Chemistry Nobel Prize Based on Design Inference

[Steady Eddie]

"Notice that what they found was not simply mechanisms that "repair DNA" as if any order of base pairs would
do. No; they found systems and mechanisms that worked to maintain the genetic instructions needed to run
the body (i.e., functional information)."

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/10/chemistry_nobel100231.html

[Glenn]

"Steady Eddie" <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:4e19c0c1-72b5-4648...@googlegroups.com...

"We listed above several of the hallmarks of artificiality, which we can expect to be exhibited by and electromagnetic emission of intelligent origin. The common denominator of all these characteristics, in fact of all human (and we anticipate, alien) existence, is that they are anti-entropic. Any emission which appears (at least in the short term) to defy entropy is a likely candidate for an intelligently generated artifact."
https://books.google.com/books?id=jAk9bTm3Sj4C&pg=PA524&lpg=PA524&dq=SETI+entropic&source=bl&ots=0y5o7Lz-qO&sig=jbWKAX0O9YDXyVXZTszIXG9mkvA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE49G62cvKAhVB2GMKHSigD7oQ6AEIPjAG#v=onepage&q=SETI%20entropic&f=false

[Steady Eddie]

"Biologists have long known that DNA wasn't rock solid. Blasts of xrays, for example, could cause
mutations in cells. Yet most researchers believed that the molecule was inherently stable. After all, cancer
and other genetic malfunctions are the exception, not the rule.

As a postdoc in the late 1960s, however, Lindahl began to have doubts. Samples of RNA in his experiments
rapidly degraded when heated. Further experiments showed that even under normal conditions, DNA
quickly suffered enough damage to make life impossible. A light bulb went on. "Lindahl had the critical
insight," says biochemist Bruce Alberts of the University of California, San Francisco.

Lindahl began to search for enzymes that might repair this unseen damage."

Explain how naturalistic processes evolved REPAIR ENZYMES.

[Ernest Major]

"Ignorance is not an argument" - Steady Eddie.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Steady Eddie]

When it's your ignorance it is.

[RonO]

Fit it into the design model and see how it works. When were these
things designed by the designer? How were they designed.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/press.html

QUOTE:
Aziz Sancar has mapped nucleotide excision repair, the mechanism that
cells use to repair UV damage to DNA. People born with defects in this
repair system will develop skin cancer if they are exposed to sunlight.
The cell also utilises nucleotide excision repair to correct defects
caused by mutagenic substances, among other things.

Paul Modrich has demonstrated how the cell corrects errors that occur
when DNA is replicated during cell division. This mechanism, mismatch
repair, reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a
thousandfold. Congenital defects in mismatch repair are known, for
example, to cause a hereditary variant of colon cancer.
END QUOTE:

This is what you have to put in your model, so why didn't anyone do it?
Why aren't there any IDiots at the Discovery Institute working on
incorporating this knowledge into IDiocy? This isn't new information.
These guys are getting the Nobel prize for working out how some DNA
repair functions work. It fits in with biological evolution, so put it
into the design model.

Too bad that you can't do something like that because you have no such
design model that you are willing to put forward (When was the sun and
moon created and why is the Bible wrong?). Neither is the Discovery
Institute willing to do what real science has already done. These are
the results, so do something with them. Go for it.

The UV repair system would be needed by lifeforms exposed to UV light.
Mismatch repair makes DNA replication more accurate. Why the big whoop
over it? This is a cellular function that makes organisms more stable.
It has obvious advantages, but the IDiots would have to work out
something like these systems were required from the beginning, but you
can't do that. These obviously could have been added on later. Early
on life forms may not have benefited so much from accurate replication.
If life evolved near by deep sea vents (early lifeforms were likely
chemotrophes and things like photosynthesis did not evolve until around
a billion years later) where there is no UV. Variation may have been
more important when more things had to be tried and there was less
competition for living space and resources. These are the things that
IDiots have to do, but you never see them doing them.

That is why it is IDiocy. Denial is not science. Find an IDiot that is
actually doing something rather than claiming that something could not
have happened naturally. You won't find it in this propaganda crap or
anything that Grasso has put up or that you have put up. So when is the
ID science going to get done?

These two biologists got recognized for doing real science. How do you
think they view their contribution to science?

Ron Okimoto

[Robert Carnegie]

www.evolutionnews.org tells lies. I mean in general.

How would the "systems and mechanisms" be able to tell the
difference between genetic "functional information" and
other DNA - other than by containing their own copy of
the correct "functional information", to compare.
Which clearly isn't there.

[jillery]

Assuming you have one, what's your point?
--
This space is intentionally not blank.

[John Stockwell]

Nope. No "design inference" there. We are talking about reproducible physical
processes, not something that is manufactured. And, where did it come from?
Likely, mutation and natural selection, just like everything else in biology.


-John

-John

[John Stockwell]

That is what their paper was about. Naturalistic processes.

No amount of cherrypicking will make a "design inference" real.

-John

[John Stockwell]

...using human manufactured signals as a model.... So, no "design inference" there either Glenn. No matter what cherries you pick or how many times you kick the dead dog of design, it won't move.

John

[Glenn]

"John Stockwell" <john.1...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:bd1baf16-4c27-487b...@googlegroups.com...

The "model" is our knowledge of nature, John. I don't know what you identify in my words as the "dead dog of design", but your argument concerning SETI identifying artificiality is simply wrong. Biased to the point of blindness, I would say. Argue with what the "cherry pick" actually says.

[eridanus]

we cannot say evolution is false or wrong because we cannot explain
everything. We are of natural ignorants. This can be seen if you
correlates our past ignorance with the great amount of gods humans
believed. As we are getting more intelligent we are believing in a
smaller number of gods. But we are ignorant enough to still believe
in a single god valid for all humans, with holy stories totally
different.
But evolution... we would never be able to explain evolution in all
its infinite details. We would never be able to explain the universe
in its totality, not the big bang, not the dark matter, not the dark
energy, etc. We would never be sure why the dinosaurs become extinct,
or other animals, big or small.
eridanus

[David Canzi]

>When it's your ignorance it is.

Nice demo of special pleading.

--
David Canzi | When something is unexplained, it is not a philosphical
| emergency requiring the immediate adoption of some
| desperate hypothesis.

[Steady Eddie]

You mean other than being intelligently designed to do so?

[Steady Eddie]

"Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins
Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped these fundamental processes at the molecular level."

Do you seriously think this "swarm of proteins" monitoring the genes just came about by evolution?
I don't think so.
The system was evidently designed.

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:24:10 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com>:

Of course; that's how selection works, as has been noted
many times.

>I don't think so.

Your privilege.

>The system was evidently designed.

If it was "evidently designed" you should have no problem
posting either the evidence or an irrefutable logic chain
which admits of no other possibility; please do so.

Note that, as the quoted statement above (by you) says, "I
can't think how else it could have happened" (IOW,
ignorance) is neither evidence nor such an irrefutable logic
chain, although it may be correct as a statement in itself.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[eridanus]

to say "it is monitored" it implies we know well what is occurring really.
I suspect we do not know yet this well, but have some faint idea.

If you love so much logic, try to reason why a god creator made the Universe
and the humans. If you are able to find a good explanation for this, you
deserve all our attention in your criticism of science.

[Otangelo Grasso]

If the DNA and RNA and polypeptide repair enzymes were not fully functional PRIOR self replication began, there would be a high mutation rate, and the cell would die, and we would not be here. THAT IS VERY STRONG evidence of design.

Furthermore, the repair enzymes require FE-S clusters, which are ultracomplex to be synthesized, requiring over 30 proteins, and in eukaryotic cells, MITOCHONDRIA.

[eridanus]

El domingo, 31 de enero de 2016, 16:55:49 (UTC), Otangelo Grasso escribió:
> If the DNA and RNA and polypeptide repair enzymes were not fully functional PRIOR self replication began, there would be a high mutation rate, and the cell would die, and we would not be here. THAT IS VERY STRONG evidence of design.
>
> Furthermore, the repair enzymes require FE-S clusters, which are ultracomplex to be synthesized, requiring over 30 proteins, and in eukaryotic cells, MITOCHONDRIA.

we probably, I am not expert on this matter, do not know many errors occur and
how many of those errors are corrected. I am guessing that the most we know is that exist some mechanism that is probably correcting errors. What ratio of
errors are those, we cannot know, but it implies we are able to keep a precise
account of the mutations that occur. I suspect, I am not an expert in these
questions, that a person that is born blind must be, at least in some cases,
because some error occurred. Thus your famous machine to correct errors did
not correct this one, and a person was born blind. The same can be said of
all the rest of errors we know something of, like being born deaf, with Dawn
syndrome, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida, and others I do not recall in this
moment. Then if it exist a machine to correct genetic errors, it is not a
prove of the supreme intelligence of the divine creator. Neither is a prove
of divine intelligence, the people that is born with errors, as I mentioned before. Neither is a prove in the case of people born with a brother sharing
some internal organs like a liver, or other vital parts. Recently in India
a boy of 11 years was operated and it was extracted from the interior of his
body a brother that weighted some 7 kilos. The children insulted him saying
he was pregnant. Then, if the machine to correct genetic error is so wonderful as you are saying, this errors of having a brother of 7 kilos inside your
body this is also the prove of an intelligent design.
I am ready to accept the theory of an intelligent design, but on condition
of accepting that intelligent design is not very intelligent after all.

On the other hand, people in favor of evolution accepts the genetic machine
is not perfect and present us with some frequency some samples of his errors.
If you go to school for deaf people you can see a lot of samples.
If you go to school for people with mental retardation, you see as well a
wide sample of errors committed by the wonderful machine that correct the
genetic errors. A school for blind people presents us also a lot of samples
of genetic errors. etc. etc.
All this are strong proves of an intelligent designer. Watching those
samples nobody can reject the intelligence of the divine designer.

What amazes me, about people like you, is how slow you are to detect a
defective argument, that is working against your thesis. The only comment
I can make on this, is that the intelligent designer made the brain of
believers rather defective on purpose. He made those errors to piss off
believers and made them look a little retarded. And this reminds me of
George W Bush, that was born again Christian, as he said, he was also
rewarded with an outstanding (little) intelligence as we all could had
verified watching a number of videos in which he was speaking. He was
quite amazing. It proves as well the blessing of the divine creator
over US conservative politicians.

Eridanus

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 31 Jan 2016 08:54:15 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Otangelo Grasso
<audiov...@gmail.com>:

>
>
>If the DNA and RNA and polypeptide repair enzymes were not fully functional PRIOR self replication began, there would be a high mutation rate, and the cell would die, and we would not be here.

Two problems with that:

A high mutation rate would imply a high rate of evolution,
and the detrimental variants would perish. But the
beneficial ones would thrive.

But more importantly, it's only necessary for the enzymes to
provide *some* protection; perfection (which has almost
certainly still not been achieved) is not required; the
efficiency would increase as the enzymes changed through
selection.

> THAT IS VERY STRONG evidence of design.

Nope; sorry.

>Furthermore, the repair enzymes require FE-S clusters, which are ultracomplex to be synthesized, requiring over 30 proteins, and in eukaryotic cells, MITOCHONDRIA.

You seem enamored of the "complexity" idea; why is that?

[RonO]

On 1/31/2016 10:54 AM, Otangelo Grasso wrote:
>
>
> If the DNA and RNA and polypeptide repair enzymes were not fully functional PRIOR self replication began, there would be a high mutation rate, and the cell would die, and we would not be here. THAT IS VERY STRONG evidence of design.
>
> Furthermore, the repair enzymes require FE-S clusters, which are ultracomplex to be synthesized, requiring over 30 proteins, and in eukaryotic cells, MITOCHONDRIA.
>

So put that into your model and what do you come up with? What happened
and when? What did your designer actually do?

Newsflash for you:

The first self replicators likely did not use DNA as their information
storage. They obviously did not worry about how error prone the system was.

The advances on the evolution of the DNA based system tells us that
proteins were being made by another system than the one that exists
today. Did you read the translation thread? How do those results fit
in with your model?

Polymerase errors were likely not a problem until RNA was being used as
a means of self replication. When did that happen in your model?

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

On Sun, 31 Jan 2016 09:51:29 -0800 (PST), eridanus
<leopoldo...@gmail.com> wrote:

>El domingo, 31 de enero de 2016, 16:55:49 (UTC), Otangelo Grasso escribió:
>> If the DNA and RNA and polypeptide repair enzymes were not fully functional PRIOR self replication began, there would be a high mutation rate, and the cell would die, and we would not be here. THAT IS VERY STRONG evidence of design.
>>
>> Furthermore, the repair enzymes require FE-S clusters, which are ultracomplex to be synthesized, requiring over 30 proteins, and in eukaryotic cells, MITOCHONDRIA.
>
>we probably, I am not expert on this matter, do not know many errors occur and
>how many of those errors are corrected.

What do you mean "we", white man? Google "DNA repair mechanisms".

>I am guessing that the most we know is that exist some mechanism that is probably correcting errors. What ratio of
>errors are those, we cannot know, but it implies we are able to keep a precise
>account of the mutations that occur. I suspect, I am not an expert in these
>questions, that a person that is born blind must be, at least in some cases,
>because some error occurred.

Some birth defects are genetic ex. cystic fibrosis. Some birth
defects are from flaws in embryo's environment ex. fetal alcohol
syndrome. And some birth defects are from a combination of both ex.
spina bifida.

[Robert Carnegie]

Design isn't enough. To maintain the correct DNA perfectly
(which deosn't happen anyway, e.g. cancer), little DNA repair
angels that you think we're talking about would have to have
another, more accurate copy of the entire DNA to compare.
And of course that isn't there. If it was, it would be
enormous, relatively.

What happens in fact is clearly heuristic, approximate,
and imperfect.

[Steady Eddie]

And evidently designed.

[Robert Carnegie]

No: that's excluded by it being heuristic, approximate, and
imperfect.

It's messy. And messy isn't designed.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 30 Jan 2016 11:20:18 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:

[Crickets...]

As usual when challenged and/or refuted.

[Steady Eddie]

My house can get very messy.
It doesn't mean it wasn't designed.
And it doesn't mean it was designed and built messily.

[Steady Eddie]

Your childish belief that "evolutiondidit" shows your gullibility.
My quote from a SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD shows that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of naturalistic
causes generating this "SWARM" of proteins and enzymes that constantly monitor and correct the genome.

As anybody who has tried structured computer programming knows, the error-handling and self-monitoring
functions (debugging) are often the most time-consuming and difficult to develop.
And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.

We know from uniform and repeated experience that intelligence is required to make a computer
program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
We see this robustness in the code written in DNA. This error-checking and correction process is so
complex that specialists in the field don't understand it. This is evidence that a higher-than-human
intelligence was required to program these features into the DNA software.

[August Rode]

Are you a software developer, Ed? I am and I'm going to call 'bullshit' on your assertions here.

> And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.
>
> We know from uniform and repeated experience that intelligence is required to make a computer
> program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.

It does but it doesn't require much intelligence. Mostly, what it requires is discipline.

> We see this robustness in the code written in DNA. This error-checking and correction process is so
> complex that specialists in the field don't understand it.

By "specialists in the field," I assume you mean people like you to whom DNA repair must seem like magic. *Real* specialists understand far more than you think they do. They know what types of DNA repair are done and, more importantly, what types of DNA damage aren't detectable or repairable.

> This is evidence that a higher-than-human
> intelligence was required to program these features into the DNA software.

DNA "software," Ed? What's that? DNA is *chemistry*, not software.

[jillery]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2016 12:18:20 -0800 (PST), Steady Eddie

The point in question isn't what your SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD said or
meant. Rather, it's your irrational and illogical insistence that
your quote is evidence of ID.

>As anybody who has tried structured computer programming knows, the error-handling and self-monitoring
>functions (debugging) are often the most time-consuming and difficult to develop.
>And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.
>
>We know from uniform and repeated experience that intelligence is required to make a computer
>program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
>We see this robustness in the code written in DNA. This error-checking and correction process is so
>complex that specialists in the field don't understand it. This is evidence that a higher-than-human
>intelligence was required to program these features into the DNA software.

If only DNA was a computer, or a computer DNA, you might have an
argument. Your conclusion is just an overreach of a failed analogy.

[solar penguin]

Was the mess in your house designed? Did you bring in an interior
designer who charged you a fortune and decided it would be simply
_fabulous_ to put old pizza boxes and banana peels in that corner,
gradually easing into beer cans and dirty underwear in the middle of the
room?

Somehow, I don't think so...

[Mark Isaak]

You seem to have missed the fact that your specialists in the field also
show that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that naturalistic causes did
*not* generate the proteins and enzymes.

> As anybody who has tried structured computer programming
> knows, the error-handling and self-monitoring
> functions (debugging) are often the most time-consuming
> and difficult to develop.
> And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.

And as anybody who has done computer programming *and* studied biology
knows, the operations of a human cell are not remotely close to what
computer programs look like. If structured programming is your standard
for design, then you have just conceded in no uncertain terms that life
does not look designed.

> We know from uniform and repeated experience that
> intelligence is required to make a computer
> program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.

Well, today's computer programmers know of an alternative, called
genetic algorithms. They work very well for solving many problems which
are too complex for practical structured programming approaches.
Something like robust error handling would be just the thing for them.

The theory behind those algorithms, which makes them so effective is,
essentially, evolution.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good
intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack
understanding." - Albert Camus, _The Plague_

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/1/16 7:58 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Sunday, 31 January 2016 18:25:49 UTC-7, Robert Carnegie wrote:

>> [...]

>> Design isn't enough. To maintain the correct DNA perfectly
>> (which deosn't happen anyway, e.g. cancer), little DNA repair
>> angels that you think we're talking about would have to have
>> another, more accurate copy of the entire DNA to compare.
>> And of course that isn't there. If it was, it would be
>> enormous, relatively.
>>
>> What happens in fact is clearly heuristic, approximate,
>> and imperfect.
>
> And evidently designed.

You just said in another post that cell biology does not look designed,
because it is nothing like what structured programming looks like.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2016 12:18:20 -0800 (PST), the following

>Your childish belief that "evolutiondidit" shows your gullibility.
>My quote from a SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD shows that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of naturalistic
>causes generating this "SWARM" of proteins and enzymes that constantly monitor and correct the genome.

Sorry, but that is *your* conclusion, not his. He merely
noted the fact of complex self-repair, and you concluded it
could not have arisen through natural processes.
Unfortunately for you, "I can't imagine how it could have
arisen through natural processes" isn't evidence it didn't.
Yours is basically argument from ignorance: "I don't know
how this could happen through natural processes, therefore
it didn't; it was done by some entity".

>As anybody who has tried structured computer programming knows, the error-handling and self-monitoring
>functions (debugging) are often the most time-consuming and difficult to develop.
>And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.

I have, and it is. And that has no relevance; biological
systems are not computers.

>We know from uniform and repeated experience that intelligence is required to make a computer
>program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.

Yes; see above.

>We see this robustness in the code written in DNA.

Sorry, but DNA isn't a "code" analogous to computer code.

> This error-checking and correction process is so
>complex that specialists in the field don't understand it. This is evidence that a higher-than-human
>intelligence was required to program these features into the DNA software.

Nor is it software analogous to computer software.

[Steady Eddie]

Hide from the facts if you want, but the truth is, each cell has an advanced computer system operating
and maintaining it.

[August Rode]

> Hide from the facts if you want, but the truth is, each cell has an advanced computer system operating
> and maintaining it.

That's so *completely* false, Ed, that you must have meant to write something other than what you actually wrote. What was it that you were trying to communicate?

[jillery]

On Tue, 2 Feb 2016 12:04:39 -0800 (PST), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Hide from the facts if you want, but the truth is, each cell has an advanced computer system operating
>and maintaining it.

Perhaps, but if so, that just means unguided natural processes grow
and reproduce computers, while human manufacture does not, and so
refutes Paley's Design Inference and your reliance on it.

[Steady Eddie]

The fact that you're an idiot if you don't realize that the cell has an advanced computer system operating
and maintaining it.

[Steady Eddie]

What kind of a stupid utterance is that?

[jillery]

On Tue, 2 Feb 2016 20:27:31 -0800 (PST), Steady Eddie

<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, 2 February 2016 14:50:41 UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 2 Feb 2016 12:04:39 -0800 (PST), Steady Eddie
>> <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Hide from the facts if you want, but the truth is, each cell has an advanced computer system operating
>> >and maintaining it.
>>
>>
>> Perhaps, but if so, that just means unguided natural processes grow
>> and reproduce computers, while human manufacture does not, and so
>> refutes Paley's Design Inference and your reliance on it.
>

>What kind of a stupid utterance is that?

The kind that shows your willful stupidity. Thanks for asking.

[Dexter]

> > > > Sorry, but that is your conclusion, not his. He

> > That's so completely false, Ed, that you must have

> > meant to write something other than what you actually
> > wrote. What was it that you were trying to communicate?
>
> The fact that you're an idiot if you don't realize that
> the cell has an advanced computer system operating and
> maintaining it.

______________________________________________

Because you say so? Your assertion is curiously lacking in
evidence. Perhaps you could provide some?

--
- There is no harm in being a fool; harm lies in being a
fool at the top of your lungs. (Author Unknown)

[August Rode]

On 2/2/2016 11:26 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 February 2016 13:40:45 UTC-7, August Rode wrote:

<snip>

>>> Hide from the facts if you want, but the truth is, each cell has an advanced computer system operating
>>> and maintaining it.
>>
>> That's so *completely* false, Ed, that you must have meant to write something other than what you actually wrote. What was it that you were trying to communicate?
>
> The fact that you're an idiot if you don't realize that the cell has an advanced computer system operating
> and maintaining it.

It seems that I forgot that you only read from prepared scripts and
don't actually understand the subjects that you're talking about. Mea culpa.

[Joe Cummings]

Then why are there errors?????

Have fun


Joe Cummings

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 2 Feb 2016 12:04:39 -0800 (PST), the following

[Crickets...]

>> >As anybody who has tried structured computer programming knows, the error-handling and self-monitoring
>> >functions (debugging) are often the most time-consuming and difficult to develop.
>> >And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.
>>
>> I have, and it is. And that has no relevance; biological
>> systems are not computers.
>>
>> >We know from uniform and repeated experience that intelligence is required to make a computer
>> >program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
>>
>> Yes; see above.
>>
>> >We see this robustness in the code written in DNA.
>>
>> Sorry, but DNA isn't a "code" analogous to computer code.
>>
>> > This error-checking and correction process is so
>> >complex that specialists in the field don't understand it. This is evidence that a higher-than-human
>> >intelligence was required to program these features into the DNA software.
>>
>> Nor is it software analogous to computer software.

>Hide from the facts if you want, but the truth is, each cell has an advanced computer system operating
>and maintaining it.

Since your knowledge of computers is apparently on a par
with your knowledge of biology (both are effectively zero),
and you seem unwilling to learn about either, I'd say the
one "hiding from the facts" isn't me.

[jillery]

On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 11:14:58 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
wrote:

>Since your knowledge of computers is apparently on a par
>with your knowledge of biology (both are effectively zero),
>and you seem unwilling to learn about either, I'd say the
>one "hiding from the facts" isn't me.

Give credit where it's due. Steadly doesn't just passively hide from
the facts, hoping they will go away. No indeed, Steadly actively and
purposefully runs away from the facts.

[August Rode]

I disagree. Ed had no methodology for determining whether or not something is a fact. I think he runs away from ideas that he disagrees with. That many of these ideas are facts is entirely secondary and doesn't factor into his "thinking."

[jillery]

At the risk of giving Steadly more credit than he's due, my impression
is "running away from facts" and "running away from disagreeable
ideas" are not mutually exclusive, but instead have a large overlap.
Either way, you help to illustrate a common theme, that actively and
manly runs away, away...

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 15:28:08 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

Could be either, or a blend of both, although I suspect
August is more correct than not regarding his inability to
determine the validity of just about anything for which
validity *can* be determined. It's the fact that he doesn't
address refutations with other than repetition of error
that's, to me, the salient issue.

[jillery]

On Thu, 04 Feb 2016 10:40:02 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

Since you mention it, Steadly's inability to determine the validity of
facts isn't relevant to their actual validity.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 04 Feb 2016 14:35:18 -0500, the following appeared

Of course not.

[jillery]

On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 11:02:12 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

Assuming that wasn't tongue-in cheek, what's the point in identifying
a case that Steadly can't identify?

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 15:09:14 -0500, the following appeared

"A" case? None. My point was (I thought) the same as
August's, and to a lesser extent, yours: That Eddie can't
even determine (or perhaps, "accept") the validity of
answers if the means to do so is obvious and the answers and
validation procedure have been exhaustively explained to
him. No specific case was cited, only an impression based on
his numerous posts.

[jillery]

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 11:09:56 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

The case August identified, and you elaborated, is of Steadly
recognizing fact. My impression is Steadly runs away from all
arguments as a matter of style, regardless of their veracity or his
understanding. His behavior is the substantial issue, his recognition
of facts is incidental. You're beating a horse your wagon isn't even
attached.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 5:45:45 PM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 2/1/16 12:18 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> > On Monday, 1 February 2016 11:05:45 UTC-7, Bob Casanova wrote:
> >> On Sat, 30 Jan 2016 11:20:18 -0700, the following appeared
> >> in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:
> >>
> >>> On Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:24:10 -0800 (PST), the following
> >>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Steady Eddie
> >>> <1914o...@gmail.com>:
> >>>
> >>>> On Friday, 29 January 2016 11:05:55 UTC-7, David Canzi wrote:
> >>>>> On Thu, 28 Jan 2016 03:58:58 -0800 (PST),
> >>>>> Steady Eddie <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> On Thursday, 28 January 2016 04:30:59 UTC-7, Ernest Major wrote:
> >>>>>>> On 28/01/2016 10:15, Steady Eddie wrote:
> >>>>>>>> Explain how naturalistic processes evolved REPAIR ENZYMES.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> "Ignorance is not an argument" - Steady Eddie.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> When it's your ignorance it is.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Nice demo of special pleading.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> David Canzi | When something is unexplained, it is not a philosphical
> >>>>> | emergency requiring the immediate adoption of some
> >>>>> | desperate hypothesis.

Nothing desperate about a hypothesis that has existed for millennia,
of the world having been designed.

What's more, this particular event just might have been designed
by a technological civilization of ca. 4 gya.

> >>>> "Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins
> >>>> Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred.

The "how" has not been explained by anyone on this thread. I'll have
more to say about this below.

> The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped these fundamental processes at the molecular level."
> >>>>
> >>>> Do you seriously think this "swarm of proteins" monitoring the genes just came about by evolution?
> >>>
> >>> Of course; that's how selection works, as has been noted
> >>> many times.

Casanova seems to be opting here for "Darwin of the Gaps."

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

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

Unfortunately, that is just as much a science-stopper as "God of the Gaps."

<snip for focus>

> > Your childish belief that "evolutiondidit" shows your gullibility.
> > My quote from a SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD shows that there
> > is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of naturalistic
> > causes generating this "SWARM" of proteins and enzymes
> > that constantly monitor and correct the genome.
>
> You seem to have missed the fact that your specialists in the field also
> show that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that naturalistic causes did
> *not* generate the proteins and enzymes.

And so the playing field is level: no scientific evidence for
naturalistic causes, none against.

> > As anybody who has tried structured computer programming
> > knows, the error-handling and self-monitoring
> > functions (debugging) are often the most time-consuming
> > and difficult to develop.
> > And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.
>
> And as anybody who has done computer programming *and* studied biology
> knows, the operations of a human cell are not remotely close to what
> computer programs look like.

So enlighten us about how the repair mechanisms work. You may
start by answering the following question:

How do these proteins "know" what the correct
nucleotides are after they have been damaged?

> If structured programming is your standard
> for design, then you have just conceded in no uncertain terms that life
> does not look designed.

I fail to follow your logic here. You seem to be opting for
another science stopper, Nobody of the Gaps:

"Nobody ever claimed that _________________ works like _________."

> > We know from uniform and repeated experience that
> > intelligence is required to make a computer
> > program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
>
> Well, today's computer programmers know of an alternative, called
> genetic algorithms. They work very well for solving many problems which
> are too complex for practical structured programming approaches.
> Something like robust error handling would be just the thing for them.
>
> The theory behind those algorithms, which makes them so effective is,
> essentially, evolution.

...designed by the human programmers. Cars have evolved too, although
the humans so far have a lot more *direct* input into their evolution
up to now.

You seem to have a mental block about the concept of design. You see
evolution even where the design is obvious.

Next thing you know, you'll be claiming that the arrangement of
words in your posts is the product of evolution.

Peter Nyikos

[Öö Tiib]

Only the fitness criteria is typically designed. In nature the fitness
criteria is survival and reproduction. Recent years have shown that
evolution is too slow for many problems and adaptive algorithms with more
feed-back and less randomness (like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning)
achieve better results faster. No human can provide direct input
to such systems, instead those are trained with thousands and millions
of inputs.

[jillery]

The desperation is in clinging to an hypothesis that has existed for
millenia, in lieu of more recent and better supported ones. My
impression is that even you recognize we have come up with better
supported hypotheses in that time. Of course, my impressions have
been wrong before.

>What's more, this particular event just might have been designed
>by a technological civilization of ca. 4 gya.

And until there's some evidence that is the case, that possibility
remains nothing more than that.

>> >>>> "Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins
>> >>>> Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred.
>
>The "how" has not been explained by anyone on this thread. I'll have
>more to say about this below.

The "how" has been explained by those who are cited.

>> The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped these fundamental processes at the molecular level."
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Do you seriously think this "swarm of proteins" monitoring the genes just came about by evolution?
>> >>>
>> >>> Of course; that's how selection works, as has been noted
>> >>> many times.
>
>Casanova seems to be opting here for "Darwin of the Gaps."
>
>This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
>naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena:
>
> "Well, it's natural selection, y'know. The __________ that did/could/
> are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
> couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."
>
>Unfortunately, that is just as much a science-stopper as "God of the Gaps."

You raise a false equivalence. Whether Casanova actually made such an
argument is itself arguable. As a separate point, the fundamental
issue is the veracity of your polemical "Darwin of the Gaps", which
implies that unguided natural processes are mindlessly invoked
similarly to God or some other unseen, unknown, undefined Designer. At
the very least, you have an obligation to make that case, which to the
best of my knowledge, you have not.

><snip for focus>
>
>> > Your childish belief that "evolutiondidit" shows your gullibility.
>> > My quote from a SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD shows that there
>> > is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of naturalistic
>> > causes generating this "SWARM" of proteins and enzymes
>> > that constantly monitor and correct the genome.
>>
>> You seem to have missed the fact that your specialists in the field also
>> show that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that naturalistic causes did
>> *not* generate the proteins and enzymes.
>
>And so the playing field is level: no scientific evidence for
>naturalistic causes, none against.

And again you invoke a false equivalence. The obligation rests on
those who make a claim. Steadly claimed above that his cites showed
either 1) evidence against biological evolution, and/or 2) evidence
for ID. In fact they showed neither.

You really should stop pretending to be a mindreader, because you
really suck at it.

[eridanus]

Of course. All this so far is out of the reach of our intelligence.
But if something is repairing DNA errors, or genetic constructions, do
it so well, it is not doing so well, for some errors occurred, as can be
observed by all the persons with genetic errors that are not mortal,
for parents or the state take care of them. Then, errors occur, and thus
the repairing mechanism, with all its presumed wonders, is not fool prove.

Summing up, we cannot explain in detail how the repairing mechanism works,
neither how it fails to repair some faults that can be observed; I am not
going to make a list of them.
Then, we know almost nothing. So great is the complexity of the question.
But our ignorance of it, cannot be the prove of the existence of god.
We cannot say, "god exist because we are a bunch of crass ignorants".
It does not look a good argument to me.
eridanus

[eridanus]

steady had been trained to wage this war in favor of god. It is like god
is impotent, or not willing, to wage this war on his own.
I was a boy of 12 or so, and one day a new priest come to the school with
the mission of selling the idea of creating or improving the "army of King Christ". He presented his philosophical preliminaries and I thought, "my!
this man is crazy!" When the priest finished his exhortation he asked:
"those willing to be the soldiers of King Christ, make a step forward."
I could not believe such a crazy idea. But my peers neither believe it.
Nobody step forward a step. He kept arguing for a while with the boys,
but it looked like they had not any Christian military inclination.
He failed to enlist any of the boys for the army of Christ.

Sometimes, it seems to me, people like Eddie were successfully enlisted
as soldiers of the army of King Christ.

Eridanus

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/9/16 3:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 5:45:45 PM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:

> [snip a lot that has nothing to to with my post]

> How do these proteins "know" what the correct
> nucleotides are after they have been damaged?

That they exist is enough to make my point. Structured programming does
not normally include code which corrects damage to other code.

>>> We know from uniform and repeated experience that
>>> intelligence is required to make a computer
>>> program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
>>
>> Well, today's computer programmers know of an alternative, called
>> genetic algorithms. They work very well for solving many problems which
>> are too complex for practical structured programming approaches.
>> Something like robust error handling would be just the thing for them.
>>
>> The theory behind those algorithms, which makes them so effective is,
>> essentially, evolution.
>
> ...designed by the human programmers.

Misdirection noted. The algorithms were inspired by evolution and put
into form by human programmers. The results were *not* designed by
human programmers; they were designed by evolutionary processes.

If Eddie wants to admit that the process of evolution itself is what
appears designed, I will not argue with him. Well, not as much.

> Cars have evolved too, although
> the humans so far have a lot more *direct* input into their evolution
> up to now.

Yes. Design as we know it is always an evolutionary process -- designs
undergo changes, and those changes are selected or discarded according
to environment. So of course the results of design and evolution have
some things in common. They also have significant differences. Those
differences allow us to assert, unequivocally, that the *overall* look
of life does not look designed.

Of course, it is possible to design things specifically so that they do
not look designed, so the appearance is not conclusive. It is, however,
highly indicative.

> You seem to have a mental block about the concept of design. You see
> evolution even where the design is obvious.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

> Next thing you know, you'll be claiming that the arrangement of
> words in your posts is the product of evolution.

Well, of course. What you see has always undergone modifications, and
some of the modifications were discarded in favor of others. The
process is not identical to biological evolution, but it shares much in
common.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good
intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack
understanding." - Albert Camus, _The Plague_

[Peter Nyikos]

That "better supported" hypothesis ultimately rests on two unsupported
assumptions:

1. That technologically advanced life is NOT a once-in-a-galaxy
occurrence and

2. that once life gets to the prokaryote level, it's only about
a million in one chance that it will advance to our own level.

>
> >What's more, this particular event just might have been designed
> >by a technological civilization of ca. 4 gya.
>
>
> And until there's some evidence that is the case, that possibility
> remains nothing more than that.

And until there is some evidence that abiogenesis took place ON EARTH,
that possibility also remains nothing more than that.

>
> >> >>>> "Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins
> >> >>>> Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred.
> >
> >The "how" has not been explained by anyone on this thread. I'll have
> >more to say about this below.
>
>
> The "how" has been explained by those who are cited.

Um...which ones? The DI citation certainly does not do that.

>
> >> The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped these fundamental processes at the molecular level."
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> Do you seriously think this "swarm of proteins" monitoring the genes just came about by evolution?
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Of course; that's how selection works, as has been noted
> >> >>> many times.
> >
> >Casanova seems to be opting here for "Darwin of the Gaps."
> >
> >This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
> >naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena:
> >
> > "Well, it's natural selection, y'know. The __________ that did/could/
> > are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
> > couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."
> >
> >Unfortunately, that is just as much a science-stopper as "God of the Gaps."
>
>
> You raise a false equivalence. Whether Casanova actually made such an
> argument is itself arguable. As a separate point, the fundamental
> issue is the veracity of your polemical "Darwin of the Gaps", which
> implies that unguided natural processes are mindlessly invoked
> similarly to God or some other unseen, unknown, undefined Designer.

Seems like that is what Casanova was doing. Can you quote anything
from him that goes beyond that, on this thread?

<snip transparent attempt to put ALL the burden of proof on me>

>
> ><snip for focus>
> >
> >> > Your childish belief that "evolutiondidit" shows your gullibility.
> >> > My quote from a SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD shows that there
> >> > is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of naturalistic
> >> > causes generating this "SWARM" of proteins and enzymes
> >> > that constantly monitor and correct the genome.
> >>
> >> You seem to have missed the fact that your specialists in the field also
> >> show that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that naturalistic causes did
> >> *not* generate the proteins and enzymes.
> >
> >And so the playing field is level: no scientific evidence for
> >naturalistic causes, none against.
>
>
> And again you invoke a false equivalence. The obligation rests on
> those who make a claim.

As did your erstwhile benefactor Mark Isaak. Just now.

> Steadly claimed above that his cites showed
> either 1) evidence against biological evolution, and/or 2) evidence
> for ID. In fact they showed neither.

I'm only concerned with what Steady said above. Just like you are
only concerned with certain things you said to Martinez, and resent
being reminded of other things you said to him.

Unlike you, I don't resent you bringing these other points up,
I'm just not interested in them at the moment.

>
> >> > As anybody who has tried structured computer programming
> >> > knows, the error-handling and self-monitoring
> >> > functions (debugging) are often the most time-consuming
> >> > and difficult to develop.
> >> > And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.
> >>
> >> And as anybody who has done computer programming *and* studied biology
> >> knows, the operations of a human cell are not remotely close to what
> >> computer programs look like.
> >
> >So enlighten us about how the repair mechanisms work. You may
> >start by answering the following question:
> >
> >How do these proteins "know" what the correct
> >nucleotides are after they have been damaged?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Casanova posting style on

And jillery runs away.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Casanova posting style off

> >> If structured programming is your standard
> >> for design, then you have just conceded in no uncertain terms that life
> >> does not look designed.
> >
> >I fail to follow your logic here. You seem to be opting for
> >another science stopper, Nobody of the Gaps:
> >
> >"Nobody ever claimed that _________________ works like _________."
> >
> >> > We know from uniform and repeated experience that
> >> > intelligence is required to make a computer
> >> > program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
> >>
> >> Well, today's computer programmers know of an alternative, called
> >> genetic algorithms. They work very well for solving many problems which
> >> are too complex for practical structured programming approaches.
> >> Something like robust error handling would be just the thing for them.
> >>
> >> The theory behind those algorithms, which makes them so effective is,
> >> essentially, evolution.
> >
> >...designed by the human programmers. Cars have evolved too, although
> >the humans so far have a lot more *direct* input into their evolution
> >up to now.
> >
> >You seem to have a mental block about the concept of design. You see
> >evolution even where the design is obvious.
> >
> >Next thing you know, you'll be claiming that the arrangement of
> >words in your posts is the product of evolution.
>
>
> You really should stop pretending to be a mindreader, because you
> really suck at it.

You really need to attend to the chirping of the crickets
which Casanova used to talk about [see above for more recent
phraseogy by him], and not to post TbBA as
a red herring.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
U. of S. Carolina, Columbia -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[jillery]

On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:37:26 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

Since you conveniently misread, that's plural "hypotheses", as in more
than one. Do you really think that science has identified only one
hypothesis in the last thousand years?

>1. That technologically advanced life is NOT a once-in-a-galaxy
>occurrence and
>
>2. that once life gets to the prokaryote level, it's only about
>a million in one chance that it will advance to our own level.

There have been numerous threads devoted to getting you to actually
document how you calculate that statistic, all in vain. Don't be
insulted that I don't wait for you to do so here.

More to the point, apparently you're trying to again hijack the actual
topic. Read the OP for comprehension. The topic is about ID, and not
your precious Directed Panspermia.

>> >What's more, this particular event just might have been designed
>> >by a technological civilization of ca. 4 gya.
>>
>>
>> And until there's some evidence that is the case, that possibility
>> remains nothing more than that.
>
>And until there is some evidence that abiogenesis took place ON EARTH,
>that possibility also remains nothing more than that.

Are you really baselessly denying the evidence for abiogenesis ON
EARTH?

>> >> >>>> "Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins
>> >> >>>> Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred.
>> >
>> >The "how" has not been explained by anyone on this thread. I'll have
>> >more to say about this below.
>>
>>
>> The "how" has been explained by those who are cited.
>
>Um...which ones? The DI citation certainly does not do that.

To refresh your convenient amnesia:

<n8d309$mj5$1...@dont-email.me>

Oh wait... you don't know how to identify by message-id. Poor baby.
Since this thread is short, I will accommodate your willful stupidity:

<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/88qfQjjSVQg/jG4Pq7qJFQAJ>

Your welcome.

More to the point, you don't say what is it that you think needs to be
explained, exactly. One can only wonder why.

>> >> The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped these fundamental processes at the molecular level."
>> >> >>>>
>> >> >>>> Do you seriously think this "swarm of proteins" monitoring the genes just came about by evolution?
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> Of course; that's how selection works, as has been noted
>> >> >>> many times.
>> >
>> >Casanova seems to be opting here for "Darwin of the Gaps."
>> >
>> >This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
>> >naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena:
>> >
>> > "Well, it's natural selection, y'know. The __________ that did/could/
>> > are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
>> > couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."
>> >
>> >Unfortunately, that is just as much a science-stopper as "God of the Gaps."
>>
>>
>> You raise a false equivalence. Whether Casanova actually made such an
>> argument is itself arguable. As a separate point, the fundamental
>> issue is the veracity of your polemical "Darwin of the Gaps", which
>> implies that unguided natural processes are mindlessly invoked
>> similarly to God or some other unseen, unknown, undefined Designer.
>
>Seems like that is what Casanova was doing. Can you quote anything
>from him that goes beyond that, on this thread?

It's almost certain that Casanova will speak for himself. The
relevant question is will you back up your alleged equivalence? Don't
be insulted that I don't wait for you to do so.

>> ><snip for focus>
>> >
>> >> > Your childish belief that "evolutiondidit" shows your gullibility.
>> >> > My quote from a SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD shows that there
>> >> > is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of naturalistic
>> >> > causes generating this "SWARM" of proteins and enzymes
>> >> > that constantly monitor and correct the genome.
>> >>
>> >> You seem to have missed the fact that your specialists in the field also
>> >> show that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that naturalistic causes did
>> >> *not* generate the proteins and enzymes.
>> >
>> >And so the playing field is level: no scientific evidence for
>> >naturalistic causes, none against.
>>
>>
>> And again you invoke a false equivalence. The obligation rests on
>> those who make a claim.
>
>As did your erstwhile benefactor Mark Isaak. Just now.

Bald assertions are as easily refuted. Care to actually identify Mark
Isaak's allegedly baseless claim?

>> Steadly claimed above that his cites showed
>> either 1) evidence against biological evolution, and/or 2) evidence
>> for ID. In fact they showed neither.
>
>I'm only concerned with what Steady said above.

It's no surprise that you're concerned with "When it's your ignorance
it is." It's just a polemical troll, which is what you do.

But if you're interested in the actual topic, it's ID.

>Just like you are
>only concerned with certain things you said to Martinez, and resent
>being reminded of other things you said to him.

The above is yet another one of your PeeWeeHermanisms. That's what
you do. Tu quoque back atcha bozo.

>Unlike you, I don't resent you bringing these other points up,
>I'm just not interested in them at the moment.

Unlike you, I don't compulsively inject noise into a thread.

>You really need to attend to the chirping of the crickets
>which Casanova used to talk about [see above for more recent
>phraseogy by him], and not to post TbBA as
>a red herring.

The only crickets here are from you and your bedfellow de jour.

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
>U. of S. Carolina, Columbia -- standard disclaimer--
>http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

Nice of you to link your employer to this thread. One can only hope
it will restrain you from your most egregious behaviors.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 11:55:17 AM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 2/9/16 3:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 5:45:45 PM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > [snip a lot that has nothing to to with my post]

Your snips have landed you from the frying pan into the fire.

> > How do these proteins "know" what the correct
> > nucleotides are after they have been damaged?
>
> That they exist is enough to make my point.

Thanks for helping me re-name an old science-stopper,
formerly "Randy of the Gaps" [Randy C. is long gone]:

Isaak of the Gaps:
"Who cares how or why it evolved? It evolved. End of story."

You should have settled for "Nobody of the Gaps," which you
snipped below, unmarked.

> Structured programming does
> not normally include code which corrects damage to other code.

I'm talking about protein enzymes, not computers.

> >>> We know from uniform and repeated experience that
> >>> intelligence is required to make a computer
> >>> program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
> >>
> >> Well, today's computer programmers know of an alternative, called
> >> genetic algorithms. They work very well for solving many problems which
> >> are too complex for practical structured programming approaches.
> >> Something like robust error handling would be just the thing for them.
> >>
> >> The theory behind those algorithms, which makes them so effective is,
> >> essentially, evolution.
> >
> > ...designed by the human programmers.
>
> Misdirection noted. The algorithms were inspired by evolution and put
> into form by human programmers.

The only misdirection here is yours: "inspired" preceded design and
"put into form" followed it.

> The results were *not* designed by
> human programmers; they were designed by evolutionary processes.

Is there an antonym for "anthropomorphic"? You manage to
careen from the opposite to anthropomorphism in a single
sentence. Quite a feat, even for someone so steeped in
the humanities side of academic culture as yourself.

> If Eddie wants to admit that the process of evolution itself is what
> appears designed, I will not argue with him. Well, not as much.

It is the products of evolution that Eddie claims to appear designed,
so why do you write "process" rather than "products"? Are you
already trying to bias the discussion in your direction?

> > Cars have evolved too, although
> > the humans so far have a lot more *direct* input into their evolution
> > up to now.
>
> Yes. Design as we know it is always an evolutionary process -- designs
> undergo changes, and those changes are selected or discarded according
> to environment.

Have you been steeped all your life in an environment that makes you
say such "inanimate-morphic" things?

>So of course the results of design and evolution have
> some things in common. They also have significant differences. Those
> differences allow us to assert, unequivocally, that the *overall* look
> of life does not look designed.

I agree, but there are individual items that look like they
might have been designed, GIVEN my directed panspermia hypothesis.
This repair mechanism, of whose workings you are evidently
ignorant, sounds like it might possibly be one of them.

> Of course, it is possible to design things specifically so that they do
> not look designed, so the appearance is not conclusive. It is, however,
> highly indicative.
>
> > You seem to have a mental block about the concept of design. You see
> > evolution even where the design is obvious.
>
> The two are not mutually exclusive.

You keep conflating the two, though.

> > Next thing you know, you'll be claiming that the arrangement of
> > words in your posts is the product of evolution.
>
> Well, of course. What you see has always undergone modifications, and
> some of the modifications were discarded in favor of others.

All guided by intelligent design on your part...

...appearances to the contrary. :-)

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

PS My intelligence has evolved ;-)
to produce over 100 peer-reviewed papers in mathematics.

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/11/16 9:30 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 11:55:17 AM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 2/9/16 3:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 5:45:45 PM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> [snip a lot that has nothing to to with my post]
>
> Your snips have landed you from the frying pan into the fire.
>
>>> How do these proteins "know" what the correct
>>> nucleotides are after they have been damaged?
>>
>> That they exist is enough to make my point.
>
> Thanks for helping me re-name an old science-stopper,
> formerly "Randy of the Gaps" [Randy C. is long gone]:

Yes, Randy.

> Isaak of the Gaps:
> "Who cares how or why it evolved? It evolved. End of story."
>
> You should have settled for "Nobody of the Gaps," which you
> snipped below, unmarked.
>
>
>> Structured programming does
>> not normally include code which corrects damage to other code.
>
> I'm talking about protein enzymes, not computers.

Jolly for you. I was talking about computers, since they were the
subject of conversation. You may go off and mutter to yourself some
more now.

>>>>> We know from uniform and repeated experience that
>>>>> intelligence is required to make a computer
>>>>> program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
>>>>
>>>> Well, today's computer programmers know of an alternative, called
>>>> genetic algorithms. They work very well for solving many problems which
>>>> are too complex for practical structured programming approaches.
>>>> Something like robust error handling would be just the thing for them.
>>>>
>>>> The theory behind those algorithms, which makes them so effective is,
>>>> essentially, evolution.
>>>
>>> ...designed by the human programmers.
>>
>> Misdirection noted. The algorithms were inspired by evolution and put
>> into form by human programmers.
>
> The only misdirection here is yours: "inspired" preceded design and
> "put into form" followed it.

Trying to drown meaning in bullshit, I see.

Evolutionary algorithms were inspired by evolution. Evolutionary
algorithms, like evolution, need intelligence to get them started on a
problem, but from that point on, the brains may leave the room, and no
intelligence (beyond random mutation and natural selection) is needed
for them to arrive at solutions to the problem that the best brains are
unable to come up with.

>> The results were *not* designed by
>> human programmers; they were designed by evolutionary processes.
>
> Is there an antonym for "anthropomorphic"? You manage to
> careen from the opposite to anthropomorphism in a single
> sentence. Quite a feat, even for someone so steeped in
> the humanities side of academic culture as yourself.
>
>> If Eddie wants to admit that the process of evolution itself is what
>> appears designed, I will not argue with him. Well, not as much.
>
> It is the products of evolution that Eddie claims to appear designed,
> so why do you write "process" rather than "products"?

Because it is what I meant. I know meaning of text has almost as little
relevance to you as it does to Ray, but to me it matters.

>
>>> Cars have evolved too, although
>>> the humans so far have a lot more *direct* input into their evolution
>>> up to now.
>>
>> Yes. Design as we know it is always an evolutionary process -- designs
>> undergo changes, and those changes are selected or discarded according
>> to environment.
>
> Have you been steeped all your life in an environment that makes you
> say such "inanimate-morphic" things?

No, the insight that design is evolutionary only came to me after
studying evolution and reading a few books about design.

You should try learning sometime. I can recommend Petroski's _To
Engineer is Human_ as a good start.

>> So of course the results of design and evolution have
>> some things in common. They also have significant differences. Those
>> differences allow us to assert, unequivocally, that the *overall* look
>> of life does not look designed.
>
> I agree, but there are individual items that look like they
> might have been designed, GIVEN my directed panspermia hypothesis.
> This repair mechanism, of whose workings you are evidently
> ignorant, sounds like it might possibly be one of them.
>
>> Of course, it is possible to design things specifically so that they do
>> not look designed, so the appearance is not conclusive. It is, however,
>> highly indicative.
>>
>>> You seem to have a mental block about the concept of design. You see
>>> evolution even where the design is obvious.
>>
>> The two are not mutually exclusive.
>
> You keep conflating the two, though.

Hold that thought . . .

>>> Next thing you know, you'll be claiming that the arrangement of
>>> words in your posts is the product of evolution.
>>
>> Well, of course. What you see has always undergone modifications, and
>> some of the modifications were discarded in favor of others.
>
> All guided by intelligent design on your part...

So we see that you yourself admit that conflating design and evolution
is appropriate.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 8:20:14 PM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 2/11/16 9:30 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 11:55:17 AM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> On 2/9/16 3:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 5:45:45 PM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >>> [snip a lot that has nothing to to with my post]
> >
> > Your snips have landed you from the frying pan into the fire.
> >
> >>> How do these proteins "know" what the correct
> >>> nucleotides are after they have been damaged?
> >>
> >> That they exist is enough to make my point.

Your snips have landed you in confusion over what the
argument between you and Eddie was all about.

> > Thanks for helping me re-name an old science-stopper,
> > formerly "Randy of the Gaps" [Randy C. is long gone]:
>
> Yes, Randy.

This beats 99% of jillery's Pee Wee Hermanisms for sheer audacity.


As you probably know, I am intensely interested in how and why
things evolved, in contrast to the naivete and ignorance you
displayed just this week, when you gave what you naively
thought to be a clear-cut case of a prediction of evolutionary theory.
I showed how naive and ignorant that was, and then you snipped what I wrote
and went into an anti-ID tirade against me with no basis in reality.

Your naive idea was that Darwin's hypothesis of African origin was
a prediction of evolutionary theory. Obviously, you were ignorant
of the fact that Eugene DuBois claimed an Asiatic origin,
also on the basis of evolutionary theory. And his view seemed
to prevail for a while after he himself discovered "Java Man," a discovery
with no parallel in Darwin's case. Look up the Wikipedia entry
on Java Man, and be educated on what evolutionary theory can
and cannot do.

> > Isaak of the Gaps:
> > "Who cares how or why it evolved? It evolved. End of story."

I see no attempt by you to argue that you DO care; nor do I see
any sign below, not even in the part I postponed replying to,
for the sake of brevity.

> > You should have settled for "Nobody of the Gaps," which you
> > snipped below, unmarked.
> >
> >
> >> Structured programming does
> >> not normally include code which corrects damage to other code.
> >
> > I'm talking about protein enzymes, not computers.
>
> Jolly for you. I was talking about computers, since they were the
> subject of conversation.

They were the subject of your conversation with yourself, but
your argument with Steady Eddie had to do with evidence that
bore on the question of whether protein enzymes evolved
or were designed.

And, since you cannot find evidence that they were not designed,
you nitpick on some differences between protein enzymes and
computers which show only that programmers have not YET tried to imitate
enzymes in the self-repair of code department.

And even so, you had to hedge with "normally." Are you just talking
about

> You may go off and mutter to yourself some
> more now.

I never started, and it is amusing to see you behaving like
a newcomer to talk.origins in your choice of hackneyed jibes.

Nick Roberts indulged in a few of them when he first came
on the scene here, but I haven't seen him continue after a
few months.

> >>>>> We know from uniform and repeated experience that
> >>>>> intelligence is required to make a computer
> >>>>> program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.
> >>>>
> >>>> Well, today's computer programmers know of an alternative, called
> >>>> genetic algorithms. They work very well for solving many problems which
> >>>> are too complex for practical structured programming approaches.
> >>>> Something like robust error handling would be just the thing for them.

Very interesting, this earlier claim of yours in the light of what
you hedged up there with "normally." Was this a case of Mark 2,
posting on February 10, not caring what Mark 1, posting on February 1,
had written, even though it was still preserved in the post Mark 2
did on the 10th?

Maybe you would do well to mutter to yourself more. :-)

Remainder deleted; how soon I reply to the rest later, depends on
how (and whether) you reply to this post.

Will we get a glimpse of Mark 3, perhaps? :-)

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Wed, 17 Feb 2016 07:55:55 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:


>This beats 99% of jillery's Pee Wee Hermanisms for sheer audacity.

Of course, your PeeWeeHermanisms are always over the top. Tu quoque
back atcha, bozo.

[jillery]

On Wed, 17 Feb 2016 07:55:55 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>As you probably know, I am intensely interested in how and why
>things evolved, in contrast to the naivete and ignorance you
>displayed just this week, when you gave what you naively
>thought to be a clear-cut case of a prediction of evolutionary theory.
>I showed how naive and ignorant that was, and then you snipped what I wrote
>and went into an anti-ID tirade against me with no basis in reality.
>
>Your naive idea was that Darwin's hypothesis of African origin was
>a prediction of evolutionary theory. Obviously, you were ignorant
>of the fact that Eugene DuBois claimed an Asiatic origin,
>also on the basis of evolutionary theory. And his view seemed
>to prevail for a while after he himself discovered "Java Man," a discovery
>with no parallel in Darwin's case. Look up the Wikipedia entry
>on Java Man, and be educated on what evolutionary theory can
>and cannot do.

Of course, it's expected for scientific theories, including Evolution,
to spawn multiple competing hypotheses. Some, or even all, of them
might be proved incorrect. That's the point of hypotheses.

Your example above doesn't support any of your characterizations and
objections about evolutionary theory and Mark Isaak.

[Paul J Gans]

jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 17 Feb 2016 07:55:55 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
><nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:


>>This beats 99% of jillery's Pee Wee Hermanisms for sheer audacity.


>Of course, your PeeWeeHermanisms are always over the top. Tu quoque
>back atcha, bozo.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/magazine/pee-wees-big-comeback.html
for latest developments in this ongoing drama.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[Mark Isaak]

You use a lot of words. But do you have anything to say?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 11:59:55 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Feb 2016 07:55:55 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
> >As you probably know, I am intensely interested in how and why
> >things evolved, in contrast to the naivete and ignorance you
> >displayed just this week, when you gave what you naively
> >thought to be a clear-cut case of a prediction of evolutionary theory.
> >I showed how naive and ignorant that was, and then you snipped what I wrote
> >and went into an anti-ID tirade against me with no basis in reality.
> >
> >Your naive idea was that Darwin's hypothesis of African origin was
> >a prediction of evolutionary theory. Obviously, you were ignorant
> >of the fact that Eugene DuBois claimed an Asiatic origin,
> >also on the basis of evolutionary theory. And his view seemed
> >to prevail for a while after he himself discovered "Java Man," a discovery
> >with no parallel in Darwin's case. Look up the Wikipedia entry
> >on Java Man, and be educated on what evolutionary theory can
> >and cannot do.
>
>
> Of course, it's expected for scientific theories, including Evolution,
> to spawn multiple competing hypotheses. Some, or even all, of them
> might be proved incorrect. That's the point of hypotheses.

That is NOT the point of the numerous claims that such and
such a thing was "predicted by evolutionary theory."

Implicit in all these claims is that evolutionary theory
narrows things down to ONE hypothesis. Otherwise, you could
list every possible hypothesis of what researchers might
uncover and triumphantly proclaim the actual one as the
"prediction of evolutionary theory."

Mankind has been down that path many times. The Delphic Oracle,
for example, was well known to give ambiguous answers to
questions about the future, and when something happened that
was consistent with the "prediction," then the oracle was
credited with having made yet another "successful prediction."

> Your example above doesn't support any of your characterizations and
> objections about evolutionary theory and Mark Isaak.

Since you don't have the guts to spell out what these alleged
objections are, you've just uttered a sub-Delphic statement which
is far more ambiguous than anything the Delphic Oracle came up with.

Here, I'll name one objection: Mark falsely accused me of making
up definitions of things like "prediction" and I sarcastically
countered with the comment that Mark will probably accuse
me of unfairly disallowing "20/20 hindsight" as though that were
part of the definition.

His accusation has been undermined by what I actually said about Darwin's
"successful prediction."

By the way, if you were stupid enough to think that I was predicting
Mark would actually claim that 20/20 hindsight comes under
the standard definition of "prediction," you will be
strengthening the hypothesis that the reason you falsely accuse
me of not recognizing sarcasm is to create the impression that
you are an expert in recognizing sarcasm yourself.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

PS I think most readers are capable of reading between the lines
and seeing just WHY you didn't have the guts to name any of
my objections and characterizations.

[Peter Nyikos]

OK, I was thinking about the hypothesis that the repair enzymes
were designed. The only "better supported" hypothesis is that it arose
via abiogenesis, and subsequent evolution, all without intelligent
intervention.

Yes, I admit that I made a big jump from talking about the whole world
being designed, and so I can understand you not knowing what I was
referring to.

>
> >1. That technologically advanced life is NOT a once-in-a-galaxy
> >occurrence and
> >
> >2. that once life gets to the prokaryote level, it's only about
> >a million in one chance that it will advance to our own level.

I was hasty here too. That "and" should be an "or" and "or less"
should come after "galaxy". Either 1. or 2.
would make the hypothesis that life on earth owes itself to
directed panspermia (DP) unlikely. And without DP, the idea
that the repair mechanism is designed has got to fall back on
supernatural intervention, which I avoid speculating about.

>
> There have been numerous threads devoted to getting you to actually
> document how you calculate that statistic, all in vain.

It's not a cut and dried calculation, but a plausibility argument
that I've gone over many times. You are free to disagree with the
numbers, but I don't think anyone has proposed different ones in
the ten or so years, off and on, that I've talked about DP.

> [...] Read the OP for comprehension. The topic is about ID, and not
> your precious Directed Panspermia.

Yes, but DP is, IMO, the only plausible scientific ID hypothesis for
the protein repair enzymes being designed. Since I think the chances
are rather slim that there are supernatural beings, I stick to science.

> >> >What's more, this particular event just might have been designed
> >> >by a technological civilization of ca. 4 gya.

Granted, it's a long shot even with DP assumed, because DNA comes in
at a very low level in the long drama of abiogenesis. That goes
especially for the speculation that DNA itself was designed,
which I've been discussing with Oo Tiib, but even if not, the
chances are that the repair mechanism also naturally evolved
on the "home planet."

That's why I modestly said "just might." One would either have to
imagine creatures without DNA designing organisms for which DNA
is the foundation for reproduction and physiology, or else assume
that somehow they evolved without those valuable repair proteins.

However, if they DID evolve into a DNA-based organism without their
help, it then becomes a very attractive hypothesis that they
designed those enzymes to benefit THEMSELVES. The next natural
step was to redesign all the living things that they found useful,
including symbiotic bacteria. These and other modified bacteria then
would be the ones sent on the long interstellar journey, because
with the repair enzymes in place, they would be more likely
to survive it. Also, once they got to their destination, they
would be more likely to flourish.

Continued in next reply to this thread, to be done as soon
as I've seen this one post.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 12:35:17 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:37:26 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 1:05:21 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 15:51:13 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

About the origin of the DNA repair mechanism by enzymes, I had
written:

> >> > ...this particular event just might have been designed

> >> >by a technological civilization of ca. 4 gya.

> >> And until there's some evidence that is the case, that possibility
> >> remains nothing more than that.
> >
> >And until there is some evidence that abiogenesis took place ON EARTH,
> >that possibility also remains nothing more than that.
>
> Are you really baselessly denying the evidence for abiogenesis ON
> EARTH?

Are you baselessly claiming that there is something
unique about the earth that makes it BETTER at starting
and evolving life than all but a few hundred planets in
the whole galaxy?

The only argument I've seen for that is the question-begging
slogan of your once-faithful ally Paul Gans, "We are *here*."

>
> >> >> >>>> "Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins
> >> >> >>>> Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred.
> >> >
> >> >The "how" has not been explained by anyone on this thread. I'll have
> >> >more to say about this below.
> >>
> >>
> >> The "how" has been explained by those who are cited.
> >
> >Um...which ones? The DI citation certainly does not do that.

<snip baseless snarky comments; I'm sure lots more will be produced
by jillery next time around>

> <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/88qfQjjSVQg/jG4Pq7qJFQAJ>

That doesn't explain "how," it merely claims that Paul Modrich
explained "how" and gives a link to a press release which also
only credits him with having explained how, and gives yet more links.

Did you chase down THOSE links to see whether they explained
"how"? If you did, would it be too much to ask you provide us
with ONE link where we are honest-to-goodness told
how, instead of passing the buck to yet more links?

[I'm 99% sure the answer is "Yes, it would be too much."
Care to jump out of character and <gasp> prove me wrong here?]

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos

PS Gans seems disinclined to return to being noticeably your ally,
judging from his latest contribution to this thread.

[jillery]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:17:35 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

The following is a restoration of your unattributed and pointless
snip. Can you at least try to control yourself, if only for the
novelty of it?

>>Since you conveniently misread, that's plural "hypotheses", as in more
>>than one. Do you really think that science has identified only one
>>hypothesis in the last thousand years?
>

>OK, I was thinking about the hypothesis that the repair enzymes
>were designed. The only "better supported" hypothesis is that it arose
>via abiogenesis, and subsequent evolution, all without intelligent
>intervention.
>
>Yes, I admit that I made a big jump from talking about the whole world
>being designed, and so I can understand you not knowing what I was
>referring to.
>
>>
>> >1. That technologically advanced life is NOT a once-in-a-galaxy
>> >occurrence and
>> >
>> >2. that once life gets to the prokaryote level, it's only about
>> >a million in one chance that it will advance to our own level.
>
>I was hasty here too. That "and" should be an "or" and "or less"
>should come after "galaxy". Either 1. or 2.
>would make the hypothesis that life on earth owes itself to
>directed panspermia (DP) unlikely. And without DP, the idea
>that the repair mechanism is designed has got to fall back on
>supernatural intervention, which I avoid speculating about.
>
>>
>> There have been numerous threads devoted to getting you to actually
>> document how you calculate that statistic, all in vain.
>
>It's not a cut and dried calculation, but a plausibility argument
>that I've gone over many times. You are free to disagree with the
>numbers, but I don't think anyone has proposed different ones in
>the ten or so years, off and on, that I've talked about DP.

As I have pointed out many times, I don't agree or disagree with your
numbers. I disagree with your claim they show abiogenesis on Earth is
less likely than DP.

>> [...] Read the OP for comprehension. The topic is about ID, and not
>> your precious Directed Panspermia.
>
>Yes, but DP is, IMO, the only plausible scientific ID hypothesis for
>the protein repair enzymes being designed. Since I think the chances
>are rather slim that there are supernatural beings, I stick to science.

I disagree that DP is a plausible scientific hypothesis for the
protein repair enzyme, or for any other biological system, being
designed.

More important, you use DP not as a scientific hypothesis, but as an
cudgel to baselessly attack the real thing. The difference between
you and anti-science fundamentalists is not in your methods but only
in your tools. So I reject your claim that you stick to science.

<snip your repetitive and pretentious DP spam>

[jillery]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 11:45:28 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

I read no such implication in "these claims".

>Otherwise, you could
>list every possible hypothesis of what researchers might
>uncover and triumphantly proclaim the actual one as the
>"prediction of evolutionary theory."

What's your problem with that? Hypotheses should not be dismissed
without evidence.

>Mankind has been down that path many times. The Delphic Oracle,
>for example, was well known to give ambiguous answers to
>questions about the future, and when something happened that
>was consistent with the "prediction," then the oracle was
>credited with having made yet another "successful prediction."

What you describe above has nothing whatever to do with scientific
hypotheses. The Oracle's answers were not testable for the very
reasons you described, which are very similar to presuming Goddidit.

>> Your example above doesn't support any of your characterizations and
>> objections about evolutionary theory and Mark Isaak.
>
>Since you don't have the guts to spell out what these alleged
>objections are,

I refer to the objections you wrote above and to which I included.
Once again, you show that you don't even know what you're talking
about.

>you've just uttered a sub-Delphic statement which
>is far more ambiguous than anything the Delphic Oracle came up with.

Your compulsions are showing again.

>Here, I'll name one objection:

Not relevant. I refer only to your objections I included above.

>PS I think most readers are capable of reading between the lines
>and seeing just WHY you didn't have the guts to name any of
>my objections and characterizations.

Yet another one of your obvious lies. You never learn.

[jillery]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:37:57 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

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

>On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 12:35:17 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:37:26 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> >On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 1:05:21 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 15:51:13 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>About the origin of the DNA repair mechanism by enzymes, I had
>written:
>
>> >> > ...this particular event just might have been designed
>> >> >by a technological civilization of ca. 4 gya.
>
>> >> And until there's some evidence that is the case, that possibility
>> >> remains nothing more than that.
>> >
>> >And until there is some evidence that abiogenesis took place ON EARTH,
>> >that possibility also remains nothing more than that.
>>
>> Are you really baselessly denying the evidence for abiogenesis ON
>> EARTH?
>
>Are you baselessly claiming that there is something
>unique about the earth that makes it BETTER at starting
>and evolving life than all but a few hundred planets in
>the whole galaxy?

Only you would claim I said anything as asinine as the above. The
relevant issue for DP is not whether Earth is more or less likely than
other planets for life to begin on it. I have stated many times my
impression that life almost certainly starts where ever conditions
make it possible, and those conditions are very unlikely to be unique,
or even distinctive, to Earth.

Instead, there are multiple challenges for life on any one planet to
reach any other stellar system, the least of which is the time it take
for local abiogenesis to happen. These have been itemized many times
over the years. Some that are fresh in my mind are the length of time
to develop technologically advanced life, and the lifetime of
technologically advanced species, and the physics and economics of
materially transporting anything from one stellar system to another.

Now answer my question, repeated here for your convenience: Are you

really baselessly denying the evidence for abiogenesis ON EARTH?

>The only argument I've seen for that is the question-begging
>slogan of your once-faithful ally Paul Gans, "We are *here*."

That's another one of your obvious lies. You just can't help
yourself.

>> >> >> >>>> "Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins
>> >> >> >>>> Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred.
>> >> >
>> >> >The "how" has not been explained by anyone on this thread. I'll have
>> >> >more to say about this below.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> The "how" has been explained by those who are cited.
>> >
>> >Um...which ones? The DI citation certainly does not do that.
>
><snip baseless snarky comments; I'm sure lots more will be produced
>by jillery next time around>

So you say while posting baseless snarky comments yourself. Tu quoque
back atcha bozo. You never learn. But thanks for the precedent:

<snip rockhead's baseless snarky comments>

Instead, since your dishonest snip makes it appear that I evaded your
question, here is my answer that you evaded:

***************************************************

To refresh your convenient amnesia:

<n8d309$mj5$1...@dont-email.me>

Oh wait... you don't know how to identify by message-id. Poor baby.
Since this thread is short, I will accommodate your willful stupidity:

<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/88qfQjjSVQg/jG4Pq7qJFQAJ>

Your welcome.

More to the point, you don't say what is it that you think needs to be
explained, exactly. One can only wonder why.

*******************************************************

You can baselessly assert your baseless opinion that the above is
snarky, but that doesn't justify you evading my direct and correct
answer to your question.

And you still haven't said what it is you think needs to be explained.

One can only wonder why.

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, January 27, 2016 at 8:35:59 PM UTC-8, Steady Eddie wrote:
> "Notice that what they found was not simply mechanisms that "repair DNA" as if any order of base pairs would
> do. No; they found systems and mechanisms that worked to maintain the genetic instructions needed to run
> the body (i.e., functional information)."
>
> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/10/chemistry_nobel100231.html

Isn't nature amazing?

None of that infers design.

Evolution does not need a designer. The Universe does not need a designer.
No matter how badly you want the Biblical version of events to be true, they simply aren't. No evidence. Ever. No evidence has ever been found that confirms any biblical account of God and nature.

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 28, 2016 at 1:55:57 PM UTC-8, eridanus wrote:

> El jueves, 28 de enero de 2016, 12:00:59 (UTC), Steady Eddie escribió:
> > On Thursday, 28 January 2016 04:30:59 UTC-7, Ernest Major wrote:
> > > On 28/01/2016 10:15, Steady Eddie wrote:

> > > > On Wednesday, 27 January 2016 21:56:01 UTC-7, Glenn wrote:
> > > >> "Steady Eddie" <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:4e19c0c1-72b5-4648...@googlegroups.com...

> > > >>> "Notice that what they found was not simply mechanisms that "repair DNA" as if any order of base pairs would
> > > >>> do. No; they found systems and mechanisms that worked to maintain the genetic instructions needed to run
> > > >>> the body (i.e., functional information)."
> > > >>>
> > > >>> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/10/chemistry_nobel100231.html
> > > >>>
> > > >>

> > > >> "We listed above several of the hallmarks of artificiality, which we can expect to be exhibited by and electromagnetic emission of intelligent origin. The common denominator of all these characteristics, in fact of all human (and we anticipate, alien) existence, is that they are anti-entropic. Any emission which appears (at least in the short term) to defy entropy is a likely candidate for an intelligently generated artifact."
> > > >> https://books.google.com/books?id=jAk9bTm3Sj4C&pg=PA524&lpg=PA524&dq=SETI+entropic&source=bl&ots=0y5o7Lz-qO&sig=jbWKAX0O9YDXyVXZTszIXG9mkvA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE49G62cvKAhVB2GMKHSigD7oQ6AEIPjAG#v=onepage&q=SETI%20entropic&f=false
> > > >
> > > > "Biologists have long known that DNA wasn't rock solid. Blasts of xrays, for example, could cause
> > > > mutations in cells. Yet most researchers believed that the molecule was inherently stable. After all, cancer
> > > > and other genetic malfunctions are the exception, not the rule.
> > > >
> > > > As a postdoc in the late 1960s, however, Lindahl began to have doubts. Samples of RNA in his experiments
> > > > rapidly degraded when heated. Further experiments showed that even under normal conditions, DNA
> > > > quickly suffered enough damage to make life impossible. A light bulb went on. "Lindahl had the critical
> > > > insight," says biochemist Bruce Alberts of the University of California, San Francisco.
> > > >
> > > > Lindahl began to search for enzymes that might repair this unseen damage."

> > > >
> > > > Explain how naturalistic processes evolved REPAIR ENZYMES.
> > > >
> > >
> > > "Ignorance is not an argument" - Steady Eddie.
> > >

> > > --
> > > alias Ernest Major

> >
> > When it's your ignorance it is.
>

> we cannot say evolution is false or wrong because we cannot explain
> everything. We are of natural ignorants. This can be seen if you
> correlates our past ignorance with the great amount of gods humans
> believed. As we are getting more intelligent we are believing in a
> smaller number of gods. But we are ignorant enough to still believe
> in a single god valid for all humans, with holy stories totally
> different.
> But evolution... we would never be able to explain evolution in all
> its infinite details. We would never be able to explain the universe
> in its totality, not the big bang, not the dark matter, not the dark
> energy, etc. We would never be sure why the dinosaurs become extinct,
> or other animals, big or small.
> eridanus

Evolution is an observable fact. The theory of evolution is what explains how it happens. If we learn more about how it works we revise the theory. At no point do we say that because we can't explain something that it must be the work of a creator.

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 9:55:49 AM UTC-8, eridanus wrote:
> El domingo, 31 de enero de 2016, 16:55:49 (UTC), Otangelo Grasso escribió:
> > If the DNA and RNA and polypeptide repair enzymes were not fully functional PRIOR self replication began, there would be a high mutation rate, and the cell would die, and we would not be here. THAT IS VERY STRONG evidence of design.
> >
> > Furthermore, the repair enzymes require FE-S clusters, which are ultracomplex to be synthesized, requiring over 30 proteins, and in eukaryotic cells, MITOCHONDRIA.
>
> we probably, I am not expert on this matter, do not know many errors occur and
> how many of those errors are corrected. I am guessing that the most we know is that exist some mechanism that is probably correcting errors. What ratio of
> errors are those, we cannot know, but it implies we are able to keep a precise
> account of the mutations that occur. I suspect, I am not an expert in these
> questions, that a person that is born blind must be, at least in some cases,
> because some error occurred. Thus your famous machine to correct errors did
> not correct this one, and a person was born blind. The same can be said of
> all the rest of errors we know something of, like being born deaf, with Dawn
> syndrome, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida, and others I do not recall in this
> moment. Then if it exist a machine to correct genetic errors, it is not a
> prove of the supreme intelligence of the divine creator. Neither is a prove
> of divine intelligence, the people that is born with errors, as I mentioned before. Neither is a prove in the case of people born with a brother sharing
> some internal organs like a liver, or other vital parts. Recently in India
> a boy of 11 years was operated and it was extracted from the interior of his
> body a brother that weighted some 7 kilos. The children insulted him saying
> he was pregnant. Then, if the machine to correct genetic error is so wonderful as you are saying, this errors of having a brother of 7 kilos inside your
> body this is also the prove of an intelligent design.
> I am ready to accept the theory of an intelligent design, but on condition
> of accepting that intelligent design is not very intelligent after all.
>
> On the other hand, people in favor of evolution accepts the genetic machine
> is not perfect and present us with some frequency some samples of his errors.
> If you go to school for deaf people you can see a lot of samples.
> If you go to school for people with mental retardation, you see as well a
> wide sample of errors committed by the wonderful machine that correct the
> genetic errors. A school for blind people presents us also a lot of samples
> of genetic errors. etc. etc.
> All this are strong proves of an intelligent designer. Watching those
> samples nobody can reject the intelligence of the divine designer.
>
> What amazes me, about people like you, is how slow you are to detect a
> defective argument, that is working against your thesis. The only comment
> I can make on this, is that the intelligent designer made the brain of
> believers rather defective on purpose. He made those errors to piss off
> believers and made them look a little retarded. And this reminds me of
> George W Bush, that was born again Christian, as he said, he was also
> rewarded with an outstanding (little) intelligence as we all could had
> verified watching a number of videos in which he was speaking. He was
> quite amazing. It proves as well the blessing of the divine creator
> over US conservative politicians.
>
> Eridanus

What kind of intelligent designer puts a sewage line next to a playground?

[jillery]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 17:12:33 -0800 (PST), youngbl...@gmail.com
wrote:

>What kind of intelligent designer puts a sewage line next to a playground?

A designer with nonhuman concepts of design.

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

We can say it is observable and that it is real. We can not explain every part of how it works but we know that it does. Any person saying otherwise is either not aware of the facts or a fool.

We are of natural ignorants. This can be seen if you
> correlates our past ignorance with the great amount of gods humans
> believed. As we are getting more intelligent we are believing in a
> smaller number of gods. But we are ignorant enough to still believe
> in a single god valid for all humans, with holy stories totally
> different.

That's because they are made up by the people of the area where those gods are worshiped.

> But evolution... we would never be able to explain evolution in all
> its infinite details. We would never be able to explain the universe
> in its totality, not the big bang, not the dark matter, not the dark
> energy, etc. We would never be sure why the dinosaurs become extinct,
> or other animals, big or small.
> eridanus

They are pretty sure that dinosaurs were killed off as the result of a asteroid that hit in Mexico. http://paleobiology.si.edu/dinosaurs/info/everything/why_2.html

Effects of the Asteroid Impact
The devastation caused by such an event is difficult to imagine. The asteroid would have hit with the force of 100,000 billion tons of TNT. This would have generated an earthquake one thousand times greater than the largest ever recorded, with winds of over 400 kph. A massive fireball would have boiled nearby seas, destroying everything for thousands of kilometers. Forests throughout most of North America and some of South America would have been flattened by the shock wave. Evidence of a giant tsunami has been found around the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, as well as in Spain and Brazil. It may have had an effect as far away as New Zealand. Map showing asteroid impact in Gulf of Mexico
Despite the enormity of the destruction from the initial impact, the dinosaurs and their contemporaries might have survived and eventually recovered, but the subsequent long-term effects of the blast were even more deadly. Ninety thousand cubic kilometers of debris would have been blasted into the atmosphere, some reaching into space only to re-enter at high speeds. This could have heated the atmosphere sufficiently to ignite global forest fires. While the heavier pieces of ejecta settled back down on Earth, fine dust particles would have remained in the atmosphere and significantly blocked sunlight, causing an effect called an "impact winter". There is much debate about the duration and severity of the impact winter following the K/T impact, but the darkness and cold temperatures might have reduced photosynthesis and collapsed food chains globally.

The amount of carbon and sulfur contained in the rock at the impact site would have aggravated these devastating effects. As much as 100 billion tons of sulfur and 10 trillion tons of carbon would have been vaporized by the impact and blown into the atmosphere. The resulting sulfate aerosols would have stayed in the atmosphere for several years; the resulting carbon dioxide would have stayed airborne for several hundred years. Initially the sulfate aerosols would have contributed to global cooling by blocking out the sun, before precipitating as acid rain. After the dust and sulfates settled out and ended the cooling, global warming would have begun. The carbon dioxide levels, being two to three times normal, would have caused extreme greenhouse conditions, raising global temperatures by as much as 10°C. Although some life forms may have survived the years of darkness and freezing temperatures, many surely died out in the subsequent centuries of heat.

There are other theories but the above is the one most scientists think is the explanation.

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

On Friday, January 29, 2016 at 9:25:52 PM UTC-8, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Friday, 29 January 2016 11:05:55 UTC-7, David Canzi wrote:
> > On Thu, 28 Jan 2016 03:58:58 -0800 (PST),
> > Steady Eddie <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > >On Thursday, 28 January 2016 04:30:59 UTC-7, Ernest Major wrote:
> > >> On 28/01/2016 10:15, Steady Eddie wrote:
> > >> > Explain how naturalistic processes evolved REPAIR ENZYMES.
> > >>
> > >> "Ignorance is not an argument" - Steady Eddie.
> > >

> > >When it's your ignorance it is.
> >

> > Nice demo of special pleading.
> >
> > --
> > David Canzi | When something is unexplained, it is not a philosphical
> > | emergency requiring the immediate adoption of some
> > | desperate hypothesis.
>

> "Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins

> Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped these fundamental processes at the molecular level."

>
> Do you seriously think this "swarm of proteins" monitoring the genes just came about by evolution?

> I don't think so.
> The system was evidently designed.

It's not about what you think, it's about what you can prove. ID has no evidence whatsoever that is testable. No scientific data anywhere to even hint at it. It is like many other things that people want to believe, simply not true. Or to be more scientifically accurate, there is no evidence to support the idea of ID. Should some become available we will all re-evaluate.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that evidence.

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 8:00:47 AM UTC-8, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Sunday, 31 January 2016 18:25:49 UTC-7, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> > On Saturday, 30 January 2016 05:25:52 UTC, Steady Eddie wrote:
> > > On Thursday, 28 January 2016 08:40:59 UTC-7, Robert Carnegie wrote:

> > > > On Thursday, 28 January 2016 04:35:59 UTC, Steady Eddie wrote:
> > > > > "Notice that what they found was not simply mechanisms that "repair DNA" as if any order of base pairs would
> > > > > do. No; they found systems and mechanisms that worked to maintain the genetic instructions needed to run
> > > > > the body (i.e., functional information)."
> > > > >
> > > > > http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/10/chemistry_nobel100231.html
> > > >

> > > > www.evolutionnews.org tells lies. I mean in general.
> > > >
> > > > How would the "systems and mechanisms" be able to tell the
> > > > difference between genetic "functional information" and
> > > > other DNA - other than by containing their own copy of
> > > > the correct "functional information", to compare.
> > > > Which clearly isn't there.
> > >
> > > You mean other than being intelligently designed to do so?
> >
> > Design isn't enough. To maintain the correct DNA perfectly
> > (which deosn't happen anyway, e.g. cancer), little DNA repair
> > angels that you think we're talking about would have to have
> > another, more accurate copy of the entire DNA to compare.
> > And of course that isn't there. If it was, it would be
> > enormous, relatively.
> >
> > What happens in fact is clearly heuristic, approximate,
> > and imperfect.
>
> And evidently designed.

And your evidence for this is what exactly?

You just can't make a claim without any and I mean ANY scientific data. There is none for ID. You can choose to believe in a biblical fable or accept the fact that your fable is not true. It is the obvious product of Bronze Age people who had no idea how things worked, so they imagined a designer. Simple as that. The evidence of the fact that all of the bible stories that involve anything that might have to do with science or nature reflect the state of knowledge of the time.

My feeling is that if there was really a god that answered prayers, there would be at least one person who regrew a limb after it had been amputated. I guarantee that is a popular thing that gets prayed for. There isn't.

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 12:00:47 PM UTC-8, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Monday, 1 February 2016 10:30:46 UTC-7, Robert Carnegie wrote:

> > No: that's excluded by it being heuristic, approximate, and
> > imperfect.
> >
> > It's messy. And messy isn't designed.
>
> My house can get very messy.
> It doesn't mean it wasn't designed.
> And it doesn't mean it was designed and built messily.

No it means you are a slob. Your thinking is similarly messy. You cling to a notion that is based on a fable. If you want to claim ID, then provide evidence.

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 12:20:48 PM UTC-8, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Monday, 1 February 2016 11:05:45 UTC-7, Bob Casanova wrote:
> > On Sat, 30 Jan 2016 11:20:18 -0700, the following appeared
> > in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:
> >
> > >On Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:24:10 -0800 (PST), the following
> > >appeared in talk.origins, posted by Steady Eddie
> > ><1914o...@gmail.com>:
> > >

> > >>On Friday, 29 January 2016 11:05:55 UTC-7, David Canzi wrote:
> > >>> On Thu, 28 Jan 2016 03:58:58 -0800 (PST),
> > >>> Steady Eddie <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>> >On Thursday, 28 January 2016 04:30:59 UTC-7, Ernest Major wrote:
> > >>> >> On 28/01/2016 10:15, Steady Eddie wrote:
> > >>> >> > Explain how naturalistic processes evolved REPAIR ENZYMES.
> > >>> >>
> > >>> >> "Ignorance is not an argument" - Steady Eddie.
> > >>> >
> > >>> >When it's your ignorance it is.
> > >>>
> > >>> Nice demo of special pleading.
> > >>>
> > >>> --
> > >>> David Canzi | When something is unexplained, it is not a philosphical
> > >>> | emergency requiring the immediate adoption of some
> > >>> | desperate hypothesis.
> > >>
> > >>"Your DNA is monitored by a swarm of proteins
> > >>Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped these fundamental processes at the molecular level."
> > >>
> > >>Do you seriously think this "swarm of proteins" monitoring the genes just came about by evolution?
> > >

> > >Of course; that's how selection works, as has been noted
> > >many times.
> > >

> > >>I don't think so.
> > >

> > >Your privilege.

> > >
> > >>The system was evidently designed.
> > >

> > >If it was "evidently designed" you should have no problem
> > >posting either the evidence or an irrefutable logic chain
> > >which admits of no other possibility; please do so.
> > >
> > >Note that, as the quoted statement above (by you) says, "I
> > >can't think how else it could have happened" (IOW,
> > >ignorance) is neither evidence nor such an irrefutable logic
> > >chain, although it may be correct as a statement in itself.
> >
> > [Crickets...]
> >
> > As usual when challenged and/or refuted.
> > --
> >
> > Bob C.
> >
> > "The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
> > the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
> > 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"
> >
> > - Isaac Asimov

>
> Your childish belief that "evolutiondidit" shows your gullibility.
> My quote from a SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD shows that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of naturalistic
> causes generating this "SWARM" of proteins and enzymes that constantly monitor and correct the genome.
>

No it shows that that one person thinks so. His idea will have to be tested over time. All that has been shown is the exact mechanism is not yet known.
There is nothing gullible about evolution, it is a simple observable fact.
ID on the other hand has no evidence. Get over it. Think about what faith has given the world in terms of scientific discovery, which I think you will agree has made life better. Diseases have been literally wiped out. Devices have been made that can do what a computer that used to need an entire room and its own AC unit to keep from overheating, have been replaced by things you put in your pocket and make phone calls with to boot. Faith has given us guys that fly into buildings.

> As anybody who has tried structured computer programming knows, the error-handling and self-monitoring
> functions (debugging) are often the most time-consuming and difficult to develop.
> And, the most intelligence-intensive part of software development.
>

> We know from uniform and repeated experience that intelligence is required to make a computer
> program "robust", i.e. able to handle errors without crashing.

> We see this robustness in the code written in DNA. This error-checking and correction process is so
> complex that specialists in the field don't understand it. This is evidence that a higher-than-human
> intelligence was required to program these features into the DNA software.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 6:59:51 PM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:37:57 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 12:35:17 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:37:26 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 1:05:21 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> >> On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 15:51:13 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> >> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >
> >About the origin of the DNA repair mechanism by enzymes, I had
> >written:
> >
> >> >> > ...this particular event just might have been designed
> >> >> >by a technological civilization of ca. 4 gya.
> >
> >> >> And until there's some evidence that is the case, that possibility
> >> >> remains nothing more than that.
> >> >
> >> >And until there is some evidence that abiogenesis took place ON EARTH,
> >> >that possibility also remains nothing more than that.
> >>
> >> Are you really baselessly denying the evidence for abiogenesis ON
> >> EARTH?
> >
> >Are you baselessly claiming that there is something
> >unique about the earth that makes it BETTER at starting
> >and evolving life than all but a few hundred planets in
> >the whole galaxy?
>
>
> Only you would claim I said anything as asinine as the above.

Since I made no such claim, you were indulging in the same
misleading noise that you have spewed again, just today IIRC,
against John Harshman on the "Hiatus" thread.

[Yeah, you didn't make the stupid mistake of confusing
my question with a claim, but that leaves you with having
made a bunch of irrelevant self-serving noise. That
is the sort of thing you love to do, and to keep projecting onto me.]

I ignored the Tweedledum-Tweedledee "battle" between you and
Harshman on that "Hiatus" thread, and instead gave a rousing
"Welcome back, Riichard!" to Norman instead, and proceeded to
let him know indirectly that I'd make it very easy for him to
make up for lost time wrt scientific discussion.

> The relevant issue for DP is not whether Earth is more or less likely than
> other planets for life to begin on it.

It's a subsidiary issue. And with this answer to my question,
you've taken away one of the possible ways one could argue for
abiogenesis having taken place ON EARTH.

However, you did give another possible way below, by telling us
your opinion on something hasn't changed:

> I have stated many times my
> impression that life almost certainly starts where ever conditions
> make it possible, and those conditions are very unlikely to be unique,
> or even distinctive, to Earth.

Well, we happen to disagree on that. Part of the reasoning behind
my hypothesis of DP as being more likely than earthly abiognenesis
involves my belief that abiogenesis that produces something
as sophisticated as a bacterium is a great rarity.

Specifically, a rarity in the "once in a galaxy' ballpark.

But the many "Rare Earth" hypotheses don't stop with prokaryotes,
because they involve the thesis that the ca. 3.5 billion years
evolution beyond prokaryotes is not something that is common;
in fact, some Rare Earth proponents even think our intelligent
species is unique in all the universe.

> Instead, there are multiple challenges for life on any one planet to
> reach any other stellar system, the least of which is the time it take
> for local abiogenesis to happen.

Most of those would be taken care of by the hypothesized panspermists,
about on our own level but with technology advanced to a level which
we can only expect to attain in about a century from now, given
enough funding. [The level of our military expenditures would be
many times more than enough; OTOH with the niggardly budget NASA has to
make do with, it could take the better part of a millennium.]

> These have been itemized many times over the years.

Especially by me, n various parts of my very lengthy drafts for
a FAQ. I expect to submit it to the Talk.Origins Archive some
time this autumn.

> Some that are fresh in my mind are the length of time
> to develop technologically advanced life,

On a planet with much shallower seas, the equivalent of the
Cambrian explosion could have come within a billion years
of the appearance of bacteria level organisms. [Keywords:
banded iron formations. I've been through this one many times.]

> and the lifetime of
> technologically advanced species,

Purely conjectural, but with the threat of a world war including
Mutual Assured Destruction having receded, I think the lifetime
of our species has a good chance of being in the millions of years.

> and the physics and economics of
> materially transporting anything from one stellar system to another.

DP only hypothesizes the transport of hardy microorganisms. As
to the physics and economics of the matter, that has also been
dealt with extensively in the latest draft for the FAQ.

> Now answer my question, repeated here for your convenience: Are you
> really baselessly denying the evidence for abiogenesis ON EARTH?

The basis has been presented above for why I consider a DP more
likely than abiogenesis ON EARTH. For the rest, google my last
thread on Directed Panspermia.

I trust that indirectly answers your loaded question.

>
> >The only argument I've seen for that is the question-begging
> >slogan of your once-faithful ally Paul Gans, "We are *here*."
>
>
> That's another one of your obvious lies. You just can't help
> yourself.

This is another reprehensible practice of yours: you call something
an "obvious lie" without even trying to explain why it is
a lie, let alone whether it is obvious.

Like Ray Martinez, you seem to think that just labeling
something a lie is "documenting a lie."

Correction: I'm not sure Martinez ever went so far as
to *explicitly* claim he had "documented" lies.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of S. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS The rest of your post exemplified your confused attitude
about what it is that makes one kind of snip OK and another
kind of snip reprehensible. If you think your attitude is NOT
confused, kindly explain why you think so, and I'll address
the rest of your post if you do a good job of it.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 6:59:51 PM UTC-5, jillery wrote:

> On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:37:57 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 12:35:17 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:37:26 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

I've snipped lots of text here that I discussed in a post on
Monday, to which Jillery has not yet replied:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/88qfQjjSVQg/3hgXZRZWHQAJ
Message-ID: <86a95feb-42bc-45a2...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Chemistry Nobel Prize Based on Design Inference

> >> >> >> >>>> Our DNA remains astonishingly intact, year after year, due to a host of molecular repair mechanisms: a swarm of proteins that monitor the genes. They continually proof-read the genome and repair any damage that has occurred.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >The "how" has not been explained by anyone on this thread. I'll have
> >> >> >more to say about this below.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> The "how" has been explained by those who are cited.
> >> >
> >> >Um...which ones? The DI citation certainly does not do that.
> >
> ><snip baseless snarky comments; I'm sure lots more will be produced
> >by jillery next time around>

[restoration]

> > > <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/88qfQjjSVQg/jG4Pq7qJFQAJ>

[end of restoration]

> So you say while posting baseless snarky comments yourself. Tu quoque
> back atcha bozo. You never learn. But thanks for the precedent:

> <snip rockhead's baseless snarky comments>

You snipped the url I've restored above, which FOLLOWED
my snip, so you could lie below that I had evaded what you
had written. Here it is, at the beginning of the allegedly
"baseless" comments that you snipped:

______________repost_____________________________

> <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/88qfQjjSVQg/jG4Pq7qJFQAJ>

That doesn't explain "how," it merely claims that Paul Modrich
explained "how" and gives a link to a press release which also
only credits him with having explained how, and gives yet more links.

Did you chase down THOSE links to see whether they explained
"how"? If you did, would it be too much to ask you provide us
with ONE link where we are honest-to-goodness told
how, instead of passing the buck to yet more links?

[I'm 99% sure the answer is "Yes, it would be too much."
Care to jump out of character and <gasp> prove me wrong here?]

==================== end of repost ============================

Only the last two lines would be regarded by most readers
as either "baseless snarky," in contrast to everything
you reposted below besides the url and the message-id.

> Instead, since your dishonest snip makes it appear that I evaded your
> question,

There was nothing dishonest about my snip, and no evasion.
I LEFT IN THE URL on which your snarky comment was based,
and you are trying to make readers think I snipped it:

> here is my answer that you evaded:
>
> ***************************************************
> To refresh your convenient amnesia:
>
> <n8d309$mj5$1...@dont-email.me>
>
> Oh wait... you don't know how to identify by message-id. Poor baby.
> Since this thread is short, I will accommodate your willful stupidity:
>
> <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/88qfQjjSVQg/jG4Pq7qJFQAJ>
>
> Your welcome.
>
> More to the point, you don't say what is it that you think needs to be
> explained, exactly. One can only wonder why.
> *******************************************************
>
> You can baselessly assert your baseless opinion that the above is
> snarky, but that doesn't justify you evading my direct and correct
> answer to your question.

How pathologically dishonest CAN you get, "jillery"?

The games you play in and around snips are becoming a gold mine
for the thread,

Dirty Debating Tactics 2: Snip-n-deceive

Where I have documented a particularly outrageous
snip-n-deceive by you. Ironically, you have proudly reposted,
this time around, part of the "deceive" in the form of

More to the point, you don't say what is it that you think needs
to be explained, exactly. One can only wonder why.

>

> And you still haven't said what it is you think needs to be explained.
> One can only wonder why.

In that reply to you, I documented that I DID make a start on
that, but you did an unmarked snip so you could keep on
with your deceit, like you did in the next to last sentence of
yours above.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of S. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS This reply to you will be reposted on that thread I began
today. Piecemeal, because your performance is so cunningly twisted
and so rich with deceit and hypocrisy, that it will take
all my effort to make its true nature intelligible.

[jillery]

On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 10:54:37 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

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

>On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 6:59:51 PM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:37:57 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> >On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 12:35:17 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:37:26 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>I've snipped lots of text here that I discussed in a post on
>Monday, to which Jillery has not yet replied:

You have some nerve complaining about this here and now, when you have
in the past deliberately delayed replying to me for weeks. It was 4
days between my post and yours. You can wait at least that long. The
world does not revolve around you.

>> ><snip baseless snarky comments; I'm sure lots more will be produced
>> >by jillery next time around>

Wrong again. Thanks for the precedent.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 2:49:31 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 10:54:37 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 6:59:51 PM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:37:57 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 12:35:17 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> >> On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:37:26 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> >> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >
> >I've snipped lots of text here that I discussed in a post on
> >Monday, to which Jillery has not yet replied:
>
>
> You have some nerve complaining about this

As you do when it suits you, you construe pure statements of
fact with complaints.

If you had not snipped so much at the end, you could
even have surmised that I was GLAD that you hadn't replied
yet. And of course, you aren't replying to the substantive
comments I made.

I've snipped nothing from your post, which features GIGO
along with a dirty debating tactic in which you seem to
specialize:

The One Shade of Gray Meltdown: in the most general
terms, this consists of seizing upon one or a few
common features in order to portray
disparate things as though they were the same.

In this case, "snip" is the common feature, with
no regard as to whether the snips were harmless
or designed to evade dealing with reality. In this case,
it is the damning evidence in the post to which you
are replying, showing that you are an unscrupulous scoundrel.

I'd call you a dedicated evildoer, except that there is
precious little indication that you know the difference
between good and evil.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 17:04:16 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

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

>On Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 2:49:31 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 10:54:37 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> >On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 6:59:51 PM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:37:57 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 12:35:17 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> >> >> On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:37:26 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> >> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >I've snipped lots of text here that I discussed in a post on
>> >Monday, to which Jillery has not yet replied:
>>
>>
>> You have some nerve complaining about this
>
>As you do when it suits you, you construe pure statements of
>fact with complaints.

There are many facts you don't mention. That you mention that
particular one puts the lie to your statement above.

>I've snipped nothing from your post, which features GIGO

Your entire series of OT rants are nothing but GIGO.

>along with a dirty debating tactic in which you seem to
>specialize:

Tu quoque back atcha, bozo.

>The One Shade of Gray Meltdown: in the most general
>terms, this consists of seizing upon one or a few
>common features in order to portray
>disparate things as though they were the same.

Actually, that's when you blame others for doing what you do, and then
blaming them again when they point out that you do the things you
blame others for doing. HTH but I doubt it.


<snip rockhead's self-promoting spam>

>> here and now, when you have
>> in the past deliberately delayed replying to me for weeks. It was 4
>> days between my post and yours. You can wait at least that long. The
>> world does not revolve around you.
>>
>>
>> >> ><snip baseless snarky comments; I'm sure lots more will be produced
>> >> >by jillery next time around>
>>
>>
>> Wrong again. Thanks for the precedent.

You never learn.

[John Stockwell]

On Thursday, January 28, 2016 at 2:10:57 PM UTC-7, Glenn wrote:
> "John Stockwell" <john.1...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:bd1baf16-4c27-487b...@googlegroups.com...

> > On Wednesday, January 27, 2016 at 9:56:01 PM UTC-7, Glenn wrote:
> >> "Steady Eddie" <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:4e19c0c1-72b5-4648...@googlegroups.com...

> >> > "Notice that what they found was not simply mechanisms that "repair DNA" as if any order of base pairs would
> >> > do. No; they found systems and mechanisms that worked to maintain the genetic instructions needed to run
> >> > the body (i.e., functional information)."
> >> >
> >> > http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/10/chemistry_nobel100231.html
> >> >
> >>

> >> "We listed above several of the hallmarks of artificiality, which we can expect to be exhibited by and electromagnetic emission of intelligent origin. The common denominator of all these characteristics, in fact of all human (and we anticipate, alien) existence, is that they are anti-entropic. Any emission which appears (at least in the short term) to defy entropy is a likely candidate for an intelligently generated artifact."
> >> https://books.google.com/books?id=jAk9bTm3Sj4C&pg=PA524&lpg=PA524&dq=SETI+entropic&source=bl&ots=0y5o7Lz-qO&sig=jbWKAX0O9YDXyVXZTszIXG9mkvA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE49G62cvKAhVB2GMKHSigD7oQ6AEIPjAG#v=onepage&q=SETI%20entropic&f=false
> >

> > ...using human manufactured signals as a model.... So, no "design inference" there either Glenn. No matter what cherries you pick or how many times you kick the dead dog of design, it won't move.
> >
> The "model" is our knowledge of nature, John. I don't know what you identify in my words as the "dead dog of design", but your argument concerning SETI identifying artificiality is simply wrong. Biased to the point of blindness, I would say. Argue with what the "cherry pick" actually says.

Again ID proponents simply cannot claim SETI as their own. The claim
by ID proponents (or ID perps as RO likes to say) is that there is some
general signature of designedness that, when identified, once and forever labels that item as "designed'.

SETI's algorithms are based on the specific case of a particular class of
radio signals. Nothing general about that.

Indeed, all of the examples in Dembski's book are already a priori manufactured
items, and what was being determined was the manufacturing process and
not whether or not the items were manufactured. Dembski is his own best
example of the Alabama sharp shooter who shoots first, and draws the targets around the bullet holes later.

-John

[Bill]

What's especially interesting is that the designedness of something
depends on what one expects to find. It's a case of confirmation bias. If
one believes that there is no design then of course he'll never see it
whereas one who believes that things in nature are designed will always
see it. The bias determines how phenomena is understood, making evidence
superfluous.

Bill

[Robert Camp]

As a general axiom, this is nonsense. It's not true at all. Design is a
concrete character that can be identified and established empirically.

As a observation that there are certain situations in which confirmation
bias overwhelms critical analysis, it is sometimes true, but also
trivially obvious.

> It's a case of confirmation bias. If
> one believes that there is no design then of course he'll never see it
> whereas one who believes that things in nature are designed will always
> see it. The bias determines how phenomena is understood, making evidence
> superfluous.

Your use of words like "never" and "always" render the above comments
laughably silly.

[Glenn]

"Bill" <fre...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:nb7dvm$r09$4...@dont-email.me...

It is useless to discuss anything with one who responds to SETI's claims as "no design inference there".

[Glenn]

"Robert Camp" <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:nb7kpj$4ae$1...@dont-email.me...

Oh what a picture.

[John Stockwell]

There are no design inferences anywhere.

Suppose we were talking about pieces of broken rock. We know a priori that
ancient peoples made tools by breaking rocks.

An object of unknown origin which does not fit any of the known methods of
that were used to make tools is found. The hypothesis is that this may
have been a tool.

To test the hypothesis a collection of rocks is assembled, some that have
had breakage as would be found in nature. Some are broken by specific methods that would be accessible to ancient peoples---known manufacturing processes---.

A criterion is established from the experimental results, and is applied
to the rock of unknown origin. The unknown rock is either determined to fit
one of the
manufactured examples or one of the rocks broken by natural processes.

Replace "rocks" with radio signals and you have SETI. What you don't have
is Dembski's "complex specified information" "explanatory filter" or any
of his other constructs.

-John

[Glenn]

"John Stockwell" <john.1...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:b8157b5a-e2a9-4525...@googlegroups.com...

Amazing.

[Mark Isaak]

On 3/2/16 11:12 AM, Bill wrote:

>> [...]

> What's especially interesting is that the designedness of something
> depends on what one expects to find. It's a case of confirmation bias. If
> one believes that there is no design then of course he'll never see it
> whereas one who believes that things in nature are designed will always
> see it. The bias determines how phenomena is understood, making evidence
> superfluous.

"Designedness" depends on one thing and one thing only -- who or what
created the pattern. If you want to infer design, you *must* find the
designer. Sometimes you can do that by going to the address printed on
the owner's manual. More often, you do that by inferring from any of
various aspects of the object. E.g., this painting has a pattern of
brush strokes characteristic to Monet, so the painter was Monet (or a
forger who knew Monet's technique well enough to copy it). In the most
general case, the inference is: technology can produce something like
this, while no known natural process can, so the best guess is technology.

As far as bias goes, you need to check the beam in your own eye, which
is large enough to pass all the way through your head.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good
intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack
understanding." - Albert Camus, _The Plague_

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 6:04:11 PM UTC-5, Glenn wrote:
> "Robert Camp" <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:nb7kpj$4ae$1...@dont-email.me...
> > On 3/2/16 11:12 AM, Bill wrote:
> >> On Wed, 02 Mar 2016 09:45:38 -0800, John Stockwell wrote:

> >>> Again ID proponents simply cannot claim SETI as their own. The claim by
> >>> ID proponents (or ID perps as RO likes to say) is that there is some
> >>> general signature of designedness that, when identified, once and
> >>> forever labels that item as "designed'.

What a grotesque caricature of what Behe has written!

Dembski I'm not sure of, because I've read very little by him.
Do you know where he stands wrt Stockwell's sweeping
generality of "once and for all," Glenn?

> >>> SETI's algorithms are based on the specific case of a particular class
> >>> of radio signals. Nothing general about that.
> >>>
> >>> Indeed, all of the examples in Dembski's book are already a priori
> >>> manufactured items, and what was being determined was the manufacturing
> >>> process and not whether or not the items were manufactured. Dembski is
> >>> his own best example of the Alabama sharp shooter who shoots first, and
> >>> draws the targets around the bullet holes later.
> >>>
> >>> -John
> >>
> >> What's especially interesting is that the designedness of something
> >> depends on what one expects to find.
> >
> > As a general axiom, this is nonsense. It's not true at all. Design is a
> > concrete character that can be identified and established empirically.
> >
> > As a observation that there are certain situations in which confirmation
> > bias overwhelms critical analysis, it is sometimes true, but also
> > trivially obvious.
> >
> >> It's a case of confirmation bias. If
> >> one believes that there is no design then of course he'll never see it
> >> whereas one who believes that things in nature are designed will always
> >> see it. The bias determines how phenomena is understood, making evidence
> >> superfluous.
> >
> > Your use of words like "never" and "always" render the above comments
> > laughably silly.
> >
> Oh what a picture.

Yeah, Robert Camp turned a blind eye to Stockwell's laughably silly
caricature of how Behe operates.

And Camp himself is not above slinging laughably silly generalities.
Here is an exchange between him and me that is so hot off the
wires, it hasn't even posted yet:

_________________ excerpt with Camp going first_______________
> When someone says they don't understand you, or they
> don't think you have a sense of humor, or suggests you are being
> excessively suspicious - or even when someone expresses a modicum of
> sympathy - you invariably accuse them of having ulterior motives, or
> just making it all up.

Where do you get such sweeping generalizations as as "someone" (implying
"each and everyone") and "invariably"? Unless you spent
all your free time following my posts, you couldn't begin
to support such a statement -- but then, you would also see
how false it is in each and every detail.

I defy you to find even ONE person besides Erik and John Harshman
to whom I've said nasty things as a result of them claiming to
have trouble with understanding something I say.

+++++++++++++++++++++ end of excerpt

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

Like a traffic cop, there's never a ranting rockhead around when he
might actually be useful.

[jillery]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2016 18:41:58 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 6:04:11 PM UTC-5, Glenn wrote:
>> "Robert Camp" <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:nb7kpj$4ae$1...@dont-email.me...
>> > On 3/2/16 11:12 AM, Bill wrote:
>> >> On Wed, 02 Mar 2016 09:45:38 -0800, John Stockwell wrote:
>
>> >>> Again ID proponents simply cannot claim SETI as their own. The claim by
>> >>> ID proponents (or ID perps as RO likes to say) is that there is some
>> >>> general signature of designedness that, when identified, once and
>> >>> forever labels that item as "designed'.
>
>What a grotesque caricature of what Behe has written!

Literally nobody in this thread, or even in this topic, even mentioned
Behe, nevermind about what he wrote. FYI, Behe isn't the only ID
proponent.

>Dembski I'm not sure of, because I've read very little by him.
>Do you know where he stands wrt Stockwell's sweeping
>generality of "once and for all," Glenn?

Your comments have even less to do with what John Stockwell said than
Glenn's comments had to do with what Steadly said.

Do yourself a favor, and at least try to post comments relevant to the
thread, if only for the novelty of it.

>And Camp himself is not above slinging laughably silly generalities.
>Here is an exchange between him and me that is so hot off the
>wires, it hasn't even posted yet:

...and so not relevant to this thread. Get over yourself.