Dembski: "Darwinian magic gig is now up"
david ford
Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
Arthur Miller's play _The Crucible_ is about the Salem witch trials.
Even at the start of the play, the evidence for Salem being a hotbed
of witchcraft was no good. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear
to the judges overseeing the witch trials that the evidence was
utterly fabricated and bogus. Unfortunately, by this time several
people have already been executed for witchcraft. What are the judges
to do? At a key point in the play, the judges decide that they better
keep the executions going since otherwise their credibility will be
shot.
A similar inertia drives Darwinism. The evidence for Darwinism was
never any good -- even in Darwin's day. But with advances in
contemporary science, Darwinism becomes utterly insupportable. What
are Darwinists to do? Rather than admit that their theory is at fault
(and thus lose credibility), they keep the propaganda mills running
overtime, inflating Darwinism's paltry successes and charging critics
like Geoffrey Simmons with being "unscientific" and "religiously
motivated" and committing the "intellectual sin" of merely picking
holes in evolutionary theory.
David Berlinski, a prominent critic of Darwinism, once remarked to me
that "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when
the objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
longer be ignored." In this book, Geoffrey Simmons reviews the many
discoveries and advances in science since Darwin that point to
intelligent design in biology. By providing numerous clear evidences
of the intelligent design of biological systems, this book is bringing
about the shift in scientific orthodoxies to which Berlinski refers.
_What Darwin Didn't Know_ leaves none of Darwinism's grandiose claims
standing. Its critique is cumulative, relentless, and overwhelming.
Why does Geoffrey Simmons focus on Darwinism? It is no accident that
in debates over biological evolution Darwin's name keeps coming up.
Nor are repeated references to Darwin and Darwinism simply out of
respect for the history of the subject, as though evolutionary biology
needed constantly to be reminded of its founder. Darwin looms larger
than life in the study of biological origins because his theory
constitutes the very bedrock of evolutionary biology. Indeed, nothing
in evolutionary biology makes sense apart from Darwinism.
To see this, we need to understand how Darwinism makes evolutionary
biology tick. Darwinism is really two claims. The less crucial claim
is that all organisms trace their lineage back to a universal common
ancestor. Thus you, the fly buzzing around your head, and the
bacteria sitting on the fly all share the same great-great-great
grandparent. This claim is referred to as "common descent." Although
evolutionary biology is committed to common descent, that is not its
central claim.
The central claim of evolutionary biology, rather, is that an unguided
physical process can account for the emergence of all biological
complexity and diversity. Filling in the details of that process
remains a matter for debate among evolutionary biologists. Yet it is
an in-house debate, and one essentially about details. In broad
strokes, however, any unguided physical process capable of producing
biological complexity must have three components: (1) hereditary
transmission, (2) incidental change, and (3) natural selection.
Think of it this way: We start with some organism. It incurs some
change. The change is incidental in the sense that it doesn't
anticipate future changes that subsequent generations of organisms may
experience (neo-Darwinism, for instance, treats such changes as random
mutations or errors in genetic material). What's more, incidental
change is heritable and therefore can be transmitted to the next
generation. Whether it actually is transmitted to the next
generation, however, depends on whether the change is in some sense
beneficial to the organism. If so, then natural selection will be
likely to preserve organisms exhibiting that change.
Evolutionary biologists debate the precise role and extent of
hereditary transmission and incidental change. The debate can even be
quite sharp at times. But no evolutionary biologist challenges
Darwinism's holy of holies -- natural selection. Darwin himself was
unclear about the mechanisms of hereditary transmission and incidental
change. But whatever form they took, Darwin was convinced that
natural selection was the key to harnessing them. The same is true
for contemporary evolutionary biologists. That's why to this day we
hear repeated references to Darwin's theory of natural selection but
not to Darwin's theory of variation or Darwin's theory of inheritance.
Apart from intelligent design, what can coordinate the incidental
changes that hereditary transmission passes from one generation to the
next? To perform such coordination, evolution requires a designer
substitute. Darwin's claim to fame was to propose natural selection
as a designer substitute. In making that proposal, Darwin perpetrated
the greatest intellectual swindle in the history of ideas.
Natural selection is no substitute for intelligence. All natural
selection does is narrow the variability of incidental change by
weeding out the less fit. What's more, it acts on the spur of the
moment, based solely on what the environment at present deems fit, and
thus without any foresight of future possibilities. And yet this
blind process, when coupled with another blind process (incidental
change), is supposed to produce designs that exceed the capacities of
any designers in our experience.
Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
world? Where is the evidence that the sorts of incidental changes
required for large-scale evolution ever occur? The evidence simply
isn't there. To appreciate what's at stake, imagine what would happen
to the germ theory of disease if scientists never found any
microorganisms or viruses that produced diseases? That's the problem
with Darwinism. In place of detailed, testable accounts of how a
complex biological system could realistically have emerged, Darwinism
offers handwaving just-so stories for how such systems might have
emerged in some idealized conceptual space far removed from biological
reality.
Why, then, does Darwinism continue to garner such a huge following,
especially among the intellectual elites? Two reasons: (1) It
provides a materialistic creation story that dispenses with any need
for design or God (this is very convenient for those who want to
escape the demands of religion, morality, and conscience). (2) The
promise of getting design without a designer is incredibly seductive
-- it's the ultimate free lunch. No wonder Daniel Dennett, in
_Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, credits Darwin with "the single best idea
anyone has ever had." Getting design without a designer is a good
trick indeed.
Darwinism is a magic trick performed far enough away from the audience
to dazzle them until someone starts handing out binoculars. With the
advances in the life sciences that he recounts in this book, Geoffrey
Simmons is handing out a great pair of binoculars and making
Darwinism's sleight of hand plain to see. Darwinism, though always a
trick, has in the past been a remarkably successful trick. _What
Darwin Didn't Know_ shows why the Darwinian magic gig is now up.
File Date: 1.30.04
Ron Okimoto
david ford wrote:
Dembski is the king of irony. The real facts are that ID lost out in
science. No credible evidence ever emerged to support the ID notions that
were the basis of Western science way back when ID notions were still
credible. Scientists gave up on the notion because there was no reason to
keep it around. A certain segement were like the Salem judges and just
keep ID going even though they know that they don't have any scientific
reason to. They don't do it because scientists could really use it or
that the evidence indicates that ID is something real. They do it for
other reasons, one of which is that they don't want to look like they have
been wrong for a couple of centuries, and that everyone else was justified
in leaving them behind. It is really sad that Dembski is stooping to
stupidity like this. The ID cause is truely lost. Dembski is becoming as
bad as the old creation scientists that he claims not to be.
Ron Okimoto
Bobby D. Bryant
> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
He forgot to give us a reason to believe in an Intelligent Designer.
--
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Denis Loubet
"david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
> David Berlinski, a prominent critic of Darwinism, once remarked to me
> that "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when
> the objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
> longer be ignored."
No, such a shift requires EVIDENCE.
Denis Loubet
dlo...@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
Glenn
"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.02.13....@mail.utexas.edu...
Glenn
"Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote in message
news:WfadndmteKi...@io.com...
world and directs all processes in the universe.
Shift that.
Malachi
Watch and learn as Dembski takes 200+ years of supporting evidence,
including that which led up to Darwin's theory to begin with, and
magically make it disappear right before your eyes with nothing more than
a wave of his hand... (while, ironically, accusing other of it)
>
> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
> world? Where is the evidence that the sorts of incidental changes
> required for large-scale evolution ever occur? The evidence simply
> isn't there. To appreciate what's at stake, imagine what would happen
> to the germ theory of disease if scientists never found any
> microorganisms or viruses that produced diseases? That's the problem
> with Darwinism. In place of detailed, testable accounts of how a
> complex biological system could realistically have emerged, Darwinism
> offers handwaving just-so stories for how such systems might have
> emerged in some idealized conceptual space far removed from biological
> reality.
>
> Why, then, does Darwinism continue to garner such a huge following,
> especially among the intellectual elites? Two reasons: (1) It
> provides a materialistic creation story that dispenses with any need
> for design or God (this is very convenient for those who want to
> escape the demands of religion, morality, and conscience). (2) The
> promise of getting design without a designer is incredibly seductive
> -- it's the ultimate free lunch. No wonder Daniel Dennett, in
> _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, credits Darwin with "the single best idea
> anyone has ever had." Getting design without a designer is a good
> trick indeed.
The hand wave is complete, the evidence has vanished and through the ruse
of clever misdirection we find ourselves discussing religion.
Dembski can't simply let his ideas compete in the world of ideas. No, he
has to elevate his ideas with the backing and authority of a God while
simultaneously demote the ideas of his critics with implied immoral
motivations.
And that, my friends, is one of the oldest magic tricks of them all.
Editor of EvilBible.com
> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
> world?
Clearly an "intelligent designer" would have to be more complex than any
biological life forms. Until you can propose a mechanism that describes the
creation of the "intelligent designer" you don't even have a theory about
the origin of life. So why don't you tell us how the "intelligent creator"
was created?
John Popelish
>
> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
> Think of it this way: We start with some organism. It incurs some
> change. The change is incidental in the sense that it doesn't
> anticipate future changes that subsequent generations of organisms may
> experience (neo-Darwinism, for instance, treats such changes as random
> mutations or errors in genetic material). What's more, incidental
> change is heritable and therefore can be transmitted to the next
> generation. Whether it actually is transmitted to the next
> generation, however, depends on whether the change is in some sense
> beneficial to the organism.
(snip)
This is very close to totally wrong. Whether a mutation is
transmitted to future generations is much more involved with whether
it causes detriment or harm to its holders. The great majority of
mutations are neutral with respect to the immediate future of their
holders. The only mutations that have a strong effect on heritability
are those that are strongly negative. They either kill the holder,
make them sterile, or make it more difficult for their offspring to
survive to reproductive age.
(snip)
> Apart from intelligent design, what can coordinate the incidental
> changes that hereditary transmission passes from one generation to the
> next?
Reproduction and death.
> To perform such coordination, evolution requires a designer substitute.
(snip)
Coordination assumes a plan to be coordinated in advance of the
result. Life shows no evidence of such a plan. It is chaotic and
haphazard, full of accidents and make do.
--
John Popelish
Dale
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>
> Arthur Miller's play _The Crucible_ is about the Salem witch trials.
> Even at the start of the play, the evidence for Salem being a hotbed
> of witchcraft was no good. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear
> to the judges overseeing the witch trials that the evidence was
> utterly fabricated and bogus. Unfortunately, by this time several
> people have already been executed for witchcraft. What are the judges
> to do? At a key point in the play, the judges decide that they better
> keep the executions going since otherwise their credibility will be
> shot.
These people are incredible. Georgia School Superintendent Kathy Cox equates
the plight of creationists with that of Galileo, and Dembski equates the
judges who believed in supernatualist witchcraft with scientists. If I
believed in Satan, I would believe he was at work here, because the
Christians always say he's crafty and seductive. Only Satan could be capable
of such abominable acts of deception.
> ...Rather than admit that their theory is at fault
> (and thus lose credibility), they keep the propaganda mills running
> overtime
Oh, yeah, those Darwinist propaganda mills. Do the propaganda workers get
overtime pay?
[...]
> Why, then, does Darwinism continue to garner such a huge following,
> especially among the intellectual elites? Two reasons: (1) It
> provides a materialistic creation story that dispenses with any need
> for design or God (this is very convenient for those who want to
> escape the demands of religion, morality, and conscience).
Those who wish to escape the demands of religion, morality, and conscience
can do so while still professing to believe in God, religion, morality and
conscience, apparently. Wicked, immoral people like Kathy Cox and William
Dembski, or the judges of Salem's witch trials have never had a problem
squaring their wickedness with their religion.
Mark VandeWettering
> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>
> Arthur Miller's play _The Crucible_ is about the Salem witch trials.
> Even at the start of the play, the evidence for Salem being a hotbed
> of witchcraft was no good. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear
> to the judges overseeing the witch trials that the evidence was
> utterly fabricated and bogus. Unfortunately, by this time several
> people have already been executed for witchcraft. What are the judges
> to do? At a key point in the play, the judges decide that they better
> keep the executions going since otherwise their credibility will be
> shot.
Yeah, those Christians are unscrupulous, aren't they?
> A similar inertia drives Darwinism. The evidence for Darwinism was
> never any good -- even in Darwin's day. But with advances in
> contemporary science, Darwinism becomes utterly insupportable. What
> are Darwinists to do? Rather than admit that their theory is at fault
> (and thus lose credibility), they keep the propaganda mills running
> overtime, inflating Darwinism's paltry successes and charging critics
> like Geoffrey Simmons with being "unscientific" and "religiously
> motivated" and committing the "intellectual sin" of merely picking
> holes in evolutionary theory.
But Simmons is unscientific and religiously motivated.
> David Berlinski, a prominent critic of Darwinism, once remarked to me
> that "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when
> the objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
> longer be ignored."
He's right. We're still waiting of course. It's not happening.
> In this book, Geoffrey Simmons reviews the many
> discoveries and advances in science since Darwin that point to
> intelligent design in biology. By providing numerous clear evidences
> of the intelligent design of biological systems, this book is bringing
> about the shift in scientific orthodoxies to which Berlinski refers.
> _What Darwin Didn't Know_ leaves none of Darwinism's grandiose claims
> standing. Its critique is cumulative, relentless, and overwhelming.
Nope. Not in the least?
> Why does Geoffrey Simmons focus on Darwinism? It is no accident that
> in debates over biological evolution Darwin's name keeps coming up.
Especially since creationists like to try to portray evolutionary biology
as some kind of religion. Curious that when applied to their own beliefs,
"religion" means "unquestionable truth", but when applied to others means
"dubious heresy".
> Nor are repeated references to Darwin and Darwinism simply out of
> respect for the history of the subject, as though evolutionary biology
> needed constantly to be reminded of its founder. Darwin looms larger
> than life in the study of biological origins because his theory
> constitutes the very bedrock of evolutionary biology. Indeed, nothing
> in evolutionary biology makes sense apart from Darwinism.
Didn't you imply above that Darwinism doesn't make sense?
> To see this, we need to understand how Darwinism makes evolutionary
> biology tick. Darwinism is really two claims. The less crucial claim
> is that all organisms trace their lineage back to a universal common
> ancestor. Thus you, the fly buzzing around your head, and the
> bacteria sitting on the fly all share the same great-great-great
> grandparent. This claim is referred to as "common descent." Although
> evolutionary biology is committed to common descent, that is not its
> central claim.
Evolutionary biology isn't "committed" to common descent: it's merely
a conclusion based upon overwhelming evidence.
> The central claim of evolutionary biology, rather, is that an unguided
> physical process can account for the emergence of all biological
> complexity and diversity.
I doubt that many would call this the central claim of evolutionary
biology, but I'll let it stand.
> Filling in the details of that process
> remains a matter for debate among evolutionary biologists. Yet it is
> an in-house debate, and one essentially about details. In broad
> strokes, however, any unguided physical process capable of producing
> biological complexity must have three components: (1) hereditary
> transmission, (2) incidental change, and (3) natural selection.
The physical process _need_ not have these things, but we do observe
all three.
> Think of it this way: We start with some organism. It incurs some
> change. The change is incidental in the sense that it doesn't
> anticipate future changes that subsequent generations of organisms may
> experience (neo-Darwinism, for instance, treats such changes as random
> mutations or errors in genetic material). What's more, incidental
> change is heritable and therefore can be transmitted to the next
> generation. Whether it actually is transmitted to the next
> generation, however, depends on whether the change is in some sense
> beneficial to the organism. If so, then natural selection will be
> likely to preserve organisms exhibiting that change.
>
> Evolutionary biologists debate the precise role and extent of
> hereditary transmission and incidental change. The debate can even be
> quite sharp at times. But no evolutionary biologist challenges
> Darwinism's holy of holies -- natural selection. Darwin himself was
> unclear about the mechanisms of hereditary transmission and incidental
> change. But whatever form they took, Darwin was convinced that
> natural selection was the key to harnessing them. The same is true
> for contemporary evolutionary biologists. That's why to this day we
> hear repeated references to Darwin's theory of natural selection but
> not to Darwin's theory of variation or Darwin's theory of inheritance.
>
> Apart from intelligent design, what can coordinate the incidental
> changes that hereditary transmission passes from one generation to the
> next?
What "coordination" are you referring to?
> To perform such coordination, evolution requires a designer
> substitute. Darwin's claim to fame was to propose natural selection
> as a designer substitute. In making that proposal, Darwin perpetrated
> the greatest intellectual swindle in the history of ideas.
*yawn*
> Natural selection is no substitute for intelligence.
And intelligence is no substitute for natural selection.
> All natural
> selection does is narrow the variability of incidental change by
> weeding out the less fit. What's more, it acts on the spur of the
> moment, based solely on what the environment at present deems fit, and
> thus without any foresight of future possibilities. And yet this
> blind process, when coupled with another blind process (incidental
> change), is supposed to produce designs that exceed the capacities of
> any designers in our experience.
Yes.
I find it suprising that you have enough hubris to find this surprising.
> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
> world?
Where is the evidence of your intelligent designer? Above you said
that the level of "design" in living things exceeds our capacity for
design. Why then do you feel that in spite of no intelligence ever
being observed to construct living things by design, that all such
living things must have been designed?
> Where is the evidence that the sorts of incidental changes
> required for large-scale evolution ever occur?
It's written in that genetic "Book of the Dead" that's contained in
the DNA of all living things.
> The evidence simply isn't there.
"NO, I CAN'T SEE IT! LA LA LA!"
> To appreciate what's at stake, imagine what would happen
> to the germ theory of disease if scientists never found any
> microorganisms or viruses that produced diseases? That's the problem
> with Darwinism. In place of detailed, testable accounts of how a
> complex biological system could realistically have emerged, Darwinism
> offers handwaving just-so stories for how such systems might have
> emerged in some idealized conceptual space far removed from biological
> reality.
It's surprising that you are lauding the rise of science over superstition
while promoting the reverse path for humanity.
> Why, then, does Darwinism continue to garner such a huge following,
> especially among the intellectual elites? Two reasons: (1) It
> provides a materialistic creation story that dispenses with any need
> for design or God (this is very convenient for those who want to
> escape the demands of religion, morality, and conscience).
In other words, it offends your religion.
> (2) The
> promise of getting design without a designer is incredibly seductive
> -- it's the ultimate free lunch. No wonder Daniel Dennett, in
> _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, credits Darwin with "the single best idea
> anyone has ever had." Getting design without a designer is a good
> trick indeed.
Indeed, an excellent trick.
> Darwinism is a magic trick performed far enough away from the audience
> to dazzle them until someone starts handing out binoculars. With the
> advances in the life sciences that he recounts in this book, Geoffrey
> Simmons is handing out a great pair of binoculars and making
> Darwinism's sleight of hand plain to see. Darwinism, though always a
> trick, has in the past been a remarkably successful trick. _What
> Darwin Didn't Know_ shows why the Darwinian magic gig is now up.
On the contrary, it isn't performed far way from the audience: it's all
around you. You merely need to stop looking at the quick handwaves
by creationist to see it for yourself.
Mark
>
> File Date: 1.30.04
>
Eric Gill
@news.uswest.net:
Yes, I know it makes it a lot more difficult if you're not preaching for
the Choir. Dembski has apparently found it impossible so far, thus the long
string of rants about evolution rather than good science behind CSI.
Richard A. Mathers
You've lost it! ID now clearly declares there is a
Designer. A complete sup rise is that its not an alien as
once was considered. Would you believe they have decided
it's God. They must have had the evidence all along! ID
the Godly Science. New methodologies are or must be on the
horizon. Maybe Pagano or Mike will be the leaders in this field.
RAM
Ron Okimoto
Malachi wrote:
SniP:
> >
> > Why, then, does Darwinism continue to garner such a huge following,
> > especially among the intellectual elites? Two reasons: (1) It
> > provides a materialistic creation story that dispenses with any need
> > for design or God (this is very convenient for those who want to
> > escape the demands of religion, morality, and conscience). (2) The
> > promise of getting design without a designer is incredibly seductive
> > -- it's the ultimate free lunch. No wonder Daniel Dennett, in
> > _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, credits Darwin with "the single best idea
> > anyone has ever had." Getting design without a designer is a good
> > trick indeed.
>
> The hand wave is complete, the evidence has vanished and through the ruse
> of clever misdirection we find ourselves discussing religion.
>
> Dembski can't simply let his ideas compete in the world of ideas. No, he
> has to elevate his ideas with the backing and authority of a God while
> simultaneously demote the ideas of his critics with implied immoral
> motivations.
>
> And that, my friends, is one of the oldest magic tricks of them all.
Yea, I wanted to comment on how Dembski's belief in God
doesn't seem to keep him from escaping from the demands
of religion, morality and conscience. It seems that people
like him don't need Darwinism as a crutch.
Ron Okimoto
Sarah Berel-Harrop
"Glenn" <glenns...@spamqwest.net> wrote in message
news:ex7Xb.24$dq2....@news.uswest.net...
There are quite a few folk who believe in God and see no reason
to believe in an Intelligent Designer.
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Chris Krolczyk
(snip)
Ron Okimoto beat me to rebutting Dembski, here,
but I have to wonder why David is *still* choosing
to let other people speak for him through the use of
quoted material.
-Chris Krolczyk
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> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>
> Arthur Miller's play _The Crucible_ is about the Salem witch trials.
> Even at the start of the play, the evidence for Salem being a hotbed
> of witchcraft was no good. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear
> to the judges overseeing the witch trials that the evidence was
> utterly fabricated and bogus. Unfortunately, by this time several
> people have already been executed for witchcraft. What are the judges
> to do? At a key point in the play, the judges decide that they better
> keep the executions going since otherwise their credibility will be
> shot.
>
> A similar inertia drives Darwinism. The evidence for Darwinism was
> never any good -- even in Darwin's day.
Standard lying for Jebus.
Chris Thompson
@news.uswest.net:
But Glenn, you don't advocate any hypothesis of Intelligent Design, do you?
But you defend it?
Chris
Steve Knight
>"david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
>news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
>
>> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
>> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
>> world?
"intricacies"?
Oh, like the human body was designed by a supreme, perfect being.
1. We breath down the same tube we eat with.
2. An appendix? Why?
3. Shitty spine.
4. Shitty skin prone to cancer from 'His' sun.
5. Crappy eyesight with a blind spot.
6. Teeth that rot.
7. Gaining excessive weight.
8. Losing hair.
I could go on but I like to be brief.
Warlord Steve
BAAWA
www.sonic.net/~wooly
Ronald Dean
"Dale" <dmg...@nspm.airmail.net> wrote in message
news:c0j55v$n...@library2.airnews.net...
they comitted adultery, stolen something? What???
>
Sarah Berel-Harrop
> These people are incredible. Georgia School Superintendent Kathy Cox
equates
> the plight of creationists with that of Galileo,
I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping up - where did she say that?!
syvanen
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>
>
> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
> world? Where is the evidence that the sorts of incidental changes
> required for large-scale evolution ever occur? The evidence simply
> isn't there.
At one level You have something here. We do not understand the
mechanisms of variation that are responsible, for example, for the
metazoan bauplane. I anticipate we will discover a very subtle, but
highly sophisticated mechanism that has allowed metazoan evolution.
This will require the integration of developmental biology and
molecular genetics -- ie resolution of the genotype/phenotype problem.
But what the hell, if it is not understood today, than just let
god-did-it. Except you will miss out on the wonderful intellectual
challenge in figuring out how it works.
Mike Syvanen
Dale
news:qVdXb.34511$A75....@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
They are deceivers. Dante puts people like this in the 8th ring of Hell.
They remind me of Holocaust deniers, in that both groups use arguments they
know will appeal to reasonable but ignorant people. They know that it's bad
for their cause when they appear to be unreasonable or fanatical, so they
adjust to more seductive rhetorical devices.
Dale
news:402d6afd$0$41128$be86...@news.hal-mli.net...
>
> "Dale" <dmg...@nspm.airmail.net> wrote in message
> news:c0j55v$n...@library2.airnews.net...
>
>
> > These people are incredible. Georgia School Superintendent Kathy Cox
> equates
> > the plight of creationists with that of Galileo,
>
> I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping up - where did she say that?!
Hard to find the original story now, but here's a link to a copy of it, and
you can find more by googling "kathy cox galileo".
http://www.transhumanism.org/pipermail/wta-talk/2004-January/003593.html
http://tinyurl.com/26zms
"Galileo was not considered reputable when he came out with his theory," she
said.
Meteorite Debris
Knight<woo...@sonic.net> sent a radio signal across the vast expanse
of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.--._.
>
But those exceptions are part of the "mystery of God". If it makes
sense it is "evidence" of a god and if it does not it is a "mystery"
of God. Together the "evidence" plus "mystery" equals theological
fertiliser.
Bigdakine
>From: "Editor of EvilBible.com" Dont_...@Here.com
>Date: 2/13/04 7:50 AM Hawaiian Standard Time
>Message-id: <sJudnbBwfKx...@adelphia.com>
>
>
>"david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
>news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
>
>> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
>> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
>> world?
>
>Clearly an "intelligent designer" would have to be more complex than any
>biological life forms.
But yet not irreducibly complex. Otherwsie the designer must be supernatural by
the ID movements own postulates..
<snip>
Stuart
Dr. Stuart A. Weinstein
Ewa Beach Institute of Tectonics
"To err is human, but to really foul things up
requires a creationist"
Bobby D. Bryant
And we reject that for exactly the same reason we reject ID -- there's no
evidence to motivate us to believe it.
Indeed, it seems to be an answer to a non-existent question.
Bobby D. Bryant
>>Subject: Re: Dembski: "Darwinian magic gig is now up" From: "Editor of
>>EvilBible.com" Dont_...@Here.com Date: 2/13/04 7:50 AM Hawaiian
>>Standard Time Message-id: <sJudnbBwfKx...@adelphia.com>
>>
>>"david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
>>news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
>>
>>> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
>>> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
>>> world?
>>
>> Clearly an "intelligent designer" would have to be more complex than
>> any biological life forms.
>
> But yet not irreducibly complex. Otherwsie the designer must be
> supernatural by the ID movements own postulates..
Of course, if they allow that something that can arise naturally can then
"design" something that's IC, the IC argument becomes vacuous. And
similarly with CSI or any other flavor of ID bunkum.
Much as they'd like to avoid the label of "creationism", their entire
program doesn't make the least bit of sense without it.
Kevin Johnston
"Sarah Berel-Harrop" <s...@hal-pc.org> wrote:
> "Dale" <dmg...@nspm.airmail.net> wrote in message
> news:c0j55v$n...@library2.airnews.net...
>
>
> > These people are incredible. Georgia School Superintendent Kathy
> > Cox equates the plight of creationists with that of Galileo,
>
> I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping up - where did she say that?!
Not sure. She's quoted here:
<http://www.vanderbiltorbis.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/02/11/4029cc5444
122>
and here:
<http://s87407375.onlinehome.us/>
and here:
<http://www.transhumanism.org/pipermail/wta-talk/2004-January/003593.html
>
Despite a few minutes of searching, I could not find an original source
(and several of the above might will expire within hours or days).
Nevertheless, apparently she did in fact say something that stupid at
some point in time.
Kevin
Mitchell Coffey
ford) wrote:
>Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
>Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
>http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
[snip]
> The
>promise of getting design without a designer is incredibly seductive
>-- it's the ultimate free lunch. No wonder Daniel Dennett, in
>_Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, credits Darwin with "the single best idea
>anyone has ever had." Getting design without a designer is a good
>trick indeed.
[snip]
Does Dembski apply the same reasoning to Adam Smith? That is, the
highly developed, interwoven, impossibly complex capitalist economies
we see to day must have been designed. There are no markets;
communism is the only possible system...
Mitchell Coffey
John Baker
<epicurus1@*THE_ANTI-SPAM_SHIELD*optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:10:19 +0000 (UTC) the ET form known as
>Glenn<glenns...@spamqwest.net> sent a radio signal across the vast
>expanse of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.--._.
>
>>
>> "Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote in message
>> news:WfadndmteKi...@io.com...
>> >
>> > "david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
>> > news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
>> > > Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
>> > > Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
>> > > http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>> > (snip)
>> > > David Berlinski, a prominent critic of Darwinism, once remarked to me
>> > > that "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when
>> > > the objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
>> > > longer be ignored."
>> >
>> > No, such a shift requires EVIDENCE.
>> >
>> The Theory of the Pink Unicorn states that the Pink Unicorn created the
>> world and directs all processes in the universe.
>>
>> Shift that.
>
>I think the great cosmic cat might object to that model :-)
Heretics! Binky will curse you all.
johac
dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david ford) wrote:
> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>
Standard creationist bunkum. Yawn.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Men become civilized not in their willingness to believe, bit in
proportion to their readiness to doubt." - H. L. Mencken
maff
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>
> Even at the start of the play, the evidence for Salem being a hotbed
> of witchcraft was no good. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear
> to the judges overseeing the witch trials that the evidence was
> utterly fabricated and bogus. Unfortunately, by this time several
> people have already been executed for witchcraft. What are the judges
> to do? At a key point in the play, the judges decide that they better
> keep the executions going since otherwise their credibility will be
> shot.
>
> contemporary science, Darwinism becomes utterly insupportable. What
> (and thus lose credibility), they keep the propaganda mills running
> like Geoffrey Simmons with being "unscientific" and "religiously
> motivated" and committing the "intellectual sin" of merely picking
> holes in evolutionary theory.
>
> that "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when
> the objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
> discoveries and advances in science since Darwin that point to
> intelligent design in biology. By providing numerous clear evidences
> of the intelligent design of biological systems, this book is bringing
> about the shift in scientific orthodoxies to which Berlinski refers.
> _What Darwin Didn't Know_ leaves none of Darwinism's grandiose claims
> standing. Its critique is cumulative, relentless, and overwhelming.
>
> in debates over biological evolution Darwin's name keeps coming up.
> respect for the history of the subject, as though evolutionary biology
> needed constantly to be reminded of its founder. Darwin looms larger
> than life in the study of biological origins because his theory
> constitutes the very bedrock of evolutionary biology. Indeed, nothing
> in evolutionary biology makes sense apart from Darwinism.
>
> biology tick. Darwinism is really two claims. The less crucial claim
> is that all organisms trace their lineage back to a universal common
> ancestor. Thus you, the fly buzzing around your head, and the
> bacteria sitting on the fly all share the same great-great-great
> grandparent. This claim is referred to as "common descent." Although
> evolutionary biology is committed to common descent, that is not its
> central claim.
>
> physical process can account for the emergence of all biological
> remains a matter for debate among evolutionary biologists. Yet it is
> an in-house debate, and one essentially about details. In broad
> strokes, however, any unguided physical process capable of producing
> biological complexity must have three components: (1) hereditary
> transmission, (2) incidental change, and (3) natural selection.
>
> change. The change is incidental in the sense that it doesn't
> anticipate future changes that subsequent generations of organisms may
> experience (neo-Darwinism, for instance, treats such changes as random
> mutations or errors in genetic material). What's more, incidental
> change is heritable and therefore can be transmitted to the next
> generation. Whether it actually is transmitted to the next
> generation, however, depends on whether the change is in some sense
> beneficial to the organism. If so, then natural selection will be
> likely to preserve organisms exhibiting that change.
>
> Evolutionary biologists debate the precise role and extent of
> hereditary transmission and incidental change. The debate can even be
> quite sharp at times. But no evolutionary biologist challenges
> Darwinism's holy of holies -- natural selection. Darwin himself was
> unclear about the mechanisms of hereditary transmission and incidental
> change. But whatever form they took, Darwin was convinced that
> natural selection was the key to harnessing them. The same is true
> for contemporary evolutionary biologists. That's why to this day we
> hear repeated references to Darwin's theory of natural selection but
> not to Darwin's theory of variation or Darwin's theory of inheritance.
>
> Apart from intelligent design, what can coordinate the incidental
> changes that hereditary transmission passes from one generation to the
> substitute. Darwin's claim to fame was to propose natural selection
> as a designer substitute. In making that proposal, Darwin perpetrated
> the greatest intellectual swindle in the history of ideas.
>
> selection does is narrow the variability of incidental change by
> weeding out the less fit. What's more, it acts on the spur of the
> moment, based solely on what the environment at present deems fit, and
> thus without any foresight of future possibilities. And yet this
> blind process, when coupled with another blind process (incidental
> change), is supposed to produce designs that exceed the capacities of
> any designers in our experience.
>
> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
> required for large-scale evolution ever occur? The evidence simply
> to the germ theory of disease if scientists never found any
> microorganisms or viruses that produced diseases? That's the problem
> with Darwinism. In place of detailed, testable accounts of how a
> complex biological system could realistically have emerged, Darwinism
> offers handwaving just-so stories for how such systems might have
> emerged in some idealized conceptual space far removed from biological
> reality.
>
> especially among the intellectual elites? Two reasons: (1) It
> provides a materialistic creation story that dispenses with any need
> for design or God (this is very convenient for those who want to
> promise of getting design without a designer is incredibly seductive
> -- it's the ultimate free lunch. No wonder Daniel Dennett, in
> _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, credits Darwin with "the single best idea
> anyone has ever had." Getting design without a designer is a good
> trick indeed.
>
> to dazzle them until someone starts handing out binoculars. With the
> advances in the life sciences that he recounts in this book, Geoffrey
> Simmons is handing out a great pair of binoculars and making
> Darwinism's sleight of hand plain to see. Darwinism, though always a
> trick, has in the past been a remarkably successful trick. _What
>
> File Date: 1.30.04
Are you still continuing with Confederate bombast and bluster? If
you're a history professor, you should know what happened afterwards.
catshark
A very nice point that may actually give some (usually conservative)
creationists pause . . .
for a moment.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
The peril of negative arguments is that they may rest on
our lack of knowledge, rather than on positive results.
- Michael J. Behe -
Frank J
(snip more Dembski doubletalk)
The only thing worth noting is that he uses "Darwinism" 20 times.
Is this the same "Darwinism" of which Dembski claims that ID can
accomodate all the results? Note that one can play Dembskiesque word
games with "results" as well as with "Darwinism" of course. But note
also that he says "results" and not "data." The 3.8 billion year
history of life and common descent are some of the "results," whereas
the fossil record is just data. Heck, all the mutually-contradictory
creationisms claim to accommodate the data - at least the ones thay
pre-select. Dembski's colleague Michael Behe has no problem with the
results I listed, and Dembski apparently has no problem with *any* of
the results. One must conclude then, that, for all the problems with
"Darwinism," there's still no problem with evolution.
Frank J
The so-called conservatives who push creationism and ID are, IMO,
mostly authoritarian:
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz/quiz.php
Conservatives range from mostly libertarian to mostly authoritarian.
Most conservatives are not creationists or ID advocates, and many are
criticizing Bush because he leans too authoritarian. But IMO many
authoritarians give at least lip service to free-market economics to
keep the (Republican) party together. They can work out the
differences when they get in power. And judging by the deficits, Bush
has already done so.
That anti-evolution and communism go hand-in-hand (think of Average
Joe) is surprising to many. But not as much when one puts the
philosophies in a perspective other than the oversimplified left-right
line.
Noctiluca
Lately I've been thinking that ID isn't so much an answer as it is a
warm, snuggly (for those who believe it) name for the lack of an
answer. As such it satisfies the big questions the same way any
comfortable mythology does. For the smaller-scale questions, namely
scientific inquiry, it acts like those little reminders on restaurant
menus, "Remember to leave room for God!"
JaM
ford) wrote:
Snip the usual unsubstantiated crap
>
>Why, then, does Darwinism continue to garner such a huge following,
>especially among the intellectual elites?
Please answer this:
Why, then, does YE Creationism continue to garner such a huge
following, especially among the intellectually chalenged or
uneducated?
Surely, that must tell you something, right?
> Two reasons: (1) It
>provides a materialistic creation story that dispenses with any need
>for design or God (this is very convenient for those who want to
>escape the demands of religion, morality, and conscience).
There's NO creation story in "darwinism".
> (2) The
>promise of getting design without a designer is incredibly seductive
>-- it's the ultimate free lunch. No wonder Daniel Dennett, in
>_Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, credits Darwin with "the single best idea
>anyone has ever had." Getting design without a designer is a good
>trick indeed.
Which is not what "Darwinism" is about.
>Darwinism is a magic trick performed far enough away from the audience
>to dazzle them until someone starts handing out binoculars. With the
>advances in the life sciences that he recounts in this book, Geoffrey
>Simmons is handing out a great pair of binoculars and making
>Darwinism's sleight of hand plain to see. Darwinism, though always a
>trick, has in the past been a remarkably successful trick. _What
>Darwin Didn't Know_ shows why the Darwinian magic gig is now up.
Again, nothing substanial, as usual.
>File Date: 1.30.04
Eh?
Regards, JaM
---------
Sometimes wishfull thinking cloud ones mind
#2105
Richard A. Mathers
>
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 06:55:59 +0000 (UTC), Mitchell Coffey
> <m.coffe...@starpowerremove.net> wrote:
>
> >On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 14:32:22 +0000 (UTC), dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david
> >ford) wrote:
> >
> >>Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> >>Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> >>http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
> >
> >[snip]
> >
> >> The
> >>promise of getting design without a designer is incredibly seductive
> >>-- it's the ultimate free lunch. No wonder Daniel Dennett, in
> >>_Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, credits Darwin with "the single best idea
> >>anyone has ever had." Getting design without a designer is a good
> >>trick indeed.
> >[snip]
> >
> >Does Dembski apply the same reasoning to Adam Smith? That is, the
> >highly developed, interwoven, impossibly complex capitalist economies
> >we see to day must have been designed. There are no markets;
> >communism is the only possible system...
> >
> >Mitchell Coffey
>
> A very nice point that may actually give some (usually conservative)
> creationists pause . . .
>
> for a moment.
>
capitalist economies IC and markets the result of the
invisible Hand of God, and Dembski will view communism as a
godless economic theory proving there is no free lunch.
RAM
John Wilkins
Yet another repsonse is that there *is* a Hidden Hand, hence a
Hand-haver, and hence the American market has a Manifest Destiny - but
of course we can't say who the Intelligent Marketer is...
--
John Wilkins
john...@wilkins.id.au http://wilkins.id.au
"Men mark it when they hit, but do not mark it when they miss"
- Francis Bacon
zzzzara
the analogy is pretty good - they use some of the same arguments as
Holocaust denial ("were you there?"); they resort to conspiracy
theories to explain why their ideas are marginalised; they go to great
lengths to deny the link between Creationism and fundamentalist
Christianity, just as deniers go to great lengths to deny their links
with neo-Nazism.
howard hershey
Chris Krolczyk wrote:
> dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david ford) wrote in message news:<b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com>...
>
> (snip)
>
> Ron Okimoto beat me to rebutting Dembski, here,
> but I have to wonder why David is *still* choosing
> to let other people speak for him through the use of
> quoted material.
>
> -Chris Krolczyk
>
It got him through high school and college without the tediousness of
having to engage in independent thought.
howard hershey
Richard A. Mathers wrote:
> Glenn wrote:
>
>>"Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote in message
>>news:WfadndmteKi...@io.com...
>>
>>>"david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
>>>news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
>>>
>>>>Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
>>>>Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
>>>>http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>>>
>>>(snip)
>>>
>>>>David Berlinski, a prominent critic of Darwinism, once remarked to me
>>>>that "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when
>>>>the objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
>>>>longer be ignored."
>>>
>>>No, such a shift requires EVIDENCE.
>>>
>>
>>The Theory of the Pink Unicorn states that the Pink Unicorn created the
>>world and directs all processes in the universe.
How intelligent is a Pink Unicorn?
>>
>>Shift that.
>
>
> You've lost it! ID now clearly declares there is a
> Designer. A complete sup rise is that its not an alien as
> once was considered. Would you believe they have decided
> it's God. They must have had the evidence all along! ID
> the Godly Science. New methodologies are or must be on the
> horizon. Maybe Pagano or Mike will be the leaders in this field.
>
> RAM
>
Patrick James
(in message <c0nvd7$k1c$2...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>):
>
>
> Richard A. Mathers wrote:
>
>> Glenn wrote:
>>
>>> "Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote in message
>>> news:WfadndmteKi...@io.com...
>>>
>>>> "david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
>>>> news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
>>>>
>>>>> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
>>>>> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
>>>>> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>>>>
>>>> (snip)
>>>>
>>>>> David Berlinski, a prominent critic of Darwinism, once remarked to me
>>>>> that "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when
>>>>> the objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
>>>>> longer be ignored."
>>>>
>>>> No, such a shift requires EVIDENCE.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The Theory of the Pink Unicorn states that the Pink Unicorn created the
>>> world and directs all processes in the universe.
>
> How intelligent is a Pink Unicorn?
Smart enough to remain Invisible.
>
>>>
>>> Shift that.
>>
>>
>> You've lost it! ID now clearly declares there is a
>> Designer. A complete sup rise is that its not an alien as
>> once was considered. Would you believe they have decided
>> it's God. They must have had the evidence all along! ID
>> the Godly Science. New methodologies are or must be on the
>> horizon. Maybe Pagano or Mike will be the leaders in this field.
>>
>> RAM
>>
>
--
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
Navigator
Chris Krolczyk wrote:
> dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david ford) wrote in message news:<b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com>...
>
> (snip)
>
> Ron Okimoto beat me to rebutting Dembski ...
It doesn't take rocket science to rebut Dumbski and Company. All one
need do is point out the not-too-cleverly-disguised logical fallacy of
him arguing _ad ignorantiam_ that there is no proof his designer-god
hypothesis is false, right?
Bobby D. Bryant
Actually, when Dembski is minding his p's and q's it takes a lot of
educating-the-listener to strip away the obfuscation and show his argument
for the appeal-to-ignorance that it is.
Behe is trivially easy to refute, because he states his argument plainly.
Refuting Dembski is like fencing with concentric clouds of gas, with
nothing solid at the center. (That last part being more than just a
metaphor.)
John Wilkins
> On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 9:31:38 -0500, howard hershey wrote
> (in message <c0nvd7$k1c$2...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>):
>
> >
> >
> > Richard A. Mathers wrote:
> >
> >> Glenn wrote:
> >>
> >>> "Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote in message
> >>> news:WfadndmteKi...@io.com...
> >>>
> >>>> "david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
> >>>> news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
> >>>>
> >>>>> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> >>>>> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> >>>>> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
> >>>>
> >>>> (snip)
> >>>>
> >>>>> David Berlinski, a prominent critic of Darwinism, once remarked to me
> >>>>> that "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when
> >>>>> the objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
> >>>>> longer be ignored."
> >>>>
> >>>> No, such a shift requires EVIDENCE.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> The Theory of the Pink Unicorn states that the Pink Unicorn created the
> >>> world and directs all processes in the universe.
> >
> > How intelligent is a Pink Unicorn?
>
> Smart enough to remain Invisible.
And dumb enough to design humans.
>
> >
> >>>
> >>> Shift that.
> >>
> >>
> >> You've lost it! ID now clearly declares there is a
> >> Designer. A complete sup rise is that its not an alien as
> >> once was considered. Would you believe they have decided
> >> it's God. They must have had the evidence all along! ID
> >> the Godly Science. New methodologies are or must be on the
> >> horizon. Maybe Pagano or Mike will be the leaders in this field.
> >>
> >> RAM
> >>
> >
--
John Wilkins
> Chris Krolczyk wrote:
>
> > dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david ford) wrote:
> >
> > (snip)
> >
> > Ron Okimoto beat me to rebutting Dembski ...
>
>
> It doesn't take rocket science to rebut Dumbski and Company. All one
> need do is point out the not-too-cleverly-disguised logical fallacy of
> him arguing _ad ignorantiam_ that there is no proof his designer-god
> hypothesis is false, right?
Hush! I still have other papers to milk that strategy with...
Wilkins, J. S., & Elsberry, W. R. (2001). The advantages of theft over
toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance. Biology and
Philosophy, 16(November), 711-724.
Phillip Brown
> Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>
> Arthur Miller's play _The Crucible_ is about the Salem witch trials.
> Even at the start of the play, the evidence for Salem being a hotbed
> of witchcraft was no good. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear
> to the judges overseeing the witch trials that the evidence was
> utterly fabricated and bogus. Unfortunately, by this time several
> people have already been executed for witchcraft. What are the judges
> to do? At a key point in the play, the judges decide that they better
> keep the executions going since otherwise their credibility will be
> shot.
>
Actually, no. 'The Crucible' is not about the Salem witch trials. It is
about McCarthyism in the 50's. If Miller had actually set his play in the
50's, he would probably have been hauled away for being 'un-american'. So
he set it in Salem as an allegory.
<all downhill from here>
--
phillip brown
Justin_Martyr2000
(hmmm, should I even bother with this?, Nahh)
John Wilkins
It was known at the time too. I gather he and Kazan were going to do
what ended up as Kazan's _On the waterfront_ (the hero was to die in the
original version), but when Kazan finked at the HUAC, Miller chose this
as the way to protest. He never spoke to Kazan again, I gather.
Dr.GH
Amen Brother! I contributed a chapter to Matt Young, and Taner Edis'
"The Failure of Intelligent Design" that mostly addresssed Dembski's
arguments. I found that Dembski is much harder to pin down, even when
you know he is spouting nonsence.
Lieutenant Kizhe Katson
Indeed ID is not an answer, it is merely a label to slap on questions
that the IDists are too lazy to do the hard work of answering (or
which would, if answered, deprive them of comvenient rhetorical
examples). ID really stands for "I Dunno".
-- Kizhe
david ford
Dembski, quoted by David Ford:
>> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
>> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the
living
>> world?
>
>
> Oh, like the human body was designed by a supreme, perfect being.
>
> 1. We breath down the same tube we eat with.
> 2. An appendix? Why?
> 3. Shitty spine.
> 4. Shitty skin prone to cancer from 'His' sun.
> 5. Crappy eyesight with a blind spot.
> 6. Teeth that rot.
> 7. Gaining excessive weight.
> 8. Losing hair.
9. Dying.
10. Dying from cancer.
11. Dying because of harmful mutations.
What, briefly, do these Bad Things demonstrate?:
that the human body wasn't designed by [SK]"a supreme, perfect being"?
that the human body arose via totally mind-less processes?
that the human body wasn't designed by intelligent aliens?
that the human body wasn't designed by a not-supreme, not-perfect
being?
What is meant by [SK]"supreme"?
What is meant by [SK]"perfect"?
If an entity creates something that dies, is that entity
"not-perfect"? "not-supreme"?
Do you think there exist _any_ [Dembski]"intricacies of
bioengineering" in the realm of biology? If "yes," what are two of
those [Dembski]"intricacies of bioengineering"?
Do you consider the bacterial flagellum to be an intricate instance of
bioengineering?
The Bacterial Flagellum and IC
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=5o2793%24r49%40alexander.INS.CWRU.Edu
Re: The Bacterial Flagellum and IC
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=5s3caq%24djh%40alexander.INS.CWRU.Edu
Flagella, minimal complexity, and evolutionary noise
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=7faih8%24eio%241%40alexander.INS.CWRU.Edu
> I could go on but I like to be brief.
david ford
Dembski, quoted by david ford:
> > Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
> > intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the
> > living world?
>
> biological life forms. Until you can propose a mechanism that describes the
> creation of the "intelligent designer" you don't even have a theory about
> the origin of life. So why don't you tell us how the "intelligent creator"
> was created?
The intelligent creator wasn't created:
the intelligent creator existed, and it also never began to exist.
david ford
> On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 14:32:22 +0000 (UTC) the ET form known as david
> ford<dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> sent a radio signal across the vast expanse
> of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.--._.
>
> > Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> > http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
> >
> > Even at the start of the play, the evidence for Salem being a hotbed
> > of witchcraft was no good. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear
> > to the judges overseeing the witch trials that the evidence was
> > utterly fabricated and bogus. Unfortunately, by this time several
> > people have already been executed for witchcraft. What are the judges
> > to do? At a key point in the play, the judges decide that they better
> > keep the executions going since otherwise their credibility will be
> > shot.
> >
> > never any good -- even in Darwin's day.
>
1) What was the evidence for Darwin's theory of natural selection:
in the 1800s?
in the period 1900-1930?
in the period 1930-1980?
in the period 1980-present?
2) What was the evidence for the allegation that biology arose via
totally mind-less processes:
in the 1800s?
in the period 1900-1930?
in the period 1930-1980?
in the period 1980-present?
Insight into 2) might appear within the thread
Evidence of "evolution," sensu Sagan: Where should I go to see?
the first post therein being
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0311291026100.28927-100000%40linux3.gl.umbc.edu
david ford
> > Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> > http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
> >
>
>
> >
> > intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
> > required for large-scale evolution ever occur? The evidence simply
> > isn't there.
>
> mechanisms of variation that are responsible, for example, for the
> metazoan bauplane. I anticipate we will discover a very subtle, but
> highly sophisticated mechanism that has allowed metazoan evolution.
> This will require the integration of developmental biology and
> molecular genetics -- ie resolution of the genotype/phenotype problem.
>
> But what the hell, if it is not understood today, than just let
> god-did-it. Except you will miss out on the wonderful intellectual
> challenge in figuring out how it works.
Biologists, biochemists, and biophysicists can and do take on the
immense intellectual challenge of figuring out how biological
organisms work without knowing how those organisms arose.
Do you agree with me that the pretension that organisms' origination
can be accounted for by the neo-Darwinian mechanism needs to go?
AC
So why is your intelligent creator exempt from the clauses you apparently
wish to apply to his/hers/its/their alleged creations?
--
Aaron Clausen
tao_of_cow/\alberni.net (replace /\ with @)
mel turner
dfo...@gl.umbc.edu [david ford] wrote...
No, they do take into consideration their evolution and common
descent.
>Do you agree with me that the pretension that organisms' origination
>can be accounted for by the neo-Darwinian mechanism needs to go?
Are you talking about the origination of the first life [abiogenesis]?
If so, what "pretension" is this? Who exactly has been pretending
thus? [But of course "the neo-Darwinian mechanism" would indeed
begin to operate once some self-replicating prebiotic molecular
systems were on hand].
If, on the other hand, you're talking instead about the origin of
the modern species of organisms, why are you calling it a
"pretension"? Do you have some valid scientific reason for claiming
that "the neo-Darwinian mechanism" can't account for their
evolution? If so, what is it?
cheers
Bobby D. Bryant
It's beautiful logic:
Everything needs a creator.
God doesn't need a creator.
Therefore God exists.
Richard Uhrich
.........
>
> It's beautiful logic:
>
> Everything needs a creator.
> God doesn't need a creator.
> Therefore God exists.
>
Oh, *now* I understand! Thanks, Bobby!
--
Richard Uhrich
--
"I reminded them and their families that the war in Iraq is about
peace." G. W. Bush after visiting wounded soldiers.
syvanen
> syv...@ucdavis.edu (syvanen) wrote in message news:<fc3e7e23.04021...@posting.google.com>...
> > dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david ford) wrote in message news:<b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com>...
> > > Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> > > Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> > > http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
> > >
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
> > > intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the living
> > > world? Where is the evidence that the sorts of incidental changes
> > > required for large-scale evolution ever occur? The evidence simply
> > > isn't there.
> >
> > At one level You have something here. We do not understand the
> > mechanisms of variation that are responsible, for example, for the
> > metazoan bauplane. I anticipate we will discover a very subtle, but
> > highly sophisticated mechanism that has allowed metazoan evolution.
> > This will require the integration of developmental biology and
> > molecular genetics -- ie resolution of the genotype/phenotype problem.
> >
> > But what the hell, if it is not understood today, than just let
> > god-did-it. Except you will miss out on the wonderful intellectual
> > challenge in figuring out how it works.
>
> Biologists, biochemists, and biophysicists can and do take on the
> immense intellectual challenge of figuring out how biological
> organisms work without knowing how those organisms arose.
At this point it is very difficult. But it is also a fact that anyone
who thinks about this problem, does deal with how the metazoan body
plan did arise.
> Do you agree with me that the pretension that organisms' origination
> can be accounted for by the neo-Darwinian mechanism needs to go?
I find this question incomprehensible.
Mike Syvanen
allan m
> immense intellectual challenge of figuring out how biological
> organisms work without knowing how those organisms arose.
> Do you agree with me that the pretension that organisms' origination
> can be accounted for by the neo-Darwinian mechanism needs to go?
To be replaced by what, exactly? Lose an elegant, well-supported (by
the evidence and by the mainstream), consistent and hugely successful
idea? No, ta, not unless you have some solid reason why
a) the mountain of evidence which supports the theory is incorrect
b) you have an alternative theory which doesn't sweep all the evidence
under the carpet, and isn't based on a logical fallacy.
Let's see if I've got ID right: all complex objects we have designed
with our intelligence are intelligently designed. Therefore all
complex objects (ourselves included) must be intelligently
designed..... Hmmm. David Hume pointed out the fallacy way before
Darwin – ie just because things may share one property (eg complexity)
does not of itself compel the sharing of any other property (eg
intelligent design).
Or, if it did.... manmade complex objects are the product of multiple
co-operative intelligence (so many Gods made life).... manmade complex
objects are nonliving (therefore life is nonliving)... or, reductio ad
absurdum, all complex objects share every property (so all complex
objects are watches).
Believe me, I will happily abandon 'evolutionism' if a better
explanation turns up. In fact, just give me ONE killer piece of
evidence and I'll be Jesus' for ever.
DS
I don't think it does much good to appeal to Dembski's 'sense of
ethics' or use silly things like facts when he clearly is willing to
pawn himself for a bit of glamor and status within the Christian
Community. he's not even talking to us or for us. he's talking to and
for creationists/true believers. We're just the sound chamber.
The goal is recognition. Status. I think that's what this really boils
down to. We often speculate on the motives behind creationism and
there are some excellent articles on that subject in the archive to be
sure.
But I think it's often really pretty simple. Guys like Dembski and
Berlinski (Berlinski really dissapointed me. As a fellow mathemetician
I thought "A Tour of the Calculus" was wonderfully written and an
absolute delight to read. Then he had to go and sell out to boneheads)
gain status among their Christian peers. Big time status. I wonder if
it might be easier than we realize to *really* start believing your
own line of horse shit after years of having your fellow Christians
call you a genius and fawn all over you.
~DS~
R.Schenck
why?
how?
R.Schenck
> > On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 14:32:22 +0000 (UTC) the ET form known as david
> > ford<dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> sent a radio signal across the vast expanse
> > of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.--._.
> >
> > > Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
> > > Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
> > > http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
> > >
> > > Arthur Miller's play _The Crucible_ is about the Salem witch trials.
> > > Even at the start of the play, the evidence for Salem being a hotbed
> > > of witchcraft was no good. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear
> > > to the judges overseeing the witch trials that the evidence was
> > > utterly fabricated and bogus. Unfortunately, by this time several
> > > people have already been executed for witchcraft. What are the judges
> > > to do? At a key point in the play, the judges decide that they better
> > > keep the executions going since otherwise their credibility will be
> > > shot.
> > >
> > > A similar inertia drives Darwinism. The evidence for Darwinism was
> > > never any good -- even in Darwin's day.
> >
> > Standard lying for Jebus.
>
> 1) What was the evidence for Darwin's theory of natural selection:
> in the 1800s?
"The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin.
> in the period 1900-1930?
i dunno.
> in the period 1930-1980?
doesn't ernst mayr handle this?
> in the period 1980-present?
what, you can't find it?
>
> 2) What was the evidence for the allegation that biology arose via
> totally mind-less processes:
> in the 1800s?
> in the period 1900-1930?
> in the period 1930-1980?
> in the period 1980-present?
probably in the same place that suggests a balance operates according
to mindless processes, or planetary motion, or rolling wheels, or
minerals interacting with water, or...
> Insight into 2) might appear within the thread
> Evidence of "evolution," sensu Sagan: Where should I go to see?
> the first post therein being
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0311291026100.28927-100000%40linux3.gl.umbc.edu
why should i look there? do you suggest there is evidence that it does
not? no, of course you don't. If at worst the evidence is -neutral-,
then why pretend it isn't neutral? Even if you choose to pretend that
there is an intelligence directing things, what difference does it
make if its occuring the same with out it? if there are invisible
angels pushing all the planets and heavenly bodies around in exactly
the same way as gravity would predict, then what difference does it
make if you beleive in angels? A difference in the afterlife? sure
whynot? but where is the difference in terms of science?
Navigator
John Wilkins wrote:
> Navigator <n...@nav.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Chris Krolczyk wrote:
>>
>>
>>>dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david ford) wrote:
>>>
>>>(snip)
>>>
>>>Ron Okimoto beat me to rebutting Dembski ...
>>
>>
>>It doesn't take rocket science to rebut Dumbski and Company. All one
>>need do is point out the not-too-cleverly-disguised logical fallacy of
>>him arguing _ad ignorantiam_ that there is no proof his designer-god
>>hypothesis is false, right?
>
>
> Hush! I still have other papers to milk that strategy with...
>
> Wilkins, J. S., & Elsberry, W. R. (2001). The advantages of theft over
> toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance. Biology and
> Philosophy, 16(November), 711-724.
Looks like that is pay-per-view, old chap. Could you post a copy here,
or e-mail me a pdf copy to y3kxp at netscape dot net?
John Wilkins
Navigator <n...@nav.com> wrote:
Try here:
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/theftovertoil/theftovertoil.html
--
John Wilkins
john...@wilkind.id.au www.wilkins.id.au
It is not enough to succeed. Friends must be seen to have failed.
Truman Capote
Chris Krolczyk
> Steve Knight <woo...@sonic.net> wrote in message news:<4qoq201o55of8qt96...@4ax.com>...
> Dembski, quoted by David Ford:
> >> Where is the evidence that natural selection can accomplish the
> >> intricacies of bioengineering that are manifest throughout the
> living
> >> world?
> >
> > "intricacies"?
> >
> > Oh, like the human body was designed by a supreme, perfect being.
> >
> > 1. We breath down the same tube we eat with.
> > 2. An appendix? Why?
> > 3. Shitty spine.
> > 4. Shitty skin prone to cancer from 'His' sun.
> > 5. Crappy eyesight with a blind spot.
> > 6. Teeth that rot.
> > 7. Gaining excessive weight.
> > 8. Losing hair.
>
> 9. Dying.
> 10. Dying from cancer.
> 11. Dying because of harmful mutations.
> What, briefly, do these Bad Things demonstrate?:
> that the human body wasn't designed by [SK]"a supreme, perfect being"?
If you follow the logic that the body was designed by a SPB,
then it follows that the *design* should be perfect, correct?
> that the human body arose via totally mind-less processes?
"Mind-less" is about as useful a word in describing genetic
probabilities as "random" is. Namely, not at all.
> that the human body wasn't designed by intelligent aliens?
Wandering a bit far, aren't we, David?
> that the human body wasn't designed by a not-supreme, not-perfect
> being?
See my first comment concerning that question.
> What is meant by [SK]"supreme"?
> What is meant by [SK]"perfect"?
> If an entity creates something that dies, is that entity
> "not-perfect"? "not-supreme"?
I don't know, David. Maybe you'd actually like to answer
some of your *own* rhetorical questions for once?
> Do you think there exist _any_ [Dembski]"intricacies of
> bioengineering" in the realm of biology?
Not if it involves Dembski's handwaving concerning how
it all devolves to "goddidit!".
> If "yes," what are two of
> those [Dembski]"intricacies of bioengineering"?
Why don't you tell us yourself, David?
*Can* you tell us?
-Chris Krolczyk
Chris Krolczyk
> 1) What was the evidence for Darwin's theory of natural selection:
> in the 1800s?
> in the period 1900-1930?
> in the period 1930-1980?
> in the period 1980-present?
You're reaching, David. The *evidence* was the same in all
those periods - the *scientific method* by which it was
obtained and examined, however, changed during those
periods, mainly due to improving techniques and a more
accurate body of knowledge produced by those techniques.
If you're going to make up a series of rhetorical
question, at least make them *interesting* ones.
> 2) What was the evidence for the allegation that biology arose via
> totally mind-less processes:
And learn to write in something resembling standard English,
if you would.
"Mind-less", indeed.
-Chris Krolczyk
TomS
<402d47ba$0$41128$be86...@news.hal-mli.net>, Sarah Berel-Harrop stated..."
>
>
>"Glenn" <glenns...@spamqwest.net> wrote in message
>news:ex7Xb.24$dq2....@news.uswest.net...>> news:pan.2004.02.13....@mail.utexas.edu...
>> > On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 14:32:22 +0000, david ford wrote:
>> >
>> > > Dembski, William A. Foreword to Geoffrey Simmons's _What Darwin
>> > > Didn't Know_. Dembski is a creationist. What is below came from
>> > > http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/Dembski013004.htm
>> >
>> >
>> Rabid atheists? ROTF!
>
>There are quite a few folk who believe in God and see no reason
>to believe in an Intelligent Designer.
There are people who look upon the idea of an intelligent
designer as -- well, a *designer*. A designer takes material and
works within its properties to accomplish some purpose. Intelligence
is needed, because the material presents some problems to the
accomplishment of the purposes. A complex solution (as in
"irreducibly complex") is an indication of a problem which was
complex for the designer.
A *creator*, on the other hand, creates *from nothing*, without
prior constraints. A creator does not need complex solutions.
Some of the advocates of ID tell us that their idea of an
intelligent designer is indistinguishable -- on the basis of their
arguments -- from space aliens. And, although it is not pointed
out, there is nothing about *how many* of them there were; or
whether they existed in recent times, or had any interest in
anything recent. This leaves an infinite gap between these
designers and a creator. And it might suggest a danger of
idolatry, that is, the misidentification of them as our Creator
and Redeemer.
---Tom S.
.. when [things] are unknown, we call them divine — as if our ignorance of a
thing were the stamp of its divinity. If God is only to be left to the gaps in
our knowledge ... is God only to be found in the disorders of the world?
Henry Drummond, Lectures on the Ascent of Man (1894)
Meteorite Debris
See www.talkorigins.org and Origins of Species by Charles Darwin.
What was the evidence for the allegation that biology was simply
created by a god
before the 1800s
in the 1800s?
in the period 1900-1930?
in the period 1930-1980?
in the period 1980-present?
What was the evidence that the earth was less than 10,000 old
before the 1800s
in the 1800s?
in the period 1900-1930?
in the period 1930-1980?
in the period 1980-present?
--
To reply remove *THE_ANTI-SPAM_SHIELD*
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Chief EAC prophet -
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"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever
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Rober...@yahoogroups.com
> day.
Darwin's theory is merely the logical consequence of four premises:
- Living creatures produce more offspring than their own replacement.
- Resources to support life are limited.
- Some sort of genetic information, i.e. some information passed down
from parents to their children, determines the way a creature builds
its body and responds to the environment etc., all affecting its
ability to survive and bear offspring.
- This genetic information is mostly preserved from parents to
children, with occasional new variation.
The consequence is that on the average, genome less suitable for
survival will be weeded out, leaving more room for genome more suitable
for survival, so over the long term the fitness will improve.
Darwin's claim is simply the "null hypothesis" with respect to this
logical consequence, basically saying that the evolution we already
observe can be adequately explained by the above theory, with nothing
extra needed.
In fact, all the evidence, both in Darwin's time and now, matches that
theory. Evolution does in fact seem to be blind variation upon past
invention, whatever happens to work now, little changes from one time
to the next just as predicted by the theory. There's not one piece of
evidence to the contrary, such as a sudden complete re-design of some
part of a body to be better than any adaption of the earlier design, or
the sudden complete invention of a new capability in full
functionality.
> "a shift in prevailing scientific orthodoxies will come only when the
> objections to Darwinism accumulate so forcefully that they can no
> longer be ignored."
If that refers to valid objections, based on actual evidence, it's
pretty unlikely, given the total lack of even one such objection
so-far. If it refers to worthless objections, where some idiot is just
causing trouble to support a false belief such as some particular
religious dogma, what's the point??
> the many discoveries and advances in science since Darwin that point
> to intelligent design in biology.
No such.
> nothing in evolutionary biology makes sense apart from Darwinism.
Correct.
> The less crucial claim is that all organisms trace their lineage back
> to a universal common ancestor. ... This claim is referred to as
> "common descent." Although evolutionary biology is committed to common
> descent, that is not its central claim.
I disagree only slightly. Almost-common-descent is pretty much proven,
there are several clades which account for all known life, but these
several clades haven't been proven to all arise from a single "trunk".
In fact I've speculated that the earliest life might have arisen from
several independent abiogenesis events which merged in various
combinations.
> The central claim of evolutionary biology, rather, is that an
> unguided physical process can account for the emergence of all
> biological complexity and diversity.
Yes. All evidence so-far is indeed accounted by that theory.
> any unguided physical process capable of producing biological
> complexity must have three components: (1) hereditary transmission, (2)
> incidental change, and (3) natural selection.
Also (4) basic fecundity greater than replacement, otherwise everything
just dies out in a short time. (I listed these four components in a
different sequence earlier above, so the numbers can be safely
ignored.)
> Darwin's claim to fame was to propose natural selection as a designer
> substitute. In making that proposal, Darwin perpetrated the greatest
> intellectual swindle in the history of ideas.
That's not a swindle. It's a brilliant piece of insight.
> All natural selection does is narrow the variability of incidental
> change by weeding out the less fit. What's more, it acts on the spur
> of the moment, based solely on what the environment at present deems
> fit, and thus without any foresight of future possibilities.
Yes. But note that mutations of various kinds (point DNA base changes,
duplications of segments, joining/splitting, etc.) can potentially
generate all possible genomes, so natural selection narrows from
*everything*possible* to just everything that actually works. What's
the gripe with that? Also, statistically, what's generated are things
similar to what worked in the past, so the only way a given genome can
be reached is if there's a chain from some very early organism through
various adaptions to the environment of the time up to the final
adaption to the current environment. So the real test of Darwin's
theory is to imagine some genome that produces some really good design,
unrelated to any chain of past genomes, and ask whether that really
good design has occurred. If so, that is a problem with Darwin's
theory. But so-far no such no-history genome has been found, so
Darwin's theory seems just fine.
> And yet this blind process, when coupled with another blind process
> (incidental change), is supposed to produce designs that exceed the
> capacities of any designers in our experience.
No, Darwin's theory doesn't make any such claim. It merely claims to
explain natural evolution. In fact we humans have already designed some
mechanical and electronic systems, including computers, which are in
some ways better designed than anything that ever occurred in
biological evolution, for their particular tasks such as traveling in
outer space or finding large prime numbers.
> Getting design without a designer is a good trick indeed.
Actually that's a necessity for any ultimate theory. Any theory that
requires a designer, then requires somebody explain how the designer
was designed, begging the question of how design arose in the first
place. (Postulating a designer who designed itself doesn't explain
anything at all, of course.)