.B.S. Haldane)
outlined a serious UNSOLVED problem----the cost of substitution when a
beneficial mutation occurs. This is another dramatic attenuator of
any change.
6. Natural Selection is a misleading misnomer. It is a term that
refers to "differential survival" in the wild. It is a stochastic
process; which is to say that there are so many variables in the wild
that it is no easier to predict which individuals in a population will
survive than it is to predict the weather. What is "beneficial" is
entirely situational. Populations already express a healthy variation
within its individuals so that it collectively survives in the varied
conditions with which it is faced.
7. Abiogenesis is completely failed and stagnated.
8. Finally Niles Eldredge has made clear over the years that
evolutionists not only DON'T know what causes novelty to emerge and
develop to maturity there is no consensus on the conception among
secularists. There are at least two major belief systems: the
Dawkinsian gradualists and the Gouldian Punc Eqers. And there is a
small
But I'll call Steven J's bluff...please produce the EMPIRICALLY
testable details which show how novelty emerged in prehistory (and
should be emerging now), how novel structures progressed to maturity
in prehistory, and how this process overcomes all the attentuating
factors including Haldane's Dilemma. To save time for you a link to a
peer reviewed journal would suffice.
T Pagano
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
>
> But I'll call Steven J's bluff
Ohhhh, look everyone, the pit yorkie is back.
Yap for us, Tony.
Yap, yap, yap . . . . .
================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedAndBlackPublishers.com
Steven J.
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>
-- [snip]
>
> >No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
> >go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
> >predictions about *how* "nature did it."
>
> 1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
> only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
> variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
> EXISTING characteristics.
>
evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, an ability hitherto unknown
among this strain. You post it weeks after reports of how Italian
wall lizards, transplanted to a new island home on Pod Mrcaru, evolved
cecal valves in their digestive tracts (again, a trait previously
unknown in this species). You post it, on the other hand, years after
reports of how random mutation coupled with natural selection have
produced bacteria able to digest nylon, or to resist -- or even feed
upon -- antibiotics unknown in nature. There is NO reason, empirical
or theoretical (as opposed to theological) to suppose that mutation
and natural selection can alter a population "only [within] a very
narrow range." Even Michael Behe's (demonstrably flawed) argument in
_The Edge of Evolution_ only proscribes certain types of
transformations, with no indication that, e.g. the changes needed to
produce lemurs and humans from a common ancestor require any sequence
of mutations that Behe finds problematical.
Oh, and strictly speaking, "nonsense" implies that my assertion is not
merely wrong, but self-contradictory or otherwise absurd on its face.
I think you should stick with the more modest "you err."
>
> 2. Secularists don't have a clue how novelty emerges or how it
> progresses to maturity. Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.
>
Since you've never defined this quality "novelty," it's not clear what
would qualify as observing it, or as an explanation for it. However,
one can have a pretty good idea of how something happens without
observing it directly (and conversely, one can observe a thing and
have no clue how it is possible). In evolution, "novel" features (as
most people define the term) emerge as modifications of previously-
existing features, or as modifications of duplications of previously-
existing features.
>
> 3. The fossil record does not show the ubiquitous transformism that
> neoDarwinism predicted. It shows without exception "sudden
> appearance" and "STASIS."
>
The last time we had this discussion, it was painfully clear that you
did not know what "stasis" meant (Gould and Eldredge used the term to
indicate that, at least at the morphological level, a species had
undergone no evolution at all; you use it to describe entire sequences
of similar but clearly distinct species each showing microevolutionary
changes as they transition from one to another). Someone who talks
about the Pearson, _et al._ foram sequence as showing "stasis" is just
using words as magic charms, not to convey meaning or express
understanding.
Note that many of what you seem to regard as "novelties" (e.g. bird
bills, bird wings, and feathers) do not appear full-blown and without
precursors in the fossil record: one can trace intermediate forms in
various maniraptoran theropods. Usually *species*, even entire
genera, appear without clear precursors, but speciation has been
observed in the lab (i.e. the sort of change that is worst-documented
in the fossil record is precisely the kind that has been observed in
the present day among living populations), and the fossil record is
known to be incomplete and incompletely uncovered and described.
Note, by the way, that Darwin himself suggested that a typical lineage
would spend far more time NOT evolving (i.e. in stasis) than it did
changing. Ernst Mayr, one of the founders of modern "neo-Darwinism,"
expanded on this idea, laying the theoretical groundwork for
"punctuated equilibria," the idea that stasis was the normal state of
species and populations, and that evolution took place not slowly over
an entire species but relatively rapidly in isolated populations of
the species. So it would seem that "neoDarwinism" does not
necessarily predict "ubiquitous transformism" in the fossil record.
>
> 4. Genetics/Population Genetics have not found any observable
> mechanisms that would progressively and coherently incorporate only
> beneficial mutations while discarding all the unhelpful ones. All of
> the known mechanisms either shuffle existing information or
> dramatically attenuate all mutations. Populations in the wild tend
> toward stasis not ubiquitous change.
>
If by "unhelpful," you mean "selectively neutral," there is neither
need nor reason to suppose that they are routinely discarded. If by
"unhelpful," you mean "harmful," the observable mechanism is called
"death before reproducing." Again, you're using words as though they
were magical incantations, that achieved affects even though neither
you nor your audience know their meaning. Selective breeding does
exactly what you describe: progressively incorporate beneficial
("beneficial" depending on the selective criteria) mutations while
discarding harmful ones. Natural selection -- differential survival
of variants in an environment without intelligent intervention --
accomplishes the same thing, although generally much more slowly.
Since mutations occur constantly, new variation appears to replace
variation that has been lost due to natural selection. Note that in a
stable environment, populations will already tend to be well-adapted,
and will be experiencing stabilizing rather than transformative
selection.
>
> 5. One of the founders of population genetics (J.B.S. Haldane)
> outlined a serious UNSOLVED problem----the cost of substitution when a
> beneficial mutation occurs. This is another dramatic attenuator of
> any change.
>
Haldane's dilemma makes a number of assumptions: that evolution takes
place in populations that are already well-suited to their
environment (i.e. the opposite assumption of punctuated equilibrium),
that all genetic changes are adaptive (i.e. the opposite assumption of
Kimura's theory that most evolutionary change, at the genetic level,
is neutral drift), and various other technical assumptions that are
also questionable in many circumstances. ReMine argued that Haldane's
calculations limited the number of beneficial mutations fixed since
the human-chimp last common ancestor to no more than 1,000, and
blithely regarded this as a disproof of evolution, without bothering
to even assert (much less provide evidence) that in fact there were
even 1,000 (much less a larger number) of adaptive differences between
the human and chimpanzee genome. So it is not clear why Haldane's
dilemma should be any sort of a problem for an evolutionary
explanation of biological diversity and complexity.
>
> 6. Natural Selection is a misleading misnomer. It is a term that
> refers to "differential survival" in the wild. It is a stochastic
> process; which is to say that there are so many variables in the wild
> that it is no easier to predict which individuals in a population will
> survive than it is to predict the weather. What is "beneficial" is
> entirely situational. Populations already express a healthy variation
> within its individuals so that it collectively survives in the varied
> conditions with which it is faced.
>
Again, do you even understand the argument(s) you are presenting
here? To say that variables are so numerous that prediction is
difficult means that a process is "chaotic," not "stochastic;" our
inability to predict the outcome of a complex situation does not mean
that the situation is not largely, or even entirely, deterministic.
To say that what is "beneficial" is entirely situational is [a] to
tell me what I've told you on many occasions, and [b] to explain why
the same process can produce such diverse outcomes in nature. And the
point of a "healthy variation" is that some variants *don't* survive
in various environments; their variations are lost (and replaced by
similar or different variants by later mutations). So you've
constructed an argument that evolution must occur, and used it as an
argument that evolution cannot occur.
>
> 7. Abiogenesis is completely failed and stagnated.
>
Have you looked into the recent researches of Jack Szostak?
Abiogenesis research has been exploring a number of new (and new
versions of old) ideas in recent years. In any case, how the first
prokaryotes originated has very little bearing on the evidence that
you share common ancestry with gorillas and ginkos, and whether any
particular theory of abiogenesis holds water has very little to do
with whether mutation and natural selection can modify existing
structures in living things to produce "evolutionary novelties."
>
> 8. Finally Niles Eldredge has made clear over the years that
> evolutionists not only DON'T know what causes novelty to emerge and
> develop to maturity there is no consensus on the conception among
> secularists. There are at least two major belief systems: the
> Dawkinsian gradualists and the Gouldian Punc Eqers. And there is a
> small
>
Again, you do not support your argument by repeatedly demonstrating
that you do not know what you're talking about. Phyletic gradualism
and punctuated equilibrium are different ideas about the tempo and
mode of evolution: whether species change constantly at a slower-than-
glacial pace, across their entire range, or whether evolution takes
place over centuries rather than millions of years in small areas.
It's not an argument over natural selection vs. some other mechanism
for adaptive change ("what causes novelty to emerge"). How fast and
how regularly a cause operates is not the same thing as what the cause
actually is.
>
> But I'll call Steven J's bluff...please produce the EMPIRICALLY
> testable details which show how novelty emerged in prehistory (and
> should be emerging now), how novel structures progressed to maturity
> in prehistory, and how this process overcomes all the attentuating
> factors including Haldane's Dilemma. To save time for you a link to a
> peer reviewed journal would suffice.
>
Let's see ... you don't know what you mean by "novelty" (neither do I,
but since you don't know, it won't do me any good to ask you), you
don't seem to understand that evolutionary change is supposed to be
contingent, not moving towards some predestined "maturity," you don't
know what Haldane's Dilemma is or what problems it really poses (and
granted, again, I'm no expert on the matter). So your question is
well-nigh meaningless, and any attempt to answer it (or some more
sensible set of questions in its place) would be beyond your
comprehension. So I shall not link to Lenski's _E. coli_ paper
recently published.
It is very difficult (for reasons you yourself, in your sole more or
less literate paragraph, have detailed) to say what selection
pressures operated in the prehistoric past, or whether the
transformation from theropod forelimb to bird's wing was driven purely
by natural selection or by some other sort of cause (e.g.
"structuralist" internal tendencies dictated by embryonic development
and physical constraints). One can, of course, test to see whether
natural selection operates in the present, or whether it can produce
traits that strike people as "novel" when they actually have some
testable concept of "novelty." My original point, of course, was that
one can much more easily test the whole idea that species are, in
fact, related by common descent, and test hypotheses about phylogeny
and about which structures were modified, in what ways, to produce
"novel" features. So I think you have misidentified my "bluff."
But thank you for responding.
>
> T Pagano
>
-- [snip]
>
-- Steven J.
hersheyh
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>
>
>
> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 28, 12:34 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
> >> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>
> >> <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >> >Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> >> >to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> >> >Creationism – God did it.
>
> >> On the other hand:
>
> >> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
>
> >No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
> >go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
> >predictions about *how* "nature did it."
>
> 1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
> only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
> variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
> EXISTING characteristics.
The 'selection' part of 'natural selection' *always* works within the
limits of *existing* characteristics. Otherwise it would have to work
on *non-existing* characteristics. Random mutation produces the novel
(or not so novel) genetic variation upon which selection works. But
once random mutation produces a variation, that variation actually
exists.
> 2. Secularists don't have a clue how novelty emerges or how it
> progresses to maturity.
Genetic novelty (which is how all phenotypic novelty in evolution
starts) arises by modification of pre-existing genomes (by well-known
mechanisms) and/or duplication followed by divergence of pre-existing
genes (by well-known mechanisms) or by chimeric duplication combining
parts of pre-existing systems (by well-known mechanisms). No known
'novelty' whose past can be traced to any extent involves the
necessity of unknown genetic mechanisms. I would say that that
represents somewhat more than "no clue".
BTW, what is the proposed mechanism by which the unseen, undetectable,
hypothetical posited entity magically poofed whatever you wish to
claim he/she/it/they poofed into existence somewhere at some time? I
don't believe you have mentioned it. Is it, whatever genetic
difference exists, except it was magically poofed by the HYPE
(hypothetical posited entity) and we don't need to know any more?
> Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.
Every type of mutation to produce new genes that is proposed in
evolutionary models has been actually observed to occur spontaneously
in nature (from point mutations to frameshifts to translocations to
jumping genes to deletions to polyploidy to inversions to
duplications). Do you have any examples that cannot be explained by
mutational events?
> 3. The fossil record does not show the ubiquitous transformism that
> neoDarwinism predicted. It shows without exception "sudden
> appearance" and "STASIS."
It shows the expected *pattern* of transformism for which there does
not exist a finely spaced frequency of related species. What "sudden
appearance" means depends upon the rate of phenotypic change relative
to the odds of fossilization. Speciation, when it occurs, occurs
initially with a small number of organisms and is often rapid in a
*geological* sense (where 10,000 years is often effectively the
smallest time division one can see). In those cases where there is
the *best* evidence (readily fossilized ubiquitous fossil parts;
effectively small shelly stuff) we see the same pattern, but more
finely grained with more intermediates.
> 4. Genetics/Population Genetics have not found any observable
> mechanisms that would progressively and coherently incorporate only
> beneficial mutations while discarding all the unhelpful ones.
Natural selection does just fine at doing both. Remember that *most*
natural selection is involved in preserving those genes which already
work *even* as it is changing those genes which needs to be
optimized. It tends to measure net 'fitness' to produce population
optimality (not perfection).
> All of
> the known mechanisms either shuffle existing information or
> dramatically attenuate all mutations.
As I have to keep pointing out to the bone-headed, natural selection
always changes the frequency of *existing* variation. I have no idea
what you mean about "dramatically attenuate all mutations", but there
certainly are changes that can increase or decrease net or specific
types of mutational events. But mutation is still the source of new
variation. Selection, of course, cannot work on variation *until* it
actually *exists*.
> Populations in the wild tend
> toward stasis not ubiquitous change.
Populations in the wild (or in captivity) tend toward stasis *when*
their environment is stable. They tend away from stasis, *if* they
have sufficient pre-existing variation, *when* their environment is
changing.
> 5. One of the founders of population genetics (J.B.S. Haldane)
> outlined a serious UNSOLVED problem----the cost of substitution when a
> beneficial mutation occurs. This is another dramatic attenuator of
> any change.
It has been discussed. The problem is not unresolved. In part
because we now know that the number of genetic changes needed to
produce even dramatically rapid phenotypic change (such as that from
the common ancestor of humans and chimps toward the more derived
hominid we see in the mirror) is actually quite numerically small.
Effectively all (but, importantly, not quite all) of the differences
between humans and chimps are due to neutral drift.
> 6. Natural Selection is a misleading misnomer. It is a term that
> refers to "differential survival" in the wild. It is a stochastic
> process; which is to say that there are so many variables in the wild
> that it is no easier to predict which individuals in a population will
> survive than it is to predict the weather. What is "beneficial" is
> entirely situational.
I agree entirely that what is "beneficial" is entirely situational.
It is mostly brain-dead creationists who think that variations are
inherently "beneficial" or "detrimental". What is beneficial is what
is relatively more optimal in a particular environment. The
environment, after all, is what determines relative 'fitness' in
"natural" selection.
> Populations already express a healthy variation
> within its individuals so that it collectively survives in the varied
> conditions with which it is faced.
Only to the extent that environments fluctuate within the same narrow
range indefinitely and that new niches remain indefinitely
unavailable. That is not geologic reality.
> 7. Abiogenesis is completely failed and stagnated.
Actually it is a vibrant and active field of chemical research.
> 8. Finally Niles Eldredge has made clear over the years that
> evolutionists not only DON'T know what causes novelty to emerge and
> develop to maturity there is no consensus on the conception among
> secularists.
Quote mined nuggets are not evidence.
> There are at least two major belief systems: the
> Dawkinsian gradualists and the Gouldian Punc Eqers. And there is a
> small
>
> But I'll call Steven J's bluff...please produce the EMPIRICALLY
> testable details which show how novelty emerged in prehistory (and
> should be emerging now), how novel structures progressed to maturity
> in prehistory, and how this process overcomes all the attentuating
> factors including Haldane's Dilemma. To save time for you a link to a
> peer reviewed journal would suffice.
>
> T Pagano
>
>
>
> >> >Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
Intelligent design (as used by ID): "A supernatural agent who is
inherently undetectable did something I want to assert was done by my
favorite supernatural something and did it somehow, somewhere,
sometime." That is a worse than useless explanation. It is worse
than openly expressing ignorance. Even "We do not currently know how
something happened." is better because it doesn't pretend to be an
explanation, but merely points out the current absence of one.
> >> Naturalism: It darn looks like somebody did it, but its just an
> >> illusion.
Naturalism: If it looks like somebody did it, that would be a
hypothesis that would require independent evidence of an actual real
designer who actually really did it by some mechanism we can learn
something about.
Shooting blanks only makes loud noises.
>
> >-- Steven J.
Greg G.
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>
>
>
>
>
> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 28, 12:34 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
> >> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
>
> >> <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >> >Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
> >> >to be crumbling into doubt.
>
> >> >Creationism – God did it.
>
> >> On the other hand:
>
> >> Evolutionism: Nature did it.
>
> >No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
> >go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
> >predictions about *how* "nature did it."
>
> 1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
> only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
> variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
> EXISTING characteristics.
>
> 2. Secularists don't have a clue how novelty emerges or how it
> progresses to maturity. Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.
While you've been away, a report of Italian wall lizards evolved cecal
valves in only twenty years from a population of ten lizards that had
been studied until war broke out on the island.
> 3. The fossil record does not show the ubiquitous transformism that
> neoDarwinism predicted. It shows without exception "sudden
> appearance" and "STASIS."
The fossil record shows that early human forms had a gradual increase
in brain size form 900 cc to 1100 cc over 1.75 million years, then a
simultaneous increase of 250 cc in about 200,000 years in two
different species of humans. That is not "sudden" and it is not
"stasis".
>
> 4. Genetics/Population Genetics have not found any observable
> mechanisms that would progressively and coherently incorporate only
> beneficial mutations while discarding all the unhelpful ones. All of
> the known mechanisms either shuffle existing information or
> dramatically attenuate all mutations. Populations in the wild tend
> toward stasis not ubiquitous change.
Beneficial mutations, by definition, allow for greater reproduction
which obviously leads to more copies of the beneficial alleles.
Detrimental alleles must decrease due to reduced reproduction. It is
as simple as computing compound interest.
>
> 5. One of the founders of population genetics (J.B.S. Haldane)
> outlined a serious UNSOLVED problem----the cost of substitution when a
> beneficial mutation occurs. This is another dramatic attenuator of
> any change.
You misunderstand Haldane's dilemma. There is no cost for a mutation,
it is the cost of natural selection on a population. If a population
in the wild suffers a given mortality rate anyway and the mutation
attenuates the mortality rate, it will increase in frequency due to
enhanced survivability and reproduction.
>
> 6. Natural Selection is a misleading misnomer. It is a term that
> refers to "differential survival" in the wild. It is a stochastic
> process; which is to say that there are so many variables in the wild
> that it is no easier to predict which individuals in a population will
> survive than it is to predict the weather. What is "beneficial" is
> entirely situational. Populations already express a healthy variation
> within its individuals so that it collectively survives in the varied
> conditions with which it is faced.
The differential survival is a statistical phenomenon. The heritable
differences accumulate over time with just a slight benefit. One extra
copy every few generations adds up. It's like compound interest. A
slightly better interest rate yields a tremendous difference in
savings over a working lifetime.
>
> 7. Abiogenesis is completely failed and stagnated.
You are so mid-20th century. See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGFN5Av3IBM&feature=PlayList&p=FC70EFC870E43B37&index=0&playnext=1
http://tinyurl.com/46q4g4
>
> 8. Finally Niles Eldredge has made clear over the years that
> evolutionists not only DON'T know what causes novelty to emerge and
> develop to maturity there is no consensus on the conception among
> secularists. There are at least two major belief systems: the
> Dawkinsian gradualists and the Gouldian Punc Eqers. And there is a
> small
Is there a point?
>
> But I'll call Steven J's bluff...please produce the EMPIRICALLY
> testable details which show how novelty emerged in prehistory (and
> should be emerging now), how novel structures progressed to maturity
> in prehistory, and how this process overcomes all the attentuating
> factors including Haldane's Dilemma. To save time for you a link to a
> peer reviewed journal would suffice.
Lizards commonly used for scientific experiments and thus well-known
are released to a new environment and develop cecal valves in a matter
of decades. DNA testing shows the population evolved from the ten
lizards that had been under study.
Herrel A, Huyghe K, Vanhooydonck B, et al (March 2008). "Rapid large-
scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated
with exploitation of a different dietary resource". Proc. Natl. Acad.
Sci. U.S.A. 105 (12): 4792–5. doi:10.1073/pnas.0711998105. PMID
18344323.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/105/12/4792
E. coli develop the ability to thrive on a new food source in the lab
in two decades.
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html
http://tinyurl.com/5qypu5
>
> T Pagano
Tiktaalik and Ambulocetus show novel features in transition. One shows
lobed-fins becoming feet while the other shows fins developing from
the feet of land animals. Both examples were discovered by inferring
evolution to be true. The predicted age of the rocks of the fossils
for each species was bracketed by the ages of the rocks for the
ancestor and descendant fossils of each. When rocks of the predicted
age showing fossils of shore creatures was discovered, a search ensued
for the transitional species in each line.
If creationism were true, they would have been equally likely to find
Ambulocetus or any other sea mammal or reptile where they found
Tiktaalik. They didn't find any shore bird fossils, either. Those
would have garnered more fame for the discoverers of Tiktaalik than
the fossils they found.
A genuine Pre-Cambrain rabbit fossil would bring fame and fortune to
its discoverer, but nobody has found anything like that, either. Just
think how many people could be led to the Lord if that turned up.
Alas, fossils that refute evolution just don't seem to exist.
--
Greg G.
I remember when you could get a ham, a quart of milk, 6 oranges, 2
loaves of bread, and a comic book... all for a quarter! You can't do
that anymore...
not with those video cameras everywhere.
John Harshman
> On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>>
> -- [snip]
>>> No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
>>> go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
>>> predictions about *how* "nature did it."
>> 1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
>> only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
>> variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
>> EXISTING characteristics.
>>
> You post this shortly after reports of how _E. coli_ in the lab has
> evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, an ability hitherto unknown
> among this strain. You post it weeks after reports of how Italian
> wall lizards, transplanted to a new island home on Pod Mrcaru, evolved
> cecal valves in their digestive tracts (again, a trait previously
> unknown in this species). You post it, on the other hand, years after
> reports of how random mutation coupled with natural selection have
> produced bacteria able to digest nylon, or to resist -- or even feed
> upon -- antibiotics unknown in nature.
Prediction: None of these, to Brave Sir Tony, are minor variations
within the fuzzy limits of existing characteristics. Tony wants a fish
to grow legs while you wait. (Of course if that really happened, the
legs would just be a "minor variation" of fins. Very little in evolution
is de novo.)
> There is NO reason, empirical
> or theoretical (as opposed to theological) to suppose that mutation
> and natural selection can alter a population "only [within] a very
> narrow range." Even Michael Behe's (demonstrably flawed) argument in
> _The Edge of Evolution_ only proscribes certain types of
> transformations, with no indication that, e.g. the changes needed to
> produce lemurs and humans from a common ancestor require any sequence
> of mutations that Behe finds problematical.
>
> Oh, and strictly speaking, "nonsense" implies that my assertion is not
> merely wrong, but self-contradictory or otherwise absurd on its face.
> I think you should stick with the more modest "you err."
>> 2. Secularists don't have a clue how novelty emerges or how it
>> progresses to maturity. Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.
>>
> Since you've never defined this quality "novelty," it's not clear what
> would qualify as observing it, or as an explanation for it. However,
> one can have a pretty good idea of how something happens without
> observing it directly (and conversely, one can observe a thing and
> have no clue how it is possible). In evolution, "novel" features (as
> most people define the term) emerge as modifications of previously-
> existing features, or as modifications of duplications of previously-
> existing features.
I suspect, to Brave Sir Tony, such features aren't novel.
>> 3. The fossil record does not show the ubiquitous transformism that
>> neoDarwinism predicted. It shows without exception "sudden
>> appearance" and "STASIS."
>>
> The last time we had this discussion, it was painfully clear that you
> did not know what "stasis" meant (Gould and Eldredge used the term to
> indicate that, at least at the morphological level, a species had
> undergone no evolution at all; you use it to describe entire sequences
> of similar but clearly distinct species each showing microevolutionary
> changes as they transition from one to another). Someone who talks
> about the Pearson, _et al._ foram sequence as showing "stasis" is just
> using words as magic charms, not to convey meaning or express
> understanding.
>
> Note that many of what you seem to regard as "novelties" (e.g. bird
> bills, bird wings, and feathers) do not appear full-blown and without
> precursors in the fossil record: one can trace intermediate forms in
> various maniraptoran theropods. Usually *species*, even entire
> genera, appear without clear precursors, but speciation has been
> observed in the lab (i.e. the sort of change that is worst-documented
> in the fossil record is precisely the kind that has been observed in
> the present day among living populations), and the fossil record is
> known to be incomplete and incompletely uncovered and described.
You have hit upon one of my hot buttons here. Please don't confuse
speciation, the evolution of reproductive isolation, with morphological
change seen in the fossil record. I would claim that these are nearly
decoupled.
> Note, by the way, that Darwin himself suggested that a typical lineage
> would spend far more time NOT evolving (i.e. in stasis) than it did
> changing. Ernst Mayr, one of the founders of modern "neo-Darwinism,"
> expanded on this idea, laying the theoretical groundwork for
> "punctuated equilibria," the idea that stasis was the normal state of
> species and populations, and that evolution took place not slowly over
> an entire species but relatively rapidly in isolated populations of
> the species. So it would seem that "neoDarwinism" does not
> necessarily predict "ubiquitous transformism" in the fossil record.
>> 4. Genetics/Population Genetics have not found any observable
>> mechanisms that would progressively and coherently incorporate only
>> beneficial mutations while discarding all the unhelpful ones. All of
>> the known mechanisms either shuffle existing information or
>> dramatically attenuate all mutations. Populations in the wild tend
>> toward stasis not ubiquitous change.
>>
> If by "unhelpful," you mean "selectively neutral," there is neither
> need nor reason to suppose that they are routinely discarded. If by
> "unhelpful," you mean "harmful," the observable mechanism is called
> "death before reproducing."
Or, not so dramatically, lower reproductive success.
> Again, you're using words as though they
> were magical incantations, that achieved affects even though neither
> you nor your audience know their meaning.
I would particularly like to know what he means by "progressively and
coherently". If anything. He seems to have a personal meaning for
"attenuate" too.
And phyletic gradualism is a strawman with no actual adherents.
> It's not an argument over natural selection vs. some other mechanism
> for adaptive change ("what causes novelty to emerge"). How fast and
> how regularly a cause operates is not the same thing as what the cause
> actually is.
Though in fact some PE fans, including Eldredge, are interested in
alternative mechanisms to natural selection.
I give him one or two more rounds at most before he runs a way again.
And when he returns, he will have conveniently forgotten every response
he received to his lame arguments, allowing him to repeat them exactly
as before, forever, and never have to deal with objections. Brave Sir
Tony is a phoenix, continually emerging renewed from the ashes of his
last logical pummeling.
T Pagano
<stev...@altavista.com> wrote:
>On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>>
>-- [snip]
>>
>> >No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
>> >go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
>> >predictions about *how* "nature did it."
>>
>> 1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
>> only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
>> variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
>> EXISTING characteristics.
>>
>You post this shortly after reports of how _E. coli_ in the lab has
>evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, an ability hitherto unknown
>among this strain.
1. As usual Steven J don't read too well and I suggest he re-read my
response to Spaceman concerning Lenski's work.
2. Spaceman (or rather his usual reporting of what others write)
misled the reader as to what Lenski's observations were. The change
which occurred in a particular E. coli population was the ability to
transport citrate through its cell membrane NOT its ability to
metabolize citrate. E. coli already possessed this ability.
3. And since neither I nor creationists in general argue for the
immutability of species one wonders how a change requiring two or so
mutations has the slightest thing to do with the issues plaguing
neoDarwinism.
4. Fact of the matter is that minor changes involving one or two+
mutations conferring some beneficial change to EXISTING functionality
is not all that unusual. The issue is that Steven J and the rest of
the atheists have inappropriately extrapolated this well beyond
observational science to explain how the E. coli came to exist in the
first place.
5. Most of these minor changes are the result of existing gene
function being broken or degraded. These observations are NOT
evidence of progressive, coherent change towards something novel
requiring thousands of mutations to explain biological diversity.
6. By "novel" it is simply meant some structure, system, or organ
which did not exist in predecessor populations. With this definition
in mind EVERY biological structure, system, and organ which has ever
existed according to the secular prehistorical account was at some
point "novel." At some point each and every structure, system, and
organ had to emerge and develop to maturity.
>You post it weeks after reports of how Italian
>wall lizards, transplanted to a new island home on Pod Mrcaru, evolved
>cecal valves in their digestive tracts (again, a trait previously
>unknown in this species).
Since Steven J got the facts wrong with regard to Lenski's work with
E. coli I have no reason to believe he gets the facts correctly here.
>You post it, on the other hand, years after
>reports of how random mutation coupled with natural selection have
>produced bacteria able to digest nylon, or to resist -- or even feed
>upon -- antibiotics unknown in nature. There is NO reason, empirical
>or theoretical (as opposed to theological) to suppose that mutation
>and natural selection can alter a population "only [within] a very
>narrow range." Even Michael Behe's (demonstrably flawed) argument in
>_The Edge of Evolution_ only proscribes certain types of
>transformations, with no indication that, e.g. the changes needed to
>produce lemurs and humans from a common ancestor require any sequence
>of mutations that Behe finds problematical.
It is encumbent upon Steven J to show with these examples of 2+
mutations in single-celled organisms where (often) EXISTING gene
function is degraded or reduced has the slightest thing to with how
novel structures, systems, and organs requiring thousands of mutations
in the right order are added coherently and PROGRESSIVELY over time.
>
>Oh, and strictly speaking, "nonsense" implies that my assertion is not
>merely wrong, but self-contradictory or otherwise absurd on its face.
>I think you should stick with the more modest "you err."
"Nonsense" does not have to be self-contradictory and is often so
absurd that the issue of correctness never enters the picture. Your
claim that there exists empirically testable details of how a dinosaur
forearm transformed into an avian wing or how a mesonychid transformed
into a whale is flat absurd. No such tests exist; no such
observations exist; in fact there is a dispute between the Dawkinsians
and the Gouldians about how this even occurs conceptually.
It is amazing how the big lie of atheism blinds its adherents.
snip
Regards,
T Pagano
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "loua...@yahoo.com"
<loua...@yahoo.com>:
>On Jun 28, 12:50 pm, dmca...@remulak.uwaterloo.ca (David Canzi) wrote:
>
>> >Creationism – God did it.
>>
>> >Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>>
>> >Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>>
>> >I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>>
>> What I think they're doing is trying a series of promises to
>> "only put it in a little" until they find out how little is little
>> enough to get consent.
>
>You are a vulgar, vulgar, insightful, vulgar man.
As I recall, the UCMJ stated specifically "Any penetration
is sufficient to complete this offense", which seems an
appropriate caveat.
--
Bob C.
"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless
Bob Casanova
in talk.origins, posted by Desertphile
<deser...@invalid-address.net>:
>On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:21 -0700 (PDT), "Devil's Advocaat"
><mank...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>> to be crumbling into doubt.
>>
>> Creationism – God did it.
>>
>> Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
>>
>> Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
>>
>> I wonder what the next step is going to be?
>
>We already see the "next step:" the demand that nobody knows the
>answer, therefore all opinions ought to be included in public
>school's science classes.
I can't wait to see the "Christian" fundies' reaction to the
demand that Vishnu and Sedna be included...
John Harshman
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
> <stev...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>>> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>>> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>>>
>> -- [snip]
>>>> No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
>>>> go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
>>>> predictions about *how* "nature did it."
>>> 1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
>>> only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
>>> variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
>>> EXISTING characteristics.
>>>
>> You post this shortly after reports of how _E. coli_ in the lab has
>> evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, an ability hitherto unknown
>> among this strain.
>
> 1. As usual Steven J don't read too well and I suggest he re-read my
> response to Spaceman concerning Lenski's work.
>
> 2. Spaceman (or rather his usual reporting of what others write)
Well, at least Tony finally managed to get that part right, though only
after being told.
[snip]
> 6. By "novel" it is simply meant some structure, system, or organ
> which did not exist in predecessor populations. With this definition
> in mind EVERY biological structure, system, and organ which has ever
> existed according to the secular prehistorical account was at some
> point "novel."
Just for clarity, at what point in the evolution of fins to legs to
wings do we see a novel structure?
> At some point each and every structure, system, and
> organ had to emerge and develop to maturity.
Not necessarily true. Everything could be a modification and/or
duplication of something else, which is what we commonly see.
[snip nonsense]
Martin Hutton
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:06:57 -0400, Steven J. <stev...@altavista.com>
wrote:
--
Martin Hutton
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
Yap, yap, yap.
Are you done yapping yet, Tony?
RAM
No blinding in atheism is comparable to your own religious
fanaticism. It is your religious beliefs that lead you to wastefully
spending emotional and intellectual energy on creationist beliefs that
will die an appropriate death as a result of the Steven J's of the
world.
Your creationist contrivances are so hokie as to lack "truthiness."
Ray, Glenn, and numerous other creationists who post here won't spout
your nonsense because they don't value your intellect but only your
emotional commitment to a reactionary religious world view that they
share.
Your "kind" is heading to extinction as a result of evolutionary
competition with the creativity of science. Just as the "Witch" kind
slowly became extinct as religious belief due to the excesses at Salem
so to will the "creationist " kind become extinct for its contemporary
excesses in denying the findings of physics, geology, biology,
anthropology, and allied sciences that reveal the "truthiness" of
evolution. The death of creationism will be for the good of mankind
in general and will relieve religion of a destructive viral burden.
Your efforts are part of the reason for creationisms eventual
failure. Keep up the good work.
RAM
>
> snip
>
> Regards,
> T Pagano
John Harshman
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
> <stev...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>>> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>>> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>>>
>> -- [snip]
By the way, this shows up in my reader as a reply to my reply to Steven
J. Is there something wrong with Tony's news reader, as well as with Tony?
hersheyh
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>
>
> 5. Most of these minor changes are the result of existing gene
> function being broken or degraded. These observations are NOT
> evidence of progressive, coherent change towards something novel
> requiring thousands of mutations to explain biological diversity.
I decided to respond to this number because it is the only thing that
Tony got partially right. The observation of reality, indeed, does
not show any "evidence of progressive, coherent change *towards* [my
emphasis] something novel requiring thousands of mutations".
*Progressive, coherent change toward something* would be a
teleological process. And evolution is NOT teleological. Oh. My
mistake. Tony actually imagines the evidence *does* show teleological
progress and so evolution needs a goal. My bad.
And most systems in biology do not *require* "thousands of
mutations". Some may have undergone thousands of mutations, but most
of them are the consequence of simple neutral drift. The number of
mutations that were *required* to convert one steroid receptor to a
different one could be counted on the thumbs of your two hands with an
intermediate that could act with either receptor. The number of
mutations required to generate a functional flagella from two
functional subsystems could be counted on the number of penises you
have.
[snip]
Steven J.
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
> >> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
> >> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
> >-- [snip]
>
> >> >No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
> >> >go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
> >> >predictions about *how* "nature did it."
>
> >> 1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
> >> only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
> >> variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
> >> EXISTING characteristics.
>
> >You post this shortly after reports of how _E. coli_ in the lab has
> >evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, an ability hitherto unknown
> >among this strain.
>
> 1. As usual Steven J don't read too well and I suggest he re-read my
> response to Spaceman concerning Lenski's work.
>
> 2. Spaceman (or rather his usual reporting of what others write)
> misled the reader as to what Lenski's observations were. The change
> which occurred in a particular E. coli population was the ability to
> transport citrate through its cell membrane NOT its ability to
> metabolize citrate. E. coli already possessed this ability.
>
a novel ability in itself, and if not, why not (and if not, why does
it matter whether a new trait is "novel?").
>
> 3. And since neither I nor creationists in general argue for the
> immutability of species one wonders how a change requiring two or so
> mutations has the slightest thing to do with the issues plaguing
> neoDarwinism.
>
not existed in its ancestors and had no obvious precursor ability.
>
> 4. Fact of the matter is that minor changes involving one or two+
> mutations conferring some beneficial change to EXISTING functionality
> is not all that unusual. The issue is that Steven J and the rest of
> the atheists have inappropriately extrapolated this well beyond
> observational science to explain how the E. coli came to exist in the
> first place.
>
ancestry with lemurs and tarsiers, as long as ... what? We allow that
the last common ancestor of primates had a miraculous origin? Would
you settle for the last common ancestor of mammals? The last common
ancestor of amniotes? Of vertebrates? Of animals? How about the
last universal common ancestor of extant species?
>
> 5. Most of these minor changes are the result of existing gene
> function being broken or degraded. These observations are NOT
> evidence of progressive, coherent change towards something novel
> requiring thousands of mutations to explain biological diversity.
>
"most of these minor changes are the result of existing gene function
being broken or degraded." Once you've done that, you should then
explain why this should be a problem for the claims of evolution.
After all, a seagull's wing has severely degraded functionality as a
grasping forelimb, and a bat's wing functions rather imperfectly as a
walking limb. Mammals have entirely lost the ability to breathe
through gills; this afflicts even aquatic mammals (so much for "common
design"). "Progressive, coherent change" pretty inevitably means loss
of some abilities while others are gained or enhanced; otherwise, I
would think, evolution would have resulted in this planet being
inhabited by a single, universally-competent species occupying every
ecological niche.
>
> 6. By "novel" it is simply meant some structure, system, or organ
> which did not exist in predecessor populations. With this definition
> in mind EVERY biological structure, system, and organ which has ever
> existed according to the secular prehistorical account was at some
> point "novel." At some point each and every structure, system, and
> organ had to emerge and develop to maturity.
>
through modifications of previously existing structures, systems, and
organs. There are no obvious candidates for "novelty" among the
traits that distinguish mammals from one another. You would have to
go back to very early chordates to find "novel" features like bones
first appearing, as modifications of previous tissues, and further
than that to find a time when, say, hearts or nervous systems were
"novel." Eventually, you get to the point where you're dealing with
relatively minor specializations in the tissues of tiny wormlike
invertebrates, or earlier to precursors to animals.
>
> >You post it weeks after reports of how Italian
> >wall lizards, transplanted to a new island home on Pod Mrcaru, evolved
> >cecal valves in their digestive tracts (again, a trait previously
> >unknown in this species).
>
> Since Steven J got the facts wrong with regard to Lenski's work with
> E. coli I have no reason to believe he gets the facts correctly here.
>
>
> >You post it, on the other hand, years after
> >reports of how random mutation coupled with natural selection have
> >produced bacteria able to digest nylon, or to resist -- or even feed
> >upon -- antibiotics unknown in nature. There is NO reason, empirical
> >or theoretical (as opposed to theological) to suppose that mutation
> >and natural selection can alter a population "only [within] a very
> >narrow range." Even Michael Behe's (demonstrably flawed) argument in
> >_The Edge of Evolution_ only proscribes certain types of
> >transformations, with no indication that, e.g. the changes needed to
> >produce lemurs and humans from a common ancestor require any sequence
> >of mutations that Behe finds problematical.
>
> It is encumbent upon Steven J to show with these examples of 2+
> mutations in single-celled organisms where (often) EXISTING gene
> function is degraded or reduced has the slightest thing to with how
> novel structures, systems, and organs requiring thousands of mutations
> in the right order are added coherently and PROGRESSIVELY over time.
>
error, assuming that if the odds of getting a particular lottery
number were, say, a million to one, then the odds of getting any
lottery number were a million to one. That, actually, was the point
of Lenksi's _E. coli_ paper: evolution is contingent, and the outcomes
we see are a tiny selection of myriad unrealized possibilities. You
see cases where *this* mutation would be useless (or, at least, would
not serve the function it does) if *that* mutation had not happened
first, and marvel at the unlikelihood of the circumstances that led up
to this particular evolved feature. You don't see all the possible
adaptions that never occurred because the "right" mutations didn't
happen in the past of some lineage (think of all the myriad eukaryote
lineages, from amoebas to euglenas, that never gave rise to
multicellular kingdoms for one reason or another). You don't see,
either, all the adaptions that don't occur because some different
contingent mutation precluded them by resulting in a different
adaption. You're falling into the error that Dembski spoke of when he
described firing arrows at a wall, and drawing bull'seyes around
wherever they hit.
>
> >Oh, and strictly speaking, "nonsense" implies that my assertion is not
> >merely wrong, but self-contradictory or otherwise absurd on its face.
> >I think you should stick with the more modest "you err."
>
> "Nonsense" does not have to be self-contradictory and is often so
> absurd that the issue of correctness never enters the picture. Your
> claim that there exists empirically testable details of how a dinosaur
> forearm transformed into an avian wing or how a mesonychid transformed
> into a whale is flat absurd. No such tests exist; no such
> observations exist; in fact there is a dispute between the Dawkinsians
> and the Gouldians about how this even occurs conceptually.
>
stages between basal archosaur forelimbs and passerine wings: fossils
that show the appearance of shoulder joints capable of 360-degree
rotation and hence of flapping, fossils that show the appearance of
downy protofeathers and of contour and display feathers, etc. This
does, at least, permit testing of various hypotheses about which
pathway evolution took, whether or not it permits testing of
hypotheses about what forces drove the transformation.
Oh, and I think there is rather less dispute among the "'Dawkinsians"
and "Gouldians" than you imagine.
>
> It is amazing how the big lie of atheism blinds its adherents.
>
It is amazing how often you resort to strings of words without
thinking about what, if anything, they mean.
>
> snip
>
> Regards,
> T Pagano
-- Steven J.
Dana Tweedy
"T Pagano" <not....@address.net> wrote in message
news:apagano-hb6g64pn09vpj...@4ax.com...
snip
> 3. And since neither I nor creationists in general argue for the
> immutability of species one wonders how a change requiring two or so
> mutations has the slightest thing to do with the issues plaguing
> neoDarwinism.
Uh oh, Tony, this will get you taken off Ray's Christmas card list.......
DJT
hersheyh
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>
>
>
> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
> >> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
> >> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
[snip]
>
> 5. Most of these minor changes are the result of existing gene
> function being broken or degraded. These observations are NOT
> evidence of progressive, coherent change towards something novel
> requiring thousands of mutations to explain biological diversity.
[snip]
The minor changes that converted a fish-like forefin into a tetrapod's
forelimb broke or degraded the function of that organ as a fin. The
minor changes that converted a tetrapod forelimb into a bird's wing
broke or degraded the function of that organ as a forelimb. The minor
changes that converted a wing into a penguin's forefin broke or
degraded the function of that organ as a wing. Thus it is degradation
all the way down from fin to leg to wing to fin again. Perhaps we
should have a fins again wake to celebrate the total degradation that
goes on in evolution?
Of course, some organisms (whales, ichthyosaurs, mososaurs) degraded
directly from leg to fin without the intermediate degraded wing state.
hersheyh
> On Jun 29, 8:58 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>
> > <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
> > >On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
> > >> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
> > >> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>
>
> > 5. Most of these minor changes are the result of existing gene
> > function being broken or degraded. These observations are NOT
> > evidence of progressive, coherent change towards something novel
> > requiring thousands of mutations to explain biological diversity.
>
> [snip]
>
> The minor changes that converted a fish-like forefin into a tetrapod's
> forelimb broke or degraded the function of that organ as a fin. The
> minor changes that converted a tetrapod forelimb into a bird's wing
> broke or degraded the function of that organ as a forelimb. The minor
> changes that converted a wing into a penguin's forefin broke or
> degraded the function of that organ as a wing. Thus it is degradation
> all the way down from fin to leg to wing to fin again. Perhaps we
> should have a fins again wake to celebrate
Make that "celebrate" "rejoyce in"
Greg Guarino
<hers...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Perhaps we should have a fins again wake
Admit it, you wrote the whole post as an excuse to get that bit in.
To me, "Finnegan's Wake" is more the song than the novel, which I
never undertook to read more than a few pages of. That song was one of
several Irish tunes that my High School English teacher would break
into from time to time.. This was in NY City in the early Seventies,
twenty-five years or so before he had a book of his own published,
Angela's Ashes.
Greg Guarino
hersheyh
> On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:03:19 -0700 (PDT), hersheyh
>
> >Perhaps we should have a fins again wake
> Admit it, you wrote the whole post as an excuse to get that bit in.
Actually a stream-of-consciousness afterthought blumed in my mind.
And I like Dublin the entendres.
Rusty Sites
>
> I give him one or two more rounds at most before he runs a way again.
> And when he returns, he will have conveniently forgotten every response
> he received to his lame arguments, allowing him to repeat them exactly
> as before, forever, and never have to deal with objections. Brave Sir
> Tony is a phoenix, continually emerging renewed from the ashes of his
> last logical pummeling.
Perhaps bipolar disorder could explain this behavior. Manic phases tend
to be short with delusions of grandeur being one of the indicators.
Episodes of depression tend to be longer and absent the delusions of
grandeur. The Pagano that we hear from is indeed resurrected by mania
each time and he may not even remember how things went the last time.
raven1
>The minor changes that converted a fish-like forefin into a tetrapod's
>forelimb broke or degraded the function of that organ as a fin. The
>minor changes that converted a tetrapod forelimb into a bird's wing
>broke or degraded the function of that organ as a forelimb. The minor
>changes that converted a wing into a penguin's forefin broke or
>degraded the function of that organ as a wing. Thus it is degradation
>all the way down from fin to leg to wing to fin again. Perhaps we
>should have a fins again wake to celebrate the total degradation that
>goes on in evolution?
Absolutely! Let us rejoyce!
raven1
wrote:
I was at a James Joyce conference back in 2004 to celebrate the
centennial of "Ulysses", and the aforementioned teacher (Frank
McCourt) was there, along with Roddy Doyle ("The Commitments"). Doyle
caused a firestorm of controversy in the Irish press on both sides of
the Atlantic by remarking that he didn't understand a word of
"Finnegan's Wake", but hearing it read aloud was like listening to
jazz.
Rupert Morrish
> On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:03:19 -0700 (PDT), hersheyh
> <hers...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps we should have a fins again wake
>
> Admit it, you wrote the whole post as an excuse to get that bit in.
You think he has an Ulsterior motive?
Rupert Morrish
> Good reply to Tony "Fish in Barrel Feet" Pagano:
Seconded.
Rupert Morrish
> On Jun 28, 6:14 am, "Devil's Advocaat" <mankyg...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Observe the process by which the certainty of their position appears
>> to be crumbling into doubt.
>>
>> Creationism – God did it.
>
> when. Nothing on the "how," of course, and no testing of the whats and
> whens. And basing it all on sought and fabricated "weaknesses" of
> evolution instead of on it's own merits.
You're just pontificating ;)
[snip]
John McKendry
> On Jun 30, 10:03 am, hersheyh <hershe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
><snip>
>> The minor changes that converted a fish-like forefin into a tetrapod's
>> forelimb broke or degraded the function of that organ as a fin. The
>> minor changes that converted a tetrapod forelimb into a bird's wing
>> broke or degraded the function of that organ as a forelimb. The minor
>> changes that converted a wing into a penguin's forefin broke or
>> degraded the function of that organ as a wing. Thus it is degradation
>> all the way down from fin to leg to wing to fin again. Perhaps we
>> should have a fins again wake to celebrate
>
> Make that "celebrate" "rejoyce in"
>
In the "Hershey Collective Everywhere" category. Nice to see a literary
double pun from the science side of the aisle.
John
T Pagano
<stev...@altavista.com> wrote:
>On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>>
>-- [snip]
snip
>>
>> 2. Secularists don't have a clue how novelty emerges or how it
>> progresses to maturity. Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.
>>
>Since you've never defined this quality "novelty," it's not clear what
>would qualify as observing it, or as an explanation for it.
1. I've defined it dozens of times in this forum and the normal
english language definition of "novel" as an adjective would do
nicely. "Novelty" is the adjective used to describe any biological
structure, system, or organ that did not exist---even in rudimentary
form----in a predecessor populations. Since the secular creation
story is one in which life and all its diversity was generated
linearly (with branching) from some prebiotic self replicating
molecule EVERY structure, system, organ was "novel' at some point in
prehistory. There is nothing controversial about this claim.
2. Evolutionists have NEVER observed the emergence and development of
biological novelty---NEVER. Many evolutionists admit that this occurs
too slowly to be observed. However, unless there exists empirical
consequences of these unobservable transformational changes the theory
is unscientific. Are there empirical consequences of this
conception?
3. The evolutionist theory of biological transformism explains that
the changes resulting in the emergence of novelty and its development
to maturity should be ubiquitous throughout prehistory. Darwin fully
expected some of the emergence and/or its development to maturity to
have been sampled by the fossil record---an empirical consequence.
This empirical consequence has never been observed---NEVER. The
fossil shows nothing but sudden appearance and STASIS.
4. There may be other empirical consequences of these theorized
ubiquitous and transformational changes leading to the emergence of
novelty and its development. But it is encumbent upon Steven J and
his merry band of atheists to identify them and then find them.
>However,
>one can have a pretty good idea of how something happens without
>observing it directly
"A-pretty-good-idea-of-how-something-happens" is also referred to as a
"theory," a "conjecture," or a "guess" and is NOT equivalent to saying
one knows the true explanation. Furthermore such conjectures are NOT
scientific unless we have a means of connecting them to reality either
by observing predicted events directly or observing the empirical
consequence of predicted events. Additionally investigators should
determine what the theory prohibits and make attempts to find the
prohibited events. That is, assuming they are interested in purging
falsity.
Not sure that the high priests of neoDarwinism have done any of this
with regard to the theory's transfomational claims.
> (and conversely, one can observe a thing and
>have no clue how it is possible).
NeoDarwinians see dinosaur forearms and avian wings in the fossil
record and believe that one transformed into the other yet among
themselves cannot even agree conceptually how such a thing happened.
>In evolution, "novel" features (as
>most people define the term) emerge as modifications of previously-
>existing features, or as modifications of duplications of previously-
>existing features.
Unless such claims are part of naturalist/atheistic philosophy one has
to connect it to reality with direct observation, observation of its
empirical consequences, and attempts to refute.
Time to put up....
snip
Regards,
T Pagnao
er...@swva.net
>
(snip)
>
> It is amazing how the big lie of atheism blinds its adherents.
>
> snip
>
> Regards,
> T Pagano
What is this mental disorder that you have that leads you, in the
middle of a discussion of science, to veer off into such irrelevancies
as atheism?
Eric Root
John Wilkins
It need not be full bipolar. A mild case would still account for the
swings, and stupidity could account for the rest.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
John Wilkins
John Wilkins
> On Jun 30, 11:37 am, Greg Guarino <g...@risky-biz.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:03:19 -0700 (PDT), hersheyh
> >
> > <hershe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >Perhaps we should have a fins again wake
>
> > Admit it, you wrote the whole post as an excuse to get that bit in.
>
> Actually a stream-of-consciousness afterthought blumed in my mind.
> And I like Dublin the entendres.
A situation that has no doubt dogged you from youth, from which we can
deduce a portrait of the scientist as a young man.
>
> > To me, "Finnegan's Wake" is more the song than the novel, which I
> > never undertook to read more than a few pages of. That song was one of
> > several Irish tunes that my High School English teacher would break
> > into from time to time.. This was in NY City in the early Seventies,
> > twenty-five years or so before he had a book of his own published,
> > Angela's Ashes.
> >
> > Greg Guarino
Steven J.
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>
> >On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
> >> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
> >> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
> >-- [snip]
>
> snip
>
>
>
> >> 2. Secularists don't have a clue how novelty emerges or how it
> >> progresses to maturity. Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.
>
> >Since you've never defined this quality "novelty," it's not clear what
> >would qualify as observing it, or as an explanation for it.
>
> 1. I've defined it dozens of times in this forum and the normal
> english language definition of "novel" as an adjective would do
> nicely. "Novelty" is the adjective used to describe any biological
> structure, system, or organ that did not exist---even in rudimentary
> form----in a predecessor populations. Since the secular creation
> story is one in which life and all its diversity was generated
> linearly (with branching) from some prebiotic self replicating
> molecule EVERY structure, system, organ was "novel' at some point in
> prehistory. There is nothing controversial about this claim.
>
abandoned this position) you've identified various features of avian
anatomy (e.g. the wing and the bill) as "novelties." Yet each is a
modification of previously existing structures that can be traced back
to the first tetrapods and even to jawless fish swimming in Ordivician
seas. In those fish, the wing existed in "rudimentary form" as a fin,
and the bill as a gill arch support that had not yet been co-opted as
a jawbone. On other occasions (e.g. when discussing the Pearson, _et
al._ foram series), you've dismissed all modifications of the shell or
test and declared that, since the ancestral form had this test, the
entire series (involving the gradual appearance of an inner chamber)
was an example of "stasis." To be perfectly consistent, you would
have to regard (could it be displayed to you) a complete series
showing every smallest link between _Homo sapiens_ and _Acanthostega_
as exhibiting "stasis."
That is, your definition of "novel" varies purely according to how
detailed and fine-grained the available evidence is (as well as
according to your ability to ignore evidence presented to you).
Gills, of course, are older than bony gill supports, and I suppose the
most striking instance of "novelty" in the chordate evolutionary line
would be the appearance of bones. I do not know what, if anything,
the fossil record has to reveal on that point. Except in rare
_laggerstaeten_, fossils without hard parts are scarcely ever
recognizably preserved, and fossils with partial hard parts would be
hard-to-read fragments (a similar but worse problem would arise with
the origin of hearts, livers, specialized nervous tissue, etc. in
basal bilaterians). So the fossil record on such things would be
spotty in the extreme. And all these traits would appear, first, as
one of many variants within a single species; their importance would
become obvious only in retrospect.
>
> 2. Evolutionists have NEVER observed the emergence and development of
> biological novelty---NEVER. Many evolutionists admit that this occurs
> too slowly to be observed. However, unless there exists empirical
> consequences of these unobservable transformational changes the theory
> is unscientific. Are there empirical consequences of this
> conception?
>
Evolutionists would not expect to see "novelty" as you define it
above. At a fine enough level of analysis, novelty should never
occur; every structure should be a modification or elaboration of some
previous structure. So technically, you're complaining that a
prediction of evolutionary theory has been fulfilled (that's not such
a trivial quibble: if we take typical forms of young-earth creationism
seriously, right after the Fall thousands of "kinds" must have been
suddenly and miraculously retrofitted with "novel" features for
predation and survival in a fallen world; one might expect to find
some indication of this, somewhere).
Of course, there are empirical consequences of common descent with
modification; these range from fetal teeth and hind limb buds in
embryonic baleen whales (which have neither teeth nor hind limbs after
birth, nor need them), to shared pseudogenes and endogenous
retroviruses in these whales and artiodactyls, or in humans and other
primates. The fact that _Tiktaalik_ is found in sediments of the age
when such a fish-tetrapod intermediate ought to have lived (and that,
e.g. early whales like _Basilosaurus_, or aquatic reptiles like
_Mososaurus_, are *not* found in such sediments) is likewise an
"empirical consequence of transformism."
Tests of natural selection as a particular cause of evolutionary
change tend to depend on mathematical analyses of how frequent various
alleles of various genes are. I'm rather grateful that you didn't ask
for empirical consequences of various *mechanisms* for "transformism,"
as I'm not at all sure I could explain them coherently to you.
>
> 3. The evolutionist theory of biological transformism explains that
> the changes resulting in the emergence of novelty and its development
> to maturity should be ubiquitous throughout prehistory. Darwin fully
> expected some of the emergence and/or its development to maturity to
> have been sampled by the fossil record---an empirical consequence.
> This empirical consequence has never been observed---NEVER. The
> fossil shows nothing but sudden appearance and STASIS.
>
You are wrong, above, twice.
As I've pointed out (you do not rebut my point; you merely ignore it),
Darwin suggested that lineages spent more time not evolving than they
did evolving; he himself obviously did not expect change to be
"ubiquitous throughout prehistory." Neither did many of the founders
of the "neoDarwinian modern synthesis;" Ernst Mayr and Steve Gould
alike argued that transformation would often be limited to small local
populations over relatively brief spans of geological time.
And Darwin's entire discussion of the fossil is an elaboration on the
theme that "the crust of the earth is a vast museum; but the natural
collections have been imperfectly made, and only at long intervals of
time." That is, Darwin did *not* expect phyletic gradualism to be
documented in the fossil record. I have already dealt with your
absurd and self-contradictory notions of "novelty" and "stasis."
>
> 4. There may be other empirical consequences of these theorized
> ubiquitous and transformational changes leading to the emergence of
> novelty and its development. But it is encumbent upon Steven J and
> his merry band of atheists to identify them and then find them.
>
You mean, like the human plantaris tendon, or fossil skulls that
straddle any dividing line you might wish to draw between "fully-
formed humans" and "fully-formed apes?" You simply don't know
anything about the fossil record, or about evolutionary theory or the
implications of the latter for the former. You assume that a few
catch phrases, asserted with sufficient confidence, will constitute a
sound argument (as I've already complained, you don't so much argue as
use stock assertions as magical incantions in hopes of miraculously
exnihilating an argument).
>
> >However,
> >one can have a pretty good idea of how something happens without
> >observing it directly
>
> "A-pretty-good-idea-of-how-something-happens" is also referred to as a
> "theory," a "conjecture," or a "guess" and is NOT equivalent to saying
> one knows the true explanation. Furthermore such conjectures are NOT
> scientific unless we have a means of connecting them to reality either
> by observing predicted events directly or observing the empirical
> consequence of predicted events. Additionally investigators should
> determine what the theory prohibits and make attempts to find the
> prohibited events. That is, assuming they are interested in purging
> falsity.
>
"Theories, conjectures, and guesses" are not interchangeable concepts,
and it is quite possible to construct and test theories about things
that have not been observed directly. You have a touching faith in
naive falsificationism, and a somewhat less touching faith that, e.g.
Behe's natterings about "irreducible complexity" actually constitute a
method of falsifying evolution by natural selection, as though Mueller
had not predicted IC as a consequence (not a prohibition) of natural
selection before Behe was even born.
>
> Not sure that the high priests of neoDarwinism have done any of this
> with regard to the theory's transfomational claims.
>
I believe you've adequately demonstrated that you're not sure of any
of the things you assert, or at least that you have no good reason to
be sure. Obviously, any of thousands of comparisons of genes and
proteins have offered the chance to falsify hypotheses of common
descent (if, e.g. human cytochrome-c were as distinct from chimp
cytochrome-c as it is from, say, pine tree cytochrome-c, or if the
human GULO pseudogene were disabled in the same way as the guinea pig
GULO pseudogene rather than the ape GULO pseudogene).
>
> > (and conversely, one can observe a thing and
> >have no clue how it is possible).
>
> NeoDarwinians see dinosaur forearms and avian wings in the fossil
> record and believe that one transformed into the other yet among
> themselves cannot even agree conceptually how such a thing happened.
>
Evolutionary developmental biologists have been investigating some of
the details of this transformation. Would you care to actually
describe some of the differences in opinion about how the change
occurred (note: arguments about the tempo and mode with which this
transformation occurred are not arguments about either the genetic
causes or the role of natural selection in the transformation).
>
> >In evolution, "novel" features (as
> >most people define the term) emerge as modifications of previously-
> >existing features, or as modifications of duplications of previously-
> >existing features.
>
> Unless such claims are part of naturalist/atheistic philosophy one has
> to connect it to reality with direct observation, observation of its
> empirical consequences, and attempts to refute.
>
> Time to put up....
>
Are you planning, at any time in the foreseeable future, to deal with
the actual intermediate fossils linking basal archosaurs to birds?
>
> snip
>
> Regards,
> T Pagnao
-- Steven J.
RAM
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
>
Again you have a lot of empty rhetoric in this response, Even
capitalized assertions about NEVER this and NEVER that. Yet you fail
to provide empirical definitions for your central causal variable
"novelty" that are a part of your assertions. A dictionary definition
is fine in literature but Steven J's criticism still holds; so where
is your definition of novelty. Your's is supposed to be a scientific
criticism and this requires an empirical operational definition of
"novelty." Are you so stupid that you think asserting no "novelty"
has ever been found in the history of biology will be taken as
anything other than an example of your "delusional grandiosity."
It is really your time to put up "an empirical operational definition
of 'novelty.'" If you can't and I'm quite sure you can't; then it is
time to either run or claim no one can answer your (delusional non-
substantive i.e. empirically unspecified) assertions.
Again I wish to note it would appear that your fanatical religious
commitments prompts you to make dramatically incorrect challenges to
areas of science in which you demonstrate considerable inadequacies
(this is an understatement). As a result you look like a fool, and
indeed act like one in TO with a high degree of regularity. And you
can blame your religious vision for this.
Science will be the winner in this war against ignorance and emotional
rigidity rapped in religious fanaticism. You provide the model for
why science should, must and will win.
Again keep up the good work.
RAM
John Harshman
> On Jun 30, 8:43 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
[snip]
>> Time to put up....
>>
> Are you planning, at any time in the foreseeable future, to deal with
> the actual intermediate fossils linking basal archosaurs to birds?
I'm going to say no. I would say that an even better series of
intermediates would be the ones relating basal synapsids with mammals.
But whatever. Since neither of these series has any "novelties" by
Pagano's definition, what's the point?
Dana Tweedy
<er...@swva.net> wrote in message
news:aa915f09-6d18-4440...@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
It's called "creationism".
DJT
Wakboth
> Yap, yap, yap.
>
> Are you done yapping yet, Tony?
Ugh. For some reason, I read that as "fapping", and although it kind
of fits, it's not a mental image I want to have. So I'm unloading it
to you all...
-- Wakboth
Frank J
> Good reply to Tony "Fish in Barrel Feet" Pagano:
>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
> >> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
> >> <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
> > -- [snip]
>
> >> progresses to maturity. Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.
>
> > Since you've never defined this quality "novelty," it's not clear what
> > one can have a pretty good idea of how something happens without
> > have no clue how it is possible). In evolution, "novel" features (as
> > most people define the term) emerge as modifications of previously-
> > existing features, or as modifications of duplications of previously-
> > existing features.
>
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Thirded.
Earle Jones
Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off> wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:13:00 -0700 (PDT), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by "loua...@yahoo.com"
> <loua...@yahoo.com>:
>
> >On Jun 28, 12:50 pm, dmca...@remulak.uwaterloo.ca (David Canzi) wrote:
> >
> >> >Creationism – God did it.
> >>
> >> >Intelligent Design – Somebody did it.
> >>
> >> >Design Inference – It looks like somebody did it.
> >>
> >> >I wonder what the next step is going to be?
> >>
> >> What I think they're doing is trying a series of promises to
> >> "only put it in a little" until they find out how little is little
> >> enough to get consent.
> >
> >You are a vulgar, vulgar, insightful, vulgar man.
>
> As I recall, the UCMJ stated specifically "Any penetration
> is sufficient to complete this offense", which seems an
> appropriate caveat.
*
The wording I recall is "Any penetration, however slight, is
sufficient..."
earle
*
Earle Jones
*
"Rape - Sexual intercourse by a person, executed by force and without
the consent of the victim. It may be committed on a victim of any age.
Any penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.
Rape is proscribed by Article 120 in the UCMJ."
from: "Military Homefront" http://tinyurl.com/5657sf
earle
*
Vernon Balbert
produced this interesting bit of text:
So where does this get put? http://www.mbm30.org/Mike/Legal_Question/
Warning: May not be considered suitable for the workplace, although it
involves no bad language or any people.
--
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. -
Douglas Adams
Bob Casanova
in talk.origins, posted by Vernon Balbert
<vbal...@gmail.nospam.com>:
Depends on how old the bison is, and whether it's
consensual.
But meese aren't in the military... ;-)
>Warning: May not be considered suitable for the workplace, although it
>involves no bad language or any people.
--
Bob C.
"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless