T Pagano wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:29:30 -0800, John Harshman
> <
jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>> T Pagano wrote:
>>> On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:08:46 -0800 (PST), Ray Martinez
>>> <
pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Feb 14, 4:35 am, Ron O <
rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>> On Feb 13, 9:25 pm, T Pagano <
not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>
> snip
>
>
>>> I have over 1800 posts available at the talk.origins google archive
>>> and Ray couldn't produce one them which even implies that I accept
>>> so-called macro evolution.
>> Actually, you do accept macroevolution, to a certain degree. You have at
>> least come very close to admitting that a number of species are related
>> by common descent,
>
>
> Abiogenesis is false (or at best stagnated)
Irrelevant even if correct.
> and Darwin's mechanism
> seems to explain little more than non progressive changes like
> antibiotic resistance.
Likewise irrelevant even if correct.
> Changes which almost vanish when the
> antibiotic environment vanishes. Progressive, transformational change
> is disconfirmed at every observable point. Lenski's 20+ year and
> 45,000+ generation E coli experiment likewise shows the utter
> hopelessness of anything faintly resembling coherent, progressive,
> transformational change.
Still irrelevant.
> So "Macroevolution" is false.
Ah, I see your problem. You appear to have a personal definition of
"macroevolution". This is not the common definition. I'm not sure what
definition Ray is using, but it appears to count any speciation. So it's
quite a different definition from yours. His is actually closer to the
usual one than yours is.
> Ray is aware
> of my views in this area and so to accuse me of accepting [purely
> naturalistic] macroevolution amounts to a bold faced lie. But I
> digress. . . . .
No, what you do is grossly misunderstand. I'm assuming (charitably) it's
by accident.
> Special Creation is the model that God instantly created, a finite
> number of fully-formed and mature original kinds. The historical
> model suggests that all other populations that have existed on Earth
> descended from these original kinds. And that the radiations from the
> original kinds are NOT the result of Darwin's mechanism but the result
> of information already contained within the population of each
> originial kind. There is no naturalistic process of macroevolution.
Sorry, but under the usual definition, if there's any speciation at all,
by whatever mechanism, it's macroevolution.
> Admittedly the model is immature and vague but only slightly more so
> than the hand waving of neoDarwinism.
Admittedly the model is vague but not so vague that it isn't abundantly
falsified by the data, at least assuming we can pin you down on what
some particular "kinds" might encompass. I've tried to get you to agree
to a few specifics, without success. For example, I've made several
attempts to determine if you think all paleognath birds are a single
kind, or perhaps all birds. So far either no answer or a weaselly answer.
> Nonetheless it is consistent
> with the fossil record.
Not in the slightest. You can't even make the claim unless you can
identify the kinds and determine which strata represent the original
creation, before diversification of the kinds. Go ahead and give it a
shot, though.
> The model does not predict gradualistic
> transformational change.
Weasel-word "transformational" noted. It does predict gradualistic,
non-transformational change, though, doesn't it? Oddly, if you believe
the claims of stasis advocates, the fossil record doesn't show much of
any sort of gradual change, whether transformational or not. Therefore,
if the evolution model is falsified, so is yours.
> Even from a theoretical perspective it is
> distinguishable from neoDarwinian "macroevolution. Our own Dr
> Theobald showed in his peer reviewed Nature article that his cladistic
> analysis could distinguish between the two.
Did you also notice that he was able to decisively reject your model on
the basis of the data?
>> and officially anything beyond the species level
>> counts as macroevolution.
>
> This is according to the atheist framework which by all accounts is
> false from abiogenetic root to the end nodes.
No, it's according to the standard meaning of a word. You don't get to
define words any way you like. That's glory for you.
> This also presumes that
> "species" is of any diagnostic value in evaluating neoDarwinian
> macroevolutionary claims. Cichlids speciate rapidly and yet they have
> not transformed into anything else.
Define "anything else".
> If neoDarwinian gradualistic evolutionary change were true "species"
> is merely a point on a linear path; it has no real significance.
Not true at all. It has significance at any given time. Nor is the path
necessary linear. But you are correct that the usual species concepts
have trouble if extended too far either in time or in space. They work
best in one time and place.
> Furthermore Gould's Punc Eq didn't consider all speciation events to
> be equally likely to produce transformational change. And PE hasn't
> proved terribly fruitful either. So in what way is "species"
> significant?
Actually, PE doesn't consider any speciation events as producing
transformational change. Gould would say it takes several speciation
events to add up to a big change. Species are significant generally
because of their existence in the modern world. Would you agree that
there are such things as separate species today? If not, why not?
>> Of course you have ignored my challenge in
>> which you were asked to clarify the degree to which you accept
>> macroevolution. But weasel as you may, you have already agreed to some.
>
> I don't accept it at all----it is a purely naturalistic, neoDarwinian
> process. And by all accounts it is false. It is an unobservable
> and undirected process which argues that in approximately 1 billion
> years, 1-2 million species were created that never existed before.
You have conflated macroevolution with *universal* common descent. You
accept macroevolution within "kinds". Pay attention.
> Yet
> Wolperts' "No Free Lunch" THEOREMS proved conclusively that EVERY
> evolutionary algorithm (including the neoDarwinian one) is no better
> or worse at finding fitness peaks than a blind search.
Wolpert doesn't agree. This is just Dembski's perverse interpretation,
which Wolpert himself denies. Felsenstein briefly described Dembski's
most serious misunderstanding: NFL applies when averaged over all
posssible fitness surfaces, in most of which there is no correlation of
fitness values between adjacent points. A random fitness surface means
that no search is better than random. However, on real fitness surfaces,
where adjacent points are correlated, search algorithms have something
to go on.
> The best evidence that the defeated Elsberry could produce for
> transformational change was the minor changes of a foram shell from
> less spherical to more spherical.
He wasn't asked to give an example of transformational change. The
weasel word was your later addendum.
> It took 15 million years for the
> minor change and nothing new was created. And Harshman thinks the
> same process can produce a bacterial flagellum, heart, liver, eye and
> brain?
We have plenty of evidence that such things did indeed happen, though of
course for soft anatomy the fossil record isn't the main evidence. On
the other hand, for such readily preserved features as middle ear bones,
the fossil record is pretty good.
> The creationist model does not require an evolutionary algorithm. The
> information for the various populations radiating from the original
> kinds is programmed in. It may be that the latest research into the
> epigenome may shed some light on this.
Or it may be that you have no clue and are just nodding in the direction
of a meaningless buzzword you heard recently. Do you have any evidence
at all for this contention of preprogrammed diversity? I thought not.
>>> Ray is well aware of this fact and as a
>>> result Ray has now become a liar. Since Ray resorts to lying his word
>>> is now worthless.
>> There's no real point in arguing about which creationist is more
>> dishonest than another.
>
> Yes, of course. We all disagree with the all-knowing atheists and
> therefore we are dishonest. Unfortunately that isn't dishonesty.
Agreed. Your strawman claim has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Your
dishonesty lies mostly in claims to have won this or that battle, while
in reality what you do is post once, ignore the refutations, run away,
and return later on to make entirely unmodified claims as if the
refutations had never happened. That's seriously dishonest.
> Otherwise offer the link where I have intentionally offered a
> statement as true which I knew to be false.
That's not the sole form of dishonesty.
> Ray knows that I dispute
> macroevolution yet he claimed I accepted it. This is dishonest.
No, it's just that Ray's definition of macroevolution is close to the
standard one, while the one you reject is your personal definition.