Ray Martinez's Idea of a Refutation of Evolution

[Peter Nyikos]

In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
confident assertion:

I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
as supporting their worldview.

But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
addressed directly to Ray:

On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:


> In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
> to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.

Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
within a population, and hence within a species.

And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.
Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
I am replying in installments:

They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.

My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
and the context only makes it worse, if anything.

> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> by special creation in real time periodically.

That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
certainly does not mean he created all of them.

And if one does NOT grant it, one can still believe in God
nudging evolution along by carefully chosen mutations that
still maintain the integrity of the usual process by which
creatures originate. This is the process that occurred when your
parents conceived you and your mother bore you, and you
grew to adulthood.

That's design just as much as what you falsely equate with
"appearance of design"; and you've been lectured often enough,
by enough people, about the difference between the appearance
of something and the actuality of that something.



> Design shuts down micro-evolution in its tracks at
> the species level.

You are contradicting yourself. Even more amusingly, you are
now AGREEING with the biological definition: it shuts down
micro-evolution at the species level BY DEFINITION.

But more importantly, there is plenty of evidence of
species-to-species evolution in the horse family.
Most Christian evolutionists have no trouble accepting
this much unguided evolution. But among those who
do not accept it, none actually claim that God created
any of the species of the horse sequence *de novo*, AFAIK.


> At this particular juncture the Atheist flees for the cover

There is nothing to flee from, as I've already shown.


> found in Christian Evolutionists. They can be counted on
> to affirm the occurrence of micro-evolution. Imagine that!

Whenever you use the words, "Imagine that!" it's a dead
giveaway that you are moving onto particularly shaky ground.

And the shakiness should be evident to all who read what
you wrote next:

> Atheists looking to Christ to save them from the implication
> that they believe in a non-existing concept!

That's as ridiculous as if a Catholic were to claim
Protestants are fleeing to the Orthodox to save them
from the implication that they are wrong to reject
Roman Catholicism.

That's because the atheists you are talking about
-- a small minority of atheists, I would guess --
are simply noting that Christian evolutionists
happen to agree with them on the existence of
microevolution. Some of them even do it just to
claim that Christian evolutionists aren't
batty the way OECs and YECs and species immutabilists are.


Your "refutation" of evolution only went downhill
after this, becoming even more blatantly *ad hominem*
than this first part did. I'll post it soon after I have
seen that this one has posted.


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

[erik simpson]

Are you talking to Ray, or are you talking to the audience? It's bad form to talk to the audience like that.

[Peter Nyikos]

Picking up where I left off in my OP:

On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:

> Since micro-evolution was produced using the assumptions
> of Naturalism

Are you implying that ALL Christian evolutionists
are Atheists because they accept Naturalism by accepting
ONE of its myriad assumptions?



> one cannot say so called Christian Evolutionists were and/or are following Christ
> in accepting micro-evolution.

By the same logic, one cannot claim Europeans are following Christ
by accepting the existence of New Zealand. A perfectly harmless
"deficiency" since neither Christ nor the Bible mentioned New
Zealand. In fact, at the time, no human being (except possibly
Jesus, if he really was the Son of Man foretold in the book
of Daniel) had any inkling that New Zealand existed.


> One cannot say Christ has led anyone to accept a claim
> (micro-evolution) that presupposes the non-existence
> of His Father as Designer and Creator.

It sure does look like you view everyone who accepts
micro-evolution, even those who believe God guided
a lot of it along, as an Atheist.


> These persons cannot be held as genuine Christians

***in the context*** of the Creation/Evolution debate.

So you think that one can be an Atheist based on where
they stand on micro-evolution, but could be a believing
and faithful follower of Christ in everything else?

The "***in the context***" is a grand equivocation that is
designed to give you a loophole if you are forced into
a corner, isn't it?

> They're confused and deluded traitors, which

includes Steady Eddie, Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran, Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
>
> >

> > And so, you justify their atheism in their own eyes.

You continue to help to justify their atheism by pouring venom on
Christians, while leaving the arguments of atheists completely unscathed.

> > And yours?
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

> > University of South Carolina
> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>

> Empty words lacking content.

Are you voicing your contempt for mathematics, or mathematicians?

Are you doing this because of a mis-translation of something
Augustine wrote, about mathematicians making a pact with
the devil? He wasn't talking about them at all.

Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

On 9/21/2017 5:12 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> confident assertion:
>
> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> as supporting their worldview.
>
> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> addressed directly to Ray:
>
> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>> In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
>> to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
>
> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
> within a population, and hence within a species.

You get off to a good start, but as soon as you reference fellow crank
Alan Kleinsman (not "Kleinman") you start going steadily downhill.

>
> And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
> and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
> show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.
> Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
> heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
> I am replying in installments:

No, Alan can show no examples since he has a fundamentally flawed view
of evolution, something you share with him. And yes, while it's true
that Ray ignores "innumerable experiments" (i.e., all of modern
science), using Alan as your go-to example is just you grasping at
straws by this point, Peter. In another thread, I responded to Ray with
the example of the evolution of resistance to malaria in certain African
populations as an example of natural selection.

>
> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
>
> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.

Hint: He doesn't do any of that.

>
>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
>> by special creation in real time periodically.
>
> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> certainly does not mean he created all of them.

Back to sanity for Professor Nyikos for a precious few seconds before
losing it all again.

Everything Ray spouts out is guaranteed to be complete and utter
bullshit, Peter, just like 80-90% of everything you spout out is a
gargantuan pile of bullshit, Peter.

>
> That's because the atheists you are talking about
> -- a small minority of atheists, I would guess --
> are simply noting that Christian evolutionists
> happen to agree with them on the existence of
> microevolution. Some of them even do it just to
> claim that Christian evolutionists aren't
> batty the way OECs and YECs and species immutabilists are.

More of Peter's mindless mindreading, folks. He has no evidence to back
up his assertion of a "small minority" of atheists, so take this
particular piece of filler with way more than one grain of salt.

[raven1]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 18:57:45 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

>On 9/21/2017 5:12 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
>> confident assertion:
>>
>> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
>> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
>> as supporting their worldview.
>>
>> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
>> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
>> addressed directly to Ray:
>>
>> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>> In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
>>> to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
>>
>> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
>> within a population, and hence within a species.
>
>
>You get off to a good start, but as soon as you reference fellow crank
>Alan Kleinsman (not "Kleinman") you start going steadily downhill.

Kleinman certainly seems to think that his name is spelled "Kleinman".

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> confident assertion:
>
> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> as supporting their worldview.
>
> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> addressed directly to Ray:
>
> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> > In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
> > to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
>
> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
> within a population, and hence within a species.

Defining micro-evolution doesn't support the same as occurring as I'm sure you would agree.

>
> And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
> and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
> show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.
> Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
> heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
> I am replying in installments:

I'm talking about the primary claim of micro-evolution occurring in the wild among sexually reproducing animal species, known as the Biological Species Concept (BSC). One cannot use Alan's medical laboratory to support the preceding as Alan attempted to use his medical laboratory to falsify cumulative selection, which John and others rejected. I've already posted Darwin's **conceptual** model of natural selection, consisting of three inferences THEN micro-evolution occurs. Alan said he sees RMNS in his lab; in reply I said if you can see RMNS as it happens then you are seeing "RMNS," not RMNS. He never answered.

So, as a matter of fact, Peter uses non-primary phenomena in his attempt to support micro-evolution occurring. The logic here is inverted and thus invalid. IF micro-evolution occurs in the wild, among the BSC, then one can factually assert micro-evolution occurs in non-primary phenomena as well.

>
> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
>
> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
>
> > That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> > by special creation in real time periodically.
>
> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> certainly does not mean he created all of them.

Ridiculous. If God created one species, and it's proven scientifically, then what is being said is that God created all species. The fact that you don't understand that is a debate killer; it's rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars.

Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member. The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as reflecting appearance of design. If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because real time special creation was accepted when Paley published, what is being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.

The above commentary is not in any way controversial among historians of science. Up until 1837 the same was Darwin's view of species.

Will finish replying ASAP....

Ray

[snip for now....]

[Bruce Stephens]

On 21/09/2017 22:12, Peter Nyikos wrote:
From (presumably) Ray:

>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
>> by special creation in real time periodically.

> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> certainly does not mean he created all of them.

To be fair, the original quote does give an explanation of one meaning
for "appearance" ("the zombie appeared from the mist", etc.).

It's not what anybody else means (most of the time, at least) when they
say "appearance of design", but I guess it's (barely) conceivable that
Ray does mean this. It's also possible that he thinks the two are
equivalent.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> confident assertion:
>
> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> as supporting their worldview.
>
> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> addressed directly to Ray:
>
> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>> In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
>> to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
>
> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
> within a population, and hence within a species.
>

And by extension the evolution of new species less likely to freely
interbreed with closely related populations due to behavioral, physical, or
genic incompatibility. And don’t forget discrete morphological jumps as in
pocket gopher external pouches.

>
> And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
> and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
> show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.

Yep

> Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
> heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
> I am replying in installments:
>

He deserves scorn. As does Ray. And you for invoking him here and pier
sixing your argument.

Ray conveniently ignores the prevalence of bacterial gene flow via plasmids
and phages which is ipso facto a text book case of evolution. Lateral gene
transfer jumps hurdle if any that Dr Dr produces with multiplicative rule
as different populations and species can share innovations in
countermeasures to antibiotics.

> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
>

Please remove Martin Harran from that List. Reminds me of:

https://youtu.be/rsRjQDrDnY8

>
> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
>
>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
>> by special creation in real time periodically.
>
> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
>

I thought “appearance” equates to being illusory, hence designoid sensu
Dawkins.

>
> And if one does NOT grant it, one can still believe in God
> nudging evolution along by carefully chosen mutations that
> still maintain the integrity of the usual process by which
> creatures originate. This is the process that occurred when your
> parents conceived you and your mother bore you, and you
> grew to adulthood.
>

Why would god take so much time between big bang, Kant-Laplace emergence of
Earth as planetary body, emergence of life and relatively recent emergence
of humans instead of magically poofing us into existence as Genesis and Ray
hold? And why so much wastage and extinction (fossil hominids) along the
way? Inelegant given omnipotence and theodical given benevolence.

[snip rest]

[*Hemidactylus*]

Or himself. Sound of his own voice.

[*Hemidactylus*]

<r3p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
>> confident assertion:
>>
>> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
>> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
>> as supporting their worldview.
>>
>> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
>> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
>> addressed directly to Ray:
>>
>> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>> In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
>>> to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
>>
>> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
>> within a population, and hence within a species.
>
> Defining micro-evolution doesn't support the same as occurring as I'm sure you would agree.
>

I can define a unicorn, but will not find a referent. Alleles do fluctuate
in frequency due to selection, drift, and flow.

>>
>> And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
>> and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
>> show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.
>> Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
>> heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
>> I am replying in installments:
>
> I'm talking about the primary claim of micro-evolution occurring in the
> wild among sexually reproducing animal species, known as the Biological
> Species Concept (BSC).

Yet species in different genera hybridize.

> One cannot use Alan's medical laboratory to support the preceding as Alan
> attempted to use his medical laboratory to falsify cumulative selection,
> which John and others rejected.

And bacteria reproduce asexually, making BSC problematic. And they can
share genetic material across species, also making BSC problematic.

> I've already posted Darwin's **conceptual** model of natural selection,
> consisting of three inferences THEN micro-evolution occurs. Alan said he
> sees RMNS in his lab; in reply I said if you can see RMNS as it happens
> then you are seeing "RMNS," not RMNS. He never answered.
>

Why the scare quotes? Rmns collapses two distinct phenomena as Harshman has
been pointing out. Alan comes up short on the selection portion.

>
> So, as a matter of fact, Peter uses non-primary phenomena in his attempt
> to support micro-evolution occurring. The logic here is inverted and thus
> invalid. IF micro-evolution occurs in the wild, among the BSC, then one
> can factually assert micro-evolution occurs in non-primary phenomena as well.
>

What does that mean? If one population contributes genetic elements to
another that is evolution by flow. If those elements go to fixation that is
evolution by drift and/or selection.

>>
>> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
>> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
>> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
>>
>> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
>> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
>>
>>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
>>> by special creation in real time periodically.
>>
>> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
>> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
>> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
>
> Ridiculous. If God created one species, and it's proven scientifically,
> then what is being said is that God created all species. The fact that
> you don't understand that is a debate killer; it's rudimentary in the
> eyes of scientists and scholars.
>

God inserts divine finger and creates urlife population. Evolution produces
rest. Or God intervenes periodically to produce endosymbiosis, Cambrian
explosion, or human ensoulment. That is a wasteful god, but who am I to
argue?

>
> Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all
> living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
> The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as
> reflecting appearance of design.

As in illusory perception given projected anthropomorphic analogy of
religious worldview.

> If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because
> real time special creation was accepted when Paley published, what is
> being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.
>

So it was not created at another place and time and dropped there? Did
Paley see the factory? And what of Adam Smith’s division of labor in
producing something as simple as a pin? Surely multiple hands would go into
fashioning a watch. Monotheism?

[jillery]

The syntax pretty much gives away the word games Ray likes to play:

"appeared" is a verb, "appearance" is a noun.
In "design appeared", design is a material object, while in
"appearance of design", design is an abstract characteristic.

So the two phrases mean the same thing only in Rayspeak.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[jillery]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2017 08:21:17 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

[...]

>>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
>>> by special creation in real time periodically.
>>
>> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
>> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
>> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
>>
>I thought “appearance” equates to being illusory, hence designoid sensu
>Dawkins.

Correct. The meaning posted above is a word game, and the response
below it is a non sequitur to that word game.

>> And if one does NOT grant it, one can still believe in God
>> nudging evolution along by carefully chosen mutations that
>> still maintain the integrity of the usual process by which
>> creatures originate. This is the process that occurred when your
>> parents conceived you and your mother bore you, and you
>> grew to adulthood.
>>
>Why would god take so much time between big bang, Kant-Laplace emergence of
>Earth as planetary body, emergence of life and relatively recent emergence
>of humans instead of magically poofing us into existence as Genesis and Ray
>hold? And why so much wastage and extinction (fossil hominids) along the
>way? Inelegant given omnipotence and theodical given benevolence.
>
>[snip rest]

Since you asked, given an omnipotent Being, it's not unreasonable to
also presume said Being would experience time differently than us mere
mortals. To borrow a phrase, it might be that one day is with said
Being as a billion years, and a billion years as one day, because
inflation.

In a similar way, it's not unreasonable to presume said being would
have a very different concept of benevolence than us mere mortals.
Which is not to say we can't know said Being's mind, only that it's
unlikely to be the same as ours. One would have to stipulate
similarity as another presumption.

But your point of sequential emergence and wastage is a good one. If
said omnipotent Being has the ability to start the ball rolling
just-so to eventually lead to us mere mortals, I would expect it also
would have just poofed us into existence in the first place. All this
change would suggest at the least said Being can't make up Its mind,
and at worst is incompetent. Which is not to say said Being couldn't
have done it that way, only that doing so suggests a Being very
different from the one presumed by most of those who believe in it.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 18:57:45 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Oxyaena
<oxy...@invalid.invalid>:

>You get off to a good start, but as soon as you reference fellow crank
>Alan Kleinsman (not "Kleinman") you start going steadily downhill.

The Good DrDr spells his name "Kleinman"; I just checked his
single post today. Although there are issues with almost all
his "facts", I believe we can assume he got that one right.
--

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

[Peter Nyikos]

What part of

Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
addressed directly to Ray:

didn't you understand?


Same question for your "I'm OK, You're OK, Peter Is Not OK"
partner Hemidactylus.


Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

Peter, is the sound of your screeching voice somehow soothing to your
ears, since no one else gives a shit about what you're saying.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Oh dear. Stuck in the 60s self help tropes. I love you too, Peter.

https://youtu.be/Dt1RlTjKP0s

[erik simpson]

If you're really into transactional analysis, what would you give me if I said
"You're OK"?

[Peter Nyikos]

True to form, you duck the question even though you had made
a snide remark about how you couldn't tell to whom I was talking.

> Oh dear. Stuck in the 60s self help tropes.

The truth hurts, doesn't it, Scott "Hemidactylus" Chase?

> I love you too, Peter.

No, you don't. Your irrational dislike for me goes back to
the 1990's when you attacked Joe Potter for "sucking up to" me
because he agreed with me on something. [Of course, you couldn't
refute either of us.] When I returned in 2010 you seemed to have
reformed and I let bygones be bygones, even at one
point thinking of you as being one of the two most reasonable
people in talk.origins.


But you reverted to your old ways, even going further by
criticizing Harshman for discussing science with me and thereby
indirectly encouraging me to stay in talk.origns.

Nothing in talk.origins could make you happier than my leaving
it permanently, eh?


> https://youtu.be/Dt1RlTjKP0s

Sorry, I don't look at videos until someone tells me how long
they are and gives a synopsis. Nothing personal, I apply that
to everyone.

Most functioning adults would do that without being requested,
so I hardly ever have to say what I've said just now.

Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

No surprise Peter avoided reply to the above, supporting my conjecture that
he enjoys only the sound of his own voice. Not OK.

[*Hemidactylus*]

True to form you latch onto this silly subthread to air long fermented
grievance grapes and avoid serious followup to my post directed at you
elsethread. How convenient.

My expectations of you remain quite low.

>
>> Oh dear. Stuck in the 60s self help tropes.
>
> The truth hurts, doesn't it, Scott "Hemidactylus" Chase?
>
>
>> I love you too, Peter.
>
>
> No, you don't. Your irrational dislike for me goes back to
> the 1990's when you attacked Joe Potter for "sucking up to" me
> because he agreed with me on something. [Of course, you couldn't
> refute either of us.] When I returned in 2010 you seemed to have
> reformed and I let bygones be bygones, even at one
> point thinking of you as being one of the two most reasonable
> people in talk.origins.
>
>
> But you reverted to your old ways, even going further by
> criticizing Harshman for discussing science with me and thereby
> indirectly encouraging me to stay in talk.origns.
>
> Nothing in talk.origins could make you happier than my leaving
> it permanently, eh?
>

I would be happy if you stopped posting crap [long grievance rehashes, your
opinions on same sex marriage, etc]. That could dramatically reduce your
bandwidth contributions [~98%]. You do the math [rounding up].

>
>> https://youtu.be/Dt1RlTjKP0s
>
> Sorry, I don't look at videos until someone tells me how long
> they are and gives a synopsis. Nothing personal, I apply that
> to everyone.
>
> Most functioning adults would do that without being requested,
> so I hardly ever have to say what I've said just now.
>

Not a fan of Gallagher?

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip material previously addressed....]

>
> And if one does NOT grant it, one can still believe in God
> nudging evolution along by carefully chosen mutations that
> still maintain the integrity of the usual process by which
> creatures originate. This is the process that occurred when your
> parents conceived you and your mother bore you, and you
> grew to adulthood.

Yes, subjective opinions are plenteous, and one does not need the permission of anyone to espouse one.

>
> That's design just as much as what you falsely equate with
> "appearance of design"; and you've been lectured often enough,
> by enough people, about the difference between the appearance
> of something and the actuality of that something.

I don't deny that I've been lectured, but what was lectured, by many, remains COMPLETELY false.

When Paley published, science treated appearance of design as actual or observed design. When Darwin answered Paley in 1859 the preceding was still the view of science. As I write today the view of science has not changed: appearance of design = actual or observed design. Dawkins NEVER said biology accepts appearance of design. Biology does NOT accept Paley's main observational claim, which would be an absurdity. It's really dumb people who have said, that Dawkins said, biology accepts existence of appearance of design. So don't say that or I will be forced to show how dumb you are.

Anyone who says appearance of design does not rise to actual or observed design is revealing their inexcusable ignorance of language. All "appearance of design" means is "observation of design" because "appearance" presupposes that one is seeing or looking----using their sense of sight, which is observation. If X appears designed one is saying X looks designed or X is observed designed. Paley intentionally chose to craft his case for design on appearance because the concept is talking about the organization of complexity thus the same appears designed.

>
>
>
> > Design shuts down micro-evolution in its tracks at
> > the species level.
>
> You are contradicting yourself. Even more amusingly, you are
> now AGREEING with the biological definition: it shuts down
> micro-evolution at the species level BY DEFINITION.

Don't understand anything said above, and I admit that no jargon was used.

And don't you think that when you accuse someone of contradiction, you should point it out?

>
> But more importantly, there is plenty of evidence of
> species-to-species evolution in the horse family.

Upon observing the equine sequence showing gradation similarity, evolution has only occurred if one assumes discovery of gradation similarity means evolution has occurred. DARWIN SAYS evolution has only occurred if one can show how micro-evolution occurs. I agree with Darwin. If one can show HOW micro-evolution occurs THEN macro-evolution logically follows via accumulation because a non-supernatural agent of causation (natural selection) is shown to exist. Prior to 1859 science did not accept any notion of unguided causation; science accepted supernatural causation (Darwin 1859:6; London: John Murray).

Will pick up right here when I return.....

Ray

[snip for now....]

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip material addressed previously....]

>
> But more importantly, there is plenty of evidence of
> species-to-species evolution in the horse family.

Upon observing the equine sequence showing gradation similarity, evolution has only occurred if one assumes discovery of gradation similarity means evolution has occurred. DARWIN SAYS evolution has only occurred if one can show how micro-evolution occurs. I agree with Darwin. If one can show HOW micro-evolution occurs THEN macro-evolution logically follows via accumulation because a non-supernatural agent of causation (natural selection) is shown to exist. Prior to 1859 science did not accept any notion of unguided causation; science accepted supernatural causation (Darwin 1859:6; London: John Murray).

> Most Christian evolutionists have no trouble accepting
> this much unguided evolution.

Which contradicts the Bible and their faith because unguided causation means invisible Guide is not involved and does not exist in nature. Unguided causation speaks mainly of natural selection and natural selection was offered by Darwin as replacing supernatural causation (Darwin 1859:6; London: John Murray).

> But among those who
> do not accept it, none actually claim that God created
> any of the species of the horse sequence *de novo*, AFAIK.

Then what is their view of how each species in the sequence came to have their existence in nature?

SCIENCE prior to the rise of Darwinism accepted EACH NEW SPECIES created independently. So the "Creationists" you're referring to have a subjective opinion, subjective in this context being defined as "contradicting the view of science."

>
>
> > At this particular juncture the Atheist flees for the cover
>
> There is nothing to flee from, as I've already shown.

When an anti-evolutionary like myself observes that Atheists are deluded, believing in a non-existing agent of causation (natural selection) they quickly refer to Christian Evolutionists, which equates to an appeal to Christ to save them from my observation. No Christian can say Christ has led them to accept a claim that says His Father did not design and create each species. But the fact remains: Atheists point to Christian Evolutionists as accepting the existence of natural selection. Yet the only common denominator between these persons is Christ. So Atheists are appealing to Christ to save them from my observation that they believe in a non-existing agent of causation.

>
>
> > found in Christian Evolutionists. They can be counted on
> > to affirm the occurrence of micro-evolution. Imagine that!
>
> Whenever you use the words, "Imagine that!" it's a dead
> giveaway that you are moving onto particularly shaky ground.
>
> And the shakiness should be evident to all who read what
> you wrote next:
>
> > Atheists looking to Christ to save them from the implication
> > that they believe in a non-existing concept!
>
> That's as ridiculous as if a Catholic were to claim
> Protestants are fleeing to the Orthodox to save them
> from the implication that they are wrong to reject
> Roman Catholicism.

I've have explained what I meant again, above.

>
> That's because the atheists you are talking about
> -- a small minority of atheists, I would guess --
> are simply noting that Christian evolutionists
> happen to agree with them on the existence of
> microevolution.

Yep, but one cannot say that Christ approves or has led these persons to accept any origin of species claim produced in service to the assumptions of Naturalism. So in this **precise context** one cannot say that these persons are Christians----that's the point.

>
> Some of them even do it just to
> claim that Christian evolutionists aren't
> batty the way OECs and YECs and species immutabilists are.
>
>
> Your "refutation" of evolution only went downhill
> after this, becoming even more blatantly *ad hominem*
> than this first part did. I'll post it soon after I have
> seen that this one has posted.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

Can't wait.

Ray

[*Hemidactylus*]

<r3p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
[snip]

>
> When an anti-evolutionary like myself observes that Atheists are deluded,
>

You are projecting a preconception based on your bizarre ideology, not
making an observation.

>
> believing in a non-existing agent of causation (natural selection)
>

Selection exists and has clear effects on the world. It has superseded
design due to superiority. There are other processes that result in
evolution, such as drift and gene flow. For some odd reason you focus on
selection.

>
>they quickly refer to Christian Evolutionists, which equates to an appeal
> to Christ to save them from my observation.
>

Save us? Christians who value truth and see evidence for evolution as
overwhelming accommodate the findings of biological science into their
worldview. The Catholic Church has moved in this direction with
reservations about ensoulment.

>
> No Christian can say Christ has led them to accept a claim that says His
> Father did not design and create each species. But the fact remains:
> Atheists point to Christian Evolutionists as accepting the existence of natural selection.
>

Or evolution more generally. Theodosius “Nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evolution” Dobzhansky was a Christian as is his
student Francisco Ayala, who has an odd notion that evolution takes God off
the hook for biological imperfections.

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2011/03/francisco-ayala-i-dont-answer-questions.html

“Why do you say creationism is bad religion?

Creationism and intelligent design are not compatible with religion because
they imply the designer is a bad designer, allowing cruelty and misery.
Evolution explains these as a result of natural processes, in the same way
we explain earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic eruptions. We don’t have to
attribute them to an action of God.”

Oddity aside these guys have been in the forefront of evolutionary biology.

>
>Yet the only common denominator between these persons is Christ.
>

I think their belief in Jesus as a savior figure is incidental, thus not
the common denominator you are looking for. The important common
denominator is accepting the factuality of evolution and its theoretic
bases in selection, drift etc. The important religious aspect could be the
injunction against bearing false witness. When the facts make a compelling
case for evolution their conscience makes accepting this as provisional
truth mandatory. Their religious views may adjust accordingly.

> So Atheists are appealing to Christ to save them from my observation that
> they believe in a non-existing agent of causation.
>

You have said some cray cray stuff in the past, but this ranks right up
there with your best. I consider myself an ontological naturalist, but
acknowledge others including religious evolutionists draw the line at
methodological naturalism. Theistic evolutionists share only an acceptance
of evolution as fact. They are allies against creationists as yourself.
This alliance does not imply atheists appealing to Jesus to protect us from
your projected ideological preconceptions. That you delineate yourself from
other creationists because they lack your presumed ideological purity shows
you lack the conception of strategic alliance. You are a force of one who
invokes the royal we. Must be lonely in there.

[jillery]

On Sat, 23 Sep 2017 14:14:40 -0700 (PDT), r3p...@gmail.com wrote:

>I don't deny that I've been lectured, but what was lectured, by many, remains COMPLETELY false.

I suppose you're right, if by "COMPLETELY false" you actually mean
"TOTALLY correct".

>When Paley published, science treated appearance of design as actual or observed design. When Darwin answered Paley in 1859 the preceding was still the view of science. As I write today the view of science has not changed: appearance of design = actual or observed design.

Of course, that's what *you* mean. That's *not* what Dawkins means.

>Dawkins NEVER said biology accepts appearance of design.

Of course, he's said it repeatedly. He just doesn't mean what you
mean by it.

> Biology does NOT accept Paley's main observational claim, which would be an absurdity.

You're right, Paley's main observational claim is an absurdity.

>It's really dumb people who have said, that Dawkins said, biology accepts existence of appearance of design.

Since Dawkins has said exactly that in public for decades, then it's
really *really* dumb people who deny it.

>So don't say that or I will be forced to show how dumb you are.

I can back up what I say. Cite or retract.

>Anyone who says appearance of design does not rise to actual or observed design is revealing their inexcusable ignorance of language.

You're projecting again.

> All "appearance of design" means is "observation of design"

Nope. Argument by bald assertion, as easily refuted. Cite or
retract.

>because "appearance" presupposes that one is seeing or looking----using their sense of sight, which is observation.

Technically true but irrelevant, as the actual point revolves around
*what* is being observed, which is a point that you apparently never
observe.

>If X appears designed one is saying X looks designed or X is observed designed.

Even if true, it's still irrelevant, as the actual point is about
"appearance" and not "appears". They mean different things.

>Paley intentionally chose to craft his case for design on appearance because the concept is talking about the organization of complexity thus the same appears designed.

You might have a coherent point if you didn't always conflate
"appearance" and "appears". You're still playing word games.

[Burkhard]

REally? If you find a watch on the beach, your inference is not only
that it was designed and manufactured, but that all that happened in
situ, on the beach?

What a strange world you are living in! I'd say pretty much everyone
else would infer that the watch was made at a watchmaker's shop, someone
bought it, took it for a walk and accidentally dropped it on the beach.

And that also seems to be what Paley was thinking: "that the watch must
have had a maker: that there must have existed, AT SOME TIME, and SOME
PLACE OTHER...

[Rolf]

"jillery" <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:aojesch1ks9eqm6cv...@4ax.com...

That's about all that Ray has to show from his life (at t.o.) for about 20
years.
What a waste. He's not been able to convince anyone that he's right about
any of his pet subjects.
I don't laugh at him, but evolution is just a subset of the subjects that
he's got wrong.
But he is in a class all his own, although time is running out on him.
Me, I am far beyond my 'best before' time and I have nothing to say besides
what I already have said so many times before.

Rolf

> --
> I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
> say it.
>
> Evelyn Beatrice Hall
> Attributed to Voltaire
>

---
E-posten er sjekket for virus av AVG.
http://www.avg.com

[jillery]

On Sun, 24 Sep 2017 13:12:21 +0200, "Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com>
wrote:

But you say it so well. Even if after your "best before" date, you
are among the most valued contributors to T.O.

[Oxyaena]

Peter refuses to respond to my post, therefore implying that he can't
deny the contents of my post, meaning that this entire OP was just a
waste of everybody's time.

[Peter Nyikos]

It is singularly appropriate that you should duck this question,
much more appropriate than for any other talk.origins regular AFAIK.

> >
> > Same question for your "I'm OK, You're OK, Peter Is Not OK"
> > partner Hemidactylus.
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> If you're really into transactional analysis,

Not at all. It's just that the wording introduced in the pop psychology
best seller of the 60's is very appropriate to the relationship between
you, Hemidactylus, and myself.

> what would you give me if I said
> "You're OK"?

I'd say that you are obviously insincere, because in the overwhelming
majority of your replies to me in talk.origins [1] over the years,
you've treated me as though I were Doubleplusbad. And Harshman, who
was active in almost all the threads where that overwhelming majority
took place, treated you, and you him, as though the two of you were
Doubleplusgood.

Now you and Hemidactylus can amuse yourselves over the fact that George
Orwell's _1984_ was published two whole decades BEFORE that pop psychology
best-seller, and that it was a work of FICTION!

[1] On the other hand, you've done an exemplary job of living up
to our agreement in sci.bio.paleontology to treat it like a
kind of "embassy" where we leave our talk.origins grievances and
negative attitudes towards each other aside, and behave like
the best of ambassadors.

Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

This stomped out grapes of wrath above has a recent vintage and less
sediment than your others. I detect a hint of oak or maybe OK from the
barrel. The sommelier suggests a slice of generic cheese wrapped in plastic
as a proper pairing.

[Oxyaena]

Nyikos' Principle is in full effect here, Peter. You've pretty much lost
the argument. The "ambassador" agreement in sbp is irrelevant to the
issue at hand, and therefore you have lost the argument.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, September 23, 2017 at 4:45:03 AM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Friday, September 22, 2017 at 5:55:03 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 5:45:02 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:

> >>>> Are you talking to Ray, or are you talking to the audience? It's bad
> >>>> form to talk to the audience like that.
> >>>
> >>> What part of
> >>>
> >>> Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> >>> addressed directly to Ray:
> >>>
> >>> didn't you understand?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Same question for your "I'm OK, You're OK, Peter Is Not OK"
> >>> partner Hemidactylus.
> >
> > True to form, you duck the question even though you had made
> > a snide remark about how you couldn't tell to whom I was talking.
> >
> True to form you latch onto this silly subthread

"blame the victim"

> to air long fermented
> grievance grapes

...which you have been fermenting quite recently...

> and avoid serious followup to my post directed at you
> elsethread. How convenient.

All in due time, Hemi. When you get flippant AND evasive, you can
expect these posts to take priority: the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

> My expectations of you remain quite low.

FWIW. You had some low expectations of me wrt some stupid
threads of jonathan, but conveniently disappeared when
I put jonathan in his place.

And so, I expect you to go on running away whenever I meet
what you would LIKE for people to believe your expectations to be.

> >> Oh dear. Stuck in the 60s self help tropes.
> >
> > The truth hurts, doesn't it, Scott "Hemidactylus" Chase?
> >
> >
> >> I love you too, Peter.
> >
> >
> > No, you don't. Your irrational dislike for me goes back to
> > the 1990's when you attacked Joe Potter for "sucking up to" me
> > because he agreed with me on something. [Of course, you couldn't
> > refute either of us.] When I returned in 2010 you seemed to have
> > reformed and I let bygones be bygones, even at one
> > point thinking of you as being one of the two most reasonable
> > people in talk.origins.
> >
> >
> > But you reverted to your old ways, even going further by
> > criticizing Harshman for discussing science with me and thereby
> > indirectly encouraging me to stay in talk.origns.
> >
> > Nothing in talk.origins could make you happier than my leaving
> > it permanently, eh?
> >
> I would be happy if you stopped posting crap [long grievance rehashes, your
> opinions on same sex marriage,

Oh, I think you were quite happy to see that radical leftist,
Sean Dillon, flaming me for taking a moderate position on same
sex marriage. After all, you once egged Mitchell Coffey on
against me when he brought trumped-up charges of homophobia
against me, by telling him,

Keep his feet to the fire and make it fucking burn!

And, since you posted paranoid comments about Trump that were
exceeded only by Mark Isaak until jonathan started his
"Heil Hitler" thread and he and Dillon topped the two of you,
I think you are quite happy that Dillon also flamed me for
not taking his unsupported word about what happened in
Charlottesville.

You publicly voiced your gratitude for Dillon having returned
after a month's absence. Care to make another expression
of gratitude to him now?

> etc]. That could dramatically reduce your
> bandwidth contributions [~98%]. You do the math [rounding up].

Obviously, you haven't been following the thread where I
debate the evolution of bats, feathers etc. with
Harshman, Casanova and now your buddy Simpson.

> >> https://youtu.be/Dt1RlTjKP0s
> >
> > Sorry, I don't look at videos until someone tells me how long
> > they are and gives a synopsis. Nothing personal, I apply that
> > to everyone.
> >
> > Most functioning adults would do that without being requested,

Note the allusion to Sean Dillon doubting that Trump is a functioning adult.

> > so I hardly ever have to say what I've said just now.
> >
> Not a fan of Gallagher?

Who's Gallagher? Is his name the only "synopsis" you are going to give?

Peter Nyikos

[r3p...@gmail.com]

Didn't say that; what I said is that it was **created** where found, not designed where found.

>
> What a strange world you are living in! I'd say pretty much everyone
> else would infer that the watch was made at a watchmaker's shop, someone
> bought it, took it for a walk and accidentally dropped it on the beach.

These comments seem to forget that Paley's watch represents a sexually reproducing living thing.

>
> And that also seems to be what Paley was thinking: "that the watch must
> have had a maker: that there must have existed, AT SOME TIME, and SOME
> PLACE OTHER...

Your capitalization emphasis refers to the designing process, not the act of creation or implementation by intervention.

>
> >
> > The above commentary is not in any way controversial among historians of science. Up until 1837 the same was Darwin's view of species.
> >
> > Will finish replying ASAP....
> >
> > Ray
> >
> > [snip for now....]
> >

Ray

[Sean Dillon]

Not very well it doesn't, in that it lacks the very qualities that define a reproducing living thing. Specifically, a watch doesn't build more copies of itself, with minor variations.

That is actually THE fatal flaw in Paley's entire argument.

[r3p...@gmail.com]

That's the MAIN POINT of Paley's entire argument: evolution is impossible; design and creation is the ONLY way for a watch to come into existence.

Ray

[erik simpson]

On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 12:55:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, September 23, 2017 at 4:45:03 AM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:

> <...>

> Obviously, you haven't been following the thread where I
> debate the evolution of bats, feathers etc. with
> Harshman, Casanova and now your buddy Simpson.
>

> <...>

What debate about bats? I must have missed it. BTW, are you even interested
in vertebrate paleontology any more? Almost any fossil bat is interesting,
since there are so few. The articles I cited were about the oldest known such fossil, and would have direct bearing on how they evolved. Clearly you weren't aware of it, and equally clearly you didn't even bother looking at the abstract, or even the picture

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, September 22, 2017 at 9:55:05 AM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> <r3p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> >> confident assertion:
> >>
> >> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> >> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> >> as supporting their worldview.
> >>
> >> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> >> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> >> addressed directly to Ray:
> >>
> >> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
> >>> to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
> >>
> >> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
> >> within a population, and hence within a species.
> >
> > Defining micro-evolution doesn't support the same as occurring as I'm sure you would agree.
> >

> I can define a unicorn, but will not find a referent. Alleles do fluctuate
> in frequency due to selection, drift, and flow.

Well put. And, of course, I agree with Ray's 10-yo level comment about
definitions not supporting "the same as occurring" and will hold
him to it.

> >> And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
> >> and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
> >> show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.
> >> Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
> >> heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
> >> I am replying in installments:
> >
> > I'm talking about the primary claim of micro-evolution occurring in the
> > wild among sexually reproducing animal species, known as the Biological
> > Species Concept (BSC).
>

> Yet species in different genera hybridize.

I don't know of any examples, now that the polar bear is securely inside
the genus Ursus. There is talk about it being downgraded to a subspecies
of the brown bear.

The Biological Species Concept is a bit more restrictive than it
should be, because it has to do with interbreeding that actually
takes place in the wild, ignoring the fact that members of species
that are "distinct" due to geographical separation [e.g. lions, tigers]
can and do interbreed in captivity.

> > One cannot use Alan's medical laboratory to support the preceding as Alan
> > attempted to use his medical laboratory to falsify cumulative selection,
> > which John and others rejected.

Didn't this illogical comment register with you, Hemi?


> And bacteria reproduce asexually, making BSC problematic. And they can
> share genetic material across species, also making BSC problematic.

>
> > I've already posted Darwin's **conceptual** model of natural selection,
> > consisting of three inferences THEN micro-evolution occurs. Alan said he
> > sees RMNS in his lab; in reply I said if you can see RMNS as it happens
> > then you are seeing "RMNS," not RMNS. He never answered.
> >

> Why the scare quotes? Rmns collapses two distinct phenomena as Harshman has
> been pointing out. Alan comes up short on the selection portion.

Ray has this habit of treating the concepts to which scientists
attach a term by putting scare quotes around the term. For instance:


"natual selection" = what scientists call natural selection

natural selection = natural selection with any supernatural involvement
in it categorically ruled out


"evolution" = what scientists call evolution

evolution = evolution with any supernatural involvement
in it categorically ruled out


Et cetera. And so, I think you can figure out what he means by "RMNS"
and by RMNS.

> > So, as a matter of fact, Peter uses non-primary phenomena in his attempt
> > to support micro-evolution occurring. The logic here is inverted and thus
> > invalid.

By "non-primary" Ray means "not involving the BSC," having unearthed
goal posts to that effect this time around.

> > IF micro-evolution occurs in the wild, among the BSC, then one
> > can factually assert micro-evolution occurs in non-primary phenomena as well.
> >

> What does that mean? If one population contributes genetic elements to
> another that is evolution by flow. If those elements go to fixation that is
> evolution by drift and/or selection.

> >> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> >> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> >> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.

By the way, the above was by Ray Martinez, and I indented it to show
I was quoting. I was amused to see how you, Hemi, told me to
remove Martin Harran from the list. But it's Ray's list, and the
only reason he didn't also include Kenneth Miller is that he cares
more about whose side someone is on than what he stands for.

That "cares more about..." applies to lots of regulars in talk.origins,
including yourself.

> >> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> >> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
> >>
> >>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> >>> by special creation in real time periodically.
> >>
> >> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> >> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> >> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
> >
> > Ridiculous. If God created one species, and it's proven scientifically,
> > then what is being said is that God created all species. The fact that
> > you don't understand that is a debate killer; it's rudimentary in the
> > eyes of scientists and scholars.

Of course, it is only rudimentary in the eyes of species
immutabilists. The real debate killer is the completely
idiotic "logic" of Ray's. It's like saying that if someone inserts a
glider gun into a "Game of Life" display, he also separately
inserts every single subsequent step in its evolution, and that
it is "rudimentary" that he does NOT have a program in place that
will do all these things for him.

That's Ray's cue to protest that he never posted anything about
the "Game of Life," as though that somehow made HIS logic about
God valid. Have you argued with him long enough to see why I say this,
Hemi?


> God inserts divine finger and creates urlife population. Evolution produces
> rest. Or God intervenes periodically to produce endosymbiosis, Cambrian
> explosion, or human ensoulment. That is a wasteful god, but who am I to
> argue?

Nowhere near as wasteful and pointless as intervening to create, de novo,
a species when all he would have to do is to make a few mutations
in a few reproductive cell molecules, or let nature do almost all
of them while God rested on the seventh day of every week over the
last billion or more years.

> > Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all
> > living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
> > The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as
> > reflecting appearance of design.
>

> As in illusory perception given projected anthropomorphic analogy of
> religious worldview.

A very naive and childish religious worldview at that.

> > If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because
> > real time special creation was accepted when Paley published, what is
> > being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.
> >

> So it was not created at another place and time and dropped there? Did
> Paley see the factory? And what of Adam Smith’s division of labor in
> producing something as simple as a pin? Surely multiple hands would go into
> fashioning a watch. Monotheism?

> >
> > The above commentary is not in any way controversial among historians of
> > science.

Ray has been told innumerable times that Lamarck did NOT agree,
and he predated Paley.

But Ray is the quintessential Usnet Treadmill Salesman, forcing
people umpteen times to repeat the same refutations that he ignores
by going back to his original false claims.

> > Up until 1837 the same was Darwin's view of species.
> >
> > Will finish replying ASAP....

As I've learned from experience, ASAP means whenever Ray thinks
he can reply in a way that he thinks is convincing. In one case
this meant "in half a year" and the reason he replied at all
was that by that time, people had forgotten all the details
of what he had said.

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

> > Ray
> >
> > [snip for now....]
> >
> >

[August Rode]

It's a real pity that watches don't share many attributes with
organisms. They're certainly lacking the types of attributes that make
Paley's analogy useful.

>> Not very well it doesn't, in that it lacks the very qualities that define a reproducing living thing. Specifically, a watch doesn't build more copies of itself, with minor variations.
>>
>> That is actually THE fatal flaw in Paley's entire argument.
>
> That's the MAIN POINT of Paley's entire argument: evolution is impossible; design and creation is the ONLY way for a watch to come into existence.

Design and creation *is* the only way for a watch to come into existence
but it isn't how organisms come into existence at all.

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 3:55:02 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, September 22, 2017 at 9:55:05 AM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > <r3p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > >> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> > >> confident assertion:
> > >>
> > >> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> > >> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> > >> as supporting their worldview.
> > >>
> > >> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> > >> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> > >> addressed directly to Ray:
> > >>
> > >> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>> In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
> > >>> to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
> > >>
> > >> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
> > >> within a population, and hence within a species.
> > >
> > > Defining micro-evolution doesn't support the same as occurring as I'm sure you would agree.
> > >
> > I can define a unicorn, but will not find a referent. Alleles do fluctuate
> > in frequency due to selection, drift, and flow.
>
> Well put. And, of course, I agree with Ray's 10-yo level comment about
> definitions not supporting "the same as occurring" and will hold
> him to it.

Evolutionists in general contend acceptance of the allele change definition of evolution equates to acceptance that micro-evolution occurs.

>
>
> > >> And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
> > >> and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
> > >> show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.
> > >> Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
> > >> heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
> > >> I am replying in installments:
> > >
> > > I'm talking about the primary claim of micro-evolution occurring in the
> > > wild among sexually reproducing animal species, known as the Biological
> > > Species Concept (BSC).
> >
> > Yet species in different genera hybridize.
>
> I don't know of any examples, now that the polar bear is securely inside
> the genus Ursus. There is talk about it being downgraded to a subspecies
> of the brown bear.
>
> The Biological Species Concept is a bit more restrictive than it
> should be, because it has to do with interbreeding that actually
> takes place in the wild, ignoring the fact that members of species
> that are "distinct" due to geographical separation [e.g. lions, tigers]
> can and do interbreed in captivity.
>
>
> > > One cannot use Alan's medical laboratory to support the preceding as Alan
> > > attempted to use his medical laboratory to falsify cumulative selection,
> > > which John and others rejected.
>
> Didn't this illogical comment register with you, Hemi?

You can't have it both ways; that is, you can't say Alan's logic of refuting cumulative selection occurring in the wild via his medical laboratory is invalid then turn around in a different context and say RMNS is shown to occur in the lab and then offer the same as evidence that RMNS and cumulative selection occurs in the wild.

My logic: IF RMNS occurs in the wild among the BSC THEN Darwinists have earned the right to say it happens in the lab among non-primary phenomena. Thus the reverse is rendered illogical: non-primary phenomena cannot be used to say RMNS and cumulative selection occurs in the wild among the BSC.

Once God is shown scientifically to play ANY role in biological production, past or present, the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism are falsified. Interpretations and explanations must, as a consequence, be described in teleological terms in order to convey the fact that causation is supernatural or Intelligent.

>
>
> > God inserts divine finger and creates urlife population. Evolution produces
> > rest. Or God intervenes periodically to produce endosymbiosis, Cambrian
> > explosion, or human ensoulment. That is a wasteful god, but who am I to
> > argue?
>
> Nowhere near as wasteful and pointless as intervening to create, de novo,
> a species when all he would have to do is to make a few mutations
> in a few reproductive cell molecules, or let nature do almost all
> of them while God rested on the seventh day of every week over the
> last billion or more years.
>
>
> > > Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all
> > > living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
> > > The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as
> > > reflecting appearance of design.
> >
> > As in illusory perception given projected anthropomorphic analogy of
> > religious worldview.
>
> A very naive and childish religious worldview at that.

Something an Atheist would say.

>
> > > If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because
> > > real time special creation was accepted when Paley published, what is
> > > being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.
> > >
> > So it was not created at another place and time and dropped there? Did
> > Paley see the factory? And what of Adam Smith’s division of labor in
> > producing something as simple as a pin? Surely multiple hands would go into
> > fashioning a watch. Monotheism?
> > >
> > > The above commentary is not in any way controversial among historians of
> > > science.
>
> Ray has been told innumerable times that Lamarck did NOT agree,
> and he predated Paley.

I've never denied. I've always observed in response: how could ONE naturalist (Lamarck) represent all of science, and not all the other naturalists who rejected Lamarck's claims and agreed with Paley?

>
> But Ray is the quintessential Usnet Treadmill Salesman, forcing
> people umpteen times to repeat the same refutations that he ignores
> by going back to his original false claims.

Completely false.

I pride myself in answering all credible counter-claims and facts.

>
> > > Up until 1837 the same was Darwin's view of species.
> > >
> > > Will finish replying ASAP....
>
> As I've learned from experience, ASAP means whenever Ray thinks
> he can reply in a way that he thinks is convincing. In one case
> this meant "in half a year" and the reason he replied at all
> was that by that time, people had forgotten all the details
> of what he had said.
>

I have replied in this thread. Anyone can fact check and confirm.

Ray

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> confident assertion:
>
> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> as supporting their worldview.
>
> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> addressed directly to Ray:
>
> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> > In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
> > to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
>
> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
> within a population, and hence within a species.
>

> And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
> and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
> show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.
> Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
> heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
> I am replying in installments:
>

> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
>

> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
>
> > That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> > by special creation in real time periodically.
>
> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
>

> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

I've replied to every on-topic claim or point initiated by Peter in this topic, just saying.

Ray

[r3p...@gmail.com]

Paley said they do; Darwin, at one time, for example, completely agreed. This is precisely why Paley 1802 is known commonly in relevant literature as "Paley's Watchmaker." Paley went on to famously conclude that living things far exceed the organized complexity found in a pocket watch.

> They're certainly lacking the types of attributes that make
> Paley's analogy useful.
>
> >> Not very well it doesn't, in that it lacks the very qualities that define a reproducing living thing. Specifically, a watch doesn't build more copies of itself, with minor variations.
> >>
> >> That is actually THE fatal flaw in Paley's entire argument.
> >
> > That's the MAIN POINT of Paley's entire argument: evolution is impossible; design and creation is the ONLY way for a watch to come into existence.
>
> Design and creation *is* the only way for a watch to come into existence
> but it isn't how organisms come into existence at all.

That's the point: It's manifestly impossible for organized complexity to evolve. A watch cannot produce another a watch; rather, it takes a Watchmaker.

Ray

[Sean Dillon]

And yet, an organism CAN create another organism. An organism can even create another organism that is not quite like itself. And those features UTTERLY distinguish an organism from a watch.

If watches had the ability to reproduce with variation, there would cease to be any reason to assume a priori that humans had designed them... unless you witnessed the actual design occurring.

Have we every witnessed the actual design of a living thing occuring?

[August Rode]

Don't really care what Paley said. He's wrong.

> Darwin, at one time, for example, completely agreed. This is precisely why Paley 1802 is known commonly in relevant literature as "Paley's Watchmaker." Paley went on to famously conclude that living things far exceed the organized complexity found in a pocket watch.

Organisms *are* vastly more complex than watches. Since the cognitive
process of design tends to produce designs that are as simple as they
can possibly be, the complexity of organisms is an argument *against*
design, not for it.

>> They're certainly lacking the types of attributes that make
>> Paley's analogy useful.
>>
>>>> Not very well it doesn't, in that it lacks the very qualities that define a reproducing living thing. Specifically, a watch doesn't build more copies of itself, with minor variations.
>>>>
>>>> That is actually THE fatal flaw in Paley's entire argument.
>>>
>>> That's the MAIN POINT of Paley's entire argument: evolution is impossible; design and creation is the ONLY way for a watch to come into existence.
>>
>> Design and creation *is* the only way for a watch to come into existence
>> but it isn't how organisms come into existence at all.
>
> That's the point: It's manifestly impossible for organized complexity to evolve.

Putting my Martinez translator into operation, I translate what you just
wrote as, "I don't see how it's possible for organized complexity to
evolve." I'm forced to translate it that way because it doesn't seem
remotely impossible to me and you have done nothing in 15 years to
demonstrate the impossibility. All you've ever done is to assert it's
supposed impossibility. If you want to continue to stick with your
argument from ignorance, go right ahead but do try to avoid speaking for
everyone.

> A watch cannot produce another a watch; rather, it takes a Watchmaker.

That's fine for watches and watchmakers but organisms are fundamentally
different than watches and the analogy can't be demonstrated to hold.

> Ray
>

[Robert Camp]

On 9/25/17 6:43 PM, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 4:10:02 PM UTC-7, August Rode wrote:
>> On 2017-09-25 18:31, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 3:05:02 PM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
>>>> On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 4:50:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> On Sunday, September 24, 2017 at 12:30:06 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
>>>>>> r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>> On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

<snip>

>>>> That is actually THE fatal flaw in Paley's entire argument.
>>>
>>> That's the MAIN POINT of Paley's entire argument: evolution is impossible; design and creation is the ONLY way for a watch to come into existence.
>>
>> Design and creation *is* the only way for a watch to come into existence
>> but it isn't how organisms come into existence at all.
>
> That's the point: It's manifestly impossible for organized complexity to evolve. A watch cannot produce another a watch; rather, it takes a Watchmaker.

It behooves anyone purporting to write a refutation of Darwinism to
employ the most basic components of sound reason.

How is it that after all these years you still don't know the difference
between a coherent "point" and a staggeringly obvious logical fallacy
(begging the question)?

[Burkhard]

Manufactured = created. The watchmakers I know do not work on the beach

>
>>
>> What a strange world you are living in! I'd say pretty much everyone
>> else would infer that the watch was made at a watchmaker's shop, someone
>> bought it, took it for a walk and accidentally dropped it on the beach.
>
> These comments seem to forget that Paley's watch represents a sexually reproducing living thing.

Doesn't matter. You claim was that that "the watch that Paley found on
the heath was created where he found it". So you build an analogy from
the watch to the living species, and from the properties of the former
to the latter. And that means your argument is indeed based on an
inference we make about the watch, and where it was made.

>
>>
>> And that also seems to be what Paley was thinking: "that the watch must
>> have had a maker: that there must have existed, AT SOME TIME, and SOME
>> PLACE OTHER...
>
> Your capitalization emphasis refers to the designing process, not the act of creation or implementation by intervention.

No, Paley uses the word maker, not not the designer, so it is about the
creation, not just the design stage. Leaving aside that for an
omnipotent deity that can speak things into existence, the human
distinction between designing something and making something is
irrelevant - God does not need planning and then has to build equipment
to put the plan into reality. As I observed before, in your attempt to
preserve your misreading of Paley, you run from one blasphemy int the next.

[Burkhard]

To be fair, apart from the "minor copies", Paley addresses this
explicitly,acknowledging that humans at this point can't build this sort
of thing, but that, while a feast of engineering, this would just be
more complex design and a "near future" option even for humans - and we
are now of course getting at least very close to having self-replicating
machines build, there is one 3d printer e.g. that builds other 3d printers

[Burkhard]

so we are back to intelligent storkism? We see animals reproducing right
before our eyes, without visible interference by third parties.
>
> Ray
>

[r3p...@gmail.com]

What I said was Paley's main implication: its impossible for organized complexity to evolve. You now have two options, repeat your point while declaring victory or explain how I missed your point?

Ray

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 6:35:02 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 3:05:02 PM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
> > On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 4:50:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, September 24, 2017 at 12:30:06 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
> > > > r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > >> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> > > > >> confident assertion:
> > > > >>
> > > > >> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> > > > >> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> > > > >> as supporting their worldview.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> > > > >> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> > > > >> addressed directly to Ray:
> > > > >>
> > > > >> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:

<snip of comments that Hemidactylus and I have dealt with>

> > > > >> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> > > > >> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> > > > >> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.

Your over-the-top insults of this mixed bag of people show
that you want to destroy talk.origins as a medium of
mature exchange of ideas by people who sincerely differ on
evolution.


<small snip>

> > > > >> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> > > > >> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
> > > > >>
> > > > >>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> > > > >>> by special creation in real time periodically.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> > > > >> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> > > > >> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
> > > > >
> > > > > Ridiculous. If God created one species, and it's proven scientifically, then what is being said is that God created all species. The fact that you don't understand that is a debate killer; it's rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars.

Its DENIAL is rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars,
who do not trample on the rules of logic the way you do.
It is obvious from this that you are neither a scientist nor a scholar.

I return to your trampling on rudimentary logic at the end of this post,
from a different angle.

> > > > > Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.

WRONG! a single watch cannot be analogous to a whole species.

> > > > > The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as reflecting appearance of design. If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because real time special creation was accepted when Paley published,

This falsehood has been so often corrected that it must count as
a deliberate lie by you. Lamarck, who predated Paley, is only
one of many exceptions.

> > > > > what is being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.

> > > >
> > > > REally? If you find a watch on the beach, your inference is not only
> > > > that it was designed and manufactured, but that all that happened in
> > > > situ, on the beach?
> > >
> > > Didn't say that; what I said is that it was **created** where found, not designed where found.

Also patently false. The watch was created elsewhere and dropped
on the heath.

> > > >
> > > > What a strange world you are living in! I'd say pretty much everyone
> > > > else would infer that the watch was made at a watchmaker's shop, someone
> > > > bought it, took it for a walk and accidentally dropped it on the beach.
> > >
> > > These comments seem to forget that Paley's watch represents a sexually reproducing living thing.
> >
> > Not very well it doesn't, in that it lacks the very qualities that define a reproducing living thing. Specifically, a watch doesn't build more copies of itself, with minor variations.
> >
> > That is actually THE fatal flaw in Paley's entire argument.
>
> That's the MAIN POINT of Paley's entire argument: evolution is impossible;
design and creation is the ONLY way for a watch to come into existence.

I'd like to see where Paley claimed evolution of biological
organisms [NOT watches] is impossible.

You are just INFERRING it from his argument from design, aren't you?

Paley knew nothing about the fossil record as far as it shedding
light on evolution. NONE of his contemporaries did. Yet it was
primarily the fossil record, with *Archaeopteryx* as its post-Paley
masterpiece, that convinced scientists of the reality of
common descent.

At least, that is what scientists call it; you call it "common descent"
in scare quotes, because without scare quotes, your self-serving
jargon makes the term into a package deal incorporating the claim
that there is NO intervention in evolution, no matter how subtle or rare,
by a supernatural agent.

Darwin was not so reckless as to claim "NO intervention".
All he explicitly denied was the God-belittling claim that
God had to create each separate species *de novo*.

And you have sunk so low, that you think it is elementary logic
that if God created even ONE organism de novo, God was forced
by his very nature to create ALL species of organisms de novo.

Casanova warned you against telling God what he had to do,
but you took that warning as inspiration for you to make
even more demands on the nature of God.

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

[Rolf]

<r3p...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:47b4f6ae-56f5-4f15...@googlegroups.com...

Can you please clarify in your own words what the term "organized
complexity" means?

Evolution is what happens within populations: A population today doesn't
display the same "genetic blueprint" as their ancestors several generations
earlier in time did. Genomes change over time for several reasons, rm&ns
being one of he reasons.

Do you understand what that says? You don't have to agree on the scientific
interpretation of the words.

Rolf
> Ray
>

[Rolf]

<r3p...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:47b4f6ae-56f5-4f15...@googlegroups.com...

Mammals don't reproduce by he same mechanism as watches, don't you know
that? Mammals reproduce by the method of merging biological stuff from two
different entitites, a male and a female, leaving the female to grow a new
entity, a male or a female, or by a chance cell division even more than one
at the same time.

The animal kindom reproduce by natural forces at work, watches are made by
watchmakers. Watches are mechanical devices, not products of biological
processes. Don't you see the fundamental difference? The subject of watches
is irrelevant wrt biology.

Rolf

>
> Ray
>

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 25 Sep 2017 15:41:04 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by erik simpson
<eastsi...@gmail.com>:

I'm just curious where he imagines I debated the evolution
of bats.
--

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

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 12:40:03 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Friday, September 22, 2017 at 6:55:04 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> >> On Friday, September 22, 2017 at 12:55:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 5:45:02 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:

> >>>> Are you talking to Ray, or are you talking to the audience? It's bad
> >>>> form to talk to the audience like that.

Note how Erik counted his chickens before they are hatched. But that's
trivial compared to all has transpired between us since Erik latched
onto me for the first time in months, starting with the very post
where the above two-liner is quoted from.

> >>> What part of
> >>>
> >>> Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> >>> addressed directly to Ray:
> >>>
> >>> didn't you understand?
> >
> > It is singularly appropriate that you should duck this question,
> > much more appropriate than for any other talk.origins regular AFAIK.

You simulated incomprehension of what I wrote here, Hemidactylus,
even though it has more repercussions for you than anything else
I wrote to Erik below, in my preceding two posts.

You are flippantly evading ALL the issues I mentioned above, even the one
in which your earlier evasion was implicitly handled.

> The sommelier suggests a slice of generic cheese wrapped in
> plastic as a proper pairing.

A far more proper pairing would be a hint of recognition of WHY
I said it was singularly appropriate for Erik to duck the same
question you ducked [1], or even a hint of recognition THAT
I said it was singularly appropriate.

[1] Far more appropriate even than for you, despite the fact that
you seriously compromised your integrity on behalf of Erik
when this issue of Erik ducking questions about his SIMULATED [2]
or ALLEGED [3] inability to comprehend plain English text came
to the boiling point.

[2] As on this thread, with you simulating the same inability.

[3] Erik's alleged inability to comprehend things I wrote,
usually blaming it on an alleged but never supported unclearness
by me, was so much a part of his *modus operandi* that for over
a year prior to the boiling point, he was essentially a one-trick
pony. And the evidence of his insincerity on all this was so
strong that THREE people ran interference for him when the
boiling point came: Robert Camp, Mark Isaak, and yourself.

The damage to Camp's credibility was the greatest, but Isaak's
credibility and YOURS were also compromised, especially since
both of you had the example of Camp's fantasy-filled debacle
to learn from.

AND NOW, [4] Erik may well have made it clear what the REAL aim of his
alleged/simulated incomprehension has been all along:
a cover for making endless wild, distorted, and outright false
allegations about me [5] and letting people think that it's
all my fault for being unclear about hundreds of things over
the years.

[4] TODAY, on the same thread about which he feigned incomprehension
in reply to the same post of yours to which I'm replying. How's
that for recent vintage, eh?

[5] Most of the ones of today had no basis in reality and even flew
in the face of what he's seen from me over the years. NONE was
even close to anything that I had ever hinted in all that time.

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

Something I never said, although you tried to turn it into something
I said through a self-serving definition of natural selection that
you conjured up and which I never endorsed.

> then turn around in a different context and say RMNS is shown to occur in the lab

Which it is, but you avoid it by calling it "RMNS" in scare quotes and
giving your private, self-serving of RMNS without the scare quotes.

> and then offer the same as evidence that RMNS and cumulative selection occurs in the wild.

Which I never did. So cease and desist with your massive insinuation
that I did it and was therefore inconsistent.

> My logic: IF RMNS occurs in the wild among the BSC THEN Darwinists have earned the right to say it happens in the lab among non-primary phenomena.

What sorts of high school debating conventions is this asinine
statement based on?

They have the right to say that it happens in the lab because
they OBSERVE it in the most primary phenomena of all: the
bacteria to which it happens.

> Thus the reverse is rendered illogical:

The reverse IS illogical, and not "rendered" illogical by anything
you've said or could say.

> non-primary phenomena cannot be used to say RMNS and cumulative selection occurs in the wild among the BSC.

Again, this is not anything I have ever done, and I'm calling your
bluff: document ONE case of someone in talk.origins making any
such use.

If you can't do it, then you are guilty of wasting everyone's time
with irrelevant wool-gathering and diverting them from focusing on the
numerous despicable things you do, day in and day out, year after year.

> >
> >
> > > And bacteria reproduce asexually, making BSC problematic. And they can
> > > share genetic material across species, also making BSC problematic.
> > >
> > > > I've already posted Darwin's **conceptual** model of natural selection,
> > > > consisting of three inferences THEN micro-evolution occurs. Alan said he
> > > > sees RMNS in his lab; in reply I said if you can see RMNS as it happens
> > > > then you are seeing "RMNS," not RMNS. He never answered.
> > > >
> > > Why the scare quotes? Rmns collapses two distinct phenomena as Harshman has
> > > been pointing out. Alan comes up short on the selection portion.
> >
> > Ray has this habit of treating the concepts to which scientists
> > attach a term by putting scare quotes around the term. For instance:
> >
> >
> > "natual selection" = what scientists call natural selection
> >
> > natural selection = natural selection with any supernatural involvement
> > in it categorically ruled out
> >
> >
> > "evolution" = what scientists call evolution
> >
> > evolution = evolution with any supernatural involvement
> > in it categorically ruled out
> >
> >
> > Et cetera. And so, I think you can figure out what he means by "RMNS"
> > and by RMNS.

And let it be said right now: despite innumerable lies of yours
to the contrary, I argue in favor of what you call "evolution"
in scare quotes, and not in favor of what you call evolution without
the scare quotes.

> > > > So, as a matter of fact, Peter uses non-primary phenomena in his attempt
> > > > to support micro-evolution occurring. The logic here is inverted and thus
> > > > invalid.
> >
> > By "non-primary" Ray means "not involving the BSC," having unearthed
> > goal posts to that effect this time around.

<crickets>

> >
> > > > IF micro-evolution occurs in the wild, among the BSC, then one
> > > > can factually assert micro-evolution occurs in non-primary phenomena as well.
> > > >
> > > What does that mean? If one population contributes genetic elements to
> > > another that is evolution by flow. If those elements go to fixation that is
> > > evolution by drift and/or selection.
> >
> >
> >
> > > >> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> > > >> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> > > >> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
> >
> > By the way, the above was by Ray Martinez, and I indented it to show
> > I was quoting. I was amused to see how you, Hemi, told me to
> > remove Martin Harran from the list. But it's Ray's list, and the
> > only reason he didn't also include Kenneth Miller is that he cares
> > more about whose side someone is on than what he stands for.

<crickets>

Of course. When did anyone suggest otherwise?

You are now abandoning your illogic, but since you didn't acknowledge
its illogic, you are planning to wait until a time my refutation is
no longer easily accessible, and then to indulge in the same illogic,
AREN'T YOU?

> Interpretations and explanations must, as a consequence, be described in teleological terms in order to convey the fact that causation is supernatural or Intelligent.

Not all of them, not by a long shot. Need I bring up the case
of your non-supernatural conception and birth again, for the
twentieth (or more) time?

> >
> >
> > > God inserts divine finger and creates urlife population. Evolution produces
> > > rest. Or God intervenes periodically to produce endosymbiosis, Cambrian
> > > explosion, or human ensoulment. That is a wasteful god, but who am I to
> > > argue?
> >
> > Nowhere near as wasteful and pointless as intervening to create, de novo,
> > a species when all he would have to do is to make a few mutations
> > in a few reproductive cell molecules, or let nature do almost all
> > of them while God rested on the seventh day of every week over the
> > last billion or more years.

The chirping of the crickets is downright deafening here. :-)

> >
> > > > Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all
> > > > living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
> > > > The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as
> > > > reflecting appearance of design.
> > >
> > > As in illusory perception given projected anthropomorphic analogy of
> > > religious worldview.
> >
> > A very naive and childish religious worldview at that.
>
> Something an Atheist would say.

It is something a sane person would say, and I explained
in great detail earlier today, in direct reply to you.

> >
> > > > If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because
> > > > real time special creation was accepted when Paley published, what is
> > > > being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.
> > > >
> > > So it was not created at another place and time and dropped there? Did
> > > Paley see the factory? And what of Adam Smith’s division of labor in
> > > producing something as simple as a pin? Surely multiple hands would go into
> > > fashioning a watch. Monotheism?
> > > >
> > > > The above commentary is not in any way controversial among historians of
> > > > science.
> >
> > Ray has been told innumerable times that Lamarck did NOT agree,
> > and he predated Paley.
>
> I've never denied. I've always observed in response: how could ONE naturalist (Lamarck) represent all of science, and not all the other naturalists who rejected Lamarck's claims and agreed with Paley?

That is NOT what you've always said in response, because Lamarck
is NOT the only person who was mentioned to you in context.

In fact, so many people were mentioned to you that you beat
a shamefaced retreat and moved the goalposts all the way
into the British Isles.

> >
> > But Ray is the quintessential Usnet Treadmill Salesman, forcing
> > people umpteen times to repeat the same refutations that he ignores
> > by going back to his original false claims.
>
> Completely false.

In fact, you've done that JUST NOW, by repeating a completely
discredited piece about "How can ONE..."

> I pride myself in answering all credible counter-claims and facts.

With one illogical, or fallacious, or false, or downright dishonest
answer after another.

Can you name even ONE thing you have said in all this thread that
BOTH directly addressed an objection a person made AND answered it
so well that it laid to rest his objection?

I'm waiting...

> >
> > > > Up until 1837 the same was Darwin's view of species.
> > > >
> > > > Will finish replying ASAP....
> >
> > As I've learned from experience, ASAP means whenever Ray thinks
> > he can reply in a way that he thinks is convincing. In one case
> > this meant "in half a year" and the reason he replied at all
> > was that by that time, people had forgotten all the details
> > of what he had said.
> >
>
> I have replied in this thread.

Not about that one case.

> Anyone can fact check and confirm.

Which reply was that, and in reply to whom?

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

U. of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 8:55:05 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 6:35:02 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 3:05:02 PM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
> > > On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 4:50:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, September 24, 2017 at 12:30:06 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
> > > > > r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > >> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> > > > > >> confident assertion:
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> > > > > >> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> > > > > >> as supporting their worldview.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> > > > > >> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> > > > > >> addressed directly to Ray:
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> <snip of comments that Hemidactylus and I have dealt with>
>
>
> > > > > >> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> > > > > >> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> > > > > >> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
>
> Your over-the-top insults of this mixed bag of people show
> that you want to destroy talk.origins as a medium of
> mature exchange of ideas by people who sincerely differ on
> evolution.

I'm a no-name nobody, I have no such powers; and as a matter of fact I haven't engaged in any trollish invective or insults.

I simply point out: alleged Christians, accepting claims concerning the origin of species, produced by the assumptions of Naturalism, equates to egregious contradiction and blasphemy.

>
>
> <small snip>
>
> > > > > >> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> > > > > >> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> > > > > >>> by special creation in real time periodically.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> > > > > >> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> > > > > >> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Ridiculous. If God created one species, and it's proven scientifically, then what is being said is that God created all species. The fact that you don't understand that is a debate killer; it's rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars.
>
> Its DENIAL is rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars,
> who do not trample on the rules of logic the way you do.
> It is obvious from this that you are neither a scientist nor a scholar.

Your comments show how ignorant you are and that you're completely unaware of the fact: Science today does not accept any pro-teleological claim. Yet science prior to the rise of Darwinism accepted supernatural causation exclusively. The logic of causation mutual exclusivity seen clearly in the preceding facts. Moreover, Peter Nyikos completely rejects design existing in nature. So his view supports causation mutual exclusivity.

Ray

(snip for now....)

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 8:55:05 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip material addressed previously....]

>
>
>
> > > > > > Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
>
> WRONG! a single watch cannot be analogous to a whole species.

Any given sexually reproducing animal/also known as an organism (= Paley's watch) belongs to a species or population of like individuals. Definitely a SHEESH moment here since the point is SO BASIC.

Peter: You've revealed that you're completely ignorant of Paley 101----COMPLETELY. What I'm saying isn't the least bit controversial among history of science scholars. Why don't you toddle over to the history of science department at your university and ask the resident professor?

In today's understanding: Paley's watch, as defined above = the Biological Species Concept.

>
>
> > > > > > The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as reflecting appearance of design. If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because real time special creation was accepted when Paley published,
>
> This falsehood has been so often corrected that it must count as
> a deliberate lie by you. Lamarck, who predated Paley, is only
> one of many exceptions.

Where did you obtain the idea that Lamarck 1809 enjoyed ANY scientific acceptance during his lifetime? And where did you obtain the idea that science accepted species mutability before the rise of Darwinism?

I've asked two straightforward questions. Let's see if I get two straightforward answers?

>
>
> > > > > > what is being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.
>
> > > > >
> > > > > REally? If you find a watch on the beach, your inference is not only
> > > > > that it was designed and manufactured, but that all that happened in
> > > > > situ, on the beach?
> > > >
> > > > Didn't say that; what I said is that it was **created** where found, not designed where found.
>
> Also patently false. The watch was created elsewhere and dropped
> on the heath.

Laughable ignorance of Paley 1802.

When Paley said he happened upon a watch lying on a heath ALL HE IS SAYING IS THAT HE ENCOUNTERED AN ANIMAL IN THE WILD!

The watch represents a sexually reproducing animal, which belongs to a species. There's no shortage of scholars who say Darwin 1859 is an answer to Paley 1802; thus Darwin's title "on the origin of SPECIES by means of natural selection." Darwin said species or Paley's "watch" (note the quote marks) as found on the heath or in the wild does not originate from independent creation (Darwin 1859:6; London: John Murray) but from a previously living species by means of natural selection.

>
>
> > > > >
> > > > > What a strange world you are living in! I'd say pretty much everyone
> > > > > else would infer that the watch was made at a watchmaker's shop, someone
> > > > > bought it, took it for a walk and accidentally dropped it on the beach.
> > > >
> > > > These comments seem to forget that Paley's watch represents a sexually reproducing living thing.
> > >
> > > Not very well it doesn't, in that it lacks the very qualities that define a reproducing living thing. Specifically, a watch doesn't build more copies of itself, with minor variations.
> > >
> > > That is actually THE fatal flaw in Paley's entire argument.
> >
> > That's the MAIN POINT of Paley's entire argument: evolution is impossible;
> design and creation is the ONLY way for a watch to come into existence.
>
> I'd like to see where Paley claimed evolution of biological
> organisms [NOT watches] is impossible.

Paley 1802 was a preemptive reply to Hume and others including Erasmus Darwin. Both had advocated the CONCEPT of evolution: species originating new species.

Ask Burkhard.

>
> You are just INFERRING it from his argument from design, aren't you?

It's his MAIN IMPLICATION. When Hume and E. Darwin advocated the CONCEPT of evolution Paley got boiling mad. He rightly saw that IF evolution became accepted then his God would be out of business, relegated to the unemployment line. The motivating force behind his Natural Theology was a desire to stamp out the concept of evolution via reminding naturalists that living things are far more complex than a pocket watch and the same, by implication, COULD NOT have evolved.

>
> Paley knew nothing about the fossil record as far as it shedding
> light on evolution. NONE of his contemporaries did. Yet it was
> primarily the fossil record, with *Archaeopteryx* as its post-Paley
> masterpiece, that convinced scientists of the reality of
> common descent.

All this says is that discovery of gradation similarity means evolution has occurred. Yet Darwin told us that when he published science accepted EACH SPECIES created independently. So discovery of gradation similarity does NOT mean evolution has occurred because each species was already held created by science. The evidence of gradation similarity, if unveiled at the time, would only mean that God created a line of similar species.

>
> At least, that is what scientists call it; you call it "common descent"
> in scare quotes, because without scare quotes, your self-serving
> jargon makes the term into a package deal incorporating the claim
> that there is NO intervention in evolution, no matter how subtle or rare,
> by a supernatural agent.

The phrase _common descent_ is a phrase belonging to terminology describing origin of species claims produced by the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism. These assumptions and claims say ALL biological production originates from material nature itself, not from immaterial Divine power operating in nature periodically, originating in heaven. So any teleological claim that assumes common descent true, to any degree, is falsified by acceptance of common descent because common descent was produced in service to the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism.

In essence: linear or horizontal causation (includes branching) contradicts vertical causation inferred from design. IF true THEN the former is falsified and must be re-conveyed in teleological terms to reflect the fact that God is shown to exist and must be the true First Cause, not abiogenesis.

Ray

(snip for now....)

[r3p...@gmail.com]

Utterly ridiculous. Darwin 1859 has no role for God in biological production from the present to First Cause (hundreds of millions of years). That means no intervention. If you reject this basic and easily verifiable fact then support what you say from the Origin....waiting.

Ray

[Peter Nyikos]

By yourself, no; but you have many willing allies among the atheists
who are already hounding much more honest and sincere Christians
than you, such as the ones you have named.

And they are only too happy to have someone like you, who claims
to be an evangelical Protestant and a creationist [1] as someone to
whom to compare the people you named, EXCEPT for Martin Harran,
who is neither an evangelical Protestant nor a creationist.

> I have no such powers;

Yes, you do; and besides the atheists, there are people who claim
that their religion, or lack of it, is nobody's business, but who
are otherwise exactly like the atheists I talked about. Many of them,
including Hemidactylus and Oxyaena [formerly Thinaxodon], right on this
thread, are busy at the destructive campaign I described above.

> and as a matter of fact I haven't engaged in any trollish invective
or insults.

Not against militant atheists, I'll give you that; but you've done
it many times against me, with trumped-up and demonstrably fallacious
charges of me being an "Atheist", and you did it RIGHT UP THERE!
[Keywords: confused, deluded, traitors]

> I simply point out: alleged Christians,

As are you. You've been singularly tight-lipped about your alleged
Christianity. I've never even seen you say whether you converted to
evangelical Protestantism [IF you ever did] through reading, or
whether you had a mentor who played a crucial role in your conversion
from Roman Catholicism. [If you did, who was [s]he?]

> accepting claims concerning the origin of species, produced by the assumptions of Naturalism, equates to egregious contradiction and blasphemy.

You are going WAY out on a limb here. How do you know they are accepting
claims concerning the origin of species on that basis, as opposed to
simply accepting "claims about the origin of species," in scare quotes?

As you can see, I've caught on to your use of scare quotes, and so
you cannot honestly pretend not to know what I meant with my
otherwise bizarre talk just now.

> >
> >
> > <small snip>
> >
> > > > > > >> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> > > > > > >> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> > > > > > >>> by special creation in real time periodically.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> > > > > > >> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> > > > > > >> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Ridiculous. If God created one species, and it's proven scientifically, then what is being said is that God created all species. The fact that you don't understand that is a debate killer; it's rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars.
> >
> > Its DENIAL is rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars,
> > who do not trample on the rules of logic the way you do.
> > It is obvious from this that you are neither a scientist nor a scholar.
>
> Your comments show how ignorant you are

You completely fail to justify this comment. In fact, comments like
these are the equivalent of the little boy who cried "Wolf", and
somehow the wolf never shows up.

> and that you're completely unaware of the fact: Science today does not accept any pro-teleological claim.

It is you who are ignorant: anthropology and the social sciences DO
accept teleological claims about why human beings act the way they do.

> Yet science prior to the rise of Darwinism accepted supernatural causation exclusively.

There you go again: your shamefaced retreat to the British Isles for
what "science" allegedly accepted is made possible by the fact that
my comments to this effect are not in plain sight.

Truly, you are the quintessential Usenet Treadmill Salesman.
You keep putting people through the same old treadmill of refuting
falsehoods that they've already refuted many times.

>The logic of causation mutual exclusivity seen clearly in the preceding facts.

More Usenet Treadmill Salesmanship.

> Moreover, Peter Nyikos completely rejects design existing in nature.

This is a bare-faced lie, in defiance of at least a dozen separarate
refutations by me.

Go on, accuse me of "Empty assertion" because I haven't documented
any of these incidents on the spot.

If I document them next time, will you abandon the thread, and set
up a new thread repeating the same lies that you spewed when you
fled from "Talk.Logic" and set up a new thread about which you
wept crocodile tears ("It pains me to ...").

Go ahead, sweeten the pot by accusing me of another "Empty assertion,"
like you did so often on your last post to "Talk.Logic", on the
grounds that I didn't post a link to that "crocodile tear" thread,
or even <gasp> quote the Subject: line from it.

> So his view supports causation mutual exclusivity.

So you go on bearing false witness against me, on slanderous grounds.
So you go on violating Jesus's commandment against bearing false
witness.

Truly, you are a poster boy for any secularist who wants
to lump you in with the Inquisitors -- them for being "murderers"
and you for being a "slanderer".

When will you admit that the NT does NOT call the Inquisitors "murderers"
and that calling capital punishment "murder" is not only un-Biblical,
it is ANTI-Biblical?

Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

Aha! A fortified port. Good call. I detect some wafting of exasperation and
indignation, coupled with a faint trace of targeted conciliation. Olives
make for a good coupling with this one, as a branching elsethread shows.

[Ernest Major]

On 26/09/2017 05:00, Burkhard wrote:
> so we are back to intelligent storkism? We see animals reproducing right
> before our eyes, without visible interference by third parties.

Ray was one-upped ten days back.

See

mid:e3789feb-3151-4b68...@googlegroups.com

which claims "And don't forget the mathematics of development to
adulthood too. That's also impossible on evolutionist terms."

Which I interpret to be a denial of organismal development as a natural
process.

--
alias Ernest Major

[r3p...@gmail.com]

Hounding them for what?

>
> And they are only too happy to have someone like you, who claims
> to be an evangelical Protestant and a creationist [1] as someone to
> whom to compare the people you named, EXCEPT for Martin Harran,
> who is neither an evangelical Protestant nor a creationist.
>

Too ridiculous to even comment on.

>
> > I have no such powers;
>
> Yes, you do; and besides the atheists, there are people who claim
> that their religion, or lack of it, is nobody's business, but who
> are otherwise exactly like the atheists I talked about.

Persons who claim Theism or Christianity then insist their faith is private are actually attempting to have the best of both worlds, the other world being secularism. Yet the Bible is clear: a believer cannot serve two masters, but only one, God or Mammon. Invariably these are serving Mammon----that's why their faith is private because its counterfeit and they know it. And your comparison to Atheists here is too ambiguous and unspecified as to the similarities.

> Many of them,
> including Hemidactylus and Oxyaena [formerly Thinaxodon], right on this
> thread, are busy at the destructive campaign I described above.
>

What exactly is their goal?

> > and as a matter of fact I haven't engaged in any trollish invective
> or insults.
>
> Not against militant atheists, I'll give you that; but you've done
> it many times against me, with trumped-up and demonstrably fallacious
> charges of me being an "Atheist", and you did it RIGHT UP THERE!
> [Keywords: confused, deluded, traitors]
>

I simply observe that you accept the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism to explain nature and evidence, which said assumptions are pro-Atheism. Then I observe that your acceptance of epistemological Naturalism contradicts your denial of Atheism as your worldview.

Ray

(Will finish replying ASAP)

[Burkhard]

Of course one can have it "both ways" on this", the question is what is
claimed in each case, and what type of evidence is required to
substantiate that claim.

The problem with Alan's approach is not that he uses evidence from a
laboratory, it is that a) the specific type of scenario that he
describes - intelligently designed measures to prevent evolution from
occurring - is not generaliseable the way his argument requires, and b)
the formal model that he builds even for this scenario just does not
selection pressures in variable strength.

He could as well have chosen an example from sexually reproducing species.

His claim is one of impossibility - and that is a universal claim that
requires that any case study or example can be generalized to all cases,
whereas the opposite claim is an existential claim (it does happen at
least sometimes) for which a single example is sufficient.

>
> My logic: IF RMNS occurs in the wild among the BSC THEN Darwinists have earned the right to say it happens in the lab among non-primary phenomena.

Good that you preface "logic" with "my", as it sure is nobody else'.
Whether or not we observe evolution in the lab is true or false
depending on what we observe in the lab.

Now that is terribly muddled, but in an interesting way.

The first issue is the nature of causation. That is a philosophical, or
if you prefer theological question that sidelines the issue of
methodological naturalism. So one and the same statement of a natural
law, derived through the precipices of methodological naturalism, can be
interpreted by a theistically inclined person as being "ultimately"
supernatural in nature, or by a materialistically or atheistically
inclined person as purely naturalistic. In both cases, something is
added to the scientific theory as formulated, in both cases, the
empirical content, that is the set of predictions of the theory, and the
set of prohibitions of the theory, remains the same.

So if we start with a formulation of (parts of) Newtonian particle
physics, e.g.

F(net) = MA

a theist can add "..and this is because God designed it like this" or
indeed "...and this is really God making t so in every instant"
and an atheist can add "...and this all there is to it".

In this case, God is not shown to play a role scientifically, but also
not shown not to play a role scientifically, both extensions are
consistent with the scientific data.

A very different question would be the claim to have shown
scientifically that God plays a role in biological production.

First, your contention that once ANY role is shown, this would imply
that he's involved all the time, is simply wrong. There are lots of
perfectly consistent conception of deities by which he, she or they
produce some life forms but not others, at some point in history but not
others. So while some Christians might want to argue that God created
the prototype of any species, they might be reluctant to say that he is
directly and causally involved now when two people reproduce (apart,
maybe, in the philosophical sense noted above) Now if we assume, for
the sake of the argument, that such an involvement of a deity in the
creation of one species were shown, you would have to show this
separately for all species? Not quite either. What you would have is a
shift of burden of proof. So once we agreed on sound scientific grounds
that say a God created directly the platypus, we'd probably accept that
he also created the kangaroo until shown otherwise.

Second, this presumed scientific proof could indeed involve a
teleological argument, but need not be teleological in nature. These are
two rather different issues, however connected in an interesting way.

If I were to observe a credible miracle, it might be that the
observation of it happening is all that I need: One moment I did not
have an arm (I had lost it in an accident), suddenly I have an arm
again. I assume that this must be due to divine intervention, but I
can;t say why the goddess chose to restore my arm. She may or may not
have had a telos, or goal in doing this - rewarding me, rewarding a
third party who prayed for me, ensuring that I'm capable of smiting her
enemies with great efficiency etc etc, but none of this forms part of
the explanation at this point. So while the explanation evokes
supernatural causality, it is not teleological .

The converse is also true, teleological explanations can be entirely
materialistic. Why do Great Danes now have a much higher rate of hip
dysplasia? Because breeders selected then over generations for long
necks and big heads, with the goal of winning prizes in competitions and
getting more money for them. A teleological explanation, but not a
supernatural one.

So conceptually or logically, these two issues are independent. I can
accept divine causation of species without having as a result to use
teleological explanations, and vice versa.

In practical terms though, there is a connection. If the goal is indeed
to "prove Gods involvement scientifically", then a proper teleological
argument is the best candidate to achieve this. So once you can show
that specific properties of specific organisms can be better predicted
because you know the intended outcome, then you have indeed a superior
theory. So a great scientifically valid teleological theory of species
origin would produce something like: We know from an independent source
that god prefers species A over species B, and wants the former to
flourish and the latter to perish. Therefore we can expect that species
A will only ever have traits that allow it to attack B, and B will never
have traits to evade A, then the prediction of the teleological theory
contradict the predictions of the evolutionary theory (where predator
prey dynamics should result in a mix of helpful traits in both species,
e.g. one defensive and one offensive). Now the two theories have
different empirical content (different predictions), we can through
observation decide which one fits the data better. If we really
observe that A outperforms B on all criteria, this favours the former
theory over the latter - now and only now, the term "god" has an
explanatory role and earns its keep.

The last creationist who at least tried to do something like that was
John Ray. He really wanted to link specific aspects of specific species
to specific goals that God according to the Bible has. Problem was that
once he tried to do this, the designer started to look less and less
compatible with the Christian god. I'd say that was the high water mark
of creationism - after that they have been in retreat, and Paley for
instance doesn't even try to link specific aspects of the Christian
deity to specific aspects of some species - his argument only supports
"some" designer, and therefore can;t produce any longer teleological
explanations of specific aspects of an organism that science demands,
and that the Theory of Evolution delivers.

[Sean Dillon]

On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 6:50:05 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 8:55:05 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip material addressed previously....]
>
> >
> >
> >
> > > > > > > Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
> >
> > WRONG! a single watch cannot be analogous to a whole species.
>
> Any given sexually reproducing animal/also known as an organism (= Paley's watch) belongs to a species or population of like individuals. Definitely a SHEESH moment here since the point is SO BASIC.
>
> Peter: You've revealed that you're completely ignorant of Paley 101----COMPLETELY. What I'm saying isn't the least bit controversial among history of science scholars. Why don't you toddle over to the history of science department at your university and ask the resident professor?
>
> In today's understanding: Paley's watch, as defined above = the Biological Species Concept.

Setting aside the substance of that claim (such as it is), you're once again abusing terminology.

The Biological Species Concept is the CONCEPT of defining a species as an interbreeding population. You keep using "Biological Species Concept" as though that was the species itself. It isn't.

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 6:20:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip material addressed previously....]

>
> > I simply point out: alleged Christians,
>
> As are you. You've been singularly tight-lipped about your alleged
> Christianity. I've never even seen you say whether you converted to
> evangelical Protestantism [IF you ever did] through reading, or
> whether you had a mentor who played a crucial role in your conversion
> from Roman Catholicism. [If you did, who was [s]he?]

So Peter evades again how I identify Atheism factually and objectively via a request to provide some personal religious back-round. There's nothing wrong with the request per se so I'll comply and hope that Peter will address on-topic points.

I was raised in semi-strict Roman Catholicism; was befriended by a person who was about ten years older than me, which made them about 30 years of age. This person imparted the basics of getting started with Jesus; shortly thereafter I faced a sudden personal crisis, drew on the exact message and had the classic born-again conversion experience on the steps of my neighborhood diocese. Because the conversion experience happened on the steps outside of the church, and not inside, I saw that as a message from Christ to abandon the RCC and become a Protestant. I've been a Protestant ever since, and was able to play an influential role in getting my parents to abandon the RCC and become Protestants as well about 20 years later.

That's all you get. If you abandon topic then I'm out of here.

>
>
> > I simply point out: alleged Christians, accepting claims concerning the origin of species, produced by the assumptions of Naturalism, equates to egregious contradiction and blasphemy.

> >
> You are going WAY out on a limb here. How do you know they are accepting
> claims concerning the origin of species on that basis, as opposed to
> simply accepting "claims about the origin of species," in scare quotes?

I didn't use scare quotes. And I'm not sure that we agree as to what scare quotes actually are? And I don't like the phrase. So we are immediately off-topic.

I believe most Christians who accept evolution do so because they don't want to be viewed as a Fundamentalist. Darwinists have succeeded in blackmailing Christians into accepting evolutionary theory. If they refuse they will be branded a Fundamentalist, that is, the dumbest and most unattractive person in Western society (not counting the white supremacist). Moreover, Darwinian educators threaten young Christians into accepting evolution by telling them they will not graduate college unless evolution is embraced and Creationism abandoned. They are then indoctrinated with a subjective view of evolution that's asserted not to contradict their faith. In other words, they lie to their faces, however.

There's no excuse. Any reasonably intelligent person COULD know and SHOULD know that evolution is actually an explanation of evidence that assumes epistemological Naturalism true. Because evolution is an EXPLANATION of evidence that contradicts Bible and Christianity egregiously, Christians are OBLIGATED to accept an EXPLANATION of evidence that supports Bible and Christianity. Again, since we are talking about an EXPLANATION of evidence there's no reason for Christians to accept a pro-Naturalism explanation as opposed to a pro-Supernaturalism explanation of the same evidence. These facts dictate that Christian Evolutionists have no excuse. They should yes Darwinian educators to death in order to get their degrees then maintain the teleological explanation of evidence as true, the evolutionary explanation as false. Some do, but most don't because they are traitors who have bowed their knee to Baal (= Darwin and his modern henchmen).

Ray

(resume replying ASAP....)

[Sean Dillon]

Ray, would you please do me the kindness of defining what "epistemological naturalism" means, as you understand it? And in particular, could you please clarify how that contrasts with "metaphysical naturalism" and "methodological naturalism"?

[r3p...@gmail.com]

Epistemological Naturalism says nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, must be interpreted and explained as originating from material nature itself.

Metaphysical Naturalism says material nature itself had a natural or material origin, and not an immaterial or supernatural origin.

Methodological Naturalism is a convoluted concept with no clear meaning. Refer to the Dover trial and the length of time it took the Court to assign or stipulate a meaning.

Ray

[r3p...@gmail.com]

Addendum:

Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.

Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.

Ray

[Peter Nyikos]

For anything they can come up with, but especially for saying things
that can be spin-doctored into misrepresentations that put them
into a bad light. An example is your gross misrepresentation of the
people you named up there.

Some people will not do even that much: they will shower them
with baseless insults like the ones Oxyaena and Wolffan shower
me with. And the others, including you, will play "see no evil,
hear no evil, speak no evil" about them and about the people
who encourage them, such as Hemidactylus.

After all, why should you support "traitors" against such people?

> >
> > And they are only too happy to have someone like you, who claims
> > to be an evangelical Protestant and a creationist [1] as someone to
> > whom to compare the people you named, EXCEPT for Martin Harran,
> > who is neither an evangelical Protestant nor a creationist.
> >
>
> Too ridiculous to even comment on.

Too truthful for you to be able to comment on it.

Don't play poker: your bluffs are just too transparent.

> >
> > > I have no such powers;
> >
> > Yes, you do; and besides the atheists, there are people who claim
> > that their religion, or lack of it, is nobody's business, but who
> > are otherwise exactly like the atheists I talked about.
>
> Persons who claim Theism or Christianity then insist their faith is private

Who among the people you labeled "traitors" fits that descriptiion?
Martin Harran claims to be a Roman Catholic. I've never seen Kleinman
claim his faith is private, and the others (except maybe Steady Eddie)
are evangelical Protestants, aren't they?

> are actually attempting to have the best of both worlds, the other world being secularism. Yet the Bible is clear: a believer cannot serve two masters, but only one, God or Mammon.

What is your private definition of the word "Mammon"?

> Invariably these are serving Mammon----that's why their faith is private because its counterfeit and they know it.

Sickeningly self-serving definition of "insist their faith is private,"
noted. Is ANY derogatory claim you make free of such misleading mental
reservations?


What they KNOW is that there is overwhelming evidence of "evolution"
to an extent that is anathema to you. [1] By "evolution" in scare quotes
I mean what you do: "common descent" [also in scare quotes] to some
extent, BUT not denying God a deciding role in that common descent.

You THINK their faith is counterfeit because you define "counterfeit
faith" as not accepting YOUR far-out doctrine that God poofs
every species into existence. And of course, they do know that
they do not accept your opinion, which you elevate into a doctrine.

[1] Some only accept a bit of "common descent", like some subset
of the horse family where the gradual changes are too gradual
to require God's poofing each successive species into existence
while sometimes allowing "last year's model" to go on thriving for some time.

> And your comparison to Atheists here is too ambiguous and unspecified as to the similarities.

Which of the above forms of hounding of "traitors" do you NOT actively
engage in, or at least endorse?

>
> > Many of them,
> > including Hemidactylus and Oxyaena [formerly Thinaxodon], right on this
> > thread, are busy at the destructive campaign I described above.
> >
>
> What exactly is their goal?

The same as yours: to discredit me and to make me unpopular.

And if I were to leave talk.origins, you and they would redouble
y'all's efforts against anyone you call a "traitor". Casanova and
jillery have been doing an aggressive job against Steady Eddie
on a thread Eddie began,

Evolutionary Theorist Concedes: Evolution "Largely Avoids"
Biggest Questions of Biological Origins

and if I didn't keep you busy, you'd be only too glad to help
them against "Steady Eddie the traitor," wouldn't you?

>
> > > and as a matter of fact I haven't engaged in any trollish invective
> > or insults.
> >
> > Not against militant atheists, I'll give you that; but you've done
> > it many times against me, with trumped-up and demonstrably fallacious
> > charges of me being an "Atheist", and you did it RIGHT UP THERE!
> > [Keywords: confused, deluded, traitors]
> >
>
> I simply observe that you accept the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism

There is no such observation, you craven libeler.

> to explain nature and evidence,

Liar.

> which said assumptions are pro-Atheism. Then I observe that your acceptance of epistemological Naturalism contradicts your denial of Atheism as your worldview.

This is a perfect example of you hounding ME: you keep telling lies
about me that you've never even TRIED to document, and pretending
you never saw long explanations from me about WHY they are lies.

And, like I said, once I am gone, you can be counted on to treat
the "traitors" you named up there the same way. And I doubt that
they will have as much fortitude as I have. They will see that
they might as well be arguing with stone walls, leaving you
and your allies against them in sole possession of talk.origins.

Peter Nyikos

> Ray
>
> (Will finish replying ASAP)

But you will NEVER try to justify your bizarre claim about
what the NT tells about Inquisitors. [see the very end of
what you left in] And none of your Atheist
allies is interested in pressuring you about it, because they
are only too happy to go along with your flaming of me and
of those "traitors."

Peter Nyikos

[Sean Dillon]

Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.

Of course, it doesn't. There is a difference between ruling out the existence of the supernatural, and saying that we only have the capability of SCIENTIFICALLY STUDYING that which is natural. Because that is the extent of science's epistemological naturalism... that SCIENCE can only study the natural, not that the supernatural is unknowable or unstudy-able OUTSIDE of science. Science makes no such claim.

[Sean Dillon]

Methodological Naturalism really isn't that convoluted. It is simply the act of only considering natural explanations for natural phenomena. Methodological Naturalism isn't an a priori requirement of the scientific method, but rather an unavoidable result of following the scientific method, in that there are no falsifiable tests of supernaturalism. Therefore, explanations that depend upon supernaturalism are unavoidably excluded. Very much like epistemological naturalism (to which it is closely related), it does NOT presume that the supernatural does not exist, or -- if it exists -- that it cannot be studied by means other than science.

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 21:18:11 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by r3p...@gmail.com:

>Addendum:
>
>Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.

Yep.

>Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.

Correct, since if the supernatural is allowed literally
*anything* is possible, and nothing can explain anything
(example: "Goddidit" tells us nothing). This would be a Bad
Thing (TM), although I doubt you can see why.

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 20:53:54 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by r3p...@gmail.com:

>Epistemological Naturalism says nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, must be interpreted and explained as originating from material nature itself.
>
>Metaphysical Naturalism says material nature itself had a natural or material origin, and not an immaterial or supernatural origin.
>
>Methodological Naturalism is a convoluted concept with no clear meaning.

Sorry, but that's wrong; methodological naturalism simply
dictates that methods used be derived from nature and look
for natural causes, which is why science is mute on the
subject of religion and the supernatural. Not really rocket
science...

>Refer to the Dover trial and the length of time it took the Court to assign or stipulate a meaning.

What makes you think the methods of science are related to
anything said by a judge?

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 08:57:09 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Sean Dillon
<seand...@gmail.com>:

>On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Addendum:
>>
>> Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
>>
>> Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
>>
>> Ray
>
>Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.

I don't think his statement involves metaphysical
naturalism; it merely notes how science works.

>Of course, it doesn't. There is a difference between ruling out the existence of the supernatural, and saying that we only have the capability of SCIENTIFICALLY STUDYING that which is natural.

OK, I see where you're going. But I stand by my statement.

> Because that is the extent of science's epistemological naturalism... that SCIENCE can only study the natural, not that the supernatural is unknowable or unstudy-able OUTSIDE of science. Science makes no such claim.

No, it doesn't; it ignores that area, with good reason.

[Rolf]

<r3p...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:881bbb26-db3d-4f21...@googlegroups.com...

Creationism is an insane idea but keeps the faithful happy in their
delusion.

Rolf

[Rolf]

<r3p...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:132f326e-e1a4-4224...@googlegroups.com...

Supernature always default to a useless assumption, unless you need a
religious solution.

Rolf

[Burkhard]

Ehh, no. Epistemological naturalism is a term of art in philosophy,
following W.v.O Quine’s seminal 1969 paper, “Epistemology Naturalized”
that describes, unsurprisingly, one specific approach to epistemology,
that is our theories of how we acquire knowledge.

Epistemological naturalism rejects one or more of the key tenets of
traditional naturalism (in the tradition of e.g. Descarts or Kant), that
is that
a) epistemology is an independent and autonomous field of study
(instead, in epsitemological naturalism, results from the sciences, in
particular cognitive science, should inform epistemology)
b) and related to this, epistemology is not an empirical endeavor, but
searches for a priori truth
and finally
c) epistemology is normative, that is it tells us what we should do to
get to the truth (instead, epistemological naturalism is descriptive,
it tells us what people do when they make truth claims)

There is a very good and not too technical description of
epistemological naturalism in Patrick Rysiew "Naturalism in
Epistemology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (so open access
online), which also has a historical part.

What you call "epistemological naturalism" is not something that a
philosopher would recognize, but it looks a little bit like a weird
version of methodological naturalism (depending on how the "must" is
interpreted.

[Sean Dillon]

On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 11:50:03 AM UTC-5, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 08:57:09 -0700 (PDT), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Sean Dillon
> <seand...@gmail.com>:
>
> >On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> Addendum:
> >>
> >> Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
> >>
> >> Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
> >>
> >> Ray
> >
> >Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
>
> I don't think his statement involves metaphysical
> naturalism; it merely notes how science works.

I guess we'd have to ask Ray whether he meant that the supernatural is ruled out for study, or ruled to be non-existent. In my experience, he is antsy to conflate the two.

[Rolf]

<r3p...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7641b85d-65bb-40ca...@googlegroups.com...

> On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 6:20:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip material addressed previously....]
>
>>
>> > I simply point out: alleged Christians,
>>
>> As are you. You've been singularly tight-lipped about your alleged
>> Christianity. I've never even seen you say whether you converted to
>> evangelical Protestantism [IF you ever did] through reading, or
>> whether you had a mentor who played a crucial role in your conversion
>> from Roman Catholicism. [If you did, who was [s]he?]
>
> So Peter evades again how I identify Atheism factually and objectively via
> a request to provide some personal religious back-round. There's nothing
> wrong with the request per se so I'll comply and hope that Peter will
> address on-topic points.
>
> I was raised in semi-strict Roman Catholicism; was befriended by a person
> who was about ten years older than me, which made them about 30 years of
> age. This person imparted the basics of getting started with Jesus;
> shortly thereafter I faced a sudden personal crisis, drew on the exact
> message and had the classic born-again conversion experience on the steps
> of my neighborhood diocese. Because the conversion experience happened on
> the steps outside of the church, and not inside, I saw that as a message
> from Christ to abandon the RCC and become a Protestant.

You got the message wrong.

I was shielded from religous nonsense from the very beginning. But as soon
as I learned to read, I immediately recognized the Bible for what it is.
That vaccinated me against the religions, but not against measles, mumps et
cetera. Guess the Lord held and still holding his hand over me. Why should I
reach 87 with hardly any disease at all? There is a god in my life, but none
that Ray would recognize.

Rolf

Rolf

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, September 23, 2017 at 4:30:04 AM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> *Hemidactylus* <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

> > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> >> confident assertion:
> >>
> >> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> >> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> >> as supporting their worldview.
> >>
> >> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> >> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> >> addressed directly to Ray:
> >>
> >> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >>

> >>> In reality, there's no evidence supporting micro-evolution
> >>> to have ever occurred on this planet, not even one time.
> >>
> >> Micro-evolution, by the BIOLOGICAL definition, refers to evolution
> >> within a population, and hence within a species.
> >>

> > And by extension the evolution of new species less likely to freely
> > interbreed with closely related populations due to behavioral, physical, or
> > genic incompatibility. And don’t forget discrete morphological jumps as in
> > pocket gopher external pouches.

> >>
> >> And so, you are ignoring innumerable experiments
> >> and unfortunate mistakes of medical judgment that
> >> show evolution of resistance within a bacterial population.
> >

> > Yep

Wait-- you are invoking me, a person who you seemingly want
to discredit as a closet creationist; so, by your standards,
you are "pier [*sic*] sixing" your own argument.

> >> Alan Kleinman could show you a lot of examples, yet you
> >> heaped scorn on him at the end of this post to which
> >> I am replying in installments:
> >>

> > He deserves scorn. As does Ray. And you for invoking him here and pier
> > sixing your argument.

Are you suggesting that every time someone invokes a less crazy creationist
for FACTS in order to convince a more crazy creationist, the facts are
automatically false?

Or is it just that you are a self-important person who
gets to decide who gets to be invoked for facts and who does not,
and, despite your obvious contempt for me, YOUR invoking
me is not thereby "pier [*sic*] sixing" your own argument?

Or are you just a flippant twit who says the first thing that
comes into his mind and doesn't care whether it makes sense or not?


> > Ray conveniently ignores the prevalence of bacterial gene flow via plasmids
> > and phages which is ipso facto a text book case of evolution. Lateral gene
> > transfer jumps hurdle if any that Dr Dr produces with multiplicative rule
> > as different populations and species can share innovations in
> > countermeasures to antibiotics.

Hemi, did you deliberately remove the extra space in the margin
between the next three lines and the left edge, just to play
a silly prank?

> >> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> >> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> >> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume something went
wrong elsewhere. You see, I originally offset those three lines, but
perhaps I should have offset them by two or three spaces from the
margin.

> >>
> > Please remove Martin Harran from that List.

I don't have the power to do that. Only Ray, the person who posted it,
and whom I'm quoting above, has that power.

But just out of curiosity: WHY doesn't Martin belong on the list, IYO?


> > Reminds me of:
> >
> > https://youtu.be/rsRjQDrDnY8

What it reminds me of is the inability of yourself and your protege
Erik Simpson being confused about who is addressing whom.

Didn't "this quote" in the next line below give you a clue as to who posted those words?

> >> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> >> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.

> >>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> >>> by special creation in real time periodically.
> >>
> >> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> >> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> >> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
> >>

> > I thought “appearance” equates to being illusory, hence designoid sensu
> > Dawkins.
> >>
> >> And if one does NOT grant it, one can still believe in God
> >> nudging evolution along by carefully chosen mutations that
> >> still maintain the integrity of the usual process by which
> >> creatures originate. This is the process that occurred when your
> >> parents conceived you and your mother bore you, and you
> >> grew to adulthood.
> >>
> > Why would god take so much time between big bang, Kant-Laplace emergence of
> > Earth as planetary body, emergence of life and relatively recent emergence
> > of humans instead of magically poofing us into existence as Genesis and Ray
> > hold? And why so much wastage and extinction (fossil hominids) along the
> > way? Inelegant given omnipotence and theodical given benevolence.

Why are you asking me these questions? I have never assumed the existence
of such a God in the last forty years.

I am a consistent reasoner who accepts the fact that this universe
is almost three times as old as earth, and well over 13,000 times
as old as Homo sapiens, and can only take seriously any concept of a
designer of our universe that squares with these undeniable facts.

Are you, perchance, trying to create the impression in the minds of
readers that I am a closet creationist?



> > [snip rest]
> >
> No surprise Peter avoided reply to the above, supporting my conjecture that
> he enjoys only the sound of his own voice. Not OK.

Peter does not have to answer posts on your self-important timetable.
And if either of us enjoys only the sound of his own voice, it is you,
adding a little two-line fantasy to your earlier post.

Did you REALLY think you had an unanswerable argument in that
village-atheist set of questions? If so, you know next to nothing
about me.

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

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, September 23, 2017 at 5:15:04 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip material previously addressed....]

>
> >
> > And if one does NOT grant it, one can still believe in God
> > nudging evolution along by carefully chosen mutations that
> > still maintain the integrity of the usual process by which
> > creatures originate. This is the process that occurred when your
> > parents conceived you and your mother bore you, and you
> > grew to adulthood.
>

> Yes, subjective opinions are plenteous, and one does not need the permission of anyone to espouse one.

Except yours, under pain of being called a deluded traitor:

They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.

> > That's design just as much as what you falsely equate with
> > "appearance of design"; and you've been lectured often enough,
> > by enough people, about the difference between the appearance
> > of something and the actuality of that something.
>
> I don't deny that I've been lectured, but what was lectured, by many, remains COMPLETELY false.

In your totally unsupported opinion.


> When Paley published, science treated appearance of design as actual or observed design.

Paley may have done that. [1] But if what you say is true, why weren't
scientists congratulating Paley for having said what they believed
to be true, but hadn't expressed so well?

[1] I've never seen you quote Paley to that effect in the scores of
times you've claimed this factoid. When will I ever get to see Paley
claiming that?

> When Darwin answered Paley in 1859 the preceding was still the view of science.

Design, yes; but many scientists were deists who did not think God
did much of anything with the universe after having created it and
set it in motion.

> As I write today the view of science has not changed: appearance of design = actual or observed design.

Science doesn't say such things, and the overwhelming majority of
scientists either ignore proponents of design in biology like Behe,
or actively oppose them. His own colleagues at Lehigh U., most of whom
had no idea what Behe's Intelligent Design argument was, signed a
document distancing themselves from him and ID.

Also, scientists like Kenneth Miller actively opposed Behe, and
I've never seen you put in a good word for him. He's just a
deluded, confused "traitor" in your eyes like the ones on your
list, isn't he?

Besides, he's a Roman Catholic, a member of the Church that you
repudiated. On what grounds did you repudiate it, by the way?


> Dawkins NEVER said biology accepts appearance of design. Biology does NOT accept Paley's main observational claim, which would be an absurdity.

So where do you get the idea that biology accepts the idea that
appearance of design = actual or observed design?

Are you not just playing a word game, gradually evolving a concept
into something it is not?

The ambiguous "appearance of design," thanks to the ambiguity
of "appearance", evolves into "observation of design," which
has a somewhat different set of meanins, and then "observation of"
gets lost in the shuffle because, by golly, if something is OBSERVED,
it's really and truly there, right?

Appearance of Alice in a looking glass becomes the actual Alice behind
the looking glass.

But you've never seen scientists accept this word game, have you?
You only claimed it because you think science HAS TO accept it, right?

You never saw Paley go through this word game, did you? In fact,
have you ever read anything BY Paley, as opposed to second hand
claims about Paley?


> It's really dumb people who have said, that Dawkins said, biology accepts existence of appearance of design. So don't say that or I will be forced to show how dumb you are.

Using the same silly word game, eh? How pretentious can you get?


> Anyone who says appearance of design does not rise to actual or observed design is revealing their inexcusable ignorance of language. All "appearance of design" means is "observation of design" because "appearance" presupposes that one is seeing or looking----using their sense of sight, which is observation.

And if one sees an appearance of an oasis in the desert, then, mirage
or no mirage, the oasis is really there, because one is "observing
the oasis."?! This is something we all would be stupid to deny,
in the World According to Ray Martinez.

Next time you are driving along a street on a hot day, and you
"observe" puddles of water on it, why don't you safely park your
car and wet your finger in one of those "observed" puddles?


> If X appears designed one is saying X looks designed or X is observed designed. Paley intentionally chose to craft his case for design on appearance because the concept is talking about the organization of complexity thus the same appears designed.

So you allege. Let's see an actual quote from Paley, and not just
the appearance of quotes of Paley that you've been regaling us with,
to that effect.

> >
> >
> >
> > > Design shuts down micro-evolution in its tracks at
> > > the species level.
> >
> > You are contradicting yourself. Even more amusingly, you are
> > now AGREEING with the biological definition: it shuts down
> > micro-evolution at the species level BY DEFINITION.
>
> Don't understand anything said above, and I admit that no jargon was used.

You are pulling a John Harshman, a.k.a. an Erik Simpson, here.

It should have been clear to you that you've implicitly agreed that
micro-evolution DOES occur, and thus ranked yourself among the
"traitors" you listed, since you've denounced them and Kalkidas
and a number of other people for accepting micro-evolution.


> And don't you think that when you accuse someone of contradiction, you should point it out?

You obviously do NOT think that when YOU accuse someone of contradiction,
YOU should point it out. After all, you once ended a post of
yours with the one word sentence "Contradiction." without lifting a finger
to explain where, in what I wrote, the alleged contradiction occurred,
or in what way it was a contradiction.

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

Of course, a demigod like you doesn't have to follow the rules
it imposes on mere mortals like myself.

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

> >
> > But more importantly, there is plenty of evidence of
> > species-to-species evolution in the horse family.
>
> Upon observing the equine sequence showing gradation similarity, evolution has only occurred if one assumes discovery of gradation similarity means evolution has occurred.

"gradation similarity" either means "similarity that progresses with
small changes from earlier to later animals" or it is a misrepresentation
of what biologists, from Lamarck on, think.

And evolution's occurring doesn't depend on our assumptions, since
it's been going on for about 10,000 times as long as Homo sapiens
has been around.

I've snipped the remainder, since any further progress on this topic
has to depend on you agreeing with the above, except for quibbles
about how long evolution has been going on before Homo sapiens came
on the scene.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

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

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 9:00:03 AM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Addendum:
> >
> > Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
> >
> > Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
> >
> > Ray
>
> Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
>

How does the metaphysical, in this case, not follow from the epistemological?

You asked for three definitions, I complied; the metaphysical was accounted for, so what's the problem?

> Of course, it doesn't. There is a difference between ruling out the existence of the supernatural, and saying that we only have the capability of SCIENTIFICALLY STUDYING that which is natural.
>

The stated reason doesn't matter. Exclusion of the supernatural is pro-Atheism; it makes Atheists happy. And why would any Christian want to exclude the Father of their alleged Savior and make Atheists happy? How could ANY Christian agree that the supernatural cannot be studied scientifically? Do they not know that prior to 1859 science accepted Supernaturalism?

>
Because that is the extent of science's epistemological naturalism... that SCIENCE can only study the natural, not that the supernatural is unknowable or unstudy-able OUTSIDE of science. Science makes no such claim.
>

Sean admits that science today is pro-epistemological Naturalism then in an attempt to deflect away from the pro-Atheism nature of the fact he says one is free to study the supernatural outside of science, which confirms that science is pro-epistemological Naturalism, which means pro-Atheism.

Ray

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 6:20:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip material addressed previously....]

>
>
> > I simply point out: alleged Christians, accepting claims concerning the origin of species, produced by the assumptions of Naturalism, equates to egregious contradiction and blasphemy.

> >
> You are going WAY out on a limb here. How do you know they are accepting
> claims concerning the origin of species on that basis, as opposed to
> simply accepting "claims about the origin of species," in scare quotes?

Peter's question, minus the scare quotes component, asks how do I know Christian Evolutionists accept origin of species claims based on the assumptions of Naturalism as opposed to merely accepting the claims themselves?

I have no such knowledge. And Peter's question is semi-rhetorical, implying that Christians, of course, would not accept claims made in service to the episteme of Naturalism, which means they believe said claims do not contradict their faith.

My arguments say they COULD know and SHOULD know that all evolutionary claims of fact were made, and are made, in service to the episteme of Naturalism----that these persons are without excuse. What I just said has ALWAYS been my claim and view. How many times have I said: Christians SHOULD see something terribly amiss when they find themselves standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Richard Dawkins and John Harshman, but don't see anything amiss. How could Christians not understand what unanimous acceptance of evolution by Atheists means? They can't figure out that evolution, the whole entire thing itself, is pro-Atheism?

>
> As you can see, I've caught on to your use of scare quotes, and so
> you cannot honestly pretend not to know what I meant with my
> otherwise bizarre talk just now.

I never used scare quotes in the excerpts you've quoted from or referenced.

>
> > >
> > >
> > > <small snip>
> > >
> > > > > > > >> My next post to this thread will show this quote in context,
> > > > > > > >> and the context only makes it worse, if anything.
> > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > >>> That's what appearance of design means: each new species originate
> > > > > > > >>> by special creation in real time periodically.
> > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > >> That is NOT what "appearance of design" means. Even if one grants,
> > > > > > > >> for the sake of argument, that God created some species, it
> > > > > > > >> certainly does not mean he created all of them.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Ridiculous. If God created one species, and it's proven scientifically, then what is being said is that God created all species. The fact that you don't understand that is a debate killer; it's rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars.
> > >
> > > Its DENIAL is rudimentary in the eyes of scientists and scholars,
> > > who do not trample on the rules of logic the way you do.
> > > It is obvious from this that you are neither a scientist nor a scholar.
> >
> > Your comments show how ignorant you are
>
> You completely fail to justify this comment. In fact, comments like
> these are the equivalent of the little boy who cried "Wolf", and
> somehow the wolf never shows up.

I'll support again in different terms:

Science before the rise of Darwinism accepted supernatural causation exclusively; but science after the rise of Darwinism came to accept natural causation exclusively, as it still does today.

Will finish replying ASAP....

Ray

[raven1]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 14:24:55 -0700 (PDT), r3p...@gmail.com wrote:

>I have no such knowledge.

You really ought to limit your posts to that, for both brevity and
clarity.

[raven1]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:46:44 -0700 (PDT), r3p...@gmail.com wrote:

>On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 9:00:03 AM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
>> On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>> > Addendum:
>> >
>> > Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
>> >
>> > Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
>> >
>> > Ray
>>
>> Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
>>
>
>How does the metaphysical, in this case, not follow from the epistemological?

Why do you think it does?

>You asked for three definitions, I complied; the metaphysical was accounted for, so what's the problem?
>
>> Of course, it doesn't. There is a difference between ruling out the existence of the supernatural, and saying that we only have the capability of SCIENTIFICALLY STUDYING that which is natural.
>>
>
>The stated reason doesn't matter. Exclusion of the supernatural is pro-Atheism; it makes Atheists happy. And why would any Christian want to exclude the Father of their alleged Savior and make Atheists happy? How could ANY Christian agree that the supernatural cannot be studied scientifically?

No Christian who understands science thinks the supernatural can be
studied scientifically.

[Sean Dillon]

On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 3:50:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 9:00:03 AM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
> > On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > Addendum:
> > >
> > > Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
> > >
> > > Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
> > >
> > > Ray
> >
> > Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
> >
>
> How does the metaphysical, in this case, not follow from the epistemological?

Simple: science is an enterprise with a limited scope of applicability. Its strictures prevent it from examining MANY claims, because those claims cannot be fitted into the narrow confines of the scientific method. Science CANNOT draw conclusions about anything to which the scientific method cannot be applied.

But this does NOT mean that science claims that the supernatural doesn't exist.

I've used a similar analogy before, but maybe it didn't sink in: Science is a tool... like a camera. The fact that my camera can only record visible wavelengths of light doesn't mean that non-visible wavelengths don't exist. The fact that science can only deal with natural phenomena doesn't mean that supernatural phenomena may not exist.

>
> You asked for three definitions, I complied; the metaphysical was accounted for, so what's the problem?

The problem is that you then swiftly collapsed the three to all essentially mean the same thing. Which they don't. Which is why we have distinct terms for them.

>
> > Of course, it doesn't. There is a difference between ruling out the existence of the supernatural, and saying that we only have the capability of SCIENTIFICALLY STUDYING that which is natural.
> >
>
> The stated reason doesn't matter. Exclusion of the supernatural is pro-Atheism; it makes Atheists happy.

No, it would only be pro-atheism if science was the only available method of knowing or learning. Which it isn't.

> And why would any Christian want to exclude the Father of their alleged Savior and make Atheists happy?

Why indeed? That's why many Christians have successfully wrestled with the notion that evolution is a tool via which God enacts His will... just like gravity. Nothing in science contradicts this.

> How could ANY Christian agree that the supernatural cannot be studied scientifically?

Because they have a basic understanding of the Scientific Method's demand for testability? Because they understand that Genesis is not a history?

> Do they not know that prior to 1859 science accepted Supernaturalism?

It is a little more complicated than that. Science then wasn't necessarily the rigorous pursuit it is today. It might be more accurately termed "Natural Philosophy," since it dealt both with science and metaphysics.

If we apply a modern definition of science, it breaks Special Creation in two. Spontaneous generation -- the sudden appearance of new organisms/species -- had at least the potential to be scientifically tested. Divine intervention, on the other hand -- the notion that it was a God or something supernatural that was CAUSING the spontaneous generation -- was NEVER scientifically testable, and was merely the default explanation accepted by Natural Philosophers, in the absence of anything testable.

The Theory of Evolution was, in fact, the theory that made biology an actual science in the modern sense.

>
> >
> Because that is the extent of science's epistemological naturalism... that SCIENCE can only study the natural, not that the supernatural is unknowable or unstudy-able OUTSIDE of science. Science makes no such claim.
> >
>
> Sean admits that science today is pro-epistemological Naturalism then in an attempt to deflect away from the pro-Atheism nature of the fact he says one is free to study the supernatural outside of science, which confirms that science is pro-epistemological Naturalism, which means pro-Atheism.

Sorry, but your conclusion just doesn't follow from you premise. The fact that my camera only captures visible light doesn't make it metaphysically anti-UV. The fact that science can only study the natural doesn't make it anti-anything-else.


>
> Ray

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 10:05:22 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Sean Dillon
<seand...@gmail.com>:

>On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 11:50:03 AM UTC-5, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 08:57:09 -0700 (PDT), the following
>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Sean Dillon
>> <seand...@gmail.com>:
>>
>> >On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >> Addendum:
>> >>
>> >> Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
>> >>
>> >> Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
>> >>
>> >> Ray
>> >
>> >Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
>>
>> I don't think his statement involves metaphysical
>> naturalism; it merely notes how science works.
>
>I guess we'd have to ask Ray whether he meant that the supernatural is ruled out for study, or ruled to be non-existent. In my experience, he is antsy to conflate the two.

Yeah; point. Ray tends to be evasive whenever he needs to
clarify his meaning, especially when he's not too sure
himself what he means. And, as an aside, when someone points
out that God doesn't have to do what either Ray *or* the
Bible says.

[Sean Dillon]

Our answer can be found in Ray's response:

"How does the metaphysical, in this case, not follow from the epistemological?"

So in this case, Ray argues that metaphysical naturalism necessarily follows from epistemological naturalism in this case.

Which of course is wrong.

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Friday, September 29, 2017 at 5:50:03 AM UTC-7, raven1 wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:46:44 -0700 (PDT), r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 9:00:03 AM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
> >> On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> > Addendum:
> >> >
> >> > Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
> >> >
> >> > Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
> >> >
> >> > Ray
> >>
> >> Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
> >>
> >
> >How does the metaphysical, in this case, not follow from the epistemological?
>
> Why do you think it does?

If material nature produced itself after First Cause unto the present then the logical inference and position is that First Cause occurred naturally as well as seen in abiogenesis.

Fully natural epistemology infers fully natural metaphysical First Cause, which is the position of science.

>
> >You asked for three definitions, I complied; the metaphysical was accounted for, so what's the problem?
> >
> >> Of course, it doesn't. There is a difference between ruling out the existence of the supernatural, and saying that we only have the capability of SCIENTIFICALLY STUDYING that which is natural.
> >>
> >
> >The stated reason doesn't matter. Exclusion of the supernatural is pro-Atheism; it makes Atheists happy. And why would any Christian want to exclude the Father of their alleged Savior and make Atheists happy? How could ANY Christian agree that the supernatural cannot be studied scientifically?
>
> No Christian who understands science thinks the supernatural can be
> studied scientifically.

Re-phrase: No follower of Christ who understands the claims of naturalistic science thinks the Father of their alleged Savior designed and created nature past and nature present. In other words these Christians agree with Atheists. Said agreement falsifies their alleged identity as Christians.

Proof positive that these Christians are not following Christ because no one can say Christ would approve or lead any person to accept the assumptions of naturalistic science. These "Christians," like I have observed many times, are traitors, which is a biblical prediction, as seen in Judas siding with the enemies of Christ----the Pharisees who also THOUGHT they were followers of God.

Ray

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Friday, September 29, 2017 at 5:50:03 AM UTC-7, raven1 wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:46:44 -0700 (PDT), r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 9:00:03 AM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
> >> On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> > Addendum:
> >> >
> >> > Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
> >> >
> >> > Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
> >> >
> >> > Ray
> >>
> >> Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
> >>
> >
> >How does the metaphysical, in this case, not follow from the epistemological?
>
> Why do you think it does?
>
> >You asked for three definitions, I complied; the metaphysical was accounted for, so what's the problem?
> >
> >> Of course, it doesn't. There is a difference between ruling out the existence of the supernatural, and saying that we only have the capability of SCIENTIFICALLY STUDYING that which is natural.
> >>
> >
> >The stated reason doesn't matter. Exclusion of the supernatural is pro-Atheism; it makes Atheists happy. And why would any Christian want to exclude the Father of their alleged Savior and make Atheists happy? How could ANY Christian agree that the supernatural cannot be studied scientifically?
>
> No Christian who understands science thinks the supernatural can be
> studied scientifically.

Comment recognizes the fact that many persons who claim to be following Christ agree with Atheists that evidence supporting the existence of Christ's Father does not exist in natural reality. Precisely why Atheism exists: no evidence of God exists. The preceding facts dictate that the Christians at issue, by any objective standard, are not genuine followers of Christ, which explains why Atheists defend these "Christians."

Ray

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 15:17:30 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by r3p...@gmail.com:

>On Friday, September 29, 2017 at 5:50:03 AM UTC-7, raven1 wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:46:44 -0700 (PDT), r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> >On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 9:00:03 AM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
>> >> On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >> > Addendum:
>> >> >
>> >> > Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
>> >> >
>> >> > Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
>> >> >
>> >> > Ray
>> >>
>> >> Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
>> >>
>> >
>> >How does the metaphysical, in this case, not follow from the epistemological?
>>
>> Why do you think it does?
>
>If material nature produced itself after First Cause unto the present then the logical inference and position is that First Cause occurred naturally as well as seen in abiogenesis.
>
>Fully natural epistemology infers fully natural metaphysical First Cause, which is the position of science.
>
>>
>> >You asked for three definitions, I complied; the metaphysical was accounted for, so what's the problem?
>> >
>> >> Of course, it doesn't. There is a difference between ruling out the existence of the supernatural, and saying that we only have the capability of SCIENTIFICALLY STUDYING that which is natural.
>> >>
>> >
>> >The stated reason doesn't matter. Exclusion of the supernatural is pro-Atheism; it makes Atheists happy. And why would any Christian want to exclude the Father of their alleged Savior and make Atheists happy? How could ANY Christian agree that the supernatural cannot be studied scientifically?
>>
>> No Christian who understands science thinks the supernatural can be
>> studied scientifically.
>
>Re-phrase: No follower of Christ who understands the claims of naturalistic science thinks the Father of their alleged Savior designed and created nature past and nature present. In other words these Christians agree with Atheists.

That "re-phrase" is not an accurate translation.

> Said agreement falsifies their alleged identity as Christians.

Only to you. God thinks otherwise. (See how easy it is to
make irrefutable but unprovable assertions, and why you
should stop doing so?)

>Proof positive that these Christians are not following Christ because no one can say Christ would approve or lead any person to accept the assumptions of naturalistic science. These "Christians," like I have observed many times, are traitors, which is a biblical prediction, as seen in Judas siding with the enemies of Christ----the Pharisees who also THOUGHT they were followers of God.

Assertions like those. Stop pretending to speak for God, in
*any* of His forms.

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 10:43:54 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Sean Dillon
<seand...@gmail.com>:

>On Friday, September 29, 2017 at 12:40:03 PM UTC-5, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 10:05:22 -0700 (PDT), the following
>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Sean Dillon
>> <seand...@gmail.com>:
>>
>> >On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 11:50:03 AM UTC-5, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 08:57:09 -0700 (PDT), the following
>> >> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Sean Dillon
>> >> <seand...@gmail.com>:
>> >>
>> >> >On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:20:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >> >> Addendum:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Epistemological Naturalism says knowledge regarding the origin of nature, natural reality, and biodiversity, past and present, can only be obtained from material nature itself.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Main implication: The supernatural is ruled out by starting assumption.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Ray
>> >> >
>> >> >Ah yup. That's what I was looking for... a claim that epistemological Naturalism collapses to metaphysical naturalism.
>> >>
>> >> I don't think his statement involves metaphysical
>> >> naturalism; it merely notes how science works.
>> >
>> >I guess we'd have to ask Ray whether he meant that the supernatural is ruled out for study, or ruled to be non-existent. In my experience, he is antsy to conflate the two.
>>
>> Yeah; point. Ray tends to be evasive whenever he needs to
>> clarify his meaning, especially when he's not too sure
>> himself what he means. And, as an aside, when someone points
>> out that God doesn't have to do what either Ray *or* the
>> Bible says.

<snip>

>Our answer can be found in Ray's response:

Possibly, but watch out for the hidden assumptions in
anything he posts.

>"How does the metaphysical, in this case, not follow from the epistemological?"
>
>So in this case, Ray argues that metaphysical naturalism necessarily follows from epistemological naturalism in this case.
>
>Which of course is wrong.

That would depend on what he means by "in this case", and
the lack of clarity regarding his meanings in various posts
has been noted. But point taken.

[Burkhard]

r3p...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 8:55:05 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip material addressed previously....]
>
>>
>>
>>

>>>>>>> Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
>>
>> WRONG! a single watch cannot be analogous to a whole species.
>
> Any given sexually reproducing animal/also known as an organism (= Paley's watch) belongs to a species or population of like individuals. Definitely a SHEESH moment here since the point is SO BASIC.
>
> Peter: You've revealed that you're completely ignorant of Paley 101----COMPLETELY. What I'm saying isn't the least bit controversial among history of science scholars. Why don't you toddle over to the history of science department at your university and ask the resident professor?
>
> In today's understanding: Paley's watch, as defined above = the Biological Species Concept.
>


As much as it pains me to agree with Peter, on this he is right. I'm not
sure that you really misunderstand Paley here, it's probably just your
idiosyncratic word use again, and more your inability to write clearly
than a genuine misunderstanding, but no, his watch cannot be a species,
let alone the species concept.

His watch is an individual. One of the problems with this analogy is
indeed that it says nothing about why, and how, different individuals
form natural groups such as species.

>>
>>
>>>>>>> The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as reflecting appearance of design. If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because real time special creation was accepted when Paley published,
>>
>> This falsehood has been so often corrected that it must count as
>> a deliberate lie by you. Lamarck, who predated Paley, is only
>> one of many exceptions.
>
> Where did you obtain the idea that Lamarck 1809 enjoyed ANY scientific acceptance during his lifetime? And where did you obtain the idea that science accepted species mutability before the rise of Darwinism?
>
> I've asked two straightforward questions. Let's see if I get two straightforward answers?
>
>>
>>
>>>>>>> what is being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.
>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> REally? If you find a watch on the beach, your inference is not only
>>>>>> that it was designed and manufactured, but that all that happened in
>>>>>> situ, on the beach?
>>>>>
>>>>> Didn't say that; what I said is that it was **created** where found, not designed where found.
>>
>> Also patently false. The watch was created elsewhere and dropped
>> on the heath.
>
> Laughable ignorance of Paley 1802.
>
> When Paley said he happened upon a watch lying on a heath ALL HE IS SAYING IS THAT HE ENCOUNTERED AN ANIMAL IN THE WILD!
>
> The watch represents a sexually reproducing animal,

that restriction is not in the text

>which belongs to a species. There's no shortage of scholars who say Darwin 1859 is an answer to Paley 1802; thus Darwin's title "on the origin of SPECIES by means of natural selection." Darwin said species or Paley's "watch" (note the quote marks) as found on the heath or in the wild does not originate from independent creation (Darwin 1859:6; London: John Murray) but from a previously living species by means of natural selection.

Darwin is indeed an answer to Paley. And one way you can answer, or
surpass a previous theory is by showing that your theory can answer
questions that the previous theory can't even ask. Paley says next to
nothing about species - there is only one short passage where Paley
talks about groups of organisms, and there he does not restrict himself
to species. He asserts that the fact that organisms forms groups of
different levels is in itself a sign of design:

"But, moreover, the division of organized substances into animals and
vegetables, and the distribution and sub-distribution of each into
genera and species, which distribution is not an arbitrary act of the
mind, but founded in the order which prevails in external nature, appear
to me to contradict the supposition of the present world being the
remains of an indefinite variety of existences; of a variety which
rejects all plan. The hypothesis teaches, that every possible variety of
being hath, at one time or other, found its way into existence (by what
cause or in what manner is not said), and that those which were badly
formed, perished; but how or why those which survived should be cast, as
we see that plants and animals are cast, into regular classes, the
hypothesis does not explain; or rather the hypothesis is inconsistent
with this phænomenon"

The model that he attacks here is one where organisms are created purely
randomly, a form of naturalistic theory of origins of organisms in the
pre-darwinian literature that can be traced back to Titus Lucretius
Carus in the first century BC. In this model, you'd have purely random
recombination of atoms that form all things. In the biological sphere,
this results in an over-generation of entities, most not capable of
sustaining life and thus dying quickly - an early concept of natural
selection, if you will.

Paley argues that if this was the case, we might find lots and lots of
diverse life forms, but they would not form natural groups or classes.
That's not implausible, but not as strong as he might have thought -
random processes can and do result in clusters and groupings. (it's a
test I give my students when they do statistics - to draw random dots on
a piece of paper. The vast majority draws nice, evenly spaced out
pictures which avoid clusters at all costs - and therefore are clearly
not random). He also hasn't quite thought through the impact of
environmental selection, though he actually gets pretty close to a
theory of natural selection that is not that far off. So even in this
model, constant selective pressure would result in a degree of sorting.

But by and large his argument is sound for that specific model. What
Darwin does is to replace this unconstrained model of random
recombination by a constrained one (constraint by environmental
pressures and by descent) and then it stops working.

But Paley does not give any positive answer why design should result in
species (and hence does not give an answer of the origin of species),
only that naturalistic competitors at he time cannot account for it at
all.


>
>>
>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What a strange world you are living in! I'd say pretty much everyone
>>>>>> else would infer that the watch was made at a watchmaker's shop, someone
>>>>>> bought it, took it for a walk and accidentally dropped it on the beach.
>>>>>
>>>>> These comments seem to forget that Paley's watch represents a sexually reproducing living thing.
>>>>
>>>> Not very well it doesn't, in that it lacks the very qualities that define a reproducing living thing. Specifically, a watch doesn't build more copies of itself, with minor variations.
>>>>
>>>> That is actually THE fatal flaw in Paley's entire argument.
>>>
>>> That's the MAIN POINT of Paley's entire argument: evolution is impossible;
>> design and creation is the ONLY way for a watch to come into existence.
>>
>> I'd like to see where Paley claimed evolution of biological
>> organisms [NOT watches] is impossible.
>
> Paley 1802 was a preemptive reply to Hume and others including Erasmus Darwin. Both had advocated the CONCEPT of evolution: species originating new species.
>
> Ask Burkhard.

Paley is in this respect a bit more careful than you, theologically. He
does argue that species did not evolve. But he also argues in a couple
of places that this was a choice that God made, and thus could have been
different had God so chosen. (you find this e.g. where he discusses why
animals have a mechanism that allows them to see, rather than just the
ability to see, without a cumbersome apparatus). So evolution for him is
not impossible it just did not happen. And even there you have to be
rather careful, as contrary to your position, he does allow for watches
to bring froth new watches in a purely naturalistic way - if
programmed/designed to do so by the designer of the original watch. For
him such as indirect design process is perfectly OK, and that means that
in principle, he should be OK with an account where the designer only
designs an original watch (the common ancestor of all watches)and then
leaves it to these watches to reproduce. While he does not mention this
explicitly, the small addition that they reproduce with variations that
respond to the environment would be perfectly consistent with that line
of argument - making Paley potentially a form of theistic evolutionist.
(This is all in Chapter II: The state of the argument continued")


>
>>
>> You are just INFERRING it from his argument from design, aren't you?
>
> It's his MAIN IMPLICATION. When Hume and E. Darwin advocated the CONCEPT of evolution Paley got boiling mad. He rightly saw that IF evolution became accepted then his God would be out of business, relegated to the unemployment line. The motivating force behind his Natural Theology was a desire to stamp out the concept of evolution via reminding naturalists that living things are far more complex than a pocket watch and the same, by implication, COULD NOT have evolved.

So the design inference is that because organisms differ radically from
things that we know are designed (watches which in your opinion are far
less complex than organisms)they are therefore designed? Rather
problematic, don't you think?

>
>>
>> Paley knew nothing about the fossil record as far as it shedding
>> light on evolution. NONE of his contemporaries did. Yet it was
>> primarily the fossil record, with *Archaeopteryx* as its post-Paley
>> masterpiece, that convinced scientists of the reality of
>> common descent.
>
> All this says is that discovery of gradation similarity means evolution has occurred. Yet Darwin told us that when he published science accepted EACH SPECIES created independently. So discovery of gradation similarity does NOT mean evolution has occurred because each species was already held created by science. The evidence of gradation similarity, if unveiled at the time, would only mean that God created a line of similar species.
>
>>
>> At least, that is what scientists call it; you call it "common descent"
>> in scare quotes, because without scare quotes, your self-serving
>> jargon makes the term into a package deal incorporating the claim
>> that there is NO intervention in evolution, no matter how subtle or rare,
>> by a supernatural agent.
>
> The phrase _common descent_ is a phrase belonging to terminology describing origin of species claims produced by the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism. These assumptions and claims say ALL biological production originates from material nature itself, not from immaterial Divine power operating in nature periodically, originating in heaven. So any teleological claim that assumes common descent true, to any degree, is falsified by acceptance of common descent because common descent was produced in service to the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism.
>
> In essence: linear or horizontal causation (includes branching) contradicts vertical causation inferred from design. IF true THEN the former is falsified and must be re-conveyed in teleological terms to reflect the fact that God is shown to exist and must be the true First Cause, not abiogenesis.
>
> Ray
>
> (snip for now....)
>

[r3p...@gmail.com]

Comment says God approves of His followers accepting naturalistic assumptions and interpretations of natural reality, tbat is, pro-Atheism assumptions and interpretations of nature, which is manifestly ridiculous. Comment above also says by merely asserting that God approves the same somehow defeats what I said, which once again proves that the author of the comment above literally has no awareness of the fact that it is egregiously illogical to say God approves of naturalism assumptions.

One cannot say that God approves of naturalistic science; rather, God's view is found in the Bible, which is also known as the word of God.

Ray

[Burkhard]

r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 8:55:05 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip material addressed previously....]
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>>> Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
>>
>> WRONG! a single watch cannot be analogous to a whole species.
>
> Any given sexually reproducing animal/also known as an organism (= Paley's watch) belongs to a species or population of like individuals. Definitely a SHEESH moment here since the point is SO BASIC.
>
> Peter: You've revealed that you're completely ignorant of Paley 101----COMPLETELY. What I'm saying isn't the least bit controversial among history of science scholars. Why don't you toddle over to the history of science department at your university and ask the resident professor?
>
> In today's understanding: Paley's watch, as defined above = the Biological Species Concept.
>
>>
>>

>>>>>>> The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as reflecting appearance of design. If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because real time special creation was accepted when Paley published,
>>
>> This falsehood has been so often corrected that it must count as
>> a deliberate lie by you. Lamarck, who predated Paley, is only
>> one of many exceptions.
>
> Where did you obtain the idea that Lamarck 1809 enjoyed ANY scientific acceptance during his lifetime? And where did you obtain the idea that science accepted species mutability before the rise of Darwinism?
>

missed that one. Well, Lamarck gained membership in the Académie royale
des sciences in 1779, and a commission as a Royal Botanist in 1781,
both positions are awarded on merit after a judgement of the most
preeminent peers. !797he became "Professeur d'Histoire naturelle des
Insectes et des Vers", one of the highest regarded chairs in France at
the time. Amongst his followers were Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
Robert Edmond Grant and Regius Professor of Natural History at the
University of Edinburgh, Robert Jameson,

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 9:00:04 AM UTC-7, Bob Casanova wrote:

Facts explained logically misrepresented as assertions. Again, no one can say Christ has led anyone to accept any claim made in service to the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism, which said assumptions say His Father did not design or create any living thing, past or present. These "Christians" are without excuse: they could know, they should know, that evolutionary theory uses the assumptions of Naturalism to explain evidence. I contend that they do in fact know, the same equates to the actions of traitors. These persons are not genuine Christians.

How can a person who accepts the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism be considered a follower of Christ? Are we to believe Christ leads people to accept pro-Atheism assumptions and explanations of natural reality? That's what the defenders of Christian Evolutionists are saying.

>
Stop pretending to speak for God, in
> *any* of His forms.

I didn't quote from the Bible, but when I do I always indicate properly.

Ray

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 10:40:03 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
> r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 8:55:05 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> > [snip material addressed previously....]
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>>>>> Paley said he happened upon a watch on a heath. The watch represents all living things, past and present, and the species that they are a member.
> >>
> >> WRONG! a single watch cannot be analogous to a whole species.
> >
> > Any given sexually reproducing animal/also known as an organism (= Paley's watch) belongs to a species or population of like individuals. Definitely a SHEESH moment here since the point is SO BASIC.
> >
> > Peter: You've revealed that you're completely ignorant of Paley 101----COMPLETELY. What I'm saying isn't the least bit controversial among history of science scholars. Why don't you toddle over to the history of science department at your university and ask the resident professor?
> >
> > In today's understanding: Paley's watch, as defined above = the Biological Species Concept.
> >
>
>
> As much as it pains me to agree with Peter, on this he is right. I'm not
> sure that you really misunderstand Paley here, it's probably just your
> idiosyncratic word use again, and more your inability to write clearly
> than a genuine misunderstanding, but no, his watch cannot be a species,
> let alone the species concept.
>
> His watch is an individual.

I said an organism, or sexually reproducing individual, same thing. Each sexually reproducing individual, organism, or animal, which is what Paley is talking about belongs to a species obviously. Nothing even remotely complicated or controversial here.

> One of the problems with this analogy is
> indeed that it says nothing about why, and how, different individuals
> form natural groups such as species.

But in these context we are not talking about alleged problems with what Paley said; rather, we are attempting to determine what he said. What Paley said or claimed is not the least bit controversial among scholars. The fact that a handful of evo loons here don't understand the meaning of Paley's watch to represent any given sexually reproducing animal, which must belong to a species, clearly justifies my description of these people as loons.

And much scholarship exists that says Paley's watch represents the entire universe or galaxy or solar system. In fact, Paley's watch represents all of the preceding as well. Again, all that's going on here is a handful of Evolutionists are revealing themselves totally ignorant.

Darwin said he thought very highly of Natural Theology, singling out Paley's logic as comparable to the logic of Euclidean geometry. Yet, a handful of loons here are unable to grasp anything logical because like I have observed time and again people who accept evolution think illogically without any awareness of the fact.

>
> >>
> >>
> >>>>>>> The watch or the living thing (= present tense) is then described as reflecting appearance of design. If true the inference can be made that the watch had a Maker. Because real time special creation was accepted when Paley published,
> >>
> >> This falsehood has been so often corrected that it must count as
> >> a deliberate lie by you. Lamarck, who predated Paley, is only
> >> one of many exceptions.
> >
> > Where did you obtain the idea that Lamarck 1809 enjoyed ANY scientific acceptance during his lifetime? And where did you obtain the idea that science accepted species mutability before the rise of Darwinism?
> >
> > I've asked two straightforward questions. Let's see if I get two straightforward answers?
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>>>>>> what is being said is that the watch that Paley found on the heath was created where he found it.
> >>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> REally? If you find a watch on the beach, your inference is not only
> >>>>>> that it was designed and manufactured, but that all that happened in
> >>>>>> situ, on the beach?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Didn't say that; what I said is that it was **created** where found, not designed where found.
> >>
> >> Also patently false. The watch was created elsewhere and dropped
> >> on the heath.
> >
> > Laughable ignorance of Paley 1802.
> >
> > When Paley said he happened upon a watch lying on a heath ALL HE IS SAYING IS THAT HE ENCOUNTERED AN ANIMAL IN THE WILD!
> >
> > The watch represents a sexually reproducing animal,
>
> that restriction is not in the text

Loony.

>
> >which belongs to a species. There's no shortage of scholars who say Darwin 1859 is an answer to Paley 1802; thus Darwin's title "on the origin of SPECIES by means of natural selection." Darwin said species or Paley's "watch" (note the quote marks) as found on the heath or in the wild does not originate from independent creation (Darwin 1859:6; London: John Murray) but from a previously living species by means of natural selection.
>
> Darwin is indeed an answer to Paley. And one way you can answer, or
> surpass a previous theory is by showing that your theory can answer
> questions that the previous theory can't even ask. Paley says next to
> nothing about species - there is only one short passage where Paley
> talks about groups of organisms, and there he does not restrict himself
> to species. He asserts that the fact that organisms forms groups of
> different levels is in itself a sign of design:

Loony.

Ray

[r3p...@gmail.com]

Lamarck died broke, and his claims enjoyed ZERO scientific acceptance when he lived. Darwin said he did not obtain an idea or fact from Lamarck 1809.
When Lamarck lived science held species immutable.

Ray

[r3p...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 8:30:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 1:20:02 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 6:20:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 6:45:05 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 8:55:05 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > > > On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 6:35:02 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 3:05:02 PM UTC-7, Sean Dillon wrote:
> > > > > > > On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 4:50:02 PM UTC-5, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:

> > > > > > > > On Sunday, September 24, 2017 at 12:30:06 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
> > > > > > > > > r3p...@gmail.com wrote:

> > > > > > > > > > On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 2:15:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > > > > > > > >> In a post made less than a day ago, Ray Martinez made the following
> > > > > > > > > >> confident assertion:
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> I've spent most of my time here at Talk.Origins refuting evolution,
> > > > > > > > > >> that is, the explanation of evidence that all Atheists accept
> > > > > > > > > >> as supporting their worldview.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> But what's really interesting is just what Ray imagines to be
> > > > > > > > > >> a refutation. Here is what he wrote next, with my commentary
> > > > > > > > > >> addressed directly to Ray:
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:30:03 PM UTC-4, r3p...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > >

> > > > > <snip of comments that Hemidactylus and I have dealt with>

> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > > > > > >> They're confused and deluded traitors, which includes Steady Eddie,
> > > > > > > > > >> Alan Kleinman, William Dembski, Ken Ham, Martin Harran,
> > > > > > > > > >> Alvin Plantinga, etc. etc.
> > > > >

> > > > > Your over-the-top insults of this mixed bag of people show
> > > > > that you want to destroy talk.origins as a medium of
> > > > > mature exchange of ideas by people who sincerely differ on
> > > > > evolution.
> > > >
> > > > I'm a no-name nobody,
> > >
> > > By yourself, no; but you have many willing allies among the atheists
> > > who are already hounding much more honest and sincere Christians
> > > than you, such as the ones you have named.
> >
> > Hounding them for what?
>
> For anything they can come up with, but especially for saying things
> that can be spin-doctored into misrepresentations that put them
> into a bad light. An example is your gross misrepresentation of the
> people you named up there.
>
> Some people will not do even that much: they will shower them
> with baseless insults like the ones Oxyaena and Wolffan shower
> me with. And the others, including you, will play "see no evil,
> hear no evil, speak no evil" about them and about the people
> who encourage them, such as Hemidactylus.
>
> After all, why should you support "traitors" against such people?
>
> > >
> > > And they are only too happy to have someone like you, who claims
> > > to be an evangelical Protestant and a creationist [1] as someone to
> > > whom to compare the people you named, EXCEPT for Martin Harran,
> > > who is neither an evangelical Protestant nor a creationist.
> > >
> >
> > Too ridiculous to even comment on.
>
> Too truthful for you to be able to comment on it.
>
> Don't play poker: your bluffs are just too transparent.
>
> > >
> > > > I have no such powers;
> > >
> > > Yes, you do; and besides the atheists, there are people who claim
> > > that their religion, or lack of it, is nobody's business, but who
> > > are otherwise exactly like the atheists I talked about.
> >
> > Persons who claim Theism or Christianity then insist their faith is private
>
> Who among the people you labeled "traitors" fits that descriptiion?
> Martin Harran claims to be a Roman Catholic. I've never seen Kleinman
> claim his faith is private, and the others (except maybe Steady Eddie)
> are evangelical Protestants, aren't they?
>
>
> > are actually attempting to have the best of both worlds, the other world being secularism. Yet the Bible is clear: a believer cannot serve two masters, but only one, God or Mammon.
>
> What is your private definition of the word "Mammon"?
>
>
> > Invariably these are serving Mammon----that's why their faith is private because its counterfeit and they know it.
>
> Sickeningly self-serving definition of "insist their faith is private,"
> noted. Is ANY derogatory claim you make free of such misleading mental
> reservations?
>
>
> What they KNOW is that there is overwhelming evidence of "evolution"
> to an extent that is anathema to you. [1] By "evolution" in scare quotes
> I mean what you do: "common descent" [also in scare quotes] to some
> extent, BUT not denying God a deciding role in that common descent.
>
> You THINK their faith is counterfeit because you define "counterfeit
> faith" as not accepting YOUR far-out doctrine that God poofs
> every species into existence. And of course, they do know that
> they do not accept your opinion, which you elevate into a doctrine.
>
> [1] Some only accept a bit of "common descent", like some subset
> of the horse family where the gradual changes are too gradual
> to require God's poofing each successive species into existence
> while sometimes allowing "last year's model" to go on thriving for some time.
>
> > And your comparison to Atheists here is too ambiguous and unspecified as to the similarities.
>
> Which of the above forms of hounding of "traitors" do you NOT actively
> engage in, or at least endorse?
>
>
> >
> > > Many of them,
> > > including Hemidactylus and Oxyaena [formerly Thinaxodon], right on this
> > > thread, are busy at the destructive campaign I described above.
> > >
> >
> > What exactly is their goal?
>
> The same as yours: to discredit me and to make me unpopular.
>
> And if I were to leave talk.origins, you and they would redouble
> y'all's efforts against anyone you call a "traitor". Casanova and
> jillery have been doing an aggressive job against Steady Eddie
> on a thread Eddie began,
>
> Evolutionary Theorist Concedes: Evolution "Largely Avoids"
> Biggest Questions of Biological Origins
>
> and if I didn't keep you busy, you'd be only too glad to help
> them against "Steady Eddie the traitor," wouldn't you?
>
> >
> > > > and as a matter of fact I haven't engaged in any trollish invective
> > > or insults.
> > >
> > > Not against militant atheists, I'll give you that; but you've done
> > > it many times against me, with trumped-up and demonstrably fallacious
> > > charges of me being an "Atheist", and you did it RIGHT UP THERE!
> > > [Keywords: confused, deluded, traitors]
> > >
> >
> > I simply observe that you accept the assumptions of epistemological Naturalism
>
> There is no such observation, you craven libeler.

Evolutionary theory is an explanation of evidence based solely on the episteme of Naturalism. If one accepts evolutionary theory then one is accepting the episteme of Naturalism because the former is based on the latter.

Peter pretends that he doesn't understand.

>
>
> > to explain nature and evidence,
>
> Liar.

What lie? Is it a lie to say evolution assumes epistemological Naturalism true? And is it a lie to say acceptance of evolution equates to acceptance of epistemological Naturalism? And how is it a lie to conclude acceptance of either equates to acceptance of Atheism?

>
> > which said assumptions are pro-Atheism. Then I observe that your acceptance of epistemological Naturalism contradicts your denial of Atheism as your worldview.
>
> This is a perfect example of you hounding ME: you keep telling lies
> about me that you've never even TRIED to document, and pretending
> you never saw long explanations from me about WHY they are lies.

So ASSERTED again! What lie?

You accept evolutionary theory; evolutionary theory in turn is pro-epistemological Naturalism, which means pro-Atheism. If one accepts evolutionary theory as true then one has accepted epistemological Naturalism as true, which dictates acceptance of Atheism.

Epistemological Naturalism is not in any way, shape or form, Agnostic. The concept of Agnosticism and the concept of Naturalism contradict. Nothing even remotely complicated here.

Ray

[snip coils of nonsense....]

[Burkhard]

I've given you the names and position of those who accepted his views
above, you stomping on the ground shouting "it ain't so" does not make
them go away

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 30 Sep 2017 10:54:12 -0700 (PDT), the following

Again with the bad translations. "Comment" says no such
thing; it says exactly what it says. And you cannot
successfully refute it.

>, tbat is, pro-Atheism assumptions and interpretations of nature, which is manifestly ridiculous. Comment above also says by merely asserting that God approves the same somehow defeats what I said, which once again proves that the author of the comment above literally has no awareness of the fact that it is egregiously illogical to say God approves of naturalism assumptions.
>
>One cannot say that God approves of naturalistic science; rather, God's view is found in the Bible, which is also known as the word of God.

See the part above, "God thinks otherwise"? He still does,
and says you are wrong. BTW, He also says that He doesn't
have to do what the Bible dictates, since He didn't write
it.